Murder in Bare Feet (9 page)

T
here was a knock at the door. It was Ahmed.

‘Good morning, sir. I have been to the Highway Cleansing Department on Victoria Street and spoken to the manager. He said that none of the twenty-four cleaners had come across any black leather shoes in the last few days. They come across all sorts of things in their job, including discarded trainers and cheap shoes, usually odd ones, but none of them had come across any black leather shoes as described. However, they said they’d keep looking.’

Angel grunted and wrinkled his nose. It had been a long shot anyway. ‘Right.’ He couldn’t hide his disappointment.

‘Sorry, sir,’ Ahmed said and turned to go.

‘Hang on a minute. There’s something else.’

Ahmed turned back.

‘I want you to go to The Feathers Hotel. Ask to speak to the manager, and ask him if you may go into the ballroom. When you get there, look at the clock high up on the wall facing the door. There’s only one. See if it tells the right time. All right?’

Ahmed frowned.

Angel said, ‘That’s all?’

‘Right, sir.’

‘And before you go, find Ron Gawber and Trevor Crisp and send them in.’

Ahmed closed the door.

A few moments later Gawber arrived.

‘Ah, Ron. It’s time we got down to finding a motive for this murder. Obviously Emlyn Jones is the front-runner, but the super confirms that Jones and his son were at the Potts do at that time. It’s looking certain it couldn’t be either of them.’

‘It must be somebody Pleasant crossed in his business dealings, sir. He wasn’t robbed.’

‘True. He’d eight thousand quid on him. But that jade head is still missing.’

‘But there’s nothing to show that he ever had the thing, is there, sir?’

‘No, there isn’t. There’s only that Gold character who said that he had. If it had been there, I wish I knew where it was now.’

‘SOCO are going through the Pleasant house now, aren’t they?’

‘Yes. I know if it’s there, they’ll turn it up. You’d better check on the phones at Pleasant’s scrapyard and at his house on Creesforth Road. I want to know everybody he phoned over the last two weeks, particularly on that last day of his life, Sunday.’

‘Right, sir.’

Gawber rushed out.

Angel watched the door close then wiped a hand over his mouth. He really began to think that the older he got the more difficult solving cases had become. He really would like to find the motive for Pleasant’s murder. After Bridie had been found butchered and dumped in an oil drum, her sister Jazmin left Emlyn Jones and moved straight in with Charles Pleasant. That would certainly make Emlyn Jones, if he was a normal man, the natural enemy of Pleasant. He couldn’t reach into Jones’s mind and know what he thought, but that would be most men’s feelings. He nodded and then rubbed his chin. However, the photograph of Jones’s presence in The Feathers with the superintendent apparently showed that he could not possibly have murdered him, and the taker of the photograph, his son, Stanley Jones, was also in the clear. So he must look elsewhere. A thought occurred to him. He reached out for his address book on the table behind him, looked up a number, grabbed up the handset and tapped a number on the telephone pad. He was soon through to the assistant governor of Wakefield Prison.

‘The prisoner you have, Larry Longley, Governor, I would like to visit him. He might be able to help me with some inquiries I am making in connection with another case.’

‘I’m afraid he won’t be any use to you at the moment, Inspector. He is very ill. He is being treated for clinical depression. He won’t talk to anybody. Hasn’t spoken for the last three months or more. He won’t speak to the prison psychiatrist, and in response to simple domestic questions from the officers about his food or clothes he only grunts.’

Angel sighed. He could see another door closing on him.

‘In addition,’ the assistant governor said, ‘I don’t think the doctor would permit questions to do with criminal activity. Longley has always maintained his innocence, you know.’

Angel nodded. ‘Don’t all prisoners do that?’

‘Yes, but Longley has declared it, shall we say, with more conviction and persistence than most.’

‘He lost both his appeals.’

‘I know. I know. You could have a word with the psychiatrist, if you wish. But I am pretty certain you would be wasting your time.’

Angel’s jaw muscle tightened, then he said, ‘Very well, Governor. Thank you.’

‘Sorry I can’t be of more help. He might be approachable in a few months.’

‘There is something else you could assist us with, Governor. It would be helpful to have a copy of Larry Longley’s visiting list.’

