The Snuffbox Murders

by Roger Silverwood

  The recording of a man who spoke through his nose was inserted here. He said, ‘Well, gee. She looks absolutely fabulous. The provenance is right. It is obviously a highly desirable statue with historical, royal and erotic connotations. It will certainly sell. Whether one million sterling, is the market price, I don’t know?’

  ‘Will you be bidding, Mr Spiegel?’

  ‘Depends how it goes, ma’am.’

  ‘Thank you. Then I spoke to a bystander, a Mr Alec Underwood…’

  At the mention of Alec Underwood’s name, Angel blinked and his hold on the steering wheel tightened.

  ‘Alec Underwood,’ the radio interviewer said. ‘What do you think to the Dorothea Jordan statue?’

  ‘I find it extremely interesting. I expect it will fetch a lot of money. It is an item that is fascinating people from all over the world.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘Well, it is historically extremely important, isn’t it? I understand that at the time Mrs Dorothea Jordan was regarded as a strikingly attractive woman and that she bore the Duke of Clarence, later King William IV, ten children. The mould of the statue was actually taken from Dorothea Jordan’s body, and the gold-plated life-size statue occupied pride of place on a couch in his bedroom at Windsor Castle for twenty-one years, including the period of his reign from 1830 until his death in 1837. And then, there is this film coming out with Sincerée La More playing the part of Dorothea Jordan. With all this hype, this beautiful antique could hardly fail to command a high price.’

  ‘And will you be among the bidders, Mr Underwood?’

  Angel noticed that there was some hesitation, before Underwood said, ‘I will have to think about that.’

  The interview stopped there and the TV reporter said, ‘Everybody playing their cards close to their chests, Marie.’

  ‘Julia Weekes there for us at Spicers’ auction house here in London. Moving on. The Footsie 100 fell again—’

  Angel reached out and switched the radio off. He turned off the main road into Forest Hill Estate. He couldn’t get away from that plaster statue. It seemed to haunt him wherever he went. He was positive Underwood was planning something bent.

  ‘And will you be among the bidders, Mr Underwood?’ he had heard the interviewer ask. Angel sniffed. Alec Underwood had never bought anything at the market price in his life. If he couldn’t buy it cheap enough, he’d steal it. Angel pursed his lips. Was that his game? Was he planning to steal the statue? If he stole it, it would be the biggest scam he had ever pulled. The auctioneers had put a speculative million-pound-plus price-ticket on it, making it such a high-profile antique. And Underwood had been seen so near to it, interviewed about it. If he intended stealing the statue, Angel now had his address; at least he would know where to begin to look. He’d be an obvious suspect. He’d never get away with it.

  What was happening out there in this wacky world, Angel wondered? A million pounds for that gold-plated plaster statue was ridiculous. He rubbed his chin, thoughtfully. Then again, so was his gas bill.

  ‘Come in,’ Angel said.

  It was PC Ahaz. ‘Good morning, sir. I have checked up on Peter Queegley’s time in Strangeways.’

  ‘Ah,’ Angel said, eyebrows raised.

  ‘Sean Noel Riley came out in April 1989, and Queegley didn’t go in until January 1990. Sorry, sir.’

  Angel shook his head and sighed. ‘Right, lad.’

  Ahmed said, ‘My grandmother used to say that disappointments were good for young folks, sir.’

  Angel’s teeth showed as his face muscles tightened. ‘But your grandmother didn’t have to deal with obnoxious oily ne’er-do-wells like Peter Queegley and Alec Underwood.’

  ‘My grandfather was enough for her, sir. I have the owner of 129 Bradford Road, sir. The picture-framer’s shop. It’s a Mrs Aimée Podlitz, of the same address. She must live over the shop.’

  ‘Oh. Podlitz? Foreign. Right. Find out if there’s anything known.’

  ‘Nothing known, sir. I knew you’d ask.’

  Angel nodded. He was pleased. Ahmed was using his initiative. ‘Who else lives on the premises?’

  Ahmed’s jaw dropped. ‘Didn’t get that, sir.’

  ‘Do it now. You’ll want the town hall.’

  ‘Yes. I know how to find out, sir,’ he said.

  Angel said, ‘And while you’re about it, find out who lives at 26 Edward Street.’

