The Morals of a Murderer

by Roger Silverwood

  ‘She’ll be with Yardley,’ said Quadrille.

  Boodle glared at him.

  ‘Obviously!’ he bawled. ‘What’s in the van?’

  ‘The case is there, and all the new clothes and things, and the shoes, also some old prison clothes and personal things. But he’s taken the money and the cigarettes. He must have stuffed them into one of those plastic bags!’

  *

  It was 4.45 p.m. when Quadrille stopped the Mercedes outside Bromersley police station. Angel and Gawber got out and the young man then sped off like an electric hare back up north to join Boodle at Friske police station. The commander had already been taken there by helicopter. The ARVs were also on their way north, and Angel expected Boodle would be co-ordinating a lightning search with North Yorkshire Police. He would desperately want to capture Yardley in daylight hours. It was essential to have him back in prison before he reached the gold and disappeared for ever!

  Angel went straight to his office and closed the door. He was glad to be away from the heat of Boodle’s rage. He pulled a small white paper bag out of his pocket and put it on his desk. He noticed the big words printed on it in blue: ‘MILLINGTON’S WINTER MIXTURE.’ He thought about it and frowned. In the bag was a scone Mrs Buller-Price had pushed into his hand on his way out; he had planned to enjoy it with a cup of tea. He reached out for the phone.

  It was Ahmed who answered.

  ‘Yes sir.’

  ‘A cup of tea, smartish, lad.’

  ‘You’re back, sir? The super said he wants to see you as soon as you come in.’

  Angel pulled a face. ‘Aaaah…’ He really didn’t want to face the super just then. ‘All right. Hold the tea.’

  He trudged down the corridor and knocked on the door.

  ‘Come in,’ the superintendent called.

  Angel opened the door.

  Harker pointed to the chair. ‘You didn’t find the gold, then?’ he said with a smile that would have made David Blunkett’s dog throw up.

  ‘How do you know, sir?’ Angel replied wearily.

  ‘Every copper knows that by now. We’ve had an email announcing Yardley’s escape from Welham prison,’ he sniggered.

  Angel’s eyebrows shot up. That was the story Boodle had put out, was it? He didn’t reply.

  ‘What happened?’

  Angel relayed the facts as they had unfolded.

  The superintendent sat there, attentive, nodding occasionally and grinding his teeth throughout. At the end, he merely smirked.

  ‘What a mess,’ he said. ‘It was a daft plan anyway.’ He sniffed.

  Angel didn’t remember him telling Boodle it was a daft plan!

  ‘You want to thank your lucky stars you did as you were told.’

  ‘What do you mean, sir?’

  ‘Well, that you didn’t drown another of his microphones. He had you pegged as a lad looking for an opportunity.’

  ‘I don’t know what you mean.’

  ‘Don’t be naive, lad. When you dunked your mike in the tea, he took it that you wanted your conversations with Yardley to be private, just between the two of you.’

  Angel screwed up his face. ‘I still don’t understand.’

  ‘You are thick, sometimes. He didn’t trust you, did he? He knows you and Yardley have some secret history and he thought the pair of you were cooking up your own private deal to organize his escape in exchange for a share in the gold.’ Angel’s mouth dropped open.

  ‘He thought you were on the take, lad. Why do you think he sent in two ‘gasmen’ to run a metal detector over your house?’

  ‘That was Boodle?’

  ‘Course it was. That’s why I couldn’t do anything about it. You wouldn’t have wanted me to set on another DI just to go through the motions of investigating it, would you? And what did you think they were looking for? Scratch cards? And you never did tell me what there was between you and Yardley.’ Angel’s jaw set like bell metal.

  ‘I don’t know Yardley, sir. I have never met him,’ he said loudly. He felt heat generate in his stomach and climb relentlessly up to his face. It was some time since he had felt so angry. ‘It’s bloody outrageous,’ he continued. ‘I shall make a formal complaint. If you’ve finished with me, sir, I shall go and see the chief constable now. I shall bring a case against Boodle. There’s too much of this, taking advantage of people, especially serving policemen and their families.’

  ‘I shouldn’t bother, Mike.’

  ‘It’s all right for you, sir. It wasn’t your wife’s privacy and your house that was violated.’

  ‘You’ll want witnesses, lad.’

  ‘Well, I’ve got you.’

