The Dog Collar Murders

by Roger Silverwood

  He nodded. ‘That’s what I thought,’ he said and returned to sipping the tea.

  Angel looked at him and pursed his lips. He really wanted to know King’s motivation. This was the closest emotionally he had ever been to the man. Did King actually know there was a mountain of cash in St Joseph’s presbytery, or was he breaking into the place on the off-chance there might be something there worth stealing? Also, was he the murderer of Harry Weston, Samuel Smart and Raymond Gulli, and the man who broke into Hugo Riley’s church? He could fit the witness’s description. But he wasn’t seen wearing a white cloak. Could he really be that man? He supposed he might resemble the drawing executed by the police artist.

  Angel warmed his hands briefly round the beaker then finished off the tea. He breathed deeply three times and tried to think friendly thoughts towards King. It wasn’t easy.

  ‘So, Peter, tell me,’ Angel said, ‘why did you try to break into the presbytery, the house where the vicar lives? There’s nothing there – is there? – but the usual domestic clobber. You might have found a surfeit of dog collars, Bibles and candles, maybe … but nothing really worth serving time for, was there?’

  King smiled, his mouth puckering up like a baby’s. On him it was grotesque. ‘I think you are trying to pump me for information, Mr Angel.’

  ‘I think I am. It’s what coppers do.’

  ‘It must be very boring.’

  ‘It is sometimes, but not always. Not in your case, Peter.’

  ‘What do you mean exactly?’

  ‘Well, you know you have a very interesting personality.’

  ‘Do I really, Mr Angel? In what way?’

  ‘Oh yes. In many ways. For instance, you try and tell me that you haven’t tried to break into St Joseph’s presbytery when all the evidence indicates that you have.’

  ‘Well, you don’t expect me to admit that I have, just like that, Mr Angel. I have got standards, you know. In what other ways do you find me interesting?’

  ‘Well, attempting to break into a place where there is virtually nothing useful to take.’

  ‘Ah, well now, that’s where you’re wrong, Mr Angel. You might think that I don’t know what I’m doing. You might think that I think that St Joseph’s is a broken-down, poverty-stricken church, whereas I know it’s a very wealthy church. I know that the vicar there is well off. His father lived in a big house on Creesforth Road. The old man died recently; now that house must be worth a few bob. Also, Mr Angel, there’s more.’

  ‘Oh,’ he said.

  ‘Yes. The old lady of the house, his batty sister, is regularly winning big lumps on the ponies.’

  ‘Really? That’s extremely clever of you, Peter.’

  ‘I was in Brian’s the bookies a couple of days back when her cleaner came in to collect the old lady’s winnings. And it was a fair wad, I can tell you. Just about cleaned Brian out.’

  ‘Really?’ Angel said, trying to sound impressed. ‘I knew there were hidden depths to you, Peter.’

  ‘So you see, if your men had not driven up like lunatics and caught me in their headlights, I would have gotten into the house – there was no burglar alarm – and I might have found the old lady’s winnings and come out loaded. There!’

  Angel nodded. King’s motive appeared to have been simple robbery. He was glad to have cleared that up.

  ‘That was good for us, Peter, but bad luck for you.’

  ‘Yes, Mr Angel. Bad luck, that’s all it was. Bad luck.’

  King pounced on the words ‘bad luck’ like Harker spotting a five pence piece on the office floor. Angel knew he would. Villains always believed they’d got a bigger measure of bad luck than anybody else.

  ‘I’ve been dogged with bad luck all my life,’ King said.

  Angel wanted to smile. He rubbed his chin to cover his mouth. He still wanted information about the murders. He wondered if King might be persuaded to talk about them. Everything he had said when he had last interviewed him had been annoyingly and deliberately inconclusive. Time had moved on, maybe circumstances had changed. He wondered how he might get round to reintroducing the subject.

  ‘You weren’t afraid then?’ Angel said.

  ‘Afraid? Me? Nah,’ he said, shaking his head then putting his nose into the beaker.

  Angel waited. He expected King to say more.

  King finished the tea and then half closed his eyes and pursed his lips. After a few moments he said, ‘Afraid of what?’

  That was what Angel had hoped for.

