The Wigmaker

by Roger Silverwood

  By 11 a.m. that morning the fountain had been drained dry, the marble slabs and the central pedestal figure removed and piled on a neat heap close by.

  Angel had notified the police workshops at Wetherby and they had sent a heat-seeking camera team of two men, who were working over the central area of the fountain base. They were trying to trace heat that was naturally generated by the chemical disintegration of a dead body. Sophisticated machines can register heat changes to a fine degree through six feet of soil, and even after several months, sometimes years.

  The DS had been panning the area with the heat detector, which was rather like a metal detector, but with a span area of about the size of a dustbin lid, for around ten minutes. He suddenly stopped, switched off the machine, looked up at the DI and shook his head.

  Angel was standing by his car, hands in his pockets trying to look like Fred Astaire waiting for the music to start. He’d given up smoking four years ago, but this was a time when he would gladly have given fifty quid for a drag.

  The DI in charge of the team came across to Angel, shaking his head.

  He knew it was bad news. They hadn’t found a body. They hadn’t found anything.

  ‘The waterpipe and plumbing we can work round, Michael, but it’s the concrete base. It must be well over six inches thick. We can’t get a reading through it. Sorry.’

  The DS began loading the machine in the little blue van.

  Angel’s face tightened. ‘Oh,’ he sighed. ‘Thanks for turning out promptly. The concrete is over eighteen inches thick. I know, I saw them pouring it.’

  The DI nodded. ‘I’ll get our road gang down this afternoon, if they’re available,’ he said, rapidly tapping numbers into his mobile. ‘Two hydraulic drills should shift that in three or four hours. If not they’ll come tomorrow morning. Don’t worry, Michael, if there’s a body down there, we’ll find it.’

  Angel sighed again and chewed on air.

  ‘See you about one-thirty, or I’ll give you a ring,’ he said and they drove the little blue van away on the exit road.

  Angel watched them go, then turned and made for his car.

  As the van disappeared through the bushes on the ‘out’ road, the burgundy Rolls Royce appeared on the ‘in’ road, coming quickly towards him. Almost before it stopped, Frank Chancey bounced out of it, red-faced and waving his arms in the air.

  ‘What the hell is going on!’ he screamed. ‘What have you done to my fountain?’

  Angel took in a deep breath. ‘I have reason to believe that the body of your wife is in the foundations. So I am naturally—’

  ‘Ridiculous. Absolutely ridiculous. She’s not dead. Nobody’s dead. She has left me. It’s hard for me to admit, Angel. Very hard for me to admit. A man of my standing and position in society, but she has gone. The woman who had everything has left the man who has everything. She’s not right in the head. If she had intended returning she would have turned up by now, but she has not. I am trying to come to terms with it. It is difficult. But there was no need to take the fountain to pieces. It cost over eighty thousand pounds. I don’t know what it’s worth now. Look at it. Just look at it. I am not standing for it. I shall charge you whatever it costs to bring it back to how it was. Vandalism, it is. Absolutely vandalism. I’ll speak to the chief constable about all this, Angel. It’s outrageous!’

  Lyle got out of the Rolls Royce, locked the door and stood behind Chancey, looking everywhere except at either of the two men.

  ‘You must do whatever you think, sir,’ Angel said. ‘I told you I heard a mobile phone ringing out under the fountain. I discovered that it was your wife’s, so it suggested to me that your wife’s body might also be there. You presumably have not heard from her for over three weeks now, and her model agency has heard nothing, her bank account and mobile phone accounts have not been used. I have every reason to believe that she is dead, perhaps murdered, and that she is buried under there,’ he said pointing at the big concrete base.

  ‘She isn’t there, you stupid flatfoot,’ Chancey said. His face was redder than a judge’s robe. ‘She’s changed her identity, hasn’t she? She’s found somebody else. How many times do I have to tell you? She’s gone. Vamoosed. You didn’t have to cause all this mess. This vandalism will cost you your job!’

