The Murder List

by Roger Silverwood

  Angel nodded several times. Grant wasn’t certain that he believed him.

  ‘Very well,’ Angel said. ‘And what time did you arrive at the hairdresser’s?’

  ‘Must have been about 8.40. It took me all of forty minutes to walk from here to there.’

  ‘Which hairdresser’s did you go to?’

  ‘Harry Rosen on Market Street. I was his first customer, I think, this morning. Anyway, I didn’t have to wait. As I went in, I sat down in the chair and he started cutting straightaway. Never happened like that before.’

  ‘How long were you in there?’

  ‘Ten or fifteen minutes at most. Then I went to the Job Centre. I was in there about ten minutes, I suppose. But I wasn’t timing myself. I looked along the cards at Job Opportunities. Either I wasn’t qualified for it, or it was a long way away, in Ethiopia or Elgin, or I needed my own car, or it was part-time, or I had to have a German shepherd dog, bring it home, look after it, feed it and work with it. That was for security work all night at the Glass Works. I couldn’t do any of those, so I went to the desk and asked if all the available jobs they had were on show. I was told that they were, so I came out.’

  Angel looked up from his notes, nodded and said, ‘That would be about ten or fifteen minutes past nine. Then what did you do?’

  ‘I went to the other end of Market Street to Jeeves, the jeweller’s, and bought this watch.’ He pulled up the sleeve of his jacket and showed Angel a bright, shiny yellow watch with matching bracelet.

  Angel looked at it and said, ‘Very nice, Mr Grant.’

  Grant beamed. ‘Yes,’ he said. ‘It cost me four hundred and twenty pounds.’

  ‘Where did you get all that money from?’ Angel said.

  Grant blinked. ‘Ma gave it me. She told me to go and get a watch, and get a good one, she said.’

  ‘And how long were you in the jeweller’s?’

  ‘Oh, about ten minutes, I should think.’

  ‘That would take you up to about twenty to twenty-five minutes past nine.’

  ‘Then I came back here,’ Grant said. His mood changed. He looked at the rocking chair. ‘To this.’ Then he looked down. ‘Ma gone. Now it’s me on my own.’ He stood up, pushed his hands in his trouser pockets and meandered around the rocking chair.

  Angel thought he saw Grant’s eyes moisten.

  Angel said, ‘Making your way back here … must have taken twenty or twenty-five minutes. That means you would have been back around nine forty or nine fifty. The time now is ten past ten. That’s right, you’ve been here with me about twenty minutes, haven’t you?’

  ‘I don’t know how I’m going to manage, Inspector,’ Grant said as he pulled and twisted a tuft of his hair. ‘I mean, I don’t know anything about running a shop.’

  Angel frowned, pursed his lips and said, ‘The principle of business is the same. You make or buy something that people want for, say, two pounds. You sell it for three, making sure that your expenses aren’t more than a pound.’

  But Grant wasn’t happy. ‘That’s not all there is to it, Inspector,’ he said, starting another circuit round the rocking chair. ‘I need to know what customers want, and where to get it from.’

  Grant said, ‘Your mother’s suppliers will not desert you. They’ll soon be in touch.’

  ‘You’re right, Inspector, I suppose.’

  ‘I understand that you’ve been away some time and that you only returned yesterday.’

  ‘Yes. I had not been getting on very well with my mother. She kept picking on me. I could never do anything right. So I left home to try to get on my feet. It was much more difficult than expected. Because I hadn’t got a job, I couldn’t get a job. Also, because I had left home, I couldn’t give a permanent address. I didn’t know it could be so tough.’

  ‘So how long were you away, and where did you actually go?’

  ‘I was away eight months. I went all over the place. It was the same wherever I went.’

  Angel frowned. ‘Well, eight months. How did you manage?’

  ‘I didn’t. I finished up sleeping rough. That was awful.’

  ‘I’m sure,’ Angel said. He ran his fingers thoughtfully across his forehead. He wondered whether it was worthwhile pressing him further on his activities.

  ‘We’ve nearly finished for now, Mr Grant. There’s one question I must put to you. Did your mother have any enemies?’

