Murder in Bare Feet Page 8

  ‘You’re lying, Angel. You found the safe and opened it – probably in the night – took the head and hid it somewhere. You’re just play-acting.’

  ‘I didn’t, and I wouldn’t. I didn’t get the key until yesterday morning. Before then, it was locked away with the body in the mortuary. I didn’t know the key existed or that the safe existed or indeed that there was any question that a jade head you speak of might have been concealed in it. Nor did any other person – that I know of – have the slightest inkling. That can all be proved. It’s on the record.’

  ‘Not “a” jade head,’ Gold said. ‘Not any old chuffing jade head, but “the” only jade head in the world,’ he snarled. ‘I am not playing for ha’pennies, Angel.’ Then he seemed to have a thought. He rubbed his chin. He was quiet for a few moments.

  Angel noticed that the car passed the speed restriction signs out of Bromersley. They were passing fields and trees. Shadrack had put his foot down on the accelerator. Every minute was a mile further away from Bromersley.

  After a few moments, Gold spoke in a more measured tone. ‘Who else was with you when you opened it?’

  ‘DS Gawber, and an employee of Charles Pleasant, Grant Molloy. But I am sure they know nothing about it. I assure you, I didn’t know anything about it until you mentioned it.’

  He hardened again. ‘Angel, you’d better not be fooling me. I know it is around here somewhere. I have to find it.’

  Gold then tapped the driver on the shoulder and said, ‘Shadrack, pass me that tape, then turn round somewhere convenient and stop.’

  Shadrack nodded and over his shoulder passed him a roll of brown sticky plastic tape about two inches wide.

  ‘Have you got any children, Angel?’ Gold said.

  ‘Not yet, why?’

  ‘If I find you’ve been frigging me around, I’ll find you, wherever you are, and I’ll make certain that if ever your wife ever hears the patter of tiny feet in your house, it’ll be mice. Understand?’

  Angel had to nod.

  He vowed that if he escaped with his life, he would do everything he could to get him behind bars.

  ‘Put your hands behind your back,’ Gold said.

  ‘Is there really any need for this?’ Angel said. He had no idea what was planned for him. He glanced out of the window. He tried to get his bearings. They were out in the country in the middle of nowhere. There was just open road, fields, and not a building in sight.

  Gold wrapped about a foot of tape around his wrists, then tore it off with his teeth. He then wound it several times round his head covering his eyes.

  Angel couldn’t see a thing. He was really angry. ‘This really isn’t necessary!’ he yelled.

  Gold wrinkled his nose, ‘If I didn’t do this, I don’t know what you’d get up to, being the smart-arsed detective you’re supposed to be.’

  ‘This is outrageous!’

  ‘And if you don’t shut it,’ Gold added, ‘I’ll put this stuff over that fat mouth of yours as well.’

  The car slowed and then stopped.

  Gold got out. ‘Come on, you bastard copper,’ he said dragging him out of the back seat. ‘You had better have been telling the truth or I’ll be back to finish you off.’ He then pushed him into the middle of the highway.

  Angel heard the car door close and the car drive off at speed. He breathed heavily with relief, but realized he was on the highway and potentially in the way of road traffic. He staggered, taking a few paces in every direction until he found a kerb, tripped over it, picked himself up, and was relieved to find a grassy surface where he managed to fall down. His shoulders hurt and his wrists were being cut into by the tape. He rolled on to his side and listened. There was the distant hum of traffic, he sensed that would be coming from the M1 which might have been about three miles away, the rustle of leaves touching each other in the gentle breeze, and then intermittently, the twitter of a bird accompanied by the sound it made when diving through the air to play or in its search for food.

  Several vehicles raced past but either didn’t see him or ignored him. He eventually heard footsteps running towards him. He listened, then when he thought the runner was close, he called out, ‘I am a police officer. Will you please remove this tape from my eyes and undo my wrists?’

  The footsteps slowed, stopped and there was a pause.

  Angel listened attentively, then repeated his plea.

  A panting voice said: ‘What you doing like this mate? Was it for a bet?’

  The man peeled the tape from over his eyes.