  The muscles on Angel’s face tightened. His heart beat harder than the drummer in the police pipe band. ‘I was given the job of searching for her, sir. I intend to try and finish the job.’

  ‘We will see,’ Chancey said. He flounced through the main entrance into the house, followed by Lyle, who seemed to have taken an unusual interest in the ground and walls of the house.

  Angel sniffed, turned and looked at where the fountain had been.

  It was four hours later. The area around the fountain base was crowded with vehicles. There were two Range Rovers with compressors on trailers behind them, with connections to hydraulic drills being held by men working on the concrete base. They were systematically cutting into the perimeter, working towards the centre; there were two other men clearing away the broken down concrete and soil; there was the DI from Wetherby, in charge of the excavation unit, DS Taylor and DI Angel and their respective vehicles. Angel and Taylor were standing on the perimeter of the foundations, keenly watching the concrete as the pieces were chipped off the main block, dreading what might be revealed as each shovelful of concrete and soil was removed.

  Angel suddenly spotted the shiny grey case of the mobile phone. The skin on the back of his hands and arms turned to gooseflesh. The mobile was revealed in wet earth underneath a freshly broken chip of concrete. It appeared to be in good condition.

  ‘There!’ he yelled over the deafening hammer of the hydraulic drills and hard working compressors. ‘The phone! There!’ he yelled, gesticulating wildly. He didn’t want the drill to shatter through the case and ruin any of the precious information it might be able to provide. The PC saw it, took his hands off the trigger of the drill, leaned forward and with a gloved hand picked it out of the sludge. DS Taylor opened up an EVIDENCE bag, and the PC dropped the mobile straight into it. The DS then rushed off in a marked police car back to the station to begin the tests. He could check the phone for any prints that might show the last person to handle it and who might have dropped it into the foundations of the fountain, also the recent call history. It was potentially brimful of useful information.

  Angel nodded with satisfaction at the find. It could prove to be invaluable in providing evidence. He also had the pleasure of knowing he had not gone completely bananas. Its presence showed that he had actually heard the phone ring. He had heard the mobile ring out.

  The DI from Wetherby together with Angel stood on the perimeter of the foundations, expecting any second to see a hand, an arm or a foot appear beneath a freshly cut piece of concrete or shovelful of brown soil.

  For another hour, the drills kept drilling, the concrete kept breaking away into small pieces, the shovellers kept shovelling, but even when they had completely broken down the slab, cleared it, and applied the heat detector to the soil beneath, there was no corpse there, nor had there ever been.

  CHAPTER THIRTEEN

  * * *

  It was 8.28 on Tuesday morning.

  It was no surprise to Angel to be summoned up to Harker’s office, first thing, after the frustrating business of the day before.

  Angel was surprised that Harker hadn’t phoned him at home the previous evening. He was bound to have had an earful from the chief constable about him. Chancey was bound to have griped to the chief, with whom he would have been drinking in the Feathers, the golf club, or the Masonic or wherever they go to massage each other’s egos, and he would have inevitably passed it on to Harker.

  He knocked on the door.

  ‘Come in!’ Harker bawled. ‘Come in. Sit down.’

  Angel looked across the desk at him. He looked as unpleasant as a body at an exhumation. His complexion was like putty and his nose was like a Victorian bath tap. T
he smell of TCP was sickly.

  Angel sat down and said nothing.

  Harker leaned forward over his desk and spoke in an icy voice as though he was auditioning for the part of Himmler.

  ‘I don’t know what to say to you. I think you might have gone off your chump. I told you distinctly to make gentle enquiries about a missing wife. Nothing more. I didn’t expect you to knock down the husband’s marble fountain costing eighty thousand pounds simply to retrieve her mobile.’

  ‘Her mobile might be very valuable to us, sir. But, also, I thought she was under there. I heard the phone ring out. I checked it was her number. It was, so I put two and two together.’

  ‘The two and two, is that all you had to go on to assume she was dead?’

