The Man Who Couldn't Lose (4 page)

The DCI looked skywards and ran his hand through his hair.

‘Can you rely on that dog?'

‘Absolutely, sir.'

He rubbed his hand across his mouth.

‘Who checked the vacuum cleaner?'

WPC Baverstock put up a hand.

‘I did, sir. There was hardly anything in it. The bag must have been changed recently. I emptied it out on a sheet of newspaper. There were no signs of H or any other illegal substance.'

‘Did the dog sniff it?'

‘Yes, sir. But there was nothing. I also checked the carpet sweeper, and got the same result.'

‘Did anybody find
anything
…
anything
else at all unusual in the house … or garden?'

Nobody said anything.

Gardiner threw up his arms.

‘Right. Thank you, everybody. Let's go.'

He leaned forward to get into the car.

Angel called out: ‘She was tipped off, sir.'

The DCI's head shot back out.

‘I've got more to do with my time than oversee time-wasting raids on old biddies scratching out an existence on a council estate,' Harker said with a sniff. He was drumming his fingers on his desk while licking his lips and shaking his head.

Angel looked down at him. He was uglier than usual. He'd seen better-looking orang-utans – and his moustache could do with trimming. He recalled that he'd started growing it that way about the same time the postman had delivered a book addressed to him at the police station in a cellophane cover called
The Love Life of Josef Stalin
.

‘It wasn't like that, sir,' Angel said.

‘The DCI says the intelligence was rubbish.'

‘I don't think it was, sir. When we arrived, everything was just too perfect. It was ten o'clock in the morning. The beds were made. There were no pots in the sink. All signs of a meal had been cleared away. Everywhere had been vacuumed and tidied round, just as if they had been expecting visitors. Also, neither of the women worked; Gloria Swithenbank said they had no savings and no debts, therefore we are expected to believe that they survived solely on her mother's pension. The rent is eighty-four quid a week. Swithenbank had sixty quid in her purse, her mother had twenty and there was not another bean in the house. The larder was well stocked and she had two bottles of vodka and a hundred cigarettes in the cupboard. It just doesn't add up.'

Harker pursed his lips, then said, ‘Perhaps she's on the game?'

Angel smiled. ‘Have you seen her?'

He shook his head.

‘No, sir,' Angel continued. ‘Gloria Swithenbank had been tipped off. And she'd had time to get the drugs and money hidden, where we couldn't find them, get the house straight, make herself presentable and then get her and her mother positioned in front of the telly like two spiced pussies waiting for a knock on the door.'

Harker wrinkled his nose.

‘I don't know,' he said, shaking his head.

‘Where could the woman hide the stuff so quickly and thoroughly?'

Harker persistently shook his head.

Angel said: ‘The dog handler said his dog reacted positively at two places in the kitchen.'

‘Really? But then again, could we really put our trust in a dog?'

Angel grabbed the advantage.

‘Would you rather put your trust in a man, sir?'

Harker frowned.

‘What man?'

‘Any man, sir. Say a professional man. Say a doctor?'

‘A doctor?' he said grandly. ‘Well, yes. Of course, a doctor would be ideal.'

‘Such as Harold Shipman.'

Harker's eyes flashed. ‘I didn't mean a villain!'

Angel was dead serious.

‘There's no deceit in a dog, sir. A dog isn't a villain. It isn't dishonest. It hasn't a record. All it has to hide is bones.'

‘Come in, Ron,' Angel said, pointing to the chair. ‘What did you make of it?'

‘Harry Hull was released four weeks ago from Armley,' Gawber said, closing the door.

Angel's eyes lit up.

‘Been over his pad?'

‘Yes, a little two-room flat, part of a big house, number 101, on Earl Street, but there was nothing of Mrs Buller-Price's there. Or anything else he shouldn't have. He's getting very clever is our Harry.'

‘Did he have an alibi?'

‘No, sir. Says he was in the flat the whole time. No money to go out and enjoy himself, he says. Can't prove it though.'

