Текст книги "Find the Lady"

Автор книги: Roger Silverwood

Соавторы: Roger Silverwood
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Текущая страница: 11 (всего у книги 12 страниц)

CHAPTER FIFTEEN

It was 4 p.m., Monday, 23 July. It was three hours since Angel had discovered the whereabouts of the Glazer gang and, in that time, not a minute had been wasted.

The sun continued to beat down and it was still very hot.

Through binoculars from the veranda of the site office, Angel observed that the Glazer gang was now pulling out chairs and hovering round the table outside their RV. They appeared to be gathering to eat a meal. That was the sign he had been waiting for. He was planning to drive an unmarked 4 x 4 car, towing a touring caravan along a service road slowly towards them, while, at the same time, another 4 x 4 and caravan, was to be driven by Crisp in his shirt sleeves and open-necked shirt, along a different but parallel service road in the same direction. The two cars and vans were to look like two unrelated family caravans moving to pitches to park and set up for the night.

The moment had arrived. Angel got in the cab of the 4 x 4 and started up the engine. He waved Crisp on and they moved off driving at 10 mph along parallel service roads towards the Glazer gang. It wasn’t far. The journey would take only thirty seconds or so.

Many caravanners were in deckchairs or on towels on the grass applying suncream in the still hot sun. Two young girls in swim suits played a simple ball game with rackets across an unoccupied caravan pitch. Angel was concerned for their safety: this was always the worry when trying to arrest an armed gang in a public place.

The slow, short journey was tense but uneventful. When they were about twenty feet away from Glazer’s RV, both 4 x 4’s stopped as planned. Eight police in riot gear piled out of each caravan at speed, their Heckler and Koch G36C assault rifles drawn and cocked. At the same time, from a loud speaker perched on the roof of Angel’s vehicle, his loud, distorted, commanding voice could be heard.

‘Eddie Glazer, this is the police,’ he said commandingly. ‘You are under arrest. So are your friends. Lie down on the grass, immediately. All of you.’

The Glazer gang looked up from their meal, stunned. They saw the sixteen rifles aimed at them, dropped their cutlery and, wide-eyed, looked across at each other.

People sunning themselves nearby heard and saw what was happening. Some of them bustled their children and their families inside their vans for safety. Some others stood up and gaped at the scene curious or astounded.

The police closed further in on the gang and screamed, ‘Get down. Get down. Get down. Hands on your head. Hands on your head.’

There was a sudden move from Glazer’s brother, Tony. From a kneeling position, he reached out to a pocket in his coat draped around the chair where he had been sitting.

‘Leave it,’ a policeman yelled and a warning shot was fired at the chair. A bullet ricocheted from the chair and made a loud metallic click.

Tony Glazer pulled back his hand. ‘All right,’ he screamed, holding up his hands from a kneeling position. ‘All right. I give up. I give up.’

Everybody on the caravan site heard the rifle shot. More sun-worshippers dived into their caravans or cars for shelter.

‘Get down,’ a policeman yelled at the Glazers.

‘Get down. Get down,’ the call was repeated interminably by the police.

The five members of the gang lay close together prostrate on the grass. The police closed in still directing their rifles at them. Two of the policemen dragged the chairs, with coats hanging on them, wine stand, boxes of wine, Oona’s handbag and the loaded table hastily towards the caravan and away from their prisoners.

On cue, a big black police van rocked quickly along the grass through the caravan site towards them.

Angel arrived at his office the following morning at 8.28 a.m. He was as bright as the Chief Constable’s MBE, and ready to supply the necessary evidence to the prosecuting barrister of the Crown Prosecution Service. This man, a Mr Twelvetrees, would use Angel’s information to obtain a remand order at the magistrates’ court next door later on that morning for each of the five members of the Glazer gang.

There was a knock at the door. It was Gawber.

‘I’ve checked the shoe size of each of the men, sir. The only size 10 is Eddie Glazer.’

He wrinkled his nose. ‘No possibility of an error, Ron?’

Gawber shook his head. ‘The others are 11s and 12s, sir.’

Angel nodded thoughtfully. ‘That confirms it then,’ he said firmly. ‘Eddie Glazer’s barrister will have to work damned hard to get him out of that.’ Then he added grimly, ‘Glazer will die in prison.’

‘I’ll push off and check they’ll be ready for court,’ Gawber said.

He went out as Dr Mac had arrived at the door.

‘Can I come in?’

Angel smiled.

‘Ah Mac, you’re always welcome here. Come on in.’

The Scotsman closed the door. Angel pointed to the chair by his desk. ‘Sit down. It’s very early for you, isn’t it, Mac? Worried some tealeaf might have nicked your porridge?’

‘None of your lip, laddie,’ Mac said maintaining a dour face.

