Missing, Presumed... (An Inspector Angel Mystery)

by Roger Silverwood

  The corners of Corbett’s mouth turned up and a few teeth were flashed.

  Angel thought it was a smile, although he had once seen a snake smile more convincingly.

  The door opened noisily and Lloyd Corbett came in carrying a black tin tray with two half-full tumblers of a brown liquid on it. He took the tray over to James Corbett and put one of the glasses on the table in front of him.

  ‘Brandy,’ he said.

  James Corbett didn’t seem to notice. He maintained an interested gaze on Angel.

  Lloyd Corbett came over to Angel and banged the other glass in front of him, causing it to splash on the table top.

  Angel noticed but he had no intention of drinking it.

  Lloyd then looked at his brother with raised eyebrows. James replied with a gesture with his thumb to go away. Lloyd jeered, waved, went out and slammed the door.

  James Corbett picked up the tumbler and took a drink. As he swallowed, he looked at the tumbler agreeably and then put it down on the table.

  Angel’s stomach had almost settled, his breathing much more even, but the muscles round his jaw were still taut. ‘What do you want with me?’ he said.

  ‘The question could be the other way round,’ James Corbett said. ‘You have been looking for me and Lloyd. Our pictures are all over town, with your name at the bottom. Says you want to know where we are. Well, we’re here. Now what?’

  ‘Simple,’ Angel said. ‘I want you to get out of Bromersley.’

  Corbett beamed. ‘That’s not very friendly.’

  Angel didn’t reply.

  Corbett’s face hardened. ‘I’ve met coppers like you before. You put on a very hard front. It jacks up the price. All right. You can play around a bit. I don’t mind. Business is good. I can afford it. You’ve got good negotiating skills, Angel. I’ll give you that.’

  Angel could sense a bribe coming on. ‘I can’t be bought off, Corbett,’ he said. ‘All I want you to do is go back from where you came.’

  The snake’s smile grew wider. ‘Oh, you are good. You should be on the telly.’

  ‘You don’t want to be hanging around Bromersley, Corbett. Don’t you realize that when Charlie Drumme gets out of hospital, he’ll come looking for you?’

  His eyebrows shot up. ‘Don’t know what you’re talking about. Never heard of him.’

  ‘You, or your lieutenants, put Charlie Drumme in hospital because you want to take over his turf.’

  ‘I told you, I never heard of him.’

  ‘He runs a string of girls down the Canal Road, and he has a small grass business in some of the small ailing pubs around the town. If the law was tighter and there were more hours in the day, we would have had the street cleared, his factory closed down and he’d be inside doing time. I would have thought that taking over his business would have been small beer to a big noise like you.’

  ‘Look, Angel,’ he said. ‘Let’s stop dancing round the outside. I can’t discuss my plans with you until I know you’re on board. I’ve got fantastic plans. Plans you wouldn’t believe. I’m talking millions. You can be part of those plans. I’ve got control of a big piece of Lancashire and I am ready to expand. You don’t have to be a grubby little copper for the rest of your life.’

  Angel smiled wryly and rubbed a hand across his mouth. ‘You’ve a chief constable and a superintendent senior to me,’ he said. ‘And two other inspectors at my rank. You’re going to need a simply huge bag of goodies to get you a police-free passage through Bromersley.’

  ‘Yeah, but I needn’t bother about the others, need I? If I’ve got you on my team, we can work round them, can’t we? You’re the brains of the outfit. You’re top banana, aren’t you?’

  ‘It doesn’t work like that, Corbett. And I’m not top banana, as you put it.’

  He smiled. ‘I like that. I like a modest man. If there’s one thing I like it’s a modest man. I’m a modest man myself.’

  ‘Yes, well, from what I’ve heard,’ Angel said, ‘you’ve a lot to be modest about.’

  The smile vanished from Corbett’s face.

  Angel regretted the easy insult. It had not been necessary. No, he reflected, but it had been fun.

  Corbett’s face went red. ‘Let’s stop frigging around,’ he shouted. ‘What I want from you is a deal…cooperation.’

  ‘Such as shutting a blind eye to yesterday’s Pelican Security van robbery?’

  Corbett was momentarily stunned. Under half-closed eyelids, his pupils slid to the left, to the right and then back again.

