The Man in the Pink Suit

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The Man in the Pink Suit Page 13

by Roger Silverwood


  ‘I’ve met her, yes,’ Angel said, trying to look uninterested. He leaned back in the easy-chair and nodded encouragingly.

  Mrs Tassel waved a finger for emphasis.

  ‘Well her father was a first violinist when I was a second. We were with the same agency, so we often played at the same concerts and things, accompanying choirs and soloists and so on. Anyway, there was a big do at a town hall near Leeds. I had just arrived. Alec Dooley was already there. So was Frank Jones. He was the announcer, compère or whatever they call them these days. He and the director were talking. They seemed to have had an argument and he then stormed off the stage. On his way to his dressing-room, he brushed past a trolley of instruments and music stands and knocked them over. Mr Dooley’s violin was among the pile so naturally, he rescued it and opened the case to see that it wasn’t damaged, then he went into Jones’s dressing-room to tell him off. Jones wasn’t at all apologetic. Instead he told him to get out and pushed Alec, who was only a little man, towards the door. Alec lost his balance and landed on the floor. He put his hands out in front to save himself and the violin and in the process broke his wrist.

  ‘I went with him to the hospital in Leeds. It was a bad break. A collis fracture I think they call it. Jones never apologized or offered to pay or anything. Alec was in plaster for six weeks. He never played again. In fact, I always said it was the beginning of the end for him. Indeed it was. He died on Christmas Day two years ago.’

  *

  Angel left Mrs Tassel not altogether satisfied with the interview. All he seemed to have discovered was that Ingrid Dooley had a strong reason to dislike Frank P Jones. He wondered how that fact fitted into the puzzle. He was of the opinion that Ingrid had not been entirely frank with him, and he still couldn’t put his finger on where he had met her before. It was annoying him. He went straight home.

  As it was Friday, his wife Mary had cooked finny haddock for their tea. He watched a bit of television and went to bed. It had been a difficult day. The ultimatum from Superintendent Harker had now expired. Come Monday, he would have to push the Jones case into court whether it was ready or not. There was such a lot to attend to do. He slept the sleep of the just and woke at six o’clock as fresh as the frost on his lawn.

  He started early. He left home at 7 a.m., went to the office to clear some of the outstanding post and then at 8.30 a.m. drove straight up to the Mawdsley Estate. He pulled up outside the little shop run by Kathleen Docherty and where Irish John and their little boy Liam lived. There were no customers in the little shop; Kathleen was doing what she always seemed to be doing: stacking bread into shelves to make more room. She looked up from behind the counter.

  ‘Oh it’s you again, Inspectour,’ she said unnecessarily loudly in a hard Belfast twang. ‘Inspectour Angel, isn’t it? How are you, Inspectour?’

  Angel heard a door close somewhere behind her. Without a word, he nipped smartly out of the shop and turned into the ginnel. He ran down to the end in time to see Irish John straddled across the wooden fence that marked off the extent of the tiny, forsaken garden from the field beyond.

  ‘Just the man I wanted to see,’ Angel called out.

  ‘Oh? I’ll be coming back to you then, Inspector.’

  Irish John cocked his leg back over the fence. He was wearing his suit and old trilby and, unusually, a collar and tie.

  ‘I was just laving. I was taking a short cut. I was going to … er … er —’

  ‘Work?’

  The man smiled. ‘I cannot tell a loy, Inspector. I don’t have a job yet. It isn’t easy to get work when you’ve just come out, you know. I was just on my way to see about a job, though. I was hoping to get an interview tomorrow.’ He nodded enthusiastically.

  He came up to Angel who was standing by the back door.

  ‘Tomorrow’s Sunday.’ Angel said lightly.

  Irish John smiled again. ‘Yus. Or next week.’

  ‘Well, I won’t hold you up, John. Just a few questions. I wouldn’t want to hinder your getting work. I know how eager you are to get back into employment.’

  John came up very close to the inspector and spoke in a soft voice with one eye on the backdoor.

