‘Come in. Come in,’ Harker squawked. ‘Sit down. Sit down.’
Angel knew he was in a bad mood, by the speed he spat out his instructions and the pitch of his voice.
Angel pulled up a chair and looked across the desk at the superintendent. His bushy ginger eyebrows made him look like one of the uglier Muppets. And he didn’t look well. His face was the colour of an outside loo and there was that lingering smell of TCP. He always smelled of the stuff when he was out of sorts.
‘Now, what’s all this about the Prophet woman being murdered by Reynard?’ Harker said challengingly.
Angel blinked. He must have been talking to SOCO. He didn’t know that Harker was yet familiar with the finding of orange peel at the crime scene. ‘I’m not sure that she was, sir,’ he replied carefully.
‘Orange peel over her body, isn’t that the MO?’
‘Not strewn about the place like this was, sir. The case notes of his two latest victims say that the orange peel was put in a relatively tidy pile, in one case on a table, and the other, a chair arm. Also, there was a printed card about, saying, “With the compliments of Reynard”. SOCO have found no sign of a card.’
‘I know all about that,’ Harker said leaning back in his chair and flaring his nostrils.
At that angle, his nose looked like the entrance to the Dover to Calais tunnel.
‘Nevertheless,’ Harker continued. ‘SOCA should be advised. We want a quick clear up, and they’ve been making a special study of Reynard. They’ve got specialist officers. They maybe could clear this up in no time. Also, I heard that in that Merseyside murder, all the motor expenses for the two weeks they were there, were put down to SOCA. Saved Liverpool CID over six thousand pounds. Helped their quarterly budget no end.’
Angel frowned as he ran his tongue round his mouth desperately thinking of what to say. Then it came to him. He looked up.
‘Yes, but SOCA sent in a Chief Super in that South Hixham case, sir. A woman called Macintosh. Eighteen stones she was. You may know her? I heard from a DI up there that she had the station running round like rabbits. Made everybody jump. Everybody, except the Chief Constable. And it was the Chief Constable who eventually had to bring things to a halt. The regular police work had been brought to a standstill. She had cancelled all leave and rescheduled the shift system, and they had had to pay out thousands in overtime. And despite all the upset and palaver throughout the station, they still didn’t catch Reynard.’
Harker frowned. ‘Hmmm,’ he said slowly. He was thinking.
Angel looked at his eyes. He had slowed him down. He was weighing the pros and cons. His pupils were bouncing and moving from side to side. The cogs were moving like a Heath Robinson time machine.
Angel concealed a smile and turned away.
After a few moments, Harker said: ‘Very well, as you are certain it isn’t Reynard, we needn’t bother SOCA. That’s all I really wanted to know. Carry on then.’
Angel looked across at him. He wasn’t happy. What Harker had said was not exactly correct. If Reynard proved to be the murderer of Alicia Prophet, and SOCA had not been advised early in the investigation, SOCA would be furious and a big rocket would be sent from them to the Chief Constable. Somebody would be in trouble. But it wouldn’t be Harker. Oh no. He’d simply say that he, Angel, had misled him.
He closed the door.
Ahmed passed two envelopes across the desk. One was a large A4 Manilla with the one word, EVIDENCE, printed across it in red, and a smaller one bearing the name and logo of the Northern Bank PLC in small black letters in the corner.
‘The bank was a bit funny about releasing Mrs Prophet’s statements to me, sir,’ Ahmed said. ‘Until I showed my ID and told them about her death.’
‘They would be, and a good job too,’ Angel said as he slit open the envelope from the bank with a penknife.
Ahmed nodded, went out and closed the door.
Angel took the bank statements out of the envelope. There were twelve sheets. He looked at them carefully. There hadn’t been much activity in the account, but he did note that for the past six months a regular amount of £1,000 a month had been deducted from her balance. There was no payee’s name; the entries simply said that the withdrawals were in cash. He checked them over again then wrinkled his nose. That six thousand pounds needed some explanation.
He turned to the thicker envelope. He opened the top and peered inside. It contained photographs, mostly black and white, in all sizes. He closed the flap and put the envelope back on the desk. He looked at it thoughtfully for a few seconds and then reached out a hand to it and tapped it twice with the fingertips. He had made a decision. He stood up. The phone rang. He raised his eyebrows as he reached out for the receiver. It was Harker.
‘There’s a treble nine,’ he said urgently. ‘A man’s body found in a skip down the side of The Three Horseshoes, off Rotherham Road.’
Angel pulled a face. His pulse began to race. Another body. Here we go again. Would it never end? Another murder, and he’d quite enough on his plate.
‘Reported by a workman, a James Macgregor,’ Harker added. ‘He’s waiting there on site.’
‘Right, sir,’ Angel said, then he phoned SOCO, Dr Mac and Gawber. He passed on the information and instructed them to make their way to the crime scene A.S.A.P. He also advised Ahmed of the recent developments and instructed him to tell Crisp to join him as soon as the money under the floorboards in the flat had been dealt with and deposited in the station safe. He then grabbed the thicker of the two envelopes and dashed down the green-painted corridor to the rear door exit that led to the station car park.
Five minutes later, the white SOCO van, Dr Mac’s car and Angel’s BMW arrived at The Three Horseshoes in quick succession. The pub was on the corner of the Mansion Hill and Rotherham Roads, not the best part of Bromersley. It had a small car park on one side of it, but locals would take the shortcut between the two roads, across the car park and park behind the pub, thus cutting off the corner and saving half a minute or so walking round the front of the pub.
Angel parked on the street. He noticed a small skip in the car park by the rear wall of the pub and advanced determinedly towards it. The green-painted skip had the words ‘For hire’ and an 0800 telephone number stencilled in white on each side. As he got nearer he could see that it was three-quarters filled with stone, dust, bricks, plasterwork and builder’s debris. At one end, there appeared to be a bundle of brown rags with a man’s shoe on top. That was the dead man.
SOCO were setting up blue and white tape bearing the words POLICE LINE – DO NOT CROSS, while Mac had found a bottle crate and was preparing to stand on it to lean over the skip. The car park was bathed in brilliant sunshine so extra lighting on the body was not necessary.
Angel met James Macgregor, who was in the pub drinking tea from a vacuum flask. He told Angel that he was working on some conversions in The Three Horseshoes, knocking an inside wall down to make two rooms into one and that in the course of bringing out a wheelbarrow of rubble, a few minutes ago, he had pushed it up a plank and found this body.
‘Yeah. I’d noticed what I thought were some old clothes someone dumped in the skip earlier this morning, you know. People do that, you know. Get rid of rubbish in any old skip they see hanging around the streets, you know. So. Well then I didn’t think anything of it. I’d tipped in a few loads before I had a closer look, and of course, it was this poor man.’
‘Did you touch him?’
‘Who? No. No. I snatched at his coat but soon let go when I seed him inside it, of course. Well, you would, wouldn’t you?’
‘What time did you finish work yesterday?’
‘Five o’clock. Always finish at five, you know.’
‘Was everything else as you left it?’
‘Exactly. Yeah. I fetched all my tools and gear in here.’