The Snuffbox Murders (18 page)

Angel forehead creased into a dozen lines. ‘Are you all right, sir,’ he said. ‘You’re not being got at, are you?’

‘No. Go and do it.’

‘I am at least entitled to some explanation, sir.’

‘I don’t recall where it says
that
in your terms of employment.’

Angel stared at him for a moment, still hopeful of an explanation as to why he should release Underwood. When he realized that none was forthcoming, he shook his head, ran his hand through his hair, stormed out into the corridor and back to his own office.

PC Ahaz was there. ‘Can I have a word, sir?’

Angel was too angry to speak. He waved him away.

‘Can I get you anything, sir?’

Angel shook his head.

Ahmed didn’t like leaving him. He knew something was wrong. He hesitated but went out and closed the door.

After five minutes, Angel went down to the cells. He took the key to cell number 3 off the board and unlocked it.

Underwood was reading a newspaper when Angel went in.

He looked up. ‘Ah, the mountain has come to Mohammed,’ Underwood said. ‘What can I do for you?’

‘I’m letting you go.’

Underwood frowned then sniggered. ‘Couldn’t find the evidence, eh?’

‘Something like that.’

‘When can I go?’

‘Now. Push off. We probably haven’t finished with you. Wasting police time, assaulting an officer in the course of being arrested. There will no doubt be more.’

Underwood smiled. His lips twisted cruelly. ‘What’s that worth?’ he said. ‘Twenty hours community service? Congratulations.’

Angel pulled the cell door open wide for him.

‘What about transport?’ Underwood said.

‘What about it? You can organize that when you get your personal stuff back at the desk. Follow me.’

Angel led him up through the green corridor to the desk sergeant and asked for his possessions to be brought out of the safe in the stores.

The desk sergeant looked surprised at Angel releasing the man without charge after all the trouble they had had bringing him in. He remembered that three officers had had almost to drag him down to that cell, accompanied by newspapermen and photographers.

The desk sergeant began filling in the release form, and addressed one of the questions to Angel. ‘Am I putting you down, sir, as the officer authorizing the discharge of the prisoner?’

‘No. Detective Superintendent Harker,’ Angel said.

‘And are you signing him out, sir?’ the desk sergeant said.

Angel had no choice. ‘Yes,’ he said and signed the sheet.

Underwood picked up the contents he had had in his pockets on admission, signed the receipt and curled his lip in cruel pleasure as he turned away from the counter and noticed Angel watching him.

‘Goodbye, little man,’ Underwood said.

‘You’ll be back,’ Angel said. ‘And I’ll be waiting for you.’

Underwood curled his lip again, then immediately made for the pay phone on the wall in the reception area.

Angel slowly walked through the security door and along the green corridor. He turned left and along to the superintendent’s office. He knocked on the door.

‘Come in,’ Harker said.

When he saw it was Angel, he wasn’t pleased. ‘Have you come here to argue some more, lad?’

‘No, sir. No.’

‘Have you let Underwood go?’

‘Yes, sir. All the documentation is done. I left him phoning for a taxi. I’ve come to say that we should inform the press. Tell them our side of the case. We can charge him for wasting police time. Resisting arrest. Can’t let him make monkeys out of us.’

‘No. The one you’ll embarrass is the chief constable,’ Harker said. ‘Just shut up and that’s an order. The stolen item, if it was stolen, has been returned. No offence has been committed. Let’s keep it like that.’

Angel’s mouth dropped open. His eyes darted about as he tried to make sense of what he had been told and what it implied.
What was happening?

‘Now buzz off, lad,’ Harker said. ‘I’ve a lot on. Last quarter’s figures have to be finished by Friday.’

Angel came out of the superintendent’s office in a daze. He walked slowly down the corridor to his own office for a bit of quiet to try and sort this mess out. He arrived at his office and slumped down into his chair. PC Ahaz followed him in. He was touching his lips and blinking intermittently.

Angel wrinkled his nose. He wanted to send him away.

Ahmed sensed it. He came up to him quickly. ‘I’ve something I
must
tell you, sir,’ he said. ‘I tried to tell you before.’

Angel pulled a pained face. ‘What is it, lad? Make it quick.’

‘Well sir, you know that I went to school with Clive Exham. His father is the chief constable’s driver and handyman.’

‘Yes. Yes,’ Angel said.

‘Well Clive told me that early this morning a big crate was delivered to the chief constable’s house by a man in a hired van. The crate was so big it had to be put in the garage. When it was unpacked it was found to be the missing gold-plated statue that all the fuss is about. Well the chief was furious, and Clive’s dad got a rocket from him for accepting delivery of it. Anyway he was told to pack it up again, which he did, and half an hour later it was collected by Express Carriers to be transported to Spicers’ auction house in London.’

Angel could hardly believe what he had heard.