  ‘To tell you the trute, it’s Kathleen that wants me to get a full-time job. I would be happy enough helping her in the shop, and delivering orders and that, but no, she wants me to get a nine-to-five job with a regular income and a pension. A proper job, she says, like her brother. He works in the shipyard, you know. A foreman. Yus. Well, when I came out, I thought she’d want me near her. You know. All the time. And keeping an eye on Liam. I can play wid him. And keep him out of mischief. But she says she wants me to get a job so that she knows where I am. When I was in Strangeways, she says, I was no help to her there, but at least she knew where I was. There’s no understanding women, Inspector Angel, is there. I mean, we are supposed to be getting married next month. You’d think she would be wanting me to be by her side, wouldn’t you now?’

  Angel sighed and then smiled, then he thought of Irish John with that woman in the short red skirt, drunk on the pavement outside the Feathers yesterday and considered what a shifty, oily little toad he was. Some Romeo. Looked as if Kathleen Docherty was a suitable match for this little man. She was certainly big enough and intelligent enough to handle herself in an even contest with him.

  Irish John came closer. ‘She’s with chile, you know,’ he said, in a quiet voice. ‘We’re going to have another. A friend for Liam. So very soon we are planning to tie the knot, that we are.’ He nodded with a smile. Then he added, sensitively: ‘I’m really very fond of her, you know, Inspector.’

  Angel was in a situation rare for him: he didn’t know what to say. He pulled away from the man’s warm nicotine-laden breath.

  ‘I intend to do right by her,’ John continued with several nods. ‘For better or for worse.’

  Angel wanted to press on. ‘I’ll leave you to settle your love life, lad. I want to ask you about your father.’

  John licked his lips and then looked down and shook his head slowly.

  ‘He’s passed on you know, a while ago now.’

  ‘I know.’ Irish John nodded, paused, then, looking up to the sky, said: ‘A good man, gone to meet his Maker.’

  ‘He was a liar and a thief and a conman,’ said Angel.

  ‘True, true,’ Irish John said without flinching. ‘But he was a good father to me. He was responsible for teaching me all I know. He died in a convent in County Donegal surrounded by the nuns. They were praying for him. You see, he’d repented for all his mistakes and the priest there had given him absolution. He had taken to doing all sorts of work around the old building. He rewired the place for electricity, and put in a central heating-system for the old mother superior who had the arthritis on her knees. It was all that praying, you know. Yes. Mmm. He had done all sorts of jobs for them since his conversion.’

  Angel shook his head, rubbed his chin and said, ‘Have you any onions?’

  John’s jaw dropped momentarily and then he said busily: ‘Yes, sor. I’m sure Kathleen’s got some in the shop. What do you want? A pound? Two pounds?’

  ‘Oh, they’re not for me, John.’

  ‘Oh?’

  ‘For you, lad.’

  ‘For me?’

  ‘Yes. To go with that tripe you’ve just handed out. Put the onions with it and you’ll have a lovely panful of tripe and onions.’

  John gave him a long, slow look, his mouth slightly open. Angel shook his head.

  The man licked his lips and then smiled.

  ‘You’re joshing me, Inspector. You’re joshing me. You knew I was kidding you, didn’t you?’

  Angel gave him a straight look.

  ‘Your father died on the twentieth of August, 1990, aged fifty-five, up in Scotland, a place called Helensburgh,’ he said reproachfully.

  ‘That’s roight. That’s roight. My, you are well informed this morning, Inspector.’

  ‘Oh I’m always well informed, Joh
n. You should know that.’ Irish John beamed and nodded.

  ‘Oh yes. There’s not much gets past you, Mr Angel,’ he said slyly in that slow, soft imitation Irish drawl he had perfected.

  ‘Yes. That’s right. And you see I happen to know what you were up to yesterday afternoon.’

  ‘Let me see, now where was I?’

  ‘Between three o’clock and four.’

  ‘I was here.’

  ‘No you weren’t.’

  ‘I was here!’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Kathleen will tell you. I was here.’

  ‘No. I know exactly where you were and who you were with.’

  There was a pause.

  ‘Ah!’ Irish John said as the penny dropped. His mouth froze in the open position. His eyes moved across their sockets twice before coming to rest on Angel’s beaming face eight inches from his nose.

