There was a hissing noise. A line of oxygen was blowing gently under his nose. He opened his eyes. He blinked and rubbed his eyes. He noticed an identity tag round his wrist and frowned. He looked up. He was on a bed surrounded by green curtains. He licked his lips. His mouth felt like a bag of feathers. He tried to swallow. It wasn’t easy … like swallowing a red hot piece of coke.
A curtain whisked open and a young nurse appeared.
‘Ah. You’re awake. How are you feeling? Got a headache? Got a pain anywhere?’ the nurse said.
‘Has my sergeant, Ron Gawber, been brought here?’ he croaked.
‘He’s in the next cubicle. Have you any pain anywhere?’
‘Is he all right?’
‘Have you any pain anywhere?’ she said again, wheeling up a blood pressure machine.
‘No,’ he croaked irritably. ‘Is he all right?’
‘Yes. You can have a cup of tea after I’ve taken your blood pressure.’
‘Can I see him?’
‘After I’ve taken your blood pressure,’ she said wrapping the plastic sleeve round his arm.
Angel took a deep breath and croaked as loudly as he could. ‘Are you there, Ron?’
There was silence.
The nurse said, ‘I think he’s gone back to sleep.’
The plastic sleeve began to inflate.
‘Ron,’ he bellowed. ‘Are you there?’
The nurse pulled a face. ‘You’ll have to keep still,’ she said impatiently.
‘Yes, I’m here,’ a small husky voice replied. ‘I’m all right, sir.’
It was Gawber. Angel’s face brightened.
‘What about Spencer?’ Angel said.
‘Keep still,’ the nurse snapped.
‘Don’t know about him,’ Gawber said.
Angel turned to the nurse. ‘There’s a man called Spencer. Is he in here?’
‘Don’t know anything about him,’ she said.
The machine stopped pumping air, clicked and the sleeve began to deflate. She noted the numbers on the dial and began to unwrap the sleeve.
‘Still a bit high. You’ll have to rest a bit. There’s a policeman outside, wants to see you. He can’t stay above a minute or so. Now, do you want a cup of tea?’
‘Yes, please.’
She wheeled the machine out through the curtain.
Angel whisked back the blanket that was covering him. He was pleased to find that he was fully dressed in all but his shoes. His tie had been loosened and his collar button undone. He leaned over the side of the bed, looking for his shoes when he saw White’s head sticking through the curtains.
‘Ah, Waldo,’ Angel said brightly.
‘Are you all right?’
‘Yes. Course I am. Did you catch them?’
‘No. Could only have been seconds behind though.’
Angel sighed and pulled a face.
White continued: ‘We searched the house. It was obvious they’d left in a hurry. There was a half-eaten meal on the table. The front door wasn’t even closed. I called the ambulance and the fire brigade.’
‘What about Spencer? The other man in the barn.’
‘Don’t know. He was in a bad way. Been taken to the burns unit. Was he one of the gang?’
Angel shook his head.
‘How did the fire start?’
‘Eddie Glazer. He intended murdering us.’
‘Damn well near managed it. Still, now that you’ve found their hideout and unseated them, they’ll be easier to catch.’
‘They’ll be more desperate, Waldo.’ Angel said grimly.
‘Aye, but they’ll be floundering round trying to find another safe place to hide. Eddie Glazer is wanted for murder. He knows that every copper in the country has seen his picture and is on the look-out for him. Your super should be chuffed with the news.’
Angel wrinkled his nose. Nothing much pleased Superintendent Harker. ‘That gang’s got to be caught!’ he said. ‘They’re armed to the teeth, desperate and very, very gung-ho. They could do a lot of damage.’
The nurse appeared with a beaker of tea. She placed it on the locker top, looked up at White and said, ‘You’ll have to go now. He’s got to get some rest.’
Angel caught White’s eye, then he looked at the young woman and said, ‘I need my shoes, nurse. Where are they?’
‘You don’t need those yet. Lie back and drink your tea.’
‘I want to go to the lavatory,’ he said tetchily.
‘Stay there. I’ll bring you a commode,’ she said and rushed off.
Angel’s jaw dropped.
However, by the time the nurse had arrived back wheeling an uncomfortable looking tubular metal chair, Angel and Gawber had found their shoes in their respective lockers, and were going down in the hospital lift with DI White.
‘Will you take us back to the rhubarb sheds?’ Angel said. ‘My car is there, and I want to see if the tracking device on Glazer’s car is still sending out a signal.’
