The Man in the Pink Suit

by Roger Silverwood

  *

  Angel pushed into the interview room, looked round, wrinkled his nose and threw a file of papers on to the table.

  ‘Phew! What a stink!’ he said to Ahmed and quickly crossed to open a window. ‘Have there been some flowers in here, lad? You don’t want flowers in an interview room. This isn’t the BBC. We’re not interviewing Catherine Zeta Jones.’

  ‘It’s nothing to do with me, sir.’

  A lady in a blue overall carrying a bucket and mop passed the door. Angel saw her and leaned out.

  ‘Excuse me, love. Have you been putting flowers in here?’

  ‘No I haven’t,’ she said resentfully, in a voice like Robin Cook having a flu jab. ‘Not since one of your big nobs complained.’ She put the bucket down. ‘You try to make things nice, and what do you get?’

  ‘Oh, you do make them nice, very nice,’ Angel said quickly. ‘Everything shines like a new penny. But there’s always a smell in here.’

  ‘There’s no pleasing you lot,’ screeched the cleaner. ‘Well I won’t bother trying to make it nice in there then. In fact, I won’t even bother going in. I’ll cross that room that off my list! You can scrub it out and polish it.’

  She picked up the bucket and started down the corridor. ‘I don’t have to take all this,’ she muttered, as she trundled along. ‘It wasn’t like this at the Co-op. I cleaned there for eight years and never a complaint. What’s the matter with them? You do your best and try and make it nice and see what happens.’

  Angel stood in the doorway, scratching his head. Ahmed watched the woman shuffle along, her voice echoing down the corridor.

  ‘Men are queer enough, but police are worse. I’ve never liked this job. I should have taken that job at the library. I wouldn’t have to put up with all this. It’s disgraceful. If my mother was alive, she’d turn in her grave.’

  They watched her disappear round the corner, then looked at each other. Angel went back into the room and sniffed the air.

  ‘Mmmm. That’s better. Right lad. Show Miss Dooley down.’

  ‘Yes sir,’ he said and ran up the corridor.

  Angel sniffed approvingly round the room, switched on the tape-machine, muttered something into it and opened the file. The long-legged lady in thigh-boots and with jet-black hair appeared at the door. Angel stood up.

  ‘Miss Dooley. Please come in.’ He indicated the chair.

  ‘Thank you,’ she said with a smile that showed off her dimple. ‘It’s Inspector Angel, isn’t it.’

  ‘That’s right,’ he said affably, and then he deftly mimed to Ahmed to close the door and take a place at the table. ‘We are recording this, Miss Dooley. It’s just a formality. Thank you for coming in to see me.’

  ‘It’s a pleasure, Inspector,’ she said as she took a chair and lowered a Harrod’s shopping bag on the floor by her side. ‘Now what did you want to see me about?’

  ‘I want to ask you about the murder of Charles Tabor on Monday the seventeenth of January. It was at approximately eleven a.m. Where were you at that time?’

  ‘I don’t know exactly. I know I was on an errand to the dispatch office, to do with …’ She broke off. ‘You have already asked me about this, you know, Inspector.’

  ‘I know. I know. But if you wouldn’t mind going through it again.’

  ‘Well, I had to organize the dispatch of a part in the post that day as the customer had been promised.’

  Angel ran his tongue across his lips. ‘And where were you when the actual shot was fired, then?’

  ‘I didn’t hear it. I must have been on my way back to the office.’

  ‘So you were downstairs?’

  ‘Yes. I must have been, because when I got back it had only just happened. Mr Tabor had been shot. The girls were in hysterics. I asked one of them what had happened. She told me. I dialled 999. Then I phoned Mark’s office on the factory floor. He wasn’t there, so I told the girl to find him and ask him to come up urgently. That’s about it.’

  ‘And when did Mark Tabor arrive?’

  ‘Oh, he came up a minute or two later, and then after what seemed an endless time, the ambulance men arrived and then you were close on their heels.’

  ‘Then what did you do?’

  ‘I met you. You asked me what I had seen, and you wanted to use my office. Don’t you remember? I went for a walk.’

  ‘It was so cold.’

  ‘It was.’

  ‘What time did you get back?’

  ‘About five o’clock.’

  ‘Was the office empty?’

