The Snuffbox Murders

by Roger Silverwood

  Angel sighed. ‘She’s moving,’ he said and nodded towards the second constable.

  The man came forward, moved the chair and got down on his knees. ‘Are you all right, miss?’

  Jessica moaned. She was holding her head.

  There was relief around the room.

  The constable then said, ‘Can you stand up?’

  From across the room, Rosemary Razzle yelled, ‘There’s nothing wrong with the little bitch. Keep her away from me or I’ll give her another one.’

  Angel’s eyes flashed. ‘Mrs Razzle,’ he said.

  The constable assisted Jessica to her feet.

  Jessica’s spectacles were on the floor by the lamp. There were spots of blood on the carpet around them.

  Rosemary Razzle said, ‘Call your gorilla off, Angel, before I stop him ever becoming a father again.’

  Angel ignored her. He didn’t even look at her.

  The patrolman reacted. He had heard her loud and clear and, gripping the link between the wrists of the handcuffs behind her back, he stepped a pace back to avoid any contact with her foot or knee.

  Angel glanced round the room. There were cushions on the floor, a table lamp damaged, and some chairs knocked askew, but the room seemed otherwise all right.

  The constable settled Jessica Razzle on a sofa and sat next to her. She was holding her head in her hands, occasionally wiping her bleeding nose with a tissue.

  Angel looked at Rosemary Razzle and said, ‘What happened then?’

  She shook her head vigorously a couple of times, then said, ‘Nothing.’ Then, changing her mind, she said, ‘Plenty. The little bitch came for me, calling me all kinds of names and banging her fists into my face. I tried to reason with her, but it was no good. Eventually I lost my rag.’

  ‘You hit her with that lamp?’ Angel said. ‘You could have killed her.’

  ‘Unfortunately, I didn’t,’ she said. Then as an afterthought she added, ‘She could have killed me. She was like a bloody tornado. She needs locking up. If you don’t lock her up in a padded cell after this, I am going to need full-time protection.’

  Jessica Razzle looked up. ‘Yes, she is,’ she said, calling across the room. ‘Because I won’t stop until I get the truth out of her. She murdered my father, and I promise you—’

  Angel said, ‘If you two cannot keep the peace—’

  ‘She never loved my father,’ Jessica Razzle continued. ‘She told me so.’

  ‘Ridiculous,’ Rosemary Razzle said. ‘I adored him and he adored me. You’re talking through your backside.’

  ‘You’re a liar,’ Jessica Razzle screamed and stood up. The constable pulled her back on to the sofa. ‘If you can’t see that she’s guilty of murder, Inspector,’ she said, ‘then what sort of a detective are you? She’s a thoroughly evil lot all the way through … just a common, jumped-up streetwalker whom God blessed with a beautiful body….’

  Rosemary Razzle struggled with her handcuffs and said, ‘Who are you calling a bloody streetwalker?’

  ‘If you two cannot keep the peace—’ Angel said.

  ‘You’re the original tart – without the heart,’ Jessica Razzle said with a sneer.

  Rosemary Razzle sucked air in noisily through her teeth. ‘Take that back, you little she-devil.’

  ‘Not one word. Not one syllable.’

  ‘Angel,’ Rosemary Razzle said, ‘you had better lock her up, good and quick, because I swear the next time I see this spoilt little cow I’ll tear her bloody tongue out.’

  The two-tone siren of an ambulance could be heard approaching the house.

  Angel blew out a slow sigh.

  ELEVEN

  Two hours later, back at the police station, Angel went down to the cells.

  ‘Now that you’ve cooled down, Mrs Razzle,’ he said, ‘I am conditionally releasing you, and I hope you will keep the peace. You’ll be subsequently charged with assault and causing a public disturbance.’

  ‘Thanks very much,’ she said, twitching her nose. ‘What was I supposed to do, let her kill me?’

  ‘You can tell it to the magistrate,’ Angel said. ‘As it’s your first offence, you will probably be fined. I strongly advise you to take control of your temper and keep out of your stepdaughter’s way.’

  ‘How can I do that? If she comes to the house—’

  ‘When the doctor says she’s fit she’ll be released from the hospital, and she’ll be specifically banned from approaching you and from being anywhere near The Manor House.’

  Her jaw tightened. ‘She’d better stick to it. She’d better not come anywhere near me.’

