‘Right, sir.’
‘And have you finished checking out King’s mobile phone and his house phone?’
‘Not yet, sir.’
‘I know you’re always very careful, Ahmed, but I want you to be particularly meticulous. Don’t let a single call be bypassed if it is in any way unusual. And I’d like your results as soon as ever possible.’
‘Right, sir,’ Ahmed said, and he went out.
Angel turned to thinking he could do with Crisp’s report on the financial state of King’s Breweries and Haydn King in particular. He was of a mind to put a rocket up that lad’s backside. He reached out for the phone, when there was a knock at the door.
‘Come in,’ he called.
It was DS Carter. She came in smiling. She was usually smiling and always agreeable.
‘Good morning, sir. I’ve got that info you wanted,’ she said, pulling her notebook out of the bag slung over her shoulder.
Angel managed a fleeting, reciprocal smile. He replaced the phone. He pointed at the chair opposite him. She sat down.
He recalled that he had asked her to find out the contents of King’s last will and testament and he was keen to hear what she had found out.
‘Right, lass. What you got?’
‘King’s solicitor is Mr Bloomfield,’ she said, opening the notebook.
He knew him well. Angel thought him to be probably the most conscientious solicitor in the town.
‘He let me read Mr King’s last will. It was dated July 11th this year. Apart from relatively small bequests, including ten thousand pounds to Nicholas Fitzroy Meredith, his butler for more than twenty years, the bulk of the shares in King’s Breweries, the house on Pine Avenue, the house in Florida, the boat and other stocks and shares will go to his nephew, Vincent Fleming.’
‘Wow!’ Angel said. He pursed his lips. ‘That makes Fleming a multi-millionaire.’
‘Yes, sir,’ she said.
Angel rubbed his chin slowly. He had a lot to think about. ‘Right, Flora. Thank you.’
‘But there’s more, sir,’ she said. She opened her eyes wider to emphasize the point.
He raised an open hand, making a gesture inviting her to continue.
She turned a page in her notebook and said, ‘There was a new will prepared by Mr Bloomfield at Mr King’s request. It was to change that one substantially. The small bequests remained the same, except for that to Nicholas Fitzroy Meredith, who was to receive the bulk of the estate. Vincent Fleming was to receive nothing.’
Angel raised his eyebrows. ‘But it was not signed?’
‘No, sir. Mr Bloomfield said that Mr King had given him instructions over the phone about ten days ago, and he had an appointment to sign it on the Monday, but phoned in to cancel because he was ill.’
Angel had a thought. He hurriedly pulled some envelopes out of his inside pocket and glanced through them. He found what he wanted. He looked up at Flora and said, ‘It adds up. That was the day he had gout.’
She nodded. ‘Mr Bloomfield said that he offered to come up to Mr King’s office or his house with a clerk as a witness, but Mr King declined. He said that he would phone Mr Bloomfield back in a few days to make another appointment. Of course, he never did. There’s going to be one very lucky man following Haydn King’s coffin to the Mount Pleasant Crematorium in the near future.’
Angel shook his head slowly, pursed his lips again and said, ‘Aye. And one very unlucky one.’ Then he added, ‘Did Bloomfield tell you why Fleming suddenly fell out of King’s favour?’
‘No, sir. King didn’t offer any explanation and Bloomfield knew better – I suppose – than to ask him.’
Angel’s eyes narrowed. It would be interesting to know what made King change his mind.
The phone rang. Angel reached out for it. It was Superintendent Harker. There was the usual coughing and then he said, ‘I want you to make yourself available this afternoon, Angel. There’s a DI Mathew Elliott from the Antiques and Fine Art squad, London, coming up. He was coming to see me at two o’clock. It’s about a link between a murder case he’s involved with in Hackney and a possible suspect from around here. All sounds very vague and probably a waste of time. Didn’t have any names in mind to offer so you can’t look anything up before he gets here. Now, as it happens, I have an appointment at the hospital at two o’clock, an operation that’ll keep me away all afternoon. They’re shoving a camera into me in a very particular place, and I’m not looking forward to it. So I’ll have to leave this chap with you. Give him my apologies, and look after him. Make him feel welcome. You never know when we might need to reciprocate.’
