The Big Fiddle (19 page)

It was 4 a.m. before the prisoners had been examined by the police doctor, interviewed, satisfactorily fed, watered, safely housed for the night and could be left in charge of the duty sergeant.

Angel checked with each of his team members and thanked them for their work and they left for their homes. He called in on the night-duty desk sergeant.

‘Are you off, sir?’ Clifton said.

‘Yes, Bernie. They should be all right until morning.’

Clifton smiled. ‘It’s been a great coup for you, sir. Six villains at a stroke.’

Angel smiled weakly. ‘I suppose so.’

‘I bet you’ll sleep like a top tonight, sir, what’s left of it.’

‘Aye,’ he said as he put on his coat.

‘You get off, sir. If anything comes up, I’ll push it onto Inspector Asquith.’

‘Thanks, Bernie. Goodnight.’

‘Goodnight, sir.’

Buoyed up by the arrest of the six robbers and the desk sergeant’s positive comments, Angel went out of the station front door and skipped down the steps to the pavement. But the cool morning air made him suddenly feel tired, and as he reached the BMW, he was thinking that the night had not really been entirely a success. He hadn’t found the Mermaid Diamond.

I
t was 8.28 a.m. on Wednesday morning. Angel walked down the corridor as usual. He went into his office and began taking off his coat. The alarm had woken him at 7.30 as always and he had to force himself but here he was. He had had three hours’ sleep. He should have had longer, but there was too much on his mind. He had to find that diamond.

There was a knock on the door.

‘Come in,’ he called. The door opened and it was Ahmed.

Angel’s eyebrows shot up. ‘I told you there was no need to come in until ten o’clock or so …’

‘I know, sir,’ Ahmed said, ‘but my mother asked me if
you
would be in as usual. Of course, I had to say yes, so she said, well then, I should be there at the same time too. Then she said, you can go to bed straight from work today and sleep around the clock all night tonight to catch up if you need to. So, well sir, here I am.’

Angel smiled. Then shook his head.

Ahmed said, ‘And I have to report that nobody registered on the PNC was born on 14 March 1971.’

Angel frowned.

Ahmed said, ‘Yesterday morning, sir, you asked me to check on the PNC to see if anybody there was born on that day. This was the entry on Edward Oliver’s application to hire a van, don’t you remember? It was a long shot, but …’

‘I do now, lad,’ he said, with his nose pushed up and his lips with it. ‘Another dead end. This case has nothing but dead ends.’

The phone rang. Angel looked at it, then turned back to Ahmed and said, ‘Get Don Taylor to look at that white van that was brought in last night ASAP, will you?’

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

He picked up the phone. ‘Angel,’ he said.

Angel heard a loud and long noise that he recognized and detected was Superintendent Harker clearing his throat. Then he heard Harker say, ‘Ah yes, Angel, I want you up here ASAP.’ It was followed by a loud click as Harker slammed down his phone.

Angel sighed. He had no idea what he wanted, but he didn’t expect to be congratulated on last night’s arrests. Trips to his office were very rarely pleasant. He made his way up the corridor to the last door on the end. He knocked on the door, pushed it open and entered.

It was like a sauna inside. But instead of the smell of aloe vera or lavender, it was menthol.

Harker, partly hidden by piles of ledgers, papers and files on his desk, stuck his head forward and said, ‘Ah,
there
you are, lad. What on earth have you done? I’ve just had the manager of the Northern Bank on the phone, reporting a burglary. Now, the Northern Bank is my bank. I’ve been banking there for nearly thirty-six years. I don’t want you upsetting him. He says that a constable attending said that DI Angel was already on the case. He said that you had been on the case even before the alarm went off at 02.02 this morning. He’s upset because he wasn’t informed and he wasn’t called out.’

Angel had expected trouble. That’s all visits to this office were. He didn’t reply. He waited for the question to be put into context.

Harker continued: ‘And this station has more guests to feed than the Feathers.
Six
of them. What’s going on?’

‘These men have been charged with stealing the Mermaid Diamond, sir.’

Harker blinked, then frowned. ‘Oh. My goodness. Do you mean the big one, the colossal one? The one that Lady Tulliver wears? I didn’t realize it had been stolen.’

‘Yes, sir. And my team have arrested a gang. You wanted a gang, sir, or that’s what I thought you had said.’

‘Oh, dear me. Well, you’d better put it somewhere very safe. It would be better to deposit it in a bank and get a receipt for it. The insurance we have here wouldn’t cover it. Oh, my goodness me. No.’

Angel shuffled in the chair and the corners of his mouth were turned down. ‘I haven’t actually
found
the diamond, sir,’ he said.

