The Dog Collar Murders

by Roger Silverwood

Harker watched from the gallery, rubbing his bony chin hard and fast, his lips twitching.

  Bloomberg simply wondered whether at the end of the parade he would have a man to defend against murder or not.

  Angel licked his bottom lip and hoped that Zoe Costello was simply going to pass King by.

  She did. She moved on to the third man.

  Harker’s face dropped. ‘What’s the matter with the woman? Is she blind?’

  Angel sighed but he knew it wasn’t over. ‘She might pick him out on the way back,’ he said.

  ‘No, she won’t,’ Harker said.

  Zoe Costello continued down the line. Crisp and Weightman followed close behind. She was painstakingly thorough and slow.

  Angel, Harker and Bloomberg stood patiently, observing in silence.

  Then, suddenly, their eyes were averted to King, who had unexpectedly walked over to a stack of chairs that had been moved out of the way. He lifted off the top one, managing to rattle the legs of it on the lower one to produce the maximum amount of noise.

  Angel’s jaw muscles tightened. ‘Just look at that, sir,’ he said.

  Harker said, ‘The silly bugger.’

  Angel shook his head.

  Their eyes stayed on him.

  King then proceeded to take the chair back to where he had been standing, banged it on the floor, pushed it up against the blackboard, sat down on it, crossed his legs, folded his arms and pulled a face like a disinterested bystander.

  The other men nearest to him in the parade glared at him.

  Zoe Costello suddenly glanced round, followed by Crisp and Weightman, who had only just caught up with the disturbance. They couldn’t see King seated in the chair from where they stood. Seeing nothing, they turned back.

  Minutes later, Zoe Costello had reached the tenth man.

  Angel ran his hand through his hair and paced up and down in the limited area at the back of the gallery. He had never experienced this behaviour in an ID parade before and was glad it was almost over.

  He returned to the glass and watched Zoe Costello surveying the last man. She nodded, turned away and seemed to have finished. She turned to Crisp and said, ‘Can I just have a quick look down the line again, just to make sure?’

  He nodded, and he and Weightman stepped back a few paces to allow her to take the lead.

  She retraced her steps away from number ten, and past numbers nine, eight, seven and six. She hovered over number five for a moment or two. It looked as if she might touch him on the arm, but she didn’t. She moved on to four. It was then that she noticed King seated in the chair. She turned to Crisp. A word formed on her lips. She decided not to say it. He shrugged. She frowned briefly.

  In the gallery, Harker almost exploded. ‘This is intolerable,’ he said, and he snatched up the mike, switched it on and said, ‘Miss er, Miss Costello. Miss Costello. This is Detective Superintendent Harker. If you want the gentleman in the second position to stand up, so that you can see him better, I believe that if DS Crisp asks him, he will.’

  Crisp didn’t need to do anything. King had heard Harker, and promptly stood up. He wasn’t sulking any more either.

  Angel thought that the mere fact that Harker, a superintendent, had noticed him and picked him out had greatly improved King’s spirits.

  Zoe Costello seemed at a loss and, after hesitating, looked towards the body of the room and vaguely said a weak, ‘Thank you.’

  She looked carefully at King, who now showed himself off as if he was a male model.

  The men in the gallery stared down at the pantomime.

  Zoe Costello soon turned away from him and moved on to the man in the first position, by the door.

  Harker put his hands up to each side of his head and groaned.

  It was virtually all over.

  Angel sighed but kept his eye on the action in the room below … just in case.

  Zoe Costello gave a cursory glance at the first man again, then with a slight shake of the head looked at Crisp and walked out of the room. Crisp followed her.

  That really was it.

  Angel saw Bloomberg pick up his briefcase. He thought he would want to rush off and tell King that – thanks to his efforts! – he was free to leave, which indeed he was.

  Angel didn’t quite know what to say to King’s solicitor. Bloomberg might allege that the identification parade was invalid but Angel didn’t think that likely because the witness had not identified his client as the murderer. If Bloomberg did claim that the parade was invalid, Harker would know exactly the course of action to be taken. He could leave them to chew the rag about that and decide what to do. Angel had enough trouble. Harker, of course, would not be pleased with the outcome either. He had hoped for the ID parade to have produced a positive result and it hadn’t. Harker had hoped to see Peter King put away for a twenty-year stretch at least and it looked like it wasn’t going to happen. Angel could not see how they could possibly go through the exercise again.