Visitors to prisons are limited, carefully vetted and a record kept. Each visitor is required to have a non-transferable pass valid for a specified prisoner on a specified day. Wakefield was particularly exacting in this regard.

‘Yes,’ he said. ‘I can certainly organize that, Inspector. I’ll get my secretary to send it in the course of a post or so.’

‘Thank you, Governor. Thank you very much,’ Angel said and he replaced the handset.

He licked his lips. There was progress … maybe. Sad to learn of the condition of Longley, though. Although the man was a convicted murderer, and sinking into depression, it was tragic to think of him being in a cell twenty-three hours a day for twenty years.

There was a knock at the door.

It was DS Crisp. He was the second Detective Sergeant on Angel’s team, a handsome man always turned out in a well-pressed suit and sharp-cut shirt and tie. All the girls liked him and he liked them. Angel frequently spotted him larking about with the prettiest girl in the station, WPC Leisha Baverstock. It happened frequently in the canteen and he had once caught them having more intimate contact momentarily behind the stationery cupboard door in the supplies room.

‘You wanted me, sir?’ Crisp said chirpily.

‘Job for you. There’s a man called Stanley Jones. He’s not on the PNC but his father is … for drunken driving and indecency. Stanley lives at Flat 14, Council Close, Potts New Estate. He apparently lives with … maybe married to … a woman. I don’t have any idea what she looks like or anything else. I want you to find out all you can about her.’

Crisp smiled. This job was something he relished, and would do well, particularly if the woman in question was a good looker.

‘Jones works for his father Emlyn at that The Old Curiosity Shop on Old Monk Street,’ Angel added.

‘I know it, sir. All sorts of weird and wonderful old things, they sell.’

‘Aye. I don’t know what she does. Anyway, see what you can dig up?’

Crisp grinned.

As he went out, DS Matthew Elliott from the Antiques and Fine Arts squad based in London came in. They had worked together on many a case and were old friends.

‘I hope you haven’t come on a wild goose chase,’ Angel said.

Elliott sighed. ‘I’ve got to follow every lead however slim, Michael. My boss is under great pressure. That jade head is priceless and seems to have inestimable political significance to the people of Xingtunanistan.’

‘You’ll want me to show you where it was thought to have been hidden then?’

‘I thought you’d never ask,’ Elliott said, his eyes shining.

It suited Angel to go back to the scrapyard at that time. He had not had the opportunity to spend much time at the scene of the crime. Just being there, often standing around quietly where a crime had been committed, helped him to get the feel of the case and there usually seemed to be something to learn. It was difficult to say what it might be, but all the most successful detectives had said the same thing.

They arrived in the BMW, and Angel pulled it up in the same position as Pleasant had left his Bentley three days earlier. He got out of the car, unlocked the yard gate, opened it by walking with it through 180 degrees then returned to the car door. All the while, he had been glancing across at the site of the road works where the murderer had been waiting. Then something dawned on him. Something that made him stop in his tracks. He asked himself why would the murderer wait there, hiding behind the concrete mixer, while Pleasant, the victim pulled up in the Bentley, got out of the car, unlocked the padlock on the yard gate, walked the gate all the way back, returned to the car, got inside it and then closed the car door before opening fire on him? Pleasant would have made a much easier target when he was actually unlocking the padlock on the gate, pushing the gate open, and when he was returning to the car, than ever he made when he was actually in the driving seat with the door closed. Why would the murderer want to make a smaller target for himself? Had it anything at all to do with him being without shoes? Couldn’t see that it had. Couldn’t understand why he was without shoes in the first place. This case was full of incongruities. He wondered about the gun. He must have another look at those shell cases. He needed to confirm that they came out of a conventional handgun and not some unusual weapon.

He drove the BMW round to the small office block, moved the forklift, the loose steel plate cover beneath it and unlocked the hidden safe.

Elliott looked on.

Angel lifted open the heavy safe door.

‘Ah!’ Elliott said, his face brightening. He crouched down and gawped into the empty safe. ‘It is certainly big enough, Michael. But if there are no traces—?’

‘None,’ he said.

Elliott shrugged and continued to stare at the open safe.