  ‘Right, sir,’ he said and he went out.

  Trevor Crisp came in.

  ‘Good morning, sir.’

  ‘Good morning, lad,’ Angel said pointing to the chair.

  Crisp sat down. ‘That woman came back to 26 Edward Street at six o’clock last night, and Riley turned up there at nine fifteen.’

  Angel looked up. His eyes locked momentarily on to Crisp’s. ‘Ah,’ he said, pleased to hear some good news for a change.

  ‘And I saw a light go on in the front bedroom at ten o’clock just before I knocked off,’ Crisp said.

  ‘And who is down there now?’

  ‘Ted Scrivens.’

  Angel rubbed his chin. ‘I was thinking that it would be great to get a bug in there, but, you know, if the woman is not part of the gang, then he wouldn’t talk such private stuff to her, would he?’

  ‘I would have thought it worth the risk, sir.’

  ‘If we make Riley suspicious, he’ll go to ground and we may never get a lead again.’

  ‘I could go in there as a meter reader.’

  ‘It’s been done so many times, lad.’ He thought about it a few moments then said, ‘We’ll wait a day. See what else we can find out. We are monitoring his post and his landline. Are there any empty houses opposite? Any For Sale boards up anywhere?’

  ‘Had a good look last night, sir.’

  ‘Do we know anybody who lives in an odd number on there?’

  ‘Don’t know of anybody, sir.’

  ‘No,’ Angel said, running his hand through his hair.

  The phone rang. Angel reached out for it.

  It was Superintendent Harker. ‘There’s a triple nine. A dead woman with facial injuries found in long grass by a lay-by opposite Strawberry Reservoir between Sheffield and Bromersley.’

  Angel squeezed the phone, his pulse racing. ‘Right, sir,’ he said.

  ‘A man parking his car with the intention of going fishing found the body,’ the superintendent said. ‘He’s standing by. Do you know where that reservoir is?’

  ‘Yes, sir. I’m on my way.’

  ‘Is it on Sheffield’s patch?’

  Angel realized that it was. He hesitated. ‘Possibly,’ he said.

  There was a pause, then Harker said, ‘I believe it is. Don’t move until I get back to you.’

  ‘I don’t mind, sir. I can do it.’

  Harker sniggered. ‘You just love a good murder, Angel, don’t you?’ he said. ‘Don’t move a muscle. I’ll check with Sheffield and get straight back to you. We’ve quite enough on here, and I don’t want it going in our statistics unnecessarily. The figures are bad enough.’ The phone went dead.

  Angel put it back in its cradle.

  Crisp stared at him.

  ‘A dead woman with facial injuries,’ Angel said slowly while rubbing his chin, ‘found in long grass by a lay-by opposite Strawberry Reservoir.’

  Crisp shook his head and frowned, ‘As if we haven’t enough on.’

  Angel’s eyes flashed. ‘One murder case helps the others. Obviously takes more time. The initial routine is exactly the same. Gathering facts. After that, anybody with a tidy, methodical mind can assemble them and permutate them until out pops the answer.’

  ‘It never works for me, sir.’

  ‘It won’t work for anybody if they haven’t enough information.’

  Crisp shook his head. ‘You make it sound easy.’

  ‘It is easy.’

  ‘For you, sir, maybe.’

  ‘With me, it’s a habit.’

  ‘With you, sir, it’s a gift.’

>   The phone rang. Angel reached out for it.

  It was Superintendent Harker again. ‘Stand down. Sheffield are dealing with it.’

  Angel’s jaw stiffened. He wasn’t pleased. He replaced the phone.

  ‘I have to know who she was and how she died,’ he said.

  Crisp said, ‘You’re not expecting it to be Rosemary Razzle are you, sir?’

  Angel hadn’t realized that he had expressed his thoughts out loud.

  ‘Eh? I don’t know. It is a woman with facial injuries, and I need to know who she is, not who I expect it to be.’

  Crisp frowned. ‘You’ve lost me, sir.’

  ‘Forget it,’ Angel suddenly said and jumped to his feet. ‘Have you got a camera?’

  ‘In my desk, sir.’

  ‘Get it quick. Come on. We’ll go in my car.’

  Angel raced out of the office. Crisp followed and called in to CID office for a camera. They met outside at Angel’s BMW.

