Murder in Bare Feet (11 page)

Angel let in the clutch and the car reversed out of the parking bay then forward through the open gates of the police compound.

‘Are my council rates helping to pay for you lumpheads to drive round in luxury like this?’

‘Probably,’ Angel said. ‘And then again, my rates are being used to investigate the disturbance of the peace and whatever other dirty little dishonest tricks you and others like you get up to.’

‘There’s nothing dishonest about me, I tell you. You’d better be careful what you say, Angel. I could have you up for slander.’

A few minutes later, Angel pulled up outside a terrace house two streets away from Sebastopol Terrace. ‘This your house, Mr Molloy?’

‘You know it is,’ he said, getting out of the car and slamming the door.

‘Do you live on your own?’

‘Yes,’ he said as he pushed the key into the Yale lock on the front door.

As soon as the three men were inside the little house, Angel pointed to Gawber to take the upstairs while he started on the ground floor. The house was clean, tidy and Spartan, so it didn’t take long.

Molloy followed Angel through each of the three downstairs rooms, standing in the middle of each room with his hands in his pockets, saying, ‘Be careful. If you damage anything, you’ll have to pay for it.’

Angel looked systematically through every cupboard and every container, looked behind the pictures and mirrors and then went about testing the floorboards and looking around for loose carpets. He found nothing unusual, incongruous, suspicious or valuable.

Gawber came down the stairs, looked at Angel and shook his head. Angel stood in the hall and rubbed his chin.

Molloy said, ‘I told you there was nothing to find. You don’t believe anything I say.’

Angel then returned to the small kitchen and looked out of the window. A white painted pigeon loft occupied most of the tiny backyard. He saw a key in the kitchen door, turned it and went outside. The two men followed him, Molloy edging close to his elbow.

There were a dozen or more pigeons cooing and strutting around in the large timber hut, which had a high landing ledge and an opening permitting their easy coming and going. There was wire netting across a large area, and inside the hut were several birds, some on perches, some on open nesting boxes, some feeding from trays suspended from the wall. At the back was a row of twelve closed boxes with holes to enable a bird to shelter. The floor of the wooden building was strewn with a thin layer of clean straw, and at the far end, a door with a big grey padlock on it.

Angel looked at the padlock and then at Molloy.

‘Now I don’t want you unsettling them and frightening them.’

‘Open it up, please, Mr Molloy.’

‘It’s just my bird loft. There’s nothing in there of interest to you, I’m sure.’

‘You’re probably right,’ Angel said. ‘But nevertheless, will you open it up, please?’

‘This is police harassment,’ Molloy said as he unlocked the padlock.

Angel had to take the padlock out of the hasp. He pushed it into Molloy’s hand and opened the door. It was big enough for human access.

‘If you cause any distress to my birds, I shall make a complaint to your boss.’

Angel stepped up into the loft on to the thin layer of clean, yellow straw. Some pigeons looked at him and chirped mild protests but didn’t move from their perches or feeding troughs.

The only places where anything could be concealed seemed to be the row of twelve closed nesting boxes at the back. Those were where Angel immediately approached. He opened them one by one, systematically. There was straw in each. He pulled up his sleeve and reached down below the straw and pulled it up. He searched all twelve boxes. Molloy sniggered each time Angel let the straw fall back in the box. There was nothing.

Angel took one last look round the pigeon loft. Because it was a simple box with a sloping roof, it seemed that there was no place anything could possibly have been hidden. He wrinkled his nose and turned to come out.

Molloy saw his disappointment and grinned. ‘There you are. I told you. A complete waste of time.’

As Angel turned, he felt the slightest rocking of a floorboard under the straw; it was accompanied by a tiny squeak. He repeated the movement exactly and the rocking of the floorboard and squeak occurred again. He stopped, frowned, crouched down and rubbed away the straw to reveal the bare floorboards. He looked closely and discovered that a cut with a saw had recently been made. As he cleared more straw, he revealed more new cuts. His breathing became faster. He dived quickly into his pocket and took out his mother-of-pearl-handled penknife.

Molloy and Gawber looked on in silence. Molloy licked his lips while Gawber stared at Angel’s busy hands.

Angel opened the knife, slipped the blade in the slits where the cuts had been made and slowly lifted three adjacent pieces of floorboarding, each about two feet long.

Molloy wiped his lips with the back of his hand and said: ‘If you find anything under there, I know nothing about it.’

Angel didn’t hear him. He pulled away a piece of sacking and saw something shiny and green. With shaking hands, he lifted the object up and placed it on the floor. It caught the bright light and reflected green rays on the yellow straw and Angel’s shirt cuffs. He felt his pulse race and his neck and face burn.