  Angel had hit home. It had only been a stab in the dark. He must be careful though. He had to get out of this situation in one piece. ‘I couldn’t do anything about that even if I wanted to,’ he added. ‘It isn’t my case.’

  Corbett’s fists tightened. He shook his head impatiently. ‘Never mind that,’ he bawled. ‘I mean a long-term, wide-ranging arrangement. I’m talking really big money.’

  Angel’s attention was suddenly taken by some activity through the big window. A big antique Rolls-Royce had pulled off the carriageway on to the gravel car park. It had huge silver headlamps and a shiny silver radiator grille. It would be the car he saw in his reversing mirror standing behind him when he had first been stopped. The driver parked it next to the BMW. The driver was the one who had been in the AA man’s uniform, the one Corbett had called Mossy. Angel noticed that it was still raining hard, as rain was still bouncing off the car’s polished black roof.

  When Corbett saw the car’s arrival, his face brightened. He jumped up from the table, dashed across to the door, yanked it open and called, ‘Lloyd! Lloyd! Fetch me that box from the car.’

  He heard a disgruntled reply.

  Then James Corbett came back into the room.

  A minute or two later, Lloyd Corbett came in with a small cardboard box. His face was like thunder. He totally ignored Angel. He shoved the box roughly into James Corbett’s hand and said: ‘This is frigging ridiculous. I have told you.’

  ‘Shut up and get out,’ James Corbett said.

  Lloyd Corbett shook his head and said: ‘I’m going. I’m going, but don’t say I didn’t tell you.’ He went out and closed the door.

  James Corbett switched on the smile. He walked over to where Angel was sitting, and put the small box on the table in front of him. ‘That’s the first payment of £20,000 in used notes and different denominations. If all goes well, as I expect it to do, and you cooperate in my plans, I should be able to pay you that sum every month. In a year that would amount to £240,000. In four years you’d be a millionaire.’

  Angel looked at the box and sighed. He didn’t expect the bribe to be as much as £20,000. It must be inflation. His heart sank. His situation was unenviable. He had to decline this obnoxious offer without rousing Corbett’s anger. He stroked his chin. He wanted to get out of this position alive.

  Corbett stared down at him. ‘Well, what do you say?’

  Angel couldn’t think of anything smart to say. ‘No,’ he said. ‘No. It’s not my style. I don’t do bribes.’

  Corbett frowned, pursed his lips, turned round and walked away. After a few moments he came back. The smile was even bigger. He nodded and said, ‘I know you, Michael Angel. I heard you had a devious mind, and that you could out-think anybody you came up against. All right. All right. But I don’t know how you do it. I don’t know how you could possibly know that that was not my best offer?’

  Angel brushed his hand through his hair. The situation was impossible.

  ‘It’s not that,’ Angel said as earnestly as he could. ‘It’s simple. I don’t take bribes. Contrary to popular belief, policemen don’t take bribes.’

  ‘I understand,’ Corbett said with a smile. The deal is, of course, £25,000 a month. I have another £5,000 in the car. How you knew, I cannot understand. Nowhere in the world has a copper ever had such an offer.’

  He looked down at Angel.

  Angel shook his head. But he understood how policemen (and others) could be so ea
sily led into such trouble. He sometimes found it difficult to find money at the end of the month. He still owed several thousand on their mortgage, and he was a week or two behind with the gas bill. £25,000 would clear it all off beautifully. To be free of debt and have a few thousand in the bank would be magic. But he knew it could not possibly happen.

  ‘I don’t take bribes, Corbett. I don’t take bribes. Don’t you understand?’

  There was the tinkle of a mobile phone.

  Angel knew it wasn’t his.

  Corbett dived into his pocket, pulled out a phone and looked at the LCD. His face creased up and he bared his teeth. He pressed a button on the phone, put it to his mouth and screamed: ‘What is it, Laura? I’m very busy. I told you not to ring me unless it was important.’

  Angel couldn’t hear Laura’s side of the conversation, but she was loud, expressive and she spoke continuously for about a minute.

  ‘All right,’ Corbett said at length. He sighed. ‘All right. Yes. I’m coming now.’

