The Murder List

by Roger Silverwood

  Maisie got up. ‘Not at all, Inspector.’

  They went out.

  Angel then went down to the cells and found the duty jailer. ‘Is Grant all right? Are there any problems?’

  ‘He’s fine, sir. No problems at all.’

  ‘Good. Let me in. I want to talk to him a while.’

  The jailer unhooked a key from a board and went across to a cell with “Grant, Cliff. DOB. 28.6.85” written in white chalk on the door.

  Angel followed him.

  The jailer opened the trap window in the door and saw the prisoner laid out on his bunk, reading a very much thumbed newspaper. Then the jailer put the key in the lock and opened the door.

  ‘Lock me inside,’ Angel said.

  Grant put the paper down, sat up, swivelled round and put his feet on the floor.

  ‘Everything all right, Grant?’ Angel said.

  ‘What have I done to have the great and almighty Inspector Angel visiting me?’

  Angel stood at the foot of the bunk and looked squarely at the man. Grant looked washed, smart enough but he needed a shave.

  ‘I’ve had your fiancée, Maisie, here. She says she was with you last Friday night. By the way this chat is off the record. I am not wired up with any recording device, nor is anyone listening. I am hoping you will make my life simple and tell me the truth.’

  ‘I have always told you the truth, Inspector, and look where it’s got me.’

  ‘Maisie said she was with you at the shop last Friday night last, Tuesday night and Wednesday night and stayed until around eight o’clock the following morning. If it’s true, of course, it gives you a powerful alibi, if it’s false and we discover that it is false, it will make you look like a conniving monster.’

  Grant sighed and ran his hand through his hair.

  ‘There’s more,’ Angel said.

  He proceeded to tell him about the finding of rice in his clothes. Grant’s jaw dropped.

  ‘I have no idea how that could have happened, Inspector. We don’t even have dried rice in the shop.’

  Angel then said, ‘Miss Spencer also showed me the two stone engagement ring you had bought her. Where did you get it from?’

  The muscles in Grant’s face tightened. He seemed surprised that Angel knew anything about it. He looked down. ‘I bought it privately,’ he said.

  ‘Who from?’

  Grant’s eyes travelled to the left and then to the right, then back again. ‘A man. I don’t know who it was.’

  Angel didn’t believe him. ‘And how much did you pay for it?’ he said.

  ‘Forty pounds.’

  ‘Forty pounds?’

  ‘He wanted fifty, but I beat him down.’

  Angel thought it must have been the bargain of a lifetime.

  ‘I can’t say anything more about it, Inspector. I really can’t.’

  Angel reckoned that Grant couldn’t say anything more about it because it was a lie. Grant had come by it, by simply taking the ring off Michele Pulman’s finger after he had murdered her.

  He looked Grant slowly up and down. The policeman felt that he was looking at the murderer of four blameless women, including one of them being his own mother. He had stabbed her with an ordinary domestic steak knife after a row. Then, as he would have been the obvious number one suspect, he went on to murder another three women of similar age in exactly the same way to confuse the investigators. Then to mystify them even further, he had introduced rice, cauliflowers and four short verses of bad poetry.

  Angel left Grant and returned to his office.

  FIFTEEN

  Angel returned to his office to find Miss Cole sitting quietly and tidily facing his desk and DS Crisp leaning against the wall.

  When Angel entered, Crisp came away from the wall and said, ‘I took the liberty of showing Miss Cole into your office, sir, because I knew that you would be in a hurry to see her.’

  ‘Thank you, Trevor,’ Angel said as he passed in front of him to get to his desk. ‘You’ve done well.’ Then he looked across at Miss Cole. ‘Are you comfortable there, Miss Cole? Is there anything you would like? A cup of tea or—’

  ‘Nothing, thank you,’ she said.

  Angel reached his swivel chair and sat down. ‘Sorry you had to wait,’ he said. ‘We won’t waste any more of your time.’

  He stood up and said something quietly into Crisp’s ear. Crisp nodded and went outside. A couple of minutes later, Maisie Spencer came in, followed by Carter and Crisp. The latter closed the door. Maisie saw Emily Cole sitting, knees close together, back straight, facing Angel’s desk. She frowned then forced a smile and nodded towards her. Miss Cole nodded back politely.

  Angel said, ‘Do you two ladies know each other?’

