The Murder List

by Roger Silverwood

  ‘What could you do that for?’ Angel said.

  Ashton pulled a few faces, and ran a hand across his mouth and chin. ‘I can’t get anywhere near £500, Michael,’ he said. He blew out a long breath heavily, had another look at it and said, ‘I haven’t much margin on it. The best I could do would be £800.’

  Angel’s nose went up. It was beyond him. ‘Eight hundred pounds,’ he said. He nodded, pursed his lips and looked down. Then he looked up and said, ‘Well, thanks very much, Daniel. Have you anything else?’

  ‘Not in the jewellery line, Michael,’ he said. ‘Keep popping in. I might get something in that you like. How is the lovely Mary, by the way?’

  ‘Oh, she’s fine,’ Angel said.

  Ashton smiled. ‘You were lucky to get her, you know. I dated her twice, but she didn’t really want me.’

  It was Angel’s turn to smile.

  ‘How’s work?’ Ashton said. ‘I see you soon cleared up the murder of that actress, Joan Minter. Are you on a murder at the moment?’

  ‘Yes,’ Angel said and he quickly told him the basic facts about the Gladys Grant case.

  Then he took his leave and drove the BMW onto Cheapo’s car park to collect Mary as arranged. He had to put on the car sidelights as it was getting gloomy due to the dark clouds and the rain. The car park was packed with cars and vans. He eventually found a place and parked the car there. The rain was coming down from every direction due to the powerful wind that was howling like a dog. As he pulled on the handbrake, at the other side of the car park, he saw an elderly lady struggling to pack groceries into the back of her car. Then suddenly, apparently without her realizing it, a can or a tin fell out of the old lady’s car onto the tarmac.

  Angel switched the windscreen wipers back on so that he could see better.

  Being on a slight slope, the can began to roll away from her. A young tall man appeared from somewhere, chased after the tin, stopped it and picked it up. The rain was exceptionally heavy at that time. The young man had no hat or umbrella. Angel thought the tin was a can of Monty’s lager, a heavily advertised brand being trialled in South Yorkshire. He ran back with the tin to the old lady to return it to her. She was protected from the downpour somewhat by being under the tailgate of her car. At first, when she looked at the tin she seemed to hesitate as if she doubted that it belonged to her. The man appeared to have to explain. Eventually she opened up a shopping bag and the man dropped it in. The young man then quickly disappeared among the many cars and vans on the car park.

  Angel pursed his lips, deliberated and was cheered when he considered that true chivalry in Bromersley was not dead after all.

  Then he saw his wife at the store entrance holding a plastic shopping bag. She was looking round for him. He quickly got out of the car and waved to her. She saw him and waved back. He had to hold onto his hat. He quickly crossed the busy car park towards her.

  ‘There you are,’ he said with a smile.

  He held his hand out for the shopping bag.

  She gave it to him. ‘Thank you, darling,’ she said.

  He guided her into the car, closed the door and got in himself.

  Then, when they were out of the downpour, he wrinkled his nose and peered into the shopping bag. ‘What’s in here?’ he asked. ‘Something for tea?’

  FOUR

  It was 8.28 a.m. the following morning, Wednesday 6 May.

  Angel dashed into his office to see if anything important or urgent had come in. There seemed to be nothing on his desk that couldn’t wait.

  The phone rang. He reached out for it. ‘Angel,’ he said.

  A well-spoken genteel voice he rarely heard said, ‘This is Mrs Kenworthy, Inspector Angel.’

  She was the Chief Constable’s secretary. She knew everything that was going on in the station before anybody else and was carefully listened to when she spoke.

  Angel put on his best Sunday manner and said, ‘Good morning, Mrs Kenworthy, and what can I do for you this beautiful spring morning?’

  ‘Well, Inspector,’ she said. ‘It’s regarding your application to see the Chief Constable. You may know that he is attending an Interpol conference in Florence later this week?’

  ‘Yes,’ he said, which wasn’t the truth at all, but he thought it might speed things along if he simply answered in the affirmative.

  ‘Well, of course he is exceedingly busy preparing for it, but he has a window later this morning at 9.15, if that is convenient to you. I know it’s very short notice.’