Angel looked up and around, suddenly aware that they could be observed. He wondered who could have looked down or across at Charles Pleasant any time when he was opening the safe. It was pretty well sheltered from the world on three sides: the office block, the forklift truck and the perimeter wall. However, he could possibly have been observed by a keen-eyed nosey parker looking from a first floor window in the scruffy lodging house next door. But even if Samson Tickle had ever observed Pleasant’s movements, he wouldn’t have had a key to the old safe. But there was food for thought.

As Elliott continued to snoop around the safe, Angel meandered out of the scrapyard and up to the rear of the lodging house. The raucous clanging and banging of drums and guitars accompanied by screaming human voices emanating from the electronic speaker in the place assaulted his ears. He pulled a pained face and wondered if it was always like that. He went down the side of the building to the back gate. There was no sign of Tickle, his wife or daughter or anybody else. The gate was open. He went into the small yard and looked around. There was nothing there, just a prop holding up an empty washing line and three wheelie bins for rubbish. He rubbed his chin. The racket was louder and dreadful. He looked upwards. The old stone building seemed eerie and the sky was black as if building for a storm. The din was unbearable. He grunted. There was something wrong. He couldn’t put his finger on it, but something was definitely wrong. He was considering whether to knock on the back door when he became aware of another noise. It contrasted wildly and made the racket even more like bedlam. It was his mobile phone ringing. He rushed away from the din, out of the yard, down the step and closed the gate. He answered the mobile as he stepped through the entrance into the scrapyard. It was Ahmed.

‘That ballroom clock at The Feathers was spot on correct, sir.’

Angel sighed. ‘Right, lad. Thank you.’

‘And the super’s looking for you, sir. He told me to find you and tell you that he wants to see you, urgently.’

‘Right. I’ll come straightaway.’

The lines on Angel’s forehead creased. Confirmation that the clock was correct meant that Emlyn Jones and his son were definitely in The Feathers at the time of Charles Pleasant’s murder. It didn’t help much, but it did finally eliminate them. He’d be able to tell Harker that now for a certainty.

He returned to find Elliott still staring at the open safe. He looked up. ‘If only this safe could speak,’ he said. ‘Maybe it could tell us about all the stolen stuff it has held hidden from the world.’

Angel didn’t hear him. ‘Got to go,’ he said. ‘The super wants me. You can stay if you want to. I have to go back.’

‘No. There’s nothing more here for me, Michael. I can’t say whether the jade head was here or not,’ he said closing the safe door and turning the key. ‘Found anything to help you with your case?’

Angel rubbed his chin. ‘No. Very strange. Something odd about their back yard,’ he said tossing his head in the direction of the lodging house. ‘No dog kennel.’

Elliott frowned. ‘No dog kennel?’

‘Come in,’ Harker yelled.

Angel pushed open the door.

‘Oh it’s you,’ Harker continued. It wasn’t a welcoming tone. His ginger moustache was twitching. Angel sensed he was in a bad mood.

‘Come in. Come in,’ he squawked impatiently. He took out his menthol inhaler, removed the cap, stuck it up his nose, sniffed noisily, stuck the top back on and dropped it into his pocket.

‘Sit down. Sit down.’

He picked up a pink sheet of A4 from the in tray on his desk and glanced quickly at it. ‘Yes. What’s this? DS Taylor says you authorized the purchase of 28 pounds of plaster of Paris?’

‘That’s right, sir.’

‘And forty-three plastic boxes? And forty-three padded packets and forty-three first-class, registered express delivery at £6.87 each.’

‘It was for a copy of the footprint—’

‘I know what it was for,’ he bawled. ‘The whole thing, including qualified DC’s labour, works out at nigh on seven hundred pounds. What do you think SOCO are there for? They are not there to make plaster cast footprints on a production line basis for some new game you’ve invented.’

Angel’s lips tightened back against his teeth. ‘That is the footprint of the murderer of Charles Pleasant.’

‘So you say.’

‘I thought it was a quick, cheap way of informing the national force.’

‘And do you think that all the forces in the country are going to line up the villains that pass through their hands in the course of the day, get them to remove their shoes and socks and invite them to put their bare foot on the plaster cast and see if it fits, like they’re playing a pantomime game?’