‘Sure. I have to go there, anyway. I need to check on my men. I left them there securing the property.’
‘And can I borrow your mobile?’
White handed it to him. He phoned Ahmed and asked him to inform Don Taylor of SOCO that he wanted him to go over the farmhouse where Glazer had been hiding out. He told Ahmed that Taylor was to check in particular for any clothing or effects there that were bloodstained; essentially, he was looking for blood samples that belonged to the late Harry Harrison. Also to see what fingerprints he could collect that would identify Ox and Kenny, if they were on record.
He returned the mobile to White gratefully.
A few minutes later, White dropped Angel and Gawber off at the gate to the rhubarb sheds where he cordially took his leave of them. They gave him hearty thanks and waved him off as he turned round and drove away.
Angel was anxious to return to the scanner to find out the whereabouts of Glazer’s Mercedes. He dashed over to his car and unlocked it; Gawber sat beside him, picked up the scanner and switched it on. It showed that the battery of the miniature transmitter was very much alive and sending out a strong signal.
‘Looks all right,’ Gawber said.
Angel nodded approvingly.
Gawber checked the co-ordinates and then frowned. He said: ‘The car hasn’t moved, sir. I don’t think it has moved since we tracked it here.’
Angel pursed his lips. ‘They can’t still be here?’ he said. ‘The Merc must be in one of these sheds then?’ His face changed as he considered the possibilities. ‘That means they’re in another car?’
Gawber blinked.
‘We’ve got to find that Merc,’ Angel said. ‘Come on!’
He dashed out of the car, slammed the door and began to climb over the fence onto the earth trodden track around the sheds. Gawber joined him.
‘Doesn’t look as if many cars or trucks come in and out of here. We’ve only got to find recent tyre tracks. That’ll not be too difficult. How many sheds are there? Maybe twenty. We’ve just got to find recent tracks of a car leading out of a pair of doors, that’s all.’
True enough. It didn’t take them five minutes. The double doors of one of the sheds were locked with a sturdy padlock. The hasps were bolted through thin, old timber. A few kicks and some pulling away of splintering wood permitted them easy access. They dragged open the doors and saw that the shed was empty, but there were tyre tracks in trodden down earth.
‘There must be another shed they used as a garage,’ Gawber said.
Angel rubbed his chin.
Then he saw something shine on the ground near the door. He bent down and picked it up; it was the tracking device. It must have dropped off the Mercedes. Sometimes this happened if the original fitting to the bodywork had not been made between two clean pieces of metal. This had clearly occurred here.
Angel sighed. All that work, time and endurance counted for nothing. The muscles of his jaw tightened. There would be no further signal from the Mercedes. The Glazer gang were free and could now be committing murder and mayhem totally unrestrained. They had to be found and imprisoned quickly. He raced back to the car, unlocked the door, grabbed the mike of the RT and spoke directly to the operations room at Bromersley station. He gave the duty officer a description of Glazer’s Mercedes and index number and told him to circulate all 43 forces with an urgent request for any sighting of it to be made direct back to him on his mobile phone. He added the important warning that Glazer’s gang was in possession of the vehicle, that they were armed and extremely dangerous.
‘What?’ he roared. ‘So you have no idea where they are?’
‘I am afraid not, sir,’ Angel said.
He knew he was going to have to take some stick from Harker.
The superintendent wrinkled his nose and sniffed. ‘You know, I much prefer the one about The Three Bears,’ he growled.
Angel continued unbowed: ‘I’ve had a notice circulated round all 43 forces, sir. Full description and details. Now that Glazer’s gang haven’t a safe haven to flee to, as they spend their funds, they may have to show their hand.’
‘Aye. Probably open an account with the Northern Bank,’ he said. ‘At two o’clock in the morning,’ he added sarcastically. ‘What about Spencer? What sort of shape is he in? Where is he now?’
‘Pretty bad, sir. But he’s in the burns unit at Bromersley General.’
Harker pulled a face that made his big ginger eyebrows bounce up and then down. ‘Are you going to be able to make the case of murder against him stick?’
‘I don’t know, sir. The motive’s strong enough.’
‘What was he doing in Glazer’s gang?’
‘He wasn’t in the gang, sir. He was their prisoner. They must have wanted something from him.’
‘Oh? Information about the bank?’
‘More likely about the two million.’
‘But Spencer didn’t know where Harrison had hidden it.’
‘No, sir, but Glazer didn’t know that.’
