The Wigmaker (9 page)

Angel purposefully snatched open the three drawers one by one. Each of the drawers, which glided out on runners, was packed with thin green cardboard files suspended on rails and labelled by tags that projected an inch or so from the top of each file. Systematically and carefully he pulled out handfuls of files and their contents from each drawer to see if either of the two unusual-looking keys had been concealed underneath the files in the bottom of the drawer. There was no luck in the top two drawers, but when he lifted files out of the bottom drawer, there, staring at him, were two keys about fourteen inches long. They had a flat castle motif at the end of each key, so he was positive that they must be the ones. His heart missed a beat as he snatched them up, stuffed them into his raincoat pocket, where they protruded precariously. He replaced the files carefully and precisely, closed all the drawers and dashed out of the station.

He hardly noticed the quietness of the yellow-illuminated, deserted streets and the eeriness of the night. His mind was exclusively concentrated on the contents and possible evidence that might be revealed if he was able to open Wolff’s safe.

He stopped the BMW outside 38 Market Street. The wig shop still had blue on white DO NOT CROSS tape across the black burned frontage.

He glanced round for the uniformed policeman who should have been on high profile duty to keep looters and Nosy Parkers and anyone else away. He saw the glow of a cigarette end in the shadow of the covered doorway of the greetings card shop next door to Wolff’s. The red glow suddenly disappeared as a uniformed constable stepped forward.

‘Can I help you, sir,’ a deep voice said.

‘It’s DI Angel, lad. Who are you?’

‘Oh. Good evening, or is it good morning, sir? It’s John Weightman. Is everything all right?’

Angel was pleased. He knew the constable very well indeed. He was one of the oldest and was also considered to be one of the most reliable men on Bromersley force.

‘Yes, fine, John.’

‘Something urgent on, sir?’

‘Not exactly urgent. No. A development, you could say, just come to a head,’ Angel said, making for the shop door. ‘Is it locked?’

‘No sir.’

‘I need some light. Follow me inside and bring your torch.’

Weightman shone the powerful flashlight as Angel pushed open the glass door. Everything was black. The water had drained away from the floor, leaving burnt linoleum and scorched paintwork.

Angel wrinkled his nose. There was a fusty smell. Reminded him of latrines in Strangeways that were discovered to be bunged up with old pin-ups of Heather Mills.

He picked his way to the place under the stairs that Taylor had described to him. The hinged L-shaped partition was now standing an inch or so from the wall. Angel put his hands round the edges of the panel and pulled the partition away. It swung towards him on its hinges to reveal its secret.

‘Shine your torch on here, John,’ Angel said, looking at the green-painted safe with its copper-coloured identity tag, brass handle and keyholes.

‘Ooo. Didn’t know
that
was there.’

‘Castle Mark II. You won’t come across many of those,’ Angel said, looking for the two keyholes. He found them easily enough. They were made in a coppery-looking metal, vertically set, one above the other and about six inches apart.

He pulled the keys out of his pocket. ‘Shine your light on these, John,’ he said.

‘My goodness, sir. Never seen keys that long.’

‘They’ll go right into the metal casing. Prevents jellymen and lockpicks alike.’

Angel looked to see if there was any indication as to which key was for which keyhole. Near the flat Castle logo on the shank of one key was stamped a letter U, and on the other in the same place, the letter L. Upper and lower, he guessed. He inserted the keys, one at a time, pushed them all the way in, leaving only an inch and the finger grip with the logo on it sticking out, and then turned them. They each made a satisfying clunk. He reached out for the brass handle, pressed it down, pulled it towards him and the heavy safe door silently opened.

‘Let me borrow your torch, John.’

Angel peered eagerly into the safe. It was ram-jammed full, packed as tightly and neatly as a watch.

There were three shelves. The top shelf was stuffed with paper money, twenty pound notes in elastic bands, they seemed to be. The paper money extended to the back of the safe, as far as he could see. There must have been many thousands of pounds there.

‘Good heavens!’ Weightman said with a whistle. ‘Aladdin’s cave!’

‘Aye. Careful not to touch anything inside the safe, John. SOCO have to do their stuff there yet.’

He shone the torch on the middle shelf. This was stuffed tightly with sixty or more small cardboard boxes; on the end of each box was a neat handwritten label. He could read: diamonds, emeralds, rubies, pearls, opals, turquoise, amber, 9 ct jump rings, 18 ct chain, 18 ct jump rings and so on. On the floor of the safe, Angel could make out the diamond laden tips of a tiara half-wrapped with what seemed to be a ginger wig, on top of which was a plastic mask.

