The Diamond Rosary Murders

by Roger Silverwood

  Angel frowned and rubbed his chin.

  Clifton said. ‘Of course, it’ll come up in their reports, but I thought you’d like notice of it.’

  Angel pursed his lips. ‘Yes,’ he said. ‘The lads gone off?’

  ‘Sean Donohue is still here. Shall I send him down?’

  Angel’s eyebrows shot up. ‘Yes, please, Bernie. Out of interest, anything else?’

  ‘A gown shop broken into, that new posh one, Madam Vera’s. Small amount of stuff taken.’

  ‘Aye. The one with the big price tickets. Any witnesses or CCTV?’

  ‘No, sir. And there was Ben Hill, the butcher, had a bucket stolen.’

  ‘A bucket? What’s a bucket worth, a couple of quid, a fiver?’

  Clifton grinned. ‘Sixty-eight quid, sir. It was a special butcher’s bucket, I understand. Stainless steel and all that.’

  Angel sniffed. ‘About what he charges for two chops, my wife tells me. All right, Bernie, I’ll pick that up when the reports come in.’

  He thanked the sergeant and closed the phone.

  Two minutes later Patrolman Sean Donohue knocked on the door.

  ‘Come in, Sean. Sit down. Tell me about the triple nine.’

  ‘It was just before midnight, we got the call from the operations room, sir. We were notified that a Mr Wiseman had reported a dead female in the car-park at the back of the old King George Hotel. It’s not very nice round there, sir. It’s like a big backyard. Room for a few cars to park. And the pub’s rubbish bins near the door to the kitchen. Anyway, me and Cyril had a good look round, but couldn’t see anything. We went round to the front. The hotel entrance was closed, but the main door to the bar was still open. We had to go in there to raise anybody. The barman directed us to Wiseman’s room. He was insistent that he had seen a body. He came down and showed us the place where he said he’d seen it, and was as amazed as we were that there was nothing there.’

  The phone rang. Angel reached out for it.

  ‘It’s Sergeant Clifton again, sir. That witness, Mr Wiseman, is here. He’s asking to see whoever’s in charge. He’s a bit steamed up about waiting so long for someone to contact him. Will you see him, or shall I get one of the lads to deal with him?’

  Angel rubbed his chin. Wiseman sounded like a time-waster, but he couldn’t be certain. Angel was used to all sorts of cranks turning up at the station under some pretext or other. He was determined to make short shrift of him if he was a time-waster.

  ‘I had better see him, Bernie. Have somebody bring him down to my office, please,’ he said and closed the phone.

  Angel turned back to Sean Donohue. ‘Wiseman is on his way down. Is there anything else I need to know?’

  ‘Not really, sir. We didn’t know what to do. We asked in the bar if anybody had seen anything unusual that night and nobody had. All the other rooms in the hotel had their lights out and therefore seemed to have settled down for the night. We had another look round the back just in case … then reported back in to Sergeant Clifton. He said leave it, but put in a full report in the morning, which I have done. And we carried on with our patrol.’

  ‘Right, lad,’ Angel said. ‘Go on home and get some kip.’

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

  It was only a few moments later that Mr Wiseman was shown into Angel’s office by a PC. The witness was suntanned, about 60, in a smart suit, white shirt and tie. But he didn’t seem happy.

  ‘Please sit down, sir,’ Angel said. ‘I believe you want to see me about the triple-nine call you made last night?’

  ‘At last, somebody is taking some notice,’ he said with a sniff. ‘I don’t think you are treating this murder with the urgency it clearly deserves.’

  Angel blinked. ‘I am sorry that you think that, sir. But we are extremely busy. This is a small town and there were more than four incidents overnight, last night, to my knowledge, needing urgent investigation, and it is impossible to deal with them all at the same time. And if my constables had seen any trace of a body – as you had reported – believe me, the matter would have received a very much greater priority.’

