The Auction Murders

by Roger Silverwood

  Angel shook his head and smiled briefly and then, very solemnly, said, ‘I wanted to ask you about a very serious matter that happened in 1962.’

  She blinked. ‘Of course, inspector. I will help you all I can.’

  ‘I understand you witnessed the tragic suicide of a policeman on the motorway. A PC Cyril Sagar. I don’t know if you can remember that far back.’

  Her eyes shone like searchlights. ‘Indeed I can. My memory of it is most vivid. I can remember things that happened in my life in the fifties and sixties better than events that happened yesterday. That business was most dreadful. I didn’t actually see the man fall, but I was in the car, passing the Barnsley junction. I must have arrived a few seconds afterwards … mmm … there he was, a shapeless heap of clothes in the road.’

  ‘It is not the event itself I am investigating, Mrs Buller-Price. I am trying to locate the whereabouts of the man’s widow. Did you happen to meet her?’

  She nodded, shaking all four chins. ‘Oh yes. I met her briefly. I have no idea what happened to her.’

  ‘Can you describe her?’

  ‘Quite pitiful, really. A little woman with a lot of dark hair in a flowered dress. I remember the sight of her clinging to her little girl, a thin, pasty 5- or 6-year-old with skinny, white legs, in that dingy hospital corridor. She was hugging a small, bright pink fluffy toy, an elephant, I think it was. Outrageous colour, Chinese pink or cyclamen. It might have been a pony. I am not sure. Dangling on an elastic. She dropped it or pushed it behind the radiator pipes. I remember laddering a stocking, creeping about on my hands and knees with a nurse, getting it out by poking it with a splint.’

  ‘Do you remember her name, or the name of the child?’

  ‘No. But I would have liked to have taken the little thing home and given her a plate of beef stew and broccoli. She needed building up. Fresh air in her lungs. A month on the beach at Scarborough, ice creams and some fun with other children. Mmmm. Poor little soul.’

  ‘You can’t recollect her name?’

  She pursed her lips. ‘Something unusual, I feel. But no. I cannot recall it, inspector. I’m sorry.’

  Angel grunted. ‘Ah well.’

  Ahmed arrived through the open door with two cups of tea on a tin tray. He placed the tray on the desk.

  ‘Thank you, Ahmed,’ she said with a smile as she took the cup.

  He went out and closed the door.

  ‘You are due at my house for tea soon, inspector, you know. I am dying to use that beautiful silver teapot I bought at the auction.’

  ‘Oh yes. Thank you, and I am looking forward to it.’

  ‘I am sorry to hear the tragic news about Dr Sinclair and his dear wife, Clementine. Such a lovely couple. You are dealing with that investigation, inspector?’

  ‘I’m afraid I am.’

  ‘And you are also investigating the murders of Mr Sanson and Alison Drabble. All those lovely people gone inside a week, and good people, I believe. All stabbed by the same silent killer, it says in the papers. Somebody local. Someone we all know. We should trust no one, the papers say. Is that right, inspector? Is it somebody we know?’ she asked deviously.

  ‘I don’t think you have anything to fear, Mrs Buller-Price. We’re getting there,’ he said confidently with equal guile, standing by the old police adage, never to give information away for free.

  ‘I blame alcohol!’ she suddenly burst out.

  Angel blinked.

  ‘Yes. Alcohol in moderation is a good, social tool, but when taken immoderately is an enemy of the soul. When you get to the bottom of this, inspector, you’ll find alcohol is to blame. Only the middle classes should be allowed alcohol. Yes. The lower classes abuse it because it is their only solace, and the upper classes abuse it because the cost is irrelevant to them. Now, inspector, you know that I don’t tittle-tattle. I am not a gossip. But about a year ago, for my birthday, with some other groceries and victuals, I ordered a bottle of special Champagne from Heneberry’s. Anyway, the following day, I came back from the fields with the dogs, and I found a shipping load of cases and boxes on my doorstep and a bill shoved through the letterbox. It was obviously not my order; for one thing there were four cases of Polish vodka. Four cases! I phoned Heneberry and, of course, they had got the orders muddled. I had got the order intended for Ogmore Hall. In the end it was put right but I couldn’t help but wonder. I didn’t know Lord Archibald was a drinker! Met him only twice. At NFU do’s. He didn’t look like a drinker, secret or otherwise. Now I think the vodka may have played a part in his demise. What do you think, inspector?’

