The Big Fiddle

by Roger Silverwood

  ‘How long have you known Christine Elsworth?’

  ‘A few years. I can’t remember exactly how many. Fourteen or fifteen.’

  ‘So you know all about her financial situation?’

  ‘I suppose I do, but that would be confidential, Inspector, without specific instructions from her.’

  ‘All I want is a general picture, Mr King. I could get a warrant to have her affairs looked into, if I had to, and HMRC will always cooperate with us if need be and tell us all that their records showed, so there’s no need to be so guarded. All I need to know is how wealthy she is, how successful her flower business is and whether or not she has any money troubles.’

  ‘Well, erm, she’s pretty well off, Inspector. She paid off the mortgage on her house years ago. The flower business is flourishing, despite the recession. The profit on flowers can be as much as 300 per cent, you know. Her turnover goes up each year and so does her profit. The fixed lease on the shop has a few years left to run, so I don’t see why she shouldn’t continue to make a healthy profit each year over the next few years at least.’

  Angel pursed his lips. ‘Right. Did you know her father?’

  ‘I met him some years ago. Nice old gentleman. Lived to a ripe old age. I was sorry to read that he had died a few days ago, didn’t he?’

  ‘I’m sad to say that he was murdered.’

  King’s eyes and mouth opened wide. ‘Really? Oh dear. I am so sorry to hear that. How is Christine? I must phone her. Oh dear.’

  ‘She’s managing, I think, under the circumstances,’ he said.

  Angel thanked King and left the office. He looked at his watch. It was 1.45. He decided he’d better return to the station and see what had come in.

  EIGHT

  Angel had only just arrived in his office when there was a knock at the door.

  ‘Come in,’ Angel said.

  It was Ahmed.

  ‘You asked me to look up Charles Morris on the PNC, sir. Well, I’ve done that.’

  ‘Aye, and what did you find?’

  ‘There were eight of that name, sir. You said an age range of twenty-five to forty-five. Well, sir, there were only two in that age range, but one is dead and the other is in Maidstone prison for armed robbery. He’s midway through a stretch of fifteen years. So I phoned Maidstone and spoke to the head officer. He said that he could confirm that their Charles Morris was definitely locked up in a cell last Sunday night and not on probation or early release or anything like that.’

  Angel thought it was remarkable that, unprompted, Ahmed had had the initiative to follow the inquiry through to Maidstone and get all that information. He rubbed his chin.

  ‘Well done, lad,’ he said. ‘That means that the PNC has no record of the Charles Morris who is a close friend of Moira Elsworth.’

  ‘That’s right, sir.’

  Angel rubbed his chin harder. He needed to know more about him.

  ‘Ahmed, Morris lives in Tunistone. Phone round the doctor’s surgeries in the area. There can’t be more than a couple. Find out which practice he is with. Then ask them for his National Insurance number, and carefully write it down. That’s the key that will allow us to find out his health history, his age, addresses, his past and present earnings and tax position, and more than he knows himself.’

  ‘Right, sir. I didn’t know he was a suspect.’

  ‘He may be perfectly kosher. We have to get at the facts. That’s what we’re doing, lad, collecting the facts.’

  ‘Phew. Right, sir,’ Ahmed said. ‘I’ll see what I can do.’

  ‘Well done, Ahmed. Go to it.’

  Ahmed went out.

  Angel rubbed his chin. He thought that there was something odd about an old man being pushed down the stairs, possibly by his carer, possibly by somebody else, then his carer being brutally attacked and stabbed many times. The murderer of the young woman carer was clearly off his rocker, in which case he might very well do it again, especially if a woman – particularly an attractive woman – was in his way.

  Ever since Taylor had told him about the message daubed by the killer of Nancy Quinn on the bedroom wall and showed him the photograph of it, he had been eager to see the provocative message for himself.

  He pushed the swivel chair away from the desk, stood up and made his way out of the office to the door. He would leave quickly before anybody delayed him with any more unhelpful information.

  As he made his way up the corridor, he saw DS Flora Carter coming down, making a beeline for him. When they were two metres apart, she said, ‘Sir.’

