The Wigmaker (8 page)

‘Anything interesting in his stomach … any booze in his blood?’

Mac pursed his lips and shook his head. ‘No.’

‘Any needle marks anywhere?’

‘No. And before you ask, he didn’t smoke either.’

Angel stroked his chin and sighed.

Mac said: ‘I told you there wasn’t much.’

‘If Pope John Paul had still been alive, this man would have been made a saint?’

A
ngel got into the BMW and pointed the bonnet out of the hospital car park. His chat with Dr Mac had in no way progressed his investigation into the murder of Peter Wolff. The post mortem seemed to have told him nothing at all useful. He recalled that his last few cases had had no great proliferation of forensic clues. Twenty years ago, you could have expected the occasional clear fingerprint on a gun or a knife or a broken bottle that would make a case easy, and ensure a guilty verdict as predictably as a traffic speed camera catching you on your night out!

He hoped that SOCO were going to come up with something helpful. He was going to chivvy them up just as soon as he got into the office.

He turned left into Rotherham Road and was sailing along Main Street, where stood the Feathers, Bromersley’s only salubrious three star hotel. As he was coming up to the hotel entrance he saw a familiar figure, big green hat, light-coloured raincoat, collar and tie, leaning against the door arch on the steps. It was Irish John. He hadn’t seen him in a couple of years or more. There he was, Ireland’s export to Britain, coolly rolling a cigarette.

Angel suddenly had an idea.

He pushed both feet down on to the pedals; there was a screech of brakes, he banged the indicator light stalk down, checked his mirror, and then pulled the steering wheel hard right pointing the car bonnet straight between two stone pillars into the Feathers car park.

By the time Angel had locked the car and reached the hotel entrance, Irish John – John Corcoran to HMP Armley and others – had disappeared. Angel turned round and walked back to the end of the frontage of the hotel and took a quick sideways step round the corner. He waited there, trying not to seem impatient, looking at his watch. Exactly five minutes later Irish John came out of the hotel, looking like a rabbit coming out its hole into the daylight. He looked round cautiously; not seeing Angel, he dipped into his pocket and pulled out the spindly thin and misshapen excuse for a cigarette and stuck it in his mouth. He found a match, lit it, inhaled, then pulled the cigarette away and began coughing. He coughed and coughed. He went red in the face. His red eyes stuck out. He held the offending weed dangling and smouldering between his shaking fingers as he coughed and spluttered. He had found his disgraceful handkerchief and was holding it to his mouth as he coughed.

Angel heard it. He couldn’t help but hear it. He came out of hiding from round the side of the hotel and made a beeline for the Irishman.

When Corcoran saw him his watery eyes flashed like a frightened cat’s.

‘John Corcoran,’ Angel said with a smile.

‘I haven’t done notting,’ the Dubliner said in an accent you could cut with a forged Visa card. ‘I’m as innocent as a newborn babe, Inspector Angel. You haven’t got notting on me.’

He had stopped coughing. It must have been the shock of seeing Angel.

‘Buy you a drink, John?’

Corcoran looked stunned. His face slowly brightened when he realized he was not about to be arrested.

‘For old times’ sake?’ Angel added.

Corcoran smiled. ‘To clear de troat, that would be vaary acceptable, Inspector. Tank you.’

They went through the revolving doors and turned right into the public bar. The place was deserted so they were served promptly: a Guinness for Corcoran and a bottle of German beer for Angel. They sat in one of the partly curtained cubicles for four, and looked across the table at each other.

‘How long you been out?’ Angel said.

‘Ah. We not going to be talking about my stay at Her Majesty’s pleasure, are we, Inspector? You didn’t coax me into this glorious alcoholic palace to talk to me about my holidays, did you?’

Angel smiled and sipped the beer.

Corcoran leaned forward and said quietly: ‘If you really must know, I did ten months in Armley, then moved for a year to Lincoln and then six months at Boston, which according to my mattemattics means I come out two weeks ago today.’

‘And have you found a job yet? Is the probation office doing its stuff?’

‘Well I don’t know about that. I went down to the “Labour” and they went through my qualifications and stuff and at first, they could only offer me a job on the bins. Well I have niver been so insulted. Then there was a vacancy driving a forklift. That sounded like real hard work, moving timber around for eight hours a day. My back won’t stand that sort of abuse, Inspector Angel. I prefer something more … more in keeping with my … breeding and education. There’s a driving job going, driving a big nob round, it’s only temporary, they said. I would have to wear a uniform. So I have to go for an interview for that, tomorrow morning, I think it was.’

