The Big Fiddle

by Roger Silverwood

  ‘Addis Ababa. Well, don’t dash out and get one. Don’t buy anything we can manage without, for goodness sake.’

  ‘Addis Ababa. Of course it is,’ she said, sounding relieved. ‘We do need an atlas, Michael. Everybody needs an atlas.’

  ‘I don’t and you don’t. We can’t eat it, we can’t wear it and it’ll not help to keep us warm next winter. If you need to know anything about the world, you can go to the library or look it up on the Internet. Anyway, what do you want to know the capital of Ethiopia for?’

  ‘It’s for a competition.’

  He wrinkled his nose. ‘Not another competition? You’ll never win anything. Nobody ever does. It’s not worth the postage.’

  Her face went scarlet. ‘I know. I know,’ she said. ‘You gave me a lecture on the cost of stamps yesterday.’

  ‘Well, as I said, we’ve got to watch our costs, Mary,’ he said.

  She didn’t reply, just breathed in and out very loudly, then turned away.

  Angel was utterly exasperated. She was always annoyed whenever he tried to talk about making savings. He stormed off to the sitting room. He put the television on and tried to become interested in it until she called him back into the kitchen for his tea. It wasn’t until after the meal that their relationship returned to normal.

  Angel put his dessert spoon and fork together and said, ‘That was scrumptious, Mary love. Thank you.’

  She smiled. ‘I’ll make the coffee and bring it through.’

  He got up. ‘Anything on the telly?’ he said as he pushed his chair back to the table.

  ‘They’re re-running some episodes of Bad Girls,’ she said. ‘I recorded one this morning.’

  His face lit up. ‘I’ll find it and set it up.’ He made for the hall, then turned back. ‘By the way, you remember that new white shirt you got for me. Have you had time to wash it?’

  She turned away from filling the coffee pot and said, ‘Did it yesterday. It’s in the drawer, why?’

  ‘Good. Got to see the Chief tomorrow at nine o’clock.’

  ‘Oh? What’ve you been up to?’

  He grinned. ‘Nothing like that. I don’t know what it’s about. Just for officers.’

  Mary pulled a face and said, ‘Something important.’

  SIX

  It was 8.28 a.m. when Angel reached his office that Tuesday morning. He had his new shirt on and a different tie. It wasn’t new although it looked new. It was one that his father used to wear on special occasions. His mother had given it to him years ago. Mary pointed out to her husband that the one he usually wore was becoming very slightly frayed where the knot was tied. He didn’t want to make the change. He had got rather used to it. He had solved many difficult cases while wearing that tie, but he wanted to look his best for the Chief Constable.

  He reached out for the phone and tapped in a number. It was soon answered by Ahmed. ‘Good morning, sir.’

  ‘Ahmed, I have an appointment with the Chief at nine. I don’t expect it will take long. Tell DS Taylor I want to see him as soon as possible after that, I want to know how far he’s got with the crime scene at Nancy Quinn’s. Also find DS Crisp and tell him I want to see him ASAP. I want his report on the house to house. All right?’

  ‘Yes, sir.’

  He replaced the phone and was fingering through the post when there was a knock at the door.

  ‘Come in.’

  It was Flora. ‘Good morning, sir.’

  ‘Yes, Flora. I was going to give you a buzz. What did you find out?’

  ‘Well, sir, Mr Piddington’s GP said that in his judgement he would not have been able to mount the stairs. He had not been able to walk for more than three years. He had very little muscle remaining in his legs and he would have lost the rhythm and balance of climbing. He also said that he certainly would not have been able to drag a wheelchair up the stairs.’

  Angel nodded. ‘You make him sound very decisive.’

  ‘He was, sir.’

  ‘Then that confirms our theory that Piddington was murdered by Nancy Quinn or some other person.’

  The phone rang. He pulled an impatient face and reached out for it.

  ‘Angel.’

  It was Superintendent Harker. ‘Ah yes, Angel,’ he said. ‘Now, the Chief Constable will not be able to hold that meeting planned for this morning. Instead he has briefed me to convey the essence of what it is about, to you and Inspector Asquith, so come on up now to my office and let’s get on with it.’

