The Curious Mind of Inspector Angel (3 page)

They began the routine all over again.

This time, everything went well. The marker boy marked the scene. The bird warbler was spot on cue.

Nanette Quadrette did her bit down the cobblestones in that long thin, tight dress, with everybody’s eyes on her. She looked terrific. She was magnetic. The scene showed great promise. She seductively knocked on the door, looking desirable and full of anticipation, and waited.

The door didn’t open.

She held the tension magnificently.

Johannson stared across the garden gate at it. It still didn’t open.

Everybody waited.
And
waited. It was too long. The spell was broken.

Quadrette took in a deep breath, turned round, glared at Johannson, hoisted her skirt and squawked, ‘Well, where the bleeding hell is he?’

Most of the crew blinked and sucked in air.

‘Cut,’ Johannson said through clenched teeth.

You could have cut the air with a chain saw. Everybody wondered what was going to happen next and stared at the director.

Johannson glared back at Nanette Quadette. ‘I am not his nanny!’ he bawled. ‘This is supposed to be a professional outfit. I am dealing with a bunch of bloody amateurs!’

Then the farmhouse door opened uncertainly and the dark bronzed head of Otis Stroom poked through it. He was wearing spectacles now. He took them off, blinked, looked across at Johannson in surprise and said, ‘I say, Mark, what’s my cue to open the door?’

Johannson looked heavenward.

Nanette Quadrette screamed, pushed the woman with the powder puff out of the way and stormed off to her caravan.

‘It’s not enough,’ Violet screamed. ‘Nowhere near enough. It’ll cost you a lot more than the deeds of this house to get shut of me, you bastard.’ She viciously stubbed a cigarette out on the ashtray on the mantelpiece and then stormed angrily round the living room.

‘Be reasonable, Violet,’ the man said, standing up and rubbing each side of his moustache in turn.

‘The crack in the pool needs twenty thousand spending on it. The drive needs repaving.’

‘I can’t possibly pay out for everything. Be reasonable, Violet.’

‘Reasonable? What’s reasonable? Who stuck by you when the coppers were climbing all over the house in that mucky porno caper you had going with that girl? If I hadn’t lied for you, you’d have gone down for four years.’

‘They weren’t pornographic! They were artistic poses. Dammit you used to—’

She cut him off. ‘She was under age and you knew it. I’ve built a very profitable business up for you, over the past ten years,’ she said, lighting up another cigarette. ‘While you’ve been away, living it up with Merle, playing at being Mr Respectable.’

‘
We’ve
built a very profitable business, here,’ he snorted. ‘You’re good at handling the girls, that’s what it is.’

‘I’m better than you, that’s a certainty,
and
I can keep my hands off them as well, which is more than you damned well can.’

‘There you go with the wise cracks again.’

‘It’s a fact. Merle wouldn’t have stuck with you if she knew the half of it.’

She had gone too far. His face went scarlet. ‘But she
doesn’t
know,’ he bawled. ‘That’s the point, you stupid bitch!’

She stared at him with eyes as cold as stilettos. ‘Thanks to me,’ she stormed. ‘And only thanks to me. And don’t you ever
dare
call me that again.’

He licked his lips. He knew he’d pay for that slip of the tongue.

‘It’s two million.
Cash
,’ she snapped. ‘And this house. And you’re getting off cheap.’

He brushed a hand through his thinning hair. ‘Can’t be done, Violet. Simply can’t be done.’

‘Oh yes, it can,’ she said confidently. ‘One word. One phone call from me and you’ll be in the brown stuff up to here,’ she said, glaring at him and pointing to her own neck.

His face went the colour of chalk. He ran his hand across his mouth. He realized that she meant what she said. ‘Look, there’s no point in going on like this,’ he said.

‘Five years ago, you said you’d find a way, but you never did. You just kept putting it off and off, and now
you
want
out
. At
my
bloody age. And
you
want
out
. Huh!’

‘Please, Violet. Be reasonable. If it hadn’t been for
Merle’s
money, we wouldn’t be in the position we are today. It was
her
money that bought the very first lease on the offices, paid the insurance, the advertising, the photographers.’

‘Stop snivelling,’ she stormed. ‘I can’t
stand
you when you’re snivelling.’

He began following her round the room. ‘I am not snivelling!’ he roared.

She stopped, turned and stared at him. ‘I don’t know what the hell I see in you,’ she said. ‘You’re going bald, you can’t write your name on a cheque without specs and you’re useless in bed.’

He stared across at her, his eyes the colour of blood.

‘This house and two million quid,’ she shouted. ‘And I’m not waiting for ever!’