‘Are you sure, Ahmed?’ he said.

He nodded.

Angel rubbed his chin. So the statue had not been stolen. But if so, what was the point of the exercise? What
was
happening?

‘Well, thank you for that, Ahmed,’ he said.

Angel began to rub his earlobe.

The phone rang.

It was the desk sergeant. ‘Thought you’d like to know, sir. Underwood hasn’t yet left the premises. His girlfriend has arrived, and a dozen news reporters – national and local – have turned up from nowhere. They’re asking why he has been released. Nobody has an answer.’

Angel shrugged. He didn’t know either.

‘He’s giving interviews and posing for photographs at the front of the station, sir,’ the desk sergeant said. ‘Just thought you’d like to know.’

Angel frowned. He was intrigued and curious. ‘Yes, Sergeant,’ he said. ‘Thank you. I’m coming up straight away.’

He replaced the phone, turned to PC Ahaz and said, ‘Come on. Let’s see what’s going on.’

As the two men rushed up the green corridor to reception he told Ahmed about the reported activities there. By the time they arrived, the gathering had moved outside to the bottom of the front steps. Alec Underwood and Shirley Vance, surrounded by reporters with flashing cameras, were climbing into the back of a large estate car like a couple of Hollywood film stars who have just been awarded a shelf-load of Oscars.

Angel observed that in the driving seat was his sidekick, Peter Queegley.

In all the clamour, Angel didn’t miss the opportunity to note and write down the registration number of the estate car. He knew he hadn’t finished with Mr Underwood.

Angel returned to his office, opened his desk drawer to take out the EVIDENCE envelope containing Farleigh’s bank statements and balance sheets intending to finish his inspection of them, when the phone rang.

It was DS Mathew Elliott of the Antiques and Fine Art squad, London.

‘I thought you would like to know, Michael, that at last, something stolen on a raid by the country-house gang, has turned up. Actually it was from the gang’s last job in Buckinghamshire on the sixteenth of May. It’s been identified as a huge painting by Rubens,
Girl in Red Robe
, more than twelve feet by five feet five inches, oil on canvas. Worth millions.’

Angel’s face brightened. ‘Where was it found?’

‘On the rocks at Whitby in North Yorkshire.’

‘Huh. I know where Whitby is. How did it get there? Is it damaged?’

‘No. In perfect condition, or so I am told. It was found very early this morning by some joggers. The painting was very carefully wrapped in several layers of heat-sealed waterproof paper. It appears to have been floated in by the tide. It is now safely locked up in a cell at Whitby station. I wondered if you wanted to retrieve it and hold it for the time being, seeing as though you already have an involvement in the case?’

Angel had always liked Mathew Elliott. It was a most generous suggestion, coming from another copper.

‘Well, thank you, Mathew. Do you think there’ll be any DNA on it?’

‘Yeah. Probably a couple of hundred holidaymakers and half a dozen North Yorkshire coppers.’

Angel knew what he meant. ‘Anyway, I’ll send my SOCO team up to collect it tomorrow. They’ll have a close look at it. You never know.’

‘Right, Michael. I’ll advise Whitby to expect them.’

Angel replaced the phone and leaned back in the chair.
There
was progress. None of the loot stolen by the country-house gang had ever been recovered before. It had always seemed as if it had disappeared off the face of the earth. He wondered why it had come in on the tide.

He phoned Taylor and instructed him to go to Whitby the following day to collect the Rubens from the station there. He also said that he wanted him to treat the painting and its packaging as evidence, and see what prints or DNA he could recover from it.

He replaced the phone, then looked down at the EVIDENCE envelope containing Farleigh’s bank statements and balance sheets, which was still on his desk. He had intended clearing them that day. He began to finger them. His eye caught the clock. It said five past five. He looked at it again. He had been right the first time. He checked his watch. That also said five past five. He wasn’t in the mood for fussing with figures at that time in the afternoon, anyway. He quickly rammed the stuff back in to the envelope, put it in the desk drawer, locked it and went home.

The following morning was Thursday, 11 June 2009.

Angel entered his office at 8.28 a.m., exactly. He was determined that this was the day he was going to solve the puzzle of the gold-plated statue.

He picked up the phone and dialled Spicers’, the auctioneers. He was surprised that, at that time, he was immediately put through to Mr Oberon.

‘Good morning, Inspector. If you are phoning about that wretched gold-plated statue, I can tell you that yesterday afternoon it was delivered here, and I gave immediate instructions to my staff to reject it and return it to the vendor.’

Angel blinked. He thought for a moment.

‘Because, of course, it’s a forgery?’ he said.

Angel heard a gasp.

‘Certainly not,’ Oberon said. ‘It’s the genuine article all right. But we have a reputation to maintain here at Spicers’, and we can do very well without this sort of publicity. We have returned the … the item to the vendor by Express Carrier and informed him that he and his wares are no longer welcome at Spicers’.’

