The Wigmaker (2 page)

He let her go.

She turned away. She pretended the kiss had had no effect on her. She loved him too much. She couldn’t let him see that. She knew he was making a fool of her. She wanted to murder him, but if she had done, she would have cried after him for the rest of her life.

‘Where’s that shirt?’

That brought her back to earth. Without a change of expression, she reached into the linen basket, dug around and pulled out a shirt.

He snatched it, grinned and dashed off.

She watched him rush out of the kitchen and listened to him clump up the stairs. She sighed, rubbed her nose with the back of her hand, sniffed, turned to the linen basket, dragged out a pillowcase, and draped it across the ironing board.

‘Still no sign of the bitch?’

‘No, Max. I told you, she might be making her own way here.’

‘Wanna bet? And buy her own ticket? You must be joking. Anyway the arrangement was clear. It was to meet here at two o’ clock. I have done this with her a few times. She knows exactly where to meet us. And she’s got my mobile number. If she had a problem, she could phone. Have you got the number of that agency?’

‘It’s in my book. Here, hold the camera. Don’t put it down anywhere. Too many thieving bastards around.’

‘What’s the number? What’s the frigging number?’

‘I’m getting it. I’m getting it. I’ll dial it.’

‘Hurry up. Hurry up.’

‘It’s ringing out. There.’

Max Peppino hurriedly exchanged the camera for the mobile phone.

There was a click and the phone was answered.

‘Top Notch Model Agency, twenty-four seven. Melanie speaking, can I help you?’

‘Max Peppino here, darling. I’m on the concourse at Heathrow and I’m bloody fed up. Katrina hasn’t shown.’

‘Really? Oh. Good afternoon, Mr Peppino. Katrina? Oh dear. I’m very surprised. She’s usually so reliable, I don’t know what to say. She’s not phoned you? Is your mobile working all right?’

‘Perfectly. Now we’ve missed the two o’clock flight because she didn’t show. I’ve the chance of three seats on the 1640 flight, but she’ll have to be here by four o’clock or we won’t get on.’

‘I’m very sorry, Mr Peppino. I don’t understand it. Have you tried to phone her?’

‘ ’Course I have. And her home number. I can’t raise her.’

‘Oh dear. I am so sorry. I can’t think what may have happened. She never misses an assignment. And she’s never late. And she loves going on shoots with you. And I know she was so looking forward to it. I suppose I
might
be able to get you a replacement. There’s Mary Ann, who is coming up very quickly, but it’s extremely short notice.’

‘Look, Melanie, if I’d merely wanted a long-legged blonde with big Bristols, I could have sailed round Kings Cross in my Jag and had a choice of a dozen for peanuts. I want Katrina. Her face is known. I paid top whack for her, and that’s who I want. For the money I’m paying her, she should be here, on time, with her engine running. I want Katrina, not just any old body. If she’s not here in twenty minutes, in time to catch the four o’clock flight, the deal is off and I’ll be suing you. This cock-up is costing me about twelve hundred a day, so you’d better dust your cheque book off.’

Melanie’s voice hardened. ‘I am extremely sorry, Mr Peppino, that you have been inconvenienced by Katrina’s failure to arrive on time. I expect she is still trying to reach you. If not, something calamitous must have happened, which concerns me greatly. If she does not arrive, you will obviously not be billed. I have offered you a substitute and I regret there is nothing else I can do. As for compensation, I suggest you reread your agreement. You will see that we are not responsible for any illness, accidents or matters of any kind that are out of our control. Now is there any other way in which I can help you?’

Max Peppino didn’t answer. He knew that if he had he would have been too offensive. He closed the phone, bit his lip and handed it back to the man holding the camera.

I
t was 7.35 a.m.

There was a noise from the hall.

‘Postman,’ Mary said.

She put down her toast, got up from the table and went out.

There were four envelopes in the post that morning. She reached for her spectacles, and frowned as she sorted through them, placed three in front of her husband, but held one back, took a knife from the breakfast table and slit it open.

Michael Angel looked up interestedly. Mary didn’t get much post and when she did, it was usually from her side of the family or someone trying to sell her something. This appeared to fall into neither category.