‘Useless, then. I still reckon it'll be him.'

Angel rubbed his chin slowly, then added, ‘And how was Mrs Buller-Price, then?'

‘You
know
her, sir. Cheerful and resilient, even though she's had some very choice pieces stolen. Optimistic, too. She expects us to recover them.'

Angel sighed. ‘You made a list?'

Gawber dug into his inside pocket, pulled out a folded sheet of A4 and handed it to him.

Angel quickly scanned the list, which comprised £200 in £20 notes, two emerald and diamond rings, a pearl choker, fourteen small silver items including picture frames, and a sixteen-inch tall white pot figure of a French poodle.

Gawber said: ‘I don't understand why anyone would steal a pot poodle of that size … or any size for that matter. I mean, it wasn't valuable. It wasn't antique. It would be heavy, awkward to carry and difficult to fence.'

Angel nodded.

‘A fence would want to charge him rent for taking it in,' he said wryly.

‘Does Harry Hull like dogs?' Gawber asked.

‘The only thing Harry Hull likes apart from money, booze and women is Harry Hull. I've got another idea. Nip down to Dolly Reuben's. See if she's got a white pot dog for sale.'

Dolly Reuben ran a tatty secondhand furniture shop on Cemetery Road. It had been the front for her husband's business. Frank Reuben was the biggest fence in South Yorkshire, until he was caught in possession of £4,000 worth of newly minted 20p pieces stolen from a security van in transit between South Wales and London. Frank was in the middle of a five-year stretch in Pentonville.

‘Right, sir,' said Gawber.

‘Take a sneaky look through her shop window, before you go in.'

Gawber smiled, nodded and made for the door.

‘And on your way out, tell Ahmed I want him.'

‘Right, sir.'

The door closed.

Angel sighed, scratched his head and leaned back in the swivel chair. He really must get on with investigating Joshua Gumme's murder. His next of kin must be informed. Everything else must wait. He would have to delegate more.

There was a knock on the door.

‘Come in.'

It was PC Ahaz flourishing a piece of paper.

‘I didn't know you were back, sir. I've got Edmund Gumme's address and telephone number,' he said, putting the paper on his desk.

‘Right, Ahmed. Ta. Now, what's DS Crisp doing?'

‘Don't know, sir. I haven't seen him this morning.'

Angel glanced at the note in front of him, picked up the phone and began tapping in the number.

‘Well, see if you can
find
him and tell him I want him. SAP.'

‘Right, sir,' Ahmed said as he closed the door.

‘I'll have to put a collar and lead on that lad,' he muttered.

He still had the phone against his ear and was listening to the ringing-out tone. It suddenly clicked and a recorded man's voice said: ‘This is Edmund Gumme. I regret I am not able to take your call. Please leave a message and your number and I'll get back to you.'

Angel hesitated. He didn't want to leave a recorded message telling him his father had been shot dead and dumped in a river. He put his hand on the cradle and ended the call. Then he tapped in another number. It was ringing out.

There was a knock at the door.

‘Come in,' he called.

The door opened. It was DS Crisp.

‘You wanted me, sir?'

Angel's eyebrows shot up. His lips tightened across his teeth. He banged the telephone down in its cradle.

‘Come in, Sergeant. I was just ringing you on your mobile. Where have you been? You're supposed to be on my team yet I can never get hold of you.'

DS Crisp's mouth dropped open.

‘I'm sorry, sir. I've been very busy. Maybe my mobile's faulty again. You had told me to deal with that attack on that postman?'

‘That was ages ago.'

‘It was Tuesday before I got to it, sir. The day before yesterday.'

‘Well, it was only an hour's job, wasn't it?'

‘The man was hurt, sir. Had to go to hospital,' he said pointedly.

Angel knew already that he was losing the argument. He indicated the chair.

‘Tell me about it,' he said patiently.