  ‘By the same token, you must not approach her or her living accommodation, wherever it might be, or you will be arrested.’

  ‘I will have no reason to go to The Feathers, Inspector.’

  ‘Good.’ Angel said. ‘I hope you mean that.’

  Then he turned to the duty jailer, a constable who was standing in the cell behind him. ‘Escort Mrs Razzle to the desk, lad. Let her pick up her possessions, and ask the duty sergeant if he can organize transport home for her.’

  Angel drove the BMW down to Bromersley General Hospital and parked it outside the A&E entrance. He went through the automatic sliding door and straight into the ward. He looked round and saw PC Leisha Baverstock standing outside a cubicle at the far end. She caught his eye, waved, turned and pulled back the curtain to reveal Jessica Razzle seated on an examination bed. She had a plaster across her nose and various small contusions on her face. There was a small purple area round her left temple.

  Angel walked down the length of the hall, into the cubicle, nodded at PC Baverstock and looked down at Jessica Razzle.

  The young woman remained seated, looked up at him and scowled.

  He raised his eyebrows, then said, ‘The doctor says you’re OK, Jessica, you can leave.’

  ‘What are you going to do about my stepmother?’ she said.

  He shook his head. ‘I’ve told you, I can’t do anything without evidence.’

  ‘She’s too clever. She will have covered her tracks by now.’

  ‘You suggested that she had an accomplice – a man.’

  ‘I’m sure she has.’

  ‘You were going to give me his name.’

  ‘Yes. It’s proved to be more difficult than I thought it would be. I didn’t expect her to attack me like that – so violently. I thought she would have had to tell me … boast about it, you know. Or that I would catch them together.’

  He looked at her, nodded and said, ‘You should leave these investigations to us, you know.’

  ‘Huh. You’ll never find the man who murdered my father.’

  ‘You will have to be patient, Jessica.’

  She sniffed. ‘Oh yes. I had forgotten. You’re that Inspector Angel, the detective who always gets his man, like the Mounties, aren’t you? I read about you in a magazine in the plane coming back. I do hope that this is not the case that spoils your record.’

  Angel blew out a foot of air. He hoped so too. There was nothing that he could say to her about that. He shrugged, then rubbed his chin.

  ‘While you’ve been in this hospital, Jessica,’ he said, ‘you have been technically under arrest. You are now being conditionally released, but you’ll be subsequently charged with assault and causing a public disturbance. In the meantime, you are not to go anywhere near Rosemary Razzle, nor The Manor House, also, you are not to leave Bromersley without notifying the police, understand?’

  She was not pleased. ‘Huh. Anything else?’

  ‘About your conditional discharge, no. Those are the conditions, do you understand?’

  She wrinkled her nose, looked at him, then turned away.

  Angel clenched his fists. ‘Do you accept the conditions?’ he bawled.

  Some nurses at their stations raised their heads, and two ambulance men looked in to the cubicle as they passed.

  ‘It is necessary for you to accept the conditions so that you can be released, J
essica. All right?’

  ‘Of course I accept the conditions,’ she said. Standing up, she looked round for her shoulder bag. ‘Can I go now? Is there anything else?’

  Angel nodded. ‘Yes, there is, as a matter of fact. Something that’s still bothering me. There’s a big safe in your father’s workshop. It is empty now. Do you happen to know what he kept in it?’

  Her eyes narrowed for a few moments, then she said, ‘I think he kept his patents and important papers, books and stuff like that.’

  ‘But you don’t actually know?’

  ‘I’ve been away two years, you know … things change.’

  ‘It’s all right, Jessica. Thank you. Now PC Baverstock will take you back to The Feathers.’

  As Angel arrived back at his office door, PC Ahaz came rushing up to him. ‘A sergeant from CID Specialized Services, Wakefield, CCC division has just been to see you, sir. He said he couldn’t wait, so he’s gone.’

  Angel frowned and pushed open the door. ‘Come in, lad. Did he go up to The Manor House?’

  ‘Oh yes, sir.’

  ‘Funny? I’ve been up there. I didn’t see him.’

  ‘No, sir. It must have been after you had brought Rosemary Razzle in. He said he had knocked on the front door up there, there was no reply, so he let himself in and checked round the workshop in the basement.’