‘I see,’ Angel said, ‘and what is the vendor’s name?’

‘Ah, Inspector, you know full well I cannot tell you
that
.’

‘Where a crime has been committed, Mr Oberon, you cannot withhold vital information from the police.’

‘But a crime
hasn’t
been committed. Therefore I am not under that particular obligation. But thank you for your good intentions, Inspector. Goodbye.’

Angel frowned and slowly replaced the phone.

He pursed his lips and eased the chair backwards. Oberon said that no crime had been committed. There was no robbery, and he had said that the gold-plated statue was genuine and was being returned to the vendor. Who was the vendor then? Of course. There was only one person it could be. Alec Underwood. He must have been the purchaser, the maiden bidder, the only bidder. He’d bought it at Pinsley Smith’s little auction in that marquee in Jubilee Park. Now that put an entirely new complexion on the case. He could see that as far as Spicers’ was concerned, there had been no crime. There had been plenty of wrongdoing, misuse of their services, but nothing actually illegal. Underwood had used Spicers disgracefully to publicize the statue but, true enough, it seemed that there was nothing Angel could charge him with.

He sat there thinking for a few minutes, when suddenly an imaginary cog fell into place between two non-existent sprockets, the mechanism turned causing a metaphorical chime of bells to ring. His face brightened and he rubbed his hands together like an undertaker at a nonagenarian’s birthday party.

He leaned forward and picked up the phone.

‘Ahmed,’ he said. ‘I want you to withdraw a night camera from the CID stores, and then I want to speak to DS Crisp and DS Carter.’

‘Right, sir. And do you want DS Taylor as well?’

‘No. You won’t get him anyway, Ahmed. He’s gone to Whitby on a job.’

‘Right, sir. Is this a night surveillance job to do with Alec Underwood, sir?’

‘It is, lad,’ he said. ‘It is.’

‘Well, sir. If you don’t mind me mentioning … I can’t see exactly what you can get him for?’

‘It will all come clear tonight, I hope, Ahmed.’

It was 1.50 a.m. early Friday morning, 12 June. The night sky was as cloudy as prison-made gin, which allowed the moon, briefly, to illuminate Angel, Crisp and Carter crouching behind gravestones at the furthest point from the church gate. Everything was still. The constant humming of traffic on the M1 a mile or so away was the only sound to be heard.

Crisp took out the compact video night camera and removed the lens cover. He turned to Angel on his right and said, ‘How certain are you that they’ll come, sir?’

Angel rubbed his nose with the back of his hand. ‘Keep your voice down, lad. In this stillness, your voice might carry.’

‘Right, sir.’

‘Pretty certain. Spicers returned the statue to Underwood by Express Carriers late on Wednesday afternoon. He must have received it yesterday, sometime. Therefore, tonight is the first opportunity Underwood will have had. They’ll be here. When they were seen here before, it was two o’clock, so I thought that this would be the most likely time they would return.’

‘Sounds solid, sir,’ Crisp said.

Angel looked at his wrist trying to see his watch. The cloud across the moon beat him. ‘What’s the time?’ he said.

‘Two minutes to two.’

Flora Carter said, ‘While we are waiting, sir, can I ask about Brian Farleigh? … I see he hasn’t been to court yet. I thought it was all sewn up.’

‘So did I.’

‘I thought you said you had enough for the CPS?’

‘I thought I had, but Twelvetrees wants it easy. He’s expecting me to produce Razzle’s collection of twenty-eight gold snuffboxes in Farleigh’s possession, but they’re evidently not there. Don Taylor and I have looked everywhere for them. If I could find them, the case against him would be complete,’ Angel said, brushing his hand through his hair. ‘And I fear that the super is going to ring me up tomorrow, that is today now, and demand that I release Farleigh because of insufficient evidence.’

Crisp nodded knowingly.

Flora’s eyes opened wide and her jaw dropped. ‘Surely not,’ she said. ‘He wouldn’t do that, sir.’

‘He
would
,’ Angel said.

Trevor Crisp leaned over, looked at Flora Carter in the moonlight and said, ‘Can’t hold a suspect with insufficient evidence.’

‘I know
that
,’ she said.

‘Sshh!’ Angel said.

All three bobbed down behind the gravestones.

There was the sound of a car engine close by.

Angel peered from behind a stone. ‘A big car with its lights extinguished has pulled up by the church gate,’ he said. ‘It’s an estate car, towing a trailer … looks like a horse box. They are here … getting out of the car. The tall one in the big black hat … it’s Alec Underwood. The driver is Peter Queegley.’

Angel then ducked down.

‘They’re looking round,’ he whispered. ‘Don’t move a muscle.’

His heart banged like a Salvation Army drum.