‘Right, sir. Yes. A fifty-eight-year old postman was in a post office van returning from collecting post from letter-boxes in the outlying villages west of Bromersley … Tunistone, Gullbush, Hoylandswaine … round there. It was about seven o'clock Monday evening when he reached his last pick-up point, which was a box in the wall, next to the Frog's Leap Inn at Midspring. He stopped and while he was filling the sack, somebody hit him on the back of the neck with something hard and he fell on the pavement. When he woke up, he was on a trolley in A and E in the Bromersley General.'

‘Was he badly hurt?'

‘Nasty bump on his head. He was off work three days.'

‘What was taken?'

‘Nothing. The van was not touched, and the post seemed all right. There was a bit of a panic when the manager couldn't find the postman's keys, but the next day they turned up in the gutter not far from where he fell.'

Angel ran his hand across his mouth.

‘So what did you do?'

‘Nothing more I could do. The man could have died.'

‘Yes, but he didn't. Have you any witnesses? Any forensic? Is the postman known to us? What's the motive?'

Crisp's mouth dropped open.

Then he said, ‘No witnesses, sir. No forensic. The man is not known to us. I don't know what the motive was. Kids trying their arm, I expect, then getting scared and running off.'

Sticking his jaw out, he shook his head and said, ‘Is there anything more you can do to find out who attacked this poor chap?'

‘No, sir.'

‘Right,' he snapped. ‘Well, let's move on. Push off and file your report while it's fresh, then come back here. I've an urgent job for you. It should have been done yesterday. I want you to go to York to find a man.'

Angel managed to clear some of the paperwork off his desk and then strolled down the corridor, out of the rear door to the station vehicle park. He got into his car and drove it to The Fat Duck for a change of scene. It was only a three-minute trip from his office and was his favourite pub. He hoped he might bump into a snout he knew, who might have been able to supply him with a tasty morsel of underworld gossip. He would have particularly liked any information about Joshua Gumme and his recent activities. In any event, the informant didn't show. He met several familiar friendly faces, exchanged a few courtesies and indulged in a pint of Old Peculier, a meat pie and several slices of black pudding stabbed conveniently with cocktail sticks offered on the bar.

Through the friendly chatter, mostly about football, he heard a phone ring. It was his mobile. He dived into his pocket, turned away from the bar and the noise and made towards the door. He pressed the button and checked the LCD screen.

It was Harker.

Angel blinked. It wasn't usual for the superintendent to contact him on his mobile. He wondered what was wrong.

He quickly pressed the speak button.

‘Angel here. Yes, sir?'

‘Another post office van driver attacked,' Harker bawled, ‘while emptying a postbox on Earl Street! His van stolen. Uniformed are there. I've sent Crisp, but I want you in on it. It's getting very worrying.'

‘Right, sir.'

Angel agreed: physical attacks in daylight hours were always extremely worrying.

He closed up the mobile, emptied his glass, ran out of The Fat Duck, got into his car, pulled out of the car park, turned left into Sheffield Road, then left again into Earl Street. Apart from a dress shop on the corner, Earl Street consisted entirely of houses, mostly terraced.

He couldn't see any signs of police vehicles, or a postbox. He changed up to top gear and put his foot down on the accelerator. The long street had a dog's leg bend towards the bottom of it. He followed it round to reveal an ambulance, a marked police Range Rover and Crisp's car parked at the side of the road, one behind the other. Fifteen people were clustered around something on the pavement. He sped up to the scene, stopped and got out of the car. He could hear Crisp despatching six PCs on a house-to-house enquiry. Big PC John Weightman was waving his arms expansively and saying, ‘Did anybody see what happened? Come along now, if you didn't see the assault, please move along. Thank you. Did you see anything, sir?'

Angel forced his way through the crowd.

‘Police, excuse me, sir, madam. Please let me pass. Thank you.'

