Sham Page 7

  Angel then said, ‘Is there a loft?’

  It was above the landing: a modern design with its own ladder. Angel found the pole and pulled down the ladder.

  ‘This shouldn’t take us too long, Ron. I’ll look up here and do this floor.’

  ‘Right, sir,’ Gawber said, and made his way back down the stairs.

  Two hours later, having searched every drawer and every cupboard and all the usual hiding places, Angel came downstairs with a cheque book and a folder of bank statements.

  ‘That smell up there, can’t think what it is.’

  ‘Flowers, sir? A pomander? Or perfume of some sort? Smells expensive.’

  Angel rubbed his chin.

  ‘Thing is, I can’t put it in a bottle and take it back to the lab,’ he said, shaking his head.

  He concluded that the rich smell was probably a French perfume. Schumaker had probably sprinkled it liberally on the bed linen, the towels, perhaps even the carpets. Angel rubbed his chin, but he hadn’t spotted a spray or a bottle or any sort of a container.

  Gawber had the envelope that had been behind the clock in his hand. He handed it to him. ‘Letter from his dad. Probably contained a cheque.’

  Angel grunted as he read it.

  ‘It refers to a cheque that would have accompanied it, sir. It was from that address in Liverpool and dated two weeks back. It was probably intended as a Christmas present.’

  He nodded.

  ‘I’ve got his cheque book and bank statement for the Bromersley branch of the Northern City Bank. Did you find an address book?’

  ‘No sir.’

  ‘Mobile phone?’

  ‘No. And the lad’s very tidy and methodical.’

  ‘Yes. Not a scrap of paper or an unnecessary hair in the place. And clean. Not a speck of dust. Very nice house, though.’

  Gawber smiled.

  ‘Spotless. I wouldn’t mind living here, sir.’

  Angel didn’t hear him. He was thinking.

  ‘I thought he would have had a mobile phone.’

  ‘He would have had that on him, wouldn’t he, sir?’

  ‘You would have thought so.’

  Angel looked round the kitchen.

  ‘Is the place lived in, do you reckon? It’s so hard to believe.’

  ‘I think so,’ Gawber said thoughtfully. ‘I think it’s his way. That’s all.’

  Angel wasn’t sure.

  He spotted the refrigerator and opened the door. It was well packed. He could see packets of bacon, sundry small items wrapped in white plastic paper with supermarket labels on them, plastic see-through boxes of strawberries and raspberries and so on. The door itself was loaded with margarine, cheese, cans of lager and plastic bottles of milk. He reached in and took one of the bottles out and looked at the label. ‘Hmmm. Use by January 10th.’ He looked at Gawber. ‘Well, that’s all right. Practically fresh. He must have bought that no more than a couple of days ago.’

  ‘Yes,’ Gawber agreed.

  Angel squeezed the lobe of his ear between his finger and thumb.

  ‘Have we finished then?’

  ‘There’s just the garage, sir.’

  They went out.

  Angel took the key out of the lock on the inside of the French windows, shoved it in the keyhole on the outside, locked it and pocketed the key.

  The garage was a simple brick-built, slate roof building. It was unlocked and inside was as immaculate as the house. The car in there was an expensive red Italian sports job.

  When Gawber saw it, his mouth dropped open. He looked at Angel and then back at the car.

  ‘There’s about a hundred thousand quid there, sir. Good for pulling the girls, don’t you think?’

  Angel rubbed his chin.

  Gawber smiled knowingly.

  *

  It was five o’clock, blacker than an undertaker’s cat and freezing cold.

  Angel parked his car on the service road behind Beckett’s flats and made his way across the yard to the back entrance; he tapped in the code, then pushed open the security door, bounced up the steps, and dashed along the landing to flat number 12. He put the key in the lock, turned it and went inside. He was just in time to see the bedroom door close and hear the click of the latch.

  He pursed his lips and went slowly up to it.

  ‘It’s only me. Michael Angel,’ he called.

  ‘Yeah. I’m coming,’ Grady replied through the closed door.