  ‘Excuse me, gentlemen,’ Angel said. ‘Must catch up with the witness.’

  He dashed down the steps and through the door into the green corridor. He could see Zoe Costello, escorted by Crisp, stepping towards his office as arranged.

  By the time he caught up, Crisp was leaving his office and closing the door.

  ‘The witness is in your office, sir,’ Crisp said.

  Angel nodded.

  ‘What happens to King now?’ Crisp said.

  ‘For the time being, we have to accept the witness’s judgement that King isn’t the murderer. So ring Kathy Ellison at the Probation Office and tell her that he is no longer an official suspect in this case, and then release him.’

  ‘Release him?’

  ‘Yes, lad. Release him.’

  Crisp looked thoughtful but said, ‘Right, sir.’

  Angel cocked a thumb at his office door and said, ‘How is she? Zoe Costello? How did she take it all?’

  Crisp smiled. ‘I think she’s cooled down now, sir.’

  It was eight o’clock on Saturday morning, 16 January, and Michael Angel was still in bed asleep. He was dreaming of a hot sun, a golden beach and a turquoise and aquamarine blue sea. He was dreaming of willowy girls with no hips, in minuscule bikinis, carrying trays of champagne cocktails. There was laughter, gentle string music and the swishing sound of the sea. One of the girls lay next to him. She snuggled into his arms. He kissed her tenderly on the lips. It was a warm kiss. A kiss full of promise. He gently manoeuvred his arms under hers and pulled her to him. She didn’t resist. She was soft and compliant. She was totally under his spell.

  ‘Michael,’ she said appealingly.

  He didn’t reply.

  ‘Michael,’ she said again. This time there was an urgency about it.

  ‘Be patient, my beautiful one,’ he murmured.

  Then he felt a strong tugging sensation at his shoulder. ‘What did you say, Michael?’ she said.

  It was a voice he knew well.

  He opened his eyes.

  Mary was tugging at his shoulder. ‘Whatever are you doing with that pillow? It’s one of the new ones, you know … filled with goose feathers. I thought you were going to eat it. And what was it you said?’

  He rubbed his eyes, sniffed and said, ‘I must have been dreaming.’

  He noticed that Mary was fully dressed. He glanced at the clock.

  ‘It’s Saturday, isn’t it?’ he said.

  ‘It is,’ she said, surprising him with a quick kiss. ‘And I want you to get up now. Your breakfast’s ready. I’ve had what I want.’

  Angel frowned.

  ‘Come on, love,’ she said. ‘Hurry up. Bathroom’s free.’

  He looked up at her. She didn’t look back. She rushed off.

  His eyes followed her out of the bedroom.

  He sat on the edge of the bed, looking at the anaglypta and scratching his stomach. There was something unusual about Mary’s behaviour. Something was afoot … very definitely afoot. He recognized the scenario
. She had some plan, some horrible idea on her mind. Something she knew he wouldn’t like and would object to. She wouldn’t want to drop it on him all at once. She would have planned to feed titbits out to him as necessary as the plan progressed. In that way, he would be cushioned to the shock when the full scheme became known.

  It would be as well if he could have some idea what she was up to. It would almost certainly involve spending money. All Mary’s schemes and plans involved spending money. And that always came at a bad time. It certainly was a bad time on this occasion, just after Christmas. Funds were very low indeed. Her last idea was buying that bed for her sister, a bed which they didn’t need and couldn’t really afford – and which he had not yet assembled due to shortage of time, a certain lack of know-how and because he didn’t want to do it.

  ‘Michael! Michael!’ she called from the kitchen.

  He reached down for his slippers. ‘Yes? Yes?’

  ‘Are you moving?’

  ‘Yes, love,’ he called. ‘I’m coming.’

  ‘Are you in the bathroom?’

  ‘Yes,’ he lied.