He reached the centre of the throng and could now see two medics, one in blue and one in predominately white, crouched over the still figure of a middle-aged man on the pavement, fixing a collar block round his neck, a stretcher by his side, and behind them a letterbox with its door wide open, half filled with post and a few envelopes scattered on the pavement.

Crisp spotted his boss and made his way across to him. Angel saw him.

‘Ah, Crisp. What happened? Anybody see what happened?'

‘No, sir. Looks like while the postman was emptying the letterbox, somebody assaulted him and stole his van.'

‘Have you its number?'

‘No. I've got Scrivens trying to find out from the GPO.'

Angel grunted and leaned over the medics and said: ‘I'm DI Angel. How is he?'

‘Very weak pulse. Shallow breathing. Unconscious.'

Angel's lips tightened against his teeth.

Then the medic said: ‘Got to get him to hospital.'

‘Yes,' Angel agreed determinedly.

The two ambulance men started to drag the injured man onto the stretcher.

Angel straightened up and came face to face with big PC John Weightman.

‘Sir?' Weightman said.

‘Ah, John. Help get this injured man to hospital, smartly. He's in a bad way. Go with him. Try to get a description of his assailant. And what happened.'

‘Right, sir,' he said, and he opened his great arms to the small crowd and said, ‘There's a man seriously injured here. Make way, please. Make way. Thank you.'

Angel turned to Crisp.

‘Send someone to the hospital to take over from John Weightman at the end of his shift. He might have come round by then.'

Crisp nodded.

Angel continued: ‘Any idea what the assailant looked like?'

‘Nobody saw anything, sir. Hoping to learn something from the house to house.'

A siren began blaring out. The ambulance zoomed off faster than John Prescott to complimentary canapés.

‘Any sign of a weapon?'

‘No.'

‘I want that van finding. Then I want SOCO to go over it with a fine-tooth comb. I want to find out what the assailant took. Go into the background of the victim. See if he's clean. There's no point in going through the letters left here. The assailant has presumably taken what he wanted, either out of this box or from the mailbags on the stolen van. There may have been registered packets collected from post offices on his round, with money or jewellery or whatever inside. Check on that. And see how this assault relates to that assault on a postman at Frog's Leap Inn at Midspring on Monday evening.'

‘The same MO, sir,' Crisp said enthusiastically. ‘Assaulted while he was filling the sack.'

‘Yes, except that this time the van was taken,' Angel said. ‘Is the thief getting bolder? Well, let's hope you can dig something out. I have to get back. Leave it to you. Let me know how it goes.'

It was 7.55 p.m. Thursday when Angel arrived at Carl Messenger's office. It was the earliest time he could get to see the man. He knocked and walked into the office-cum-waiting room and closed the door. It was very quiet. The only sign of human existence was the strip light blinking at him from the ceiling.

From an open door, a man's dreamy voice called out, ‘Come along in, Inspector. I am ready for you.'

He crossed the room and peered into the gloomy room. All he could see was a copper lampshade beaming light onto a desk. There was no sign of life in the little room. He pushed the door further open to reveal a small hunched man standing there clutching a big brown envelope. He shuffled forward.

‘Pleased to meet you, Inspector,' he said in a slow, breathy voice. ‘I am Carl Messenger.'

He held out a small, cold hand.

Angel shook it. It was an unusual experience. He could recall corpses that had been warmer and more animated.

Carl Messenger moved very slowly behind his desk to a chair and slumped into it clumsily.

‘Please sit down.'

‘Thank you,' Angel said. ‘And thank you for seeing me at this late hour.'

‘No matter. Like you, I sometimes have to work after hours. Anyway, I dug out the document to which you referred. I must say, I was very sad to hear of the murder of Mr Gumme. And he was such a nice gentleman.'

Angel pursed his lips and frowned. He wondered what planet this man had been living on the past few years. He didn't reply. He looked across the desk at him.

Carl Messenger's eyes were half closed most of the time as if he was drugged or tired, and when he did occasionally open them, he looked in pain. He moved only when absolutely necessary and then very slowly.