  He closed the phone and pushed it into his pocket. He walked towards the door and then back again. He looked at Angel and made one more circuit. When he returned he said, ‘I know what it is, Michael, you want time to think about it.’

  ‘No, I don’t,’ Angel said.

  He simply wanted to reject the deal. He didn’t want to antagonize the man. He wanted to walk out of the place alive and go home to his wife Mary, that’s all. What more could he say?

  Corbett didn’t want to hear that.

  ‘I’ll be in touch,’ he said, and he walked out of the room. Angel wondered if he was leaving. It would mean he was free. He jumped to his feet, ready for a quick exit.

  He heard men shouting in the bar, then footsteps rapidly coming back towards him. He sat down. What were they coming back for?

  Lloyd Corbett came into the room. He dashed over to where Angel was seated and grabbed the cardboard box from the table. He turned, hesitated at the door and said, ‘Here, Angel. Have you come across The Fixer on your travels?’

  Angel frowned. ‘No.’

  He pulled an ugly face. ‘If you do — a tip for you — kill him before he kills you,’ he said and rushed off.

  Angel blinked in amazement, and wondered what Lloyd Corbett meant by it.

  Seconds later, through the window, he saw the Corbetts pile into the back of the Rolls-Royce and saw it pull away rapidly from the front of The Log Cabin. It turned left towards Bromersley.

  He let out a long sigh. He was alive. He was free. He couldn’t believe it. He dashed out of the room into the empty bar/dining area to make for the door. Then he remembered, his car keys were in James Corbett’s pocket.

  He heard a voice behind him call out. ‘Is your name Mr Angel?’

  He frowned, turned and saw a little man in a white hat dodging round at the back of a coffee machine behind the serving counter.

  ‘Yes,’ he said.

  The man dangled a set of car keys at the end of his fingers. ‘I was told to give you these.’

  Angel smiled. His car keys. That was fantastic. If he put his foot down, it was possible to catch up with them, follow them and find out where they were hiding out.

  He dashed up to the counter, his hand outstretched.

  ‘There’s a message goes with them,’ the man said, smiling.

  ‘Oh yes?’

  ‘They said to tell you that they noticed you had two flat tyres.’

  Chapter Four

  It was 0828 hours the following morning, Friday 22 August.

  At last the rain had stopped and the sky was a clear blue.

  The headline news on the radio and television was still about people flooded out of their houses, broken river-banks, roads swamped, clogged sewers and trains delayed. The weathermen were pointing out that while locations above sea level would soon dry out after the heavy drenching, water would still be soaking down from the hill and mountain tops for the next few days, adding to the existing troubles in low-lying and vulnerable places.

  Angel was in his office, on the phone speaking to DS Donald Taylor, head of SOCO.

  ‘It was an old Rolls-Royce, Don,’ Angel said. ‘Probably 1920s or 30s. The number plates were false but that was to be expected. I want you to see if you can recover any tyre tracks. The tyres were very wide, it won’t be difficult to spot which vehicle it is. But you’ll have to move fast, before the tracks are all driven over.’

  ‘Right, sir.’

  ‘I’ve sent Ed Scrivens along to your office with the addresses of the sites and my sketches and notes of the likely places where you might be able to find them. He should be with you any second.’

  ‘We’ll move as soon as he gets here, sir.’

  He replaced the phone but it rang immediately. He lifted the receiver. It was DS Crisp. ‘Yes?’

  ‘I’ve been round the eight people who actually married a couple on 9 August, sir,’ he said. ‘They each only performed the one ceremony that day, and none of them recognized Selina Line. In fact, they all say they don’t ever recall having seen her.’

  Angel sighed.

  ‘I have been thinking, sir,’ Crisp said. ‘Either the photograph’s wrong, or she simply didn’t get married on the ninth. I mean, the root source of this information was the registrar. She can’t be wrong, can she?’

  ‘No. And the supporting information I have is directly from her sister and she should know. Now, I want to make this particular line of inquiry a hundred per cent conclusive. Go back to the registrar and get a comprehensive list of priests, ministers and whatever who are authorized to marry people in Bromersley. You’ll have to be nice to her. Then visit each one, show him or her the photograph of Selina Line and find out if they’ve married her in the past, say, three weeks. All right?’