  The phone rang. Angel looked at it with relief. ‘Excuse me,’ he said and reached out for it.

  It was the superintendent. ‘Just had a call from the hospital,’ he said urgently. ‘An hour ago, in response to an anonymous triple nine, an ambulance picked up a man with gunshot wounds in Jubilee Park. Not carrying any ID. He’s in a bad way … anxious to speak to a policeman.’

  Angel breathed out a long sigh. It sounded desperately urgent. ‘I’ll go straightaway, sir.’

  ‘Ward 12.’

  ‘Right.’ The phone went dead.

  He looked up at Mrs Buller-Price. ‘I have to go. I must apologize. It’s an emergency.’ Then he stabbed a number into the phone.

  Her eyes shone excitedly as she took in the situation. ‘That’s perfectly all right, inspector. I understand,’ she said, quickly reaching down for her stick and bag.

  A voice down the phone boomed, ‘Transport.’

  ‘DI Angel. This is an emergency. I need a car and driver to take me to the hospital.’ ‘Right sir. There’ll be one at the front in two minutes. It’ll have to be a patrol car.’

  ‘Don’t care if it’s a whippet, if it can carry me and get me there quick!’

  He banged down the cradle and dialled another number. He turned to Mrs Buller-Price. ‘I’m sorry about this. I’ll get Ahmed to show you out.’

  ‘That’s all right, inspector. I understand perfectly,’ she said, looking alert and interested in the ongoing activity. ‘You know, I could drive you there, if you wish?’

  ‘Very kind, but he’ll use the siren.’ There was a click in the earpiece. ‘Cadet Ahaz.’

  ‘Come in here, lad, pronto.’

  He replaced the handset and reached out for the crutches.

  In less than five minutes he was rocking down the hospital corridor to Ward 12. A woman in a white coat was standing behind a desk at the nurses’ base near the door, reading a patient’s chart and chewing the end of a pen.

  ‘Excuse me. I’m Inspector Angel from Bromersley Police. I’ve been called to see a patient …’

  She pointed to an open door behind him with the pen and said, ‘In there.’

  ‘How is he?’

  She shook her head involuntarily and pursed her lips. Then she abruptly changed. She looked down at the paper she had been reading. ‘He’s doing very well,’ she said quickly, then looked back up, nodded and smiled. But it was too late. Her face had given it away. Angel had seen it all before. She smiled with her lips but not with her eyes. His father had died of a gunshot wound in 1987 in this very hospital, and in the same way, he had had to dash there from the station in response to a phone call. He sniffed, squeezed the grips on the crutches, turned, set his jaw and walked through the open ward door.

  It was a small, single-bedded room with minimal furniture: bed, locker, sink and chair. In the bed was a patient who had a bandage on his head down to his eyebrows. The only uncovered parts of him were his eyes, nose and mouth. There was a tedious hissing sound of escaping oxygen. A plastic mask hung pointlessly by his chin. The mandatory bleeping machine with a monitor that displayed a moving wavy pattern on a screen and the figure 89, which irregularly changed to 90 and then back again, dominated the other side of the bed. A bag of blood was hanging from a stand with a tube that disappeared under the blankets. A drop of brown liquid dripped into an opaque container fastened to the leg of the bed. Everywhere you
looked, there were bags and tubes and wires …

  Angel leaned over the bed and peered closely into the man’s pallid, sweaty face. His swollen eyelids were closed, his mouth open. He appeared to be between fifty and sixty years of age and was probably a handsome gadabout in better circumstances.

  After a few seconds, Angel sighed, straightened up and moved away from the bedside. He put the crutches across the sink, dragged the chair close to the bed and sat down. Looking across at the bleeping monitor, he rubbed his chin. The bedclothes moved irregularly up and down. There was the whooshing of laboured breathing; the man was fighting for his life.

  Quietly, the nurse came in. She was wearing rubber gloves and carrying a loaded hypodermic in a kidney dish. She looked at the patient and then at Angel. ‘Still asleep? Has he not woken up? Does he know you’re here?’

  Angel shook his head. ‘No.’

