The Big Fiddle

by Roger Silverwood

  Angel remembered reading that the jewellery fair was coming to Leeds. He had not noted the date. The letter advised that it was coming in five days’ time. He recalled the old adage: Doesn’t time fly?

  He wrinkled his nose and thought a moment. The jewellery fair would certainly be an attraction to crooks, but he couldn’t say that he’d recognized any of his old clients sniffing around Bromersley of late. But Leeds was twenty miles away. He didn’t think it likely that crooks would assemble in Bromersley. Then he recalled that Lord Tulliver lived at Marlborough House, Tunistone, which was only a few miles away, and that the Tullivers were opening the Fair on the first day and that Lady Tulliver would be wearing the fabulous Mermaid Diamond. That jewel alone would tempt many would-be thieves to try to come up with some imaginative idea to get round the strategies of the private security firm, the police and the insurance company.

  He had no information to give to the West Yorkshire force, so he ticked his name on the circulation card and rang for Ahmed.

  ‘This needs to go to Inspector Asquith urgently, Ahmed,’ he said, handing him the letter.

  ‘Right, sir. And I’ve just finished checking off Nancy Quinn’s mobile phone, if you would like me to—’

  Angel’s face brightened. ‘Oh yes, lad. Bring the list in. It’s very important.’

  Ahmed had listed the telephone number, person called (where known), date, time and length of each call made from Nancy Quinn’s mobile over the last two weeks of her life.

  Angel looked at the list. It was surprisingly short.

  ‘Some calls were to Christine Elsworth, sir,’ Ahmed said. ‘Some to the flower kiosk, several were to her mobile and several to her home address. She made a lot of calls to shops. It seems that she was always buying clothes by phone.’

  Angel knew that to be true. Her flat had been bursting with them.

  ‘Were there any calls made that you were unable to identify?’ Angel said.

  ‘Yes, sir. Sixteen, all to the same number. I’ve marked it in red.’

  ‘Sixteen?’ Angel said. ‘07763193880. Who do you phone that frequently, Ahmed?’

  ‘Dunno, sir.’

  ‘Someone you are worried about, someone who owes you money or somebody you love.’

  ‘But she didn’t ring that number the two days before she died, sir,’ Ahmed said.

  Angel said sombrely, ‘Aye. That will be because she had no need to. Her lover – and murderer – was living with her.’

  Ahmed’s jaw dropped. ‘You mean that that number is the number of her murderer, sir?’

  ‘I believe so, Ahmed,’ he said. ‘It makes sense, doesn’t it? And that’s the tall man described as having dark hair and a babyface.’

  ‘Wow. She made about two calls most days to him. I have been through to the phone company and all they could tell me was that it was a live line and that it was a pay as you go phone.’

  Angel frowned, ran his hand over his mouth and said, ‘If we could find someone else who has also spoken to him on that number. It might be possible to catch up with him.’

  ‘How can we do that, sir?’

  Still frowning, Angel said slowly, ‘I don’t know, Ahmed. I really don’t know. Leave it with me. I’ll give it some thought.’

  The phone rang. It was Flora Carter. She sounded strange.

  ‘I’m at Piddington’s house, sir, 22 Jubilee Park Road. A lot of damage has been done here; there’s rubble everywhere. I don’t understand it.’

  ‘Well, force an entry and have a closer look.’

  ‘You don’t understand, sir. I’m already inside the house, and the front door wasn’t locked. Inside is a mess. Like squatters have been. I think you’ll want to see this for yourself.’

  Angel stopped the BMW outside the late Mr Piddington’s house. He noticed a FOR SALE board in the garden which had not been there before.

  He ran up the garden path. He had been concerned about Flora Carter’s safety. As he drove from the station, it occurred to him that intruders might still be in the house.

  The front door was opened from the inside by Flora Carter.

  ‘Have you checked all the rooms, Flora?’ he said.

  ‘Oh yes, sir. There’s nobody here now, sir, if that’s what you were thinking.’