  ‘No sir. Three weeks have passed, and nothing has been heard of her. No movement on her credit cards, her bank account or her telephone.’

  ‘You know that’s simply not enough, these days. Looks as if she simply doesn’t want to be found. She’s a very rich and talented young woman in her own right. Anyway, you were not instructed to take this matter any further than to find the woman. You were not instructed to treat it as a fully blown murder investigation.’

  Angel wasn’t getting as much stick as he had expected. He was surprised. He was also a bit annoyed. He was always getting told off for doing what was really the obvious and intelligent thing to do. When it didn’t work out right, he got a rocket. He wasn’t gifted with hindsight.

  He thought that the best means of defence was attack, so he decided to take a chance. He wrinkled his nose and said, ‘Well, sir, are you taking me off this case, because of the fact that the chief constable and Chancey are friends, or do you want me to continue with my investigation to find the murderer?’

  That disturbed Harker’s equilibrium. Angel hoped it would, but he mustn’t go too far.

  Harker’s eyes flashed a moment, then returned to normal. He didn’t answer for a few moments, then icily, he said, ‘Just because you have had a few little plaudits in connection with your investigations into murder cases, over the past five or six years, you should not get too conceited in your approach to me and the job. That smartarse attitude cuts no ice. I expect you to carry out the specific order I gave you in connection with the finding of Katrina Chancey, which was that, in the course of your other work, you should try and find out her whereabouts. By inference, I meant that you should find her alive. There isn’t enough evidence to declare that she’s dead. All right?’

  It wasn’t all right, but Angel thought he had adequately made his point. He didn’t say anything.

  ‘You have still the unsolved murder of that wig maker, Peter Wolff, which you seem to be dancing around. You are wasting far too much time chasing shadows. Also, from your report, you seem to have got a tangled interest in a missing man, Grainger … spending a lot of time interviewing the wife … what’s her name? Zoë Grainger? Young, is she? Pretty, is she? Lonely?’

  It was Angel’s turn to be rattled. His lips tightened back against his teeth. His self-control was now being tested.

  ‘Leave my private life out of this.’

  Harker smiled like a snake after a kill.

  ‘I’ve been there, lad. It’s not for you. Stick with what you know about. Take my tip. Don’t go wandering into unfamiliar territory.’

  Angel stood up. He’d had enough and, anyway, he thought that was the end of the sermon.

  Harker stood up and said: ‘One more thing. There is every reason to believe that Katrina Chancey is alive and well. So, I am specifically ordering you not to knock anything else down or do any more digging in Frank Chancey’s garden or grounds or … anywhere near him.’

  Angel came out of Harker’s office with the superintendent’s last words ringing in his ears.

  He belted down the corridor to his office, furious; he was now more determined than ever to find the missing Katrina Chancey, dead or alive.

  There was a knock at the door. It was Gawber.

  ‘You wanted me, sir?’

  ‘Come in. Sit down. Just had a rocket from Harker. Been warned off Chancey. I’ve been told in no uncertain terms not to question him. The order comes down from the chief. They’re drinking mates … or something.’

  Gawber looked at him.

  ‘Gives me a job, then ties my hands,’ Angel growled. ‘So many questions. Why would Chancey slyly drop Katrina’s phone in the foundations of the fountain when it was being built, then later ring out the number deliberately when I was passing it?’

  ‘How do you know he did either of those things?’

  ‘He or the murderer, who might be one and the same, would be the only person to get near her phone, during or after he had murdered her. Come on, Ron. Is that logical or not?’

  ‘It’s logical, sir. But there are other possibilities.’

  ‘For example?’

  ‘Well, sir, say she lost her phone, left it in a taxi, next customer found it and took it … used it … gave it her boyfriend who happened to work for the concrete mixing company that delivered the readymix that was poured there the other day and it dropped out of his pocket into the—’

  Angel sighed. ‘That’s a bit far fetched. And I suppose someone happened to dial her number just as I was walking past the fountain.’

