The back door slammed and he was gone. It was too late.
It was a clear sky so the moon made it easy to follow somebody but not easy to hide from them.
Angel drove the car the mile or so round the houses so that he could travel along Rustle Spring Lane in the direction required to have Mawdesley Cemetery on his left. There was very little traffic about at that time . . . several private cars and a taxi . . . a man walking a dog . . . a courting couple stopping at every entry that provided minimal shelter for another quick kiss and a squeeze.
The streetlights were efficiently bright and unhelpful when you were trying not to be observed.
After he had passed the cemetery gates, he slowed the BMW down almost to walking speed and switched the car headlights onto long beam. It was only a couple of minutes later he spotted the back of a tall, dark-haired young man in a black overcoat. It was unmistakably Trevor Crisp.
Angel looked further ahead to see if he could see anything of Ephemore Sharpe, but she was not visible to him. He overtook Crisp by a short distance, parked the car at the side of the road leaving the sidelights on, got out, locked it and made for the pavement. A few moments later Crisp caught him up and they walked side by side.
‘Have you still got her, lad?’ Angel whispered.
‘Oh yes, sir. She’s there. Almost at the main gates to St Magdalene’s Hospital.’
They walked together in silence. They had to walk quickly.
Angel thought it quite remarkable that Ephemore Sharpe could set such a pace, as she was sixty-nine years of age. Eventually his eyes became more used to the dark and he could see the tall, skinny, tilting stick of humanity, like a Lowry figure, in a light-coloured coat and no hat scurrying ahead, taking small, quick steps. She carried something that seemed to be about as big as two grapefruits in what looked like a white plastic bag swinging from her left hand. He watched her particularly carefully as she arrived at the hospital gates as he was anxious not to lose her, and was surprised when she didn’t turn up the drive. She walked straight past. She didn’t hesitate, she didn’t even glance at the building.
‘Where is she going?’ Crisp whispered.
Angel began to wonder what would be of interest to her in the vicinity of Rustle Spring Lane. The top end of the lane met Park Road, which led to Jubilee Park and Creesforth Road. That was the classy part of Bromersley on the edge of the town.
Maybe she was going to lead them to a place in the country where she hides the cougar. Now that would be a revelation!
He began to wonder if she was aware that she was being followed.
‘Has she looked back at all? Have you noticed?’
‘No. I don’t think so. Haven’t seen her.’
The two policemen followed her for a further eight minutes, carefully keeping the regulation minimum of 200 metres behind her as recommended for those particular conditions, and eventually found themselves on Creesforth Road.
Wendy Green had lived at number 16, and Angel could see the silhouette of the house just ahead. He remembered that Don Taylor had not yet reported back to him about the possibility of finding evidence of the recent presence of a male visitor there.
Ephemore Sharpe was surely not returning to the home of one of her victims?
Indeed she was. She turned up the drive which was in darkness and strode out to the front of the late Wendy Green’s house as Angel and Crisp crossed the road to be out of the moonlight and into the shadows. They peered at number 16 from behind a stone pillar at the entrance to the drive of number 13.
They saw her reach up to the door knocker with her right hand to give it a vigorous rat-a-tat. The left hand was still holding onto the white plastic bag. There was no reply. She turned round and looked up and down the road. It seemed deserted. Then she tried the door handle. The door was locked. She lowered her head, stamped her foot and her body shook with anger. She quickly turned, went across the front of the house and down the side of it out of the policemen’s sight.
Crisp looked at Angel.
Angel said, ‘We’ll wait here . . . for a couple of minutes anyway. Looks as if she’s trying to get into the place.’
‘We might get her for house-breaking, sir,’ Crisp said.
‘I want her for more than that,’ he said.
Five minutes passed. Angel began to get worried. Then she appeared from the other side of the house. She stood for several seconds at the front corner of the house looking round. Then she went purposely along a path towards the double garage door facing the drive. Angel noticed that she was still carrying the white bag.
A heavy wagon suddenly roared along Creesforth Road with its headlights blazing.
Her eyes flashed. She crouched down and stayed stiff.