  Angel frowned as he replaced the phone. He needn’t have put his best shirt on if he had known. He looked across at Flora as he stood up. ‘I’ve got a meeting with the super and DI Asquith now. In the meantime, find out all you can about Nancy Quinn. Start with our records, obviously, but then see what you can learn from HMRC, and so on. Got to go.’

  ‘All right, sir,’ Flora said.

  Angel dashed out of the room and made straight up the corridor. As he reached the super’s door, DI Haydn Asquith also arrived from the opposite direction. He was in his best uniform. His buttons had been polished so much that when they caught the light, they were dazzling.

  ‘Ah, Michael. Any idea what this is about?’ Asquith said.

  ‘No,’ he said. ‘I thought we were to see the Chief.’

  ‘We were. But last night he was offered a ticket to the big golf tournament at Turnberry. All the big world-class names will be there. He’ll be on the plane now to Prestwick. Should be at Turnberry for ten o’clock when they tee off.’

  Angel blinked. ‘Really?’

  ‘Yes. Who else is coming?’

  ‘I understand it’s just you and me, Haydn. We’d better go in.’

  Angel knocked on the door and pushed it open. The smell of menthol hit him in the face like a hot towel.

  Harker looked up from his desk. ‘Sit down, lads. This won’t take long. The Chief sends his apologies, but something extremely important cropped up at the last minute.’

  Angel and Asquith exchanged glances, but avoided smiling as they turned to find chairs and sit down.

  Harker coughed several times and turned over a mountain of paper from one side of his desk to the other, apparently searching for something. Eventually he spotted a thin file and pulled it out. ‘Ah,’ he said triumphantly.

  He opened it and began to read, then he looked up and said, ‘Yes. Now, this is very important and absolutely confidential, lads. You’ll see why as I go along. It is a notification from ACPO, about a case referred to only as case number 1066 for security purposes. This is an ongoing case where two men knocked on the house door of a bank manager and his wife late at night, gained admittance, then pulled out handguns and threatened to kill the wife if the man didn’t do as he was told. Very alarming stuff. The two villains stayed in the house overnight and the bank manager was instructed the next day to behave normally in every respect except that he was to assist in a robbery. The bank manager was told that a van would arrive at the rear door of the bank at noon and that he was to facilitate the other three members of the gang, enabling them to empty the bank vault and load it into the van. He was told that if anything went wrong, his wife would be decapitated. Imagine that? Decapitated!

  ‘Anyway,’ Harker continued, ‘the bank manager duly left for work as usual unescorted, but with the fear of God pumped into him about what would happen to his wife if the job went wrong. Accordingly, the robbery took place and the gang got away with seven million pounds.

  ‘The gang were rounded up, however, thanks to a quick-witted member of the bank staff who, suspecting that the manager was behaving oddly, rang up the local station and spoke to the head of the CID, who expertly followed the van to a farmhouse out in the sticks, then returned to the station. Later the CID and uniformed, supported by an Armed Response Unit, surrounded the farmhouse and arrested and charged the gang of five without a round being fired. The gang are obviously well disciplined and are saying, “No comment” to all questions, which I find alarming. Although this kidnapping and r
obbery involved five men, there may have been more.

  ‘Now, the bank manager had obeyed the gang in every particular in the expectation that his wife would be at his house safe and sound. Instead she was not found until twenty-four hours later, six miles away, in an empty flat, tied up, rolled in a carpet, barely alive and out of her mind. For security reasons, her identity has been changed and she was transferred to a hospital in another part of the country. She is still ill and being treated for anxiety neurosis. She might never totally recover.’

  Angel’s facial muscles tightened as he considered the distress the couple must be enduring at that time, especially the manager’s wife.

  Harker continued: ‘The Chief Constable doesn’t want a repetition of this on this patch. He recognizes the power of gangs. It is reminiscent of Chicago in the twenties, and London in the sixties. A gang has to have a leader and if he can establish a controlling fear culture over a handful of men, and so rely on each of them to carry out his orders, and if each of the five could wield similar power over say, another five men, the man at the top would be mightily powerful.