  ‘Don’t be daft, lad. Don’t be daft! I’ve my back to watch, haven’t I?’

  Angel’s face changed. He stared at the toothy alligator across the desk. What price loyalty? He couldn’t believe what he was hearing.

  ‘Best thing you can do,’ the superintendent continued, ‘is to get to that gold before he does.’

  Angel shook his head in disbelief. Then he nodded. He wondered if he had correctly understood the way things were. If Boodle had been looking for an opportunity to get his hands on the gold for himself, then there would have been little surprise that he might have thought Angel had the same idea. What a turn-up for the books?

  ‘Come on, Mike. There’s nowt you can do about it. I shouldn’t have mentioned it. I thought you had worked it out. Let’s get on to our own crime figures.’ The superintendent shuffled through some papers in front of him until he found the one he wanted. ‘Hmm. Yes. Now there’s this chap Evan Jones. I’ve had a letter from Holloway probation office. They want to know if we’ve seen anything of Amy Jones. She’s not clocked in since she was released a month ago. In the absence of any information from anywhere, the case officer seems to think she may have drifted back to her ex-husband. Alternatively, they think that as she was from round here originally she may have returned here. Take another look at Jones. See if there’s any sign of her around his place. You never know. Give me something to write back. That Jones chap seems to be sailing very close to the wind. He’s buying gold, isn’t he?’

  Trancelike, Angel said: ‘Yes.’ He was still thinking about the ‘gasmen’, and the loyalty of the alligator.

  ‘Don’t like the look of him,’ the superintendent growled. Angel tried to shrug off the mood. It wasn’t easy.

  ‘If he’s buying gold, it means he isn’t stealing gold.’

  ‘At the moment, we only know he bought the one bar.’

  ‘That’s more than eighty thousand quid! And according to the Inland Revenue, it seems to have been with clean money.’

  ‘Yes,’ said Harker, grinding his teeth. ‘Exactly,’ he said heavily. ‘Exactly.’

  ‘What are you getting at, sir?’

  ‘Just supposing he’s involved in fencing this stolen gold, and he’s got access to these eight hundred and twenty bars. How’s he going to turn it into cash so that he can spend it? I mean, he can’t buy a house with four bars of gold, or a round of drinks with a pinch of it. A quantity like that, he’d have to sell legitimately, through bullion-dealers. And he’d have to sell it in small quantities, a bar or two at a time, not to arouse suspicion.’ Angel realized what the super was suggesting.

  ‘You think he’s set up a laundering scam?’

  The superintendent nodded. He stopped grinding, looked up and peered through half-closed eyes.

  ‘Make sure he doesn’t blow soap in your eyes, shoot you a line, and then hang you out on it to dry,’ he snarled.

  *

  Angel arrived at the police station the following morning early, anxious to hear if there was any news about Yardley. He called in the communications room and read that there had been no reported sightings of him since his escape yesterday morning. Mrs Buller-Price’s car had been found in good condition near to where it had been taken and a SOC officer had been over it and found nothing useful to the inquiry. Angel left the room and hurried down the main
corridor. He followed the smelly plumber who was carrying a length of copper piping and a yellow plastic bucket. He arrived in his office and was fingering through the post when there was a knock on the door.

  ‘Come in,’ he called.

  It was Gawber.

  ‘Come in, Ron. Sit down.’ He turned away from the letters. ‘The super thinks Jones may have set up a gold-laundering scam. He’s even suggested he might know something about this Bank of Agara job. Well, Jones got a receipt for that gold bar he bought in the Isle of Man. If we were to search his place and find one gold bar, he’d just wave that receipt at us.’

  ‘Oh?’ said Gawber, his eyes opening wide. ‘And he can use that same receipt for a different bar over and over again.’

  Angel nodded. ‘Now, if he is running a laundering scam, we’d need to find him with more than one bar.’

  Gawber shook his head. ‘When those two men in suits turned his house over, it didn’t look to me as if they had found anything interesting, and there wasn’t a safe. We would need to look at his car-sales pitch. I expect there’s a safe in his office there. But we’d need something to justify a search warrant, wouldn’t we?’

  ‘Ay.’

  There was a knock at the door. ‘Come in.’

  It was DS Crisp.

  ‘What is it, lad?’ said Angel irritably.

