by Janet Neel
Death’s Bright Angel
Introducing Francesca Wilson and John McLeish
‘A brilliant debut…sharp, intelligent and amusing’ (Independent)
Francesca Wilson is 28, divorced and a high-flying Civil Servant at the Department of Trade and Industry. John McLeish, beneath the rugby-playing exterior, is a highly imaginative and sensitive police detective. When a Yorkshire business man is callously beaten to death with a hammer in a side street off London’s Edgware Road, the murder investigation throws this unlikely pair together and sets in motion a relationship which was to flourish and develop through seven novels over twelve years, garnering a host of loyal followers from their first appearance in Death’s Bright Angel which won the Crime Writers’ Association’s John Creasey Award for best debut crime novel in 1988.
JANET NEEL is the maiden name of Baroness Cohen of Pimlico. She read Law at Newnham College Cambridge and qualified as a solicitor in 1965. She worked in the USA designing war games and in Britain as a civil servant in the Department of Trade and Industry; then moved into a career in merchant banking. She was appointed to the House of Lords in 2000 and sits as a Labour peer with a particular interest in trade, industry, taxation and communications. Married with three children, Baroness Cohen is currently a non-executive director of the London Stock Exchange and vice-chairman of the Borsa Italiana and also Chairman of the Cambridge Arts Theatre. Apart from crime novels under the name Janet Neel, she has also written novels as Janet Cohen.
Also by Janet Neel
Death on Site
Death of a Partner
Death Among the Dons
A Timely Death
To Die For
O Gentle Death
Ostara Crime is a new imprint which aims to collect and republish quality crime writing for new readers. The Series Editor is Mike Ripley, an award-winning crime writer and editor who was also the crime fiction critic for the Daily Telegraph and then the Birmingham Post, reviewing almost 1,000 crime novels in 18 years. He now writes the monthly ‘Getting away With Murder’ column for Shots Magazine (www.shotsmag.co.uk), the UK’s leading website for fans of crime writing and has been the editor of Ostara’s Top Notch Thrillers imprint since its launch in 2009.
Also by Janet Neel in Ostara Crime
Death of a Partner
Death Among the Dons
Other Ostara Crime Titles
Christine Green Deadly Errand
Christine Green Deadly Admirer
Christine Green Deadly Practice
Denise Danks The Pizza House Crash
Denise Danks Better Off Dead
Denise Danks Frame Grabber
DEATH’S BRIGHT ANGEL
Janet Neel
Ostara Publishing
First Published 1988
Copyright © 1988 Janet Neel
Ostara Publishing Edition 2013
The right of Janet Neel to be identified as the Author of the Work has been asserted by her in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.
ISBN 9781906288907
A CIP reference is available from the British Library
Printed and Bound in the United Kingdom
Ostara Publishing
13 King Coel Road
Lexden
Colchester CO3 9AG
www.ostarapublishing.co.uk
For my mother,
Mary Neel
Contents
Chapter One
Chapter Two
Chapter Three
Chapter Four
Chapter Five
Chapter Six
Chapter Seven
Chapter Eight
Chapter Nine
Chapter Ten
Chapter Eleven
Chapter Twelve
Chapter Thirteen
Chapter Fourteen
Chapter Fifteen
Chapter Sixteen
Chapter Seventeen
Chapter Eighteen
Chapter Nineteen
Chapter Twenty
Epilogue
1
The elderly little man in the old navy suit looked ill at ease tucked away in the corner of the big fashionable pub in Little Venice. Not that the rest of the customers were particularly homogeneous, but they had in common the particular ease that comes with the possession of a high income and the willingness to spend it freely and with the maximum of display. This man was plainly from a different world, one where you counted the coins in your pocket and piled them up carefully when paying for a drink. He rose from his corner and went over to the bar to order another half of lager.
‘Is there another pub here with a similar name?’ he asked apologetically. ‘I’ve been here twenty minutes and there is no sign of the person I came to meet.’
The barman pointed out briskly that it would hardly be possible to confuse the Pig and Whistle with the Royal George or the Crown and Anchor which represented the choice locally available. Seeing him look downcast and assuming instantly that it was a woman who had stood him up, he volunteered that there were, however, a great many pubs just the other side of the canal, many looking much the same as each other, and that it would be easy to get confused.
The man, appreciating the courtesy, smiled his thanks, finished his drink and walked out into a very dark evening. It was only just past seven but the whole of the November day had been grey and rainy, and a depressing drizzle still fell. He walked briskly across the bridge, turning into one of the featureless little streets off the Edgware Road, full of small bed-and-breakfast houses. Not an attractive area, he thought disapprovingly; rubbish in the streets, mean cold houses, and not a trace of anything green. No wonder London schoolchildren grew up delinquent. Not enough street lighting either. He decided that it would be simplest to go back to the unattractive house where he was staying and to use the phone in the hallway, supposing it wasn’t jammed, to find out what had happened to the man he was meant to be meeting. Then he would ring his sister in Yorkshire to find out how their mother, just out of hospital after a hip operation, was getting along. He sighed as he thought about his mother; had his wife still been alive the phone call would have been unnecessary, since she would automatically have been round to the nursing home with flowers from the garden. His sister, however, had grown from a careless girl to a scatterbrained and feckless grandmother, prone to forget her husband’s tea or the existence of her grandchildren, never mind her mother. He brightened as he was reminded of his own grandchildren and felt in his pocket for the miniature teddy bear he had bought for his treasured three-year-old grandson and the little plastic rattle for the child’s six-week-old brother. The strap on the expensive gold watch slipped down on his wrist as he fished in his pocket, and he adjusted it patiently, admiring the face of the watch as he did so. It was a good watch, received only last week from the hands of his Chairman to mark his forty years’ service with the company, starting as a boy of fifteen in the war. It was a pity he hadn’t been able to enjoy the presentation ceremony, worried as he had been by the thought of the interview to come, but he loved the watch, and he still had the presentation box in his briefcase.
