The Hero's Fall (DCI Cook Thriller Series Book 14) by Phillip Strang (best classic romance novels txt) 📗

DCS Goddard to sign it, prepare a court order, make sure all the salient points are there, and I’ll phone up Doctor Henstridge, tell him I’m on my way and that I’ll expect full cooperation.’

***

Henstridge sat firmly on his office chair, adamant that he wouldn’t discuss the matter further or open up Hampton’s file without a court order.

‘Events are moving fast,’ Isaac said. ‘I suggest you prepare the information that we want.’

‘That’s not the issue. As you say, you intend to arrest Mike Hampton on suspicion of murder, so that must mean you are very confident of his guilt.’

‘Not murder, not yet, but he had the motive, if not the ability. He is the crux on which our investigation hinges.’

‘And if his medical report says otherwise?’

‘If it does, then we’ll look elsewhere. In the meantime, you can either deny or confirm that Mike Hampton has reacquired the use of his legs.’

‘Section 29 of the Data Protection Act gives me some leniency in this, and I’m aware that your chief superintendent has signed the form, but due to the seriousness of the matter, I’ll still need a court order. You, as a police officer, can understand that,’ Henstridge said.

‘I can, and I do. However, Hampton may well have been responsible directly or inadvertently for the deaths of two persons. I wouldn’t want another to be on your conscience.’

‘I will follow the letter of the law, no other.’

‘When was the last time you saw Hampton?’

‘It will be in the information I give you.’

‘It’s only a question.’

‘To you, it is, not to me.’

At Mike Hampton’s house, calm reigned. Larry and Wendy had arrived, told the man his rights and informed him of his removal to the police station.

‘In a wheelchair?’ Hampton’s comment. ‘Me, involved in a murder? How? I can’t leave the house, not unless I go down a ramp, and you expect to charge me with cutting a bungee cord.’

‘It’s not been reported, the cutting of the cord,’ Larry said.

‘It’s on Twitter.’

The curse of social media. Those interviewed had been told of the need for confidentiality, but others, with their smartphones, hadn’t.

‘You’ll need to come with us to the police station,’ Wendy said.

‘Why? I don’t need a cell; I’ve got one here.’

Even though a woman came in during the week to check on Hampton, the house showed neglect. An electric heater, turned up too high, closed windows, and a smell that permeated the place.

Wendy excused herself and went outside. It was cold, but not so cold that the heater needed to be on high.

‘We’re taking your brother to the police station; to help us with our enquiries,’ Wendy said on her phone.

‘How? Why?’ Deb Hampton’s reply. ‘He couldn’t have shot Angus.’

‘He could have been responsible for the death of Tricia Warburton.’

‘He never knew the woman.’

‘We believe the intended target was Otto McAlister, and the woman was an unfortunate consequence. We are obtaining your brother’s medical records. You spent a lot of time with him. You must have seen him move.’

‘And if he can, he’s a murderer, is that what you’re saying?’

‘We still have to place him at the second murder site.’

‘How, I used to help him into the shower?’

‘Surely the house has been set up for a disabled person,’ Wendy said.

‘Mike wouldn’t hear of it. He relented with a ramp into the garden, but when he first came back, he wasn’t as bad as you see him now.’

‘Yet, he’s on his own. Neither you nor Kate.’

‘You know what he’s like. He’s my brother, not a millstone around my neck, and as for Kate, more interested in herself than her husband.’

‘Still, a millstone around hers.’

‘She married the man for better or worse, and now that’s what he is, the worse. You’ll not convince me that he’s faking his injury. Where is his loving wife?’

‘She’s not answering her phone.’

‘Justin Skinner?’

‘She’s not with him. He’s abseiling in Wales. It was Rachel, his on-again, off-again girlfriend who had answered the phone.’

‘Then she’s with someone else,’ Deb said.

‘How’s your man?’ Wendy asked, an attempt to draw the woman away from damning her sister-in-law, to get her to refocus.

‘Three weeks’ time, a quiet wedding in the local church. You’ll come?’

‘I’d be pleased to,’ Wendy said.

‘Jock’s moved in with me, so we can skip the honeymoon, too much work to do around the place.’

‘Kate spent time with Mike. Did she ever believe he wasn’t as bad as he said he was?’

‘She didn’t say anything to me, but then we never spoke much, argued mainly, apart from that time she turned up at the farm.’

Four hours later, Isaac had the court order.

***

Kate Hampton’s visit was unexpected, but there she was at the police station, asking after her husband.

It was Larry that spoke to her. ‘How did you find out?’

‘I received a phone call from your sergeant, assumed it was serious,’ the woman’s reply, which didn’t ring true, not to Wendy when told.

‘It’s either Deb Hampton or Justin Skinner that phoned her,’ Wendy said. ‘And I never told Skinner’s girlfriend what it was about, only Deb.’

‘It must have been her,’ Larry said. ‘Suspicious?’

‘With those two, I can’t see it.’

Mike Hampton was in the interview room. An ambulance had brought him to the police station. The man’s condition, whether good or bad, was uncertain; however, exacerbation by the police bundling him into the back of a police car couldn’t be allowed.

Kate Hampton sat in another room, no more than thirty feet from her husband.

With the court order, Dr Henstridge’s reluctance had changed to obliging.

‘Mentally, the man’s regressed into a dark place,’ Henstridge had said. ‘The brain is a powerful organ, able to wreak havoc, conversely able to heal the sick.’

‘Dark place, what