It was undoubtedly the missing jade head of Hang Mung Cheng.

Gawber gasped at the sight of it.

Molloy’s face went scarlet. His silence indicated that he had become resigned to the inevitable and had given up further thought of pleading ignorance to the existence in his pigeon loft of the remarkable stolen jade artefact.

Angel rummaged down in the cavity to see what else there might be there. He felt something, took out his handkerchief and with it picked up a crudely made key welded to a small spanner. He turned it over and back again to examine it. Meanwhile, Gawber quickly took out an evidence bag from his pocket, unfolded it and held it open to accept the key. Angel nodded and released the key into it.

‘T
hat’s fantastic, Michael! Absolutely fantastic!’ Elliott said on the phone. ‘The boss will be delighted. He’ll enjoy telling the Empress. She’ll be over the moon. She’s in hiding in London somewhere, I understand.’

‘Good.’

‘Has it been damaged at all?’

‘It looked fine to me.’

‘Good. I can’t wait to see it. I expect she’d want to take possession of it as soon as possible. Would that be a problem?’

‘No. We have caught the thief. He’s admitted it. We have a written statement. The head is secure in the station safe. You can have it as soon as you like. The sooner the better as far as we are concerned.’

‘Good,’ Elliott said. ‘Incidentally, sorry to report, that plaster print didn’t come near Goldstein’s foot.’

Angel sniffed. Subconsciously he had known it all along, but it could have been a lucky throw.

Elliott sensed his disappointment.

‘Sorry, Michael.’

‘That’s alright.’

‘By the by, I discovered that Goldstein was in the employ of the Chief of Police of Xingtunanistan. He’s the nephew of the Empress. There was a letter from him and a million Tuong found sewn into the lining of Goldstein’s rucksack. That was his fee for the recovery of the head. Worth about eighteen thousand pounds sterling.’

Angel sighed. ‘It wasn’t enough. It cost him his life.’

Elliott agreed.

‘Heard any more about Nelson Shadrack and Seminole Trotter?’

‘Not a thing,’ Elliott said. ‘A warrant has been issued for their arrest and full ID with photographs have been distributed to all ports and airports. I don’t expect they’ll be seen in the UK again for a while.’

He thanked Angel once more, said that he would be in touch soon and rang off.

Angel replaced the phone, leaned back in the swivel chair and looked up at the ceiling. He went over the events of the past three hours with a warm feeling of satisfaction. After he had lifted the jade head from under the pigeon loft, Molloy had admitted that he had accidentally found Pleasant’s old safe and that over weeks of trial and error had contrived a key and opened it; his prints were all over the head and the key so he had little choice but to admit it all. He was just a small-time thief with big ambitions. His footprint didn’t fit the plaster cast, so he hadn’t murdered Pleasant. That much seemed certain. Angel sighed. What he needed was a good, solid suspect. The favourites had been Emlyn and his son, Stanley, but they had a perfect, apparently indestructible, alibi, so they were in the clear. Surely it couldn’t have been Nelson Shadrack or Seminole Trotter in their merciless hunt for the jade head? Goldstein had said that he knew that Pleasant had it hidden in a safe, so it was reasonable to assume that Shadrack and Trotter also knew. He didn’t like the idea of those two dangerous lumps rambling round the streets of Bromersley or wherever they had chosen to inhabit. Perhaps when they learned that the jade head had been found and returned to its rightful owner, they’d disappear into the woodwork. He hoped so. This murder inquiry was all highly unsatisfactory. In addition, he had that strange feeling that something wasn’t quite right; there was something about the jade head business that still bothered him. He couldn’t quite put his finger on it. He wondered if there was something in connection with the finding of the head that he should have attended to. A sort of loose end. He couldn’t think what it was. He didn’t believe in old wives’ tales about inanimate objects having curses on them or anything like that; and the so-called mystery of the Orient was wasted on him. It was no more a mystery than the alleyway between the graveyard of St Mary’s Church Bromersley and the back of the Fat Duck most dark Saturday nights. There were places you simply shouldn’t be, unless you were with six big men in riot gear each carrying a thumping great baton and a shield. He scratched his head and tried to think. All that he knew was that he would be glad to see the back of that jade head. That thing was a mystery. It was just one of several. There was the dog kennel that wasn’t in Tickle’s back yard. Where was the damned thing, then? And why were both Emlyn Jones and his son so self-conscious about raw parsnips being found on a cupboard at Emlyn’s and on top of women’s clothes at his son’s, so embarrassing apparently, in each case, that they had to dash to hide them from him. And who shot Charles Pleasant in his bare feet? And why was the murdered man driving his car without shoes?

There was a knock at the door. He looked at it and leaned forward in the chair.