  ‘The position that that bank manager found himself in could happen to the Chief, me or either of you. It could happen to any senior policeman, bank official, judge, politician or anyone who has control over large sums of cash or is in a position to change the course of events to favour an organized gang of villains.

  ‘So, the Chief wants to know if either of you have any notion of a gang of, say, four or more crooks, working in and about our patch.’

  Harker looked up from the paper. ‘Well?’

  ‘There are none I can think of, sir,’ Angel said.

  ‘No, sir,’ Asquith said.

  ‘Well, if any come to light,’ Harker said, ‘report them to me. I know that the Chief has access to special funds he can call on from the Home Office to finance long-term surveillance, also sound-enhancing equipment and specialized officers to combat any such extreme situations. Right, lads, that’s it. Any questions?’

  Angel said, ‘Yes sir, do you know how the bank manager’s wife is now?’

  Harker’s face creased. He wasn’t pleased. ‘I’ve no idea, lad,’ he said slowly and deliberately. ‘This isn’t a time for hearts and flowers. The point is, the Chief wants to know if there are any gangs on our patch, because if there are, he will introduce a programme to move them out. That’s all.’

  Angel returned to his office. He reached out for the phone and tapped in a number. It was soon answered.

  Ahmed said, ‘I made those phone calls, sir. DS Crisp is on his way from Commodore House. He should be here in five or ten minutes. And DS Taylor said he would come ASAP. He should be with you now.’

  ‘Well, he isn’t,’ Angel said.

  There was a knock at the door.

  ‘That’s probably him,’ Angel said. ‘Come in,’ he called.

  The door opened and it was DS Taylor. He was carrying a red paper file.

  Angel slammed down the phone and turned to the sergeant. ‘I expected you to be here.’

  ‘Sorry, sir. I came as soon as I could. I assumed you wanted as much info as I could gather.’

  ‘Your assumption was right. Well, sit down and tell me first if you’ve anything fresh on Piddington.’

  ‘Only that those prints on the back of the wheelchair have still not been identified. He must have had some other person visiting him and I can only suppose that whoever it was tried to make him more comfortable by rearranging the cushions.’

  Angel’s face hardened. ‘Or by pulling him to the top of the stairs and then letting go.’

  Taylor looked at Angel a few moments before saying, ‘I suppose it could have happened like that, sir. Shall I go on?’

  Angel nodded.

  ‘His prescription medicines appeared to be in order and in the appropriate quantities,’ Taylor said. ‘We have found fibres from the carpet at Piddington’s sitting room on the sofa at Commodore House, but that’s not at all surprising, as Nancy Quinn had been visiting the place twice a day.’

  Angel nodded in agreement.

  ‘There was no other forensic there, sir,’ Taylor added.

  There was no disguising Angel’s disappointment. He pulled a face, sighed and then said, ‘Right, Don. Now, what about Nancy Quinn’s flat?’

  Taylor said, ‘Well, as you know, sir, the body was on a carpet on the floor. They may have been down there making love. Anyway, I believe that the first knife wound was delivered while they were on the carpet, because there was a spray of blood on the skirting board. The other thirteen wounds were delivered quickly afterward while she was still on the floor. There were two separate hairs, that are not hers, that we found on her. One on her neck and the other on her vest. It looked to me as if there had been a fair amount of sexual activity, maybe intercourse, taking place before or even during the stabbing. The wounds were made with a knife just about everywhere on her torso. She was dressed except for her tights, which were on the floor nearby. They were snagged in several places, so I suspect that they were probably removed by the man whilst still holding the knife.’

  ‘You mean she was raped?’

  ‘It could have been like that, or it could have been some sort of a sex game. You know how things are today, sir?’

  Angel looked at him, blinked and then frowned.

  Taylor looked at him in surprise, his eyebrows raised.

  Angel said, ‘What else did you find?’

  Taylor hesitated. He looked down and shook his head. ‘It’s difficult to er … show you this, sir,’ Taylor said, fiddling with the red paper file he had brought with him.