The policemen pressed themselves back against the drive wall. They had no wish to be illuminated either.
When the heavy wagon had passed and quiet returned, Ephemore Sharpe stood up, crossed quickly to Wendy Green’s garage and tried the door. It wasn’t locked. She pulled at it several times and eventually managed to lift it upward and over, then she went out of view. It was too dark to see anything from across the road.
‘Damn,’ Angel said.
‘I think she’s gone inside, sir.’
‘Mmm, yes,’ Angel said, rubbing his hand across his face.
A minute later they saw her again. She had come out of the garage and was pulling down the door. Then she came straight down the drive, turned left at the bottom and began the quick walk back towards Park Road.
When she was safely out of earshot, Crisp whispered, ‘Did you notice, sir, she wasn’t carrying that plastic bag? Must have left it in there.’
Angel had noticed. He was thinking that whatever it was, it wasn’t enough to feed a big cat, and he knew that Don Taylor had been through that garage as thoroughly as a prison doctor doing a bowel search for a condom of heroin. He clenched his fists then ran a hand through his hair.
‘We’d better follow her. See if she calls anywhere else.’
They soon reached the hospital. Angel collected the BMW en route and the two men operated a leap-frog pattern surveillance in the car and on foot the rest of the uneventful way to the farm. Crisp was not far behind when Ephemore Sharpe unlatched the farmyard gate, closed it and made her way to her front door which she opened quickly, entered and closed. In the quiet of the night, he heard the bolts slide across and the click of the old lock when the key was turned.
Angel parked the BMW halfway down Ashfield Road in sight of her front door. Crisp walked back to the car and got inside.
‘I don’t think she’ll be going anywhere else tonight, sir,’ Crisp said.
Angel’s mind was everywhere. He couldn’t make sense of anything anymore.
‘What did she want to go back to Wendy Green’s house for?’
Crisp shrugged. ‘We can go and find out, sir.’
They waited twenty minutes until Angel thought that she had completed her excursions for the night then drove the BMW back to 16 Creesforth Road. He parked up the drive right outside the garage, reached into the glove compartment of the BMW, took out a torch and then they made for the garage door. Inside Angel waved the torch around to see what there was. There was a low slung, expensive-looking car inside, an exercise bike covered in dust and an old chest of drawers covered in tins of engine oil, car polish and the like.
‘Not much here,’ Angel said. Then he handed the torch to Crisp and pulled open the drawers of the chest. The top two contained an electric drill, spanners, socket sets and domestic tools. The bottom drawer contained rusty spanners, tyre levers and similar. At the back of the drawer a piece of white plastic showed. He pulled the drawer out further.
‘It’s there!’ Crisp said.
Angel snatched up the bag and opened it. ‘Shine inside it, Trevor. I don’t want to contaminate it with my prints.’
Angel peered inside the bag.
‘What’s inside, sir?’
Angel frowned. ‘It’s a pot, or
plaster ornament of some kind,’ he said. ‘It’s quite old . . . a few chips . . . knocked about a bit. It’s the figure of a lion. It’s got a name printed on a sort of chain round its neck. I think it’s called Pascha, yes.’
Crisp’s eyebrows went up. ‘What sort of a name is that?’
Angel said, ‘There was a German woman who trained and performed in a circus with a lion called Pascha. Saw it on a poster in Ephemore Sharpe’s house.’
Angel thought a moment. He recalled what she had said to him and added, ‘She said that the pot animal was a gift, and that Wendy Green had stolen it from her.’
‘Well, she couldn’t have done, sir, could she?’ Crisp said.
Angel nodded. It was exactly what he had been thinking.
15
Angel arrived home that Friday night as the church clock bell struck eleven. He was tired and he was hungry. Mary had waited up for him. She quickly made some scrambled egg and toast, and he sat down at the kitchen table and ate appreciatively while telling her about the events of the evening.
‘She lied to me,’ Angel said. ‘Ephemore Sharpe lied to me simply because she didn’t like Wendy Green. And the poor girl isn’t here to defend herself.’