‘Yes. Come in.’

It was Ahmed, with a letter. ‘Special delivery for you, sir. Looks important.’

Angel blinked.

‘Thank you,’ he said. He looked at the envelope: it was from the Assistant Governor’s Office, Wakefield Prison. It was what he had been waiting for.

Ahmed turned to go out.

‘Find Ron Gawber and send him in, lad.’

‘Right, sir,’ he said and went out.

Angel slit open the envelope, took out the single-page letter and read it. It was very short. He re-read it, and put it down on the desk. He nodded with satisfaction, and rubbed his chin.

Gawber arrived after a minute or two.

‘You wanted me, sir?’

‘Yes,’ he said brightly. ‘Come in, Ron. Read that.’

Gawber carefully perused the letter, then he looked up and said, ‘In the five years he’s been in Wakefield, only four people have been to visit Larry Longley. His son, Abe, frequently – you’d expect that. His solicitor, Alexander Bloomfield, occasionally – he’s a necessity. And his sister-in-law – Jazmin Frazer, once on 1 August 2007. That’s only last week!’

‘Yes. That’s a shock to the system.’

‘Amazing. You wouldn’t expect her visiting him, would you?’

Angel agreed. ‘Four days before Pleasant’s murder.’

‘A week today,’ Gawber said pointedly. ‘My sister-in-law wouldn’t come and see me in prison if I murdered my wife, sir.’ Then he added, ‘Of course, Larry Longley always claimed he was innocent.’

‘Maybe he is. He’s appealed twice.’

‘But the judiciary have rejected both appeals.’

Angel shrugged. ‘Yes.’

Gawber nodded then he said, ‘Anyway, sir, we now have the address of Abe Longley. He’s moved to Sheffield.’

‘Yes. Who can blame him? Trying to start a new life, I suppose. I’ll have to see him soon.’

‘Do you want me to call on him, sir?’

‘No. You know me, Ron. I always like to do the opening inquiries myself.’

Gawber shrugged.

‘Tell you what you can do, though,’ he said. He turned round to the table behind him and picked up a small box containing four small polythene bags; inside each bag was one of the bullet cases found on the earth next to the footprint at the site of roadworks where the murderer of Charles Pleasant stood. ‘Nice run into the country for you. Take those to ballistics at Wetherby. See Professor Wayman. Check on what sort of a gun he thinks fired them. There are the four examples to look at. He might be able to tell us something more than just the calibre.’

‘I know, sir,’ he said dryly. ‘Smile at him and maybe he’ll do it while I wait.’

‘You got it,’ Angel said.

Gawber closed the lid of the box, put it in his pocket and made for the door.

‘And if you see Trevor Crisp on your travels, tell him I want to see him,’ he called.

‘Right, sir.’

The door closed.

Angel sat down. He didn’t have time to think of the next priority because the phone rang.

He reached out for it. It was Harker. He started speaking before Angel got the phone to his ear.

‘I’ve just had the Chief Constable on the phone. He wants to know what’s happening on the bank robbery front. I told him I’d check up on it and get back to him. So, how far have you got?’

Angel’s head came up. He licked his lips. He didn’t know what to say. He hadn’t done anything at all about it. It was the last question in the world he needed at that time. All his effort had been on the Pleasant murder. ‘I’m waiting for SOCO’s report, sir,’ he said.

‘I’ve just been speaking to Taylor,’ he bawled. ‘He said that the report was delivered to you yesterday. There were no DNA or prints. Everything’s done except for the ballistics on the bullet fired into the bank wall. How far have you got with it?’

‘Ah,’ he said. ‘I have just noticed the report is right here in front of me, sir.’

‘Right. Well, how far have you got? Did you find the bogus ambulance?’

‘No, sir. Not yet.’

‘Well, have you been able to identify anybody on the security tape? The girl was pretty clear in some of those shots.’

‘But females can disguise the shape of their faces with cotton-wool and wigs and make-up, sir.’

‘I know! I know! I know all that!’ he stormed. ‘But what can I tell the Chief Constable? He’s got the deputy chairman of the Great Northern Bank on his back. He’s an old friend of Sir Stanley McPherson, an advisor to the Chancellor of the Exchequer and his brother-in-law is Lord Nile, who is on the Great Northern Bank board. These are very big wheels, Angel. They could make us a lot of trouble. That gang of robbers has to be caught, tried and put away, and we need to be quick about it.’

The names and titles didn’t impress Angel at all. If he had included George W. Bush, the Pope and the Cheeky Girls, it would have made the same difference. ‘I’ve really been pulling out all the stops to find the murderer of Charles Pleasant,’ he said. ‘It’s a pretty complicated case, sir.’