He stopped to check that he had enough coins for the phone, and lifted his head, surprised by the sudden silence. He realized that, unconsciously, he had been aware of someone walking down the street behind him and he glanced back, but there was no one. Must have turned off into one of the houses, he thought, and bent his head again shortsightedly to sort out coins. He heard the sodden dead leaves on the pavement squeak, and an indrawn breath, and as he turned just saw an upraised arm, elongated by something held in the hand; but before he could cry out, his head exploded and he felt himself falling.
His attacker, moving with desperate speed, kn
elt beside the fallen body and prised the fingers away from the briefcase. Cursing with panic he reached under the coat, took the man’s wallet, considered for a second and tore off the watch. He laid a gloved hand against the pulse in the neck, swore, and glancing round the deserted street, picked up the hammer and smashed it down twice more on the side of the skull. He froze where he was crouching as a car came slowly down the road, obviously looking for a place to park, and he breathed out carefully as it speeded up again, discouraged by the solid lines of parked cars. Covered with cold sweat, he stood up and started to walk quickly away from the body, gloved hands dug deeply into his pockets and chin tucked well down into his scarf so that between the scarf and the flat, peaked cap only a small, unidentifiable part of his face could be seen.
It was not more than five minutes later that a young West Indian secretary, coming home after supper with a girlfriend, walked past. She hesitated by the dishevelled bundle of clothes huddled against the hedge, and, true to a sound Baptist upbringing, bent bravely to see if help would be kindly received, or whether, like other derelicts in this area, this one would merely curse her. Her enquiring gaze met a sight that was to give her trouble for the rest of her life; the last two savage hammer blows had pulped the left eye and pushed the skull out of all human shape. The intensity of her screams, even in that area where people mind their own business, brought the street out to her aid. In that time, however, the murderer had rejoined the Edgware Road, pausing under a street lamp to check quickly his clothes for signs of blood; satisfied, he climbed sedately on to a bus going up toward Notting Hill Gate, still carrying the nondescript briefcase into which he had thrust the wallet and the watch.
Ten minutes away, in one of the CID rooms at Edgware Road police station, Detective Inspector John McLeish and Detective Sergeant Bruce Davidson were considering going out for supper. They had each done three hours of virtuous paperwork well after normal office hours, and both were hoping to get home before any more work came in.
‘Better get some dinner in, then.’ Davidson at twenty-eight was a stocky, dark-haired, black-eyed Scot from Ayr, the force of his native accent undimmed by five years’ service in London. A misleadingly benevolent and comfortable figure with a hint of a beer belly, he was highly intelligent and a legendary womanizer.
‘Coming.’ John McLeish at thirty-one was also a Scot — the Metropolitan police force, like the armies at Waterloo, could not function without the Scots in their ranks — but there all resemblance ended. He had only a trace of accent, having been brought up in the South, and as he unfolded himself from behind a desk his head, as usual, narrowly missed the hanging light. The electrician had not reckoned with a Detective Inspector six feet four inches tall and springy on his feet as befitted a rugby forward who had been in the Scottish international squad, and had just missed a cap in an unusually strong year. As Bruce Davidson had observed to a colleague the first time he saw McLeish, it was in its way a pity not to keep him in the uniformed branch. Add a helmet on top of that lot and you had a sight to strike terror into any number of villains.
The phone rang at the desk which McLeish had just left.
‘Will we run?’ Davidson enquired, faking a dash to the door. McLeish cursed but reached automatically for the phone.
‘CID.’ He jerked his head back, setting the light swinging. ‘A murder? That’s a bit better than the rubbish you’ve been sending us.’ He listened. ‘Does sound like drugs, doesn’t it? — using a hammer. Can you get the usual set up? We’ll be with you.’
‘I must eat,’ Davidson said plaintively, following his chief down the stairs. McLeish was, as usual, jumping them five at once.
‘So must I, don’t worry.’ Anyone working with Davidson knew that you kept him from his dinner at your peril. He really did need to eat every three hours or, as he mournfully observed, nothing worked.