  ‘No. Mark Tabor was there.’

  ‘Where were the safe keys?’

  ‘On the desk, I suppose. I can’t say I noticed.’

  ‘So you walked about the estate in all that weather for more than an hour?’

  ‘I suppose so.’

  ‘You didn’t go anywhere else?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘The other members of the general office had gone home.’

  ‘Yes. Apparently.’

  ‘Leaving Mr Tabor’s office unoccupied.’

  ‘Mark Tabor was there.’

  ‘All the time?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘How do you know?’

  ‘Well, I don’t.’

  ‘He was at the hospital, with his father.’

  ‘Oh yes.’

  ‘All the staff left early on that day.’

  ‘I believe so.’

  ‘And what time did you leave?’

  ‘I left with Mark Tabor.’

  ‘And what time would that be?’

  ‘About half past five.’

  ‘Mark Tabor had to lock up that night. There was nobody else?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘What did you do while he was checking the doors and the lights?’

  ‘I didn’t do anything.’

  ‘You just sat in your office and did nothing?’

  ‘Well, yes.’

  ‘I’ll tell you what I think you did,’ Angel said coolly. ‘You took the keys off the desk, opened the safe, took out all the money in there then locked it up again. In the region of a hundred and five thousand pounds and put it somewhere safe, probably your desk and some in that bag you have down there, which you took home that night. The following day, you took home the rest.’

  ‘No,’ she said firmly, her big eyes staring at him.

  ‘Yes,’ he said with a nod.

  ‘You can’t prove it.’

  ‘No. Not yet. You hated Frank P Jones, didn’t you?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘It was his fault your father lost his ability to play the violin. Wasn’t it?’

  ‘Who told you that?’

  ‘Mrs Tassell.’

  ‘Oh!’

  ‘She told me that he pushed your father over.’

  ‘He broke his wrist. It stopped him earning a living,’ she said angrily. ‘It shortened his life! If it hadn’t been for Frank P Jones he would have still been here!’

  ‘Thereafter, you had to support him. Financially, I mean.’

  ‘I had to support him in every way. He lived with me. He was depressed. He used to drink. I was the only breadwinner.’

  ‘Things were difficult?’

  ‘Very.’

  ‘But your father had some savings?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘A pension?’

  ‘No. Unemployment pay, that’s all.’

  ‘And your earnings at the factory.’

  ‘Yes.’

  Angel rolled his tongue round his mouth. ‘How did you manage to buy that brand new car? Must have set you back thirty thousand pounds. That solitaire ring. There’s five thousand. Those boots three hundred.’

  ‘I had my savings.’

  He smiled wryly. ‘What you saved out of your salary from Charles Tabor?’

  ‘Yes.’

  Angel sighed, then slowly shook his head. ‘It won’t do, Ingrid. It won’t do. It doesn’t add up right.’

  He noticed her chest heaving. She
licked her lips and stared right back at him. Angel pressed on.

  ‘Charles Tabor must have been paying you remarkably well.’

  ‘Enough.’

  ‘Perhaps you had a relationship that was more than employer and employee?’

  She gave the slightest shudder. ‘No. Certainly not,’ she replied. Her eyes flashed wildly. ‘No.’

  Angel knew that was the truth for certain, or she was an excellent actress. He thought he would try another tack.

  ‘You’re a very handsome woman, Miss Dooley.’

  She didn’t react. He went on: ‘How tall are you?’

  She hesitated. ‘Five feet, eight inches.’

  ‘Do you know how tall that man in pink is?’

  She looked mystified. ‘I have no idea.’

  ‘He’s five feet, eight inches.’

  She shrugged.

  Angel nodded. ‘What a coincidence.’

  THIRTEEN

  Angel was looking closely at the photographs stuck on the wall of his office. He flitted from one to the other and back to the larger coloured photograph of Jones in the Louvre, holding the famous drawing by Leonardo da Vinci. He was looking for that telltale sign, that inconsistency, that piece of information that was going to indicate whether the photographs were all of the same man or not.

  There was a knock at the door.

  ‘Come in,’ he muttered.

  It was Ahmed. ‘Oh. You’re back, sir.’

  ‘What do you want, lad?’

  ‘You asked me to phone the hospital and find out how Mr Jones was.’