  Angel waved his hand. ‘Can’t stop now, Flora,’ he said without slackening his pace. ‘Report on Nancy Quinn?’

  ‘Yes, sir.’

  ‘Come with me. I’m going to her place now.’

  Flora turned round and walked at his side.

  ‘You can give me your report in the car on the way,’ he said.

  They got into the BMW and when he had turned safely out of the police car park, Angel said, ‘Right, Flora, what’ve you got?’

  Flora Carter, referring to her notebook, said, ‘Nancy Quinn, sir. I found nothing of particular interest. She was born in 1988. She lived with her parents on Canal Street, Bromersley. They’re both dead now. Father died in 2000 and her mother 2006.’

  ‘Anything odd about their deaths? What did they die of?’

  ‘Natural causes. Father died of a heart attack and her mother of breast cancer. Nancy went to Cemetery Road School. Left when she was sixteen and went straight to nurses’ college on Blair Avenue, but didn’t finish the course.’

  ‘Blair Avenue? Where’s that?’

  ‘It used to be called Thatcher Avenue.’

  Angel blinked, then smiled.

  Flora continued: ‘The principal there said that Nancy couldn’t afford to continue the course even though she was subsidized by the council. The principal said that she discovered afterwards that Nancy was interested in a particular young man. Anyway, she left the college at eighteen and worked for two years at the Eventide Home for the Elderly on Sheffield Road, as a trainee carer. The manageress there said she left in August 2008, when she was twenty. She told me Nancy said the money wasn’t good enough for her. The manageress mentioned that she often did her best to stop good staff from leaving, that it was always cheaper than teaching a new girl from scratch. However, in this case, she said, she was happy to let her go.’

  ‘In other words she was no good?’

  ‘That’s the implication, sir.’

  Angel had to apply the brake to the car because of a traffic light. He turned to Flora and said, ‘You didn’t get the name of the young man, did you?’

  ‘No, sir. The principal simply said that she had frequently seen a young man waiting for her at the end of the lectures. He used to ride off with her on the back of his very noisy motorbike.’

  ‘Did she know what he looked like?’

  ‘She said she wouldn’t be able to describe him now, but she seems to recall that he was a pleasant, clean, presentable young man.’

  ‘Hmmm. And where did Nancy go after she left the Eventide Home?’

  ‘That’s where the trail ran out, sir. I couldn’t pick it up anywhere. Work and Pensions said that according to their records, she wasn’t in any employment, and was receiving state benefit.’

  ‘Did Work and Pensions tell you that if she was receiving cash in hand for work, without declaring it, which is illegal of course, it wouldn’t show up on their records?’

  Flora smiled. ‘Well, I don’t expect she declared her earnings from Christine Elsworth.’

  The light changed to green so Angel put the car in gear and let in the clutch. He turned left onto Jubilee Park Road. He hadn’t far to travel along there to Commodore House.

  ‘It’s a pity you couldn’t get info on the man Nancy was going out with. Did any of the other people there know anything at all about her young man?’

  ‘Most of the staff weren’t even there between 2006 and 2008, sir. S
taff doing those sorts of jobs don’t stay long.’

  He nodded. He knew she was right. ‘Anything else?’

  ‘No, sir. Sorry.’

  ‘It all fits the style of girl she was. Struggling on her own, without parents to guide her and lean on.’

  He knocked down the indicator stalk on the steering wheel, and turned right onto the concrete forecourt of Commodore House.

  They got out of the car and took the lift up to Nancy Quinn’s flat.

  There was a uniformed policeman still outside the door of number 21.

  ‘Good afternoon, sir,’ the constable said, throwing up a salute.

  ‘Good afternoon, lad,’ Angel said. ‘Are the SOC people still in there?’

  ‘Yes, sir. DS Taylor has just come back and there are one or two others in there.’

  Angel nodded, pressed down the door handle and walked into the little flat.

  Taylor was speaking to one of his team. When he saw them he broke off and came across. ‘Good afternoon, sir.’

  ‘Found anything of interest, Don?’ Angel said.