  The runner was in the gear: shorts, trainers and sweatshirt.

  Angel blinked. ‘Oh thank you so much.’

  The young man laughed and unfastened his wrists.

  ‘Some people would do anything for a laugh,’ he said.

  ‘Thank you. Thank you very much.’

  ‘Anytime,’ the young man said with a grin and continued his run.

  Angel reached in his pocket for his mobile and tapped in a number.

  Gawber soon replied and sighed with relief. ‘Wow. We’ve been worried about you, sir,’ Gawber said. ‘The landlord at The Fat Duck phoned in to say that he’d been held at the end of a gun in his cellar, and his barmaid had been locked in an airing cupboard by two men who had followed you into the snug. Then they left, and when he came up and looked in the bar, so had you. The bar was empty. He put two and two together and phoned us. We have had four cars standing by, but we had no idea where to send them.’

  Angel appreciated it, but he would have done no less for Gawber and any other member of his team.

  ‘I’m all right. Come and collect me. I’m on the main Bromersley to Huddersfield road, about half-way between Cheviton and Lower Springfield.’

  ‘On my way, sir. I’ll put out a look out notice for their car, if you can give me the index number.’

  ‘It was a big, dark blue Ford, Ron. That’s all I got. They were far too clever for me.’

  Twenty minutes later, Gawber picked up Angel from the country road and they returned together to the station in his car.

  ‘Phew! I don’t want that to happen again,’ Angel said when they were back in his office. ‘Chief thug was a man who told me his name. Said it was Gold. I’ve not heard of him. And one of the heavies he called Shadrack.’

  Gawber shook his head. ‘Don’t ring any bells with me, and they’re the sort of names you’d remember.’

  Angel nodded. ‘Get me the up-to-date video of national mug shots, will you. I’ll look at them on my lap top. Might recognize somebody.’

  ‘Right, sir,’ he said and went out.

  Angel sighed. There was just too much to do. He must deal with the priorities. It’s when you’re overworked you tend to work at the job in front of you and permit yourself to deal with events as they come up instead of working to a sensible, proven sequence and sticking to it. Everything that drops in your lap you think you can deal with quickly, but it is time consuming and some of it is not urgent. Everybody else thinks that their time is important, and it is, to them, but not to the investigation of the murder of Charles Pleasant. Murder was always his first priority and he must stick to the orderly examination of the evidence, and he must do it while it was still hot. He hadn’t yet heard from SOCO. He must see what was happening there, and he must go back to the crime scene.

  The phone rang. He glared at it and muttered a rude word. He had wanted to phone Taylor and chase up the results of their search of the crime scene. He reached out for it and snatched it up. It was DS Matthew Elliott at the Antiques and Fine Art squad, London. He was an old friend of his and they had worked on many cases together over the years. He couldn’t brush him off.

  After they had exchanged pleasant greetings, Elliott said, ‘I’ll tell you why I’m phoning. You’ve no doubt heard about the missing jade head of this famous oriental chap, Hang Mung Cheng? Well, I have some information that it is in your neck of the woods. The information that has come down is that it is in the possession of a scra
pdealer, of all people, a Charles Pleasant in Bromersley. Is he known to you?’

  Angel’s head shot up. ‘Not in the sense you mean, Matthew. He is known to us, because he was murdered on Sunday afternoon last. Four gun shots in broad daylight.’

  There was a pause. Elliott was clearly surprised. ‘I suppose the murderer got away with the jade head?’

  ‘I don’t know. We haven’t got that far. We haven’t found it. Could be your information is out of date … or late, if you see what I mean.’

  He told him all the pertinent facts of the case and in particular surprised him when he told him that the murderer of Pleasant had been a man in bare feet, and also that the victim himself had been found without shoes.

  ‘I don’t understand the idiosyncrasies of people with homicidal tendencies, Michael. Their interest in bare feet and shoes is too difficult for me to comprehend. All I know is that I’m under a lot of pressure to find this jade head. I am being hammered by my boss. He’s had a phone call from the Home Secretary and a personal appeal from the Empress of Xingtunanistan, Louise Elizabeth Mung Cheng, the woman who is the rightful owner. There is desperate heat on to find it and get it back undamaged. Apart from political prestige, it’s worth millions! Where can I go from here?’

