The Snuffbox Murders (17 page)

‘Yes. Right. Sir.’

‘Now poke out your ears. Keep your mind on the job. You can remind Flora Carter, Ted Scrivens and John Weightman what this obbo is for. We are still trying to find the leader of the country-house gang, who is a very clever thief and murderer. He guards his own and his gang’s privacy and security and liberty in the manner of Hermann Lamm. Also, he murders anybody who talks about him, or who might have talked about him, or might be about to talk about him, by pulling out their tongues with a hefty pair of pliers. He’s sly, cunning and brutal. He’s not your average uneducated villain, so you need to be on your toes. Got it?’

‘Oh yes, sir. I’ve got it.’

‘I want him locked up.’

‘Yes, sir.’

‘The man we are looking for probably has no criminal record, therefore his fingerprints won’t be on file anywhere. And presumably when he is out murdering and stealing, he always wears gloves. Summer and winter alike. They will keep his hands warm in the winter, but….’

Suddenly Angel’s voice petered out and his eyes glazed over.

‘Hello. Hello,’ Crisp said.

Angel’s thoughts were in another place. He was recalling the picture of seeing a mangled black glove coming out of a washing machine on one of the hottest days of the year. His heart was pounding. His eyes opened. He blinked several times, saw the phone in his hand, frowned, quickly said, ‘Goodbye,’ into the mouthpiece and closed it down.

Then he came out of his office and made for the BMW. He drove it along Wakefield Road, turned left on to Canal Road and pulled up outside number 22. He got out of the car, raced round the bonnet and banged on the house door. He stood impatiently on the step … it seemed a long time before it was answered.

Elaine Dalgleish eventually appeared.

‘Oh. Inspector Angel. Whatever’s the matter?’ she said.

‘I must see you,’ he said.

She pulled the door open further and he pushed past her into the little sitting room and through the internal door to the kitchen.

Elaine Dalgleish closed the front door with shaking hands, and came up behind him. He stood in the centre of the tiny kitchen and looked up to the ceiling at the clothes’ rack. It was empty.

She watched him and said, ‘What is it you want, Inspector?’

‘Where is that washing?’ he said pointing in the direction of the ceiling.

She swallowed. ‘What washing?’

His eyes flashed. ‘Do you do washing for other people?’

She didn’t answer immediately. ‘A woman has to make a living, Inspector, in these hard times.’

‘I’m not criticizing you, Mrs Dalgleish. Work is virtuous. I want to know who you do washing for?’

‘Why?’

‘Can’t you answer a simple question? A week last Friday, I came here to see you. The place was flooded. A washing-machine repair man pulled a woollen glove out of the thing. He said it had been causing the trouble. Remember?’

She could hardly deny it.

‘Of course,’ she said. ‘It was one of
my
gloves.’

Angel’s jaw dropped open. He stared at her. ‘There was enough wool in that one glove to knit you four jumpers. Whose glove was it?’

‘I’ve told you, mine.’

‘And the five sets of overalls on your rack, were they also yours? Be careful how you answer, Mrs Dalgleish. I could lock you up this instant for obstructing me in the execution of my duty.’

She licked her lips, twice. ‘What do you want to know for?’

Angel shook his head. He was surprised at his own patience. ‘It is very likely that your customer is a murderer and the head of a gang of thieves.’

She shook her head. ‘No, Inspector. Not this man.’

Angel’s eyes were nearly popping out of his head. ‘I want his name and address.’

‘I don’t know his address. He drops the dirty clothes off here, I wash them, then he picks them up a couple of days later. His name is Lucan, Arthur Lucan.’

Angel sighed. ‘Arthur Lucan. Mmm.’ He thought the name rang a bell.

‘And you have no idea where he lives? Do you have his telephone number?’

‘No.’

‘How does he pay you, cash or a cheque?’

‘Cash. Are you sure you’re not from the Inland Revenue, Inspector. You can tell me now.’