  ‘Ay. And how is he?’

  ‘DS Gawber said he was off the drip, been out of bed, had some breakfast. He’s been chatting to him. He could be coming home in a few days.’

  ‘Oh? That sounds a lot better. Is Gawber all right?’

  ‘Yes, sir.’

  ‘Hmmm. I must go down there.’

  Ahmed grinned. ‘Huh. You’ll need an escort, sir. Did you see the photograph in the Daily Standard, all that crowd round the hospital doors?’

  ‘Oh. It’s like that still, is it.’

  The phone rang. He reached over the desk. ‘Angel.’

  It was the superintendent. ‘I’ve got Mac’s report. You’d better come.’

  ‘Right, John,’ Angel replied enthusiastically. He slammed down the phone, and made for the door. Then he turned back, pointed at the wall, looked at Ahmed, and said, ‘I’m going to see the super. Take a shufti at these pictures. See if you can find a difference. The prize is a bottle of Glenfiddich.’

  Ahmed’s mouth opened, and his eyes followed him down the corridor.

  ‘I don’t drink, sir,’ he called after him.

  ‘Oh no. A case of Pepsi then.’

  Angel knocked on the superintendent’s door.

  ‘Come in, Mike,’ Harker called. ‘Sit down.’

  ‘Yes sir.’

  ‘I’ve read it.’ Harker picked up a bunch of six A4 pages, heavy with print and stapled at the corner. He handed them to him and then rubbed his chin with a big red hand.

  Angel took the report and stuck his nose into it.

  Harker sniffed and after a moment said, ‘I’ll tell you what it says.’

  ‘Hmmm. What?’ Angel mumbled, turning over a page.

  ‘It says there were no powder marks on the suit. No blood specks. Nothing foreign on the shoes. No positive footprints anywhere in the factory or the offices. No related fibres. Nothing.’ He wiped his hand across his mouth. ‘In short,’ he said, ‘Jones didn’t shoot Charles Tabor.’

  ‘Hmm.’ Angel looked up. He smiled. ‘I’ll tell him.’

  The corners of Harker’s mouth turned down as if his piles were playing up.

  ‘You better inform the CPS at once. And the press will have to be told we’ve dropped the charge. You’ll have to issue a statement.’

  Angel lowered the report. The two men looked across at each other briefly.

  Harker glowered. ‘Where do we go from here?’

  *

  Ahmed was still perusing the photographs as Angel came back into the office. ‘You’d better pack that in, lad. We’ve a lot to do,’ he said as he pulled out the swivel-chair and looked down at the desk.

  Ahmed turned to the inspector.

  ‘You can’t see his right hand in this photograph, sir,’ he said.

  ‘What,’ said Angel, abstractedly; his mind was on other things. He pulled open a drawer.

  ‘He’s holding a drawing or something.’

  ‘Yes. By Leonardo da Vinci. So what?’

  ‘You can’t see if he’s wearing a ring.’

  Angel thought for a second. ‘Well, he is. I’ve seen him wearing a ring. A plain wedding-band.’

  ‘Yes sir. It’s on the stills taken from the CCTV. The ones I did.’

  ‘Yes? So what?’

  ‘Well, is he wearing a ring now?’

  ‘Yes, he is. I’ve seen it. It was too tight. He couldn’t get it off.’

  ‘Well I can’t see it, sir.’

  ‘‘Course you can’t. You’ve just said. He’s holding that picture.’

  ‘Ah! But is it on the same finger?’

  ‘What?’ Angel stopped fishing in the drawer and looked ahead at nothing in particular. He was thinking out what Ahmed had said. The lad was right to question it. Jones was certainly wearing a ring on his right hand, on his second or third finger. But he couldn’t say for certain which one.

  ‘Hmmm. Well, it doesn’t matter now, lad. Forensics say he didn’t do it. I’m dropping the charges.’

  Ahmed looked surprised.

  ‘I thought you knew that, sir,’ he said. ‘That’s why you didn’t want to bring the CPS in, and were looking so closely at Ingrid Dooley.’

  Angel sighed, then nodded. ‘All right. Ring DS Gawber at the hospital, and ask him to check on that wedding-ring. Find out which finger Jones is wearing it on.’

  Ahmed made for the door.