  ‘The murderer, of course,’ he said as casually as he could. ‘He could have been ransacking the house. You could have interrupted him.’

  King’s arms and shoulders twitched. The pupils of his eyes slid to the side and back. The mood had changed. ‘I’d better say no comment to that one, Inspector,’ he said. Then he leaned back on to the pillow and stretched out his legs. ‘I’m answering no more questions. Leave me alone. I’m tired. I want to go to sleep.’

  Angel returned the key to cell number one to DS Clifton and went home. It was 3.30 a.m.

  Mary was in her nightdress and housecoat and had fallen asleep in an easy chair. She awoke instantly when she heard Angel turn the key in the lock in the back door. She was relieved to see him but angry that he had not phoned. They had a few words but when he explained the situation concerning Miss Wilkinson, she quickly forgave him. She made them a hot drink, which she took to bed on a tray.

  Angel got undressed, had a good wash, set the alarm for nine o’clock, finished the drink and went straight to sleep.

  Next morning, he was in the office for ten o’clock. He had to attend court with Peter King at eleven. Despite the evidence, King pleaded not guilty, which angered the magistrate’s clerk, who gave him a telling off. The upshot of all that was that he was remanded to the Crown Court at a date to be notified, and made the subject of an interim Probation Order.

  Angel was tolerably well satisfied with the result and he dashed back to the station. As he made his way up the green corridor to his office, he could hear his phone ringing. He pushed open the door and answered it in time.

  It was DC Scrivens. ‘I tried to get you earlier, sir, but your mobile was on voicemail.’

  ‘What is it, lad? Something urgent?’

  Scrivens hesitated. ‘Well, sir, I have still got two unmarked cars in positions observing the two warehouses.’

  ‘I know, lad. Has there been a delivery of phony biscuits, then?’

  ‘No, sir. We’ve monitored all the deliveries, videoed all the vehicles, drivers and crew, checked the index numbers with Swansea, and everything has been entirely in order.’

  ‘Pity. What are you bothering me for?’

  ‘We have been here since Tuesday afternoon, sir, and I am concerned that if we stay here much longer, we are going to be sussed.’

  Angel’s eyebrows went up.

  ‘I wondered what you would want us to do?’ Scrivens said.

  Angel frowned. The lad had a point. It was a big consignment of cocaine they were on the lookout for, worth a very big lump of money, which would have to be paid for in cash. Drug deals were always cash. Therefore the delivery crew could very well be the principals, and if they were, would very likely be armed.

  ‘What do you want me to do, sir?’ Scrivens repeated.

  ‘Well, do you think you can hang on there and stay unobserved until the warehouses close today, lad?’

  ‘I daresay we can, sir.’

  ‘Do that then. Stand down for the weekend, report to me on Monday early doors and I’ll make my mind up then whether to continue or not. In the meantime, keep your eyes peeled.’

  He replaced the phone. It was always worrying when a large consignment of a Class A drug was reported to be coming into the area.

  Angel ran his hand through his hair and looked at his watch. It was 11.30 a.m. and Miss Wilkinson had not yet arranged for the collection of her flour bin. He was still holding the key to cell two. So many things to do. So much detail. He rea
ched out for the phone.

  There was a knock at the door. More disturbance. There was no time to think. He looked at it, mouth slightly open and his lips tight back against his teeth. ‘Come in,’ he bawled.

  It was DS Carter. She looked excited. She was carrying a suitcase.

  ‘I’ve got it, sir,’ she said, holding the case up for him to see.

  ‘According to Mrs Vincent, the witness, this is an exact replica of the suitcase she saw the thieves pack the money into, sir,’ Carter said.

  He replaced the phone and blew out a lungful of air.

  The suitcase was mainly stone coloured but had a dozen or more thin brown stripes across the lower half of it.

  Angel looked at it thoughtfully, then he said, ‘It would hold four million quid, in tens and twenties, I suppose.’

  Carter nodded in agreement.

  ‘I have seen that pattern before, but it is a bit unusual,’ he said.

  ‘That should help us,’ she said.

  He agreed, then silently reckoned he needed all the help he could get.