  Angel’s fists clenched. ‘He wouldn’t have had time.’

  ‘He left a message for you, sir.’

  Angel raised his eyebrows.

  Ahmed frowned and referred to a notepad. ‘He said, “One was in Preston and the other in Strangeways.” I hope that makes sense, sir. That’s all he said.’

  Angel thought for a moment, then realization spread across his face. ‘It makes sense all right, Ahmed. It makes perfect sense, thank you.’

  ‘Anyway, he’ll be sending you a full report,’ Ahmed said. He knew that the message must have been more significant than he understood because Angel’s face looked brighter and happier.

  Angel was still thinking about the message when the phone rang. He reached out for it. It was Hubert Lord, the DI of Skiptonthorpe force. Angel had never expected to hear from him again.

  ‘Ah, Angel,’ he said, ‘I thought you might like to know that I’ve sewn up this Stefan Muldoon murder. Preparing it for the CPS. It was the son-in-law who did it. His wife is giving corroborative evidence against him. Singing sweeter than Katharine Jenkins. Didn’t take long at all. Highly satisfactory, don’t you think?’

  Angel frowned and rubbed his chin. He wasn’t certain how to reply. It sounded to him to have been far too easily achieved. ‘Oh? Well, yes. I suppose.’

  ‘Doesn’t take us long once we get started, you know. And it had absolutely nothing at all to do with your country-house gang.’

  ‘Right,’ Angel said, though he wasn’t altogether satisfied that Lord was right about that. ‘Fine. Well, it was only an educated guess.’

  ‘I don’t believe in guessing, Angel,’ Lord said. ‘Just deal in hard facts, you know.’

  We all do when we’ve got them, Angel thought, but he didn’t speak it out loud.

  Lord said, ‘Now you said you would appreciate any evidence of Muldoon’s recent contact with anyone known?’

  ‘That’s right,’ Angel said, running his tongue over his lips.

  ‘Well, there was a whole conglomeration of prints in the cabin in the yard where his lorries were kept. As well as Muldoon’s, his daughter’s, his son-in-law’s, his drivers’ and his customers’ and neighbours’, we found prints of a Sean Noel Riley. I thought you might be interested.’

  Sean Noel Riley. Angel felt his pulse rate increase. He certainly was interested. And it was a starting point. He’d never before had as much as a sniff of a clue that could possibly relate to the country-house gang. That might be it.

  ‘Are you there?’ Lord said.

  ‘Sorry,’ Angel said. ‘I was just … I was just finding my pen to write that down. Yes. Sean Noel Riley. Got it. Thanks very much.’

  ‘There was a perfect thumb, first, second and third finger on an empty lager can in the rubbish. It would be very recent, because Muldoon’s daughter emptied the rubbish every week.’

  ‘Great stuff, Lord. Thanks very much. Have you interviewed this man, Riley?’

  ‘No need to. I’ve got my man. Well, Angel, the best of luck.’

  ‘Yes,’ Angel said, ‘and the same to you.’ He thought he would need it. He also thought that Lord should have interviewed Riley to see if he could get any easy evidence out of him, but there you are. Lord had his methods.

  Angel replaced the phone. His pulse was now racing. He turned to Ahmed. ‘Get on to records and let me have everything they’ve got on Sean Noel Riley.’

  ‘Right, sir.’ Ahmed said and made for the door.

  ‘And send Trevor Crisp and Flora Carter in.’

  ‘Yes, sir.’ Ahmed said as he dashed out of the office.

  Angel was so pleased that, if Lord hadn’t been so pompous, he might have popped out and bought the man a chocolate-covered ice-cream lolly.

  DS Carter and DS Crisp arrived at Angel’s office at the same time.

  ‘Grab a chair each of you,’ Angel said. ‘Just waiting for Ahmed. Won’t be a minute.’

  Ahmed rushed in carrying a few sheets of A4. He put one of them on the desk in front of Angel, then turned back, closed the door and leaned against it.

  Angel quickly began.

