The Wigmaker

by Roger Silverwood

  ‘You’ve not rung up about that suit of armour, have you? Did you say the Fox was dead?’

  ‘Yes and we have found its lair. A thumping big safe overflowing with precious stones, diamonds, emeralds, rubies, sapphires, gold, a diamond tiara—’

  ‘Where?’ the interruption came quickly. ‘Where?’

  Angel knew he had the man’s full attention. He was talking to DI Matthew Elliott, head of the Antiques and Fine Art squad, Scotland Yard. He had known him for years. Elliott would be able to assist him in trying to identify the victims of the Fox’s robberies, which might, he hoped, lead to his murderer.

  ‘I’ll come up this morning.’

  Angel smiled and replaced the phone.

  ‘That’s all very well, but we are still no nearer knowing who murdered him,’ Harker said with a sniff.

  ‘But it opens up a wider field of suspects, sir.’

  ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘Motive, sir,’ Angel said. ‘I had not been able to find a motive. I mean, who would want to have murdered Peter Wolff, a humble, quiet, apparently respectable wig maker? What harm could a wig maker do to a customer? What threat does a wig maker pose? What double-dealing could a wig maker get up to? Nothing that I can think of. I can’t think of anything that would motivate a man to break into his place, creep up the stairs, shoot him while he was asleep and then set fire to his place. Now that we know he’s the Fox, it’s an entirely different proposition, isn’t it?’

  Harker sniffed. He seemed to agree but looked unenthused by it all.

  ‘Well, sir,’ Angel continued, ‘there are all the jewellers he robbed; there’s the competition from other thieves who may have been casing a shop just as he cleaned it out before them; there are the bullion dealers, stone dealers, auctioneers and jewellery manufacturers he may have sold to; there are the insurance companies who had to pay out millions in clients’ claims; lastly, there is the fence he may have sold stuff through. Any one of them might hold a grudge against him.’

  Harker sniffed. ‘Maybe. That means you’ve plenty to be going at then, lad?’

  Angel took it as his cue to leave. He stood up.

  ‘Before you go, you’d better tell me how things stand with you and the search for Frank Chancey’s wife?’

  Angel’s head shot up. ‘You agreed I should leave it, sir. Yesterday you were going to tell the chief constable that there were no—’

  ‘I know what I was probably going to do. I am asking you where the enquiry has got up to?’

  ‘It has moved on no further, sir. No ransom note, no direct information of her abduction, no witness of foul play, no emergence of her actual dead body. You agreed yesterday, she was just a … misper.’

  The corners of Harker’s mouth turned down again. He drew in a deep breath and then blew it out.

  Angel thought that he was under some pressure that he didn’t want to speak about.

  ‘If you still want me to pursue it, sir, I have a suggestion to make,’ Angel said.

  ‘Aye?’

  ‘I’ve been thinking. The relationship between Chancey and his wife may not have been that cosy. After all, she left on Saturday, the fourteenth of April ostensibly for Rome, but he apparently didn’t try to contact her by phone or any other way until sixteen days later, the thirtieth. We know that because, as she didn’t in fact go to Rome, he didn’t know that until sixteen days later, which means that at no time in that period had he phoned Rome to try to reach her. For that matter, she had not phoned him to tell him where she was. But maybe he wouldn’t even have phoned on the thirtieth, if the model agency hadn’t phoned him, concerned that Katrina had missed an appointment and couldn’t make contact with her. To some couples it might seem to be a long time to be separated without so much as a phone call.’

  ‘Hmmm,’ Harker said rubbing his chin. ‘True. True.’

  Angel nodded. ‘Under the circumstances, it would be very reasonable to ask him about his relationship with her. And it would get me back in his house, talking to him. You never know where it might lead.’

  ‘There’s a fair difference in their ages, isn’t there?’

  ‘She’s twenty-two and he’s thirty-seven.’

  Harker sighed. ‘Aye. Do it, lad. As soon as maybe. But don’t upset him. He’s a highly respected pillar of the community.’

  ‘You’re lucky to catch me, Inspector. I am usually at my office by this time. Anyway, now that you’re here, what do you want? If you had any good news about Katrina, I expect you would not be standing there with an expression like that.’