‘Right, sir,’ Angel said. ‘We’ve been in touch with Mathew Elliott before, sir. But in those days he was a sergeant …’
There was an abrupt click and the line went dead. Harker had replaced the phone.
Angel’s eyebrows shot up. He gritted his teeth and looked at the receiver.
Flora saw his face and said, ‘Everything all right, sir?’
Anybody would think Harker was running Marks & Spencer, Angel thought.
‘The super was in rather a hurry, that’s all,’ he said.
He returned the receiver to its cradle. Two seconds later, the phone rang again.
He looked at it, wrinkled his nose and picked it up. ‘Angel.’
A small male voice said, ‘This is PC Knightly on reception, sir. Sorry to bother you. There’s a woman here from that posh dress shop down the arcade, Madam Vera’s … the one that was broken into last week. She wants to see whoever’s in charge of the investigation. I take it that that’s you, sir?’
Angel sighed. ‘Yes, lad, it is, but I’m extremely busy just now. What does she want?’
‘I don’t know exactly, sir. I think she er …’ At this point the young policeman lowered his voice to a whisper. ‘I think she just wants to chivvy you up, sir. She says the break-in has cost her a lot of money, and she’s hoping for “restoration”, as she put it.’
‘And I’m hoping to win the lottery,’ Angel said.
‘What’s that, sir?’
‘Never mind, lad. I’ll sort it. Ask her to wait there a few minutes.’
He replaced the phone and turned to Flora.
‘Madam Vera, or whatever her real name is, is in reception. Find out from Don Taylor if he found any forensic at her shop, also check on whether there was anything useful from any CCTV in the area. Then nip up to reception and see what she has to say … and find out what exactly was stolen. A PC has already taken the details, but take them again. You’re a woman; you’ll have a better idea about the value and significance of the theft. Indeed, if there is any. Maybe get a lead on what sort of a person would rob an expensive dress shop. Say, an angry disappointed customer … or someone with a grudge, you know. Personally I don’t know why women get so animated about such relatively trivial things as what they wear.’
It was Flora’s turn to raise her eyebrows. ‘Well you obviously care, sir. I mean, you always look very smart.’
‘Well, it’s the expected uniform for a police inspector’s job, isn’t it? How can anyone go wrong with a clean, pressed dark suit, cotton shirt, tie and polished black leather shoes.’
‘Don’t you ever want a change?’
‘Huh. You’d think I was a right berk if I turned up here in a bright green jacket, tartan trousers and a red shirt, wouldn’t you? Now hop off find out what you can and settle Madam Vera down. I feel a bit guilty about neglecting her … but there just isn’t enough time.’
Flora went out and closed the door.
Angel looked up at the clock. It said 10.20 a.m. He fumbled in the bottom of his jacket pocket and came out with two business cards. He put one back in his pocket and put the other one on his desk in front of him. He reached out for the phone, looked down and tapped in the number he read off the card. The phone was soon answered by a voice that sounded like a desperate young mermaid whose vocal cords had been marinated in honey.
‘Vincent Fl
eming Associates, insurance brokers,’ she said. ‘Can I help you?’
His eyebrows went up. ‘This is Detective Inspector Angel,’ he said. ‘I want to speak to Mr Fleming, please.’
‘Oh yes. Thank you, Inspector. Won’t keep you a moment.’
Fleming came on the line. He seemed very buoyant. ‘Why, good morning, Inspector. What a pleasant surprise. And what can I do for you?’
‘I need to see you straightaway, Mr Fleming.’
‘Dear me. It sounds serious. Well, I am at your disposal, Inspector.’
Eight minutes later Angel was sitting in Fleming’s ground-floor office in an office block in the centre of Bromersley on the corner of Huddersfield Road and Karl Marx Row.
‘Have you come to tell me that you have completed your inquiries into my uncle’s death, Inspector?’ Fleming said.