Harker rubbed his chin. ‘But how did he know about its existence in the first place?’
‘Could only have been told about it by Harrison or Spencer.’
‘They would have been fools to have told Eddie Glazer.’
‘Harrison would have been too smart to have breathed a word about it. But Spencer was comparatively green. Maybe he was scared. Maybe they scared it out of him. As a matter of fact, Glazer told me that Spencer had confessed to him that he had killed Harrison. Said he’d told him he’d stabbed him five times. Five times. He made a point of saying that.’
Harker blinked. ‘Have you seen Mac’s PM on Harrison? My copy arrived this morning.’
‘Not yet, sir.’
‘Mac does say that there were five separate stabbing wounds to the heart and aorta, delivered in quick succession.’
Angel frowned. ‘That would result in a mighty great surge of blood. That suggests that Glazer did it. I can’t imagine that if Spencer put a knife into a man intending to murder him, that he could take it out in the midst of blood pumping out and insert it again and again and then twice more. It takes a certain callous, hardened character to do that. And then having succeeded with the murder, be able to recall accurately how many stabs he had made.’
‘Hmm. Interesting reasoning, Angel. Reasonable, I suppose. But I fear that wouldn’t be enough for the CPS.’
‘No sir. If I can get supporting evidence, sir … blood on his clothing … DNA … and so on, they would. Anyway, I have it in hand. SOCO are going through the farmhouse where Glazer’s gang were holed up, and which they left in such a hurry.’
Harker nodded. ‘Yes. Yes. All right. Give it a go.’
Angel was surprised to get Harker’s easy accord. He usually went against everything he said. Angel thought Harker must be in a good mood and, unusually, enjoying a good patch with his wife, Morvydd, an unusual woman. Angel had met her once at a Police Federation Dinner. He hadn’t enjoyed the experience. She was almost as objectionable as her husband. He recalled that she had pressed close up to him, smelling of pickled onions, spraying half-chewed Ritz biscuits onto his new dicky, while gushingly insisting that he called her Morvydd. It had taken almost the entire evening to shake her off and get back to the protection of his wife, Mary.
‘I’ve made thorough inquiries along all that end of Wells Street, sir,’ Scrivens said brightly.
Angel looked up from his desk, licked his lips and grunted.
‘I showed a copy of the photograph in the newspaper shop, the butcher’s and the post office nearby, and no one saw anybody that looked like her. They all said that they would have remembered if they had seen anybody like that. A woman in the butcher’s said the dress looked as if it was from the 1920’s. I hung around the steps of the baths, at the critical times of ten minutes to two and eight minutes past three, the times when the taxi driver had collected her and delivered her back, and I showed the photograph to everybody coming through the turnstile, but nobody had seen her. It’s hopeless, sir.’
‘Right lad. Not to worry. I’m beginning to wonder if she existed at all,’ he said, rubbing his chin. ‘Or was she a cardboard cut out like the Cottingley fairies,’ he added quietly.
‘The Cottingley fairies, sir?’ Scrivens said.
‘Oh?’ Angel looked up. He was surprised that Scrivens had heard him. ‘The Cottingley fairies never existed, lad. They were paper cut-outs of fairies that were photographed by two mischievous young ladies from Cottingley – it’s not far away, near Bradford. But they let the world believe they were the real thing.’
‘Fairies, sir?’ He laughed. ‘Who would believe that?’
Angel’s face was as straight as a copper’s truncheon. ‘The photographs fooled several distinguished people at the time.’ He sniffed, then sighed and said: ‘Just like – I do believe – Lady Blessington, whoever she is, is fooling us right now!’
Scrivens frowned.
‘And it’s getting right up my nose,’ Angel added with his lips tightening. ‘And wasting a lot of police time, when I am up to my neck in it.’
Scrivens scratched his head.
‘Yes, sir. Do you want me to do anything else?’
‘Yes, lad. I want you to go to the burns unit at the hospital, and beg, borrow or steal Simon Spencer’s clothes. Don’t take “no” from the hospital staff. If you have to, point out that this is a murder inquiry. I want everything he was wearing when he was admitted yesterday, including his shoes. Put them carefully in an evidence bag, seal it and take it round to Don Taylor at the SOCO office. Tell him I want him to see if there is any DNA of Harry Harrison anywhere on them. I am particularly looking for traces of his blood. If there is anything, then we’ve potentially got Spencer for murder. All right?’
Scriven’s nodded enthusiastically.