  ‘Ay,’ Angel called after him. ‘And get him to take it off,’ he added artfully. ‘Tell him I want it as evidence!’

  ‘Right, sir.’ The door closed.

  Angel picked up the phone. ‘Get me the CPS, please.’

  He explained to the CPS about the late and conclusive forensic evidence and it was arranged for their messenger to return all the papers and exhibits the following day. He then began drafting a statement to circulate to the press and media. This wasn’t as easy as it would seem. Although he had to tell the absolute truth, he also had to try to put the Bromersley police force in the best possible light, and head off embarrassing and intrusive questions. Consequent upon his arrest for this dramatic and unusual theatrical murder, Jones was now so newsworthy that this announcement would inevitably command an enormous amount of attention locally, nationally and abroad. Angel knew he needed to be very precise. The statement was taking some sort of shape, when Ahmed knocked on the door and noisily dashed into the office.

  ‘Sir! Sir!’

  ‘What is it, lad? What ever is it?’

  ‘I phoned the hospital. Mr Jones is wearing that ring on the third finger of his right hand. The third finger, sir!!’

  Angel beamed. ‘Good. Good.’

  ‘And he can’t get it off, sir. He can’t get it off,’ said Ahmed excitedly. ‘Even the nurse can’t get it off. She’s rubbed his finger all over with petroleum jelly. Do you want them to saw it off?’

  Angel pursed his lips. ‘No,’ he said rubbing his chin. ‘No. If ever he’s got to count up to ten, he’ll need it.’

  *

  The following morning, at 8.30 a.m., Angel left his bungalow and went straight to Bromersley General Hospital. It was a cold morning and there had been a slight frost but there was still no snow. He reached the hospital in good time despite the morning rush hour, and parked beside a white television van with an aerial dish on its roof. As he went through the revolving door, he noticed that there was still a substantial press pack in hibernation waiting for news of the man in the pink suit.
Men in heavily creased raincoats, youths in jeans and trainers, monopolized the sixteen seats, and another ten or twelve held up the wall in the reception area, and had cameras and recording machines at their feet. They were mostly reading newspapers and making the tea-dispensing machines and the telephones work overtime.

  Angel made his way surreptitiously to the lift and pressed the button for the fourth floor. When it reached the level and the doors slid back, he spotted Constable Scrivens along the corridor sitting on a chair next to a door. When the young man saw the inspector, he recognized him, stood up and began to button up his jacket.

  ‘Everything all right, lad?’

  ‘Yes sir.’

  ‘Everything quiet?’

  ‘It is now,’ Scrivens said meaningfully.

  ‘Where’s DS Gawber?’

  ‘Inside, sir. With Mr Jones,’ he said pointing to the door behind him.

  Angel nodded.

  ‘Are you going in, sir?’ the young man asked.

  Angel nodded. ‘Ay. That’s what I’m here for.’

  Scrivens opened the door and Angel walked into the little ward.

  Frank P Jones was sitting up in bed. He shuffled himself up the bed expectantly and straightened the sheet. The appearance of Angel seemed to energize him.

  ‘It’s you,’ he said. ‘At long last you have deigned to visit me. I thought you would have been here before now. I was sure you hadn’t finished with your wretched questions.’

  ‘No sir, not quite,’ Angel said affably. ‘It’s a policeman’s stock in trade, you know.’

  Beyond the bed, DS Gawber was lounging on an easy-chair. He saw Angel and, employing an elbow crutch, began to struggle to stand up. Angel waved him down. ‘Now then, and how are you, Ron?’

  ‘Getting better, every day, sir.’

  ‘Good.’

  Angel surveyed the room. It was white and spotless. One wall was all windows, on another wall was a sink. There was a bedside cabinet loaded with bundles of envelopes and packets bound in rubber bands, a pile of newspapers and a jug of water and a glass. Protruding from under the bed was a cardboard box also filled with bundles of unopened envelopes and packets. There was a black metal-and-plastic chair against the wall.

  Jones’s face was a lot paler than when Angel had last seen him in the interview room at the station, but he was looking perky. He was sitting up in the bed, wearing pink pyjamas, and had half-lens spectacles perched on the end of his nose. There was a newspaper with a huge photograph of him across the front page laid on the bed.