Between bites of toast and egg, he prattled on about the pot tiger for quite a time until all aspects had been aired and some aspects had been repeated.
Eventually Mary pouring tea into a cup said, ‘Can we talk about something else, Michael?’
‘Of course. Of course,’ he said quickly.
Mary had always been a patient listener and he was well aware of it. But it helped him to say out loud what he was thinking, and to air all the different facets of a piece of information. Mary’s reactions and contributions had often assisted him in solving a case.
‘What’s the matter, love?’ he said. ‘Sorry to go on.’
‘It’s all right. I know how this case is bothering you, Michael. But it’s twelve minutes to midnight, and then it will be Saturday. That’s a day off work. A day of relaxation. A day for a change.’
He looked across the table at her. She was smiling. She was very beautiful, and she had a beautiful smile, but it made him suspicious. He frowned. ‘You’re not decorating again, are you?’
Her smile turned into a grin. ‘No,’ she said. ‘But we can’t do with that safe in the hall cupboard for ever. We have nowhere to put our coats and we can’t even close the door properly.’
He was much relieved that he would not have to spend the weekend with a scraper, stripping wallpaper off a wall, and the house upset with clobber from the room that was being decorated. He hated that. Nevertheless Mary had raised a subject he would have rather forgotten about: finding a key to open Uncle Willy’s safe.
‘There might be your money in there, or even some beautiful silver. And it would be nice to catch up with our mortgage payments,’ she said. ‘And the gas people have sent us a reminder. They want us to set up a direct debit. Did you know we owe them two hundred pounds?’
He wrinkled his nose and said, ‘Yes, love, well let’s deal with that in the morning.’
* * *
The following morning, Mary was in the kitchen preparing some vegetables for a soup for lunch when she heard the clatter of the letterbox. She wiped her hands on her apron, went into the hall and pulled a newspaper out of the slot. It was the local rag. She opened it and glanced at it on her way back to the kitchen. Something she saw made her stop and call into the sitting room.
‘You are mentioned on the front page of the Chronicle, Michael,’ Mary said. ‘With a photograph. It’s an old one. You look about sixteen.’
‘Thank you,’ he said.
‘You didn’t tell me you’d been interviewed,’ she said.
He frowned. ‘What’s it say?’
She smiled. ‘The headline is, SUPER COP NEEDS YOU.’
He winced. He wasn’t pleased. It meant he would have to put up with more insults and sarcasm from Harker when he returned to work on Monday.
‘I’ll read it to you,’ she said.
‘I can read it myself.’
‘It’s only short,’ she said. ‘It says, Detective Inspector Michael Angel of the Bromersley force — the cop who, like the Mounties, always gets his man — needs your help in solving a mystery. He wants you to report the sighting of any large wild cats in the neighbourhood. Two local people, a man and a woman, have been viciously attacked and have subsequently died from wounds received from a large wild cat believed to be roaming free around the district at night. The identities of both victims are not confirmed at the time of going to press. If you see the cat, please note the size and colour of it, the time, date, where seen and send or bring the details — with a photograph (if at all possible) — to the Chronicle offices on York Street. Full details will be reported in next week’s edition. That’s all,’ she said, handing him the paper. ‘You didn’t tell me about this.’
He nodded. ‘Didn’t I?’ he said. ‘Well, I must have forgotten. It’s been a very busy week.’
Then he put his nose into the paper and Mary returned to the kitchen.
A few moments later there was a knock at the front door.
‘It’ll be him here now,’ Angel said. He stood up, threw the newspaper into the chair behind him, walked up the hall and opened the door.
On the step stood a tall, grey-haired man with a bright, cheery face. ‘Hello there, Michael. How are you?’
‘Come in, Sam. Thank you for turning out and coming all this way. On a Saturday, your day off.’
‘I’ve only come from Castleford,’ he said with a grin. ‘Twenty minutes. And believe me, every day is my day off. This is a trip out for me.’
‘Mary,’ Angel called. ‘This is ex Inspector Sam Holiday. Used to head up the CID unit, S19. It dealt with crimes involving bank security vaults, safes and things like that.’