They swept into Pindar Road still chewing on greasy kebabs in pitta, and stopped well away from the scene of the crime to finish their meal. They were both in unspoken agreement that decent reverence in the presence of the dead was absolutely required, and both had survived years in the Serious Crimes squad with this conviction undimmed. They finally arrived on even terms with the police pathologist and the photographer. Two of the uniformed branch, a sergeant and a constable, were already there, their car parked beside the body with the blue light flashing. The street was full of people, hanging out of windows and lining the doorsteps. McLeish knelt by the body in one swift economical movement, and looked without touching, lost in concentration, while the photographer worked. He sat back on his heels finally, and produced a piece of chalk to draw round the outline of the body.
‘Got the weapon?’ he asked, getting up.
‘Hammer. Standard claw type. No prints.’ The man from forensic was evidently one of the strong silent ones. He jerked his head. ‘Over there, in the gutter.’
McLeish considered the hammer, blood congealed on all its surfaces. ‘Anything in the pockets?’
‘Haven’t looked yet. You want to, you go ahead.’
McLeish signalled to Davidson who slid a hand into a plastic glove, then felt delicately inside the coat and jacket.
‘No wallet,’ he reported.
‘No watch either,’ observed the uniformed constable who was adjusting the screen round the body, and McLeish glanced at him consideringly. The CID recruits from the uniformed branch, and is always on the look-out for competent people.
‘How do you know he wore one?’
‘Deep mark on the left wrist.’
‘Good, well done. What have you got there?’ This to Davidson who was extracting a small plastic-covered card case which he handed gingerly to the forensic man. The group bent silently over it.
‘“William Fireman, Purchasing Manager, Britex Fabrics, Towneley, Yorkshire”,’ Davidson read, squinting to see through the plastic.
‘Staying in one of these places, probably,’ McLeish observed. ‘Get asking, Bruce. Take the constable here with you if he can be spared.’ The constable gave him a swift pleased smile, seeing it as a reward. McLeish was amused that the boy did not apparently realize that anyone in uniform would have been sent — the presence of a uniform saved a lot of time in explanations on a house-to-house trawl.
He waited to see the screens set up and to check that everything at the scene of the crime had been collected, noted, bagged or photographed as appropriate, under the charge of the scene-of-crime officer. The sheet covering the body snagged as they shifted a screen, momentarily revealing the frightful misshapen head. We’d better find this one, McLeish thought grimly; that sort of savagery should not be walking the streets.
The routine swept smoothly on, eating up the hours of the night. One of the little bed-and-breakfast places was quickly identified as the place where the late William Fireman would have spent the night. He came apparently to London every two or three months and always stayed there, but the West Indian proprietor knew nothing about him personally. The sub-routine which has to do with notifying the next of kin and getting the body identified had been put into action. The personnel officer of Britex Fabrics had been roused from the family television, and, greatly to his credit, on being told the nature of the injuries had immediately volunteered to come himself to identify the body, rather than ask the family. He had scrambled on to a late train and been taken straight from King’s Cross to the mortuary, where he had been offered the least injured side of the head to identify, and white-faced but stolid, had confirmed that it was indeed the late William Fireman. Women police constables in Towneley had been dispatched to break the news to his sister and mother, waiting till 7 a.m. to do so, in a well established compromise between telling next of kin as soon as possible and not adding to the shock by waking them in the middle of the night to break the worst news of all.
‘What kind of firm is it?’ McLeish had drawn the task of organizing the Yorkshire police to notify next of kin, and thought he might as well get some background information f
rom them.
‘Textiles. Sheets, duvet covers, thermal clothing, some industrial clothing. Biggest employer by a long way up here, although the gossip is that they aren’t doing very well. My brother works there. What happened to your body? No, don’t you try and wish it on us, lad, we’ve got the Moors Rapist to cope with, and the nuthouse specialists here reckon him for another go come full moon on Friday. If this chap’s head was bashed in and his wallet and watch are gone, it’s a London special, isn’t it? One of your drug addicts?’
McLeish had had to agree that this was much the likeliest solution, and had gone on to talk to the pathologist.
‘One blow, delivered from above by someone taller and right-handed. The other two, which killed him, delivered when he was on the deck. Mind you, the first blow would have knocked him out, and if he’d survived it might not have left much of him worth having, but it didn’t kill him. So the murderer finished him off, for some reason. Be worth finding a chap like that and putting him away.’
McLeish had confirmed as equably as possible that same was in fact his intention, shared by the entire Edgware Road CID, and had set in motion the routine check of all locals with a record of violence, whether accompanied by robbery or not. His chat with the pathologist, however, had left him uneasy. Why had the murderer struck two extra blows when the victim could not have been offering any resistance at that stage? The classic answer would be that the victim knew the attacker. On the other hand, he thought wearily, if the murderer was an addict, logic simply did not apply. Under the influence of hard drugs, who knew what considerations applied. He resolutely went on working his way down the check-list of procedures, until Davidson put his head in.
‘Coffee? Or breakfast?’
‘Breakfast, knowing you. Let’s go to that caff in Wellcome Street.’
It was still cold and dark although it was past 7 o’clock and they were glad to huddle in the plastic-coated warmth of the café in Wellcome Street, along with what appeared to be the labour force of a medium-sized building site. As it got close to 8 o’clock the café emptied, and reluctantly McLeish and Davidson got up to leave too. They were both pale and irritable after the long night, but both felt better for breakfast.