Murder in Bare Feet Page 11

  ‘It was the perks of the job.’

  ‘No, Mr Molloy. You are bent.’

  ‘I never took anything from anybody,’ he bawled.

  Angel turned to Weightman. ‘Stay with him,’ he said. Then he stood up, went out into the corridor and closed the door. His face was red and his pulse banging in his ears. He didn’t like nit picking, penny pinching, conniving little crooks like Grant Molloy, but he was not sure what he could do about it. He stood there rubbing his chin. He could see Charles Pleasant finding out that Molloy had been milking him out of some of the scrapyard profits and perhaps threatening him with the police, and then sacking him. But he couldn’t visualize Molloy standing in his bare feet outside the scrapyard gunning Pleasant down in retaliation. The thought of Molloy’s bare feet caused him to wrinkle his nose. Besides, Molloy had a key. He could have gunned him down inside the yard. There would have been less risk. He could check his foot against the plaster of Paris model. He charged up the corridor to the CID office. The door was wide open. There were three plain-clothes officers working at computers; the nearest to the door was Ahmed. When he saw Angel he stood up.

  ‘Did you want me, sir?’

  ‘Yes, lad. Look up the PNC and see if there’s anything on a Grant Molloy and let me know quickly, then get one of those plaster-cast footprints and take it to Interview Room Number One and leave it with John Weightman.’

  ‘Right, sir.’

  He went out of the office and pushed on up the green corridor to his own office. He opened the door and was followed in by Ron Gawber who must have been close behind him. He was waving several pages of close-typed A4.

  ‘Have you a minute, sir? I’ve got those lists of calls made from Pleasant’s home and scrapyard. I’ve uncovered the identity of all the people called. There doesn’t seem to be anything ominous or unexplained.’

  Angel turned. ‘Really?’

  He took the list and glanced down at it. He was particularly interested in calls made on the Sunday Pleasant was murdered. There was none. It was as Gawber had suggested: an inconsequential list of stores, shops and businesses: no friends or family.

  The phone rang. It was Ahmed. ‘There’s nothing about Grant Molloy on PNC computer, sir.’

  Angel blinked. ‘Right,’ he said and replaced the phone.

  He told Gawber what Ahmed had said, briefed him on the Molloy and Featherstone situation, instructed him to find the duty JP and get a warrant to search Molloy’s house, then he returned alone to Interview Room Number One.

  Molloy looked up as Angel walked into the room.

  ‘I can’t be kept here much longer. I have my pigeons to feed, you know.’

  ‘You may have to organize somebody to do that job for you, Mr Molloy,’ Angel said heavily.

  Molloy’s face changed and for the first time he looked concerned. He swallowed and wiped the back of a hand across his mouth.

  Weightman said, ‘Ahmed just brought that box in, sir.’

  Angel nodded, picked it up, took off the lid and turned back to Molloy.

  ‘I have here in this box the footprint of the murderer of Charles Pleasant. If your footprint matches it, you’ll have more to worry about than your pigeons, I promise you.’

  Molloy’s eyes opened wide. ‘I didn’t murder Mr Pleasant,’ he protested.

  ‘Well, then you won’t mind us checking to see if your foot matches this footprint, will you?’

  Molloy’s eyes flashed in every direction. He rubbed his mouth. ‘I ought to have a solicitor. I know my rights.’

  ‘This is only an informal interview, Mr Molloy. Nothing is being recorded or written down. You’ve not been charged with anything, yet. We can wait for a solicitor if you insist. But if you didn’t shoot Mr Pleasant on Sunday last, you have nothing to fear.’

  ‘I didn’t have anything to do with his murder.’

  ‘Take off your right shoe and sock then, please.’

  ‘I’ve got a warrant to search your house,’ Angel said, waving the document under Molloy’s nose.

  Molloy’s mouth opened, then shut. ‘You’re never satisfied, are you? I told you it wasn’t my footprint, but you didn’t believe me.’

  Angel stood with his hand on the car door and glared into the man’s eyes. ‘You’re bent, Mr Molloy, as bent as old Judge Wimpenny’s gammy leg. I don’t trust anything you say. Just get in the car and be thankful you’re getting a free lift home.’