  Wiseman’s attitude didn’t change. ‘I think that your men think that I am stupid or mental or something, but I will tell you what happened and hope that I may convince you that I am sound in both mind and limb. I am a Captain in the Royal Engineers. I am near retirement and married so I am looking for a house for us to retire to around here. I am staying at the King George Hotel. It’s not much of a place, but the Feathers was fully booked. Last night I went to bed about 9.30 and went to sleep almost straightaway. At around midnight … I’m not sure to five minutes or so, I woke up. I had to go to the bathroom. Came back. I thought the room was a bit stuffy, so I opened the window. It was very cold, but there was no wind. I looked out. I couldn’t see much. My room hasn’t a view. It is on the first floor, and it looks out over the back of the hotel where my car was parked. I could just make out the skyline beside the roof of the cardboard box factory. Anyway, I was looking down when, at that moment, a light went on. It was only on for a second or two. And I saw this body on the ground. A woman … a big mop of beautiful blonde hair … long bare legs covered in blood. She was wearing a dark coat or dress. And obviously dead … and there she was… blood all over … it was awful.’

  ‘Where did the light come from?’

  ‘That’s it. I don’t know. It all happened so quickly.’

  ‘Was it headlights from a car?’

  ‘I don’t think so. And it was not the car-park light. I checked that with the barman. He said that light didn’t work. It needed a new lamp and shade. It’s not been working for years.’

  ‘What did you do then?’

  ‘I rang 999, then I got washed and dressed. Then your two patrolmen came up to my room. I pointed out to them where I had seen the body and then went down with them to look at it. Of course, as you will now know, it wasn’t there.’

  Angel leaned back in the swivel chair and licked his bottom lip with the tip of his tongue.

  ‘Well, Inspector,’ the man said, ‘Do you believe me?’

  ‘It’s an odd story, Mr Wiseman, but yes, I believe you.’

  ‘Good. I can’t understand who moved the body and where it was moved to.’

  Angel said, ‘And why move the body at all? Why hang about the scene? Why didn’t the murderer leave the body and make good his escape?’

  Angel nipped the lobe of his ear between his finger and thumb and rubbed it several times. ‘How much time elapsed between you seeing the body from your bedroom window and discovering it was no longer there?’

  ‘About ten or fifteen minutes, I suppose.’

  Angel nodded. ‘That’s long enough,’ he said. ‘I don’t suppose you saw or heard any persons or traffic in the car-park.’

  ‘I was busy getting washed and dressed, Inspector. I didn’t notice.’

  Angel stood up. He reached out for the phone and tapped in a number. While he waited for the phone to be answered, he turned to the man and said, ‘I won’t detain you long, Mr Wiseman, but I would like you to return to the George and show me exactly where the body had been, also you can point out your bedroom window to me, if that’s convenient to you.’

  ‘Certainly, Inspector. I’ll push on ahead and meet you in the car-park,’ he said.

  ‘Thank you,’ Angel said.

  The phone was answered. It was DS Don Taylor, the Scene Of Crimes Officer.

  ‘Don, I want you to join me at the rear of the King George Hotel straightaway,’ Angel said. ‘A body was reported there, but then, apparently, went missing.’

  THREE

  Angel, Taylor and Wiseman arrived at the small car-park at the back of the hotel within a minute of each other. There were only two other cars parked there.

  Wiseman showed the two policemen the place just below his bedroom window where he said that he had seen the body, and Angel promptly instructed Taylor to scrutinize the entire area for any corroborative trac
es, and then asked Wiseman to show him his room.

  Taylor put down kneeling pads and closely looked at the car-park surface inch by inch. He soon found three small brown spots that had dried into flakes. He thought that they might be blood, and he managed to retrieve them onto clear adhesive tape. If they were blood, it might be possible to extract the DNA and identify the owner of it. He could detect nothing else. Close by were eight large rubbish bins on wheels, usually a great source of valuable information. He lifted the lids and was surprised to find that they were all empty. He lowered the lids and continued to make a careful search of the rest of the area.

  Meanwhile, Wiseman took Angel by the rickety lift up to his room on the first floor, where he showed him the bedroom window from where he said he saw the horrific sight below him on the car-park. Angel looked down out of the window and reckoned that Wiseman must have been about 9 metres from the spot.

  He rubbed his chin.