Angel grinned.

Mac leaned across the desk and said: ‘I suppose you’d like to hear the result of the DNA comparison between the loose hair found on the body of Alicia Prophet, which SOCO confirmed belonged to Charles Prophet, and the flesh content in the saliva of Carl Gaston’s mouth, taken from that handkerchief of yours, wouldn’t you?’

Angel paid Dr Mac very serious attention. ‘It certainly has a bearing on a case I’m working on, Mac,’ he said expectantly.

‘Well, I can tell you quite positively, that there are enough similarities to prove that Charles Prophet was indeed the biological father of Carl Gaston.’

Angel raised his head.

‘Thank you very much indeed, Mac,’ he said, nodding slowly.

That was the very last piece in the puzzle and Angel felt a warm, comfortable feeling in his chest. An excited shiver ran up and down his arms and hands. He now knew exactly where to find the mysterious Lady Cora Blessington. He considered the position a moment; there was still a lot to do before he could make the arrest.

After exchanging the usual courtesies, Dr Mac left.

Angel rushed down to the CPS office and discussed and determined with Mr Twelvetrees, prosecuting barrister, the charges to be made against the Glazers. They were duly typed up and presented to their solicitors before attending the court. Later that morning, he had the satisfaction of seeing the five of them whisked away on remand in a Group 4 van.

The rest of the morning and afternoon, he spent a thoughtful and busy few hours making his plans. He briefed Gawber and then went home for a shower and an early tea.

At 5.25 p.m., Angel left home and drove the BMW to the end of Victoria Crescent, a side street in Bromersley. He parked it in such a position that he could see down Victoria Road; the road comprised Georgian stone-built houses which had been converted over the past century or so to offices mostly occupied by solicitors, accountants, estate agents and building societies. He particularly wanted to clock all the comings and goings from the offices and small private car park of Prophet and Sellman. He looked at his watch. It was 5.32 p.m. He did not expect that he would have to wait long.

At 5.35 p.m. Charles Prophet strode confidently out of the big blue door, crossed the car park to his car and drove away in the direction of The Feathers Hotel on Market Street. Seconds later the elegant figure of Karen Kennedy appeared on the front step. She looked round, turned back, put a key in the door lock, turned it, withdrew it, stuffed it into her swish Gucci handbag and strode swiftly the few paces across the car park to her white Mercedes. Seconds later, she drove away from Angel with a roar of the engine and turned in the opposite direction towards Jubilee Park on the other side of town, where she lived in a new block of flats on the main Doncaster Road.

Angel started up his BMW and followed her. She lived less than two miles from the office and she had, on good days, been known to walk the short distance. Today she was driving her white Mercedes competently through the side streets of Bromersley, skirting the busy shopping areas and eventually turning onto Doncaster Road. Angel kept a discreet distance behind her until she reached her block of flats. She pulled up on the main road, switched off the ignition, got out of the car and made her way towards the main door of the flats.

Angel followed her and was slowing his car, when, at the last moment, he touched the accelerator and the BMW jerked forward which caused his front bumper to hit the rear of the beautiful Mercedes making an unpleasant, expensive crashing noise.

Karen Kennedy heard it. She looked back angrily, took in the situation and stormed back down the path towards him.

Angel frowned and bit his bottom lip. He reversed the BMW back a few feet from the Mercedes, stopped the car and got out.

Karen Kennedy stood on the pavement edge, hands on hips and surveyed the damage. Then she stared at Angel and said: ‘Oh, it’s you. I might have known it. A stupid policeman! Haven’t you any brakes on that car?’ All the charm so well controlled at the office of Prophet and Sellman had completely disappeared.

Angel said: ‘I am very sorry, but you did stop rather abruptly and without any signal.’

Karen Kennedy’s face went scarlet. ‘There was no need for a signal,’ she stormed. ‘My brake lights would tell you I was stopping. Anyway, I had locked the car and was ten feet away, when you crashed into it!’

‘I didn’t know you were going to stop and park here on a main road,’ he said calmly. ‘And I don’t think your brake lights were working.’

‘They were working perfectly well yesterday when the car was returned after a service.’

‘And look how far you are from the kerb. A traffic policeman would book you for being more than ten inches from the kerb. It’s not safe for other traffic.’

She looked down at the distance the wheel of the Mercedes was away from the kerb. ‘That’s all right,’ she said. ‘Must be only five or six inches, that’s all.’

Angel looked shocked. He shook his head. ‘Be reasonable. It’s at least eighteen inches, Miss Kennedy … far too far … if this matter was taken to court, you’d have a job to prove the actual distance.’

She looked up at the sky and fumed: ‘Huh! Give me strength. Wait there, Inspector Angel,’ she said determinedly. ‘Wait there. I won’t be two minutes.’