‘Who’s it from?’

‘Don’t know yet,’ she muttered eager to get at the contents.

The envelope contained an A4 sheet. She quickly unfolded it. It was a letter with a cheque attached.

‘It’s from some solicitors.’

He blinked. ‘A solicitor’s letter? What you been up to?’ he said wryly. He saw the cheque and frowned.

‘Solicitors in London,’ she said. ‘Black, Michaels and Hope.’

‘Sound like something kids have for breakfast with milk on. What do they want?’

She didn’t reply. She read the letter quickly.

Angel was curious. ‘What do they want?’

She looked up at him and beamed. ‘I’ve been left some money.’

He blinked. That was a pleasant surprise. Came at a good time too, he thought.

‘Do you remember me telling you about Great-Uncle John who went out to India for ICI?’

‘You said HMV,’ he said accusingly.

‘Same thing,’ she said, pulling an impatient face.

Angel’s mouth dropped open. When he had swallowed he said, ‘Vaguely. What about him?’

‘He died, poor lamb. But he left all his great nephews and nieces, of whom I am one, a bequest.’

‘Great. How much?’

She smiled at him and said, ‘After tax and conversion from Australian dollars to English sterling, divided among the six of us it comes to six hundred and six pounds.’

Angel began to tear into his post. He looked up. ‘Gas bill,’ he muttered. ‘That six hundred and six will more than clear that.’

‘Not likely,’ she said.

His face brightened. ‘We can have an extra few days in Scotland.’

She shook her head. ‘No. I don’t like Scotland anyway. It’s you that likes the place. No,’ she said dreamily. ‘I am going to get something I like … something that I’ve always wanted.’

‘A new outfit?’ he said.

Her eyes lit up. ‘No,’ she said firmly. ‘I’ve always wanted a really classy table for the hall. I shall get this into the bank and keep my eyes open for one.’

Angel’s jaw dropped. ‘For six hundred quid you could furnish an entire house. Besides, there’s no room for it.’

‘Something antique … like Chippendale.’

‘Chippendale!’ he bawled. ‘You’ll be lucky to get a pair of Chippendale chopsticks for six hundred quid.’

‘A small occasional table … but it’s got to be Chippendale or Hepplewhite.’

‘Where did you get all those expensive-sounding names from?’ he said tearing into his letters.

‘The women’s circle had a man talking on antique furniture only last Tuesday.’

Angel grunted as he tore into another envelope. ‘Look, we can get thirty-five per cent off a motorized wheelchair. Doesn’t say how much they are in the first place.’

‘Who wants a motorized wheelchair? Tomorrow we are going on a visit to Seymour Timms just outside Harrogate. World expert on the growing of chrysanthemums. Have you heard of him?’

‘Mmm. Might have. He must be getting on.’

‘Was on the BBC gardening programmes years ago.’

‘Great. Hope you enjoy it, love.’

Angel tore into the last envelope. There was something bright and colourful inside. ‘Look, I’ve a voucher for twelve thousand pounds. All I have to do is phone this number and run up a gigantic phone bill to find out that I haven’t won twelve thousand pounds, I’ve won a table mat made in China worth four p.’

‘You ought to be doing something about that sharp practice, Michael. You’re in a good position to deal with crooks like that.’

‘They slip through our fingers as easily as your jelly, Mary. Oh! Look at the time!’

Detective Inspector Angel arrived at his office, took off his raincoat and hung it on the hook on the stationery cupboard. He glanced at the pile of envelopes and paperwork on his desk and wrinkled his nose. He was about to start fingering through it when the phone rang. He leaned over and picked up the handset. It was his boss, Detective Superintendent Harker. He could tell by the loud and noisy breathing. The man had asthma and every other ailment heard of.

‘Come up here, lad, smartish,’ he growled. There was a click and the line went dead.