Angel felt a warm glow in his chest; a tremor of excitement made his hands shake briefly and his heart began to thump. This was quite a coup.

‘Peter Wolff must have been the Fox, John.’

‘The Fox? Really, sir? The wig maker?’

‘There’s his wig and mask and—’

‘Wow! Thank goodness, sir,’ the big man replied smiling. ‘That’s an end to that. Whatever will the papers write about now?’

Angel stood back from the safe, sighed, reluctantly closed it, locked it and withdrew both keys.

A
ngel pulled out the address book in his desk drawer, found the number he wanted, picked up the phone and dialled the number. It rang out. It kept ringing out. It seemed to be ringing for an interminably long time. He looked at his watch. It was 6 a.m. He cast his eyes round the office and then beyond, out through the window. As he listened to the monotonous brrr brrr, brr brr, he noticed the early morning sunlight dancing lightly on the yellowy-green leaves of the silver birch in the garden of the insurance company offices next door. He suddenly realized that maybe winter was really over, and that that day promised to be sunny, maybe the actual beginning of a glorious summer.

There was still no reply and he was about to drop the phone back in its cradle when there was a click and a half awake man’s voice from out of the side of his mouth, the other side being covered in pillow, grunted, ‘Yeah? Yeah? What is it?’

‘Good morning, Matthew. Michael Angel, Bromersley, here. The Fox is dead, Matthew. I thought you’d like to know.’

‘What? The Fox is dead?’

‘Yes. And it’s a beautiful May morning. The sun is shining. The birds are coughing. Summer is on its way.’

‘Have you seen the bloody time, Michael?’

‘I have been up half the night.’

‘You’ve not rung up about that suit of armour, have you? Did you say the Fox was dead?’

‘Yes and we have found its lair. A thumping big safe overflowing with precious stones, diamonds, emeralds, rubies, sapphires, gold, a diamond tiara—’

‘Where?’ the interruption came quickly. ‘Where?’

Angel knew he had the man’s full attention. He was talking to DI Matthew Elliott, head of the Antiques and Fine Art squad, Scotland Yard. He had known him for years. Elliott would be able to assist him in trying to identify the victims of the Fox’s robberies, which might, he hoped, lead to his murderer.

‘I’ll come up this morning.’

Angel smiled and replaced the phone.

‘That’s all very well, but we are still no nearer knowing who murdered him,’ Harker said with a sniff.

‘But it opens up a wider field of suspects, sir.’

‘What do you mean?’

‘Motive, sir,’ Angel said. ‘I had not been able to find a motive. I mean, who would want to have murdered Peter Wolff, a humble, quiet, apparently respectable wig maker? What harm could a wig maker do to a customer? What threat does a wig maker pose? What double-dealing could a wig maker get up to? Nothing that I can think of. I can’t think of anything that would motivate a man to break into his place, creep up the stairs, shoot him while he was asleep and then set fire to his place. Now that we know he’s the Fox, it’s an entirely different proposition, isn’t it?’

Harker sniffed. He seemed to agree but looked unenthused by it all.

‘Well, sir,’ Angel continued, ‘there are all the jewellers he robbed; there’s the competition from other thieves who may have been casing a shop just as he cleaned it out before them; there are the bullion dealers, stone dealers, auctioneers and jewellery manufacturers he may have sold to; there are the insurance companies who had to pay out millions in clients’ claims; lastly, there is the fence he may have sold stuff through. Any one of them might hold a grudge against him.’

Harker sniffed. ‘Maybe. That means you’ve plenty to be going at then, lad?’

Angel took it as his cue to leave. He stood up.

‘Before you go, you’d better tell me how things stand with you and the search for Frank Chancey’s wife?’

Angel’s head shot up. ‘You agreed I should leave it, sir. Yesterday you were going to tell the chief constable that there were no—’

‘I know what I was
probably
going to do. I am asking you where the enquiry has got up to?’

‘It has moved on no further, sir. No ransom note, no direct information of her abduction, no witness of foul play, no emergence of her actual dead body. You agreed yesterday, she was just a … misper.’

The corners of Harker’s mouth turned down again. He drew in a deep breath and then blew it out.

Angel thought that he was under some pressure that he didn’t want to speak about.