  Molloy muttered something unintelligible as he climbed into the back seat of the BMW. Gawber closed the door behind him and got into the front seat beside Angel.

  Angel let in the clutch and the car reversed out of the parking bay then forward through the open gates of the police compound.

  ‘Are my council rates helping to pay for you lumpheads to drive round in luxury like this?’

  ‘Probably,’ Angel said. ‘And then again, my rates are being used to investigate the disturbance of the peace and whatever other dirty little dishonest tricks you and others like you get up to.’

  ‘There’s nothing dishonest about me, I tell you. You’d better be careful what you say, Angel. I could have you up for slander.’

  A few minutes later, Angel pulled up outside a terrace house two streets away from Sebastopol Terrace. ‘This your house, Mr Molloy?’

  ‘You know it is,’ he said, getting out of the car and slamming the door.

  ‘Do you live on your own?’

  ‘Yes,’ he said as he pushed the key into the Yale lock on the front door.

  As soon as the three men were inside the little house, Angel pointed to Gawber to take the upstairs while he started on the ground floor. The house was clean, tidy and Spartan, so it didn’t take long.

  Molloy followed Angel through each of the three downstairs rooms, standing in the middle of each room with his hands in his pockets, saying, ‘Be careful. If you damage anything, you’ll have to pay for it.’

  Angel looked systematically through every cupboard and every container, looked behind the pictures and mirrors and then went about testing the floorboards and looking around for loose carpets. He found nothing unusual, incongruous, suspicious or valuable.

  Gawber came down the stairs, looked at Angel and shook his head. Angel stood in the hall and rubbed his chin.

  Molloy said, ‘I told you there was nothing to find. You don’t believe anything I say.’

  Angel then returned to the small kitchen and looked out of the window. A white painted pigeon loft occupied most of the tiny backyard. He saw a key in the kitchen door, turned it and went outside. The two men followed him, Molloy edging close to his elbow.

  There were a dozen or more pigeons cooing and strutting around in the large timber hut, which had a high landing ledge and an opening permitting their easy coming and going. There was wire netting across a large area, and inside the hut were several birds, some on perches, some on open nesting boxes, some feeding from trays suspended from the wall. At the back was a row of twelve closed boxes with holes to enable a bird to shelter. The floor of the wooden building was strewn with a thin layer of clean straw, and at the far end, a door with a big grey padlock on it.

  Angel looked at the padlock and then at Molloy.

  ‘Now I don’t want you unsettling them and frightening them.’

  ‘Open it up, please, Mr Molloy.’

  ‘It’s just my bird loft. There’s nothing in there of interest to you, I’m sure.’

  ‘You’re probably right,’ Angel said. ‘But nevertheless, will you open it up, please?’

  ‘This is police harassment,’ Molloy said as he unlocked the padlock.

  Angel had to take the padlock out of the hasp. He pushed it into Molloy’s hand and opened the door. It was big enough for human access.

  ‘If you cause any distress to my birds, I shall make a complaint to your boss.’

  Angel stepped up into the loft on to the thin layer of clean, yellow straw. Some pigeons looked at him and chirped mild protests but didn’t move from their perches
or feeding troughs.

  The only places where anything could be concealed seemed to be the row of twelve closed nesting boxes at the back. Those were where Angel immediately approached. He opened them one by one, systematically. There was straw in each. He pulled up his sleeve and reached down below the straw and pulled it up. He searched all twelve boxes. Molloy sniggered each time Angel let the straw fall back in the box. There was nothing.

  Angel took one last look round the pigeon loft. Because it was a simple box with a sloping roof, it seemed that there was no place anything could possibly have been hidden. He wrinkled his nose and turned to come out.

  Molloy saw his disappointment and grinned. ‘There you are. I told you. A complete waste of time.’

  As Angel turned, he felt the slightest rocking of a floorboard under the straw; it was accompanied by a tiny squeak. He repeated the movement exactly and the rocking of the floorboard and squeak occurred again. He stopped, frowned, crouched down and rubbed away the straw to reveal the bare floorboards. He looked closely and discovered that a cut with a saw had recently been made. As he cleared more straw, he revealed more new cuts. His breathing became faster. He dived quickly into his pocket and took out his mother-of-pearl-handled penknife.