Angel wrinkled his nose and both corners of his mouth turned down. Driving in, he had been feeling quite chipper, particularly in view of Mary’s unexpected inheritance from down under. He replaced the phone, closed the office door and made for the green corridor. He did a mental stocktake on matters outstanding as he strode up to the boss’s office. Last night, he had finished all the paperwork on his latest murder case … about a man posing as someone else and then murdering his wife … and passed it all on a plate to the CPS. He thought that getting a guilty verdict would be as easy as pie for Mr Twelvetrees, the barrister. Angel knew he was a bit behind with some of the routine statistics but, if he had an uninterrupted run, he expected to catch up with them by the weekend.

He arrived at the superintendent’s office. He knocked on the door and walked in.

Harker looked up from the desk. His head was like a turnip. He was wiping his nose. It was the size and shape of a Victorian mixer tap. ‘Aye. Come in.’

Angel could smell the TCP. Harker frequently smelled of the stuff. His nose was red. He’d got a real corker of a summer cold.

Angel made for a chair.

‘You needn’t sit down, lad.’

Angel looked at him. ‘Got a call from the duty officer, fire department. They were summoned to a blaze at 38 Market Street at 0600 hours. Flames shooting out of the roof. It’s a shop of some sort. Only small. The man said it was a wig factory. Didn’t know there were such places. I suppose they’ve got to make them smelly things somewhere. Anyway, Peter Wolff, the proprietor, he was found dead in the shop. Take it from there.’

‘Right, sir.’

Angel pulled up behind two fire engines, a white van that he recognized as the forensic van and Dr Mac’s car. They were parked outside a small shop squashed into a long row of other shops up a side street on the edge of the main shopping centre of Bromersley. A few shoppers and people with nothing better to do were standing around and staring at the dark, miserable little burnt-out shop and the official vehicles parked in front of it. The glass frontage and some of the stonework above it was blackened with soot, but you could just make out the words on the plate-glass window:
Peter Wolff hair stylist and wig maker to the stars.
And below that,
By appointment only
then a phone number. The interior of the shop was dark, there were no lights and no indication as to the activity inside.

Angel got out of the car to see a man in white overalls, boots and cap come out of the shop door carrying a roll of tape. He began to feed out DO NOT CROSS – POLICE LINE tape across the front of the shop door. Angel recognized him. It was DS Taylor. He was head of Scene Of Crimes Office (SOCO) at Bromersley.

He saw Angel and threw up a sort of salute.

‘Good morning, sir,’ he said.

Angel nodded. ‘What you got, Don?’

‘Pretty sure it’s murder, sir. A man, thought to be Peter Wolff, proprietor of the shop, found dead in bed. Shot at close range, I think. Fire started at all three levels. So it’s got to be arson. He lived on the top floor … not much room.’

‘So he actually lived over the shop? Didn’t think people did that any more. Did he live here on his own?’

‘Don’t know yet, sir. Top floor seems to have been living accommodation, second floor was where he had a sort of office, and where he made the wigs … sewed them up … stored the hair and the skull caps and so on. The ground floor was the shop where they were fitted and sold.’

He nodded. ‘I suppose wigs and hair are highly inflammable. Were there a lot?’

‘By the look of the blaze, I dare say.’

‘Dr Mac with the body?’

‘Yes sir. Top floor.’

‘Stairs safe?’

‘Yes, sir. Soaking wet. Where there’s carpet it’ll be slippy.’

Two firemen came through the door and brushed past them; they were each carrying a rolled up hose. Angel was caught by one of them on the elbow. Water dripped from a crease in his yellow waterproof on to Angel’s trouser-leg and shoe. He wrinkled his nose.

The fireman said, ‘Sorry, mate.’

Angel shook it off and said: ‘Have you finished? Is the fire out and is the building safe?’

‘Yes, mate. We’re off. The fire is out but you’ll need your own surveyor about structural safety. But it looks OK to me. Cheers.’

Angel thanked him and they disappeared behind one of the fire engines. He looked over Taylor’s shoulder through the door into the blackness. ‘I’m expecting my sergeants Ron Gawber and Trevor Crisp. If you see them, tell them where I am, will you? And I want some gloves.’

‘My lads inside have them, sir.’