  Irish John moved back a step. He licked his lips and then consciously changed the shape of them into a smile.

  Angel nodded slowly. Irish John looked towards the house door and then back.

  ‘Mmm. You wouldn’t be wanting to spread it around would you, Mr Angel?’

  ‘No,’ Angel lied, knowing full well that Irish John knew he was lying. ‘It’s not important,’ he went on. ‘What is important is what you did with the Walther PPK/S 32 that your father gave you just before he died.’

  TEN

  Detective Inspector Michael Angel stood in his vest and pants, in front of the mirror in the bathroom in his bungalow on the edge of the South Yorkshire town of Bromersley. The transistor radio on the window ledge was banging out a racket made with guitars and drums interspersed with a fast-talking obsequious man who stumbled through tit-bits of vital local news, about a man who had fallen off his bicycle in the High Street, a woman who collected used bus tickets and an interview with a boy genius, who had a conker that was a twenty-niner.

  Angel didn’t hear what the DJ man was saying. He had too much on his mind. He was thinking that tomorrow morning, he would have to parcel the case, Regina v. Jones and push it up to the CPS. The superintendent was certain to arrange a special sitting of the magistrates’ court to put the man in the pink suit on remand in his absence, and therefore, out of the jurisdiction of Bromersley police. If he did that, Angel knew he would not be able to question him even informally and, unravelling the truth in the case would become much more difficult.

  He was about to apply shaving foam to his face when he stopped and stared closely into the glass. He was attracted to the handsome face, the thick shock of shiny dark hair and the blue eyes, and he wondered if there really had been any improvement since he had given up the fags and the booze. After he had grimaced and pouted several times, to tighten the skin, he snarled at the mirror and made a decision: there was nothing for it, he would have to give up pork pies and chips as well!

  He applied the soap and was about to make the first stroke down his cheek with the razor, when it happened. Ping! It came to him like a flash of lightning. It came from nowhere. He suddenly knew where he had seen Ingrid Dooley before. The scene came flooding back like a three-second film-strip. He could see her in the waiting-room at the police station, wiping tears from her eyes with his handkerchief. He was delighted that his memory had at last spewed out the little scene from a year or two back. He was impatient to get to work the following morning, so that he could arrange to see Ingrid Dooley, and, at the same time, try to keep out of the way of the superintendent.

  The morning of a new week came soon enough, and as he drove rapidly past the front of Bromersley police station, he was pleased to note that the media circus of TV vans and cars, and the skate-board boys had gone and he wondered what sort of a commotion there would be outside Bromersley General Hospital. He turned into the station yard and made for his office.

  As he was unfastening the buttons of his raincoat, he glanced across at the high pile of fresh post delivered to the in-tray, and growled something that sounded like ‘sugar’, but was not as sweet.

  Ahmed knocked on the open door and came in with his head down carrying another handful of letters.

  Angel pulled up the swivel-chair and dropped into it. He took an envelope out of his pocket on which he had made some notes over the weekend and consulted them.

  The young cadet silently packed the letters safely into the in-tray. Then he remained standing in front of the desk. He looked first at the inspector then down at his feet. There was clearly something wrong. His face was not its usual smiling self. He didn’t make any effort to leave. Angel sensed something was wrong and looked up.

  ‘What is it, lad? Not been taking your syrup of figs?’

  ‘No sir,’ he muttered.

  ‘Just made your last will and testament?’

  ‘No sir.’

  Angel sighed and shook his head.

  ‘Well, are you going to tell me, or do I have to guess best of three?’

  Ahmed looked up. ‘Erm … no sir. On Saturday, I went all round the town, sir. I haven’t missed a single florist’s shop. I’ve even been in greengrocers that might have sold flowers, and nobody has asked for a pink carnation on its own in the last fortnight.’

  Angel smiled across at the small sad face.

  ‘Right lad. That’s all right then.’

  Ahmed’s mouth opened. ‘That’s all right, sir?’

  ‘If you’re sure you’ve not missed anybody.’

  ‘Oh no,’ said Ahmed decisively. ‘I haven’t missed anybody.’

  ‘Right then.’

  Ahmed smiled broadly.