  Angel smiled and nodded gently.

  ‘Oh, I am forgetting my manners,’ Chancey continued. ‘Please sit down. Would you like tea, or coffee … or anything?’

  ‘No thank you, sir. And no, I regret that we have no new specific lines of enquiry, but there is just one thing that … bothers me.’

  ‘Speak out, Inspector,’ Chancey said looking directly at him across the big desk.

  Angel knew he had to pick his words carefully. ‘Well, you told me that your wife left early Saturday morning, the fourteenth of April?’

  ‘Yes. That’s right, as far as I know. I was actually at the office – where I should be now. What is wrong with that?’

  ‘And that as far as you knew, at the time, she arrived safely in Rome, Italy, later that day.’

  ‘Yes, and booked into the very best hotel in that beautiful city. She adored the place. She has been there before. I have stayed there with her. I was satisfied that she would have been comfortable and happy there. Yes. Yes. What about it?’

  ‘Yet, although you believed that she was happily enjoying her holiday there, you didn’t know that, and it was sixteen days before you bothered to contact her. And that was precipitated by a rather desperate phone call to you from her model agency advising you that they could not reach her and that she had missed a vital appointment.’

  ‘That’s true. But I thought she would be happy to lounge around the pool, or go out on a shopping spree from time to time. She always enjoyed that. And I have been very busy with the house improvements, you know … the spring-cleaning, the fountain, and so on. I have also bought her a new car. I’ve made all these improvements for her, you know, Inspector. Not for me. Frankly, I could live in a box provided it wasn’t noisy, was warm and it had a bit of a view with a few trees. But she likes everything smart and new and bright. I thought she would be over the moon when she returned. Besides all this extra work here, I have also been running a public company, you know, with twenty-two branches employing over eight hundred employees. And, incidentally, I am pleased to say that we are on course to announce a record profit for the half-year figures in June. I have been and still am a very, very busy man.’

  ‘Isn’t it true, Mr Chancey,’ Angel said gently and carefully, ‘that your marriage, to put it in the vernacular, was on the rocks?’

  Chancey’s jaw dropped. He looked away. It was as if he’d been hit on the side of the head with a Group Four prison bus. He breathed in and then out unevenly several times. It took a few moments for him to recover. Eventually he turned back to Angel and said quietly, ‘How very clever of you, Inspector. I had heard that you were a highly perceptive policeman, and that … like the Mountie, you always got your man.’

  Angel remained silent. He wasn’t used to compliments. He didn’t get many. He didn’t say anything, just looked across the desk and waited.

  ‘Very well. I’d better tell you something about how things were … and what happened that Friday night.’

  Angel settled back in the chair, his pen at the ready.

  ‘Katrina and I have only been married two years. I am keen to have children. I need a son, or more than one, to take over the business for one thing, although a daughter – or more than one – would be … delightful. Anyway, Katrina had said she agreed with me. That we both wanted children was absolutely great. I was eagerly looking forward to becoming a father. However, as time moved on and she didn’t fall pregnant,
I began to think there was something wrong with one or both of us. And that, unhappily, maybe clinical investigations would have to be … well, anyway, that Friday night, I found a blister pack of pills in a drawer. I asked her what they were for. She said they were vitamins and tried to snatch them back from me. I read the label and saw that they were contraceptives. I faced her with it. She admitted she had been taking them and I was furious. Essentially she said she wouldn’t have her career jeopardized by becoming a mother at this time. We had the mother and father of all rows. We both yelled and she screamed a lot. She threatened to leave me. I said don’t even think about it. I thought I had talked her round. I persuaded her to go away for a holiday, to think things over … gave her some money, a big cheque, to buy herself new clothes. It was a bribe really. I knew it was. Then, when she had gone, I busied myself getting the house how we wanted it. We had talked about the changes for months. I thought that when she came back it would please her, that it would make her happy and settle her down.’

  He sighed as if he was glad to have told somebody.

  ‘The rest, I think, you know.’

  Angel thought a moment. He didn’t want to be needlessly unkind.

