The Hero's Fall (DCI Cook Thriller Series Book 14) Phillip Strang (microsoft ebook reader .TXT) 📖

he never puts a foot wrong, done this before, even climbed Mount Everest. Can you believe that?’

‘We’re aware of his history,’ Isaac said. ‘How did you find out?’

‘It’s on the news. Tricia’s live on the television.’

Wendy was aware of Maddox and her reputation, only too willing to strip off for a photo if the price was right.

‘You don’t like her?’ Wendy asked.

‘Angus did, thought she was alright, fancied her probably.’

‘Did you mind?’

‘Not much. I’ve got a flight this evening, the Bahamas, a photo shoot.’

‘You’ll need to cancel it,’ Isaac said.

‘I can’t. The penalties if I don’t go, my reputation.’

‘Miss Timberley, Angus Simmons, your boyfriend, the man you were living with, has been murdered. You’re a person of interest,’ Wendy said.

‘Murdered, Angus, no way. Everyone loved him,’ Maddox Timberley said, her composure starting to slip, the realisation of the situation. ‘He was good to me, never hit me, nothing like that.’

‘A lady’s man?’ Isaac asked.

‘Are you inferring he wasn’t?’

‘His masculinity has been questioned.’

‘These comments that he was bisexual or gay, that’s all they were. The media always portrays me like a tart, makes up stories, screwing whoever, but the majority’s a lie. I grew up in a good Christian family, parents who loved each other, loved their children.’

‘Unusual name, Maddox.’

‘Freda Sidebottom from Rotherham doesn’t sound so good.’

‘That’s your original name?’ Wendy asked.

Maddox’s suppressed emotions were released as she spoke of her family and where she had come from. Wendy grabbed the woman as she went weak at the knees, the tears starting to flow, the shock of the reality washing over her.

Isaac cast a glance in Tricia Warburton’s direction, saw that her cameraman had his lens trained on them, the woman talking into her microphone. He may have misjudged Maddox Timberley; he still wasn’t sure about Tricia Warburton.

Chapter 3

Angus Simmons’s sexual proclivities were important, but not as much as where the shot had originated.

‘No more painful than a severe bee sting,’ the pathologist said at the autopsy, ‘enough to cause an instinctive reaction to put a hand on the area, to flick away.’

Enough to cause a lapse of concentration and death, Isaac knew.

Maddox, the deceased’s girlfriend, her manner more like Freda Sidebottom than the persona of Maddox Timberley, sat soulfully in the interview room at Challis Street. It was a charmless room; the walls painted beige, the ceiling white. A camera was mounted high in one corner of the room, a metal cage around it, and there was a small table with four chairs, two to each side. The recording equipment controls and a digital clock were secured to the table, the recorder in an adjacent room.

Maddox Timberley, not a suspect presently as her alibi was firm. She had no firearms experience, and even if she had, it would have taken a competent marksman, someone with training, to execute the shot.

‘It came as a shock,’ Maddox said. She held a cup of coffee in her right hand. To her side, a lawyer, but not needed, not yet, Isaac thought, but then, he had been misled before by a pretty face and an easy manner. He thought back to it: early in his career, a Swedish au pair he was dating at the time who had killed not just one man but several, her behaviour resulting from a troubled childhood and sociopathic tendencies.

‘When the cameras were off; when Angus wasn’t performing for the camera, what was he like?’ Isaac asked.

‘He was studious, and the feats that he accomplished, the challenges he accepted or took on, were well thought out. He planned meticulously, never took a chance, and he told me that climbing the Shard wasn’t that difficult, only looked so from the ground.’

‘And you believed him?’

‘I trusted him.’

‘Loved him?’ Wendy, an incurable romantic, asked, not only for the sugary-sweet sentiment but also to judge the relationship’s strength. She knew that her DCI would focus on the reality, but if Maddox Timberley was to be absolved of any collaboration in the death, her feelings towards Angus Simmons were important.

‘I was very fond of him.’

‘An honest answer,’ Wendy said, realising that a gushing, overly-emphasised proclamation of undying love would not have been sincere, not from a person whose history of former lovers was well known.

‘We had been together for nearly two years, and Angus wasn’t a man to commit, not to me, not to any woman.’

‘Why did you stay with him?’ Isaac asked.

‘Because I could be myself, no need to pretend with Angus, nor he with me.’

‘Compatible?’

‘A dull, boring couple at home, content to lounge around in our pyjamas, to read a book, to watch a mushy romance on the television.’

‘Loving?’ Wendy asked.

‘If by that you mean that we were at each other like rabbits, the answer is no. I believe I explained that before.’

‘You said he was placid,’ Isaac reminded Maddox.

‘He was always buying me flowers, remembering our anniversaries, the little things that happened in our relationship, but a lover he was not.’

‘Did that concern you?’

‘When every hot-blooded male over the age of fifteen wanted to jump me, no. I’ve already told you that in public, I’m Maddox Timberley, but at home with my parents and then with Angus, I was the gap-toothed skinny rake my parents had raised, the person that Angus liked.’

‘The gap’s gone,’ Wendy said.

‘I enjoy the limelight, the same as he did. Both of us seduced by fame and fortune, the lifestyle that came with it, and if pouring myself into a skintight dress, too short for decency, is the cost, then so be it. Angus was the same, and climbing buildings when he no longer wanted to was the price he paid.’

‘Are you saying he had trepidation?’

‘Never with his ability. Climbing buildings was irresponsible, something he