  Angel knew exactly where the lay-by was and they were there in ten or eleven minutes. It was on an important fast road out in the country, opposite Strawberry Reservoir at the bottom of a long hill. There was a gathering of four men on the pavement by the lay-by leaning against their bicycles, each man had a fishing rod fastened to the crossbar. The men were standing there in the sunshine smoking cigarettes and expectantly watching every car that came near, hoping that it was a police car that would take over their self-appointed guardianship of a dead body.

  As Angel and Crisp approached the lay-by, they could not see any signs of a dead body, but there was a lot of long grass everywhere, waving in the warm breeze.

  As the BMW pulled up, it was besieged by the elderly fishermen, a curious, lined and tanned face at each window.

  ‘The dead woman’s over here,’ one said, pointing ten feet away in the long grass. ‘She’s not breathing and as stiff as a board.’

  ‘It’s a dreadful sight. She looks awful,’ said another, turning away and swallowing hard.

  ‘I was the one what found her. I was the one what phoned up,’ said a third.

  ‘All her innards have come out of her mouth. Nobody should treat a woman like that.’

  ‘Thank you, gentlemen,’ Angel said getting out of the car. ‘Please come away from the crime scene. The investigating team will not want you trampling over any possible forensic evidence.’

  The men looked at each other in surprise.

  ‘We want to go fishing. We’ve told you all we know. You can’t want anything else from us.’

  Angel said nothing. He stuck out his chest and walked a little way up the hill, the men following him, while Crisp sneaked out of the car and up the banking.

  ‘Are you not the police, then?’ the first man said.

  Crisp easily found the mound of nondescript clothes in the long grass, and photographed it six times from different angles without touching it.

  ‘We’re just here to check that the integrity of the murder scene is being properly preserved,’ Angel said to the men, as he saw Crisp running back to the car. ‘Thank you very much. Please keep everybody away from it until Sheffield CID arrive.’

  ‘How long will they be?’ said one of the men.

  Angel looked up the hill in the direction of Sheffield. He was surprised to see two police cars and a white van in procession, all flashing blue lights and approaching fast.

  ‘There they are now,’ he said, running back down the hill towards the BMW.

  He climbed into the driver’s seat, glanced at Crisp and started the engine.

  Crisp looked pale.

  ‘Everything all right?’ Angel said.

  ‘Got plenty of pics, sir,’ Crisp said with a long sigh.

  Angel pulled away from the crime scene only half a minute before Sheffield’s SOCO’s van wheels rolled to a stop on the very same grass verge.

  ‘Who is it then?’ Angel said. ‘Recognize her?’

  He put his hand to his forehead. ‘No, sir. Pretty ghastly. Her own mother wouldn’t recognize her.’

  THIRTEEN

  Back at the police station Angel and Crisp rushed into the theatre and transferred the pictures on to the viewing screen.

  The photographs were horrible, but Angel had seen worse. The clearest photograph showed what seemed to be a bundle of rags with a grey ball at the top sparsely covered with grey hair, below that, red raw flesh with blue streaks. Beneath that, something shiny and yellow had caught the light of the sun. It confounded Angel for a while, until he enlarged the image up to the point at which the photograph dissolved into pixels, then brought it back a step. He could see that it was the profile view of a gold crucifix on a chain.

  His eyebrows shot up. He nodded thoughtfully. ‘We are rattling the big man’s cage, Trevor,’ he said rubbing his chin. ‘We are in dangerous territory.’

  Crisp frowned. ‘You know this woman, sir?’

  ‘She was the old woman in the picture-framing shop. Mrs Aimée Podlitz.’

  He reached out for the phone and tapped in a number.

  ‘That old woman?’ Crisp lowered his eyes. His hands shook. Then he looked up at Angel. ‘I wouldn’t like to think that my mother suffered anything like that, sir.’

  ‘It’s a similar case to Stefan Muldoon,’ Angel said.

  ‘The woman you spoke to only yesterday?’ Crisp said. ‘And can you identify her from that picture?’

  He nodded. ‘He’s had to resort to murdering an old woman fronting a picture-framing business to try to put the fear of God into anybody trying to get nearer to him.’

  The phone was answered. Angel spoke into it.