  Angel nodded, turned and looked round. The table was untidily littered with dirty crockery, cutlery and open packets and boxes of food, the remnants of a meal or two. There were more dirty pots on the draining board. He rubbed his chin. Grady had certainly made himself comfortable. He glanced down at the wastebin by the sink and saw an empty bottle with gold foil wrapping round its neck. He leaned down and snatched it up. His pulse quickened as he glanced at the label: Lafayette Champagne 1999.

  His jaw tightened, he shook his head and dropped it back in the bin. It rattled noisily. His eyes wondered across to the bottom of the aluminium sink. There were more dirty plates and cutlery; it didn’t look as if Grady’d washed up at all since his arrival, and then Angel saw two glass tumblers next to each other one of them marked at the rim with scarlet lipstick.

  His pulse raced. The skin on the back of his hands tightened. He dashed over to the bedroom door, squeezed the doorknob and pushed at it hard. The door opened. It caught Grady on his backside. He was dressed in an open-necked shirt, slacks and slippers and leaning over the bed doing something with the pillows. He looked up. Their heads met six inches apart. Grady grinned slightly. Angel glared angrily into the man’s big baby blue eyes. The policeman was so furious he could have bitten his nose off.

  At the other side of the room near the window, he saw a slim young woman with a head of jumbled hair that covered her face. She was wearing a white blouse and a long leather skirt that she was vigorously yanking round her waist with both hands.

  Angel’s jaw dropped as he stared at her.

  She glanced across at him momentarily, then turned away, unconcerned, and continued tugging at the skirt.

  Grady straightened up and looked at Angel through lowered eyes; he was still smiling and rubbing his neck.

  Angel’s face was stonier than the Sphinx. He said nothing. He turned, stormed back into the sitting-room, thrust his hands hard into his coat pockets, blew out a long sigh and looked through the window at the sleet in the headlights of passing traffic.

  Grady followed him out and closed the bedroom door.

  Angel turned round to him. He was the first to speak.

  ‘Who’s that, then?’ he growled and jerked his head in the direction of the bedroom.

  Grady rubbed his chin, then smirked and said, ‘Sharon Rossi.’

  Angel blinked and stared at him.

  ‘Sharon Rossi!’ he bawled.

  Grady nodded. ‘And I am going to marry her,’ he replied robustly.

  Angel shook his head. ‘You’re going to die for her!’ he retorted. ‘Sharon Rossi? Don’t you realize when Rikki Rossi finds out about this, you’re as good as a dead man.’

  Grady’s face changed. The smirk had gone. He was suddenly very serious.

  ‘No. When he goes down he’ll not be able to touch me.’

  ‘There’s Carl, and his mother, and that’s Rikki’s daughter in there. What’s she going to think when she sees it’s your evidence that has put her father away?’

  ‘She knows all about it. I’ve told her. She hates her father. It was him that came between us before.’

  ‘You can’t trust her, you fool. She’s having you for a right idiot! Blood’s thicker than water. When her father presses the right buttons, she’ll drop you faster than the Lib Dems dropped Charlie Kennedy. You’ll be as good as dead.’

  Grady licked his lips. His eyes darted from left to right and then back again.

  ‘No. No. She’s … it’s not like that,’ he stammered.

  ‘And you’ve just made t
he safest “safe house” in the UK into a death-trap,’ Angel said, waving his arms round the room.

  ‘No. She’s all right. It’ll be all right. She loves me. We can … I can still stay here.’ ‘Bah!’ Angel snarled and wrinkled up his nose. ‘That’s what she says. But what does she really think? How will she react when she hears a jury declare her father guilty and sees them stick the cuffs on him and march him off to Wakefield for twenty years? What is she going to think about you then?’

  ‘We’ve talked it all out. She’s got a level head on her. She’s a smart girl. She understands. I know what I’m doing.’

  ‘Oh yes. You know what you’re doing. That’s why you’re an unemployed bum, hiding out here at public expense, while she’s prancing about in expensive clobber picking you up and dropping you down whenever she feels like it.’

  ‘It’s not like that.’