  ‘What do you think, Inspector?’ Wiseman said.

  Angel shrugged. ‘We shall carry on with our inquiries and try to get an explanation.’

  Wiseman nodded. ‘Thank you for taking me seriously, Inspector. You’ll let me know if I can help any further with your inquiries, won’t you?’

  ‘Indeed I will. Thank you very much for your help, and good luck with your house-hunting.’

  He came out of Wiseman’s room, went down in the lift to the reception office and knocked on the door. He made himself known and said, ‘Can I see the hotel manager, please?’

  ‘I’m Mrs Fortescue,’ the lady in the office said. ‘Irene Fortescue. I’m the manager. How can I help you?’

  ‘Can you tell me who are in the rooms on the floors above Mr Wiseman?’

  She looked in a big book on the desk.

  ‘Mr Domino of London was on the fifth floor and a Mr Memoré on the fourth. They booked in together. Mr Domino had the penthouse. He paid cash in advance for two nights.’

  ‘Did they come by car?’

  ‘They came in the same car driven by another man.’

  ‘Do you have the car number?’

  ‘I’m sorry.’

  ‘Are they still in their rooms?’

  ‘No. They must have left very early this morning. They didn’t have breakfast.’

  Angel wrinkled his nose. ‘Did they say why they wanted rooms on higher floors and different floors?’

  ‘They both said – well, Mr Domino said, that they needed quietness. He did all the talking, well, what bit of talking there was. I think the short gentleman was foreign. He rarely spoke.’

  ‘Do you have addresses for them?’

  ‘Oh yes,’ she said and she swivelled the book round for Angel to see. He copied the addresses onto the back of an envelope from his inside pocket. ‘Thank you very much, Mrs Fortescue.’

  ‘Is there anything else, Inspector?’ she said.

  ‘Yes. I would like to have a look at their rooms.’

  ‘Yes, of course,’ she said. ‘I’ll get the pass key and show you up. Have they done something wrong, Inspector? Are the police looking for them?’

  Angel gave her a potted version of what had been reported. ‘The dead woman was described as very attractive, about 35, big head of blonde hair, wearing a black dress and black coat.’

  Mrs Fortescue’s mouth dropped open. ‘Good heavens. You won’t believe it, Inspector, but a woman exactly fitting that description was in this office about half an hour ago.’

  Angel blinked. ‘What did she want?’ he said.

  ‘She was asking if Mr Domino was still here.’

  He shook his head. It didn’t make sense. ‘What did she actually say?’

  ‘I can’t remember the exact words … she had a dreamy expression as if she was half-asleep or something. Very strange. She was quite eerie. Anyway, I rang his room, but there was no reply,’ she continued. ‘And when I looked round to tell her, she had gone. Disappeared into thin air. I went up to the room and knocked on the door. There was no reply so I let myself in and sure enough, he had gone.’

  Angel took a moment or two to try to make sense of the puzzle. The obvious explanation was that there were two women who looked similar, were dressed similarly and had reasons for being at the hotel within a few hours of each other, and that one of them might be dead. Put like that it sounded very unlikely.

  He rubbed his chin.

  ‘I understand the outside light for the area at the rear of the hotel is not working,’ he said. ‘Is that correct?’

  ‘I am afraid that the children round here use it as a target for throwing stones. It has been replaced several times and the directors decided that it would not be replaced again. I hope we are not breaking any laws?’

  He shook his head. ‘Not as far as I am aware.’

  At that moment, there was a loud knock on the office door and a woman in a blue overall burst in. She ignored Angel and went straight up to Mrs Fortescue at her desk.

  ‘You’ll never believe it, Mrs Fortescue,’ she said. ‘I went to move that sofa in the penthouse suite to vacuum underneath it and it wouldn’t budge. I thought it was me that was getting too old to shove it, but no. It wouldn’t budge. So I went down on my knees and I could see metal pieces with big screws going through the carpet into the floorboards and the other side screwed into the legs of the sofa. Those metal fastenings are on all six legs. And they’re covered with fringe so that you can’t see a thing. What would anybody want to do that for? It’s a sofa, it’s not going to go anywhere. And nobody would want to steal it. It’s not worth anything. I wouldn’t give it house room. Anyway, it can’t be moved. So underneath will have to stay mucky.’