  ‘It would be worthwhile having a photograph of it in the Bromersley Chronicle, Flora,’ he said. ‘If we could recover it, even if it had been discarded empty, we might get some DNA that could lead us straight to the thieves. Get Ahmed to photograph it.’

  ‘Right, sir. But there’s something else.’

  He looked up.

  ‘That American, Ben Wizard character, ex-partner of Felicity Kellerman, sir. Got his email address from her.’

  ‘Yes. What about him?’ he said.

  ‘I managed to catch up with him, sir. He said that he has a two-week booking at the Cat and the Canary, Washington Avenue, in Seattle. I asked him where he was at three o’clock on Monday afternoon, the time that Harry Weston was shot, and he said on a train travelling down from Liverpool to London, on his way to Heathrow.’

  Angel sighed. ‘That’s not good enough, Flora. He could have shot Harry Weston at the ticket office at three o’clock, taken a later train via Sheffield to Euston, then on to Heathrow.’

  She nodded. ‘I’ll check on the CCTV, sir?’

  ‘It will be too late for that. British Rail won’t have kept tapes since then. You could try Heathrow. See what flight he was on, and the time of its departure. That might confirm his story. If he was in the air before, say, seven o’clock, Monday night, he couldn’t possibly have murdered Harry Weston, or the two priests, and he couldn’t have been the one who turned Father Riley’s place upside-down.’

  ‘I’ll get straight on to it, sir.’

  She went out.

  The arrival of Flora Carter with the suitcase reminded Angel that he was in possession of three exhibits that were actually used by the robbers in the security van robbery. He swivelled round in the chair to the small table behind him and picked up two evidence bags. He looked at the labels. In one bag was the screwdriver used to short circuit the key switch on the crane, and in the other bag the two that had been sharpened and used to puncture two of the tyres of the stolen furniture van. SOCO had been unable to find any prints or DNA on any of them and they had been on the table behind him for the past two days.

  He took them out of their bags and examined them carefully. The three screwdrivers matched each other. They were ten inches long, the handles were made from a dark burgundy-coloured rubber material and had six sides. On each of the sides was a tiny logo composed of five white rectangles, three black rectangles and the letters MO scrolled over them all.

  Angel looked at the logo, trying to work out what it might represent. He pulled open a desk drawer, rummaged around inside it and brought out a jeweller’s 8x loupe. He fitted it into his eye and peered closely at the screwdriver handle. He went over to the window for the best light and turned it over for different angles, but he couldn’t work out what the logo represented. He looked at it with the loupe again. The phone rang. He returned to his desk and dropped into the swivel chair. He picked up the receiver and got a loud blast of a man coughing loudly into the earpiece. He knew it was Harker. The coughing persisted. Angel held the phone away at arm’s length until it stopped.

  ‘Are you there, Angel?’ Harker said, clearing his throat. ‘I want you in my office, now.’

  ‘Right, sir,’ Angel said.

  Harker banged down the phone.

  The muscles of Angel’s face tightened and he rubbed his chin hard. He had no idea what the superintendent wanted to see him about. It was probably to chivvy him up about his lack of progress with the case. He always had a go at him about two or three days into a murder investigation. Whatever it was, it would be annoying, difficult and unhelpful. It always was. He dropped the loupe back into the drawer and closed it, but left the screwdrivers and everything else as it was. He dashed out of his office, up the corridor, knocked on Harker’s door and went in.

  The superintendent was sitting at his desk behind piles of papers, wiping his purple nose.

  ‘Come in, lad,’ Harker said. ‘Keep that door shut, and sit down.’

  Angel quickly closed the door and turned round into the room. A shaft of warm air hit him in the face. He blinked. The office was hot enough to grow mushrooms. Angel soon found out why.

  Harker had a large portable fan heater behind the desk about a yard away from his feet and legs. He grunted and said, ‘There’s a flour bin occupying a cell. The duty sergeant said that it was yours, and that you’re hanging on to the key.’

  ‘Yes. That’s right, sir.’

  ‘I presume there’s a reason for it. It’s not that flour is going to be in short supply and it would interfere with your cake baking, is it?’

  Angel wasn’t pleased. He quickly told him what was inside the bin, and that it belonged to Miss Wilkinson and that she was due there that morning to take responsibility for it and organize the counting and payment of it into a bank.