‘Certainly not. Why?’

‘Well, you see, I don’t declare my washing money to anybody.’

‘Well it’s nothing to do with me, Mrs Dalgleish. Is that why you didn’t want to tell me about it?’

She hesitated. ‘Well, yes.’

‘Nothing to do with me. That’s entirely up to you. Tell me, have you done washing for this man, Lucan, before?’

‘Yes. About five times. He says he wants them thoroughly washing and drying but not ironing.’

‘And what exactly do you wash?’

‘Five overalls, five woollen hats, five balaclavas, five pairs of gloves.’

‘You’d better come back to the station with me and make a statement.’

Elaine Dalgleish frowned and reached out for her coat.

On the journey back to the station, it came to Angel that Arthur Lucan was the name of a music-hall comedian who played the part of an Old Mother Riley character early in the last century. He wondered if Sean Noel Riley had adopted the alias.

He led her through the cell entrance into his office, and instructed Ahmed to bring in the laptop and the memory stick with the up-to-date ‘rogue’s gallery’ on it.

‘I want you to look through these photographs, Mrs Dalgleish,’ Angel said. ‘See if you can spot the man.’

Ahmed set up the laptop on Angel’s desk.

After only a couple of clicks of the mouse, she pointed to one of the photographs and said, ‘That’s him.’

Angel looked across at her choice.

It was Sean Noel Riley.

He nodded and said, ‘Thank you, Mrs Dalgleish.’

He looked at Ahmed and jerked his head towards the door. ‘We’ll organize a lift for you back to Canal Road.’

PC Ahaz nodded and showed Mrs Dalgleish out.

Angel was only moderately well pleased that Elaine Dalgleish had picked Riley out. It confirmed that Riley was a member of the gang, if not the leader, but it didn’t broaden the inquiry at all. A different face would have provided Angel with an entirely new line of inquiry. Nevertheless, he promptly phoned the observation van. Scrivens answered and said that there was nothing to report. Angel updated him about Elaine Dalgleish laundering the crook’s kit and the fact that she had picked Riley out of the rogue’s gallery. He told him to tell the others on that watch. He thought it would encourage them. He ended the conversation and replaced the phone.

He leaned back in the chair again and gazed at the ceiling. There was nothing more he could do to speed up the listening operation at Edward Street. Riley’s mail was being intercepted; his phone calls and all his conversations downstairs were being monitored. Something had to break soon. Angel accepted that he would simply have to be patient.

Regarding Farleigh, things were more difficult. He really needed to find those twenty-eight gold snuffboxes. Farleigh’s house and office, land and cars had been thoroughly searched. There simply was nowhere else to look. Angel desperately hoped that the CPS would be able to make a case with the evidence he had already provided. He could think of nothing else he could do to drive that inquiry along.

He looked down at his desk. There was another pile of mail and reports needing his attention and on top of it was the big EVIDENCE envelope of balance sheets and bank statements gathered by Don Taylor from Farleigh’s office. He wrinkled his nose and opened the big envelope. He pulled out the balance sheets for the past five years and spread them across his desk. They made pleasant enough reading. Brian Farleigh had apparently been running a very prosperous security business. Both the turnover and the profit had been maintained at approximately the same ratio each year, and both increased handsomely each year. It all seemed satisfactory as far as it went, and justified Farleigh’s sumptuous lifestyle. Angel then turned to his bank statements. Throughout the five years, they were always in credit which was also a very comfortable position to be in. The debits could usually be understood from the tiny, hand-penned notes against each entry, but the credits were sometimes large sums with only the words “sales and labour” scrawled against the entry. He reckoned that Farleigh must be working on a high hourly rate for his labour. Angel frowned, shook his head and moved on.

The bank did not seem to charge Farleigh excessively for their services. It could have been because he always maintained a high credit balance in the account. The only direct bank entries he could see were “S & S” charges of forty pounds a quarter which were debited from the balance, which Angel considered had not been at all excessive.