  ‘You’re not the only one with that thought.’ He related his experience at the hands of Gold, Shadrack and the other heavy.

  ‘I don’t know of them, Michael, but every crook and arty person in the world the slightest bit bent is on the lookout for it.’

  ‘Our SOCO team have searched Pleasant’s scrapyard, but have still to search his house. They’re a bit overwhelmed.’

  ‘I’ll come up. I’ll be there first thing in the morning.’

  ‘All right, Matthew. See you then.’

  Angel put his hand on the cradle, waited for the line to clear then he dialled a number. It was answered by Taylor.

  ‘Did you check out that empty safe, Don?’

  ‘There was a showing that gold had been in there, sir, but nothing else that I could identify.’

  ‘Any jade?’

  ‘Did you say jade, sir?’

  ‘Yes. Green stone. Comes from China and … out there.’

  ‘I know jade, sir,’ Taylor said. ‘No, sir. No jade.’

  Angel pulled a face. If the jade head had been carefully wrapped it would not necessarily have left behind any trace.

  ‘Did you finish the grates?’ he asked.

  ‘Yes sir. All the way up the street. Nothing there.’

  He wrinkled his nose. ‘Right, Don. Don’t suppose you found the shoes?’

  ‘No, sir. No shoes. We’re still making moulds of that footprint. Ahmed should get some off tonight. And we hope to get into the victim’s house first thing tomorrow.’

  ‘Good.’ He replaced the phone.

  He sighed. Wouldn’t it be great if he could recover Charles Pleasant’s shoes? He couldn’t believe that the man left the house in his stocking feet. What would be the point? Assuming that he was wearing shoes when he left home, a perfectly proper and logical assumption, then, for whatever reason he must have taken them off and disposed of them sometime between leaving the house, driving to the scrap-yard, opening the gates, returning to the car and getting shot. So the shoes should be somewhere along Creesforth Road, Park Road, Bromersley town centre, Wakefield Road and Sebastopol Terrace, assuming that that was the route he took on that quiet Sunday afternoon. If he could recover the shoes, who knows what forensic they might hold. But how could he find them? He could leaflet the area. Every house, both sides of the road. That would be two or three hundred houses and shops.

  ‘Lost. One pair of black leather shoes, size nine.’

  He rubbed his chin and looked out of the window. The more he thought about it, the dafter it sounded.

  Under average circumstances, partly worn shoes wouldn’t have a value. People might wear somebody else’s shirt or vest or dress or whatever. Buy it at a jumble sale or somewhere, wash it and put it on. But they were unlikely to buy secondhand shoes. They hardly had a value in this country. They’d simply be dumped.

  If the shoes had been – for whatever reason – thrown out of the car window, they might have been collected by a street-cleaner, shoved in a bin and disposed of.

  Street cleaner! There was a thought.

  He picked up the phone and summoned Ahmed.

  ‘I want you to find out who cleans the streets. It’ll be a council department. Highways Cleansing or something like that. They’ll tell you who is in charge of it at the town hall. Go down and see him. See if any of the men who actually clean the streets, particularly in the town centre, have come across any shoes over the past couple of days. They would be black leather, elasticated sides, size nine and in good fettle.’

  ‘Right, sir.’

  CHAPTER 8

  * * *

  It was six o’clock. Angel looked up from his desk. He arched his back then straightened up and stretched it. He sighed. It had been one of those days. He usually finished at five, but there was so much paperwork. He didn’t want to be suffocated in the stuff. He wanted to clear his desk so that he could give full attention to the Pleasant case. He gathered the remaining papers on his desk into a pile and slipped them into the top drawer and locked it. He closed the office door, tramped down the quiet green-painted corridor, past the empty cells and out of the rear door. He got in the BMW and had intended going straight home but as he reached the station car park entrance, he slowed the car. He recalled that he had not yet seen Stanley Jones. He had hoped to question him the day previous, but there had not been time. He had also wanted to interview him away from the influence of his father. He knew how inhibiting Emlyn Jones could be; he didn’t want him nodding and winking at his son behind his back, and interrupting and prompting the young man at every twist and turn of the questioning. But he was tired. He had had a long day; nevertheless, he made the decision to call on him. He had the address on the back of an envelope in his pocket, so he stopped the car and consulted it: ‘Flat 14, Council Close, Potts New Estate, Bromersley.’