  ‘That’s fine,’ Angel said.

  If the Chief Constable wants to see you, he always dictates the time and place. His secretary was merely going through the motions. If the big cheese has a window open, better close it for him quick, before he catches pneumonia.

  ‘I will be there, Mrs Kenworthy. Thank you. Goodbye.’ He replaced the receiver, noted the appointment in his desk diary, and tried to remember what he was doing before the phone rang.

  There was a knock at the door.

  ‘Come in,’ Angel said.

  It was Detective Constable Ahmed Ahaz from Bromersley CID.

  Ahmed was Angel’s right hand man. He considered him to be keen, industrious and thoroughly reliable.

  ‘I saw you come in, sir,’ he said.

  Angel nodded. ‘Anything happen here yesterday that’s important, Ahmed?’ he said.

  ‘No, sir. A couple of cases of house-breaking, and a domestic. That’s all.’

  Angel blinked. That was unusually quiet, he was thinking, when the phone rang. He reached out for it.

  ‘Angel,’ he said.

  He could hear heavy, laboured breathing from the earpiece. He knew it was Superintendent Harker.

  ‘Ah, Angel,’ Harker said. ‘There’s been a triple nine from a woman in a flat just behind the Civic Centre. Flat 22, Monserrat House, Monserrat Street.’

  ‘I know it, sir,’ Angel said. ‘It’s round the corner from Canal Street.’

  ‘The caller said that her friend, Fay Hough, is dead. Call timed in at 0830 hours. Control has sent a patrol car to secure the scene. The rest I’ll leave with you.’

  ‘Who reported it, sir?’

  ‘The victim’s friend, a Mrs Ivory,’ Harker said then the line went dead. He had terminated the call.

  Angel looked up at Ahmed. ‘Another suspected murder,’ Angel said as he scribbled the address on the back of a used envelope. He passed it to him. ‘Here,’ Angel said. ‘Inform Dr Mac. He’ll know what to do. And ask Inspector Asquith if he’ll organize security there until further notice. Do that on the CID phone then come back, will you?’

  Ahmed nodded. ‘Right, sir,’ he said and he was gone.

  Angel picked up the phone and tapped out the SOCO number. Don Taylor answered. Angel told him of the situation and gave him the address. ‘You’d finished at Grant’s shop anyway, hadn’t you?’ he said.

  ‘No, sir,’ Taylor said. ‘We haven’t done the search of the house and shop.’

  Angel pursed his lips. ‘I’ll see to that,’ he said. ‘You get out to Monserrat House ASAP. I’ll see you there later.’

  Then he ended the call and immediately tapped in another number.

  ‘Yes, sir?’ It was DS Flora Carter.

  Angel told her about the body at Monserrat flats and gave her the address. Then he said, ‘Have you seen Trevor Crisp?’

  ‘No, sir. He’s probably still on the door to door around the Grant murder.’

  ‘Right,’ he said. ‘I want you to find him and assist him, if necessary, to finish those off, then both of you go to Monserrat and begin the door to door there. They will all be flats. Just do the flats on the same floor.’

  ‘Right, sir,’ she said and he replaced the phone.

  Angel pushed back the swivel chair, leaned back and sighed. Then he rubbed his chin and wondered who or what he might have missed.

  There was a knock at the door.

  ‘Come in,’ he called.

  It was Ahmed. ‘That’s all OK, si
r.’

  ‘Great stuff,’ Angel said. ‘Now I want DC Scrivens, ASAP, Ahmed. Find him for me, will you, lad?’

  ‘He was in CID, sir. I’ll see if he’s still there.’

  Angel came out of the Chief Constable’s office on the top floor of the police station. He seemed to be pleased with the outcome and as he made his way down the stairs to the ground floor, he found himself subconsciously singing ‘I feel pretty’ from West Side Story. He received a strange look from a young civilian girl from the general office, who was coming up the stairs. That made him think about the words he was singing, which resulted in him stopping the singing abruptly.

  He peered into CID, saw DC Scrivens, and said, ‘Ted, I want you to accompany me to Grant’s house and shop to search the place. Are you busy with anything that can’t wait?’