Angel shook his head. ‘Did you always take so long to answer a simple question, John?’

‘It’s on account of my being married once, you know, Inspector. Oh yes. Many moons ago now, I’m glad to say.’

‘Didn’t know you’d been married.’

‘Oh, Inspector. In those long and dark days the thing was, if you became aware of a silence, then that was the time to start saying what you had to say, and to keep going and get it out of your system until you were interrupted, which in her mother’s house didn’t take very long at all, I can tell you.’

‘I’ll take that as a yes. Did you and your wife not have your own house when you got married, then?’

‘Oh yes. Her mudder promised to give a house to her loving daughter Maureen and myself on the day the connubials was blessed with child.’

‘So you were a year or so before … you got a house?’

‘No sir. Two weeks. In fact, she was rushed to the doctor’s straight after the connubials. The wedding dress was too tight round the … middle, you understand. And the excitement and the booze and that. And do you know,’ he said, lowering his voice to a whisper. ‘I was denied the matrimonial bed and the conjugals until three weeks after we were married!’

‘But you got the house?’

‘Oh yes. Oh yes, Inspector. Oh yes. I got the house, the bed, the furniture, the bills, the wife, the baby,
and
the mother-in-law. It was just too much for a poor, simple man, to acquire all at once. So I waited a full week – that was a respectable length of time, I thought – and then I hoofed it away. I thought that some other poor bastard down on his luck could have the pleasure of Maureen and her mother. A ready made home for him to walk straight into, if you see what I mean. Don’t you think that I did the right thing, Inspector Angel?’

Angel stifled a smile. ‘If you
let
her divorce
you
and paid maintenance of the baby.’

‘What! I should cocoa. The baby wasn’t mine. Would you believe it? It came out that it was the mother-in-law’s lodger who had had that honour. And he was quick to move on. And years later, after her mother died, the old witch, Maureen got caught up with a metal-basher from Cork who could give her all she needed. Well, that’s what she said. Anyway she needed a quiet divorce from myself so that she could tie the connubials with him. This was quite a few years ago now. So we agreed most amicably to a divorce. But Maureen wouldn’t divorce in Dublin. Oh no. She said it wasn’t respectable. It should be done in an English court. Out of the way, you know. Strict Roman Catholic she was. So I brought her over to Liverpool. Stayed in a boarding house down Islington Road. Tell you what, Inspector Angel. We made up for the conjugals we couldn’t have between the wedding and the birth of Brigid. Anyway, we went before the judge and pleaded on the grounds of incompatibility. Incompatibility! I told the judge that I thought that that was putting it mildly and do you know what, Inspector?’

Angel shook his head.

‘He fined me ten pounds for contempt of court!’

Corcoran took a good gulp of the Guinness, then he shut one eye, lowered his voice and said, ‘But you’ve got me jabbering, and that’s not what it’s about. What is it you’re wanting from me, Inspector?’

‘Information, John. For money.’

‘What sort of money? Would it be enough to get me legless?’

‘Probably. You see, John, I’ve got a dead body on my hands and I can’t find who killed him. He was shot in the heart close up.’

Corcoran’s eyes flashed. His hands went up and came down. ‘Just a minute, Inspector. This is Irish John you’re talking to. You know I don’t do shooters. I don’t go anywheres near shooters. That’s porridge long time. Strictly not for me. I keeps away from wild men with shooters.’

‘I know that, and I’m not going to ask you anything about the murderer. I want to know about the victim.’

‘Oh. Aaaah!’ he said agreeably.

‘His name is Peter Wolff and he was a wig maker. He had a shop at thirty-eight Market Street. Does it mean anything to you?’

‘A wig maker?’ Corcoran said. He lifted his glass, emptied it and lowered it to the table noisily. Angel pointed at it, Corcoran nodded and said, ‘It’s my turn.’

‘I’ll do it,’ Angel said. He stood up, took the glasses to the bar and returned with the same again.

He placed the Guinness in front of Corcoran.

‘I been thinking, Inspector. To tell the truth I niver heard of him. A wig maker. Don’t like the sound of it. Messing with other people’s hair. No. Peter Wolff, did you say? And he’s been
murdered
?’

‘Ask around will you? There’s a bit of money in it for you.’

Angel reached his office at ten minutes to five. He immediately reached out for the phone and tapped in SOCO’s number. He eventually reached Don Taylor.