  ‘I’ve caught Fishy Smith, sir,’ Crisp said enthusiastically. ‘I caught him meandering round Bromersley market.’

  Angel’s eyebrows went up. ‘Oh. I’d forgotten all about him. Oh yes.’ His jaw stiffened. ‘I’ve a bone to pick with that evil little monster.’

  ‘He’s in cell number two.’

  ‘Right, lad. I hope you didn’t get too near. He’d empty your pockets faster than Gordon Brown.’

  Crisp grinned. ‘I kept my distance, sir.’

  ‘Right. Have you searched him?’

  ‘He’s nothing on him that looks stolen, sir. His stuff is laid out on the counter in the charge room. Ed Scrivens is watching it for me.’

  ‘Right, I’ll come straightaway.’ He turned back to Gawber. ‘Don’t go far away, Ron. I’ll happen be wanting you to search Fishy Smith’s pad.’

  Angel headed straight for the charge room. Crisp followed behind him.

  PC Scrivens was leaning against the counter. He straightened up when Angel appeared.

  ‘Right, lad,’ Angel said.

  The constable went out and closed the door. Crisp nodded towards the few items on the counter.

  ‘That’s all he has, sir.’

  There was an empty leather wallet, two pounds and ten pence in coins, a ring with two keys, a rabbit’s-foot brooch, a little plastic model of a black cat and a small brown jar with a green screw-top. Angel poked methodically through them. He came to the jar. He picked it up, and unscrewed the lid. Inside was a clear greasy substance, like an ointment. It was almost empty. He sniffed at it. His eyebrows shot up. He turned and looked at Crisp strangely.

  ‘What’s up, sir?’ asked the sergeant.

  Angel held up the jar. ‘What’s this, lad?’

  Crisp took it, sniffed at it. ‘Smells like rubbing ointment. For colds.’

  ‘It’s menthol,’ snapped Angel. He snatched the jar back. He put his nose over the jar again. ‘Yes.’

  Crisp shrugged, surprised at Angel’s reaction.

  ‘You rub it on your chest, sir.’

  ‘I know what it’s for, lad,’ said Angel tightening the lid. ‘What’s he doing with it, that’s what I want to know?’

  Crisp looked blank and said nothing. Angel stuffed the jar into his pocket and turned back to him.

  ‘He can have that stuff back. Bring it down to the cells. Follow me.’

  Fishy Smith stood up as Angel and Crisp went into the cell.

  ‘You can’t keep me in here. I haven’t done nothing wrong. I wasn’t loitering with intent to do nothing. It’s an interference with my liberty. I don’t mind being bottled up when I’ve done something wrong but this is an infringement of my rights.’

  Angel closed the cell door. ‘Save it, Fishy. Save it. All that guff is wasted on me, you should know that by now. Let’s get down to brass tacks. What have you done with my warrant-card and badge?’

  Fishy’s mouth opened and then closed.

  ‘I don’t know nothing about ’em.’

  ‘Come on. Don’t muck me about. When you were in last week, making a fuss in the charge room and I came up to speak to you, you took that opportunity to dip my pocket and relieve me of the leather wallet they were in.’

  ‘Not me, squire. Must have been somebody else.’

  ‘It was you and you know it.’

  Fishy Smith looked away, smiled, shook his head a few times and looked back.

  ‘Fancy the great Angel being dipped. I bet that stuff could be worth quite a bit out in the right hands. What a laugh, eh?’

  ‘What did you do with them?’ Angel bawled angrily.

  ‘I haven’t seen them. I don’t do no dipping any more, Mr Angel.’

  The inspector put his hand in his pocket and produced the jar of menthol ointment.

  ‘Whose pocket did this come out of?’

  ‘That? That? Huh. That’s just ointment.’

  ‘Whose pocket did you get it out of?’

  ‘I didn’t get that out of anybody’s pocket. It’s for my stuffed-up nose.’

  ‘Your nose isn’t stuffed up.’

  ‘No. Not now. It’s better, isn’t it.’

  ‘It’s your head that’s stuffed up. Stuffed up with the idea that you can pull one across me. Where did you get it from?’

  ‘It’s only ointment. I don’t know. My sister gave it me.’

  ‘Where did she get it from?’

  ‘I don’t know. A chemist’s, I suppose. It’s only a jar of ointment, Mr Angel. It’s not exactly the crown jewels!’