  He took off his pyjama jacket, stood up and crossed the landing to the bathroom. The room seemed brighter. He didn’t need the electric light. He looked out of the window; the sun was trying to be seen. The big freeze had taken a breather and most of the snow that had been gripping the fields and hills for the earlier ten days had gone and the rest had turned to grey slush and soaked into the grass or disappeared into the brooks, becks and streams or down the drains.

  The sight of the bright sky and the green fields made him wash and shave with enthusiasm. He even found himself humming, ‘Oh What A Beautiful Morning’.

  He walked into the kitchen wearing a dressing gown.

  Mary gawped at him but said nothing. She put the teapot on the table. The muesli was already in a dish. He sat down, poured the milk over it and took a mouthful.

  ‘You’re not dressed,’ she said.

  Without looking up, through the muesli he said, ‘It’s Saturday.’

  It had taken her long enough to state the obvious, he thought. She must be wanting him to get dressed and smarten himself up to go out somewhere. Perhaps take her out. He wouldn’t mind that, now that the weather had changed and the roads would be clearer. But he wondered where she would be wanting to go.

  She poured out two cups of tea and passed one over to him.

  ‘Thank you, love,’ he said.

  She smiled. ‘I thought we might go out somewhere nice.’

  He nodded.

  She didn’t want him to do anything in the garden. That was good. It was far too cold and everything was soaking. He was pleased about that.

  ‘Have lunch in a nice restaurant somewhere?’ he said.

  ‘We haven’t done that for ages.’

  ‘How about The Feathers?’

  ‘I thought we might have a run out in the car. Make a day of it.’

  Angel’s face brightened. ‘You mean the seaside? Scarborough? Bridlington? Skegness? Blow the cobwebs away?’

  ‘I wasn’t thinking of going that far,’ she said. ‘I was thinking that there are some lovely places to eat at Meadowhall.’

  ‘Meadowhall?’ Angel looked hard at her. ‘That’s just shops,’ he said. He knew it. That was Mary’s game. She wanted to go to one of the biggest shopping centres in the country, to eat.

  Mary kept a dead straight face and said, ‘There are all kinds of restaurants there.’

  ‘I don’t want fish and chips again!’ he said. ‘We are not going there.’

  It was half past two.

  Michael Angel followed Mary Angel across the busy tarmac of one of the packed car parks in Meadowhall to the BMW. He was carrying a parcel of five rolls of wallpaper. He sighed with relief as he lowered it into the car boot. Mary added two plastic bags containing sachets of paste and other bits and pieces. She hadn’t planned on buying anything other than wallpaper and paste, but she had seen all sorts of knick-knacks in eye-catching wrapping on the shelves, had picked them up, decided they could be useful and popped them in the wire basket.

  Angel had discovered, of course, as he knew he would, eventually, the con Mary had in her mind to work across him. It was the burning necessity, she reckoned, which hadn’t been apparent to him (and probably never would have been), that the bedroom that was to be temporarily occupied by her sister, Lolly, very much needed refreshing and brightening with new wallpaper.

  He wasn’t pleased about this. He had slapped it on his credit card and had no organized thought-out way in which he was going to repay it without paying the bank’s exorbitant interest. The gas bill was still not paid and was about a month overdue. But since the early days of their marriage, he had always said that Mary could have her own way, and without abusing the privilege, she always got it. Naturally, she was delighted and had pledged to do the paperhanging herself, thereby saving that expense.

  Angel slammed down the boot lid and they got into the car. They had had a passably good lunch at an expensive restaurant in and among the myriad of lanes of shops and were on their way home. Angel had nothing much to say in the way of conversation. It had all been exhausted in the earlier abandoned argument about the unnecessary wallpapering of Lolly’s room, as it had become known.

  As Angel reached the outskirts of Bromersley, he saw one of Grogan’s ice-cream vans parked near the gates of a small park off Sheffield Road. Two girls aged about fourteen suitably dressed in warm boots, overcoats with furry hoods and gloves, were walking away, laughing and licking on ice-cream cones.

  He slowed the BMW down, pointed to the van ahead and said, ‘Would you like an ice cream, Mary? Never tasted Grogan’s ice cream. I wonder what it’s like?’

