Find the Lady

by Roger Silverwood

  ‘All right, bring her down. Let’s get on with it.’

  CHAPTER FIVE

  * * *

  ‘I am Detective Inspector Angel. Please sit down, Mrs-er …’ Angel said.

  ‘Thank you. My name is Elizabeth Reid, Mrs Elizabeth Reid,’ the tubby Scottish lady said in a raw Glaswegian dialect.

  ‘I understand that you lease out flats in that block at the top of Mansion Hill and that one of your tenants has gone missing, Mrs Reid? Tell me about him.’

  ‘Yes, Inspector. A man came to me about three months ago. He was after a bedsit. Mr Harold Henderson his name was. I fixed him up with one on the top floor, number twenty. He seemed a reliable, clean-looking man. He paid me a month’s rent in advance. I made out a rent book in his name. He’s now overdue. I collect, normally on a Tuesday. I’ve called the last four Tuesdays. He wasn’t in. He’s never in. I thought it was odd, so this morning, when he didn’t reply, I used my key to take a look … see what was happening, you know. When I got inside, it was untidy, sink full of pots, dirty clothes all over the place. That’s usually what I find with single men … nothing cleaned or dusted. It looked like he hadn’t been there for weeks … like deserted!’

  Angel sniffed. It didn’t seem to him to be particularly significant. ‘Don’t you think he could have taken a holiday?’ he said.

  ‘If he has, I don’t think he took any clothes with him.’

  Angel rubbed his chin. Men don’t need much. He could have bought a clean shirt and underwear as he went along.

  ‘Another funny thing,’ she continued. ‘He’s moved all the furniture round. He’s put the table by the window and he’s moved the bed to the middle of the room. I ask you, who sleeps in a bed in the middle of a room?’

  Angel raised his head. His eyes narrowed.

  ‘Bed in the middle of the room?’ he said.

  ‘That’s right,’ she said. ‘It’s crazy, Inspector, isn’t it?’

  He looked at Crisp. ‘Come on, laddie. We must have a look at this.’

  They were at the flats in a few minutes and climbed the three uncarpeted flights of stairs following Mrs Reid. She led them onto the top floor, along the short landing to a door with the printed plastic numbers, two and zero, gold on black, stuck to the top of the door. She produced a bunch of keys and unlocked the door.

  Angel went in first. He looked round. It was an untidy room with a small window looking over some of the roofs of houses. The furniture was utilitarian. There was a small table against the window and, as Mrs Reid had said, the bed was right in the middle of the room. The floor was uncarpeted but there was a rug the size of a small hearthrug placed at the side of the bed, so that when Mrs Reid’s lodger got out of bed on a morning, his feet would naturally land on the rug and not on the cold bare wooden floorboards.

  Angel crossed straight to the bed, leaned down, dragged the hearthrug away, then bent down to look at where it had been. There they were, as he expected, two very fine saw cuts, three feet apart across two floorboards. They were only visible if you knew where to look. He nodded with satisfaction and with the tips of his hands and fingernails easily managed to lift first one floorboard and then the other. He pulled the two pieces from the support of the beams and handed them to Crisp.

  Mrs Reid stood close by and looked on open-mouthed. ‘Goodness gracious me,’ she said.

  Angel immediately saw the reason for the freshly made hiding place. It was stuffed with Bank of England £20 and £50 notes bundled in green Northern Bank wrappers.

  Crisp’s eyes glowed.

  ‘There must be thousands, sir.’

  ‘Aye,’ Angel said. He reached into his pocket and took out his mobile. He opened it and dialled a number.

  ‘Goodness gracious me,’ Mrs Reid said again.

  ‘Shall I count it, sir?’ Crisp said.

  ‘No. Don’t touch any of it. There’ll be some prints on the wrappers, and I want them clean, clear and indisputable,’ he said heavily. ‘Then it can be moved and counted.’

  Another ‘Goodness gracious me,’ escaped from Mrs Reid, who then said. ‘What about my Mr Henderson, Inspector? Wherever can he be?’

  Angel nodded towards the cache of money.

  ‘Don’t worry about him, Mrs Reid. We’ll find him. And if we don’t find him, he’ll definitely find us.’

  There was a knock at the door. It was Gawber.