  He pressed the indicator to the left and let in the clutch.

  It was in the better class of council estates on the outskirts of Bromersley; the flats had not been up for very long. Number fourteen was on the ground floor. He rang the bell and waited.

  An athletic young man in a vest, jogging trousers and trainers pulled open the door. He had a long nose and sharp chin like a boxer and his hair was shiny black and flat as if it had been stuck down with Cherry Blossom. He spoke with a slight touch of a Welsh accent, boyo, and he stuck out his chin challengingly when he spoke.

  ‘Yes? Oh it’s you. Detective Inspector Angel. I remember you. Tried to get me on a shoplifting charge years ago, but you couldn’t make it stick. Short on evidence, weren’t you? What do you want? My father said you would call. Something to do with my mother’s fancy piece, Charles Pleasant. Or should I say ex-fancy piece?’

  ‘Not entirely,’ Angel said. ‘May I come in? Can we talk somewhere quietly?’

  A woman’s voice from the inside of the house yelled, ‘Stanley! Whoever it is, get shut of them. Your dinner’s ready.’

  Jones glanced behind him, tightened his lips then said, ‘Can’t see you now.’

  Angel’s head came up. His muscles tightened. ‘It’s very important,’ he said. ‘We are talking about the death of a man.’

  ‘Won’t it do tomorrow?’

  Angel licked his lips. ‘I can come back in a hour, I suppose.’

  Jones hesitated. He looked back along the hall and then at Angel. ‘Well, better get it over with, I suppose. Come in,’ he snapped.

  The house was a jumble of furniture old and new with no special style or care about it at all. He showed Angel into the front room and pointed at a dusty upholstered chair. ‘Sit there.’ He touched his nose with his forefinger and said, ‘I remember, I have just to get something.’

  Jones went back out into the hall.

>   Angel looked round the small room. It was overfull with furniture, three easy chairs, all odd, a TV with a huge screen, and a piano across the back wall with lots of women’s clothes draped untidily over it. On top of the clothes bizarrely he saw a solitary parsnip. He stood up, picked it up and looked closely at it to make sure that, indeed, that’s what it was. It was a long root. It had been scrubbed clean but not peeled and its top had been neatly cut off. He remembered he had seen a bunch of parsnips, but unwashed and unprepared complete with their green tops, incongruously on the cupboard in his father’s, Emlyn Jones’s, office. He frowned and then smiled as he wondered if raw parsnips were used in some ritual that he had not yet heard of … something peculiar to the Welsh?

  Suddenly he heard banter between Jones and a squawky female. His voice was getting louder. He was coming back.

  Angel gasped, quickly banged the parsnip down exactly where he had found it on top of the woman’s coat on the piano, and returned to the chair.

  Jones came through the door and eyed Angel uncertainly. He was carrying what looked like a sheet of A4 paper with some heavy colouring on the reverse side. He kept it close to his chest turned away so that Angel couldn’t see the picture.

  ‘She’s a bit upset. Dinner’s spoiling. Let’s get it over with. What do you want?’

  Angel nodded. ‘As you obviously know by now, Charles Pleasant was shot dead at his scrapyard on Sunday afternoon. I need to know where your father was at the time.’

  Jones’s lips curled downwards. ‘It was my mother put you up to this wasn’t it?’

  ‘An accusation has been made,’ he replied trying to stay cool. ‘I just have the job of following it up, that’s all.’

  ‘My mother has put you up to this though, hasn’t she?’

  ‘I don’t need or want to get into any of your family disputes, Mr Jones. They are not my business. If you know where your father was on Sunday afternoon, just tell me.’

  Stanley Jones turned the A4 sheet of paper over and held it in front of Angel’s eyes. ‘Here,’ he said. ‘Take a good look at that. Take it.’