  ‘This throws a different light on matters, Mr Chancey. And being away so long, might she not have found someone else who—’

  Chancey’s eyes flashed. ‘No. Never!’ he bawled. ‘She could never leave me!’

  ‘Ahmed, I asked you to find DS Crisp for me. What the hell’s going on?’

  ‘I’ve tried everywhere, sir. I can’t even raise him on his mobile.’

  ‘Well, have another scoot round the station, leave a note on his desk or something, but find him. It’s very urgent.’

  The phone rang.

  ‘Off you go.’

  ‘Right, sir.’

  Ahmed went out and closed the door, as Angel reached out for the phone.

  ‘Angel.’

  It was Edwin Larkin. He was phoning for his employer, Lord Tiverton. He passed the phone over to him.

  ‘Tiverton here,’ the old man growled. ‘Look here. Have you made any progress in finding my suit of armour, Inspector?’

  ‘We are doing our best, sir,’ Angel replied lamely. ‘Doing our very best.’

  He knew it was not at all true, and he did hate lying but he couldn’t tell the old man that he had a murder case on his hands and that it had a higher priority. He had circulated all the police forces, as well as the specialist national Art and Antiques section, but he hadn’t had time to do anything else, there was such a lot happening.

  ‘There are millions at stake, young man, millions! Last month my wife’s diamond tiara was stolen from the jewellers. There went another three hundred thousand. It’s outrageous, Inspector. Outrageous.’

  ‘We are doing our best, sir,’ Angel repeated. ‘Please be assured of that.’

  He could have told him that a tiara had been recovered, but as it had not been checked over by SOCO, nor identified as Tiverton’s, he thought it might have been wrong to raise his hopes.

  The old man didn’t sound convinced; he growled and muttered something unintelligible, which ended in a few words that sounded like: ‘the police were all flying bustards’.

  ‘There’s something else, Inspector,’ Tiverton added. ‘There’s a wheelbarrow gone missing. Almost new, metal wheelbarrow. I ask you, what next? Put that down on the stolen list. It makes my blood boil. From now on, if I see any strangers mooching round here, I’ll give them a blast of buckshot to remember me by, I’ll tell you.’

  There was a click and the line went dead.

  Angel sighed. He was thinking that a thief might very well steal a wheelbarrow to transport a suit of armour away from the old carriage stables. It would be an ideal form of transport for it. Ergo, find a stolen wheelbarrow and you’ll find a suit of armour. He must remember that.

  There was a knock at the door. It was Crisp. Unusually, his cheeks were flushed and his eyes shining.

  ‘There’s a young woman in reception, sir. Her husband has left her, disappeared!’

  Angel stared hard at him; his hands clenched tight. ‘I don’t do domestics, lad. You should know that by now. Just because a female member of the public, with a great pair of legs, comes in here—’

  ‘Not only her legs, sir,’ Crisp said pointedly with a smile.

  ‘Comes in here with a sob-story, that her husband has left her, you’re there, fawning all over her, trying to con her into going back to your flat for tea and sympathy and goodness knows what else.’

  ‘Sir,’ Crisp said protestingly.

  ‘Oh, I forgot. You’re engaged to WPC Leisha Baverstock, aren’t you?’

  Crisp looked away, his eyelids half-closed. ‘No, sir. That’s off. She gave me the … push.’

  Angel’s eyebrows shot up.

  ‘Not surprised,’ he said. ‘And by the way, I am still awaiting a report from you about Peter Wolff.’

  ‘There was nothing useful to say, sir.’

  ‘Let me be the judge of that.’

  ‘Well, I did the rounds. Spoke to over ten small-time hairdressers, you know, one person businesses, like most of them are, in Bromersley. Nobody knew him on a personal basis. They all really said that what he did wasn’t the same type of business as they did. I can understand that. They looked after the middle class ladies who could afford a mid price maintenance job every week or fortnight or so, but the glamour girls, professional girls, women on TV or so who wanted a wig, at hundreds of pounds, that was Wolff’s market.’

  ‘What did you find out about his private life?’

  Crisp shook his head. ‘Wasn’t married. Wasn’t into crumpet, as far as I could find out, sir. Nothing.’