  ‘No joy at that newsagent’s, sir. He has no knowledge of a woman in blue. He has never seen her in his shop that he can recall.’

  Angel’s face assumed a grim expression. He pushed his hand through his hair.

  ‘Lady B phoned the office for a taxi to pick her up outside Wells Street Baths, yesterday at a few minutes to two o’clock. How did she get to the baths? Did she walk it? Does she therefore live in walking distance of there? Would we able to trace her phone call to the taxi office?’

  ‘I’ve left Scrivens there, sir. He’s still working on it,’ Gawber said.

  The phone rang. It was DS Taylor of SOCO. ‘I thought you’d like to know, sir, about that hair we found on the victim’s skirt.’

  ‘Yes Don,’ Angel said, his face brightening.

  ‘We’ve got a match, sir, but I’m sorry to say it’s that of her husband, Charles Prophet.’

  Angel wrinkled his nose. That was a big disappointment to him. ‘Right. Thank you very much, Don.’

  ‘But there’s something else,’ Taylor said. ‘Don’t know whether it’s good news or bad. We’ve been through the Prophets’ wheelie bin and, at the top, probably the last item put in there, were four oranges in a plain white plastic bag.’

  Angel rubbed his chin. With Reynard’s penchant for oranges, that was something to think about. ‘Yes, Don?’

  ‘Not likely to be from a supermarket. They were in a plain white plastic bag … probably came from a shop or a market stall.’

  ‘Yes, but are there any dabs on it?’ he asked urgently.

  ‘Only smudges and strips: nothing we can use.’

  ‘Oh,’ he growled.

  ‘There’s something else, sir. The sample peel we took from the victim’s skirt on the settee is the identical variety and the same maturity as the oranges in the wheelie. Therefore it would be reasonable to assume that there had been five oranges in the bag originally and that one of them was consumed by the murderer, Reynard.’

  Angel felt a slight, cold tremor run up his back at the very mention of the name as he thought that he might be so close to identifying and arresting that infamous man.

  ‘Pity you couldn’t have managed a print off the bag,’ Angel said. ‘It would have been a big step forward.’

  ‘Sorry sir,’ Taylor said.

  Angel thanked him, replaced the handset and brought Ahmed and Gawber up to speed with SOCO’s news.

  Then he said: ‘Ron, Nip up to Creesforth Road. Ask Don Taylor for that bag and then go round the town. See if you can find a fruiterer in town or on the market who sold a man five oranges in a bag like that, yesterday, Monday. I know it’s a long shot, but you never know.’

  ‘Right, sir,’ Gawber said and went off.

  Angel watched the door close.

  Ahmed came up to the desk. ‘Can I do anything, sir?’

  Angel smiled. He liked the lad’s enthusiasm.

  ‘Yes. Fetch me a cup of tea.’

  ‘Right, sir,’ he said eagerly, and dashed off out of the room.

  Angel reached out for the phone. He tapped in SOCO’s number. He wanted to speak to DS Taylor.

  ‘Ron, I want you to send a fingerprint man up to Flat 20, Mansion Hill. There’s an impressive amount of fun-time money under the floorboards, and I want to know where it has come from. It wants fingerprinting, counting and depositing in the station safe. Trevor Crisp is hanging on there for you. All right?’

  He hung up and pushed the swivel chair backwards and gazed up at the cream ceiling with the grey dust marks round the rose and the electric flex that came down holding the white plastic lampshade
. He rubbed the lobe of his ear between finger and thumb.

  There were many things that didn’t make sense in this murder case. This orange business was wacky. Why would Reynard buy five oranges, murder somebody, peel one, throw the peel over her, eat it and throw the other four away?

  ‘Come in. Come in,’ Harker squawked. ‘Sit down. Sit down.’

  Angel knew he was in a bad mood, by the speed he spat out his instructions and the pitch of his voice.

  Angel pulled up a chair and looked across the desk at the superintendent. His bushy ginger eyebrows made him look like one of the uglier Muppets. And he didn’t look well. His face was the colour of an outside loo and there was that lingering smell of TCP. He always smelled of the stuff when he was out of sorts.

  ‘Now, what’s all this about the Prophet woman being murdered by Reynard?’ Harker said challengingly.