‘Right, sir.’
He went out.
Angel looked at the mountain of post, reports and general bumf piled up in front of him and blew out a long sigh. He began fingering through it. He wasn’t looking for anything specific. He was hoping that he could find some inconsequential big lump that he could drop into the wastepaper basket to make the pile instantly smaller. It was not to be. He came across an envelope from the General Hospital, Bromersley. He quickly slit it open. It was Mac’s postmortem on Harry Harrison aka Harry Henderson. He raced through it and noted that the small clumps of hair found on Harrison’s coat were his own and thought to have been pulled out of his scalp in the course of a fight; there were many bruises to his head and chest areas as the result of a number of blows thought to have been delivered by bare knuckles. All the blood samples taken at the scene also belonged to the victim.
Angel reread the pertinent facts and grunted unhappily. He could see nothing in the report that would immediately indicate the identity of Harrison’s murderer. He nodded as he considered that the victim’s assailant, if it was one person, would almost certainly have very bruised knuckles. He sighed and began pushing the report back into the envelope when there was a knock at the door.
It was Ahmed. He came in waving an evidence envelope. ‘DS Taylor dropped these in, sir. Mrs Prophet’s address book and a Christmas card list. He said you were expecting them.’
Angel took them eagerly. ‘Right, lad. Thank you.’
Ahmed went out.
Angel opened the envelope and tipped the two items out onto the desk. He looked carefully down the Christmas card list, which wasn’t dated, then looked through the address book. It was a small but thick, leather-backed book with many crossings out, additions and alterations. He looked firstly at the B’s for Blessington to no avail, then at the C’s, just in case she had been entered under C for Cora, but there was no entry there either. He leaned back from the desk and shook his head.
There was a knock at the door. It was DS Gawber.
Angel looked up. He was pleased to see him. ‘Feeling OK.’
‘Bit of a sore throat, sir. All that smoke.’
‘Yeah. Yeah. Sit down.’
‘Have I missed anything, sir?’
‘I was just looking in Alicia Prophet’s address book for an entry for Lady Blessington. Of course, there isn’t one,’ he said glumly. He pointed at the chair and rubbed his chin.
Gawber sat down. He nodded his understanding at Angel’s disappointment.
Angel’s eyes narrowed. ‘This case is really infuriating me, Ron,’ he said, grinding his teeth. ‘We are just not getting anywhere. Let’s kick it about a bit.’
Gawber nodded. That’s what Angel always did when he’d reached an impasse.
‘A so-called friend of the family, Lady Blessington,’ Angel said, ‘with a title, although we now know that’s false, and also there’s no entry of her in Mrs Prophet’s address book or on their Christmas card list, called every month. She collected … or took money from Mrs Prophet, a blind woman … a thousand pounds every month for the last six months.’
‘That sounds like rent or blackmail, sir,’ Gawber said.
Angel nodded to him, then continued. ‘But on Monday last, she arrived with a handgun and murdered her.’
‘Killed the goose that laid the golden egg?’
‘Exactly, but why?’
‘Does Lady B stand to inherit anything, sir?’
‘No Ron, she doesn’t. It all goes to the husband. That’s another one of the things that doesn’t make sense. Lady B hasn’t a motive. If she does, I don’t know what it is. If she was milking Alicia Prophet to the tune of a thousand quid a month, why kill her? The husband says he knew Lady B only slightly. However we know that he took a photograph of her, having tea with his wife on their patio. I have the very photograph.’
He plunged into his pocket and took out the photograph still covered in polythene and placed it on the desk.
‘Anyway, Lady B arrived on Monday afternoon by taxi, having been picked up from the baths on Wells Street. She was seen walking up the garden path and entering the house. About an hour later, she was seen running from the house to the taxi. The taxi driver says he took her back to Well Street Baths where she then disappeared into outer space and has never been seen since.’
‘But she shot Alicia Prophet, sir?’ Gawber said decisively.
‘Without a doubt. There’s nobody else. The husband would be the expected murderer. But he has an excellent alibi. He was working in his office with his secretary.’
‘Very beautiful secretary, you said, sir,’ he said pointedly.
‘Yes, all right. Very beautiful secretary,’ Angel said irritably. ‘Now there are several witnesses to Lady B dashing out of the house only a minute or so before Mrs Prophet’s dead body was found by Mrs Duplessis, a neighbour, on the settee, with orange peel scattered hither and thither.’
‘Same MO as Reynard.’