  Angel rubbed a hand across his mouth, licked his lips quickly and said, ‘You’re not much of a detective, are you, lad?’

  ‘If there is nothing, I can’t make it up, sir,’ Crisp said reasonably.

  ‘All right. All right. Let’s leave it at that for now,’ Angel said, then added, ‘And get rid of that woman in reception. But be gentle. Point her to the Salvation Army. They are good at missing persons. Or Relate or something. This just isn’t the place.’

  ‘But you haven’t heard the interesting bit about her, sir.’

  Angel’s lips tightened back against his teeth. ‘What, lad? What?’

  ‘She’s the wife of Gabriel Grainger. The chap you put away for two years for tricking that woman out of her life savings. And she’s asking to see you.’

  Angel looked up. He remembered Gabriel Grainger. He drummed his fingers on the desk top, narrowed his eyes, then nodded. ‘I remember him. His good looks were his downfall. Women of all ages just fell at his feet. He’ll have been out of prison about a year now.’

  He looked at the pile of post and bumf in front of him, rubbed his chin and said, ‘All right. I’ll have a quick word. Show her in, then nip off to Wolff’s shop and see how SOCO are making out with that safe. We’ve got to stick with that case while it’s still hot.’

  ‘Right, sir.’

  Crisp brought her down the corridor, showed her into Angel’s office, closed the door and rushed off to Peter Wolff’s shop.

  The woman was dressed up to the nines, like a film star of the old school: long-sleeved summer dress, stockings, high-heeled shoes and carrying a black handbag.

  ‘Thank you for seeing me, Inspector. My name’s Zoë Grainger. I know you don’t know me, but you knew my husband, Gabriel. I recognize you, because I was in court when he got sent down for two years.’

  Angel liked the woman. She appeared to be straightforward and direct, and Crisp was right, she was very attractive; also her voice was deep and soothing, in contrast to the squawking nasal discord produced by skinny, American women infiltrating news programmes on British TV these days and copied by teenagers and others.

  ‘Please sit down. Forgive me, Zoë. I don’t remember you. If I had met you, I am sure I would have remembered.’

  She smiled sweetly. It soo
n went.

  ‘Gabriel and me weren’t married then, Inspector. I was just a girlfriend then. One of many, I regret to say. I wish now, that that was how it had stayed, but I was soft and stupid. I married him three weeks after he came out of prison. Anyway, I’ll get right to the point. I know you’ll be busy. Trevor said that you don’t normally see people reporting missing persons, because you get so many of them and that it isn’t necessarily a crime.’

  ‘That’s true.’

  ‘Well, I love my husband, Inspector. He’s all I’ve got. And I want to do what I can to pull him out of whatever mess he might be in.’

  ‘What mess is that?’

  ‘Well, I don’t know where to start. You see, Gabriel is easily led, Inspector. You might disagree on that point, but he is. After he was released he couldn’t settle into a proper job. He had been a part-time model, but he lost interest in it. He’s always been a bit of a philanderer. I knew that when I married him. I thought I could cure him of it, but … well, I haven’t managed it yet. A pretty girl with a few quid and he was straight off the rails; he’d take her out, take her to bed, stay out late … ’til one or two in the morning. He’d come in drunk and … objectionable. This would last for a couple or three nights at the most. Then, he would get sick of her … and dump the poor cow, whoever she was. I’ve been living with this, tolerating it, but it hurts. Anyway, up to now he has always come back to me. And I’ve somehow got over it. Lived with it. Come to terms with it. In fact, we’ve had some really nice times. Not often, but we have. He can be a real charmer when he wants. But this time, Inspector, it’s been thirteen days. Never been separated this long. Don’t like being on my own without him. It’ll be two weeks tomorrow. I don’t know what’s happened … haven’t heard a word, not a single, damned word.’

  She was close to tears, but she was also angry.

  He nodded sympathetically. ‘Please go on.’

  ‘Well, on Friday night, the thirteenth … it must have been eight o’clock, he got a phone call. At first I thought it was one of his … women. He insisted it was a man offering him a job. For big money, he said. Very well-to-do, with great connections, he said. This is the opportunity I’ve been waiting for, Zoë, he said. Have faith in me, for once.’