He heard the church clock chime five o’clock. He leaned back in the chair, yawned and rubbed his chin. He was ready for home. He closed the file of bank statements, stuffed it and everything else to do with Farleigh in the envelope and locked it in his desk drawer. He would try and come back fresh to the job and finish the statements tomorrow.

He then made for his car and home.

Mary was pleased to see that he was on time. He could see that she was. He gave her a peck on the cheek, opened the fridge, took out a beer and went into the sitting-room. He threw off his coat, loosened his tie and flopped into the easy chair. He had a sip of the beer and switched on the TV.

When the picture and sound came up, it was the tail-end of the news. There was a picture of the front of Spicers’, the specialist antique jewellery and work-of-art auctioneers, and their imposing Georgian stone-pillared doorway on Royal Crown Road, London. It quickly cut to the statue of Dorothea Jordan in the entrance hall, and a voice-over reporter was retelling the history of the statue and the fact that a TV documentary programme was to be shown on that channel very shortly. Angel noticed a tall man in a black hat worn Gestapo fashion. He peered at the screen. The man turned and looked direct to camera. Angel’s eyes opened wider. It was Alec Underwood again. He seemed never off the television, and never far away from that statue.

The voice-over reporter finished by saying that the actual auction of the statue was tomorrow morning at ten a.m., and that it would be transmitted live on their channel and asked viewers not to miss it.

Angel thought that he probably would.

Then up came the local news, which led with a piece about a local fishing trawler from Bridlington, which had been involved in an accident in early morning mist in the North Sea forty miles east of Flamborough Head. It had been badly holed by a huge foreign container ship. The coastguard at Flamborough Head had been aware and an RAF rescue helicopter from Leconfield had been dispatched. No lives had been lost, and, ‘In the tradition of the Navy,’ the news reporter said, ‘the captain refused to leave the badly listing trawler.’

Angel thought you could take bravery too far.

He leaned back in the easy chair, took another sip of the beer and closed his eyes. Next thing he knew, he felt the beer can being whisked out of his hand. He looked up and saw Mary going out of the room with it. He blinked a couple of times. She returned after a few seconds with the remainder of the beer in a tumbler, and held it out to him. He took it. She stared at him and said, ‘You’re not in the back of a bus going to Blackpool, you know, Michael.’

He looked at her in a vague sleepy fog, sipped the beer again and closed his eyes.

The following morning, Angel came into the office at the usual time and was met by an excited Ahmed who had an unusual twinkle in his eye.

‘Isn’t it a hoot, sir?’ he said with a grin. ‘About that gold statue. After all that ballyhoo.’

Angel frowned. ‘The auctioneers are selling it today, lad, then it’ll all be over.’

‘Oh no, sir. Haven’t you heard? It’s disappeared. It’s gone. Unless they find it very soon, they
won’t
be selling it. They can’t. They made a point of saying that. Spicers are worried about losing faith with their customers. They expected a big crowd attending the auction because that statue was to have been there … and now it won’t be.’

Angel looked at him, almost closed his left eye and pulled his head back on to his neck. ‘What do you mean, lad?’

‘It’s been on the news, sir. The statue disappeared last night.’

‘Really? Was it stolen?’

Ahmed hesitated. ‘Yes, sir.’

Angel pursed his lips. ‘What about our friend, Alec Underwood? What’s happened to him?’

‘Don’t know, sir. He doesn’t seem to be anywhere around the auctioneers now. I saw the TV news this morning. I saw a live shot of the pedestal where the statue had been in Spicers’ entrance hall, and Spicers’ spokesman being interviewed … and Alec Underwood wasn’t anywhere about.’

Angel squeezed the lobe of his ear between finger and thumb. ‘Did anybody say what time the statue was taken?’

‘All the man said was last night, sir.’

‘Really?’