Angel rubbed his chin. ‘Not quite,’ he said. ‘But I am getting there. Have you been in touch with Mr Bloomfield, your uncle’s solicitor?’
‘Ah, I see where you are going with this, Inspector. No, but Bloomfield rang me on Friday afternoon to offer his condolences and to tell me that I had inherited the bulk of my Uncle Haydn’s estate. However I would rather have had my uncle alive … to enjoy his friendship and guidance … after all, he was my nearest relative. But, naturally the fact that he left me so provided for … was solace to me at this dreadful time.’
‘You speak of your uncle with affection, but did you get on well with him?’
‘You will understand, my dear Inspector, that Uncle Haydn was, in modern parlance, a self-made man. He was king in attitude as well as in name. He started with very little and because most of his commercial decisions were spot on, his business was successful and grew to the size it is. Thereafter, he tended to assume an air of infallibility. So it was understandable that he might disagree with people who had divergent opinions.’
Angel pursed his lips. ‘Are you saying you didn’t get on with him?’
‘On the contrary, Inspector. We got on very well most of the time, but there were times when he could be … erm, difficult.’
‘Did he complain to you about the strange dreams – or nightmares, you could call them – he had been having over the past two weeks?’
‘Nightmares?’ he said with a grin. ‘No. Certainly not. This is the first I’ve heard of that. Tell me about them.’
‘Did you find him behaving differently over the past two weeks? Was he morose, introspective or depressed?’
‘Not at all. I would have noticed. He invited me for dinner that last Thursday evening, and I was with him for about three hours. I’m pretty certain that if there had been anything like that worrying him, he would have told me about it then.’
‘What time did you leave?’
‘Must have been about 9.30. Uncle Haydn didn’t keep late hours.’
‘What did you talk about?’
‘The same as always. Business. I am an insurance broker. He had been considering putting his insurance, both business and personal, through me. We talked about the sort of cover he would need and the cost.’
‘Would that have amounted to much?’
‘The commission would have been eleven or twelve thousand pounds a year. Very welcome in these difficult times, Inspector.’
Angel nodded. He pursed his lips. Eleven thousand pounds was a large amount of money, but not life-changing, he thought.
‘He had carefully arranged them so that they were all due for renewal on the first day of the year,’ Fleming said. He wanted to be sure that he was getting the very best deal before he put the suggestion to his co-directors. Of course they would pretty well rubber-stamp anything my uncle said, but he didn’t want any of them finding a better deal somewhere else and then be accused of nepotism.’
‘Of course. Anything else?’
‘Well, we talked about the weather, the brewing business … Auntie Judy, I should say ex-Auntie Judy.’
‘Judy Savage? What about her?’
‘She was annoying him. She had apparently instructed her solicitor to write to him to say that she couldn’t manage on the allowance the judge had agreed he should pay and that she was appealing through the court for a substantial increase.’
‘How much was that disturbing him?’
‘It was annoying him. It was making him angry with her, very angry indeed. But she was wasting her time.’
‘It wouldn’t keep him awake at nights?’
‘Oh no. I wouldn’t have thought so. Not at all.’
‘And what did he say about the brewing business?’
‘He was saying how well everything was going. He was bursting with optimism. He said that he expected to deliver the best balance sheet the brewery had ever known.’
Angel rubbed his chin. Those were definitely not the thoughts and attitudes of a man considering taking his own life. He shook his head and screwed up his eyes. He was no further forward in solving the mystery of the dreams.
However, he thought that this was time for him to drop the bombshell on Vincent Fleming and watch his reaction.
‘Did you know,’ Angel said, ‘that about ten days ago your uncle gave instructions to Mr Bloomfield to take you out of the will and put Mr Meredith there in your stead? And that Bloomfield had prepared a new will ready for your uncle’s signature, but he never signed it?’
Fleming blinked. His jaw dropped. He stared at Angel. It looked as if he hadn’t known.
Angel said, ‘What exactly happened ten days ago?’
Fleming licked his lips. His eyes narrowed and he looked in the direction of the skirting board at the opposite side of the office, while slowly shaking his head.