‘I’m not going anywhere,’ Angel said evenly. ‘I’m not leaving here until I have details of your insurance company.’

She stormed off through the main door into the flats. When she was out of sight, Angel turned away from the door, dived into his pocket and pulled out his mobile.

He tapped in a number. The phone was promptly answered.

‘In position, sir,’ Gawber said. ‘We can be there in a minute.’

‘Right,’ Angel said. ‘When I send you a text, come in fast.’

‘Right, sir.’

‘Out.’

Angel cancelled the call and set up his phone to send the letters ‘OK’ to Gawber by text and held it in his pocket ready.

A moment or two later, Karen Kennedy appeared through the door. She had discarded her handbag and was bearing down on Angel with a small camera. Her face was grimly set, determined to win the argument.

Angel pressed the button on the phone in his pocket and sent the text.

Karen Kennedy stormed up to him waving the camera.

‘This will settle all argument, once and for all, Inspector. Don’t think that because you’re a policeman that you’re above the law.’

‘I don’t,’ he replied. ‘I just don’t think that you have any idea about driving a car.’

Her beautiful eyes glared at him. ‘I have passed the advanced driving test and I have the certificate to prove it,’ she said confidently. ‘Please move out of the way. Let me take a photograph of this. My car is very properly parked and no more than six inches from the kerb. Eighteen inches indeed, huh!’

Angel stood back to allow her access with the camera.

She photographed the two cars from various angles and was busy lining up a shot of the damage to her car resulting from the crash when a Panda car pulled up quietly behind Angel’s. Gawber, SOCO’s Taylor and WPC Leisha Baverstock got out and came up to Angel.

Karen Kennedy was intent on taking the photographs and didn’t seem to notice them at first, then she suddenly spotted the uniform on the WPC.

‘What’s this?’ she said, her eyes darting from one to the other and then back to Angel. ‘Called for reinforcements, have you?’ She waved the camera at him. ‘It won’t do you any good, Inspector. The camera doesn’t lie.’

DS Taylor looked at Angel who nodded for him to proceed.

The policeman took out his warrant card, showed it to her and said, ‘I am Detective Sergeant Taylor. Is that your camera, Miss?’

‘Of course it is,’ she snapped.

‘Do you own any other?’

‘No. Why?’

He held out his hand. ‘Will you give it to me, please?’

‘No,’ she said. ‘Certainly not. This is evidence. Your inspector is not going to get away with this.’

‘I am a forensic officer and I need to examine it, in connection with the murder of Alicia Prophet.’

Her jaw dropped. ‘Alicia Prophet?’

The colour drained from her face. She stared at him, then at Angel. She swallowed and said, ‘But I have nothing to do with that. It has nothing to do with me.’

Taylor stood there with his hand held out.

‘May I have the camera please?’

Karen Kennedy handed him the camera.

WPC Baverstock stepped forward and got hold of her by her elbow. ‘Come along with me, miss.’

Angel returned to the station in his car with Gawber, WPC Baverstock and Karen Kennedy, while Taylor rushed off with the camera in the Panda car.

At the station, Angel told Karen Kennedy that he would be inviting her to make a statement under caution, and suggested that she contacted her solicitor. He then left her in an interview room in the competent hands of WPC Baverstock and made his way up the green corridor with Gawber to his own office.

Gawber closed the door and they both sat down.

‘Whatever made you suspect that it was Charles Prophet dressing up as Lady Blessington then, sir?’ Gawber said.

Angel breathed in deeply, sighed and said, ‘The very first thing was that curious photograph of his wife, Alicia and Lady Blessington cosily having tea together on the patio. It was, I expect, taken shortly before the murder, only hours or days, and placed casually among the other photos to help try to establish the authenticity of Lady B. Prophet said it had been taken about six months earlier. If it had been, it would have been in January, and it would have been almost certainly too cold for tea in summer clothes outside on the patio, with flowers, trees and shrubs, rich in foliage, and some rose bushes and other flowers in full bloom. So I knew that it was a lie. I began to wonder why he needed to lie about a trivial thing like that. I got to thinking that he was about the same height as Lady B. Once I went down that lane, I was well on the way to solving the riddle. The fact that Prophet’s wife was blind made me realize that she never knew what he was dressed in or what he looked like. I was puzzled when he said that he had taken the photograph. Obviously, I knew I had to check that out closely. If it was another lie, then it indicated that he must have had an accomplice. There was no camera in the Prophets’ home. I checked with SOCO. And there were no other recent photographs anywhere in the house. They were not a family that habitually took photographs as some families do. So I had to widen the search. Karen Kennedy was the first obvious suspect. I had to get possession of her camera without raising her suspicions, hence the contrived accident with her Mercedes. I thought she’d be just the sort of person who would have to win a dispute. Photographs were the obvious proof, and if she had a camera, she’d have to use it.’