Angel rocked on the swivel-chair for a minute, then said, ‘Get me Spicers’ auctioneers on the phone.’

Ahmed found it and Angel was on the phone within a minute or so. He had to hold on a few minutes before he got through. A weary voice said, ‘Spicers’ Auctioneers. Melanie speaking. How can I help you?’

‘This is Detective Inspector Angel of Bromesley Police. I want to speak to Mr Alec Underwood please.’

Angel heard the girl gasp, then say meaningfully, ‘So does Mr Oberon.’ Then she changed her tone. ‘Here, are you having me on? You know that Mr Underwood doesn’t work here.’

‘No, miss. I really am a policeman. So Alec Underwood is not there?’

‘Nobody knows where he is.’

‘And Mr Oberon – is he the boss?’

‘Yes. He’s absolutely livid. The gold statue will
not
be offered for sale today. The management is very sorry. Now, this phone line is extremely busy, sir. If you don’t want anything else, sir, I’m afraid you must hang up.’

‘Thank you,’ Angel said and replaced the phone.

He suddenly turned to Ahmed. ‘I think I know where Underwood and the statue will be. If anybody wants me, I’m going to his place, 29 Bromersley Road, Cadworth.’

‘Right, sir.’

Angel then went out through the back entrance, passing the cell where Brian Farleigh was being held. He looked though the food hatch in the door and saw him with a big tough-looking man in a dark suit and sunglasses. They were seated on the bunk and seemed to be whispering together intensely about something.

Angel turned to the constable on Jail duties. ‘Who is in there with Farleigh?’

‘His barrister, sir. Mortimer Selmer.’

Angel blew out an imaginary candle. He thought he looked more like a bouncer from the ‘Red Devils’ night club.

‘Did you search him?’

The constable looked insulted. ‘Of course.’

Angel wrinkled his nose, then rushed off.

It was only a two-mile drive to Underwood’s and it took him only five minutes. As he approached the bottom of the drive he was amazed to find it filled to the gate with cars, and then more cars on the highway. He stopped the BMW where he could at the side of the main road and made his way on foot along the pavement and up the drive.

Much to his surprise he saw a crowd of a dozen or so men and a couple of women outside Underwood’s front door, peppering him with questions and, at the same time, taking his photograph. He was looking somewhat forlorn, hanging on to his front-doorknob and saying, ‘I’ve answered all your questions. I’ve nothing more to say. Thank you so very much, now please would you go? Thank you so much. No. I’ve nothing more to say. Absolutely nothing. Thank you so much. Please go, and don’t damage the hollyhocks. Please walk round them. Thank you so much. Good day.’

They were filtering away, but some watched Angel curiously as he walked straight up to Underwood.

Angel and Underwood didn’t exchange words, just looks. Underwood quickly opened the door wider, and Angel nipped into the hallway.

Shirley Vance came into the hall, saw Angel and screamed.

Underwood promptly shut and locked the front door, then looked back to see what the scream was all about.

‘You’ve let one in, Alec,’ she said looking at Angel suspiciously.

Angel pulled out his warrant and said, ‘I’m a policeman, miss. You’ve nothing to worry about.’

She didn’t look comforted. She turned away quickly, reached for her handbag and began ferreting about in it.

Underwood looked at Angel and, with a look of distaste said, ‘Now, what is it
you
want, Inspector?’

‘Where is it, Underwood?’ Angel said. ‘What have you done with it?’

‘What are you talking about?’

‘The gold statue.’

Shirley Vance said, ‘Oh that. That’s what all those newspaper men want to know.’

‘What’s your name, miss?’ Angel said.

She smiled sweetly. ‘I’m Shirley Vance, I’m a moggle.’

Underwood said, ‘Shut up, Shirley. I’ll handle this.’

She pulled a face, found a packet of cigarettes in the bottom of the bag, took one out and lit it.

Angel said: ‘Come on, Alec. Don’t mess me about. Where is it?’