  Angel blinked. He must have been talking to SOCO. He didn’t know that Harker was yet familiar with the finding of orange peel at the crime scene. ‘I’m not sure that she was, sir,’ he replied carefully.

  ‘Orange peel over her body, isn’t that the MO?’

  ‘Not strewn about the place like this was, sir. The case notes of his two latest victims say that the orange peel was put in a relatively tidy pile, in one case on a table, and the other, a chair arm. Also, there was a printed card about, saying, “With the compliments of Reynard”. SOCO have found no sign of a card.’

  ‘I know all about that,’ Harker said leaning back in his chair and flaring his nostrils.

  At that angle, his nose looked like the entrance to the Dover to Calais tunnel.

  ‘Nevertheless,’ Harker continued. ‘SOCA should be advised. We want a quick clear up, and they’ve been making a special study of Reynard. They’ve got specialist officers. They maybe could clear this up in no time. Also, I heard that in that Merseyside murder, all the motor expenses for the two weeks they were there, were put down to SOCA. Saved Liverpool CID over six thousand pounds. Helped their quarterly budget no end.’

  Angel frowned as he ran his tongue round his mouth desperately thinking of what to say. Then it came to him. He looked up.

  ‘Yes, but SOCA sent in a Chief Super in that South Hixham case, sir. A woman called Macintosh. Eighteen stones she was. You may know her? I heard from a DI up there that she had the station running round like rabbits. Made everybody jump. Everybody, except the Chief Constable. And it was the Chief Constable who eventually had to bring things to a halt. The regular police work had been brought to a standstill. She had cancelled all leave and rescheduled the shift system, and they had had to pay out thousands in overtime. And despite all the upset and palaver throughout the station, they still didn’t catch Reynard.’

  Harker frowned. ‘Hmmm,’ he said slowly. He was thinking.

  Angel looked at his eyes. He had slowed him down. He was weighing the pros and cons. His pupils were bouncing and moving from side to side. The cogs were moving like a Heath Robinson time machine.

  Angel concealed a smile and turned away.

  After a few moments, Harker said: ‘Very well, as you are certain it isn’t Reynard, we needn’t bother SOCA. That’s all I really wanted to know. Carry on then.’

  Angel looked across at him. He wasn’t happy. What Harker had said was not exactly correct. If Reynard proved to be the murderer of Alicia Prophet, and SOCA had not been advised early in the investigation, SOCA would be furious and a big rocket would be sent from them to the Chief Constable. Somebody would be in trouble. But it wouldn’t be Harker. Oh no. He’d simply say that he, Angel, had misled him.

  He closed the door.

  Ahmed passed two envelopes across the desk. One was a large A4 Manilla with the one word, EVIDENCE, printed across it in red, and a smaller one bearing the name and logo of the Northern Bank PLC in small black letters in the corner.

  ‘The bank was a bit funny about releasing Mrs Prophet’s statements to me, sir,’ Ahmed said. ‘Until I showed my ID and told them about her death.’

  ‘They would be, and a good job too,’ Angel said as he slit open the envelope from the bank with a penknife.

  Ahmed nodded, went out and closed the door.

  Angel took the bank statements out of the envelope. There were twelve sheets. He looked at them carefully. There hadn’t been much activity in the account, but he did note that for the past six months a regular amount of £1,000 a month had been deducted from her balance. There was no payee’s name; the entries simply said that the withdrawals were in cash. He checked them over again then wrinkled his nose. That six thousand pounds needed some explanation.

  He turned to the thicker envelope. He opened the top and peered inside. It contained photographs, mostly black and white, in all sizes. He closed the flap and put the envelope back on the desk. He looked at it thoughtfully for a few seconds and then reached out a hand to it and tapped it twice with the fingertips. He had made a decision. He stood up. The phone rang. He raised his eyebrows as he reached out for the receiver. It was Harker.

  ‘There’s a treble nine,’ he said urgently. ‘A man’s body found in a skip down the side of The Three Horseshoes, off Rotherham Road.’

  Angel pulled a face. His pulse began to race. Another body. Here we go again. Would it never end? Another murder, and he’d quite enough on his plate.

  ‘Reported by a workman, a James Macgregor,’ Harker added. ‘He’s waiting there on site.’