  Both Maisie and Emily shook their heads.

  Angel looked quickly at them both and seeing no recognition in either’s face, he introduced them.

  Then he said, ‘I have brought you two ladies together, so that Miss Cole can see your beautiful ring, Maisie. Will you show it to her?’

  Maisie was delighted, and held out her left hand for Miss Cole to see.

  When Miss Cole saw the ring, she jumped out of her seat, rushed over to her, raised up her arms and in a loud voice said, ‘Oh my god! Oh my god! How did you come by it?’

  Maisie frowned. ‘My fiancé gave it to me. It’s very unusual, isn’t it?’

  ‘Can I have a closer look at it, please?’ Emily Cole said.

  Maisie pressed her lips into a fine line. Her eyes narrowed. She looked from Miss Cole to Angel then back. After a moment, she slowly slipped the ring off and passed it to the old lady.

  Miss Cole snatched it off her, turned away, held it up to her eyes and peered inside the ring shank, then tried to put it on her little finger. The ring was too small for her puffed up and ancient fingers. She gave the face of it another thorough examination then turned to Angel and said, ‘Yes. This is the ring, Inspector. No doubt about it.’

  Maisie, open mouthed, stared hard at Miss Cole.

  Angel held out his hand. Miss Cole reached over and put the ring into it. As soon as it touched his hand, Angel was reminded of his wedding anniversary in two days’ time and his need to get a move on if he was going to secure that solitaire.

  Maisie said, ‘What does she mean, Inspector? “This is the ring. No doubt about it”?’

  Angel turned to her and said, ‘Evidence has been given that this ring was stolen by being removed from the body at the time of the murder of Mrs Michele Pulman, Maisie. So that means I’ll have to take possession of it for the time being.’

  Maisie said, ‘But that’s not right, Inspector. Cliff gave me that ring. He wouldn’t take it off a dead woman and give it to me. It’s not right. He bought it, fair and square. He wouldn’t be party to any murder. I shouldn’t have my ring taken off me like this. Cliff is innocent of these murders.’

  Angel looked at her and said, ‘Miss Spencer, if it is proven that the ring has been bought fair and square and was not stolen then, of course, you will certainly be entitled to have it returned to you. But I wouldn’t hold out much hope.’

  Maisie’s eyes welled with tears.

  From her corner seat, Miss Cole said: ‘I wouldn’t hold out any hope at all, Miss Spencer. That ring by rights belongs in Mrs Pulman’s estate.’

  Maisie glared at the old lady. Then she turned back to Angel.

  ‘Oh, Inspector, this can’t be right. Nobody has ever given me a ring before.’ She covered her face with her hands. ‘Oh, can I see him?’ she added.

  Angel said, ‘No, I’m sorry, Maisie.’

  ‘We are engaged,’ she said.

  ‘It’s not possible yet, Maisie. I’m sorry.’

  ‘But he’s innocent, I’m sure of it.’

  There was a knock at the door.

  ‘Come in,’ Angel said. It was Ahmed.

  Angel’s face lit up. He looked up and down the young man. ‘Are you all right, Ahmed? Where have you been? I haven’t seen you since yeste
rday morning. Just a minute.’ He turned to the two women and said, ‘Thank you both for coming in.’

  They both looked at their feet. Neither seemed to have anything else to say.

  He rang reception, asking for a police constable to escort the two ladies to the waiting area near the front door of the station, then he rang the control room and organized transport for them.

  When the constable arrived at Angel’s door to collect the two women, Maisie burst into tears. Angel hated to see her so upset. He patted her gently on the back, but he could not find any words to comfort her. Miss Cole looked very solemn as she followed the constable and Maisie up the corridor.

  Angel closed the door thoughtfully. He returned to his chair behind the desk.

  ‘Right, Ahmed. Sit down and tell me what you’ve been doing,’ Angel said. ‘Those two jobs didn’t take you a full working day, did they?’

  ‘Well, collecting the Will from Barnes and Barnes was easy enough, sir,’ he said, putting a long brown envelope on the desk in front of him.

  ‘Ah good, thank you. What took you so long with checking up on Mrs Pulman’s late husband and late daughter?’

  ‘Well, sir, neither of the deaths were recorded in the Bromersley register. Nor the Barnsley register, nor the Leeds register—’

  Angel frowned. ‘Have you been to the Bromersley, Barnsley and Leeds register offices?’