‘I haven’t got it,’ he said.

Shirley Vance stared at Angel, her fingers twitching as she took a draw from the cigarette.

‘You know where it is?’ Angel said.

‘No,’ Underwood replied. ‘It could be anywhere.’

Angel turned to Shirley Vance. ‘What do you know about it?’

She looked at Underwood who shook his head.

She pulled the cigarette out of her mouth and said, ‘Nothing. But he hasn’t done anything wrong.’

Angel said: ‘All right, Alec, is that your last word?’

Underwood stuck his chin out and said, ‘My first and my last.’

‘You give me no choice,’ Angel, said. ‘Alec Underwood, I am arresting you for the robbery—’

Underwood pulled back his shoulders and said, ‘No, you’re bloody well not.’

Then Underwood aimed a powerful punch with his right hand at Angel’s head. Angel quickly bobbed down and Underwood’s hand went straight into the doorjamb. He yelled and put it in the other hand to nurse it.

Shirley Vance screamed.

Angel then swung behind him and jabbed the back of Underwood’s legs with his foot, causing him to drop down on to his knees, then Angel clapped Underwood’s head between his forearms, causing him a dizziness he didn’t expect. Angel followed this with a knee in his back to send him forward on his face. When Underwood became fully alert six seconds later, he found that he was on the floor, his arms behind his back and his wrists in handcuffs.

Shirley Vance rushed over, crouched down, showed a lot of thigh, grabbed his arm and said, ‘What’s happening, Alec?’

Underwood’s face was scarlet. His eyes glowed like searchlights. ‘Help me up,’ he said.

Angel was on the phone. ‘Tell Ted Scrivens, Leisha Baverstock and Don Taylor and the SOCO team I want them down here asap.’

When DC Scrivens and WPC Baverstock led Alec Underwood and Shirley Vance respectively out of 29 Bromersley Road, Cadworth, to a police car outside, the press corps had doubled. Four TV news companies’ transmitting vans had arrived, had set up their aerials and the camera mechanisms were making their humming sound. Commentaries in Spanish, German, French and English could be heard jabbering competitively against each other.

Reporters surged up successively to everyone who came out of the house.

‘Sorry. Can’t say anything,’ was the reply from the police personnel.

Underwood had a lot to say. ‘This is a wrongful arrest,’ he said. ‘I have done nothing wrong. No. I have no idea where the statue is. I’ve never touched it. It’s all down to the auctioneers, Spicers. They were responsible for the security of the statue, not me. Yes, I was interested in it. Who wouldn’t be? It was so beautiful. This is a wrongful arrest. Don’t worry. I’ll soon be free. They’ve nothing to hold me on.’

PC Baverstock brought Shirley Vance outside; she was hanging tightly on to Underwood’s arm. She was overwhelmed by the reception. Her big frightened eyes looked in all directions and when asked anything, said, ‘I don’t know nothing. I’m with him.’

When the police car had sped away, the press corps took very little time to pack up and leave. They knew they weren’t likely to find out anything from SOCO or Angel, who were still searching Underwood’s house for the statue. It didn’t take them long to discover that the gold-plated statue was not there.

When Angel arrived at the station, there was a group of national and local reporters hovering round the front door and reception area. He drove directly round to the back, let himself in with his swipe card and went straight to his office. He had Shirley Vance brought to his office. She looked nervously round the little room. He invited her to sit down, then he said, ‘Now then, Miss Vance, what is Alec Underwood to you?’

She looked serious and afraid. ‘He’s my man, you know. We’re going steady.’

‘Do you want to go to prison?’

‘No, of course not.’

‘Well, tell me all you know about this gold-plated statue.’

She shrugged. ‘I don’t know nothing.’

‘The statue is reputedly worth millions. If you have been in any way co-operating with Alec to steal the statue you could finish up spending a long time in prison. If you know where it is and you tell me now, you might be saved a long time behind bars.’