  ‘Well, sir. I believe we have eight different specimens of hair – not hers – vacuumed off her clothes, sir. But there is no telling whether they are relevant or not.’

  ‘No, but let’s be optimistic. By the way, I sent young Scrivens over to try to retrieve a particular newspaper and a bottle of milk.…’

  ‘It’s in hand, sir. He gave me your message. But there was no trace of the paper. We looked in the bins and absolutely everywhere. But we think we’ve got the right bottle of milk. In fact it was the only one. It does have fingerprints on it and identification is being sought at the station, as we speak.’

  ‘Good. Apart from the hair specimens, are there any other traces? Prints or anything?’

  ‘We’ve not found any clear, recent fingerprints. The obvious places where we would expect to find prints have been deliberately wiped clean with something woollen such as a glove. Also all the cutlery, for example, and some of the pots, both dirty and clean, have been wiped over.’

  Angel pursed his lips.

  ‘Unusual,’ Flora Carter said.

  ‘Yes, Flora,’ Angel said, ‘which makes me think our murderer is a psycho. They can be very devious and have an amazingly clear discernment of a character’s probable reactions.’

  Taylor shook his head when he heard what Angel had said. He didn’t like it one bit. ‘You really think it’s a psycho, sir?’ he said. ‘I remember before when we had a psycho. It took three of us to hold him down to handcuff him. And he almost wrecked your office.’

  Flora Carter looked uncomfortable.

  ‘Yes. He was a big, athletic chap. Tore the tongue out of one of his victims, and tried to nick a man’s lifetime collection of highly valuable snuffboxes. He’s safely locked up now, Flora. He’s in Wilefowle High Security Hospital. Murderers come in assorted guises. We can’t pick and choose. Now, how is tracing the calls on her mobile coming along?’

  ‘It’s being attended to, sir … at the station.’

  ‘Good. Let me know as soon as you can.’

  ‘Of course, sir.’

  ‘Any prohibited substances, weapons, pornography, cash, drugs or gold?’

  ‘No, sir. If there had been anything of value here – and I don’t think there would have been much – I reckon the assailant would have gone through the place methodically, drawer by drawer, cupboard by cupboard, and taken away every note and coin, and piece of jewellery in the place or on her person. The purse in her handbag had credit cards in it, but no cash. And I noticed that the body had no watch, rings or earrings on it.’

  Angel said: ‘Aye. Fits the psycho pattern absolutely. Thoroughness and attention to detail.’

  Taylor nodded.

  ‘Mac said that the murder weapon was a short knife with a serrated blade, possibly a steak knife. Have you come across it?’

  He shook his head. ‘If it had been there, we would have seen it.’

  ‘He must have taken it with him.’

  ‘In my report you will see that the bathroom sink has signs of watered-down blood where he probably washed himself and/or that knife, and a blue towel found on a towel rail, which he also used.’

  Angel nodded, then he looked around the room and said, ‘Which room has that message daubed on a wall?’

  ‘The bedroom, sir. Through that door,’ Taylor said, indicating the door they were facing.

  Angel took a deep breath through his teeth and marched into the room. Flora Carter followed close behind.

  The room contained a typical three-piece bedroom suite in pinewood, an odd chair and an odd bedside cabinet, all painted pink. Nancy Quinn’s mountain of clothes had all been cleared away. There were bottles, jars and other containers of all kinds of make-up, hair and beauty products crammed onto the dressing table and the bedside cabinet. Everything was covered in aluminium powder where the fingerprint expert had been looking for that giveaway print. The walls had been papered with a plain paper which presumably over the years had been distempered several times. The wall facing the bed had the message daubed in bloody capital letters about eighteen to twenty centimetres high: Inspector A – don’t get in my way.

  The muscles round Angel’s mouth tightened as he stared in silence at the grotesque words.

  Flora Carter looked at his face. After a few moments she said, ‘What are you thinking, sir?’

  He turned up his nose and said, ‘I’ll get in his way all right. And I hope to get there before he murders anybody else.’

  It was 5.30 when Angel arrived home. He was weary.