‘No prints or DNA left by the murderer. There is £6.56 in cash found on the draining board. Fresh oranges, bought locally, are found in the dustbin … two bags of shopping in the pantry doorway. And Lady B looks like an older version of the model in a painting found on the wall of Margaret Gaston’s bedroom.’
‘Who is she, sir? The girl in the painting?’
‘An unknown model from the 1930s.’
‘It couldn’t have been Lady B when she was younger?’
‘No. She would have had to have been born in 1910.’
‘Of course. Could it have been her mother?’
Angel blinked. ‘Witnesses put Lady B between forty and sixty. Yes. If you stretch things a bit, it’s possible. I suppose it could be her mother, but that doesn’t give us a motive for her murdering Alicia Prophet? Nor an indication as to where she has disappeared to.’
Gawber shook his head. ‘No sir. But there must some reason why this picture turns up at this time. It’s telepathy. It’s a telepathic picture of the murderer. Do you think somebody or something out there is … trying to tell us something?’
Angel pulled a face and ran his hand quickly through his hair. ‘Don’t let’s get carried away, Ron. You can’t solve murders with a ouija board, tarot cards and magic smoke writing!’
‘But there must be an explanation,’ Gawber said forcefully.
‘Yes,’ Angel said animatedly. ‘I am sure there is. I don’t know what it is yet, but there will be a reason, and I bet it’s a damn good reason too.’
‘Or it could be coincidence.’
‘Coincidence?’ he yelled. ‘Coincidence! How many times have I told you, Ron. When you look for evidence in a murder case, there’s no such thing as coincidence!’
Gawber didn’t reply. He didn’t want to annoy Angel further, so he decided to stay silent.
There was an awkward silence.
Angel was a little embarrassed by having allowed himself to be unnecessarily irritated and worked up over what he considered to be Gawber’s unorthodox attitude to coincidences. He considered briefly whether to apologize or not, decided against it, then returned to the original problem in hand. He rubbed his chin thoughtfully.
Eventually, he broke the silence and said: ‘What’s so fascinating about blue, Ron?’
‘Blue, sir? The colour blue?’
‘Yes. Lady Blessington is always seen in the same blue dress.’
‘Maybe she’s only got one best dress? She’s hard up. No shame in being poor, sir.’
‘No. None at all. Still I think if she’s visiting Bromersley, and been around here for six months, you’d think she’d want to show the world an alternative dress … if only to follow the seasons round?’
‘I expect so, sir. Even I have two suits. Sunday best, and second best.’
‘In the winter, if she only had one dress, she could wear something – a coat or a cloak – over it, I suppose, couldn’t she?’
‘That dress would show under her coat.’
‘Aye. Why does she wear such a long dress, Ron? After all, it’s the middle of summer. The temperature has … sometimes … been in the eighties.’
‘Maybe she’s got lousy legs, sir.’
‘You mean muscular?’
‘Don’t know what I mean. I’m just thinking aloud, sir.’
‘Do you think she was sporty?’
‘Yes, sir. She caught the taxi to and from the swimming baths on Wells Road. Maybe she was a swimmer?’
‘I don’t know. She wasn’t seen in the pool on the CCTV, you know. But some sporty women have powerful limbs that are not necessarily attractive.’
‘That dress covered her arms as well.’
‘Yes, well maybe she’s also got great muscular arms?’
‘Maybe. Maybe.’
The door suddenly opened. It was Ahmed. He didn’t knock. There was something different about him. His eyes were shining.
‘Have you heard the news, sir?’
‘What?’ Angel looked up and snapped at him.
‘Reynard’s been arrested and charged, sir. It’s on TV. It was a news flash. I was in the canteen.’
Angel and Gawber leapt to their feet and rushed out of the office and up the corridor to the double doors and through to the station canteen. There was a crowd of ten policemen and women looking up at the TV fastened high up to the wall. They rushed up and stood behind them. On the screen, they could see a man in a plain dark suit standing in front of a stone building speaking directly to camera. Underneath him was a caption that read: ‘Detective Inspector Blenkinsop.’ He was saying:
‘… known as Reynard, aged 35 years of Cutforth Road, London SW, was at 0935 hours this morning arrested after an exchange of gunfire outside the Chitterton branch of the Exchange Building Society. The arrest came after a week-long surveillance operation by the Serious Organised Crime Agency of the police, and demonstrates how successful the police can be, when the different forces under the direction of SOCA can work together to fight crime.’