  She peeled back the bedclothes, found a suitable place and emptied the syringe. ‘He was awake five minutes ago,’ she said placing the hypodermic in the kidney bowl and fishing for the pen in her top pocket. She picked up the notes on a clipboard hanging from the bottom of the bed. ‘His pulse is down,’ she said, sounding pleased. ‘I think he’ll be awake soon.’ Reaching out, she adjusted the oxygen mask over his nose and mouth and went out.

  A few moments later, the patient stirred. He rolled his head from one side of the pillow to the other, then he pulled the mask away from his mouth and nose and licked his lips.

  Angel stood up and said, ‘Hello?’

  The man opened his eyes, blinked several times, looked round the room and then peered up at Angel.

  He smiled and said, ‘I’m DI Angel of Bromersley Police.’ He produced a small tape recorder from his coat pocket and switched it on. ‘Now what can I do for you?’

  ‘You’re a policeman. It’s my wife,’ he whispered and then winced. ‘I think she’ll be in great danger.’

  ‘Go on,’ Angel said. ‘This recorder will catch every word you say.’

  He glanced at it and nodded. ‘She needs taking away from the house,’ he whispered breathily.

  ‘I can do that. But tell me why.’

  ‘It’s a long story. Erm … I stupidly got into debt to a man called Harry Youel … gambling … I was never going to be able to pay it back, the interest was getting to be more than the capital … he knew I was a telephone engineer and he had some racket going … he offered me a deal to rub out the debt … three nights’ work and I would have paid him off … I had to agree or I would never have got out of his clutches … he took me to a big house in the country … I don’t know where it was … I was blindfolded there and back … but it must have been north of here … I felt the sun on my right cheek when I was travelling from there to Bromersley in the late afternoon … I stayed there … At nights they drove me back out to connection boxes in and around Bromersley … I had to fix some circuits to enable him to fiddle the banks. It all went well for him. He made a killing. After three big nights, I thought that was it, and I was out of his clutches … but no … he wanted me to fix more lines … his men, Joshua and Poodle, kept hitting me … I insisted, I wouldn’t do anymore … anyway, I needed my pills for blood pressure … he wouldn’t let me get them from home … I became ill … I had violent headaches … I couldn’t see straight … I thought I would die … he threatened me again … I still refused … he said he’d kill my wife! When he saw I was no use to him, he shot me in the stomach … twice I think … I don’t know what happened then, I must have passed out.’

  ‘You were picked up in the park, by an ambulance, and brought here.’

  ‘Oh? They must have dumped me there … Anyway, my wife needs taking away from our house immediately, until you get Youel locked up … she doesn’t know anything about this … she doesn’t know I’m here … will you make sure she’s safe?’

  ‘Yes, of course.’

  ‘Promise me.’

  ‘I promise. And I’ll tell her where you are. Now what’s your name and address?’

  ‘Anton Mulholland. And my wife’s name is Adele.’

  10

  ‘I want to put that woman in the safe house on Beechfield Walk, sir,’ Angel said as he placed a memo on the desk in front of the super.

  Superintendent Harker stopped grinding his teeth, picked up the memo and read it. ‘Is she a witness?’

  ‘No, but she’s the wife of one, and she needs protection while Youel is free.’

  He wrinkled his nose, ‘Can only shell out board and lodging to witnesses at risk, you know, lad. Not their entourage. This isn’t the Holiday Inn!’

  Angel’s eyes flashed. The skin on the back of his hands tightened. ‘I’ve got a statement from a dying man that will put Youel away for a long time; I promised to see his wife protected until that villain was in custody!’

  The super pulled a face like a baby about to cry. ‘Can’t go making wild promises like that, lad,’ he squawked.

  ‘It wasn’t a wild promise, sir.’

  ‘Hmmm. It had better be worthwhile. Signed and witnessed is it?’

  Angel shook his head. ‘It’s a recording, sir.’

  ‘A recording! And he’s dying? He’d better live long enough to stand in the box at Youel’s trial, if it’s going to be worth anything at all. If he dies, your recording isn’t worth a stick of liquorice.’

  ‘It’s enough to charge him with,’ Angel said, his heart pounding.

  ‘You’ve got to catch him first.’

  ‘Well, I think I know where he is,’ he replied, heavily.