DI Angel and Mary Angel lived three miles out of the centre of Bromersley, on the Forest Hill Estate. On the morning of Monday, 19 February, Mary Angel was coming into town on the bus to do some shopping and was sitting next to the window immediately behind the driver. The bus had to stop at some temporary traffic lights because of road works at the bottom of Creeford Road. The Northern Gas company had a van standing in the road next to a hole in the pavement surrounded by traffic cones.

As the bus stood there, Mary Angel was uniquely positioned to see up a narrow alleyway. She observed a girl on her stomach across the top of the wall, her long, thin legs hanging down. She had plenty of black hair, was wearing a raincoat, long socks and leather shoes. Mary saw her jump down to the narrow footpath, land badly and fall backwards. At the same time, something shiny dropped among the sprinkling of weeds on the edge of the path. The girl didn’t seem to notice. She was more concerned with her inelegant fall. She quickly scrambled to her feet, shook her leg and then put her weight on the ankle to try it out. It seemed all right. She looked round, saw the bus and the faces at the windows, turned away and ran quickly away down the alley out of sight.

The traffic lights changed to green and the bus pulled away.

Mary wondered what the girl had been up to. The wall she had come over must have been the perimeter of the garden of the end house on Creeford Road. It was not the usual way for a visitor to leave a house. She couldn’t ignore it, her husband being an inspector in the local constabulary. The girl had looked very furtive; her method of leaving the premises left Mary in no doubt that she had been up to something dishonest, and she was considering what next to do. She made a decision. She would phone her husband on her mobile and let him deal with it.

She reached into her handbag for the phone, when she noticed the bus was slowing down again. It stopped. She looked up. Apparently, it was a regular bus stop for passengers to alight only. One elderly lady was getting off. Mary suddenly decided to alight also and she leaped out of her seat and followed her down the steps. The doors swished shut, the bus pulled away and she watched it go wondering if she had done the right thing.

There was nobody around. A few cars whizzed past in both directions. She waited for her opportunity, crossed the road and walked back to the end of the alley. She looked up it and around about. There was no sign of the girl, or anybody else. She walked the few paces up the alley to the spot where she had seen the girl fall. Several tufts of grass had been pulled out of the old wall, and it had fresh scrape marks where she had caught her shoes on the way down. She looked down to where she thought something had been dropped. Sure enough in a clump of grass, there was something shining back at her. She reached down and picked it up. It was like a pair of scissors with a small box on one of the blades. She realized at once that it was a candle-snuffer. It looked very old, and being silver, she considered it might be quite valuable. She snapped it a couple of times. It seemed to be all right. She put it into her shopping bag and looked round to see if anything else had been dropped. There was nothing.

Mary walked back to the road junction, went round the corner onto Creeford Road to the first house. It was a big, detached Victorian pile with double wrought-iron black-painted gates standing wide open. She walked through the gates and along the short drive that was surrounded by dark evergreen bushes of several types. Then up four stone steps to the freshly painted black door.

There was a door knocker and a china bell-push. She stuck out a finger and pressed the bell. Nothing happened. After a short wait, she reached up for the door knocker, gave it a few bangs and then pressed the bell-push again for good measure.

There was still no reply. Looked like there was nobody at home.

She dug into her bag for her mobile and tapped in her husband’s phone number. He soon answered and she told him the story about the girl coming over the wall, the finding of the candle-snuffer and her attempt to return it to the householder. He thought it needed following up promptly, so he told her to wait there and he’d be along right away.

She sighed and stuffed the mobile in her bag, and then strolled under the small parapet to see whatever there was to see in the garden.

A big car suddenly roared through the gates driven by a man in a hurry. He saw Mary Angel by the front door and was surprised. He slammed the car door and rushed up the steps.

She stared down at him. He was almost certainly the wealthy man who lived there, and she was pleased that she might be able to tell him the story, return the silver snuffer and press on with her shopping.

‘Good morning,’ he said pleasantly, his eyebrows raised. ‘Did you want to see me?’

‘Good morning,’ she said. ‘I do if you live here.’

‘Indeed I do,’ he said pulling out a bunch of keys and making for the door.

‘Good. Then I can give you this. I believe it’s yours.’

He turned back.

She reached into her bag, pulled out the candle-snuffer and handed it to him.

He took it from her, stared at it, gasped, turned it up and down, and then very seriously said, ‘Well, thank you
very
much, but how on earth did you come by it?’

She began to tell him the events of the morning to which he listened most attentively. He was thanking her when another car came through the gate. She was relieved when the driver smiled reassuringly up at her. She acknowledged the smile with a small wave of the hand.

‘You know the gentleman?’ he said quickly.

She smiled. ‘It’s only my husband. It’s all right. He’s a policeman.’

The face of the man holding the candle-snuffer suddenly changed. His eyes bounced. ‘Oh,’ he said.