  ‘Well, how do you explain that? It must have been coincidence.’

  ‘I’ve told you about coincidence! No. As I was passing the fountain, the great man was in his study. It overlooks the fountain. He looked down on me, saw me passing the fountain … and thought, what a wheeze! I’ll take the mick out of that cocky inspector. Pull him down a peg or two. Make him think that Katrina is under the fountain, and I’ll laugh my socks off if he decides to demolish it for nothing. That’ll put him in a bad way with his superiors and he’ll have to watch his step. And I’ll be able to bawl him out. And he won’t dare to look where her body really is.’

  Gawber frowned, rubbed his chin and said: ‘And where is the body, then?’

  ‘Where do you think?’

  Gawber rubbed his chin. ‘I don’t know. Somewhere near the house?’

  ‘Got to be. That Saturday morning, the fourteenth, we weren’t able to find a hire car, a taxi or anybody else who had who taken her away from the house to the airport or anywhere else. I don’t think she went anywhere. She was dead by then and she’s around the house or gardens somewhere now.’

  Gawber suddenly piped up. ‘She’ll be under the gazebo.’

  Angel nodded and smiled. ‘That was the next place I thought of.’

  The sun was shining and it was quite warm for early May.

  The brand-new gazebo was a pretty white wooden circular building with a tiled roof. It stood proudly on top of a great mound of earth, with steps up the side from a lawn recently put down in rolls of turf.

  Angel and Gawber made the twenty-eight steps from the lawn. A less strenuous approach was from the house along a path on flagstones through an arbour of roses.

  Angel stepped on to the wooden floor of the gazebo. He took in a deep breath and gazed out in each direction in turn. It was in a high position that gave a long view to the south and west of the countryside leading to the Pennines, eastwards a closer view of Tiverton Hall, the lake, the tennis courts and the greenhouses, with farmland beyond, northwards, it was screened from the house by thick evergreen bushes and coniferous trees.

  ‘Do you think Chancey would approve of us trespassing in his garden, standing inside his brand new gazebo, sir?’

  ‘He’d be delighted. In fact, I bet he’s in his office now thinking that that’s exactly where he hoped I would be.’

  ‘You mean … walking over his wife’s grave? Katrina Chancey’s body is under here, isn’t she?’

  Angel peered at him. ‘You said she was, Ron.’

  ‘I thought you agreed?’

  ‘No. I didn’t say that. I said that that was the next place I’d thought of.’

  ‘Have you changed your mind then, sir?’


  ‘My mind wasn’t made up, but I believe that Chancey would think that. After the embarrassment over the fountain, the next place we would think of looking would be the gazebo.’

  ‘Is that what you’re going to do then, sir? Take this thing to pieces. It’s only timber. And get the bulldozers in?’

  ‘No.’

  Their attention was suddenly taken by a small van appearing through the main gate, travelling slowly and uncertainly along the drive towards the house. On the side of the van were the painted words: ‘Alf Palmer. Plumber, Electrician. The man you can trust.’ They thought nothing more of it, but it had disturbed their train of thought.

  Angel took a last look round the views. ‘Come on, Ron. There’s nothing else for us here.’

  Gawber stamped on the floorboards several times before turning to join him.

  They began the descent and saw another van of a different colour. It was also making an uncertain approach to the house. On the side of the van was painted the words: ‘Ken Podmore. Plumber. Bathrooms and kitchens fitted’.

  By the time they reached the bottom step another van had appeared through the main gate. It was yet another plumber’s van with a different name. Angel managed to flag the driver down. A man with three days’ growth of beard pulled down the window and said. ‘Got here as soon as I could. Couldn’t find you, mate. Are you Mr Clancey? It is cash, isn’t it?’

  Angel said: ‘The man’s name’s Chancey. We’re security. My name’s Mark Twain. What do you want?’

  The man pulled a face. ‘Don’t tell me it’s a hoax? I thought it was funny.’

  ‘What’s that?’ Angel said.