  He stepped inside the house and was amazed by what he saw. Some of the internal walls had holes big enough to put your hand and arm through into the next room or hallway. The floors in the hall and rooms were covered with rubble, broken red bricks, old grey mortar, fragments of faded wallpaper, some stuck to plaster, and grey dust. He looked into the sitting room, which still had its table, sideboard, settee and armchairs, but now with the walls full of holes and the furniture a floor laden with grey dust. Mr Piddington’s wheelchair was on its side covered in grey dust. He went all over the house. It was all the same.

  ‘Did you find any tools? This sort of damage must have been made by tools such as picks and hammers … or stone chisels and hammers.’

  ‘No, sir,’ she said. ‘There are no tools or anything like that. In fact, there is just the furniture. What’s the explanation? What were they looking for?’

  Angel pursed his lips. ‘Oh, yes. He or she or they were looking for something all right. I wonder what Mrs Elsworth can tell us. Better get her here straightaway, Flora. Phone the shop. Then pop round to the neighbours. Somebody’s bound to have seen or heard something. I’ll just take another look around here.’

  ‘Right, sir,’ she said.

  Ten minutes later, Christine Elsworth arrived. She was shocked when she saw the state of the house. She went from room to room, her mouth open, her head shaking in disbelief, striding over piles of rubble, treading on bits of broken brick or mortar.

  Angel waited for her in the hall.

  When she came downstairs, she came across to Angel and said, ‘I don’t understand it, Inspector. It was all right when I left it yesterday afternoon, after I had shown the estate agent round.’

  ‘You locked the door?’

  ‘Yes, I locked it myself.’

  ‘And what did you do with the key?’

  ‘I gave it to Adrian Potter. He’s the estate agent, of Ernest Potter and Son, Victoria Road.’

  ‘But DS Carter found the front door unlocked.’

  Christine Elsworth gasped as she heard the news. Then her lip quivered as her hand went to her face.

  Angel frowned, then said, ‘What’s the matter?’

  She shook her head. She was unwilling or unable to tell him.

  Angel rubbed his chin and said, ‘I understand. The other key was with Nancy Quinn and is now in the possession of the man who murdered her.’

  She nodded.

  ‘And do you know who that is?’ he said.

  She swallowed, found her voice and said, ‘No. Of course not. If I knew that, Inspector, I would tell you.’

  He wasn’t so sure that she would. He ran his hand through his hair and said, ‘I noticed that the damage is only to the non-load-bearing walls. Do you know why that might be?’

  She frowned. ‘No idea,’ she said.

  ‘I think it is because he was looking for something. Something he expected to find bricked up in a wall. Now, what would he be looking for?’

  ‘I’ve no idea.’

  ‘Will he come back?’

  She shuddered, and her eyes shone like car headlights. She looked away. ‘How should I know? I sincerely hope not,’ she said. Then quickly she added, ‘I must get back to the shop, Inspector. We sometimes get busy at lunchtime. You must excuse me.’

  Angel saw that she was terrified. He watched her scurry towards the door.

  ‘Mrs Elsworth,’ he said, ‘don’t worry about the house tonight. We’ll get the key from Adrian Potter, lock up and return the key to you at the flower shop, if that’s all right with you?’ he said.

  She stopped, turned, sighed and said, ‘Oh, yes. Thank you, Inspector. Thank you very much.’

  As she went through the front door, Flora came
in and closed it. She looked after her and said, ‘She seems in a hurry.’

  ‘She’s scared to death, Flora. Too scared to say what she knows. Did you find out anything?’

  ‘Nobody saw or heard anything, sir.’

  Angel shook his head. His face muscles tightened. ‘Amazing,’ he said. ‘Well, we’ll have to do it the hard way. Do you have a long measuring tape in your kit?’

  ‘It’s in my car boot, sir. Do you want me to get it?’

  ‘And have you a pad of graph paper?’

  She frowned. ‘The sort we use for in road accidents … to show the position of vehicles, skid marks and so on?’

  ‘That’s the stuff,’ he said. ‘Get it.’