‘What did you say, lad?’

‘I said that I haven’t yet located the diamond, sir,’ he said.

‘Well, what are we boarding six men for? Have you a case against them or not?’

‘Yes, sir. The case against them is that they
conspired
to
steal
the diamond.’

‘And you can prove it?’

Angel had to think quickly. He wasn’t sure that he could prove it. He swiftly changed tack. ‘They are also charged with breaking into a bank and stealing – between them – £720,000,’ he said.

‘You have recovered that money, I hope?’

‘Yes, sir,’ Angel said. ‘It’s in the station safe.’

‘Hmm. I see that we have an unmarked patrol car out of service. I saw it as I came in this morning. How we are to manage without it, I really don’t know.’

‘It was unavoidable, sir. The robbers’ van was surrounded by our vehicles and the driver rammed his van into our car in a bid to escape. In no way was our driver to blame.’

‘It still means we will be one car short for goodness knows how
long. And we shall have a heavy bill for the repairs. And your team will be putting overtime chits in, I expect?
There’s
another expense.’

‘They all did a very good job, sir. I also had to call in the FSU, sir.’

‘The FSU?’ he said, raising his bushy ginger eyebrows. ‘Dearie me, Angel. It gets worse. This operation is turning into a very expensive night out. How I keep this station within its budget, I don’t know. And it looks as if you didn’t catch the top man in this gang. I expect he escaped with the stone and we’ll never see it or him ever again.’

Angel’s fists clenched. He knew this was a serious possibility.

Harker said, ‘If ever you have to mount an expensive operation like this again, I need to know
before
you commit the force to such needless extravagance.’

Angel shook his head. He didn’t think it was by any means an expensive operation. ‘There was no needless extravagance here, sir. We needed the FSU. The robbers were dangerously armed. We took three guns off them and two knives so we certainly needed armed support.’

‘But you failed to recover the diamond. The whole object of the exercise!’

Angel didn’t have a satisfactory answer to the superintendent on that point so he said nothing.

Harker saw that he was not answering. ‘The trouble with you, Angel, is that your head is too big. You think that because you’ve had your name in the paper a few times and had articles written about you that that makes you a genius, and God’s gift to the police force. Well, let me acquaint you with the real situation: you are not. You bumble your way from one investigation to another, eventually falling over a solution. And hey presto! Like a conjuror pulling a rabbit out of a hat, you appear to have solved the crime.
Now, I know you’ve always solved the cases you’ve been given in the past, but your good luck has to come to an end. And this case looks like being the one to do it. Now buzz off and find that diamond, if you can, without incurring this station in any more wasteful and unnecessary expense.’

Angel came out of Harker’s office fuming. He stormed back down to his office, and met DS Carter at the door.

‘What do you want, lass? And what are you doing here anyway? I told everybody on last night’s op there was no need to come in until ten o’clock.’

She shrugged. ‘Do you want me to go home?’ she said with a grin.

‘No. Not now you’re here. Come in. I must just make this call to Don Taylor.’

They went into his office. He reached out for the phone and tapped in a single digit.

‘Don, have you started on that white van yet?’

‘We are just unwrapping it now, sir.’

‘It is possible that one of the thieves hid the diamond pendant somewhere in the bodywork or under the upholstery. The same is possible in the Black Maria. Will you give both vehicles a very, very close search and let me know instantly if you find anything?’

‘Right, sir.’

He closed the phone, replaced it and turned to Carter. ‘Now, Flora, what did you want?’

Before she could reply, the phone rang. He reached out for it. ‘Angel.’

A rich, but menacing voice of an educated man who thought he was a superior being said, ‘I left a message for you.’

It was the voice of the person Angel knew as Edward Oliver.

Angel’s blood ran cold. His pulse began to race. He held his breath. But he had the presence of mind to press the record button on the telephone.

The voice continued: ‘The message said, “Inspector A – don’t get in my way.” It was left in red. Have you forgotten it already?’

Flora knew that something was wrong. They exchanged glances. Angel snatched up his pen and scribbled on the paper nearest to him, ‘Trace this call.’ Then he turned it towards her, she read it, nodded and rushed out of the office.

‘Are you there?’ the voice said. ‘I see that I have your attention.’

His voice was like icicles Angel had seen hanging from the roof outside latrines at Strangeways.

‘I am here all right, Mr Oliver. Who are you and what do you want?’