‘If you still want me to pursue it, sir, I have a suggestion to make,’ Angel said.

‘Aye?’

‘I’ve been thinking. The relationship between Chancey and his wife may not have been that cosy. After all, she left on Saturday, the fourteenth of April ostensibly for Rome, but he apparently didn’t try to contact her by phone or any other way until sixteen days later, the thirtieth. We know
that
because, as she didn’t in fact go to Rome, he didn’t know that until sixteen days later, which means that at no time in that period had he phoned Rome to try to reach her. For that matter, she had not phoned him to tell him where she was. But maybe he wouldn’t even have phoned on the thirtieth, if the model agency hadn’t phoned him, concerned that Katrina had missed an appointment and couldn’t make contact with her. To some couples it might seem to be a long time to be separated without so much as a phone call.’

‘Hmmm,’ Harker said rubbing his chin. ‘True. True.’

Angel nodded. ‘Under the circumstances, it would be very reasonable to ask him about his relationship with her. And it would get me back in his house, talking to him. You never know where it might lead.’

‘There’s a fair difference in their ages, isn’t there?’

‘She’s twenty-two and he’s thirty-seven.’

Harker sighed. ‘Aye. Do it, lad. As soon as maybe. But don’t upset him. He’s a highly respected pillar of the community.’

‘You’re lucky to catch me, Inspector. I am usually at my office by this time. Anyway, now that you’re here, what do you want? If you had any good news about Katrina, I expect you would not be standing there with an expression like that.’

Angel smiled and nodded gently.

‘Oh, I am forgetting my manners,’ Chancey continued. ‘Please sit down. Would you like tea, or coffee … or anything?’

‘No thank you, sir. And no, I regret that we have no new specific lines of enquiry, but there is just one thing that … bothers me.’

‘Speak out, Inspector,’ Chancey said looking directly at him across the big desk.

Angel knew he had to pick his words carefully. ‘Well, you told me that your wife left early Saturday morning, the fourteenth of April?’

‘Yes. That’s right, as far as I know. I was actually at the office – where I should be now. What is wrong with that?’

‘And that as far as you knew, at the time, she arrived safely in Rome, Italy, later that day.’

‘Yes, and booked into the very best hotel in that beautiful city. She adored the place. She has been there before. I have stayed there with her. I was satisfied that she would have been comfortable and happy there. Yes. Yes. What about it?’

‘Yet, although you believed that she was happily enjoying her holiday there, you didn’t
know
that, and it was sixteen days before you bothered to contact her. And that was precipitated by a rather desperate phone call to you from her model agency advising you that they could not reach her and that she had missed a vital appointment.’

‘That’s true. But I thought she would be happy to lounge around the pool, or go out on a shopping spree from time to time. She always enjoyed that. And I have been very busy with the house improvements, you know … the spring-cleaning, the fountain, and so on. I have also bought her a new car. I’ve made all these improvements for
her
, you know, Inspector. Not for me. Frankly, I could live in a box provided it wasn’t noisy, was warm and it had a bit of a view with a few trees. But she likes everything smart and new and bright. I thought she would be over the moon when she returned. Besides all this extra work here, I have also been running a public company, you know, with twenty-two branches employing over eight hundred employees. And, incidentally, I am pleased to say that we are on course to announce a record profit for the half-year figures in June. I have been and still am a very, very busy man.’

‘Isn’t it true, Mr Chancey,’ Angel said gently and carefully, ‘that your marriage, to put it in the vernacular, was on the rocks?’

Chancey’s jaw dropped. He looked away. It was as if he’d been hit on the side of the head with a Group Four prison bus. He breathed in and then out unevenly several times. It took a few moments for him to recover. Eventually he turned back to Angel and said quietly, ‘How very clever of you, Inspector. I had heard that you were a highly perceptive policeman, and that … like the Mountie, you always got your man.’

Angel remained silent. He wasn’t used to compliments. He didn’t get many. He didn’t say anything, just looked across the desk and waited.

‘Very well. I’d better tell you something about how things were … and what happened that Friday night.’

Angel settled back in the chair, his pen at the ready.

