Angel nodded towards the car and said, ‘It’s already been dusted?’
‘The outside was done before we broke off to go to the Doonan job, sir.’
‘Is it locked?’
Taylor shrugged.
Angel gripped the handle of the driver’s door and pulled. It opened. His eyebrows shot up. He looked at Taylor.
‘That’s how it was, sir.’
Taylor walked round the car and tried the other doors. They were also unlocked.
Angel nodded and peered inside the car. It was clean and tidy and there was nothing untoward. He closed the door.
‘You’ll dust the steering wheel, handbrake and gear stick?’
‘Yes, of course, sir.’
He went round to the boot and opened it. It was big and empty, but around the catch where the lock fitted he saw several strands of an off-white textile. It was much thicker than traditional cotton thread. Angel crouched down to peer at it, but didn’t touch it.
Taylor went to the SOCO van behind them and returned with a holdall. He took out a pair of white plastic disposable tweezers in a hermetically sealed bag. He unravelled the strands of thread and carefully inserted them in an ‘EVIDENCE’ bag.
‘Take a swab of the floor of the boot,’ Angel said. ‘I believe that that pig was transported here via this car. I want that determined, if it’s possible.’
‘Right, sir. You think somebody else might have brought it here?’
‘No, but it’s pretty heavy for Santana to have been able to manage on his own.’
Taylor nodded his agreement.
Angel closed the car boot, noted that the model was the S320 cdi, reflected briefly on how much it must have cost and went inside the house. Taylor followed.
The plastic trail of floor covering had now been removed and Angel looked down at the polished parquet floor in the hall and along to the bedroom. ‘Did you retrieve any footprints or marks from here?’
‘There were lots of shuffle marks but nothing we could use. There was a mark about an inch wide on the floor, rubbing off the polish … couldn’t make out what it was. It was in a more or less direct line from the front door to the bedroom door.’
‘Was it the pig?’
Taylor’s mouth dropped open. ‘Could possibly have been the pig … You mean being dragged along?’
Angel nodded as he opened the bedroom door.
The body of Peter Santana had been removed. There was a big ruddy-brown stain where it had been. There were blood spatters on the pretty wallpaper by the door opening and on the white paintwork.
‘The shooting must have taken place here, by the door,’ Angel said, thinking aloud.
Taylor nodded.
‘The body was found fully clothed on the floor just inside the door. He put up a gallant fight before he was shot. Maybe he was defending the pig. It was in that bed, covered over.’
‘Defending a dead pig, sir?’
‘I mean trying to hide the fact that he had a dead pig in his bed. It could have been an … embarrassment?’
Angel rubbed his chin a while then looked across at Taylor. ‘Where was the wrapping from the nightdress?’
‘In a wastepaper basket by the dressing table, sir.’
Angel meandered further into the big room. He spotted the empty wastepaper basket.
‘Was there anything else in it?’
‘No.’
Angel came back towards the bed where the pig had been. Clearly it had been removed and the bed remade.
He stared at the Laura Ashley bedspread then turned to Taylor. ‘Have you ever tried to put clothes on to somebody or something unconscious, or inanimate, Don?’
‘Can’t say that I have.’
‘It isn’t easy.’
‘Do you think that more than one person put that nightdress on the pig, sir?’
‘I really don’t know,’ Angel said. ‘I really don’t know.’
He caught sight of the silver candelabra with the pink candle wax hanging off the three holders, and he remembered how cold he had been when he had first entered that room earlier in the day. It was still very cold. He turned to Taylor. ‘Is there no heating on?’
‘I wanted you to see this, sir,’ Taylor said, directing him to the hall. ‘If you’ve finished in here.’
He’d finished there for the time being, but he wasn’t happy. He gave the room a last look round. This was not promising to be an easy case. His pulse was steady, his eyes slightly narrowed as if in pain, his mind like a box of assorted cogs, each trying to find another to mesh into smoothly, and failing at every attempt.