  Molloy and Gawber looked on in silence. Molloy licked his lips while Gawber stared at Angel’s busy hands.

  Angel opened the knife, slipped the blade in the slits where the cuts had been made and slowly lifted three adjacent pieces of floorboarding, each about two feet long.

  Molloy wiped his lips with the back of his hand and said: ‘If you find anything under there, I know nothing about it.’

  Angel didn’t hear him. He pulled away a piece of sacking and saw something shiny and green. With shaking hands, he lifted the object up and placed it on the floor. It caught the bright light and reflected green rays on the yellow straw and Angel’s shirt cuffs. He felt his pulse race and his neck and face burn.

  It was undoubtedly the missing jade head of Hang Mung Cheng.

  Gawber gasped at the sight of it.

  Molloy’s face went scarlet. His silence indicated that he had become resigned to the inevitable and had given up further thought of pleading ignorance to the existence in his pigeon loft of the remarkable stolen jade artefact.

  Angel rummaged down in the cavity to see what else there might be there. He felt something, took out his handkerchief and with it picked up a crudely made key welded to a small spanner. He turned it over and back again to examine it. Meanwhile, Gawber quickly took out an evidence bag from his pocket, unfolded it and held it open to accept the key. Angel nodded and released the key into it.

  CHAPTER 11

  * * *

  ‘That’s fantastic, Michael! Absolutely fantastic!’ Elliott said on the phone. ‘The boss will be delighted. He’ll enjoy telling the Empress. She’ll be over the moon. She’s in hiding in London somewhere, I understand.’

  ‘Good.’

  ‘Has it been damaged at all?’

  ‘It looked fine to me.’

  ‘Good. I can’t wait to see it. I expect she’d want to take possession of it as soon as possible. Would that be a problem?’

  ‘No. We have caught the thief. He’s admitted it. We have a written statement. The head is secure in the station safe. You can have it as soon as you like. The sooner the better as far as we are concerned.’

  ‘Good,’ Elliott said. ‘Incidentally, sorry to report, that plaster print didn’t come near Goldstein’s foot.’

  Angel sniffed. Subconsciously he had known it all along, but it could have been a lucky throw.

  Elliott sensed his disappointment.

  ‘Sorry, Michael.’

  ‘That’s alright.’

  ‘By the by, I discovered that Goldstein was in the employ of the Chief of Police of Xingtunanistan. He’s the nephew of the Empress. There was a letter from him and a million Tuong found sewn into the lining of Goldstein’s rucksack. That was his fee for the recovery of the head. Worth about eighteen thousand pounds sterling.’

  Angel sighed. ‘It wasn’t enough. It cost him his life.’

  Elliott agreed.

  ‘Heard any more about Nelson Shadrack and Seminole Trotter?’

  ‘Not a thing,’ Elliott said. ‘A warrant has been issued for their arrest and full ID with photographs have been distributed to all ports and airports. I don’t expect they’ll be seen in the UK again for a while.’

  He thanked Angel once more, said that he would be in touch soon and rang off.

