The Hero's Fall (DCI Cook Thriller Series Book 14) by Phillip Strang (classic books for 10 year olds TXT) 📕

‘Were they friends?’

‘Angus never had many friends; Mike would have been his only one. A loner even as a child, not with his face in a book or staying in the house, but out on the moors, sometimes disappearing for days on end.’

‘You worried?’

‘Yes, dreadfully, but that was Angus, and then after a few days, there he would be sitting down at the kitchen table, cleaning a rabbit that he’d caught, expecting me to put it in the oven for him.’

‘Which you did.’

‘I was resigned to Angus’s fate. I knew that one day he wouldn’t come home, and now, he hasn’t. My anguish and sorrow are behind me; emotions deadened by his lifestyle.’

‘Yet, you loved him as only a mother could.’

‘He was a remarkable child and an even more remarkable adult, and I hoped that one day he would stop, but I never expected it.’

‘Maddox Timberley?’ Wendy asked.

‘She came up here with him once. I liked her, and so did Angus, thought that he might be settling down.’

‘She has a reputation.’

‘So had Angus, but he was a quiet boy, kept to himself, never troubled anyone, other than his poor mother who worried about him. Maddox was fine by me, never judge a book by its cover, and up here, two weeks she spent about six months ago, she fitted right in, took off the high heels and the makeup, helped me around the house, even cleaned a rabbit for him. He liked her a lot.’

‘Love?’

‘Not Angus, not as you’d understand. He was solitary, not emotional, no hugs and kisses for his mother.’

‘We’re told that his libido wasn’t high.’ Wendy wasn’t sure how to phrase the question to the mother.

‘It wasn’t a passionate romance. Angus preferred physical challenges, and Maddox, away from the spotlight, wore a pair of old jeans and a torn shirt. Good family values, that was Maddox, not like what we had shown Angus. His father’s a decent man, bit of a bastard though, can’t keep his hands where they should be.’

‘Women?’

‘Meet with him, judge for yourself. Maddox never met him; Angus wouldn’t have risked it.’

‘He would have made a play?’

‘Not his father, but he would have been looking. That’s why I brought Angus up here, away from him. Needn’t have worried though; Angus was never going to be like his father.’

Chapter 4

A construction worker found the site where the shot had been taken. Larry Hill was out at the scene within the hour, the twenty-first floor of a new residential high-rise construction.

‘Blows up here sometimes,’ the foreman, a tall, well-built man with a Liverpudlian accent, said.

With no windows, the wind howled through, safety barriers in place to prevent a mishap; sufficient according to the site foreman and its safety officer, not enough for Larry.

‘The day of the murder?’ Larry asked.

‘Not sure we’d know. We had an industrial dispute, the place locked up tight.’

‘Security?’

‘Hardly. They don’t like to waste money, and besides, what’s to steal? Concrete and rebar, not something you can put in a backpack, sell down the pub.’

‘If the place is shut up tight, how did the shooter get up here?’

‘If it were us, we’d climb the stairs or use the construction elevator.’

‘He wasn’t you, and the elevator wouldn’t have been working.’

‘Then, if he wasn’t hiding up here from the day before, and that’s unlikely, not many places to hide and it’s perishing cold at night, he came up the stairs.’

‘Twenty-one floors?’

‘We do it on most days.’

‘I wouldn’t,’ Larry said, although the construction elevator attached to the side of the building had been dusty and hesitant, and it had groaned as it rose from the ground below.

‘Too many cooked breakfasts from what I can see, Inspector. You’d have a heart attack before the tenth floor.’

Usually, Larry knew, people were careful in what they said to a police officer, a degree of respect for the law, an unwillingness to tempt providence, leave themselves open to suspicion, even if they hadn’t done anything wrong. However, men who had hard physical jobs acquired a toughness and took no such care. These were beer-swilling men, men who swore profusely, shouted at each other, fought on occasion.

Larry, still not used to the exposed surroundings, leant up against a concrete wall.

‘You’re right,’ Larry said. ‘Fond of a beer as well.’

‘Spend a day with us. We’ll soon get the flab off you. Stuff that dieting nonsense.’

‘I might take you up on that,’ Larry said, knowing that he wouldn’t. He was a sedentary man, the energy slowly draining from his body, yet up high, away from the pollution down below, the cold, biting air entering his lungs, he had to admit to feeling better.

“He would have had to be fit,’ Larry said.

‘It depends how long he was here before he took the shot,’ the foreman said. ‘He would have been exhausted, and even us, we’re puffing if we walk up, okay after a couple of minutes, but you…’

‘A heart attack,’ Larry interjected.

‘Almost. Army training, I know about weapons,’ the foreman said as he looked at the rifle mount that had been left behind.

To the rear of the men, the sound of an approaching elevator, the crime scene investigators arriving, the site closed for the day.

Kitted up, the CSIs went to work, a further safety barrier installed by the site foreman at Gordon Windsor’s request.

Time was of the essence as the weather was inclement, storm clouds rolling in. It was sheer luck that only two days had passed since someone had lain on the dusty concrete floor and taken the shot, the site protected from the harshest winds by a small rise from the floor, the base of an expansive yet so far open window,