‘I haven’t been to prison, Inspector, and I don’t want to go there, but I don’t know nothing about stealing the statue. And Alec hasn’t stolen it either, I’m sure of that. He wouldn’t steal anything. He’s a lovely, proper, decent man who wouldn’t take nothing that wasn’t his.’

Angel knew different but he didn’t enlighten her. He rubbed his chin. He wondered where they could have hidden it.

‘Whereabouts do you live?’

‘I live with Alec, of course.’

‘Where did you live before that?’

‘I was a chambermaid at the Feathers Hotel in town for two years, I lived in there.’

‘Where did you live before that?’

‘I shared a room with a girl in Dublin. I was chambermaid at the Dublin Schooner Hotel in Ireland for four years. That was another living-in job.’

‘Do you have a car?’

‘No. Can’t drive, Inspector.’

‘Does Mr Underwood have another garage or lock-up besides the one at the house?’

‘Not that I know of … shouldn’t think so.’

‘Right. Thank you very much, miss. You can go.’

She breathed a sigh of relief. ‘I can go? What about Alec? Are you letting him go?’

Angel shook his head. ‘I’m afraid not. I need to know a lot more from him yet, miss.’

The following morning, the radio, television and newspapers were full of pictures of Alec Underwood being dragged into Bromersley police station accused of stealing the missing statue. The pictures were accompanied with columns of copy about the case and the searching of his house at Cadworth.

As soon as Angel arrived at the station, he was summoned into Harker’s office.

‘Don’t like all this publicity, Angel. I don’t know what you’ve been doing to create all this hullabaloo. There’s a photograph of Underwood in every UK paper, and I even heard it on CNN this morning. It’s only a gold-plated plaster statue that’s missing, isn’t it?’

‘It’s not anything I’ve created, sir. Intrinsically it
is
only a gold-plated plaster statue, but it is an important antique surrounded by a lot of authentic royal history. They say it’s worth millions.’

Harker wasn’t impressed. He wrinkled his nose then said, ‘Well get him charged, in court, bailed and out of the station asap. I don’t like this place being turned into the X-Factor.’

Angel agreed. It would suit him fine. He nodded. ‘Right, sir.’

He went out of Harker’s office rather surprised. It wasn’t often he was in agreement with the superintendent, in fact he couldn’t recollect
any
previous occasion. He returned light-heartedly to his own office and phoned the CPS. He wanted to make sure that there wouldn’t be any difficulty in presenting Underwood before the magistrates’ court that morning for bail to be set and a date for a hearing to be fixed. Apparently Twelvetrees was engaged with somebody else and he sent a message back to say that he would phone back in a few minutes as soon as he was free.

Angel wasn’t pleased but there was nothing he could do about it. He busied himself looking through the morning’s post. As usual, most of it was inconsequential bumf. He was in the middle of shredding a letter when the phone rang. He reached out for it. ‘Angel.’

It was the superintendent.

He was coughing noisily down the phone before he managed to say, ‘That chap Underwood, I want you to withdraw the charge, set him free and get him out of the place asap.’

Angel’s face creased. ‘What’s that, sir?’

‘You heard. There’s no case to answer. Just … discharge him and let him go.’

‘What do you mean, there’s no case to answer?’

‘Don’t argue with me, lad,’ Harker said. ‘Withdraw the charge and do it
now!
’ Then he slammed the phone down causing an uncomfortable and annoying click on Angel’s eardrum.

Angel banged down his own phone, got to his feet and charged up to Harker’s office. He didn’t bother to knock. He simply barged in and went straight up to the skinny man’s jumbled desk.

Harker looked up at him, absolutely furious. His face was as red as a lobster’s belly and his lips and eyebrows twitched as if they had been connected to each other by invisible wire.

‘What are you doing here? I have told you what to do, lad,’ he bawled, waving a skinny arm. ‘Now get on with it.’