  ‘I need to see your sister.’

  ‘No. Leave my sister alone. You can’t. She’s gone back.’

  ‘Where to?’

  ‘I don’t know, do I? I’m not her keeper. Liverpool, I think.’

  ‘You’ll have to stop in here until we find her, then.’

  ‘No. I remember. I bought it at the chemist’s.’

  ‘What chemist’s?’

  ‘I don’t know what chemist’s.’

  ‘Did you buy it yourself?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘What did you ask for?’

  ‘I don’t know. I don’t recall what I said exactly.’

  ‘You’re a liar. You lifted this from somebody’s pocket.’

  ‘No I didn’t.’

  ‘I’ll let you into a secret, Fishy. This jar of menthol is evidence. The man you stole it from is a murderer. If he knows you’ve got it, he’ll be after your blood.’

  ‘Get off! What’s a jar of menthol got to do with a murder?’ Angel suddenly peered into his eyes.

  ‘Ah. I see it all. You didn’t steal it. It is yours. You must be the murderer.’

  Fishy Smith didn’t reply. His mouth opened wide. Angel turned to Crisp.

  ‘Get a warrant to search this man’s house while I charge him with the murder of Duncan McFee,’ he said.

  The man swallowed and his eyes opened up like two fried eggs.

  ‘Hold on,’ he yelled. ‘Hold on. I found that jar of menthol in a bag in my step-sister’s flat.’

  Angel sighed. ‘Now we are getting somewhere.’

  Chapter Thirteen

  He locked the car and went through the open office door. Olivia Button was at the desk, combing her long blonde hair. When she saw him, she quickly dropped the comb into her open handbag, deftly threaded her hair into an elastic band and pushed the little pedestal mirror into a desk drawer.

  ‘Sorry about that,’ she said with a sweet toothy smile. ‘Can I help you?’

  ‘Oh,’ Angel began. ‘I was looking for Mr Jones.’

  ‘He’ll be back in a minute. I’m sitting in for him. Is there anything I can do?’ she offered
delicately, flashing her big blue eyes.

  Angel looked at his watch.

  ‘It’s his lunch hour,’ she said. ‘He’s gone for a short run. He’ll be back in a couple of minutes.’

  ‘Won’t he be staying out for lunch?’

  ‘No. No.’ She smiled. ‘He’ll be back. He’ll just have a banana at his desk … with me. That’s his lunch.’

  Angel didn’t think a run and a banana an adequate substitute for a pork pie and pint of Old Peculiar at the Feathers, but he was generously prepared to accept that in this modern world with its new found values, it took all sorts.

  ‘How does he keep his strength up?’ he asked with a grin. ‘He’s very strong,’ she said, maintaining a smile. ‘He says he’s always been fit. He’s exercise mad. He runs and he runs. There’s not an ounce of fat on him. Always eats the right food. He’s as strong as a bull. Now why are you so interested?’

  ‘I’m Inspector Angel, Bromersley CID,’ he said, then hesitated. ‘I wanted to speak to him.’

  Olivia Button’s face changed. Her eyes got bigger, her mouth dropped open momentarily, then, as quickly, her face brightened and she smiled and sighed as a wiry figure in white shirt, shorts and shoes came running in through the open door, panting noisily.

  ‘Four minutes and twenty seconds,’ he gasped. ‘My best yet.’

  Angel turned.

  Evan Jones pulled the sweatband off his head, wiped his forehead with it and blew out a long sigh.

  ‘Ah. Oh? Hello, Inspector. What can I do for you?’ he said in that sing-song way. ‘Have you caught those men who broke into my house yet?’

  ‘No. I want to see you about something else. It’s private really,’ Angel said looking towards Olivia. ‘Perhaps we should go somewhere.’

  ‘No. No,’Jones replied. ‘That’s all right. Olivia is all right. I have no secrets from her.’

  Angel shrugged a shoulder.

  ‘Well, it’s about your ex-wife. It seems that since she came out of prison, she’s not kept to the terms of her probation. In fact, she’s not been seen since her release from Holloway on the sixteenth of March. I wondered if you had seen her?’

  ‘No. No,’ Jones said quickly and firmly. ‘And if I never see her again, it will be too soon.’ He looked at Olivia. She gave him a small, nervous smile.