‘Right,’ he said and stepped through the door. He wandered through the downstairs shop, swimming in a half-inch of water. He looked at the black and steamed-up wall of mirrors with two sinks and two chairs facing them. On the opposite decorated wall were about twenty framed photographs behind steamed up glass of beautiful women. Angel assumed they were famous actresses or celebrities in flamboyant hairstyles, trying to look enigmatic. Their names were printed underneath, but he didn’t recognize any of them. He swished his way through more water to a door in the rear wall. He frowned as he looked back at it. He felt a dribble of water on his head; it ran down his face. He moved quickly.

There was a loo by the back door and a window next to it. A semicircle in the windowpane had been scored round the latch and a piece of glass neatly removed. He nodded knowingly. He had seen it many times before. He wasn’t best pleased. It had professional written all over it, which meant that SOCO were unlikely to lift any usable fingerprints around the point of entry or anywhere else.

He retraced his steps, kicked his way through the puddles to the bottom of the stairs and made his way up to the first floor, being careful not to touch the handrail. As he reached the top the smell of a mixture of sulphuretted hydrogen and burning sofa hit his nostrils. Bad as it was, he had smelled worse. A man in whites, holding a flashlight and flicking a brush over a metal filing cabinet heard him approach and turned round. Angel didn’t know the man behind the white protective clothes hood and mask.

‘Got any gloves?’ he said.

The man broke off the dusting for prints and reached down to a large white plastic bag by his side. He fished inside and pulled out a thin white packet and handed it to him.

‘Ta,’ Angel said. He tore off the top of the packet and took out the gloves. ‘When you get downstairs, you’ll see the rear window has had a segment scored out of it.’

‘I’ve seen it, sir. Don’t worry. I won’t miss it. But it’s hard to get prints … everything covered in soot.’

Angel smiled knowingly. ‘Aye. But if there
are
any prints, they would be there before the soot fell. You can blow the soot off with something like an ordinary drinking straw. All right?’

The man’s eyebrows shot up. ‘Oh yes, sir. Yes.’

The SOCO man seemed surprised at Angel’s comment. There was a short pause and the man added, ‘Come to think of it, I’ve got a pipette in the kit, sir.’

Angel turned away from him and shook his head. He looked round the room. It was a black, smelly mess. Almost everything had been destroyed. On the wall by the stairs were lots of smoky cuttings of newspaper ads pinned to the wall with Blu Tack. Angel read one. It was four inches, double column. It had a photograph of a young woman with a flamboyant hairstyle trying to look beautiful. The photograph was positioned in the middle of the text. Written across the corner in blue ballpoint pen were the words ‘Brom Chron 23/5.08.’ It read:

Angel wrinkled his nose. The ad seemed a bit terse, but no doubt Mr Wolff knew what he was about. Above the cuttings at eye level was a short shelf, crammed with a dozen or more jars, like he remembered seeing in chemists’ shops. They had elegant stoppers in them and mysterious labels printed in Latin in gold on black. SOCO would look into them, but he surmised they would be dyes, bleaches and that sort of thing. He turned back into the room. Very little else had survived the flames and water. The workbench, the chair where he assumed Wolff had worked threading and cutting the wigs were black wrecks. In a corner away from where the main seat of the fire had been was a tall metal four-drawer filing cabinet. The green paint was blistered in places. He pulled the rubber gloves on to each hand with a satisfying snap, took a pen out of his pocket, placed it behind the handle of the top drawer and pulled the drawer open. There were files neatly labelled and seemingly in alphabetical order. They were untouched by the fire. That was good. He slammed it shut.

‘Great. Is Dr Mac up the next flight?’

‘With the body, sir, yes.’

Angel turned round and made his way up the second flight to the top floor.

The top floor seemed to have suffered the least fire damage. There was a bedroom, a bathroom without a bath, a small living room with a small oven in the corner, a worktop, a television and a sink, a settee, an easy chair and a small table. The rooms didn’t have doors, just archways.

Dr Mac, a small white-haired Glaswegian in a white paper suit was leaning over a large divan bed. His bag of mysterious surgical instruments stood open on the floor. He turned to see Angel appear through the arch.