  ‘Ahmed,’ he said. ‘I want you to find out who owns the property, next door to, and at the back of, the picture-framing business at 129 Bradford Road, and phone it through to me asap.’

  ‘Right, sir,’ Ahmed said.

  Angel replaced the phone.

  ‘That was the country-house gang’s HQ, sir?’

  ‘Probably. I’m not sure of anything, lad, but what crook do you know who would murder anyone and leave a gold pendant and chain worth maybe two hundred pounds round the dead person’s neck?’

  Crisp’s eyes narrowed.

  ‘None, eh?’ Angel said. ‘Our man is way above risking being caught by being in possession of a two-hundred-pound necklace. He’s playing for thousands. Must be him. The picture-framing shop might just be the way in, past the CCTV camera, so that all visitors – not that there’d be many – are clocked in, literally. He needed a place to store the loot and vehicles to transport it about the place. Maybe there are garages at the rear. They’ll be in Aimée Podlitz’s name, if they are. Anyway, whatever he was using there, he’ll have cleared out of them by now. But we’ve got to have a look.’

  ‘Come in,’ Angel said.

  It was Flora Carter. ‘You wanted me, sir?’

  ‘Yes. I want you to get together as many officers as you can to make an immediate assault on the 129 Bradford Road picture-framing shop and residential accommodation, and the lock-up garages and outbuildings at the back. I have reason to believe that the premises might have been the HQ of the country-house gang, and that they may have vacated them late yesterday or even overnight. An elderly woman who apparently worked at the shop, possibly a member of the gang, was found dead earlier today away from the house.’

  ‘Is that the woman who has had her tongue pulled out, sir?’ Flora Carter said.

  ‘Well, yes. It seems to be the mark of the leader of the country-house gang to instil discipline. He’s doing it to scare everybody.’

  Her pretty mouth twitched. ‘Yes. Well, he’s … he’s succeeding, sir,’ Flora Carter said.

  Angel looked at her a moment then said, ‘Turn that fear into determination, Flora. Because we are coppers we can never run. We’ve always got to fight.’

  She swallowed quickly, straightened up and said, ‘Yes, sir. I know that.’

  ‘Liaise with SOCO’s Don Taylor. Treat it like a crime scene. If it’s been abandoned in a h
urry, you never know what valuable clues might have been left behind. That man might have slipped up for the very first time in his life.’

  There was a knock at the door.

  ‘Come in,’ Angel said.

  PC Ahaz came in, his eyes glowing. He looked at Carter and then at Angel.

  ‘Excuse me, sir. I thought you’d want to know. Bradford Road is blocked. Traffic for the M1 is at a standstill.’

  Carter said: ‘Bradford Road?’

  ‘Yes, Sarge.’

  Angel’s eyes narrowed. He wasn’t pleased. ‘Blocked? Why is it blocked?’

  ‘Apparently there’s a big fire, sir. I heard about it in the canteen. Inspector Asquith has summoned all his units to attend.’

  Angel snatched up the phone and tapped in a 7.

  It was soon answered by the duty sergeant in the control room.

  ‘What’s this about a fire, Sergeant?’

  ‘Yes, sir. It’s developing into a big one, sir. A Chinese woman reported the smell of fire in a picture-framing shop next door to her takeaway business on Bradford Road at 1128 hours this morning. Fire service were informed immediately. Logged in at 1129 hours.’

  ‘I suppose the address is 129 Bradford Road.’

  ‘As a matter of fact it is, sir. Fancy that. I have an update on that incident, just in, sir. It says, “Fire has developed and spread to shops either side, and at storage premises and garages at the rear. Flames are ten metres high. Five fire tenders are now on the scene. Two more are coming from Rotherham. Residents of nearby houses have already been evacuated to Farr Street church hall. The road is likely to be blocked for at least six hours. Diversions have been set up.” I know that Inspector Asquith is out there with all the uniformed he could muster.’

  ‘Right, lad, thank you,’ Angel said. ‘I’ve heard enough.’ He replaced the phone. His face was like his mother’s Yorkshire pudding, after the shilling in the gas had run out.

  Ahmed said, ‘Did it start in that picture-framer’s shop you asked me about, sir?’

  ‘Yes,’ Angel said. He ran his hand through his hair. ‘And there goes any chance of recovering prints, DNA or anything else useful from that damned place.’