They left the bedroom and returned to the hall.
Angel noticed a large clock on the wall. It showed the time at eight minutes past twelve. He looked at his watch and found the correct time to be 1.15 exactly.
‘The clock’s wrong.’
Taylor looked up at him.
Angel put his ear to the face of the mechanism for a few moments. Then he went down on his knee and found a wire feeding out from the back of the clock to an electric socket. It was a very fine antique reproduction clock run from mains electricity.
‘The power must have been switched off at eight minutes past twelve. That would be midnight, last night?’ Angel said.
‘Looks like that, sir,’ Taylor said, then he pointed to a table against the wall. On it were four electric fuses. Above the table was a fuse box screwed on to the wood panelling on the wall; it had a door on the front of it, which was partly open. Inside was a line of a dozen fuses and spaces for the four fuses on the table below.
‘That’s why it is cold everywhere, sir,’ Taylor said. ‘Those fuses put half the house in darkness and knocked off the central heating. We’ve checked them for fingerprints and they’ve been wiped clean.’
Angel raised his eyebrows slightly.
‘Wiped clean?’
‘Yes, sir. The murderer must have come in the front door,’ Taylor said, ‘pulled the fuses, wiped them clean of his prints. That would put the place in darkness. That’s why Santana was using the candles.’
‘That means the murderer must have been in the house … hiding, while Santana found the candelabra and lit it. And Santana would have had to pass the fuse box to get it from the dining room. Also the intruder would have been wiping the fuses in the dark. I don’t think so.’
‘Maybe he had a torch?’
‘He’d need three hands then. He’d have to put the torch down, and anyway, the light would have told Santana of his presence. Have the fuses been photographed?’
‘Yes, sir.’
‘Is there a fault?’
‘Don’t know. With your permission, sir, I’ll put the fuses in now and … see what happens.’
Angel nodded. He turned back to Taylor. ‘Why would they be wiped clean?’
Taylor busied himself pressing the fuses into their respective holders.
The lights came on, and the hum of some sort of machine from the pool room started behind them. They crossed the hall and looked through the glass at the turquoise water.
Angel opened the door and went in. The hum was louder.
‘A water pump, I expect.’
Chlorine in the air made Angel wrinkle his nose.
The big, inviting-looking swimming pool was screened by large windows on two sides. He saw that they looked out on to heather-covered mountains and a grey cloudy sky. At the far end of the room on a tiled area was a massage table and four body-building machines. He looked at them enviously and thought that they would have provided a thorough workout for the most ardent bodybuilder.
Angel came out of the pool room and closed the door. He turned to Taylor and said, ‘Check if the appliances or lights extinguished by pulling those four fuses are in safe working order. There must have been some reason for the murderer putting half the place in darkness. And by the way, whose prints were on the candelabra?’
‘Santana’s, sir. Clear and distinct.’
‘Hmmm. And there were no sign
s of an intruder breaking in?’
‘There were no signs of anyone breaking into the house anywhere, sir. The front door was closed but not locked. It surprised the housekeeper. She said that Mr Santana was usually so careful, and he was a creature of habit.’ Angel nodded. He knew what that meant. He was a creature of habit himself. His mobile began to ring. He fished into his pocket and pulled it out.
It was Crisp. ‘Liam Quigley lives at 24 Sebastopol Terrace, sir. I’m standing on his doorstep. I’ve been knocking on the door for the past ten minutes. There’s no sign of life. Of course, he might be out. What shall I do?’
Angel’s lips tightened back against his teeth. ‘Don’t mess about, lad. Get a warrant for his arrest. He’s been identified as the murderer of Vincent Doonan, hasn’t he? It was your ear Doonan whispered his name into, wasn’t it?’
‘Yes, sir.’
‘Well, Quigley might be dodging us. Get a warrant to search his house. Then get in there. If he’s there, bring him in, and look sharp about it.’