  ‘Right, sir,’ Angel said, then he phoned SOCO, Dr Mac and Gawber. He passed on the information and instructed them to make their way to the crime scene A.S.A.P. He also advised Ahmed of the recent developments and instructed him to tell Crisp to join him as soon as the money under the floorboards in the flat had been dealt with and deposited in the station safe. He then grabbed the thicker of the two envelopes and dashed down the green-painted corridor to the rear door exit that led to the station car park.

  Five minutes later, the white SOCO van, Dr Mac’s car and Angel’s BMW arrived at The Three Horseshoes in quick succession. The pub was on the corner of the Mansion Hill and Rotherham Roads, not the best part of Bromersley. It had a small car park on one side of it, but locals would take the shortcut between the two roads, across the car park and park behind the pub, thus cutting off the corner and saving half a minute or so walking round the front of the pub.

  Angel parked on the street. He noticed a small skip in the car park by the rear wall of the pub and advanced determinedly towards it. The green-painted skip had the words ‘For hire’ and an 0800 telephone number stencilled in white on each side. As he got nearer he could see that it was three-quarters filled with stone, dust, bricks, plasterwork and builder’s debris. At one end, there appeared to be a bundle of brown rags with a man’s shoe on top. That was the dead man.

  SOCO were setting up blue and white tape bearing the words POLICE LINE – DO NOT CROSS, while Mac had found a bottle crate and was preparing to stand on it to lean over the skip. The car park was bathed in brilliant sunshine so extra lighting on the body was not necessary.

  Angel met James Macgregor, who was in the pub drinking tea from a vacuum flask. He told Angel that he was working on some conversions in The Three Horseshoes, knocking an inside wall down to make two rooms into one and that in the course of bringing out a wheelbarrow of rubble, a few minutes ago, he had pushed it up a plank and found this body.

  ‘Yeah. I’d noticed what I thought were some old clothes someone dumped in the skip earlier this morning, you know. People do that, you know. Get rid of rubbish in any old skip they see hanging around the streets, you know. So. Well then I didn’t think anything of it. I’d tipped in a few loads before I had a closer look, and of course, it was this poor man.’

  ‘Did you touch him?’

  ‘Who? No. No. I snatched at his coat but soon let go when I seed him inside it, of course. Well, you would, wouldn’t you?’

  ‘What time did you finish work yesterday?’

  ‘Five o’clock. Always finish at five, you k
now.’

  ‘Was everything else as you left it?’

  ‘Exactly. Yeah. I fetched all my tools and gear in here.’

  Angel thanked him and then spoke to the landlord and his wife, who had nothing useful to add. They had had a busy but peaceful evening in the bar, and nothing unusual had occurred.

  Angel nodded and came out of the back door of the pub as one of the SOCO team in standard disposable white paper overalls was snapping photographs of the pub, the skip, the body and everything else that didn’t move.

  Gawber arrived and came rushing across the car park.

  ‘Do the door-to-door, Ron. All I’ve got is a dead man in a brown suit, who wasn’t here at 5 o’clock yesterday afternoon.’

  ‘Right, sir,’ Gawber said and set off back the way he’d come.

  Angel turned back to the skip.

  Mac was in the skip, kitted out in the white paper overalls, hat, rubber boots and gloves. He hovered over the body.

  Angel called over to him. ‘Cause of death, Mac?’

  The doctor wasn’t pleased. He muttered something including an expletive he’d no doubt learned in his student days while washing pots for beer money in a Glasgow pub.

  ‘Didn’t quite catch it, Mac,’ Angel said knowingly.

  ‘I don’t know the cause of death yet,’ he snapped testily. ‘Give me a chance! Wound to the chest. Lot of blood around. Lot of bruising. He’s been badly knocked about. Might take me a day or so.’

  Angel’s eyes narrowed.

  ‘Nasty. Sounds like a gang-type attack, more than one assailant?’

  There was a pause before Mac snapped out his reply.

  ‘Don’t know. Ye’ll have to wait.’

  Angel looked away. That was the problem – he couldn’t wait. He looked back at the body and tried to get a square look at the face. Mac had turned the head over to pull up the eyelids. There were blue bruises to the forehead and the cheeks. There was blood dried on his lips, which also seemed swollen. Nobody could ID him in that state.