  She nodded and dashed out to her car.

  When she returned, they measured the outside walls of the house and then the inside measurements, allowing between twenty-seven and twenty-eight centimetres for the thickness of the external walls and between fifteen and sixteen centimetres for internal walls. Then, in the hall at the bottom of the stairs on a small table, Angel drew a plan neatly on the graph paper and, to his dismay, the sums were correct. Using the same system, they measured upstairs and found these sums were also correct.

  Angel wrinkled his nose. He had expected to find a discrepancy of a metre or so, that would indicate the presence of a false wall, but it was clearly not so. As he finished winding in the tape, he handed it to Flora and said, ‘I’ll have another think about this. In the meantime, go to Potter, the estate agents on Victoria Road, and get the key for this place, so that we can lock it up. I’ll stay here and wait for you.’

  ‘Right, sir,’ Flora said and she went out.

  Angel stood in the hall, and rubbed his chin. He heard the front door close. He picked his way through the debris on the stairs, climbed to the top and then stood on the landing amidst broken bricks and mortar and stared up at the wooden rectangle in the ceiling, the entrance to the loft. He knew there should be a pole somewhere around to gain access. He could see nothing of it anywhere in the corners of the landing walls. He saw the airing cupboard and tried to open the door. He had to kick rubble away from the front of it so that it would open, to reveal a smooth, brown wooden pole with a brass hook that fell out into his hands. Behind it was the cistern and several shelves of bedclothes and towels.

  With the pole, he was able to reach up to the loft door, open it and unhook the aluminium steps so that they came rattling down to the floor of the landing, ending at his feet. He tested them and they seemed perfectly safe, so he climbed up through the loft door all the way to the top. He had come prepared with a torch and he shone it around. There were networks of spiders’ webs of different sizes draped at the far end of the area and behind him, and it was strange to be looking through them at the underside of the roof slates, wooden beams and cross members. Looking downwards, the bedroom and bathroom ceilings seemed to be well covered with insulating material to a thickness of about fifteen centimetres, and he could see three metres away what looked like a lagged water tank and a pipe leading from it also lagged with brown insulating material. There was nothing else in the loft. It all looked very proper and he was about to return down the steps when it occurred to him that, although there was a plethora of spiders’ webs throughout the loft area, there were none actually around the loft door and between him and the water tank. That suggested that there might have been a human presence in the loft recently. He pursed his lips. Of course, it could just have been a plumber checking the tank.

  Before he could stop himself, he had gingerly made his way across the top of the fibreglass insulation material on the beams to the water tank. He shone the torch onto the top of the tank and turned back the insulation. He found that it was covered with a wooden lid. He removed the lid and shone his torch inside. There was not a drop of water in sight. Instead, at the top, he saw a plastic Yogi Bear mask. Underneath it were many bundles of £20 notes wrapped in see-through wrappers. His pulse began to bang away. His mind was in overdrive. He knew he’d found what he had been looking for and possibly the motive for the murders. It was not a water tank at all, but a large wooden crate. It must have been made in situ because it would have been too big to pass through the loft door. As he fished through it, he discovered that there were £5, £10 as well as £20 notes, each denomination wrapped tightly in cellophane packets of £1,000. A packet of £20 notes straight from the Mint took up little space, and so he found that it was impossible to estimate the amount of the find, except that it must run into millions. He moved the Yogi Bear mask carefully to one side to enable him to pull out a token packet of £1,000 in £20 notes, which he stuffed into his pocket, replaced the lid and the loose insulation on the wooden case, and came down the steps. With the pole, he pushed the aluminium steps back up to the landing ceiling and then pulled down the loft door. As he put the pole back in the cistern cupboard, he wondered where the missing water tank for the house was located, and then, he looked upwards, above the shelves of bedding and towels. The water tank was there, located above the cistern. Simple. Only a plumber would be likely to realize that the camouflaged wooden box in the loft did not contain water.

  As he stood on the landing amidst the rubble, he heard the front door close with a bang.

  It was Flora Carter. ‘It’s me, sir,’ she called. ‘Are you there?’