  ‘Yes, sir. I finally found them in the Huddersfield register office. Then I went to the local newspaper offices where I eventually came across a pretty comprehensive report on the accident.’

  ‘And how did you get to those places?’

  ‘By bus and train, sir. There are quite decent services to those towns from here.’

  Angel smiled. ‘You shouldn’t have gone to all that trouble without ringing me back. At the time, it was important. Now it’s less so.’

  Angel brought him up to date with the arrest of Cliff Grant and an outline of the confirmatory evidence that had subsequently rolled in. He finished by saying, ‘As you’ve invested so much time and legwork in it, you might as well tell me quickly what you found out.’

  ‘Right, sir,’ Ahmed said taking out his notebook. ‘Well, one evening in January 2005, Dominic Pulman was taking his daughter, Annabelle, back to university on the country road. There had been a heavy fall of snow that day, and at a particularly treacherous corner, the car skidded. It went off the road, down a gully, through the ice at the bottom and into a body of water two metres deep. They were found two days later.’

  Angel pulled a grim face. ‘Sounds dreadful. You’d better write up your notes – even if it is only to justify your expenses.’

  ‘Right, sir,’ Ahmed said, then he ran his fingertips across his chin a few moments. ‘There is one thing I’d like to ask about the arrest of Cliff Grant, sir.’ Angel looked at him and nodded. ‘Well, I thought that you were thinking that the killer was female, sir. I wondered what had changed your mind. That’s all.’

  Angel rubbed an eyebrow with his fingertips. ‘It’s like this, Ahmed,’ he said. ‘Science is never wrong, is it?’

  Ahmed frowned. He looked at Angel. He wondered if he was asking a trick question.

  Angel sniffed and in a louder voice said, ‘Well, Ahmed, is science ever wrong?’

  ‘Scientific tests, conducted in laboratory conditions can’t be wrong, sir, I suppose, but deductions based on the results of those tests can be wrongly interpreted.’

  ‘That’s exactly the point. The graphologist said that the writer of the verses was a man, middle-aged, and emotionally unstable.’

  ‘And do you agree with that, sir?’

  ‘Well, it shows that he knows his job.’

  ‘So we are definitely going with male, are we, sir?’

  ‘We have to, Ahmed. We are logical people, aren’t we? I have enough evidence to put Grant away for a very long time, whether it is in a prison or a secure hospital.’

  Ahmed shrugged slightly and held his open hands palm side upwards. ‘But that doesn’t explain the grey-haired woman, sir.’

  Angel’s nose turned upward and he said, ‘No, I know it doesn’t. Look, Ahmed, you’d better go and write up your notes. I don’t want you telling me that I have probably got everything wrong. I can do that for myself.’

  Ahmed grinned. ‘Right, sir,’ he said.

  He went out and closed the door.

  Angel ran his hand through his hair. He sighed, then he looked across his desk to see what he must do next. There was no time to lose. If Grant was not the murderer, then the lives of two other women were still at risk. Then he saw the long brown envelope that Ahmed had brought in from Barnes and Barnes. He reached out for it. It wasn’t sealed. He shook out the contents. It contained several large sheets of paper fastened together at the corner with a piece of pink tape. He straightened the papers out and saw he heading, “The Last Will and Testament of Michele Gloria Pulman”.

  Angel read it quickly. It was really very simple and it had only been made six months ago. Everything was bequeathed to Emily Cole provided that she was still in the employ of Mrs Pulman at the time of her death.

  Angel rubbed his chin. The words of Gerard Barnes, her solicitor came back to him. Barnes had said, ‘Mrs Pulman was a very wealthy woman.’

  He put the document down, pushed the swivel chair away from the desk, tipped it back as far as it would go and stared up at the top of the office wall and the ceiling. He closed his eyes and tried to think clearly. This was proving to be probably the most difficult case he’d ever taken on. He was still a thousand miles away from knowing what a cauliflower, a throat and mouth filled with rice, and an elderly woman with grey hair had to do with …

  Then he had a brainwave.

  He opened his eyes, sat forward in the chair, pulled open a drawer, took out a copy of the local telephone directory, and whizzed down the Ws until he came to the entry for ‘Watts & Wainwright, Church St, Chrtd Survyrs’.

