‘You’ve no idea who gave Harry Harrison a damned good hiding and finished him off by sticking a knife into him several times, then dumped him in that skip, leaving him to bleed to death, have you?’
‘Well, it wasn’t me. More than likely it would have been Eddie Glazer. He probably caught up with Harrison in the pub or somewhere and the little squirt refused to tell him where he’d hidden the money. Glazer’s a nasty piece of work.’
‘Hmmm,’ Angel muttered. That was true. ‘I’ll be frank with you, Spencer,’ Angel began. ‘Glazer and his gang have disappeared. All we have to go on at the moment is the description and licence plate number of their car. Any assistance you can give me in finding where they might have disappeared to would be greatly appreciated.’
Spencer sighed then said: ‘I don’t know anything about that, Inspector. Honestly, I haven’t a clue. I wish I had. They’re no friends of mine.’
Angel was tired and fed up. It was the weekend. Thank God for that. Two murder cases in one week was hard work. He went home. He put the car away, locked the garage, came in through the back door, smiled weakly at Mary, took a bottle of German beer out of the fridge and a glass off the draining-board and shuffled off into the sitting-room. He loosened his tie, pressed a button on the television remote control and slumped into the chair. As the set warmed up it showed a young woman in front of a map rattling off details at high speed about the temperature and global warming. He sipped the beer. It had been five days since he had first been sent to Creesforth Road and had been presented with the murder of Alicia Prophet. He wasn’t really any the wiser about the mysterious Lady B. An amateur murderer if ever there was one, he thought. Virtually advertised the fact that she was at the scene of the crime at the time of the murder. Committed the murder in broad daylight, ate an orange and sprayed the peel over the body, then trotted down the front path like a lady of leisure, conveniently dropping her handbag in front of a neighbour, Mrs Duplessis. Made sure the taxi driver would remember her, publicized her destination, Wells Street Baths, then disappeared in a puff of smoke. Ridiculous.
The other case, the murder of Harry Harrison … now that was relatively simple. It was committed by one crook or the other. One suspect was in hospital, and with his injuries, he wasn’t going anywhere in a hurry. The other was … well … somewhere else.
Mary came in with his tea on a tray. It was finnan haddock. They always had fish on a Friday. He enjoyed that then reached out for the Radio Times to see what might be on television after the news: politics, pop groups, personality parades, soaps and cooking. He fell asleep in the chair.
Mary looked across at him and sighed.
On Saturday he weeded the garden and cut the lawn; on Sunday, Mary prepared a picnic lunch and they spent the late morning on the moors. However the weather broke unexpectedly and following several rolls of thunder and some lightning, it rained vertical stair-rods. They arrived back home at one o’clock, missing the worst of the weather and in time to watch a John Wayne cowboy film on television, then ‘Songs of Praise,’ followed by ‘Last of the Summer Wine.’ As the theme music increased in volume and the credits rolled up over the bucolic scene, Angel’s mobile phone rang out. He was surprised at the interruption: it could only be police business and he knew it must be urgent. His pulse increased and his heart began to bang in his chest, as he reached down into his trouser pocket and yanked the phone out.
‘Angel,’ he said expectantly.
‘Sorry to bother you, sir. This is PC Donohue. We have been called out to a vehicle fire on some farmland in Skiptonthorpe. It is a big, black Mercedes saloon. We attended and when I reported it in, the desk sergeant said you had it on orders that you had to be advised on this number of any sighting of this vehicle.’
‘Yes. Yes,’ Angel said excitedly. ‘That’s right. Tell me, what’s happened?’
‘We had a treble nine call to a vehicle fire by the back road behind Summerskill’s farm on the top side in Skiptonthorpe. We attended promptly, so did the fire service.’
Angel’s knuckles tightened. ‘Don’t tell me the fire service have been crawling all over the site?’
‘Yes, sir.’
He wrinkled his nose. ‘What’s the state of the fire now, lad?’
‘It’s out, sir. The fire service are just damping down.’
‘Right. When it’s safe, get them off the site, mark it out and treat it as a crime scene. And stay there. I’ll be with you in about fifteen minutes.’
‘You’ll need your wellies, sir.’
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
Angel soon found the country road behind the farm at Skiptonthorpe. He saw the police car with two policemen inside at the side of the road. He drove up and parked behind it.
And he certainly did need his wellies. The rain had now ceased but it had been a very heavy downpour.
He clocked the gap between some bushes where the Mercedes had been driven ten yards off the road onto the edge of a ploughed field, dumped and ignited. A lager can, several newspapers and magazines had been dumped close by and were now drenched and part trodden into the mud.
There was a smell of burning rubber and petrol.
He could see that the car’s rear window and windscreen had been smashed, most of the upholstery and carpeting burned out, and all the internal surfaces and controls were black, but the metal parts, the wheels and the tyres were intact.
He squelched precariously at a careful distance of about twenty feet from the car looking down at the sodden earth.
Two policemen came up to him wearing high-visibility yellow coats and flat hats.
‘Good evening, sir. Good evening, sir.’
Angel looked up from the muddy field, his lips tightened back against his teeth. ‘Look at all those footprints. You’ve had a bigger crowd here than there was at Reggie Kray’s funeral!’
The two policeman exchanged glances but said nothing.
‘I want you to mark out this area with DO NOT CROSS LINE tape, at a minimum of fifteen feet from the car and this break in the bushes. I want to preserve every track in the mud from around the car and up to the road.’
‘Right, sir.’
‘When you’ve done that, I shall want some illumination. It’ll be dark in a few hours. I expect to be here all night. I shall want one of you to go to the stores and get a lighting kit and generator.’
They dashed off and opened the boot of their car.
Angel dug his hand into his pocket, pulled out his mobile and tapped in a number. ‘Is that the National Crime and Operations Faculty? I want to call on your specialist to advise on motor vehicle tracks, please. It’s very urgent.’
It was 2100 hours and the section of the field and the break in the bushes had been marked out with DO NOT CROSS tape attached to stakes in the ground. The road was full of activity and thronged with police vehicles. Angel had requested more uniform to secure the site and manage the few interested members of the public occasionally rubbernecking as they passed. SOCO had arrived and also an HGV with low loader to transport the car away. Angel was with a DI Ince and a photographer from the NCOF who were working on pads on their knees making plaster casts and taking measurements with a steel tape.
It was going to be a busy night.
‘Two coffees, Ahmed. Smartish.’
‘Right, sir,’ he said and went out of the office.
Angel looked up Gawber, rubbed his scratchy chin, sniffed and said, ‘They’ve ditched the only lead we had, Ron. We had the number, colour and make of their car. Now I have no idea where they are and we have absolutely nothing to go on!’