  Angel nodded. ‘I’ve got another job for you. In fact I’ve got several.’

  The young man looked like a hundred-yards sprinter on starting-blocks.

  ‘What sir? What?’

  ‘First. I want you to run through that videotape of Jones and find me all the frames showing his face full front that you can. There aren’t many, I know. He’s wearing a hat and sunglasses, but the best you can find. Then blow them up as far as they’ll go, print them off and bring them in. All right?’

  Ahmed nodded.

  ‘Then I want you to find out who is on duty at the hospital and find out from him how Jones is, and let me know. Then I want you to get me DS Gawber on the phone. He’ll be at home.’

  ‘Yes sir.’

  Ahmed started counting on his fingers.

  ‘Then I want you to find DS Crisp, he should be at Jones’s house, I expect with Dr Mac. I want him back here pronto.

  ‘Then I want you go back in the records, and see what you can find out about a man called Dooley. He died in the street outside Pewski’s the undertakers on Sheffield Road about two years ago. His daughter is Ingrid Dooley.’

  Ahmed’s face lit up. ‘Anything else, sir?’

  ‘No.’

  Ahmed made for the door. ‘Right sir.’

  ‘Yes,’ Angel called after him. ‘Make us a cup of tea. Now. And hurry up.’

  The young cadet dashed out of the office.

  Angel looked after him, shook his head and smiled. Then he reached over to the in-tray, began unloading it and groaned. The telephone rang.

  ‘Angel.’ It was the girl on the switchboard. ‘There’s a person-to-person call to you from California in America. Couldn’t get the name of the caller.’

  He frowned. ‘America? California?’

  ‘That’s what he said, Inspector.’

  ‘Right. Put him on.’

  There was a click.

  ‘Detective Inspector Angel speaking. Who is that?’

  A very loud American voice came over the line.

  ‘This is Hiram P Zabonski of Epic Film Studios, Hollywood. Is that Michael Angel, chief of homicide?’

  ‘Yes. I suppose so.’

  ‘The detective investigating the Man in the Pink Suit inquiry?’

  ‘Yes, sir. What can I do for you?’

  ‘Ah. I’m very pleased to speak with you, sir. We’ve heard of you, Michael, here in Hollywood, and what a top-not
ch job you are doing in the inquiry. And I’d like to offer you a starring part in a movie we are going to start shooting over here in three or four weeks’ time.’

  Angel’s jaw dropped. ‘I think there must be some mistake.’

  ‘No. No. There’s no mistake. I’ve seen you on the English take of CNN news. You have a very magnetic personality, Michael. The sort audiences like. Now what I’m proposing is a contract for ten thousand dollars a week, ten weeks minimum.’

  Angel grinned then shook his head.

  ‘Oh? Erm … I’m a policeman. I can’t just drop everything.’

  ‘I know. I know. But this is the offer of a lifetime, Michael. This film would put you up there with such greats, like Peter Falk and Raymond Burr. Don’t worry about any contractual employment contracts you may have with the English police. We will buy them out. Won’t cost you a penny. All you have to do is pack a bag and get on a plane here. We’ll pay the fare. I can have the fare telegraphed to you today. You’ll get it in the morning. Are you married?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘You can bring your wife too. That’s OK.’

  ‘I can’t do that.’

  ‘Why not?’

  ‘I can’t. What’s the part? What’s the film about, anyway?’

  ‘It’s a great screenplay. Great. You’ll love it. It’s about the Man in the Pink Suit who shoots a man in broad daylight and gets away with it.’

  Angel pulled a face. ‘How does he get away with it?’

  ‘We don’t know that, Michael. The story isn’t played out yet, is it?’

  ‘Oh?’ Angel was nonplussed.

  ‘Your role is that of the detective, of course. I want you to replay exactly the part you have been playing since Frank P Jones shot this computer mogul. It’s powerful drama!’

  Angel sighed. ‘No. I couldn’t do that.’

  ‘It’ll be a superb script. I’ve got the six best writers in the world working on it. It’s a terrific part for you. Why not?’

  Angel wasn’t going to America for ten weeks, he knew that.

  There was a short silence, Angel said: ‘I’m sorry, but I can’t.’

 

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