  The super’s little black eyes froze and his bushy ginger eyebrows slid up his forehead. ‘Where?’

  ‘At Littlemore school. With his son, Sebastian. It’s the only logical place.’

  ‘Don’t be daft, lad. Pogle’s on obbo there. He would have reported in.’

  ‘Ah well,’ Angel said slowly. ‘I’m a bit worried about Pogle, sir.’

  ‘What?’ he bawled.

  ‘The witness, the man in hospital, Mulholland, said that he was being held by Youel in a big house in the country, north of here. It fits, sir.’

  His voice went up an octave. ‘Are you suggesting Pogle is letting Youel come and go and shutting a blind eye to it?’

  Angel didn’t answer, but he looked Harker straight in the eye.

  ‘You’re taking a witness’s word against a DI’s?’ the super spluttered.

  ‘There’s something else, sir.’

  ‘There’d better be. And you want to be thankful this conversation is off the record,’ he said pointing a long blue finger.

  Angel’s jaw stiffened. ‘Oh no sir. I want it putting on the record … all I’ve already said and what I am going to say now.’

  The super ground his teeth harder and harder. If he could have breathed out fire, it would have scorched Angel’s eyebrows.

  ‘You recall I was ambushed outside the station and offered a bribe by Youel?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘I had asked transport to organize a lift to take me home, and I was told I’d be picked up at the front. When I got outside, there was a car already waiting for me. It was one of Youel’s cars — not a station car — but I didn’t know that at the time. The driver called out my name; he knew I wanted a lift.’

  ‘So what? It was coincidence. His man would have been hovering on the off chance. Youel had been wanting to approach you, hadn’t he?’

  ‘His man didn’t know me.’

  ‘He wouldn’t have to.’ He nodded at the crutches on the floor. ‘Your Long John Silver outfit would have been a dead giveaway!’

  ‘No sir. No. It was all planned!’

  ‘You’re going off your chump, lad. Pogle’s got an impeccable record. Served at this station nearly as long as you have. He’s as clean as a whistle. His grandfather was mayor of this town. The family’s got an impeccable reputation. There’s nothing at all to support this daft idea. It’s just your creative imagination.’

  ‘No sir. It isn’t,’ he
said firmly.

  ‘Pogle could say the same thing about you, I expect. Haven’t you thought how suspicious your story was? You said you were ambushed by Youel and two of his men, and taken off in his car. Then you were offered a bribe, which you say you declined. Youel was so delighted, he promptly brought you back here and let you go free and unharmed.’

  ‘I was tipped over the hedge at the front, sir.’

  ‘Huh. A violent crook and his gang, wanted nationally for robbery, robbery with menaces, violence, fraud and a string of other charges, delivered a DI back here to the front door of this police station in broad daylight, in front of those big windows, where he shoved you over a hedge?’

  ‘That’s what happened.’

  ‘And you’d not a bruise or a scraped knuckle to show for it!’

  ‘No.’

  ‘You didn’t retaliate.’

  ‘I didn’t have the chance to retaliate. Look sir. It seems to me it’s now or never. Sebastian, we know, is there. It’s perfectly logical that Harry Youel, his father, would want to be with him. He has to be in the area somewhere. FSU has already been round all the hotels and places offering accommodation. That obbo’s gone on long enough. You could say if Harry Youel isn’t there now, he’s never going to be there.’

  The super sighed noisily. ‘Trouble with you lad, is that you haven’t enough to do. And you’ve no patience. You’ve got a nasty multiple murder case in your lap, and just because you’re not making any progress with it, you’ve shifted your attention to this Harry Youel scam.’

  Angel was furious. He thought he would explode. He jumped up. His face was burning. ‘You brought me into this Harry Youel scam. You wanted me to stand in for Desmond Pogle at that briefing. I didn’t volunteer for any of it. Anyway, sir, I hope you have noted my various comments and recommendations. If you don’t want me for anything else, I have a lot to do. I’ll get on with it.’

  The superintendent glared at him, then made a gesture with one hand, the way a sultan might have used to dismiss a slave.

  Angel snatched up the crutches and made for the door, glad to get out of the office. He was so angry: his chest ached. There was a serious risk he might have said something that offensive, it might have ended his career.