The Money Tree Murders Page 17

  Angel blinked. He did not recognize the intruder.

  ‘Who are you and what do you want?’ Angel said.

  The intruder stared at him and said nothing.

  ‘What do you want?’ Angel said.

  The intruder pulled out a gun and pointed it at him. Angel recognized it as a Walther PPX. An old model, but it would kill anybody at that range.

  ‘Put up your hands,’ the intruder said.

  As he raised his hands, Angel changed the angle of his right hand and knocked the reading lamp on the library table over. The light went out. The room was in darkness.

  Angel dived to the floor.

  The intruder fired off three shots in the direction of where Angel had been.

  Angel crawled round the back of the settee to the sideboard, stood up, grabbed a heavy green glass door stop that had stood many years at his grandmother’s back door, leaned over the settee and banged it across the back of the intruder’s head.

  The firing stopped. The intruder went down with a crash.

  Angel rushed to the doorway and switched on the central light.

  He saw the Walther PPX on the carpet and kicked it out of the way. He looked at the long blonde flowing hair and reached down to touch the face. It wasn’t flesh he could feel but rubber. He realized it was a rubber face mask. He peeled it off under the chin and over the back of the head to reveal Alan de Souza.

  Mary, in her nightdress, came running in. She put her arms round him. ‘Are you all right, darling? Whatever’s happening?’

  ‘It’s all right, Mary. Everything’s all right.’

  Two hours later, peace descended on the Angel household. Alan de Souza had been charged by the night duty sergeant and taken away. The Walther PPK had been put in an evidence bag and taken to the station safe, and Grandmother’s door stop, undamaged, had been replaced on the sideboard.

  Michael and Mary Angel were still in their night clothes but neither party was tired enough to go back to bed.

  They were having a very early breakfast.

  Mary passed a cup of tea and said, ‘What I don’t understand is what de Souza was up to?’

  Angel reached out for a piece of toast and said, ‘Well, with some big winners, de Souza arranged to give the contestant the answers to the questions for a hefty proportion of that contestant’s winnings. The contestants weren’t ever likely to report the fiddle to anybody, were they? He had a sure-fire easy way of making money, in theory forever. He had his own private money tree.’

  ‘Well, what went wrong?’

  ‘His new girlfriend, Jeni Lowe, found out about it and told him that he should stop it or she’d spill the beans. He had no intention of stopping and so he killed her by fixing the brakes of her car. But she didn’t die before she told old Abercrombie – who was out scavenging for fuel for his fire – the facts and asked him to tell the police. But he didn’t do that. Instead he tried to blackmail de Souza. And was also murdered by him.’

  ‘How awful. But are you going to be able to prove that de Souza’s the murderer?’

  ‘Oh yes. There was the mouthpiece cover from an inhaler the same as he uses, plus fingerprints all over the interior of Jeni Lowe’s car, and there were a few hairs on Abercrombie’s chest and on his hand. If those prints and those hairs are de Souza’s, and I fully expect that they will be, it will prove his guilt; also it will show what a liar he is. De Souza had said that he’d never been out with Jeni Lowe, never been in her car and had never heard of old man Abercrombie.’

  Angel slowly went upstairs to shower, shave and dress, then got down to the station for his usual time of 8.28 a.m. As he made his way down the corridor, everybody was smiling and without exception spoke to him, if it was only to say, ‘Good morning.’

  He arrived at his office and closed the door. He took off his coat and hat and sat down at his desk. He smiled. He was thinking it was great being a copper as long as you solve your cases. If you can’t, you might just as well be a traffic policeman.

  He looked at the pile of paperwork in front of him. He wrinkled his nose then reached out and dragged it forward.

  There was a knock at the door. ‘Come in,’ he said.

  It was DS Flora Carter holding a sheet of A4. ‘Good morning, sir, and congratulations.’

  He smiled again. ‘Thank you, Flora. But you did your bit, as did everybody else. Did you get my message?’

  ‘Yes, sir,’ Flora said, waving the sheet of A4. ‘I have it here. A copy of de Souza’s bank statement, sir, and he has a credit balance of over £680,000.’

  Angel’s eyebrows shot up.

  Quoting from the bank statement, Flora said, ‘It is made up from cash amounts paid in almost every Monday morning over the past three months, after the transmission of the show on a Sunday night. For instance the last three Monday mornings, he paid in £6,000, £31,000, and £75,000 respectively. Those figures are fifty per cent of the amount the winner Josephine Huxley won.’

  ‘Wow!’ Angel said. ‘Great stuff, Flora. Leave that statement with me. The CPS will be delighted to have it. Cherry on the cake. Thank you.’

  She went out.

  There was another knock on the door. ‘Come in,’ he called.

  It was Ahmed. The wrinkles on his brow indicated that he was in some distress.

  ‘What’s the matter, lad?’ asked Angel.

  ‘Oh, sir, I have just seen that neighbour of mine … the one that I got this Mitto-Amino watch from,’ he said, holding up his wrist. ‘He’s in the charge room with the duty sergeant. He’s being booked for selling counterfeit goods!’

  By the same author

  In The Midst Of Life

  Choker

  The Man In The Pink Suit

  The Importance Of Being Honest

  Mantrap

  Salamander

  Sham

  The Umbrella Man

  The Man Who Couldn’t Lose

  The Curious Mind Of Inspector Angel

  Find The Lady

  The Wig Maker

  Murder In Bare Feet

  Wild About Harry

  The Cuckoo Clock Scam

  Shrine To Murder

  The Snuffbox Murders

  The Dog Collar Murders

  The Cheshire Cat Murders

  The Diamond Rosary Murders

  The Big Fiddle

  The Fruit Gum Murders

  © Roger Silverwood

  First published in Great Britain 2014

  ISBN 978 0 7198 1724 3 (epub)

  ISBN 978 0 7198 1725 0 (mobi)

  ISBN 978 0 7198 1726 7 (pdf)

  ISBN 978 0 7198 1361 0 (print)

  Robert Hale Limited

  Clerkenwell House

  Clerkenwell Green

  London EC1R 0HT

  www.halebooks.com

  The right of Roger Silverwood to be identified as

  author of this work has been asserted by him

  in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and

  Patents Act 1988