  ‘No, thank you, love,’ she said. She pretended to shiver. ‘It’s too cold.’

  He smiled. ‘When was the last time you had a cornet?’

  ‘A cornet?’ she said, her eyebrows rising upward. She considered the suggestion. ‘Are you having one?’

  ‘Why not? Be a devil.’

  ‘All right, love,’ she said.

  He stopped the BMW just behind the smartly painted ice-cream van and went round on the pavement to the serving window.

  The salesman slid open the window. ‘Good afternoon, sir. Now what can I get you?’

  ‘Two vanilla cornets, please.’

  ‘That’s two pounds, please,’ the man said.

  As Angel dug into his pocket and fingered through his change, the salesman reached into a box, pulled out two large orange cones then deftly scooped large semi-spheres of ice cream and perched them on top of each one.

  Angel put the correct money inside the window.

  The salesman handed him the two cornets. As he did so, he quickly turned away as if he didn’t want his face to be seen.

  ‘Thank you,’ Angel said.

  The ice-cream man then picked up the money and said, ‘Thank you, sir. Have a nice day.’ He closed the window, put the server into a drawer and made his way to the driver’s seat.

  Angel nodded and wondered where he had seen the face before. He turned away from the van window to find himself facing the gate to the small park, which was wide open. Looking through it and along the path towards the swings was a strange sight he had heard reported before. About ten feet from the entrance, at the side of the path, was a small puddle of melting ice cream with six or seven cones sticking out of it. He went into the park and down the path. He crouched down to have a closer look. The ice-cream cornets appeared simply to have been discarded. Perhaps because they were sour or didn’t taste right. He couldn’t think of any other explanation. He looked at the two cornets he was holding. They looked identical to the ones thrown away. He straightened up and stood there a few moments, struggling for a reason, but none came.

  He returned to the car. He noticed Grogan’s van had packed up and gone.

  He handed the ice cream to Mary, who took it eagerly. ‘I don’t think I’ve had a cornet for ten years o
r more. Thank you, darling,’ she said.

  He smiled and the couple began to lick the white stuff.

  Mary dived straight in, and after a few preliminary licks made a suitable hole in the dome shape.

  Angel didn’t know what to expect. He started cautiously, considering each lick, ready to dispatch the cornet to a waste-bin if necessary.

  Mary soon licked through the ice cream, reached the biscuit, crunched all the way through that, reached for her handbag for a handkerchief, wiped her lips and fingers with it, and said, ‘Thank you, Michael. That was quite the nicest ice cream I have ever had.’

  Angel had to agree. It really had tasted remarkably good. He started the car engine and pointed the car bonnet towards home.

  However, the identity of the driver salesman in a Grogan’s van and the reason for the ice-cream cornets being placed upside-down in the discarded ice cream around the town monopolized his thoughts throughout the weekend and beyond.

  TWELVE

  Sunday came. It was cold but there was no snow. Angel avoided looking at the clocks because although he was up early enough to go to church, he didn’t really want to go. Mary said nothing. He thought that she probably felt the same.

  He munched his way through his muesli and drank endless cups of tea, his mind on the upturned cone biscuits stuck in the melting ice cream. At the same time, Mary was wondering where she had put the paper scrapers after decorating the kitchen the previous spring, and how she could talk her husband into helping her to scrape paper off the bedroom walls. There was now less urgency to assemble the bed. That would be a job to do after the decoration had been completed.

  They spoke only in monosyllables through breakfast until Mary said, ‘Look at the time. Quarter past ten. We can’t possibly get to church now.’

  ‘No,’ Angel said. He felt a little uncomfortable as he knew he had connived at being too late.

  He left the breakfast table, taking his tea cup with him, moved into the sitting room, turned on the gas fire and switched on the TV. Up came the sound of a church organ followed by the picture of stained glass windows, candles and a choir in full voice. He watched it with interest. He could see it was an Anglican church and wondered from what part of the country it was being broadcast. He reasoned that if he watched that, it might mollify his conscience. Halfway through the second hymn, he began making notes about what he had to do the next day, Monday.