Mary came into the hall, smiled sweetly, then returned to the kitchen.
Angel showed Holiday the safe and the two men sat in the sitting room drinking coffee.
‘This safe is very old by today’s standards, Michael. Must have been made about 1936. I’m sure you will have noticed that the copper keyhole is dusty and a patina has developed. A key has not been in that keyhole for some time. As a matter of interest, what’s inside?’
‘We don’t know exactly.’
Mary called out from the kitchen. ‘It might have some jewellery, or maybe some antique silver inside, Sam. Uncle Willy was in that line of business.’
Angel looked towards the room door then back at Holiday.
Holiday smiled. ‘Well,’ he said, ‘it should be fairly easy to open by blowing the lock.’
Angel frowned. ‘Yes, but where can you get dynamite?’ he said.
Holloway shook his head. ‘You can’t. Not for breaking into a domestic safe. The best way, Michael, is to find the key.’
‘The key was lost years ago. The owner has died and left the safe to me.’
Holiday scratched his head. ‘There is a way. That is to drill a small hole just above the lock. However, that depends on the sort of metal the safe was made from. If the casting is made from cobalt-vanadium alloys with embedded tungsten-carbide chips, it would shatter the cutting tips of the drill bits, which are more than fifty pounds each. The process could cost more than a thousand pounds . . .’
‘Can’t you find out what metal it has been made from, Sam?’
‘Can’t be sure. You can only find out by actually drilling. Don’t know how long that will take. Would take a few hours. Do you want me to have a go?’
Mary called out from the kitchen, ‘Yes please.’
Holiday looked at Angel smiled and said, ‘When do you want me to start.’
‘Right now, Sam, would be fine!’ she called.
Angel’s eyebrows shot up.
* * *
Two hours later, after the second tungsten-carbide-tipped drill bit shattered before their eyes, Holiday switched off the drill, turned to Angel and said, ‘It�
��s no good, Michael.’
Mary came into the hall. ‘What’s happening?’
‘Sam can’t get through this casing,’ Angel said. ‘This is the sixth try. He’s only drilled half an inch and the second drill bit has shattered.’
‘There’s something in the casting,’ Holiday said. ‘Might be a composite hard plate that is making it impossible to get through even with these special drill bits.’
‘Can’t you keep trying, Sam?’ Mary said.
‘It’s not practical, Mary. I can’t keep spending your money, like this. It would be like throwing it in the bin. Besides, if I got through to the lock there is still no absolute certainty that I would be able to open the safe.’
Mary’s face dropped.
Angel rubbed his chin. ‘What options are left to us now then Sam?’ he said.
Mary said, ‘I have heard something somewhere about thermal lances. Could we not get one of them?’
‘The trouble with thermal lances and plasma cutters, apart from the cost,’ Holiday said as he turned the key in the chuck to remove the damaged bit, ‘is that they create such a high temperature that they might burn or melt whatever’s in the safe. Your best bet — if you really can’t get the key — is to use an oxyacetylene torch.’
‘Could you do that then, for us, Sam?’ she said.
‘I’ve never used one,’ Holiday said. ‘I don’t know much about them. We never used them in S19. If we had found ourselves in this position, we would have gone for blowing the lock. But Michael could soon learn to operate one, I daresay. You could then hire a torch and the bottles of gases . . . and you’d need a good pair of goggles.’
Angel frowned.
‘I’m sure he could,’ Mary said.
Angel turned round and looked at her, his mouth and eyes wide open.
Holiday showed him the place on the safe where he would need to direct the torch. Angel tried to look intelligent and interested and made the appropriate noises, but it wasn’t for him.
Mary invited Holiday to stay for a meal and he and Angel talked over past cases, particularly where their paths had crossed. Angel paid him for the two shattered drill bits (which was £110) and gave him £10 for petrol. Holiday wouldn’t take any more even though both Michael and Mary Angel thought he had earned it.
THE CHESHIRE CAT MURDERS an enthralling crime mystery full of twists (Yorkshire Murder Mysteries Book 18) Page 16