  ‘We’re not Securicor, you know, lad. Get shot of it.’

  ‘Yes, sir.’

  ‘Now how’s the murder case coming along? Who have you got in the frame?’

  Angel didn’t want to answer him. ‘Nobody, actually, sir.’

  ‘Nobody?’

  ‘There are several people who might have a motive for murdering Harry Weston, but no one suspect stands out.’

  ‘Who, for example?’

  He would ask that, Angel thought. ‘Well, sir, witnesses have said that Harry Weston had relationships with two girls at the same time. I don’t see that as a motive for murdering anybody, but some people do. Matter of pride. So there’s Angus Rossi, father of the girl Weston had been seeing on a regular basis until two weeks ago. Angus Rossi is a hot-tempered, uncouth and proud sort of man. Then there’s Ben Wizard, partner or ex-partner of the girl Weston had abruptly befriended a few months back. But Ben Wizard has a beard and whiskers, and the murderer is clean shaven. Or there’s Clive Grogan, son of Grogan, the ice-cream manufacturer, now courting Madeleine Rossi. He might be under pressure from Madeleine to prove his love for her by shooting the young man who she says was cheating on her, except that he’s far too civilized, well brought up and, I think, too young. And there is a man of the road, known as Irish John.’

  ‘Is this Irish John known to us?’

  ‘No, sir. I’ve got Crisp trying to find him. He hasn’t reported back yet. He might be having a difficult time. I thought it might be possible that he might have called for a handout at each of the two vicarages, had the gun and shot each priest, robbed him and then turned their places upside-down looking for more money. Also, there might be other men of the road I may have to find and interview. I’m hopeful of turning up a discretionary payment record at one of the churches that might produce information about other regulars calling at the vicarages, manses and presbyteries.’

  Harker’s ginger eyebrows floated upwards. ‘Is that the extent of your progress?’

  Angel wasn’t pleased. ‘Well, I have been diverted by other cases and security matters,’ he said.

  Harker sniffed. ‘What
about the murderer of the other two men?’ he said.

  ‘I’ve nothing new on that, sir.’

  ‘What forensic have you got?’

  ‘Only a white thread found on the body of the priest, Raymond Gulli of St Barnabas’s Church. I am waiting for SOCO to report further on it, if there is anything more to say. They confirm that it has definitely come from the murderer’s clothes because there aren’t any textiles in the vicinity that match it.’

  ‘And what’s this about the suspect always seen in a white gown? What sort of a white gown?’

  Angel shook his head slowly. ‘I don’t know, sir. I really don’t know.’

  ‘Why would a man walk around in white, in Bromersley?’ Harker said. Then he suddenly looked up. ‘I suppose it is a man, and not a woman?’ he added.

  ‘It’s a man, sir,’ Angel said.

  ‘A man in a dog collar?’

  Angel nodded then said, ‘I have a witness. She says she saw a man in a dog collar leaving the scene.’

  ‘Well, have you evidence to show that the murders were committed by one and the same person?’

  ‘No, sir. But I do know that the victims were all killed by the same gun. Last night, Peter King made an attempt to get into St Joseph’s presbytery. At first I thought he could have been the murderer but I don’t know. He’s such a liar. He might even confess to it but it wouldn’t necessarily be valid. He confessed to murdering and raping that girl in Leeds just before Christmas but of course he didn’t do it.’

  ‘You have an eye witness, a woman, Zoe Costello?’

  Angel shrugged. ‘Yes.’

  ‘Have you had King in a line-up?’

  ‘I considered it, sir. He’ll probably invalidate it by making himself conspicuous. He always looks guilty.’

  ‘Never mind that. Put him in a line-up and go for a confession.’

  Angel’s jaw muscles tightened. ‘I don’t want a false arrest,’ he said.

  ‘I don’t,’ Harker said quickly.

  Angel didn’t believe him.

  ‘Peter King is a bloody nuisance,’ Harker continued. ‘He’s responsible for half the petty crime in this town. If he wants a spell inside again, he can have a spell inside. We’ve got to get our figures up. There are too many criminals in Bromersley.’