‘Pleasant?’ he roared. ‘The scrapdealer?’ he roared again. ‘Well, you can drop that.’

‘It’s a murder case, sir,’ he protested.

‘Yes,’ he said, and then he sniffed. ‘Let me tell you something that I’ve discovered in my experience. If a case is complicated, it sometimes pays to leave it a while and let it ripen … let it unravel itself a bit, let the witnesses worry a little, the suspects sweat a little, and the murderer—’

‘Go on to murder somebody else,’ Angel said, finishing Harker’s sentence for him. It was involuntary. He didn’t intend to speak out, but it came into his mind and just popped out. He regretted it immediately. He knew it could only make trouble for him.

He heard a sort of intake of breath and then a pause. He knew Harker would be furious; had probably turned purple. Angel had seen him do that when he was really angry. He sat there, hanging on to the phone. He thought about offering an apology, but he didn’t think he could manage it. It would stick in his throat.

Eventually, Harker came back. His voice was quivering. Angel could tell he was talking through tight lips. ‘You are being ridiculous, stubborn and offensive. I won’t forget it. And you still have not given me one thing useful to say to the Chief.’

‘Didn’t mean to be offensive, sir,’ Angel said. He thought very quickly. ‘Regarding the robbery, you could say that there were no prints, no DNA, and nothing useful yet from ballistics. However, all personnel have been appropriately briefed to apprehend any suspicious characters, and the machinery for apprehending the bank robbers, as soon as they come out of hiding, is in place.’

‘Mmm,’ he replied with a sigh. ‘That is a right load of waffle, but it might fill the bill. In the meantime, drop that murder case for the time being, and get on to this bank robbery and I don’t want any argument about it.’

There was a loud click in Angel’s ear and the phone went dead.

Angel blew out a lungful of air and slowly replaced the phone. That was the last thing he wanted to do. He rubbed his mouth and his jaw. He took four deep breaths, stood up, walked round the office, ran his hand through his hair, gazed out of the window for a minute or two seeing absolutely nothing there, returned to his desk, sat down, picked up the phone and tapped out a number.

It was soon answered.

‘Ahmed,’ he said evenly. ‘Find Ted Scrivens and send him in.

‘Right, sir.’

‘And do you know where DS Crisp is, lad?’

‘No sir.’

Angel’s lips tightened back against his teeth. ‘Well, find him for me. I can never find that lad. I want him urgently, tell him.’

A few minutes later, DC Scrivens, a lanky young policeman who had been on Angel’s team for the past four years, knocked on the door and came in.

‘Sit down, Ted. And listen up. In reference to that bank robbery on Monday, it involved three men and a woman. You will know that a bogus ambulance was used.’

‘Yes, sir.’

‘Right, well, according to witnesses, it was a perfect likeness to the real thing, so I suspect that it was a vehicle that had originally been an ambulance, was decommissioned by a hospital, possibly Bromersley, possibly not, bought by the crooks and tarted back up to look like the real thing again. I imagine it was sold to a car auction house either by the hospital or via a specialist dealer who supplies new ambulances and took the old one in on a part-exchange basis. Now, if we could find out how the crooks came by it, or where they had it resprayed and dolled up, and by whom, or where it is hidden now, it might help us to trace the robbers. Got it?’

Scrivens was paying close attention. He nodded. ‘Yes, sir.’

‘Now, I suggest you start at our local hospital. Find out what they do with their redundant ambulances. Also, you could look up on the PNC for any local vehicle mechanics, panel beaters, body sprayers and so on. Visit them unannounced. Search their premises. Look for signs of a vehicle covered over, or outbuildings that are locked up, or tins of cream paint; that colour isn’t used much on private cars these days. Of course, it’s perfectly possible that they may have taken off the chrome and the fittings from the old ambulance, sprayed it a different colour and sold it on. However, ambulances have a unique shape. I want you to try and find me a lead. You’ll need to use your initiative. I’ll leave it with you. Report to me on my mobile anytime if you uncover anything. All right?’

Scrivens face shone. He was pleased to be given the job of making an inquiry under his own steam. It also gave him opportunities to work away from the station office. ‘Yes, sir,’ he said brightly and rushed off.

Angel watched him through the door and wondered if he had done the right thing. It was really a job for a battle hardened detective sergeant with a snarl; Scrivens was barely a potty trained detective constable with a yelp. But Gawber and Crisp were otherwise engaged. There was nobody else in plain-clothes in his team he could have sent. He consoled himself by reasoning that it would be good experience for him. But where was Crisp? Why didn’t he check in? He considered for a moment what he should do next, then he reached out to the phone and tapped in a number. DS Taylor of SOCO answered.