He closed the phone with a click, blew out a foot of air and stuffed the mobile back into his pocket.
He turned back to Taylor and said, ‘What else is there to see?’
Together, they visited the other rooms in the house. Angel had a general trudge round. He saw nothing remarkable in any of them. He checked on the windows, which were all closed, locked and secure.
It was becoming clear that the murderer must have entered the house by the front door, that he knew his way around the house and had therefore been well known to Peter Santana. It must have been somebody who would benefit from his death. As Santana was enormously rich, a motive shouldn’t be difficult to find. He ruminated on these matters as he returned silently to the hall and up to the front door.
He thanked Taylor and went outside. It was now quite gloomy and in the cold air he could see that fog was not far away. He walked all round the lonely house. There were no trees on the moors, the strong winds had seen to that, but there was a good stone wall around the house. He trudged up the drive looking in every direction. He went through the open gates, which appeared to be left permanently open. He peered round the stone pillars from which they were hung. At the base of one of the pillars he saw several recently snapped twigs of dormant gorse. He wandered further around the area, across more gorse, some heather and grass, but found no other signs of disturbance. He pursed his lips and, standing in the cold, considered the explanation. Someone had been standing there, very recently … could have had binoculars and been watching the house. He crouched down hopeful that the snooper might have dropped something or left a heel mark or something. But there was nothing.
He returned to his car.
It was only a ten-minute drive to the police station, and Angel spent most of the time thinking about the murder of Peter Santana. It was such an unusual and disconcerting case. The newspapers were having a great time, with headlines such as, ‘The pig and the producer’, ‘Hamming it up’, ‘How millionaire brought home the bacon’, and so on. Angel knew he ought to be in and among the people associated with Santana to find out what had made him tick, but they would have to wait. There were more pressing matters. He had a lot on his mind.
He walked quickly down the green-painted station corridor to his office, picked up the phone and tapped out a number. Ahmed answered.
‘There was a villain picked out by Clem Bailey yesterday from our rogues’ gallery, Ahmed. Number twenty,’ he said while unbuttoning his raincoat.
‘Yes, sir. I looked it up. That was Laurence Smith.’
Angel’s eyebrows shot up. ‘Laurence Smith? Larry the Liar?’
‘I don’t know about that, sir.’
‘Well, get out all you can on him for me, pronto.’
‘Right, sir.’
Angel knew Laurence Smith, a difficult man who had the reputation of being an habitual liar. He had served time for robbery and dealing in stolen goods.
Angel peeled off the raincoat threw it over a chair and looked down at his desk. At the top of a pile of post and reports was an email from the Drugs and Abusive Substances Squad, London. It was addressed to senior officers at each of the forty-three police forces in the UK.
The following paragraph caught his attention:
As a result of stringent searching and recent arrests of smugglers concealing heroin inside children’s teddy bears and 50 kilo sacks of dried currants, smugglers have turned to concealing the drug in hollow plastic rolling pins in children’s toy baking sets, hollow wooden children’s toy forts and other unusual wooden and mechanical toys, ornaments and household equipment. All officers are asked to be aware of the devious methods and unusual containers smugglers have been driven to concealing the drug and the Drug and Abusive Substances Squad request your cooperation.
As he was re-reading the email, the phone rang. He reached out for it.
‘Angel,’ he growled.
‘Crisp here, sir. Got the warrant. Got a squad of four men together at the front of the station to mount that raid on Quigley’s pad. Just filling up with diesel. Will be leaving in two minutes.’
‘Right. I’ll follow you in my car.’
The two cars glided quietly up to the front door of Quigley’s terraced house in the Canal Road area of Bromersley. There was a light showing through thick curtains drawn across the downstairs front room. Two constables moved swiftly through the ginnel to the back of the house, while Angel, Crisp and a constable with a battering ram approached the front door.
Crisp began to bang loudly on the door. ‘Police, Quigley. Open up. It’s the police. Come on, Quigley. Open up. Open up.’