  ‘Well, she was pretty forthright, Inspector. I suppose over the years, she would have made a few enemies. Nobody could compete with the sort of tongue lashing she could dish out, particularly if she thought somebody was trying to get the better of her. But I wouldn’t have thought that those sort of skirmishes would have resulted in her murder. But I think that I should tell you, Inspector, that my mother was a law unto herself. For instance, in her opinion, there was no woman good enough for me. If ever I spoke warmly about one, my mother would always decry her and run her down. I could never bring a girl home. She would never have had a warm or even polite reception from my mother. So I never did. In her eyes, there was no female in Bromersley, probably the whole country good enough for me. I kept telling her that the queen had got a husband, but I couldn’t possibly have changed her. Consequently any courting I did had to be on the sly.’

  ‘So you are not aware of anybody who would want to murder your mother?’ Angel said.

  ‘Definitely not.’

  ‘Now what about your father? Was your mother divorced or was she a widow?’

  ‘She was divorced from him. I know very little about him. Apparently she was a dancer on the stage when she was younger and she met a man, he was a singer, Philip Grant. They had a whirlwind romance, married in 1984. I was born a year after in 1985. Shortly after I was born they fell out and he left her, then she heard he had died. She told me about it. I don’t ever remember seeing him.’

  Angel’s pen was working overtime recording the details. ‘Where did he die and when?’

  ‘Oh, about ten or fifteen years ago. I can’t be sure. I think he was living in Leeds at the time he died.’

  ‘What was his first name, and your mother’s maiden name?’

  ‘My father’s name was Philip and my mother’s maiden name was Hemingway.’

  ‘Right. Thank you. And have you seen anything here now that wasn’t here before you went out? Has the murderer left anything behind?’

  Grant’s face creased. His eyes narrowed. ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘Cigarette packet. Used tissue. Glove. Anything. It’s not unusual for criminals to be sloppy.’

  ‘I haven’t noticed anything.’

  ‘Has anything been stolen?’

  Grant frowned. ‘I dunno,’ he said. ‘I haven’t had a chance to look round, have I?’

  ‘If you notice anything unusual, don’t touch it and let us know. Where did your mother keep her money?’

  ‘The notes she kept in a big old leather wallet, which she always had with her. In the daytime it was in her overall pocket and at night it was under her pillow.’

  Angel stood up. ‘I’ll inquire,’ he said. ‘Excuse me.’

  He went out of the room and into the shop.

  Grant heard exchanges between Angel and some others, then the Detective Inspector returned with a big, old, brown leather wallet. It had edges of paper money protruding through worn out cotton stitches and was held together with two wide rubber bands. He passed it over to Grant. He hesitated, then took it and looked at it as if he shouldn’t be touching it.

  Grant knew that Angel was watching him. He wriggled uncomfortably and licked his bottom lip. Eventually he offered the wallet back to Angel and said, ‘It looks all right to me, Inspector.’

  ‘Better look inside it, Mr Grant,’ Angel said. ‘Hadn’t you?’

  Grant wrinkled his nose. His eyebrows drew closer together. He began to bite his lip. He looked at Angel who nodded encouragingly.

  Grant hesitatingly eased the two rubber bands. He pulled them off and put them on the sett
ee.

  Angel thought they were roughly cut pieces of an inner tube from a bicycle.

  Then the wallet opened in Grant’s lap. It was bursting with paper money, predominately twenty pound notes, sorted into amounts of five hundred pounds held together by red elastic bands.

  Angel took in the fact that there was a minimum of nine bunches of twenty pound notes plus a few loose wraps of twenties and some ten pound notes, in all amounting to around £5,000.

  Grant stared at it.

  Angel wondered what Grant was thinking. He must be pleased that there was that money to give him confidence and enable him not to worry about where his next meal was coming from and so forth, but his mother had to die for it to happen.

  Grant picked up the elastic bands and rolled them round the closed wallet.

  ‘Is it all there?’ Angel said.

  Grant gave a little shrug. ‘I don’t know how much she had, but—’

  ‘I meant is that all there is? Or is there somewhere else where she keeps her money?’

  ‘Oh yes. The coins she kept in an old Nuttalls’ Mintoes tin in that cupboard,’ he said, pointing at the sideboard. Then he added, ‘I wonder.’