‘Katrina and I have only been married two years. I am keen to have children. I need a son, or more than one, to take over the business for one thing, although a daughter – or more than one – would be … delightful. Anyway, Katrina had said she agreed with me. That we both wanted children was absolutely great. I was eagerly looking forward to becoming a father. However, as time moved on and she didn’t fall pregnant, I began to think there was something wrong with one or both of us. And that, unhappily, maybe clinical investigations would have to be … well, anyway, that Friday night, I found a blister pack of pills in a drawer. I asked her what they were for. She said they were vitamins and tried to snatch them back from me. I read the label and saw that they were contraceptives. I faced her with it. She admitted she had been taking them and I was furious. Essentially she said she wouldn’t have her career jeopardized by becoming a mother at this time. We had the mother and father of all rows. We both yelled and she screamed a lot. She threatened to leave me. I said don’t even think about it. I thought I had talked her round. I persuaded her to go away for a holiday, to think things over … gave her some money, a big cheque, to buy herself new clothes. It was a bribe really. I knew it was. Then, when she had gone, I busied myself getting the house how we wanted it. We had talked about the changes for months. I thought that when she came back it would please her, that it would make her happy and settle her down.’

He sighed as if he was glad to have told somebody.

‘The rest, I think, you know.’

Angel thought a moment. He didn’t want to be needlessly unkind.

‘This throws a different light on matters, Mr Chancey. And being away so long, might she not have found someone else who—’

Chancey’s eyes flashed. ‘No. Never!’ he bawled. ‘She could
never
leave me!’

‘Ahmed, I asked you to find DS Crisp for me. What the hell’s going on?’

‘I’ve tried everywhere, sir. I can’t even raise him on his mobile.’

‘Well, have another scoot round the station, leave a note on his desk or something, but find him. It’s very urgent.’

The phone rang.

‘Off you go.’

‘Right, sir.’

Ahmed went out and closed the door, as Angel reached out for the phone.

‘Angel.’

It was Edwin Larkin. He was phoning for his employer, Lord Tiverton. He passed the phone over to him.

‘Tiverton here,’ the old man growled. ‘Look here. Have you made any progress in finding my suit of armour, Inspector?’

‘We are doing our best, sir,’ Angel replied lamely. ‘Doing our very best.’

He knew it was not at all true, and he did hate lying but he couldn’t tell the old man that he had a murder case on his hands and that it had a higher priority. He had circulated all the police forces, as well as the specialist national Art and Antiques section, but he hadn’t had time to do anything else, there was such a lot happening.

‘There are millions at stake, young man, millions! Last month my wife’s diamond tiara was stolen from the jewellers. There went another three hundred thousand. It’s outrageous, Inspector. Outrageous.’

‘We are doing our best, sir,’ Angel repeated. ‘Please be assured of that.’

He could have told him that a tiara had been recovered, but as it had not been checked over by SOCO, nor identified as Tiverton’s, he thought it might have been wrong to raise his hopes.

The old man didn’t sound convinced; he growled and muttered something unintelligible, which ended in a few words that sounded like: ‘the police were all flying bustards’.

‘There’s something else, Inspector,’ Tiverton added. ‘There’s a wheelbarrow gone missing. Almost new, metal wheelbarrow. I ask you, what next? Put that down on the stolen list. It makes my blood boil. From now on, if I see any strangers mooching round here, I’ll give them a blast of buckshot to remember me by, I’ll tell you.’

There was a click and the line went dead.

Angel sighed. He was thinking that a thief might very well steal a wheelbarrow to transport a suit of armour away from the old carriage stables. It would be an ideal form of transport for it. Ergo, find a stolen wheelbarrow and you’ll find a suit of armour. He must remember that.

There was a knock at the door. It was Crisp. Unusually, his cheeks were flushed and his eyes shining.

‘There’s a young woman in reception, sir. Her husband has left her, disappeared!’

Angel stared hard at him; his hands clenched tight. ‘I don’t do domestics, lad. You should know that by now. Just because a female member of the public, with a great pair of legs, comes in here—’

‘Not only her legs, sir,’ Crisp said pointedly with a smile.

‘Comes in here with a sob-story, that her husband has left her, you’re there, fawning all over her, trying to con her into going back to your flat for tea and sympathy and goodness knows what else.’

‘
Sir
,’ Crisp said protestingly.

‘Oh, I forgot. You’re engaged to WPC Leisha Baverstock, aren’t you?’

Crisp looked away, his eyelids half-closed. ‘No, sir. That’s off. She gave me the … push.’

Angel’s eyebrows shot up.

‘Not surprised,’ he said. ‘And by the way, I am still awaiting a report from you about Peter Wolff.’