Angel rubbed his cold hands together to try to warm them up, while the constable and Crisp maintained the racket at the front door. Then Crisp gave the signal and the constable let heave with the battering ram and the door flew open.
They rushed out of the cold into the front room, but there was nobody there. They dispersed rapidly throughout the little house, switching on all the lights. The men covering the back door rushed back down the ginnel and into the house through the front door. Every room was checked but nobody was found.
Crisp was last down the stairs. ‘He’s not here, sir.’
They all congregated in the kitchen.
Angel looked round the tiny room. It was clean and tidy. There were no pots in the sink; everything was washed up.
Suddenly they heard the whirring sound from the mechanism of the cuckoo clock on the wall beginning its hourly cycle.
Angel recognized the noise, turned round and stared at it. He rubbed his chin. He looked closely at the weights to note which weight fell as the cuckoo proclaimed that the time was five o’clock. It was the weight on the shortest length of chain, an inch or so from the underside of the clock. The other weight was almost at the floor. From that he knew that the clock had only recently been wound up.
He said nothing. They had searched the place and Quigley wasn’t there. He ran his hand through his hair. He turned round and realized also that the room was warm. He saw a radiator on the kitchen wall covered with a towel. He put his hand on it and found that it was damp. Then he spotted an electric kettle. He patted it carefully. It was warm. The muscles in his jaw tightened.
He knew that Quigley was there.
Angel, Crisp and the constables searched the ground floor again. There was no cellar, just a hallway, two rooms and a pantry. Then they went upstairs and carefully looked through the two bedrooms and the bathroom. Angel even opened the cistern cupboard. There was not so much as a hungry spider.
The squad gathered on the small landing. Angel signalled to one of the constables, who leaned across to him; he whispered something in his ear. The man immediately went downstairs and returned with a long-handled sweeping brush, which he silently handed to him. Angel took it and pointed it up to the ceiling and pressed it against the wooden trapdoor that led to the loft. He pushed but it did not give. He tried in several other positions, but with the same result.
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‘He’s up there,’ Angel said at length. ‘He’s either holding the door down or he’s put some weight on top of it.’
‘How did he get up there?’ Crisp said.
‘Got a ladder and pulled it up behind him, I expect,’ Angel said.
‘What can we do, sir?’
Angel pointed downstairs and put his first finger vertically across his lips.
The squad made their way downstairs to the kitchen.
‘He may be able to hear all we are saying.’ He turned to the constable who had driven the van. ‘Nip back to the station to the stores and bring back some steps or a ladder, sharpish.’
‘Right, sir,’ he said and he was gone.
‘He may have planned this way of escape and could have victuals and supplies up there to last for days,’ Angel said.
The men waited patiently in the kitchen. Angel looked at his watch. He pulled out a chair, sat down, picked up his mobile and tapped in his home number.
‘Hello, love. Are you all right?’
‘Where are you?’ Mary said. ‘You’re not ringing to say you’re going to be late again, are you?’
‘Something came up. I might be an hour or two. Anything in the post?’
Her voice went up an octave. ‘An hour or two? And I’ve made a beef casserole with onion and kidney and mushroom. It’s been slow cooking for three hours. I timed it for six o’clock. After that it will start drying up. What am I supposed to do about it, Michael? Tell me that.’
‘I’m sorry, love. It’s unavoidable.’
Angel noticed that Crisp was smiling down at him. He looked away.
Angel’s fingers tightened round the phone. ‘Put it on a low light,’ he said, ‘and I’ll get back as soon as I can.’
‘It’ll dry up. It’s too bad, it really is.’
‘Is there anything in the post?’
Her voice lightened. ‘As a matter of fact there is. We’ve got a wedding invitation. Who do you think is getting married?’
The guessing business always rattled him. ‘I don’t know, do I?’ he growled.
‘Don’t be so irritable. Why, little Timmy, of course.’
The Cuckoo Clock Scam Page 5