  He put the wallet on the settee, stood up and crossed the room. He opened one of the sideboard doors and saw the Nuttalls’ Mintoes tin, took it out to the table and prised off the lid. It was almost full with bagged silver and copper. He took out a few bags and peered into the bottom of the tin. There was an amount of mixed coins. He returned the bags he had taken out.

  Angel watched him.

  Grant looked satisfied. ‘That’s all right,’ he said. He replaced the lid, put the tin back in the cupboard and returned to his seat on the settee.

  ‘She would empty the till each evening. She’d put the notes in her wallet and the loose change in the tin. If there was enough, she’d bag it up in proper bank bags, and, as much as possible, she paid the wholesalers’ delivery men and travellers’ with the change and kept back the notes.’

  Angel nodded, then pointing to the wallet of money he said, ‘You’d better take charge of that. I should pay it into your bank for safety’s sake.’

  Grant looked at the wallet. He’d never held that much money. A smile slowly developed.

  Angel said, ‘You’ll have a funeral, and your accountant and probably your solicitor to pay, and you don’t know what bills your mum might have left behind.’

  ‘That’s one thing I can be certain of, Inspector. My mother won’t have left any bills unpaid. She always paid on time. That was one of her rules.’

  Angel nodded and smiled. ‘Right, Mr Grant, will you empty your pockets onto the table?’

  Grant frowned. Then he looked up and said, ‘What for?’

  ‘You can refuse if you want to, but I would think it awfully suspicious if you weren’t willing to cooperate.’

  Grant’s pulse began to race. His face coloured up. ‘It would make me feel a suspect, Inspector. Don’t tell me you think that I could have …’ He didn’t finish what he had wanted to say.

  Angel said, ‘You told me you were the only living relative you knew of. You also said that your mother had told you that she had left everything of hers to you. So you had the most to gain by her death.’

  ‘I also had the most to lose,’ he said quietly.

  Angel heard him, pursed his lips and said, ‘It’s standard procedure, Mr Grant. We search all close relatives, those who live on the same premises and especially those who will inherit. You qualify on all three counts.’

  Grant sighed noisily, stood up and began to empty his pockets on the table.

  He took out a spotlessly clean white linen handkerchief still folded into four, a key, a packet of twenty cigarettes, a box of matches, two one pound coins, and a receipt from Jeeves the jeweller’s. Then he patted his pockets, ostensibly to check that they were all empty and sat down.

  Angel looked at the contents on the table. He opened the cigarette packet and noted that it contained fourteen cigarettes, then checked the matchbox and noted that it was almost full. He shook his head. ‘Is this the lot?’ he said.

  ‘Yes,’ Grant said.

  Angel sighed. ‘Stand up,’ he said.

  The muscles around Grant’s mouth tightened then relaxed. He slowly got to his feet.

  Angel stood up and came up to him. ‘Put your arms out.’

  Grant grudgingly obeyed.

  Angel then patted the man’s chest. He appeared to find something on his right breast. Angel’s face tightened. He stepped back, pointed to it and said, ‘Whatever it is, take it out.’

  Grant pursed his lips, then he slowly reached into his inside pocket, took out a wodge of paper money in an elastic band and dropped it onto the table.

  Angel looked at it, sighed then shook his head. He resumed the search. He patted Grant’s jacket pockets, his trouser and hip pockets until he was satisfied that he was not concealing anything else.

  Angel wrinkled his nose. ‘Right,’ he said. ‘Sit down.’

  Grant slumped onto the settee. He ran his hand through his hair.

  Angel reached out to the table for the wodge of paper money. It had a red elastic band round it, just how it was wrapped in Mrs Grant’s wallet.

  Angel sat down and counted the money. ‘There’s £370 there,’ he said.

  ‘I’d forgotten about that,’ Grant said.

  Angel sniffed. He then reached out for the receipt from Jeeves the jeweller’s. He looked at the figure at the bottom. He turned to Grant and said, ‘It says £120. You told me it was £420.’

  Grant smiled. ‘No, Inspector. You must have got it wrong. I said £120.’

  Angel’s eyebrows shot up, his jaw muscles tightened and a red mist visible only to him came up from his chest. If there was one type of person he could not stand, it was a liar. He lunged out with his leg and kicked the underside of the table. It was like a twelve-inch gun being fired.

  The contents of Grant’s pockets bounced on the table top.

