DCI Isaac Cook Box Set 1

and by the age of seventeen, his relationship with them was irreparably severed. The family home was big enough for him to enter and leave it without having to do more than briefly acknowledge them. The only time he granted them a conversation, short even then, was when he needed money or to top up his credit card. They gave in with little resistance. Their lives were full and busy. A delinquent child who had neither the innate charm nor the good looks of his parents left them with a feeling of apathy towards him. Marjorie Frobisher and Robert Avers could not love him as parents should, and the son realised this. The more alcohol in his system, the more he disliked them, the more vengeful he became.
There had been a period in his early twenties when a good and decent girl had attempted to love and change him. They had moved in together, enjoyed a loving relationship, mainly sober for three years before he had fallen off the waggon and hit the booze again. The relationship passed the honeymoon stage, although they had never officially married, and domesticity caused him some troubles. She moved out, and the intervening years had been of casual relationships, mainly one-night stands, and days spent in a drunken and drug-filled haze. He had attempted a career while sober, managed to find a job as a junior auctioneer at one of the most prestigious auction houses in the city. He wasn’t sure how it had come about, but he figured maybe his mother was screwing one of the directors. Yes, he knew about her shenanigans and his father’s. That was what men did, but his mother? He could never forgive her, them, for their lifestyle, their affairs, their wealth, when he had been forced to play second fiddle, even third, in their affections.
He hated them both with a passion ‒ his mother, the most. If they were only dead, he increasingly thought. Then I’d only need to share their money with that bitch sister of mine. There would be plenty enough then, enough for me at least.

Chapter 4
Detective Superintendent Goddard continued to be reticent as to who was pushing the search for Marjorie Frobisher. So far, all the probing from Isaac had failed to elicit a clue.
It was now close to four weeks since Marjorie Frobisher had been seen. Her credit cards occasionally used in one location; the next time, a hundred miles away. Her mobile phone, switched on long enough for an SMS to her husband, – ‘Home soon, love you’ – and then turned off, barely gave time to triangulate its position.
‘Sir, this is going nowhere.’ Isaac Cook tried one final time to get an answer from his superior at a hastily scheduled meeting at Isaac’s insistence. They met in the detective superintendent’s office, an office that Isaac aspired to within the next two to three years. He regarded policing as a vocation; the detective superintendent’s office the next major goal to aim for. A goal now being hampered by the forlorn search for a missing person.
He was determined to hammer out the situation with his boss. ‘I’m suggesting we pull out until the woman is found, alive or dead. This is just a waste of time.’
Richard Goddard understood the frustration of the man sitting in front of him, but there was nothing he could do. The investigation had to continue. ‘Isaac, you’ve got to stay with it. It’s either the woman or the body. The pressure on me for a result is intense. I can’t take you and DI Ahmed off the case.’
‘But we’re wasting our time. The woman was not popular with the people she worked with, but she’s not short of money. And she messages her husband every few days. What’s the point of all this?’
‘Are you sure about the SMSs? Is she sending them and using the credit cards? Is there a signature?’
‘The credit cards only need a pin number. We can’t be sure about that either, but why? People go missing all the time. Normally, there’s a cursory investigation, and then life goes on. Sometimes they turn up somewhere down the track, or they don’t. It doesn’t mean they’ve all been bumped off, weighted down and thrown to the fishes or fed to the pigs.’
‘Isaac, I understand your frustration, but it’s out of my hands.’
Isaac admitted defeat and left. He did not like leaving on such a sour note. His boss was still answerable to others and forced to follow orders, no matter how illogical.
Frustrated with the conversation, Isaac met up with Farhan, and they went out for a meal at an Indian restaurant not far from the office. It had been a long day, and neither had achieved much. Isaac had managed to speak to the executive producer’s personal assistant, Sally Jenkins, but that had revealed nothing. He had even met up with Jess O’Neill, and she was still giving him hints that some further investigation, outside of office hours, was acceptable. He was tempted, but the timing was wrong. If Marjorie Frobisher did turn up alive, the first thing he was going to do was to ask the series producer out, even conduct some serious probing of a personal and intimate nature, which looked a strong possibility after his last meeting with her.
‘Sally Jenkins, what did you expect?’ Jess O’Neill had said. ‘Did you pick up on the signals?’
‘Her and Richard Williams,’ Isaac proffered an answer.
‘Yes, of course. He must be nearly forty years older than her, but he’s a pants’ man. Sorry for my crudity, but he hits on everyone if they’re female and attractive.’
‘Has he hit on you?’ Isaac asked.
‘Sure has, but I told him to shove it. I don’t need a sugar daddy, no matter how much money he’s got or what car he drives.’
‘Out of interest, what sort of car?’
‘Ferrari. Why?’