‘You defied me, Angel,’ the voice continued, ‘yes, you defied me. Not only did you stop me from getting the money Piddington had stolen from the bank, but you also tried to stop me getting the Mermaid Diamond. Nobody pulls two strokes across me and gets off scot-free. Oh no. Now, Angel, I have a young woman here, a very beautiful young woman, who wants to speak to you. I don’t know if I should let her. Hold on, I’ll see if she wants to be nice to me. If she does, I’ll let her speak to you.’

Angel’s heart was beating so strongly, he thought it might break out through his shirt. He couldn’t imagine who he could mean.

‘Who is it, you bastard?’ Angel said. ‘Who is it?’

He didn’t have to wait long to find out.

‘Michael. Oh Michael, darling,’ she said.

It was Mary. His beloved wife.

‘This man is wearing a black hood,’ she said.

Every muscle in Angel’s body tightened. The monster had Mary in his clutches.

‘I am here, Mary,’ he said. ‘Where are you?’

‘I have no idea who he is. I beg of you, do as he says. He says he’ll kill me if you tell anyone there, but you’re to look at the CD in the computer at home.’

‘Mary,’ Angel began. But the phone call had abruptly ended.

Inside, his chest was burning like a furnace. It felt as if it would burst. He had never known that he loved Mary so much. He dropped the phone and ran out to his car.

Flora saw him fly past her on the corridor. She saw his face and knew something was very wrong. She went into his office, saw the phone thrown down on the desk. She picked it up and put it to her ear. There was nothing. Then she remembered that he had pressed the record button. She pressed the green playback button and listened to the conversation he had had with the man only three minutes ago. She was shocked when she heard the playback. She couldn’t decide what to do. She knew she couldn’t do nothing. She decided to race after him and offer to help despite the threat. She put the phone back in its holster and rushed out to the car park. She knew his first stop would be his home to play the CD.

Angel drove the BMW like a madman. He saw only what was directly ahead in his path. He arrived at home in record time. He dashed into the unlocked house and went straight into the sitting room where the computer was set up on a bureau in an alcove at the side of the fireplace. He switched it on and impatiently waited for it to go through its processes. In the computer tower was a drawer for CDs. He pressed the button and the drawer came out with a disc on it. He glanced at the disc. It had a blank label
unfamiliar
to him. That must be the one.

He was about to play it when he heard a noise in the hallway. He gasped. Every nerve in his body tightened.

It was Flora Carter.

‘Oh, it’s you,’ he said.

‘I followed you.’

He shook his head and returned to the computer. He put the cursor on the start button and clicked on it.

On the screen it showed a man wearing a black hood with slot
holes for eyes. He was pointing a handgun at Mary. Mary was seated with her wrists tied to the arms of a chair. Mary said, ‘He wants me to say that you’ve to look in slot 212 in the bird’s
waterproof
.’

Then the computer screen went black.

‘Look in slot 212 in the bird’s waterproof,’ Flora said. ‘It’s a sort of puzzle, or conundrum … like a crossword clue. What’s it mean?’

‘It
is
a crossword clue,’ Angel said. His face looked grim. ‘Slot 212 means a letterbox of a house or a flat. Very rare to have flats numbering up to 212. It
must
be a house number, but which street?’ He ran his hand through his hair. ‘There are millions of streets.’

‘What’s a bird’s waterproof. Birds don’t have waterproof coats or anything.’

‘They do. Their coats. Their feathers are waterproof.’

‘Oh yes … their feathers …’

‘
The Feathers
,’ he said. ‘The Feathers Hotel. Slot 212. I’ve got it.’

He dashed out to the street to the BMW and drove off.

Flora closed down the computer, came out of the house and closed the door. She followed him to the Feathers in her own car.

Angel dashed up to the reception desk and asked if there was any mail for room 212. The clerk turned round, looked along the key slots and found one envelope. He passed it over to Angel.

Angel moved away from the desk and tore open the envelope. The single sheet of paper inside read: ‘Still with us, Angel? Try this. No apples. Just water, but in a tin. RLS.’

He groaned, slumped into a seat in the reception area and stared at the paper.

Flora came in through the rotating doors, saw him and rushed over.

‘There you are,’ she said.

He looked up and passed her the note.

She sat down next to him and read it aloud: ‘No apples. Just water, but in a tin. RLS.’

‘It’s a toughie,’ Angel said.

‘Who do you know with the initials RLS, sir?’

‘I’ve been thinking … I can’t think of anybody I’ve ever put away or worked with … it’s a Robert, Roger, Ralph, Raymond … or to take the surname, Smith, Sunderland, Scott, Southall, Stevenson … I don’t know, there must be hundreds.’

Angel rubbed his chin. ‘The only name that comes to mind is Robert Louis Stevenson. But he didn’t write this clue. It’s not him.’