Gawber looked up at him in amazement.

‘Fantastic. But why did he spread the scene with orange peel. That didn’t fit the illusion of a titled lady committing the murder?’

‘That was done by Margaret Gaston. She came on the scene via the back door, shortly after Prophet had committed the murder and departed by the front door. She had brought some shopping requested by Alicia. Saw the dead woman, shot in the head, assumed, correctly, as it happens, that it was Prophet, and because she would have done anything for him – after all, he was the father of her child – thought she could assist him by fogging the issue by dispensing orange peel around the body, just as if the murder had been committed by Reynard. She’d no doubt been reading all the gory details about that multiple murderer in the papers. She had some oranges in the shopping. Then she thought she must dispose of the rest of the oranges to remove the source, so she put them in the dustbin.’

‘And the shopping in the pantry and the change on the draining board were also left by Margaret?’ Gawber said.

Angel nodded.

The phone rang.

It was Taylor.

‘Got it, sir,’ he said triumphantly.

‘It is the same camera?’

‘Yes, sir. There are similarities on the prints in three places. A bit of fogging on the top right hand corner and two identical places where the film was scratched as it was rolled on to the next exposure. That’s more than enough to be absolutely positive it’s the same camera.’

‘Right,’ Angel said and replaced the phone. He turned to Gawber. ‘Come on. It’s just about sewn up.’

Angel switched on the recording machine, gabbled off the time and date and those present, looked across the table at the woman and said: ‘Miss Kennedy, you said that on the day that Alicia Prophet was shot, Mr Charles Prophet was in his office the entire afternoon.’

‘Yes,’ Karen Kennedy mumbled.

‘Please speak up, for the benefit of the tape,’ Gawber said.

She looked at her solicitor, who nodded encouragingly.

‘Yes, I believe I did,’ she said.

‘Well, we now know that that is not true,’ Angel said. ‘Would you like to … revise your evidence?’

She glanced at her solicitor, who nodded.

‘Yes. Yes. I suppose I must,’ she said slowly. ‘After lunch … he was not in his office all afternoon. At about twenty minutes to two, he went out.’

There was a long pause.

Angel looked across the table at her. She looked back at him.

‘You know exactly what happened,’ Angel said, ‘because you and he planned it together, didn’t you?’

She didn’t say anything.

‘If you plead guilty and tell me what happened, it will reduce your sentence, Miss Kennedy. Those are the rules.’

Her solicitor nodded. She licked her lips.

‘Mmmm,’ she began. ‘Well, he took a suitcase of clothes and stuff and drove his car to Wells Street Baths and parked it in the public car park. He bought a ticket and took the suitcase into the baths. He changed into the blue dress, wig and stuff in a cubicle there and … he deposited the suitcase with his ordinary clothes in a locker. He came out of the baths and took a taxi to his own home. Walked into the house. Set the world straight with Alicia. Got her to sit on the settee. And, as he told me afterwards, shot her in the head. He said that she wouldn’t feel a thing or even know it was going to happen. Then he reversed his steps, took the taxi back to the baths, changed and returned to the office by car.’

‘What happened to the blue dress, the wig and other clothes?’

‘Late that same night, he brought them to my flat and we burned them in the incinerator in the boiler house in the basement.’

‘And why did he choose such old-fashioned clothes?’

‘Don’t know. Said he’d seen a picture of a woman in a blue dress somewhere. He modelled himself on that. He said he preferred the long dress because it would conceal his legs, which he thought might be a giveaway. He said the picture didn’t show the woman’s feet. He was glad of that because, I couldn’t find any women’s shoes large enough to fit him.’

‘You were aware of his intention to murder his wife?’

She swallowed, looked down at the parquet floor then nodded.

Gawber said: ‘For the purposes of the tape, Miss Kennedy nodded.’

‘Do you know why?’ Angel said.

‘He was bored with his wife,’ she said timidly. ‘He said that she was blind and a drag on him, and that he wanted me. He’d inherit her money, and he said he’d never be found out. He said that you, the police, would naturally suspect him, but if I stuck by the alibi they wouldn’t find out. The plan was to establish a non-existent person, have her murder his wife virtually in front of three eye-witnesses, then make her disappear. He said it was the perfect crime.’

Angel raised his head. ‘What was that?’ he said. He wrinkled his nose and shook his head. ‘Don’t you know yet, there’s no such thing as the perfect crime?’

She burst into tears.

He turned to Gawber and said: ‘I’ve heard enough, Ron. Bring him in and charge him with murder.’