The three pressed themselves hard against the cold grey stones and stayed stock-still. After a minute or so, they heard the rattle of machinery from the direction of the church gate.

Angel straightened up and peered between two gravestones across the churchyard again.

‘What’s happening, sir?’ Flora Carter said.

Angel turned to Crisp and said, ‘They’ve got a little tractor, Trevor. Get that camera running.’

‘Right, sir,’ Crisp said. He raised the little video camera, looked through the viewfinder and squeezed the trigger. ‘It’s the sort of tractor you can hire to dig trenches,’ he said.

‘Or graves,’ Angel said.

‘Or plant telegraph poles,’ Flora said.

They saw Queegley driving a small-track vehicle down a ramp from a horse box attached to the back of the car. Underwood and Queegley then together uncoupled the empty trailer and pushed it back down the lane several yards. Underwood then opened the tailgate door of the estate and Queegley drove the tractor right up to it. The two men huddled round the tractor and the estate car for several minutes so that it was not possible to see what they were doing. However, in due course, Queegley got in the driving seat of the tractor, reversed it away from the estate car. The police could then see that the little tractor now had a thick arm sticking upwards and a big sling arrangement suspended from it. In the sling, swinging slightly to the movement of the tractor was a large box in the shape of a coffin.

‘Bloody hell,’ Crisp said.

Flora Carter said, ‘They’re not going to bury somebody, are they?’

Queegley turned the tractor towards the church gate being held open by Underwood. He went through it, into the churchyard.

Angel glanced at Crisp. ‘You getting all this, Trevor?’

‘Oh yes, sir,’ Crisp said, not taking his eye from the magnified viewfinder.

Queegley drove the little vehicle along the front of the church along an uneven path among gravestones, almost to the end. Underwood followed, sometimes reaching out to steady the coffin as it swung at precarious angles. Queegley stopped when he arrived adjacent to an old sandstone box grave. He moved a lever and the coffin lowered slowly on to the path. Underwood unhooked the sling fastening, took some steel cords out of a box on the tractor, fastened them on to the hook, then set up corner pieces that fitted neatly over each of the corners of the box grave. When he had finished, Queegley moved a lever that took the strain, then slowly lifted up the old box grave top and lowered it safely on the grass at the side. Then they reversed the procedure and put the coffin into the stone box grave and replaced the stone lid on top.

‘They’ve buried something or somebody,’ Crisp said.

Angel quickly dipped into his pocket, pulled out his mobile and tapped in a number.

‘Trevor, forget the camera now,’ Angel said. ‘Climb up that wall and go round on the outside to the gate and head them off, in case they try to make a break for it.’

Crisp’s face creased. ‘Oh. I shall get my suit all muckied up. I thought you were sending for help.’

‘Hurry up,’ Angel growled.

Crisp began to scale the wall.

Into the mobile, he said, ‘DI Angel here. Send two cars to St Mary’s church immediately to rendezvous with me to arrest two men and take possession of some vehicles.’

He closed the phone and returned it to his pocket.

Meanwhile Queegley had turned the tractor round and was following Underwood along the path.

‘Come on, Flora,’ Angel said. ‘If they don’t come quietly, I’ll take Underwood. You take Queegley. Trevor Crisp should be at the gate by then to assist you.’

They broke cover, ran the length of the churchyard and were almost upon the two crooks when Angel in a loud voice said, ‘Stop where you are, Underwood. This is the police. You are both under arrest. Get off that tractor, lad.’

Underwood gasped. His eyes flashed. He glanced at Flora Carter, then at Angel, then said, ‘I don’t think so.’ He began to run towards the church gate.

Crisp saw him coming and stood in the gateway to block him.

Underwood saw him, turned round and made a straight line in the opposite direction, which was towards the entrance to the church.

Angel immediately gave chase after him.

Meanwhile Queegley had got off the tractor and was looking round wondering whether he could make a run for it. Then he saw Crisp approaching from the church gate and Carter from the direction of the church door, and he knew he was sunk.

Underwood had reached the church door. He tried the handle but it was locked. He punched and kicked at the door. It didn’t budge.

Angel caught up with him.

Underwood turned and saw him. His evil eyes stared hard at him.

Only four yards of churchyard flagstones separated them. ‘You’re under arrest, Alec,’ Angel said. ‘You can’t get away. You might as well come quietly.’

‘You can’t arrest me,’ Underwood said, and he made gestures with his hands inviting him to come closer.

‘Come on. Take you on, any time, Angel. Come on.’

Angel shook his head. ‘Turn round and put your wrists together,’ he said, and he went up to him.

Suddenly Underwood’s fists closed and he lunged out a hard right which grazed Angel nastily on the chin. The expected follow-through left hook was deftly caught by Angel with both hands. He gave Underwood’s wrist a quick twist and a jerk. Underwood let out a loud yell and landed in a heap on the church path.