Angel and the Actress (5 page)

Mary put her hand with the letter in it down on her lap and said, ‘What can I do?’

Angel wasn’t pleased. He ran his hand through his hair. Then moistened his lips. ‘It’s a long way up to Edinburgh, but you’ll have to go, I suppose,’ he said.

Mary nodded. ‘I knew you’d say that.’

Angel wrinkled his nose.

She said, ‘You could be more gracious about it.’

‘
Gracious?
’ he said. He opened his mouth to say something, then thought better of it.

‘Is it all right, then? Will you able to manage? If I thought for one moment you wouldn’t be able to manage, I wouldn’t go.’

‘I’ll manage,’ he said. ‘Of course, I’ll manage. I’ve
managed before. But your sister’s a pain in the backside. Ever since she kicked that poor bloke out, she’s—’

‘What poor bloke? You mean Angus?’

‘No. That painter-and-decorator chap.’

‘He was an architect. You mean François?’

‘No, her husband. The first one. Rupert, or whatever his name was.’

‘You mean Robert? That was her
first
husband. Rupert McGee was her solicitor at the time. He was dreadful. They both were.’

‘
He
was all right. If he hadn’t caught her messing about with that painter and decorator, they could have still been together.’

‘He was an architect. Oh, it’s a long story. There’s a lot more to it than that. He was dreadful. The things he said to her.’

‘She wasn’t exactly incapable of dishing out a tongue-lashing, was she?!’

Mary sniffed, then said, ‘Trust you to be pulling her to pieces.’

There was a pause in the exchange while Angel finished off his coffee and put the cup and saucer on the library table.

‘Well, I hope that when she’s parading her new equipment up and down Princes Street, she pulls a bloke as loopy as she is, who will put up with her crackpot schemes and idiotic ideas.’

Mary’s face went scarlet. She whipped her feet off the pouffe and stood up. She leaned over and snatched up Angel’s cup and said, ‘I hope you don’t want any more coffee, because there isn’t any.’

Then she stormed off into the kitchen.

Angel’s watched her go, his mouth wide open and his forehead creased.

Then he heard the running of water and more banging of pots and pans.

He pulled the envelope containing the letter that had been addressed to him out of his pocket. He looked down at it, clenched his teeth while rubbing the back of his neck for a few seconds, then stuffed it back in his pocket.

T
HE NEXT MORNIN
G
, Tuesday, 4 November 2014, three miles or so from Bromersley, on a country lane leading to the A1, concealed behind a hawthorn hedge was a Volkswagen Jetta. The car had had all its windows removed.

The driver was wearing a black balaclava underneath a fibreglass helmet, which was securely fastened under his chin, a pair of heavy-duty gloves and thick plastic knee, ankle, elbow and wrist supports over a dark suit. He looked at his watch. It was 8.38 a.m. He started the engine and pressed down the accelerator several times. The car responded with lionlike roars. The vehicle had been checked out most carefully the night before.

The mobile phone on the shelf in front of him rang out. He snatched it up.

‘Yeah?’ he said.

‘Just going under the railway arches,’ a voice said. ‘Right behind him. Everything OK?’

‘Yeah,’ the driver said. ‘Should be visible to you in about sixty seconds.’

The phone went dead.

The driver threw down the phone, shuffled in his seat, revved the car engine again and gazed down the road. He snatched up a pair of binoculars, lifted up his eyeshield and peered through them. There was nothing. The road was empty. Then he looked again. He could now see something on the narrow, twisting road. A big blue and white van. It had writing on the side.
That was the van!
A good two hundred yards behind it he saw the blue Ford Mondeo. His heart banged away like a drum. He breathed faster.

He kept his eye on the van. It was travelling fast. Too fast, he thought.

The security van driver had to stop at a halt sign to turn left into the main road north to the A1. The Volkswagen Jetta was waiting up a dirt-track lane, behind a hawthorn hedge, fifty yards away. The driver revved the car one more time, then released the handbrake, let in the clutch and began travelling down the lane. He had to match his speed so that they both arrived at the halt sign together, hopefully with his wheels travelling faster than fifty miles per hour.

He still thought the van was travelling too fast. He pressed the car accelerator down further. The engine responded. The speedometer showed sixty miles per hour. He thought he was on target. The van showed its side view to him. ‘Slater Security,’ it read. It was slowing down. That was good. His speed was sixty-five miles per hour. He was two seconds away. He braced himself.

There was an unholy bang followed by the tearing and crunching of metal as the two vehicles became a mass of steaming and hissing scrap in the centre of the road.

A crowd of starlings flew noisily overhead, protesting
at the disturbance.

There was a smell of scorched rubber. Liquids trickled onto the road, searching their way to the gutter.

Seconds later, the Ford Mondeo rolled in gently behind the pile up and stopped. Three men in balaclavas leaped out of the car, wielding pickaxes and heavy hammers. They raced towards the back doors of the van and began to dismantle them with their weapons.