  Mrs Fortescue frowned.

  Angel frowned.

  ‘Leave it with me, Clarice,’ Mrs Fortescue said. ‘I’ll go up and have a look at it for myself. Leave it for now. Finish off the corridors and the stairs.’

  ‘Righto,’ the cleaning lady said. She glanced back at Angel, then muttered, ‘You never know what you’re going to find next, do you?’

  She went out of the office. Angel watched her leave.

  Angel and Mrs Fortescue went up in the lift to the fifth floor. She let Angel into the room with her pass key. They crossed to the sofa by the window. Angel crouched down, lifted the fringe around the feet and saw the L-shaped brackets exactly as the cleaning lady had described. Then he stood up, walked round to the back of the sofa and looked at the back feet. They were secured to the floorboards in exactly the same way.

  Angel crouched down and gave the sofa a mighty push. But it didn’t budge.

  He turned to Mrs Fortescue and said, ‘Is it usually in this position?’

  ‘No,’ she said. ‘It should be across the foot of the bed. I can’t imagine why it has been moved. And why would anybody want to screw it down like this? I see all sorts of things in this business, but this is the wackiest I’ve ever come across.’

  ‘Well, leave it where it is for now. Don’t touch anything. I’ll get our SOCO team to check it out.’

  They went out of the room. He closed the door, and as she locked it, she said, ‘Do you think there’s something hidden under the sofa, Inspector?’

  ‘I don’t know,’ he said, making for the lift. ‘I’ll get SOCO to unscrew it and take a look. Now I must see the room Mr Memoré occupied.’

  She pressed the button for the fourth floor. ‘I shall send a bill on to Mr Domino for damage to the carpets and for screwing holes into the furniture,’ she said. ‘It’s disgraceful behaviour in a respectable hotel.’

  Angel licked his bottom lip with the tip of his tongue thoughtfully as the lift rattled down. He was thinking that the address that gentleman had given was most likely false.

  Mrs Fortescue said, ‘What is it about people staying in hotels? They wouldn’t behave like that in their own homes.’

  They arrived at the room recently occupied by Mr Memoré.

  Angel peered inside from the doorway. He noted that the bed had not been made. ‘Good,’ he
said. Then he turned to Mrs Fortescue and said, ‘This has not yet been cleaned by your staff? Please keep everybody out until our forensic team have been over it.’

  Angel returned to the station. It was four o’clock and it was getting darker and colder. As he walked thoughtfully down the green corridor towards his own tiny office, he passed the open door of the CID office. He stopped, came back and looked in. Unusually, there was only one person in there. It was DC Ahmed Ahaz. He was seated at his computer screen, updating the station website. He was the youngest member of Angel’s team, and was always willing and enthusiastic. Angel liked him and could see a great future for him in the force.

  ‘Ahmed,’ Angel said. ‘Come into my office a minute.’

  Ahmed picked up a newspaper and followed him down the corridor.

  ‘I want you to check out two characters, Charles Domino and Joseph Memoré,’ Angel said, hanging his overcoat on the hook at the side of the green stationery cupboard. ‘See what you can find out.’

  Angel took the envelope out from his inside jacket pocket and pointed to the note he had made. ‘There are their addresses, in London.’

  ‘Right, sir,’ Ahmed said as he carefully copied the information into his notebook. As he finished, he said, ‘Have you seen this morning’s newspaper, sir?’

  ‘Haven’t had time for anything, lad,’ he said, pointing to the pile of paperwork on his desk. ‘What is it?’

  Ahmed unfolded the paper he had been carrying and handed it to him. ‘A big robbery in Hatton Garden, sir,’ he said.

  Angel sighed. ‘I saw it on the telly, last night. Diamond-and-ruby Rosary belonging to Bloody Mary.’

  ‘But did you know about that, sir?’ Ahmed said, pointing to the bottom of the big front-page piece. ‘The last sentence, sir.’