‘There’s nothing more I can think of, Ron,’ he said, holding his hands out over the suitcase and shaking his head.
‘No,’ Gawber said, still staring at the clock dial and listening to the ominous tick of the clock.
‘Thirty seconds,’ Angel said. He put a hand on his chest and prayed.
‘We should get under the table, sir. It’s the best shelter there is,’ Gawber said crouching down and scrambling underneath.
Angel grunted, but he couldn’t take his eyes off the clock face. All the syrupy mud had now run off the dial into the workings of it. It simply needed one minuscule spec of grit to find its way between a cog and a sprocket, or between any two meshing gear wheels, and the clock would stop, the bomb wouldn’t detonate and he would have to wait for another time to find out whether his final destination was heaven or hell.
‘Come on.’ Gawber said from underneath the stone table. ‘There’s plenty of room.’
Angel thought that with a charge of six sticks of dynamite, it wouldn’t make much difference in that small cellar whether he was under the table or stood where he was.
There were now only ten seconds left. He watched the slim, black, second hand, edge jerkily round the dial. Fifty-five, fifty-six, fifty-seven, and then it stopped.
Angel stared at it, hardly daring to believe his eyes. He held his breath. He listened for the ticking; that too, had stopped.
It had worked.
He gave a very heavy sigh. And then another. Then he bent down and looked under the table. He saw Gawber rolled into a ball, gripping his torch in one hand, the other hand over an ear and his eyes shut.
He nudged him. ‘Come on, Ron. I think we’re OK.’
Gawber opened his eyes and blinked. ‘Did it work?’
Angel grinned. ‘I always said I’d find a better use for that cough medicine of yours.’
Gawber unrolled himself, stood up and stretched his arms. Then he looked cautiously inside the open suitcase. ‘Wow! Only three seconds to go?’
Suddenly they heard several sets of footsteps outside and voices.
Angel squeezed Gawber’s arm and said, ‘Shh!’ He didn’t know if Schuster or some other villain had returned for some reason.
They listened at the steel door. They heard a familiar voice. ‘DI Angel are you there? It’s Ahmed, sir. Are you there?’
Angel and Gawber looked at each other and smiled.
‘The cavalry has arrived.’
Angel battered on the steel door. ‘In here, Ahmed. Behind this steel door. Can you unlock it? Is the key in the lock?’
‘No, sir.’
Gawber sighed.
Ahmed and a squad of uniformed worked quickly to release the two men. They had to get crow bars and a welder to release them. The whole operation took more than an hour.
Angel told Ahmed to phone the UXB unit in York and tell them that there really was a bomb this time, a homemade unexploded bomb!
Ahmed nodded. He was also told to organize a guard of the place until the army arrived. Then Angel and Gawber rushed out of the cellar and up the steps to discover that all four tyres of Angel’s car had been slashed. Angel got a patrol car to take them to the police station.
‘That was a near miss, sir. I’m glad to be away from that place.’
‘Schuster is nothing if he’s not thorough,’ Angel said as the driver pulled onto the main road.
Gawber looked very tired.
‘I suppose Schuster would be thinking that his plan had worked,’ Angel said. ‘That his bomb had gone off, and that we are dead.’
Gawber nodded.
‘So what would he be up to now?’
‘He would know he couldn’t stay any longer at the shop, sir. He’d be wanted by the police. He’d really want to get away from the place.’
‘Right away from the place. Well away from Bromersley too.’
‘Yes, sir.’
‘But he doesn’t have a car, and he doesn’t drive. That’s why he didn’t take mine.’
‘So he’d need transport. If he proposes a long journey, he’d need a taxi either to a train station, say Doncaster or Leeds, or to an airport, Leeds/Bradford or Robin Hood.’
‘Exactly. Shouldn’t be difficult. Crack on with it. Must catch him before he gets out of the country. Must find the taxi he took.’
‘Right, sir,’ Gawber said.
The patrol car drove up to the front of the station.
‘Wait here for us, lad,’ Angel called to the patrol-car driver as he opened the door.
The two men ran up the steps to reception and were waved through the security door. They dashed into Angel’s office. Angel pulled the local directory out of a drawer. There were six taxi firms in the town and four others in villages a few miles out. Angel decided initially to discount the ones out of town. Gawber noted the top three numbers and dashed off to the CID office to use the phone. Angel took the bottom three and began tapping in a number.
In four minutes, Gawber came running into Angel’s office all smiles. He had found Schuster. A driver at the third taxi firm he had phoned had picked up a man answering Schuster’s description with a young woman outside the old mill building about an hour ago and had taken them to Leeds/Bradford airport. In fact, the dispatcher had spoken to the driver by radio while Gawber was on the line. He had told him he thought they were a honeymoon couple. They had two suitcases with them.
Angel beamed and jumped up. ‘Great,’ he said, then frowned. ‘Bring your handcuffs,’ he said meaningfully and he reached into a drawer, took out his own pair and pushed them into his pocket.
‘Right, sir.’ Gawber went back to his desk to collect his and the two men dashed out of the offices and up the corridor. They jumped into the car, instructed the driver to take them to the airport as quickly as possible, then sat back in the seat to catch their breath.
‘Honeymoon couple, eh?’ Angel said thoughtfully.