  Grant’s eyes flashed. His mouth dropped open. His heart pounded away like a Salvation Army drum.

  Taylor dashed in from the shop to see what had caused the noise. Everything seemed all right to him, so he went back into the shop.

  ‘Don’t lie to me, lad,’ Angel bellowed. ‘It won’t do you any good. I’ve been lied to by experts and it didn’t do them any good.’

  Grant spluttered. ‘I thought I had said £120, Inspector. Er … erm … sorry if you misunderstood me.’

  But Angel was angry. ‘I didn’t misunderstand you, lad,’ he roared. ‘I can see exactly what happened. So let’s stop playing silly buggers! You stole £500 out of your mother’s wallet. Bought yourself a watch for £120, went to the hairdresser’s, he charged you eight quid, and that’s why you have £372 in your pocket.’

  ‘I didn’t steal any money, Inspector,’ Grant said. ‘My mother gave me the money.’

  ‘Did she? Are you sure? I suppose you are going to tell me that she also gave you the cigarettes and matches?’

  Grant’s face changed. ‘Well, yes,’ he said. ‘Er, well, no.’

  Angel kept up the pressure. ‘Don’t you know? Which was it? Yes or no? Or don’t you know the difference? You are spewing out that many lies you wouldn’t know the truth if it jumped out and bit you.’

  ‘No,’ Grant said. ‘I admit it. I took those. I was desperate. I had to have a fag.’

  ‘That’s better,’ Angel said more equably. ‘When did you take them?’

  ‘In the night. I woke up to go to the bathroom. I couldn’t get back to sleep.’

  ‘Where did you get them from?’

  ‘From the shop.’

  ‘That’s better. A lot better. You see, telling the truth is far less difficult than you thought. And it’s absolutely painless.’

  Angel looked directly at him.

  Grant looked down at his feet. His mouth was dry. He licked his lips. His heart was pounding faster and louder. He suddenly became aware that he was breathin
g rapidly and unevenly so he concentrated on bringing it under control.

  ‘You see,’ Angel said. ‘It didn’t hurt, did it?’

  Grant didn’t look up.

  ‘But you had every intention of lying to her,’ Angel said, ‘and telling her the watch cost £420, didn’t you? After all the receipt could easily be falsified. It only needed two strokes of a ball point to change the one into a four, to make the £120 into £420? Then you would have been £300 in pocket, wouldn’t you?’

  The muscles in Grant’s jaw tightened. This was too much.

  ‘All right! All right!’ he yelled. ‘There was no other way of getting any money of my own together. I have a life to live. I’m thirty years of age and I have nothing. I wanted something for myself for a change. But I didn’t steal the £500. Ma gave me that money, voluntarily. It meant something to her to make me look smart and well off. She had bought me a gold watch for my eighteenth birthday and I had lost it in a stupid card game.’

  ‘Are you sure?’ Angel said. ‘You’d better be careful from now on, lad, that you tell me the truth.’

  ‘I have told you the truth.’

  ‘You weren’t very sure a minute ago, when I asked you about the cigarettes, were you?’

  ‘Yes. I told you, I took them.’

  ‘You stole them,’ Angel said, ‘from your own mother…’

  Grant looked down. He clasped his hands together tightly. He sniffed and went up to his top pocket for his handkerchief. It wasn’t there. It was on the table. He reached out for it. Shook it open and wiped his nose. Then nasally he muttered something.

  Angel said, ‘What’s that, Mr Grant? You said something.’

  Grant looked up briefly. His face was red. He wiped his cheeks and eyes. ‘You wouldn’t understand,’ he said.

  ‘I’ll tell you what I do understand,’ Angel said. ‘I understand that you and your mother, after a re-union last night, had a row … a big row, probably about money. You didn’t take kindly to being pushed around by her for the rest of your life. You went to bed, but you didn’t sleep very well. The row continued this morning. You couldn’t do or say anything right. You had reached your limit. You couldn’t stand it anymore. You resolved to change everything. When your mother went into the shop, you got a kitchen knife, followed her in and stabbed her. Then you took out her wallet, lifted the first bundle of money to hand, which happened to be £500, replaced the wallet, looked round for something to hide the stab wounds, threw a cauliflower at her and left.’