  ‘Yes. Right, sir. I might have some difficulty getting to the little churches out in the wilds, like Hoylandswaine, Tunistone and Slogmarrow. Did you know Creesforth Dam Road is closed to traffic? The dam was in danger of flooding. The sluice gate is reputed to be cluttered up with rubbish.’

  ‘Is it? You can go round the bottom road.’

  ‘No, sir. That’s flooded. And Bromersley Bottom might be flooded if the dam doesn’t hold. They say that it is at a dangerous level.’

  ‘Really?’

  ‘There’s a crane working from the road to clear rubbish from the sluice gates…so that the overflow dam water can get away more quickly. It was on the news.’

  ‘I hadn’t heard. Well, you’ll have to do the best you can. Get round there when the road is reopened. Thank goodness the rain has stopped. Have you made any progress on the other matter? Finding the woman with red hair?’

  ‘Not much, sir. I haven’t had the time.’

  ‘I’m not chasing you. Just anxious.’

  ‘I have found out one thing, sir,’ he said. ‘That there’s no such company as Merlin Vacuum Cleaners.’

  Angel smiled. He wasn’t surprised.

  It was an old ruse for ‘working girls’ to pretend to be selling vacuum cleaners or some other domestic appliance on their visits to houses, particularly helpful to them in areas where their clients had nosy neighbours.

  ‘All right, lad. Get on with it and keep in touch.’

  He replaced the phone, eased himself back in the swivel chair and rubbed his chin. He wondered why he was having so much difficulty finding Selina Line. The wedding was proving difficult to trace, and it shouldn’t be. He ran his hand through his hair. He only had Josephine Henderson’s word that Selina Line had phoned from the phone box on Victoria Road on 1 August and told her that she was getting married on the ninth. It made him think. If the phone company had said that the call had come from Berlin, then presumably she would have flown there and had the German police scratching round the churches, chapels, town halls and wherever else it was now legal for two people to be married.

  He sighed noisily. Nevertheless, he didn’t believe that Mrs Henderson had an ulterior motive. If she had, why would she have picked on
Bromersley? It would have been far easier and more convenient for her to have selected somewhere nearer home in Surrey.

  He knew that he wouldn’t be able to check on Selina’s phone call to Mrs Henderson with the phone company, as too much time had elapsed. He would simply have to believe her. It was just that it seemed impossible to find any trace of Selina Line anywhere. All inquiries so far had drawn a blank. It was as if she didn’t exist. He suddenly had a thought. He leaned forward to lower his chair, opened the middle desk drawer and took out one of the photographs of the missing woman that he had had printed. Then he looked in his address book, picked up the phone and tapped out a number.

  He spoke to the assistant editor of the Bromersley Chronicle, the local weekly rag, and made an arrangement to reproduce the photograph with the headline, ‘Have you seen this woman?’ It would be presented in next Friday’s issue on the front page with a paragraph of description and so on.

  He replaced the phone, sighed and nodded. That was the first stage of going public with the inquiry. His heart somehow felt lighter.

  He reflected over the conversations he had had with Josephine Henderson again and the more he thought about it, he felt instinctively that she was telling the truth. The entire inquiry hinged on that. She had better be.

  There was a knock at the door. It was Gawber.

  ‘Come in, Ron. Sit down. What have you got?’

  ‘About Dennis Schuster and his missus?’

  ‘Yes. Yes,’ Angel said enthusiastically.

  ‘Well, I discovered that he isn’t a contributor to the Inland Revenue, for a start.’

  ‘That’s no surprise.’

  ‘And according to the Benefits Agency in Newcastle, he’s been claiming unemployed benefit since 2000. But before that I did find a link previously to teaching.’

  Angel looked up.

  ‘He was employed as a peripatetic musician, teaching piano in various schools in the borough until 2000. I don’t suppose any school would touch him when they discovered he had a criminal record.’

  Angel rubbed his chin. ‘Crooks and kids don’t mix,’ he said. ‘But then we’re not expecting our villain to tell the truth, are we? Villains like to say something near the truth, and to a conman like Schuster, it must have seemed quite respectable for him to tell his exceedingly rich bride-to-be that he was a schoolteacher, don’t you think? Education is still a very respectable profession.’