  ‘No, sir,’ the young man said.

  ‘Right. We’ll go in my car.’

  Five minutes later, they arrived in the BMW outside Grant’s shop on Sebastopol Terrace.

  The shop customers and curiosity mongers had dwindled away. The street was deserted. There were no other cars or vehicles around. Angel was pleased to see that the sign in the window of the shop door indicated that the shop was open.

  Angel and Scrivens went into the shop. The shop bell peeled out its loud ringing. Angel went through the door in the counter and Scrivens followed. When they arrived in the little living room, they saw Cliff Grant laid on the settee. He had his eyes closed. He was dressed, except for his shoes, and was wearing the blue smock his mother used to wear in the shop. His eyes opened.

  ‘I thought I heard the shop bell,’ he said. ‘Was it you, Inspector?’

  Angel nodded and smiled.

  ‘I was just resting my eyes,’ Grant said. ‘That shop bell hasn’t stopped ringing since eight o’clock this morning. Everybody asking me about my mother. And wanting to buy stuff. And I don’t know where anything is, and I don’t know the price of it. I’ve just had to guess.’

  Grant saw Scrivens for the first time. ‘Who is this?’

  Angel said, ‘This is a colleague of mine.’

  Grant’s eyebrows shot up. He sat up on the settee, swivelled round and put his feet into his slippers strategically positioned on the floor. ‘What do you want?’ he said. ‘I thought you had finished here yesterday.’

  ‘We have come to search the property, Mr Grant,’ Angel said.

  Grant pulled his head back in surprise. ‘What for?’

  ‘Standard procedure in a murder case,’ Angel said. ‘We won’t have finished here until we find out who murdered your mother.’

  The shop bell went.

  Grant stood up and made for the shop. ‘Well, if you must, I suppose you must.’

  He went out.

  Angel turned to Scrivens. ‘You start upstairs. You know what we’re looking for, the usual things, gold bullion, diamonds or precious stones, unusually large quantity of jewellery, drugs, cash, any items that look as if they might be the proceeds of a robbery or a forgery, and, in this instance, any quantity of cauliflowers and rice.’

  Scrivens frowned. ‘Cauliflowers and rice, sir?’

  83 Sebastopol Terrace was only a small house so Angel didn’t expect it to take long for the two of them to carry out a search. They made a thorough job of it. They looked in the loft above the landing, and in the old coalhouse outside the back door. They checked all the room floors. Where any floor boards were loose, they were taken up, underneath was searched and the boards were replaced. In the tiny bathroom, the bath was boxed in. Scrivens carefully removed the hardboard panel from the long side and, crouching on the floor, looked at the farthest reaches of it with a torch, but there was nothing.

  The shop bell rang occasionally, which kept Grant off the settee some of the time. As Angel searched the shop itself, he noticed that Grant had a pleasant repartee with the customers, most of whom he had grown up with and knew him well enough to call him Cliff. Also, he noticed that with his good looks and personal charm to a certain age group of women and girls, if he didn’t have the item in the shop that they had asked for, he was able sometimes to woo them into buying an alternative item that was already in stock.

  Angel saw that there was a fair sprinkling of rice on the clean, linoleum covered floor around and underneath the place where the body of Gladys Grant had been found.

  In a quiet moment when there weren’t any customers, Angel turned to Grant and said, ‘Is the shop floor usually like this?’

  Grant looked down at the sprinkling of rice. ‘It’s usually clean enough to eat off, Inspector,’ he said. ‘But I haven’t had time. Ma would have swept that up straight after it happened.’

  Angel nodded. He was sure that was the case. His mother would have done exactly the same.

  ‘Where are the packets of rice?’ he said.

  Grant’s eyebrows knitted together. ‘I don’t know if we have any. I’ve seen tinned rice pudding somewhere, but not dry like that.’

  They scoured the stock round and about the tiny shop. After a few minutes, Grant said, ‘No, Inspector. I don’t think we have any. And I’ve not been asked for it since … since … erm, since I came back.’

  ‘And cauliflowers, did your mum stock cauliflowers?’