Angel got out of the car and came up the steps. ‘Good morning, sir.’

The man smiled. It wasn’t a great smile. Angel had seen more convivial smiles on a corpse. He knew the expression. It was the practised smile of a man who wanted to scream and run.

The man said, ‘I’m afraid there’s been some mistake.’ He handed the candle-snuffer back to Mary. ‘This isn’t my property. I don’t know who it belongs to. Thank you for showing it to me. Now, if you’ll excuse me, I will have to be off. I have an appointment. Good morning.’

He went in the house and closed the door.

A few minutes later Angel drove the BMW up to the front of the five-storey building that had once been a wool mill. He locked the car door and glanced up at the big, old stone building. He noticed the large door in the wall on the top floor, and the metal arm and pulley that used to swivel out to function as a simple hoist to move wool and whatever else from one floor to another. He also observed that all the upper floors seemed deserted, indeed, some of the windows needed the attention of a glazier, but that the ground floor seemed to be fully occupied by a second-hand car showroom and motor repairers, a double-glazing window makers and, with a tiny frontage on the corner, an antiques dealer with a sign that showed that David Schuster was the tenant.

Angel walked up to the old-fashioned shop door and turned the knob. A bell on a spiral spring hanging from the low ceiling bounced and rang out loudly. He stepped down into the cramped, dusty little shop and looked around at the pictures and animal heads on plaques adorning the walls, the piled-up sticks of furniture, and mixture of modern and old household clobber packed and stuffed wherever it would fit. Piles of framed paintings, two crude sculptures, dusty curtains and curtain rails were piled up on one side and six ancient fire extinguishers were occupying floor space by the glass counter.

Angel sniffed and wondered if he had come to the right place.

A man in a Victorian smoking hat and scruffy suit shuffled through a bead curtain in a cloud of cigarette smoke. He smiled, put a lighted cigarette in an overfull ashtray, placed both hands on the counter, leaned over it and said, ‘Now, sir. What can I do for you?’

‘Are you Mr Schuster?’ Angel said.

‘My name is on the shop. I cannot deny it, sir. David Schuster, antiques, restoration and second-hand furniture. Also house clearances a speciality. Alas, there aren’t many genuine antiques around these days. I have to diversify like most everybody else.’

Angel pointed to the curtains and the fire extinguishers. ‘You certainly deal in a wide variety of … things.’

Schuster smiled. ‘Yes, I must be mad. I have just cleared out the Bransby Art Gallery, which Bromersley council have closed down. These curtains, fire extinguishers and other things came with the deal. I will find a customer for everything in time, I expect. If those fire extinguishers are in your way, I will move them.’

Angel leaned down and pushed them to one side.

‘Thank you,’ Schuster said.

Angel straightened up. ‘I have been told that you are an expert on silver.’

Schuster pursed his lips and struggled to look modest. For him, it wasn’t easy. ‘I know a bit about silver, sir. Yes.’

Angel opened the paper bag he had been holding, pulled out the candle-snuffer and offered it over the counter.

Schuster took it slowly from him, held it out disinterestedly, turned it over, then back again, then put it on the counter between them.

‘Do you want to sell it?’ he asked, nonchalantly.

Angel shook his head.

‘It’s not mine to sell, Mr Schuster. I am a police officer. DI Angel. This has come into my possession. I simply have to find out its value.’

‘Ah,’ Schuster said. ‘Just a valuation you want?’

‘Whatever you can tell me.’

‘Right,’ he said and reached up, dragged at a coiled metal contraption that looked like a snake. He pressed a switch at its neck and the snake’s head lit up. Angel could see that it was an angle poise lamp.

Schuster directed the light onto the candle-snuffer, took a 10x loupe out of his pocket, set it into his eye, closed the other and then picked up the silver. He took a full minute casting his eye over it. He tested the action of the blades, then he put the piece down, switched off the light, put the loupe back into his pocket and said, ‘Well, it’s very old. Maybe 200 or 300 years or even more. Very unusual design. The tips of the snuffer are like a pair of hands. Cannot bring to mind what the hands represent. I’m sure it’s something significant, but I can’t think what. Delicately traced. It would have been done in the days when a silversmith was an artist and didn’t charge by the hour. High standard of silver, but not English. Almost certainly made on the Continent. In good condition. Very much polished. Shows it came from a house with lots of servants. Probably polished every day. Not that useful. I mean, who uses candle-snuffers these days? Might be very interesting to a museum though. Hard to say.
I
wouldn’t pay more than thirty pounds. Hmm. That would be
my
top price. In a classy auction house, like Flumen’s, on a good day, you
might
get a bid of a hundred or even more. Now, if only it had been a pair of vine scissors. They’re all the rage now, especially if they are antique.’