Meanwhile, the big driver of the Volkswagen managed to kick open the car’s door, which had compacted into the door jamb. He disentangled himself from the wreckage, glanced at the point of impact of the two vehicles, grinned, then pulled out a Beretta handgun from his pocket as he ran round to the offside of the security van to take the driver and his mate in hand. They were still in their seats, shaking their heads and blinking. He saw a red button on the dashboard flashing.

‘Oh,
hell
!’ the driver of the Volkswagen said.

That was the button to be pressed by the driver in an emergency. It transmitted by radio a pre-recorded distress message with an added map reference to the security firm’s depot. The car driver had hoped to have prevented the call being sent. He quickly looked round for the aerial. He saw two. He reached out and hammered each of them savagely at the base with the butt of the handgun, then grabbed them and yanked them off the vehicle, hoping that he had been able to stop the signal to the security company in time.

The van driver and his mate looked round and saw him. He waved the gun at them. They saw it and put up their hands.

‘Take your helmets off, leave them there and get out,’ he said.

They slowly obeyed.

He pointed the gun at a space on the pavement and said, ‘Lie down there on your bellies, close your eyes, don’t move and you won’t get hurt. I’ll be watching you.’

He then looked towards the back of the van to see what was happening. Suddenly, the three men in balaclavas, jeans and T-shirts jumped out of the van. One of them was trailing a flex of wire and a battery.

‘Take cover,’ he called.

The men ran back about fifteen yards, then squatted on the road with their backs to the van.

The big man with the gun ran with them.

The man trailing the wire called out, ‘Heads down. Three. Two. One. Blast!’

There was a loud explosion in the back of the van, creating a small cloud of white smoke.

The men dashed back into the van. There was a quiet moment, then a small cheer went up followed by a lot of activity. The big man in the dark suit went to the Ford Mondeo, removed a brown and white suitcase and took it to the van. Three minutes later, the four gang members and the suitcase, bursting with money, were in the Ford Mondeo, which was being cautiously driven at a steady thirty miles an hour back towards Bromersley town centre. The driver took the road out of town to Cheapo’s supermarket car park, where they left the car discreetly parked among sixty or seventy other cars and made their different ways to their own transport. The big man took the brown and white suitcase.

It was 8.28 a.m. when Angel arrived at his office the following morning, Tuesday, 4 November 2014. He was quickly followed by PC Ahmed Ahaz, whose eyebrows were raised and eyes were shining. ‘Have you seen this, sir?’ he said, holding a newspaper out in front of him.

Angel’s mind was fully engrossed in the murder case and on what he needed urgently to attend to that morning. He didn’t intend being diverted. ‘What is it, Ahmed?’ he said tetchily.

‘The front four pages are all about the Joan Minter case, sir.’

‘Well, she was very famous, there’s bound to be …
Four
pages, did you say?’

‘And there’s a photograph of you, sir, on page two.’

He lowered his eyebrows. ‘
Me?
’ he growled. He took the paper and glanced at the front page. It was the
Daily
Y
orkshireman
. The headline was: ‘Joan Minter murder official: Angel leading investigation.’ There were two photographs of her on her own, a very early one and a most recent one; four with her and her respective husband at the time, and an old photograph of Angel looking smart in uniform when he was a police sergeant.

He blinked when he saw the picture of himself. He glanced at the other pages, then turned to Ahmed and said, ‘Can I read this later, Ahmed?’

Unusually, Ahmed hesitated. ‘Yes, sir,’ he said, ‘but can I have it back because I want to put it in my scrapbook.’

Angel concealed a smile. ‘Yes, of course,’ he said. ‘I won’t forget.’

Ahmed looked pleased and made for the door.

Angel said, ‘Find Trevor Crisp for me, will you?’ His face muscles tightened, then he shook his head. ‘I can never find that lad.’

‘Righto, sir. I think he’s in CID,’ Ahmed said, and he went out.

A few moments later, DS Crisp arrived.

Being the head of CID at Bromersley, Angel wanted to be briefed about crimes reported to CID the previous day while he had been busy on the Joan Minter murder.

Crisp had dealt with most of the matters of importance. He told Angel that he had shown Mrs Sellars their rogues’ gallery but that she had been unable to identify the crook who had taken her attention while his accomplice had stolen her handbag. He also reported all he could about the theft of the two cars from Mr and Mrs Sellars.

The phone rang.

Angel reached out for it. It was DS Taylor. ‘The results of the gunshot residue tests have just arrived by courier, sir.’

Angel said, ‘Well, bring them down. I want to know what they say!’

He slammed down the phone and turned back to Crisp.

The phone rang again.

Angel frowned at it, then snatched it up. It was the station civilian telephone receptionist, Mrs Meredew. ‘There’s an emergency call from Slater Security on the line, sir.’

‘Put them through,’ he said.

A man said, ‘We’ve had a brief automated emergency message from one of our vans, two or three miles away
from you. It’s at a crossroads between the villages of Hemmsfield and Indale. They were making their way south to join the M1 south along Hemmsfield Road.’