‘That’s what he said, sir.’
A few miles later, Angel said, ‘You know, Ron. We’ve been had. The phone call from the desperate young woman was a good bit of acting, to get us into that cellar.’
‘Aye, to get shot of us,’ Gawber said.
‘Damn well nearly succeeded too.’
‘Who is the girl?’
‘The only girl I can think of is the one who dropped the candle-snuffer while coming over Mace’s garden wall.’
‘Yes, sir. Slim, black hair, boys’ socks.’
‘That’s her. Who the hell is she?’
Thirty-five minutes later, their driver pulled into the car park at Leeds/Bradford airport. Angel and Gawber showed their ID and found themselves in the departure lounge. They scanned it quickly, but there was no sign of Schuster with or without a young woman. They went up to the departure gate, showed their ID to airport police and after some argument and questioning they were allowed through. They rushed out onto the tarmac. There were two planes loading passengers. Short queues of people were dribbling slowly across the tarmac onto the steps to the planes. He wondered if they were too late.
Suddenly, Angel spotted a dapper little man with a beautiful dark-haired girl on his arm crossing the short distance to the bottom step of a plane.
His heart leapt. His pulse raced. ‘They are there, Ron,’ Angel said, ‘I’ll take Schuster. You take the girl, Flavia Radowitz!’
‘Just thought you’d like to know that the BDU arrived about an hour ago and are dealing with the UXB at the mill, sir,’ Ahmed said as he placed the cup of tea on the desk in front of him.
Angel frowned. ‘What’s the BDU? Have you started making these shorthand initial letters up yourself now?’
‘No sir,’ he said, looking surprised. ‘Bomb Disposal Unit.’
Angel grinned. ‘All right, Ahmed. Thank you.’
Gawber knocked and came in. Ahmed went out and closed the door.
‘At a rough estimate, sir,’ Gawber began, ‘there’s £80,000 worth of old gold, antique jewellery, Georgian silver and ivory b
its and pieces in David Schuster’s suitcases. He says it’s all been acquired honestly through twenty-two years trading in his shop.’
Angel nodded and said, ‘I’m inclined to believe that much.’
‘He could have set himself up very well indeed with Flavia Radowitz in Rio de Janiero.’
Angel took a sip of the tea. ‘If she didn’t take it off him first,’ he grinned over the top of the cup.
Gawber smiled. ‘You knew it was her, didn’t you, sir?’
‘I thought it was. I couldn’t understand why a girl would want to wear boys’ socks, then it came to me. It was a way to cover that big tattoo on her ankle. A tattoo of a tarantula that size, in that place, would have identified her in a flash.’
Gawber nodded. ‘Of course.’
The phone rang. He reached out for it. ‘Angel.’
It was Harker. ‘You’d better come up here. I’ve got some news for you.’
Angel wrinkled his nose. Now what? ‘Right, sir.’ Angel dashed up the corridor, knocked on his door and went in.
‘Aye, come in. Sit down, Michael.’
Angel blinked. The honey monster was being nice. He called him by his first name. There must be a catch somewhere. He knew to be wary.
‘Yes, sir?’
‘Ah yes,’ Harker said, rubbing his bony hands together like an undertaker at a meeting of the nonagenarian society. ‘I’ve had a phone call from Lord Truscott.’
Angel pursed his lips. He couldn’t quite recall the name. He was certain he hadn’t met him. He raised his eyebrows. ‘Oh yes, sir,’ he said, to keep the story going.
‘Most thankful he was. He’s sending you a cheque, he says. A reward, he said, for finding two most valuable paintings of his.’
Angel remembered. Matthew Elliott had mentioned him. The naked ladies with the fat backsides. His face brightened. ‘Very good of him, sir.’
‘Yes,’ the monster said. ‘For £3000.’
Angel’s face glowed. ‘£3000!’
‘Of course, I thanked him profusely on your behalf, and had to explain to him, as I know you would have done, that members of the force cannot accept personal reward for doing what, after all, is their duty, and that you would, of course, donate it to the Bromersley Police Charity.’
Angel wrinkled his nose. He was desperately thinking of some reason why an exception might be made to negate the rule in this case, but he couldn’t actually think of anything.
‘So, Michael, when you get the cheque, pay it into your account and then make a cheque out to Bromersley Police Charity for £2,800 and everybody will be satisfied, won’t they?’
By the Same Author
IN THE MIDST OF LIFE
CHOKER
THE MAN IN THE PINK SUIT
THE IMPORTANCE OF BEING HONEST
MANTRAP
SALAMANDER
SHAM
THE UMBRELLA MAN
THE MAN WHO COULDN’T LOSE
Copyright
© Roger Silverwood 2007
First published in Great Britain 2007
This edition 2012
ISBN 978 0 7198 0777 0 (epub)
ISBN 978 0 7198 0778 7 (mobi)
ISBN 978 0 7198 0779 4 (pdf)
ISBN 978 0 7090 8389 4 (print)
Robert Hale Limited
Clerkenwell House
Clerkenwell Green
London EC1R 0HT
www.halebooks.com
The right of Roger Silverwood to be identified as author of this work has been asserted by him in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988
The Curious Mind of Inspector Angel Page 16