  Angel replaced the phone, leaned back in the swivel chair and looked up at the ceiling. He went over the events of the past three hours with a warm feeling of satisfaction. After he had lifted the jade head from under the pigeon loft, Molloy had admitted that he had accidentally found Pleasant’s old safe and that over weeks of trial and error had contrived a key and opened it; his prints were all over the head and the key so he had little choice but to admit it all. He was just a small-time thief with big ambitions. His footprint didn’t fit the plaster cast, so he hadn’t murdered Pleasant. That much seemed certain. Angel sighed. What he needed was a good, solid suspect. The favourites had been Emlyn and his son, Stanley, but they had a perfect, apparently indestructible, alibi, so they were in the clear. Surely it couldn’t have been Nelson Shadrack or Seminole Trotter in their merciless hunt for the jade head? Goldstein had said that he knew that Pleasant had it hidden in a safe, so it was reasonable to assume that Shadrack and Trotter also knew. He didn’t like the idea of those two dangerous lumps rambling round the streets of Bromersley or wherever they had chosen to inhabit. Perhaps when they learned that the jade head had been found and returned to its rightful owner, they’d disappear into the woodwork. He hoped so. This murder inquiry was all highly unsatisfactory. In addition, he had that strange feeling that something wasn’t quite right; there was something about the jade head business that still bothered him. He couldn’t quite put his finger on it. He wondered if there was something in connection with the finding of the head that he should have attended to. A sort of loose end. He couldn’t think what it was. He didn’t believe in old wives’ tales about inanimate objects having curses on them or anything like that; and the so-called mystery of the Orient was wasted on him. It was no more a mystery than the alleyway between the graveyard of St Mary’s Church Bromersley and the back of the Fat Duck most dark Saturday nights. There were places you simply shouldn’t be, unless you were with six big men in riot gear each carrying a thumping great baton and a shield. He scratched his head and tried to think. All that he knew was that he would be glad to see the back of that jade head. That thing was a mystery. It was just one of several. There was the dog kennel that wasn’t in Tickle’s back yard. Where was the damned thing, then? And why were both Emlyn Jones and his son so self-conscious about raw parsnips being found on a cupboard at Emlyn’s and on top of women’s clothes at his son’s, so embarrassing apparently, in each case, that they had to dash to hide them from him. And who shot Charles Pleasant in his bare feet? And why was the murdered man driving his car without shoes?

  There was a knock at the door. He looked at it and leaned forward in the chair.

  ‘Yes. Come in.’

  It was Ahmed, with a letter. ‘Special delivery for you, sir. Looks important.’

  Angel blinked.

  ‘Thank you,’ he said. He looked at the envelope: it was from the Assistant Governor’s Office, Wakefield Prison. It was what he had been waiting for.

  Ahmed turned to go out.

  ‘Find Ron Gawber and send him in, lad.’

  ‘Right, sir,’ he said and went out.

  Angel slit open the envelope, took out the single-page letter and read it. It was very short. He re-read it, and put it down on the desk. He nodded with satisfaction, and rubbed his chin.

  Gawber arrived after a minute or two.

  ‘You wanted me, sir?’

  ‘Yes,’ he said brightly. ‘Come in, Ron. Read that.’

  Gawber carefully peru
sed the letter, then he looked up and said, ‘In the five years he’s been in Wakefield, only four people have been to visit Larry Longley. His son, Abe, frequently – you’d expect that. His solicitor, Alexander Bloomfield, occasionally – he’s a necessity. And his sister-in-law – Jazmin Frazer, once on 1 August 2007. That’s only last week!’

  ‘Yes. That’s a shock to the system.’

  ‘Amazing. You wouldn’t expect her visiting him, would you?’

  Angel agreed. ‘Four days before Pleasant’s murder.’

  ‘A week today,’ Gawber said pointedly. ‘My sister-in-law wouldn’t come and see me in prison if I murdered my wife, sir.’ Then he added, ‘Of course, Larry Longley always claimed he was innocent.’

  ‘Maybe he is. He’s appealed twice.’

  ‘But the judiciary have rejected both appeals.’

  Angel shrugged. ‘Yes.’

  Gawber nodded then he said, ‘Anyway, sir, we now have the address of Abe Longley. He’s moved to Sheffield.’

  ‘Yes. Who can blame him? Trying to start a new life, I suppose. I’ll have to see him soon.’

  ‘Do you want me to call on him, sir?’

  ‘No. You know me, Ron. I always like to do the opening inquiries myself.’

  Gawber shrugged.

  ‘Tell you what you can do, though,’ he said. He turned round to the table behind him and picked up a small box containing four small polythene bags; inside each bag was one of the bullet cases found on the earth next to the footprint at the site of roadworks where the murderer of Charles Pleasant stood. ‘Nice run into the country for you. Take those to ballistics at Wetherby. See Professor Wayman. Check on what sort of a gun he thinks fired them. There are the four examples to look at. He might be able to tell us something more than just the calibre.’

  ‘I know, sir,’ he said dryly. ‘Smile at him and maybe he’ll do it while I wait.’

  ‘You got it,’ Angel said.

  Gawber closed the lid of the box, put it in his pocket and made for the door.

  ‘And if you see Trevor Crisp on your travels, tell him I want to see him,’ he called.