  ‘Shouldn’t think so, Inspector,’ Grant said. ‘At least, not on a regular basis. You see, this tiny shop is only for the convenience of its customers. I recognize that. I shouldn’t think any of our customers bought the bulk of their weekly grocery needs from my mother. This shop is to top up what they forgot, or what they’ve run out of, or what they didn’t want to hump from the supermarket, or what they suddenly have a fancy for. They look on the shop as an extension of their own larders. Ma would never have thought she could possibly have competed with Cheapo’s on the vast range they have as well as the price. But she’s only round the corner for a couple of hundred households, is most likely open when the whim takes the householder, and she doesn’t have to spend a lot at a time walking up and down aisles and queuing at cash tills.’

  Angel understood only too well and he continued looking behind a pile of boxes of breakfast cereals.

  At 11.30, Angel and Scrivens had finished the search. Neither of them had found anything incriminating. They hadn’t found anything that might have been illegal and might have led to a prosecution of any kind, nor any dried rice nor cauliflower, nor anything that would have assisted with the investigation into Gladys Grant’s murder. Angel wasn’t pleased. But he was satisfied that they had been thorough and that nothing had been overlooked.

  Angel and Scrivens came together in the sitting room.

  Angel’s mobile began to ring. It was Mac. It must be important. He almost never phoned Angel. He preferred to communicate by email.

  He reached into his pocket. He opened the phone. Angel put it to his ear. ‘What is it, Mac?’

  ‘Michael!’ the Glaswegian said. ‘I’m at this crime scene at Monserrat House. And I’ve uncovered some very interesting facts you’ll want to know about.’

  Angel blinked. He noticed that Mac sounded breathless. Angel thought he must be excited about something. It was unusual for him to become animated about the discovery of anything in his capacity of pathologist.

  ‘What’s that, Mac?’ Angel said.

  ‘There are too many similarities for it to be coincidental.’

  ‘Spit it out, Mac. What are you talking about?’

  ‘This body, here at Monserrat House, a Mrs Fay Hough. Do you know that she has three stab wounds in the heart, a cauliflower in her lap and a few grains of rice on her chest?’

  Angel’s jaw dropped open. He squeezed his eyes shut.

  ‘Are you there, Michael?’ the doctor said.

  ‘I’m here, Mac. I’m here,’ he said. ‘I heard you. I was thinking.’

  ‘Aye. I can believe that,’ Mac said. ‘There’s something else.’

  ‘What’s that?’

  ‘I’ve found a note. It’s from the murderer. Handwritten. St
icking out of her nightdress.’

  Angel’s heart began to beat faster. ‘A note?’

  ‘Aye. That’s what I said.’

  Angel sighed.

  ‘Shall I read it to you?’ Mac said.

  Angel was thinking. He knew that murderers who leave notes for the investigator are usually psychopaths, who kill because they like killing, and are always difficult to fathom because they are so unpredictable.

  Angel breathed out a long breath and said, ‘I’ll come straight over.’

  Monserrat House was only two minutes in a car from Sebastopol Terrace.

  Angel stopped the BMW at the foot of the off-white twelve storey high block that had been built in 1960, supposedly to abolish the pressing housing shortage in Bromersley. He went into the lobby, entered the lift and pressed the button. The lift cage glided silently up to the second floor. Almost opposite the lift doors was a uniformed constable standing outside the door of a flat.

  The constable saluted him. Angel went up to him, acknowledged the salute and said, ‘Good afternoon, Constable. Is this flat 22?’

  ‘It is, sir.’

  ‘Who is in there?’

  ‘Dr Mac, DS Taylor and three other SOCOs, sir,’ he said.

  Angel nodded. ‘Thank you,’ he said. Then he pressed the door handle down and the door opened. He noticed the crowbar marks on the door itself, and on the door jamb both above and below the lock, it was clear to see how access to the flat had been made.

  Angel went inside. The door opened straight into a big room, with big windows. It had a table in the centre of the room with six dining chairs neatly tucked underneath. There were several easy chairs, a settee and a television.

  Don Taylor came up to him in his white sterile overalls, holding a clipboard.

  Dr Mac was standing at the entrance to a room with his bag in his hand. He looked as if he was about to leave. He had discarded his whites, and changed out of his boots back to shoes.