  ‘I believe that we have a lead to the country-house gang,’ Angel said. ‘It’s tenuous, but logical. The head of SOCA, Sir Miles Luckman, told the super that the gang must be from round here, and he gave the super a confidential twenty-four seven support-line phone number. I mention that solely to show how confident Sir Miles is of that information. As to where the info originated … your guess is as good as mine. SOCA get up to all sorts of tricks. Anyway, this country-house gang is tightly run and highly successful at what it does. They’ve carried out five multimillion-pound robberies this year without leaving anything helpful behind for the respective SOCO teams to work on. Also the stolen items have not turned up anywhere even though many of them are easily identifiable antiques. Because of the style and method, I believe that the leader has adopted the Lamm method of operating.’

  Crisp said, ‘The Lamm method, sir? Hermann Lamm? I’ve heard of him. Fantastic man! Wonderful leader!’

  ‘Don’t glorify him, lad,’ Angel said. ‘He was an out-and-out villain.’

  ‘I’m not doing that, sir, but it was fantastic how he always cased the target personally, built replica sets of the scene, trained and rehearsed his men, set a time limit that he considered safe in which to do the job, which had to be adhered to, and then planned their escape route in meticulous detail with permutations of optional escape routes and tactics in case anything went wrong.’

  Angel blinked. ‘Aye. That’s right,’ he said. ‘Well, I was going to say all that.’

  Crisp grinned and looked at Flora Carter, then at Ahmed.

  ‘In addition,’ Angel said, ‘an important requirement of each gang member was that he could keep his trap shut. Now I don’t quite know how Hermann Lamm would have reacted if he had found out that one of his gang had flashed big money about in a bar, or shot off his mouth to a girlfriend, but I don’t expect it would have been friendly or that he would have reacted with sweet reasonableness. Now I think that Stefan Muldoon was a member of the country-house gang who didn’t keep his trap shut and that the gang leader, whoever he is, took a gun and a pair of pliers to Muldoon and shut him up permanently. And he did it in such a way that there isn’t a newspaper in the country – maybe the world – that didn’t report his horrific death, which would be a lesson to the criminal world, not to mess with the leader of the country-house gang.’

  Crisp and Carter nodded in agreement.

  ‘You said you had a lead, sir?’ Carter said.

  ‘Yes,’ Angel said. ‘DI Lord from Skiptonthorpe told me—’

&nbs
p; Crisp and Carter groaned unexpectedly, in unison.

  Angel glared at them. ‘What’s that all about?’

  ‘Do you think you can rely on anything DI Lord told you, sir?’ Crisp said.

  Flora Carter looked at Angel and nodded in support of Crisp. ‘Yes, sir,’ she said.

  ‘He may be a bit pompous, but he’s the source of our lead, and in the absence of any other, we have to follow it up. Now then, Lord told me that his team found prints of Sean Noel Riley on Muldoon’s premises.’

  He nodded to PC Ahaz, who handed A4 computer print-outs to Crisp and Carter. They were head-and-shoulders photographs, with a description underneath of a thickset man, six feet one, thirteen stone, aged forty-four, almost bald, with a scar across his left eye. The sergeants looked at the pics.

  ‘He got the scar from a bottle fight in a quayside pub in Dublin in 1999,’ Angel said. ‘Not the sort of bloke you’d take home to Mother.’

  Crisp and Carter frowned and exchanged sideways glances.

  ‘We don’t know much else about him. Served three years in Strangeways for possession of a firearm. Came out 1987. Before that only trivial stuff. 1986 accused of shoplifting, but released because the shopkeeper declined to give evidence against him 1985, breach of the peace, throwing missile at moving police car, part of a park bench, got off with a warning. That’s all. Associates, Stefan Muldoon. Well, I told you about him. And Peter Amos Kidd, aka Peter Walters, aka Peter Waterstone, serving twelve years in Peterhead for armed robbery. That’s it.’

  ‘You think that Riley murdered Muldoon, sir?’ Carter said.

  ‘I don’t think so. I think the gang leader would have done that. I don’t think that Riley is smart enough to be the gang leader. No, Sean Noel Riley is known to have been in the company of Stefan Muldoon sometime during the last week of his life. Riley’s prints were on an empty can of lager found in Muldoon’s waste bin. Now, there are a million reasons why he could have been there, but as they were both known crooks and, as both had not been found involved in any criminal activity for twelve years, I reckon the explanation could have been that they had learned their lesson, had gone straight and that they were busily engaged in some honest, wholesome endeavour such as planning to take the local old people on a day trip to Scarborough … or Whitby.’