  ‘But it is! It is exactly like that. And what are you going to use for money? A girl like that is not going to be satisfied with half a lager and a bag of chips, you know. That leather skirt she’s wearing alone, I bet, cost the best part of five hundred quid. The idea of that lass and you is plain daft. It’s riddled with difficulties!’

  ‘No. It’s not,’ he snapped. ‘And money is no problem, no problem at all,’ he said, straightening up and sticking out his chest. ‘I know where there’s more than a hundred thousand quid. I can pick it up anytime I like.’ He snapped his fingers, flamboyantly, and added, ‘Just like that!’

  Angel’s eyebrows shot up.

  ‘Honest money, is it? Not money that the law could send you down for? We’ve probably got all the numbers from the bank on file just waiting for a mug like you to get caught passing it!’

  Grady couldn’t think of a reply. He put his hands in his pockets and shrugged.

  ‘And do you intend to marry her and have kids — unless you have the snip it’s as likely as not — and then have her bring them to visit you every month at Strangeways? That’s if you are still alive, of course, that’s if you’re lucky. She might not want to visit you, to see you with your blue-white prison tan, smelling of disinfectant, and with a permanent sniff from bunged up sinuses as a result of condensation. You are not right in your head. Do you not see that this is a golden opportunity for you. A crossroads in your life. There are a million girls out there. It doesn’t have to be this one. Send her back home. We’ll move you to another safe house, although where to, I don’t know at the moment. And then, next week, give your evidence, get Rikki put away, find yourself a proper job, a nice girl, get married, and get out of the rackets. That’s what you should be thinking about, not trying to get one over on Rikki by bedding his daughter! It’s ridiculous. And dangerous. Besides, you’re old enough to be her father.’

  ‘I told you, it isn’t like that, Angel. She loves me and I love her. And I’m not that old. There’s only twelve years in us!’

  ‘Bah! It’s enough. I’ve heard all that stuff before. I tell you, Rikki Rossi will think twelve is a lot. And I don’t expect he has you in mind for a son-in-law!’

  The bedroom door suddenly opened and Sharon Rossi slipped in. She closed the door and stood with her back against it. Angel hadn’t seen her before that day. She was strikingly beautiful. His mouth dropped open as he stared at the attractive, slim face, high cheek bones and the delicately formed nostrils, slim nose and arched neck, similar features to her mother, of course, and with the advantage of youth. He didn’t speak. He couldn’t speak. He was thinking, she must be the sort of feminine form he’d heard that artists yearn to reproduce in stone and on canvas. He gazed at her face and then slowly tracked downwards, past the crisp white blouse buttons, the small belt buckle down to her pretty nylon covered ankles and chic leather shoes.

  She stared at Grady and then at Angel.

  ‘I have heard every word you’ve been saying,’ she began.

  Angel couldn’t take his eyes off her. He listened carefully to her husky voice that sounded like warm liquid chocolate.

  ‘Those walls are made of cardboard,’ she continued. ‘And you are quite wrong about me, Mr Angel. I love my father, but I don’t like him. I have told Pete that I am a hundred per cent behind him.’

  Grady smiled like a lottery winner in a trance.

  She moved over to him, grabbed his arm and his hand and held tightly on to them.

  ‘And it is true; we are going to get married, just as soon as dad is safely behind bars. And we are getting properly married in a church somewhere, because I love him, and because I am expecting his baby.’

  ***

  ‘What!’ Strawbridge bellowed.

  His voice made Angel’s ear-drum ring. He pulled the phone away from his ear and held it at arm’s length.

  Angel’s wife, Mary, looked up from the magazine she was reading and stared at him.

  ‘Sharon Rossi’s up the duff?’ the superintendent repeated.

  ‘Yes, sir.’

  ‘Are you sure?’

  ‘That’s what she said.’

  ‘Is she still at the flat?’

  ‘Looks like she’s moved in,’ Angel said meaningfully.

  ‘Well they’re not having their honeymoon on public money, if I can help it,’ he sighed. Then he said, ‘I don’t like this. I don’t like this one bit. We can’t do with this complication so near the trial. We can’t do with this girl on the scene. There’s no telling which way Grady will jump now. A bit of pressure from her and he’ll say and do anything she tells him to. You should have stopped this.’