  Angel shook his head impatiently. ‘Difficult? Difficult? What are you saying? What is it, man?’

  Taylor looked down to avoid Angel’s gaze, opened the red file he was still holding, bursting with photographs, took out the top one and held it out in his general direction. Angel grabbed it, turned it over and looked at it. It was a photograph of part of a bedroom showing a big area of the wall with red hieroglyphics scrawled over it. At the bottom of the photograph was part of a bed covered in women’s clothes, mostly dresses, and on the right, part of a wardrobe with the door hanging open overflowing with clothes.

  Angel gawped at the photograph, then quickly yanked open the top drawer of his desk and fished around for a hand magnifying glass. He put it over the red scrawl and slowly read it aloud, as he was able to make sense of it. ‘“Inspector A – don’t get in my way.”’ He said it again.

  His jaw dropped and his mouth fell open for a few seconds, then he gritted his teeth and said, ‘Huh. He’d better not get in my way, whoever he is.’

  Taylor looked up and said, ‘You must know him, sir.’

  Angel rubbed his chin. ‘Hmm. Well, he doesn’t come to mind.’

  ‘Well, he knows you.’

  Angel turned the photo over. It read: ‘Nancy Quinn’s No. 1 Bedroom. Flat 21, Commodore House. 12.55 hours. 6 May 2013.’

  Taylor said, ‘He used the corner of a nightdress of hers … soaked in blood … to daub that message on the wall.’

  Angel looked grim. ‘This is a threat, Don,’ he said. ‘This man is evil. He shows contempt for the law, and he doesn’t value human life. We’ve got to catch him ASAP before he murders anybody else.’

  ‘If you have any suspects in mind, sir, he’ll have bloodstains on his clothes, trace evidence down his fingernails and on his shoes. If there’s anybody we can pick up now—’

  ‘There’s nobody, Don. I have nothing yet to go on. Have you anything else?’

  ‘Not at the moment, but we haven’t finished. I still have four PCs working at Commodore House. Two are going through the mountain of clothes, vacuuming down garment by garment. And the other two are systematically searching the flat. Also I have her mobile phone. I’ll be sifting through her calls. She didn’t have a landline. We might still get something useful.’

  ‘Right, Don. Crack on with it.’

  Taylor stood up. He handed Angel th
e red file. ‘These are all the pics of both the Piddington scene and the Nancy Quinn scene, sir.’

  ‘Right, lad.’

  Taylor went out.

  Angel picked up the photograph of the message on the bedroom wall and stared at it, his nose turned upward as if he had accidentally smelled the gravy in the cookhouse at Strangeways.

  He read the daubed message again. ‘Inspector A – don’t get in my way.’ He said it aloud, then blinked several times. He wondered whom he knew or had known who might have murdered Nancy Quinn. It could have been a villain he had known or even locked up from the past. It could have been one of a thousand … or even ten thousand.

  There was a knock at the door.

  Angel put the photograph in the red file, and said, ‘Come in.’

  It was Crisp. ‘You wanted me, sir. I came as soon as I could.’

  Angel pointed to a chair. ‘Sit down, lad. Tell me, have you finished the door to door?’

  ‘I’ve interviewed everybody on that floor except the ones you had done, sir. I took a photograph of her with me. None of them knew Nancy Quinn by sight or at all except the man in the flat opposite hers, number 22. A man called Raymond Rich, aged about thirty, lives on his own, works as a draughtsman at a factory in Sheffield during the day and at nights he’s a DJ at “Lola’s” nightclub. He said he’d seen several different men over the months come out of her flat when he returned from his gigs at one or two o’clock in the morning. He also said he thought she was very pretty. He had been out with her himself, but the relationship didn’t last long.’

  ‘Did he say why?’

  ‘He said they just didn’t click, sir. That was his word.’

  Angel sniffed. ‘Did he say he’d seen anybody in particular in the last week or so?’ he said.

  ‘Yes, sir. I was coming to that. Rich said that on Sunday morning last he saw a man let himself into her flat at about ten o’clock with a newspaper and a bottle of milk.’

  Angel’s face brightened. ‘Let himself in?’