Angel jumped to his feet. ‘One moment, sir, please,’ he said. He put a hand over the mouthpiece, turned to Crisp and said, ‘Get Control to listen in to this and issue a red alarm.’

Crisp dashed out of the office.

Then Angel turned to the wall behind his desk that had a large map of the local area. In a second he had picked out the crossroads.

He removed his hand from the mouthpiece. ‘A patrol car is on its way there now, sir,’ he said. ‘Our Control Room is being made aware of this emergency and is now sharing this call. The incident is at Bromersley Station map reference A1257 by K209. Have you contact with your van?’

‘No. Both radio links with the van itself are dead. It’s very unusual. Our communication manager is trying to raise them via the drivers’ mobile phones.’

‘If you succeed, advise our Control Room promptly and put them in the picture. What is your name?’

‘I’m the manager here at the Leeds depot,’ he said. ‘Reader’s my name, Mathew Reader.’

‘Thank you, Mr Reader. We’ll do what we can,’ Angel said, and he replaced the phone.

Crisp came running in. ‘Patrol car on the way, sir.’

Angel said, ‘Right. Get out there. See what’s happened. Then report to me.’

‘Right, sir,’ he said, and he went out.

Don Taylor caught the door. He was carrying several
A4 sheets of paper. He knocked on it and said, ‘Can I come in?’

Angel’s eyebrows went up. ‘Yes. Yes. Ah, the GSR results. What do they say, Don?’

Taylor looked down at the top sheet and said, ‘I haven’t read it myself yet, sir.’

Angel quietly said, ‘Well, sit down, read it and tell me what it says.’

When he was settled, Taylor said. ‘It says …’

He quickly broke off, turned over the first four pages to the last page and began to read again. ‘It says the conclusions are … that of the persons tested for the presence of cartridge residue on their clothing, three of them had relatively large quantities. They are Felix Lubrecki, Leo Altman and Erick Cartlett. Also Alexander Trott was found to have minute traces of lead, antimony and barium in the sample submitted, which of course are the constituents of a bullet, which we found unusual. We suggest that the paraffin wax test be applied without delay to the four persons mentioned, which may immediately show up the person or persons who discharged a firearm up to seventy-two hours prior to the test being made.’

Angel looked at him and blinked. ‘Is that it?’ he said.

Taylor looked back at him. ‘Yes, sir. The other pages are full of the safeguards that we should implement to prevent cross-infection. There are also long paragraphs saying that we shouldn’t rely on the test too much and it should be used only to corroborate existing evidence of eye witnesses.’

Angel’s eyebrows went skywards. ‘We should be so lucky. Right, Don. Crack on with it, then. You know what we are looking for?’

‘Blue specks with tails.’

‘Especially on the thumb and forefinger.’

It was 9.30 a.m. before Angel could leave the station and resume his enquiries into the murder of Joan Minter. He pulled up outside the Mansion House on Ceresford Road where he was met at the door by a very angry Erick Cartlett.

‘I have been waiting for you, sir. You have kept me here, hanging around the house, quite pointlessly causing me to miss a very important meeting. I have to warn you that I shall report your conduct in this matter to the American Embassy.’

Angel said, ‘I’m sorry to have caused you any inconvenience, Mr Cartlett. Please come into Miss Minter’s sitting room.’

Cartlett followed Angel into the little room off the hall that he was using as an office.

When Angel had closed the door, he turned to Cartlett and said, ‘I have to point out to you, Mr Cartlett, that owing to the untimely death of your late friend, Miss Minter,
she
has also been very greatly inconvenienced and will be missing far more than
one
important meeting. Isn’t it therefore reasonable that we should do our best to find whoever is responsible?’

Cartlett’s jaw dropped. Then he said, ‘Well, I am certainly not responsible. I now hear that I have to wait further for another indignity. A candle wax test, whatever that is.’

‘It’s
not
an indignity,’ Angel said. ‘It is merely the spreading of warm liquid paraffin wax on your hands and
allowing it to harden. It’s quite painless and it doesn’t take long.’

‘What’s that supposed to prove?’

‘The paraffin wax extracts from deep in the pores fine residues given off by the firing of a gun. We can see them in the hardened wax.’

Cartlett turned up his nose and said, ‘But Joan was murdered about thirty-six hours ago. I’ve had a shower and a good soak in the bath since then. And washed my hands several times. Most of us have.’

‘Doesn’t matter. Washing your hands won’t make any difference. The nitrates will be in your pores for up to seventy-two hours whether you’ve washed your hands or not.’

Cartlett’s mood changed again. He straightened up and said, ‘Well, what if I refuse?’

‘Well, I hope you won’t. It would very much look as if you’re guilty. But, I suppose, if you refused, I should have to get a warrant.’

‘Get a warrant, then.’

‘There is another way,’ Angel said.

Cartlett said, ‘What’s that?’

‘I could put you under arrest for the murder of Joan Minter without the need for you to take the paraffin wax test. If you
are
guilty, it would show that it was a shrewd idea of mine. If you’re innocent, it will hold you here in custody for at least another week, and I shan’t have to worry about you absconding back home.’