‘I’m still waiting for your report on Peter Wolff’s place, Don?’

‘It’s almost ready, sir. A bit difficult and unusual, what the fire didn’t damage, the water did.’

‘I was looking to you to throw me a lifeline.’

‘Nothing very direct, sir. No fingerprints, no footprints, no bodily fluids. No DNA. Only the victim’s.’

He rubbed his chin and licked his bottom lip. ‘Wasn’t there
any
thing?’

‘Yes, sir. Very unusual. Splashes of a metal, mainly on the floor in the shop and the back room downstairs, and taken by treading and being carried on Woolf’s footwear to the two upper floors. There were traces on his slippers and his shoes. It’s almost as if there was some sort of a metal repair business being carried on downstairs.’

‘What sort of metal?’

‘We have to make sure, sir, but initial tests indicate that the dust is a high grade of gold. And some platinum.’

Angel frowned. That
was
unusual. He felt a warm vibration in his chest. This investigation was getting interesting. ‘When will you know?’

‘I’ll check it out with the laboratory at Wetherby, sir. I’ll send one of the victim’s shoes. A couple of days or so.’

‘Right. Anything else?’

‘There is one item we couldn’t deal with. That might prove helpful.’

‘What’s that?’

‘There’s a huge safe on the ground floor, under the stairs leading to the first floor. It’s bricked in, amateurishly, but strongly. Probably did it himself. It was hidden behind a hinged panel. All clever stuff. We can’t open it with the kit we’ve got, and the keys weren’t anywhere on the premises.’

‘Searched his pockets?’

‘Oh yes, sir. Found a bunch of keys for the shop and that. Thing is, the safe is an old Castle Mark II. Big job. It needs two keys with extra long shanks. Might be ten or fifteen inches long or even longer. We’ve searched everywhere. And I mean
every
where?’

Angel knew how thorough SOCO were. If they search a place, they pull floorboards up, remove tiles, knock walls down if necessary, bring sniffer dogs in, use heat-seeking equipment, X-ray techniques. If something had been hidden they would always find it.

‘Have to bring in a locksmith from Castles.’

‘That might take a few days. Is there a serial number on it?’

‘Yes, sir.’

‘Have you finished dusting it?’

‘Yes, sir. Just Wolff’s dabs on it, sir.’

‘Is someone from uniform still on duty at Wolff’s shop?’

‘Oh yes, sir.’

‘Better put them on their mettle, Don.’

As Angel replaced the phone he was thinking he didn’t want someone with the keys, the murderer perhaps, who could have stolen them the night of the murder, calling back there to help himself to the contents of Wolff’s safe. He couldn’t imagine what was in there. Taylor had said it was a big safe … Wigs, hair, cash? Something that was going to pin-point Wolff’s murderer? He grunted aloud. He would have to wait until tomorrow. It was five o’clock. Might as well call it a day.

Angel was in bed, Mary next to him, both asleep. A distant clock chimed. Angel suddenly woke up. He blinked several times. The bedroom was as black as an undertaker’s hat. He peered at the luminous clock dial on the bedside table. It was two o’clock. He lay still there a moment listening to his own breathing. Then he listened to Mary’s. It was regular, slow and peaceful. He sat up in bed and scratched his stomach. Something had disturbed him. He usually slept like a well-fed Labrador. He noticed his heart was beating faster than usual. Then it came to him in a flash. It was something that had been bothering him all evening. He simply couldn’t shake off thinking about the concealed safe at Peter Wolff’s shop, and how the contents might throw light on the identity of his murderer. He gently peeled back the sheet; he didn’t want to disturb Mary. He put his feet on the pink carpet and fumbled around for his slippers.

Twelve minutes later, he was dressed – in a fashion – and was driving his car into the almost empty park at the rear of Bromersley police station. He let himself in the rear door with his card, dashed up the deserted corridor to his office … switched on the light and made a beeline to Wolff’s filing cabinet standing in the corner.

He had been thinking. Logically, at the time of Peter Wolff’s murder, the keys to the safe had to have been on the victim’s premises. Where else would they have been? SOCO hadn’t found them, so they couldn’t have been there at the time of the search. Therefore they had to have been removed by the murderer or by the police. The only items authorized to be taken from the premises were Wolff’s body and the green filing cabinet. Clearly SOCO would have searched the body, so unless the murderer had taken them with the intention of returning, the only remaining logical place for the keys to be was in the filing cabinet.