  Angel’s eyes flashed.

  ‘How could I?’ he said indignantly. ‘I wasn’t to know there was still anything between them. I couldn’t have anticipated he would have contacted her.’

  ‘All right. All right,’ Strawbridge snapped.

  There was a pause. The superintendent was thinking. ‘I don’t suppose there’s any chance of her leaving voluntarily, or being persuaded to.’

  ‘Shouldn’t think so. There’s only one thing I can think of, sir.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘Well, we know he’s got a gun. I don’t suppose he has a licence for it. Arrest him for being in possession of a gun without a licence. Bring him in and shove him in a cell. That’ll kill two birds with one stone.’

  ‘But we could only hold him for a few hours.’

  ‘It’s a start, isn’t it?’

  Strawbridge sighed.

  ‘Arrest him now, and all the goodwill I have built with him will sail straight down the river. All that time wasted.’

  ‘I don’t know, sir. He still seemed pretty vindictive towards Rikki Rossi. And Sharon seemed red hot at supporting him. He may still be willing to give evidence.’

  ‘Against her father? I wouldn’t put money on it.’

  ‘Do you want me to issue a couple of uniformed and go out and arrest him now, sir?’

  ‘No. There is too much at stake; there’s only a few days to wait. Let’s leave things as they are. I’ll sleep on it and see you in the morning.’

  ‘Right, sir.’ Angel sniffed.

  ‘Good night.’

  7.

  The morning came and Angel had expected to be called into Strawbridge’s office early, but he heard nothing so he assumed the superintendent was prepared to let things at Beckett’s Flats continue as they were. He wasn’t very happy about it, but it wasn’t his case. He was only acting as liaison between Strawbridge and Grady. He had enough on his plate so he was content to dismiss Grady, Sharon Rossi and the Walther from his mind.

  There was a knock at the door.

  ‘Come in.’

  It was Ahmed with a handful of envelopes.

  ‘Oh, it’s you.’

  He put the post on the desk in front of him.

  ‘Yes, sir. And there’s been a man on the phone. Didn’t want to speak to you. Wouldn’t give his name. Didn’t give a number. Just left a message.’

  ‘Oh? What’s he say?’

  ‘Will you meet him in the usual place at the usual time
today.’

  Angel smiled. Then nodded.

  ‘He said you’d know who it was, sir.’

  Angel nodded.

  ‘Right. Ta. Anything else?’

  ‘No, sir.’

  There was a knock on the open door. It was DS Crisp.

  ‘Come in. Right, Ahmed. Thank you.’

  The cadet went out.

  Crisp came in and closed the door.

  Angel pointed to the chair.

  ‘Have you sorted it out then?’

  ‘Yes and no, sir,’ Crisp said, sitting down and opening a file he had brought.

  Angel wrinkled his nose.

  ‘What do you mean?’ he growled. ‘You talk as daft as a politician.’

  ‘Well, I went into the car showroom, sir, and managed to speak to the actual salesman. He said he had sold that car to a hard broad called Buller-Price.’

  Angel frowned. ‘How did she pay?’

  ‘Cash, sir. Twenties and fifties.’

  ‘Cash? All that, in cash! Didn’t he think it was fishy?’

  Crisp shrugged. ‘Didn’t say. Probably not. He was glad to make the sale.’

  Angel pondered a moment.

  ‘Did you get a description of the woman?’

  ‘Yes, sir,’ Crisp said and referred to his notebook. ‘He said she was slim, red hair and had a mouth like a sink plunger.’

  Angel blinked. Distinctive, he thought.

  ‘Smart clothes. Wore a lot of gold jewellery. She came with a man. Could have been her chauffeur, he didn’t get out of the car. She did all the talking and the paying.’ ‘How old was this bloke at the garage?’

  ‘In his twenties, sir.’

  Angel nodded knowingly. ‘Anybody over forty would seem positively ancient to him. What about the insurance office?’