  As he drove the BMW into the garage, he thought that he seemed to have rushed around without achieving very much. He ran through his doings … he had seen the bloody message from the murderer, warning him not to get in the way … Don Taylor had told him that there was a fresh set of prints on the back of old Mr Piddington’s wheelchair that might be those of the murderer… and a man had been seen entering Nancy Quinn’s flat with a paper and bottle of milk on the same day as she was brutally murdered, someone who might have left his prints on the bottle … and he had seen Andrew King, accountant to Christine Elsworth, who had told him that his client’s finances were healthy. A lot to think about, but none of it helped him find the murderer.

  He reached the back door and put the key in the lock.

  Mary met him at the door. She put her arms round him and kissed him on the lips. He squeezed her and kissed her back.

  It was unusual to get such a greeting from her after sixteen years of marriage.

  He held her tight and pushed her away to enable him to take a good look into her eyes. He frowned and said, ‘What’s the matter, love?’

  ‘I thought you might be put out … maybe upset,’ she said, smiling and patting him gently on the cheek.

  Angel frowned. ‘What about?’

  ‘About what the Chief Constable said.’

  He had almost forgotten that he had had an appointment that morning with the big boss. He forced a grin. ‘What do you know about what he said?’

  ‘I don’t know anything about it. But it’s been on mind all day. Tell me … what was it about?’

  Angel turned round, closed the door and remembered what the superintendent had said about gangs, and he’d given the case of the bank robbers and what had happened to the bank manager’s wife. Angel had no intention of telling Mary about that. There were times such as when a policeman was killed in the line of duty that Mary took it to heart, got very upset and said that she wished he was out of the force and in a safe job such as working in the HMRC office.

  ‘Actually we didn’t see the Chief,’ he said. ‘He was at the big golf tournament.’

  Her mouth dropped open.

  ‘In Scotland,’ he added.

  ‘Golf tournament … in Scotland?’

  He passed her, went to the fridge, took out a can of German beer, found a glass in the cupboard next to it, and poured some out. He took a sip. Then he looked back at
her.

  ‘Well, what happened then?’ she said. ‘What was it about?’

  ‘Oh, well, he briefed Harker. And he had Haydn Asquith and me in his office. It was about gangs. Particularly gangs robbing banks. It wasn’t that interesting.’

  Her eyebrows knitted together. ‘Is that all?’

  ‘Yes,’ he lied. ‘What’s for tea?’ he said quickly. ‘I must go up and take this suit off. I don’t want to get it creased.’

  He drank more of the beer, emptied the remaining contents of the can into his glass, then took another swig.

  Mary glared at him. ‘What are you hiding? All these quick, diversionary tactics, Michael Angel. I know you of old. What did he really say?’

  ‘I’ve told you,’ he said. Then he added: ‘And you’re the one doing the diversionary tactics. I said, what’s for tea?’

  ‘Ham salad, strawberries and ice cream,’ she snapped, continuing to eye him closely.

  ‘Very nice,’ he said, quickly turning towards the hall. ‘I’m going upstairs. Get out of this suit … keep it nice and pressed. Won’t be a jiffy.’

  NINE

  It was 8.28 a.m. the following morning when Angel arrived at his office. He glared at the pile of post, circulars, letters and reports on his desk, then picked up the phone and tapped in a number.

  ‘Is DS Crisp anywhere on the horizon, lad?’ he said into the mouthpiece.

  ‘He’s at his desk, sir,’ Ahmed said.

  ‘Huh. Right, lad,’ he said. ‘Tell him I want him.’ He banged the phone down into the cradle.

  There was a knock at the door and Crisp came in.

  Angel looked up at him.

  Crisp felt very guilty. ‘I was just coming anyway, sir,’ he said.

  Angel doubted it. ‘I asked you to phone me on my mobile as soon as you had the information from the witness. It’s very urgent, lad.’

  ‘I didn’t get to see him until late yesterday afternoon. I would have had to ring you at home. I didn’t think you’d want bothering.’

  ‘This is a murder case, lad. I always want bothering. You’ve rung me at home many times before.’