  He came down the stairs.

  She waved the key at him and said, ‘I’ve got it, sir.’

  His face shone. ‘Good. So have I,’ he said, and he told her about the find, showed her the packet of £20 notes and said, ‘The Yogi Bear mask and the old picture of the Queen indicate that the money is from a big bank robbery from the local Royal Westminster Bank, in 1983. There were three robbers on that job, and all three were wearing Yogi Bear masks.’

  Flora’s eyes twinkled with excitement. ‘Wow, what a find.’

  ‘Yes,’ he said. ‘But I want you to keep it absolutely shtum. Two men served time for it, while the third – it now looks as if he was the late Mr Piddington – got away scot-free. We might be able to find out who knows about this if we keep it to ourselves for a little while.’

  ‘Right, sir.’

  ‘Now what I want you to do is to get a duplicate of this house key made ASAP. The quickest way would be at that little cobbler’s and key-cutter’s on Almsgate.’

  ‘Right, sir. What for?’

  ‘I’ll tell you when you get back. Now fly!’

  She grinned and rushed off.

  Angel reached out for his phone and was soon in conversation with the manager of the local branch of the Royal Westminster Bank.

  ‘Are you making any progress in finding out who is passing that old money?’ Rodney Ballantyne said.

  ‘I think you might say yes to that, Mr Ballantyne,’ Angel said. ‘But I need your assistance regarding the history of the case. I need to know the details of the two robbers who were caught, and the result of the court case.’

  ‘That’s no problem, Inspector. I’ll get all that emailed to you within the hour, if that would be all right?’

  ‘Excellent. Look forward to it, and thank you.’

  ‘It’s a pleasure, Inspector, and good luck.’

  Angel cancelled the call, then tapped in another number.

  ‘National Crime Operations Faculty,’ a voice said. ‘Which department do you want?’

  ‘This is DI Angel of Bromersley force,’ he said. ‘I would like to speak urgently to someone in the electronic surveillance equipment department …’

  ELEVEN

  Angel parked the BMW on Main Street in the town centre. He looked at his watch. It was 4.30. He got out of the car, rushed down the busy street to the corner on Market Street to Christine Elsworth’s flower kiosk.

  The girl behind the counter recognized him and said, ‘Hello. Mrs Elsworth is in the back.…’

  Christine Elsworth peered round the doorway behind the counter. She didn’t look pleased. ‘Oh, it’s you, Inspector. Come on through.’

&n
bsp; ‘Thank you,’ he said, and he followed her into the small workroom where she was busy cutting a piece of Oasis to fit a metal frame intended to support a floral display.

  Angel said, ‘I thought you’d like to know … I have locked up the house and and here’s the key.’ He fished around in his pocket, found it and handed it to her.

  ‘Thank you,’ she said. ‘Did you find anything at all helpful there?’

  ‘I’m afraid not,’ he lied. He rubbed his jaw. ‘I cannot for the life of me see what the intruder was looking for.’

  ‘I’ve been thinking who I can get to make good the damage.’

  ‘You can probably claim on your insurance, and I would have thought your estate agent would be able to advise on that.’

  ‘Of course. I must ask him.’

  Angel pursed his lips. ‘Those holes in the walls made me think that the intruder must have been looking for something … something really valuable. I have had a good look round and I couldn’t find anything, anything at all. Have you any idea what it was? Did your father keep any jewellery in the house … or a stockpile of sovereigns … or a big pile of cash?’

  ‘Not to my knowledge, Inspector,’ she said. ‘If he had, it would have turned up by now, wouldn’t it? My father only had his pension and it was a struggle every week to pay all his bills, keep him cared for, warm and well fed. I invariably had to contribute something to keep him going. Not that I minded. He kept me going when I was in trouble. He kept me together when my husband died.’

  Angel nodded sympathetically. ‘Even so, Mrs Elsworth, there must be a reason why someone would make holes in the walls like that.’

  ‘Well, Inspector, I’m sorry, I have no idea what it was.’