  Ten minutes later, Angel was in the offices of Watts & Wainwright.

  ‘Mr Wainwright? I’m Inspector Angel. Thank you for seeing me promptly. Is there somewhere we can go where we can talk privately?’

  ‘Yes, of course, in my office,’ Wainwright said, leading him through. ‘It’s through here, Inspector. This is it. Please sit down.’

  ‘Thank you,’ Angel said.

  ‘My receptionist said you were interested in 6 Orchard Grove, Inspector,’ Wainwright said. ‘How may I help you?’

  ‘Yes. I understand that the owner, Miss Emily Cole, is selling it?’ Angel said.

  ‘It is for sale, Inspector, but it is not owned by Miss Cole. She is the tenant.’

  Angel’s eyes narrowed. He pursed his lips. ‘Where is she moving to?’ he said.

  ‘I don’t know. She will have made her plans, I suppose. She was given six months’ notice to quit on 1st December of last year. So she will be out by 1st June.’

  ‘I don’t suppose she will be looking forward to moving at her age?’

  ‘She doesn’t. Recently she asked for an extension beyond the 1st June. We have put it to the vendors, Hawker Properties PLC, and they are considering it, but frankly, I don’t hold out much hope.’

  ‘What was she hopeful of achieving by extending the notice period?’

  ‘Well, erm … Can I speak to you in confidence, Inspector?’

  ‘We are speaking in confidence, I hope, Mr Wainwright. It applies both ways.’

  ‘Of course. Of course. Well, she said that she could possibly raise the capital for an outright purchase if she was given a little more time.’

  Angel rubbed his chin. That was significant news.

  Wainwright said, ‘But as she had been having considerable difficulty keeping up with the monthly rent, the vendors do not consider her as a serious prospective cash purchaser of the property. Besides, there are several other parties interested in the property, so I expect to conclude a sale quite soon.’

  ‘I understand,’ Angel said.

&nb
sp; He took his leave of Wainwright and drove straightaway to 6 Orchard Grove. It was easy to find because of the For Sale sign protruding out at the front.

  From the outside, Angel thought it was a very fine-looking small, detached house, which had been built in the thirties, and was located up a short, quiet road in the affluent district of Bromersley. He parked the car at the side of the road, walked up the garden path through the long, immaculately maintained weed-free borders to the front door and pressed the bell push. He heard the bell ring out in the house. He waited. But there was no reply. He tried again and waited.

  Next door, he heard a car engine. Then it stopped. There was the slam of a car door. Shortly after that, a man’s voice called through a thick privet hedge.

  ‘Hello there. Can I help you? Are you looking for Miss Cole?’

  Angel looked toward the privet in the direction of the voice and said, ‘Yes, sir. Where are you? I can’t see you.’

  ‘Can you come to Miss Cole’s front gate?’

  ‘Yes, of course,’ Angel said, then he made his way along the garden path back towards his car. He reached the gate, opened it and saw the man next door standing with a hand on his drive gate. He gave Angel a big smile.

  ‘Just been out to do a bit of shopping,’ he said. ‘Lucky I saw you. You would have been standing there all day. I saw her leave early this morning in a taxi. She had two big suitcases. Looks like she’s gone away for a holiday.’

  Angel frowned, introduced himself then said, ‘Do you happen to know where she was going?’

  ‘No idea,’ he said. ‘I called out to her as she was locking her front door, and she pretended not to have heard me, but I know she isn’t deaf. She seemed eager to get away and was not prepared to be delayed with friendly chit chat. She’s a strange old woman. My wife and I have tried to be good neighbours, heaven knows.’

  Angel thanked him. He got in the BMW, made a three point turn out of Orchard Grove and when he reached the main road, he reckoned cogs were falling into place. In the first two murders, an old woman with grey hair in a sheepskin coat, who “might not be the full shilling,” was spotted leaving the crime scene. That could easily have been Cole. If he could find the sheepskin coat in her house or in her possession, it would be sufficient to arrest her. Also, she could have easily planted an empty Monty’s lager can into Mrs Pulman’s waste bin. And Cole was also in the best possible position to have been able to steal the two stone diamond ring which, contrary to what she had said, Mrs Pulman may have removed from her finger years ago, dumped in a drawer and forgotten about.