Angel waited.
Eventually Fleming breathed out a heavy sigh, looked at Angel and said, ‘You’ve really bowled me a googly there, Angel, old chap.’
Angel held out his hands palms upward to indicate that it had not been his intention.
Fleming shrugged. ‘So I was to be left out, was I?’ The muscles round his mouth tightened. ‘That would be dear Aunt Judy,’ he said.
His face showed that he held her very far from ‘dear’.
‘Uncle Haydn phoned me ten days ago breathing brimstone and fire about her. He thought that I had some allegiance towards her. About the time of the divorce and several times afterwards, she visited me, and she used to ring me up seeking consolation. He might have thought that I was being disloyal … even a spy in the camp. There wasn’t an atom of truth in it, but I could hardly tell her to go away. It’s odd that he didn’t mention the will at all on Thursday evening.’
‘Did you tell him that you had been in touch with her?’
‘Oh no. I expect he would have found out either directly from her, or she may have confided in her own solicitor and that had been conveyed to Bloomfield, who had dutifully informed my uncle. I don’t know.’ He shook his head. ‘But I am surprised, Inspector, that something so relatively trivial would have such extreme consequences.’
Angel wrinkled his nose. At that time, nothing surprised him.
NINE
The interview with Vincent Fleming had in no way progressed Angel’s investigation into Haydn King’s death, nor had it assisted him in understanding the influence of the nightmares conveyed to him by Superintendent Harker and confirmed by King’s butler, Meredith. To say that Angel was disappointed would be to putting it mildly.
He came out of Fleming’s office and drove the BMW to the car-park of the Fat Duck, and, as he kicked his way through an inch of snow to the pub door, he thought about Vincent Fleming. Coming into that mammoth inheritance could make Fleming look as guilty as hell, if he had known that his uncle had intended changing his will.
The pub wasn’t busy. At the bar he ordered a roast beef sandwich and a pint of shandy, which he enjoyed in silence while thinking about the case.
Fleming had a front door key to King’s house. He could easily have entered in the middle of the night. He could have crept into the swimming pool room,
waited behind the cubicle curtain and with whatever weapon it was, murdered King before he had time to get down to Bloomfield’s to append his signature to the new will.
He mulled over the matter for a while. There was motive and opportunity, but at that moment no weapon, and not an atom of proof.
He returned to his office at 1.50. He hung up his coat and reached out for the phone. He tapped in the extension number for SOCO. It was answered by DS Taylor.
‘Don,’ Angel said. ‘You have a book, taken from Haydn King’s bedroom: The Interpretation Of Dreams. You were checking it for fingerprints.’
‘Yes, sir,’ Taylor said. ‘I haven’t had the chance to get to it yet … there’s so much.’
‘I know. I know. I want you to deal with it by the end of the day. Verbal would be OK. The written can follow.’
‘Right, sir. What exactly do you need?’
‘I need to know specifically whose prints are on it, that’s all. I’ll phone you first thing in the morning.’
‘Righto, sir,’ Taylor said.
Before Angel could return the phone to its cradle, there was a knock at the door.
‘Come in,’ he called. It was DI Mathew Elliott of the Art and Antiques squad, a smart, handsome young man in a dark suit, white shirt and tie.
Angel smiled broadly. ‘Ah, Mathew,’ he said. ‘I believe congratulations are in order. It’s a couple of years since we last met. You were a sergeant then. I hear that you’ve now reached the dizzy heights of inspector.’
Elliott grinned. ‘A few more quid in the pay packet, you know, sir. Still not in your class, though.’
‘Nay, Mathew. And call me Michael for goodness sake. And there’s no need to ingratiate yourself now that we’re the same rank.’
Elliott laughed. ‘You don’t change, at all.’
Angel pointed to the chair and said, ‘Sit down, lad, and tell me what brings you out of your plush London HQ where it’s all happening, to this backwater?’
When he was settled, Elliott said, ‘Well, Michael, you will have heard about the robbery of that diamond-and-ruby Rosary?’
The Diamond Rosary Murders Page 9