The Fruit Gum Murders (14 page)

‘What's the name of the shopkeeper?'

‘Enoch Truelove, sir. They don't sell many flowers but they usually have a few made-up bunches in the window. It's a shop that sells everything and is open all hours. Mr Truelove said he remembered selling a man half a dozen lilies on Sunday. And, what's more, he said that he thought he might recognize the man if he was to see him again.'

Angel frowned. ‘A man? You're sure he said a man?'

‘Positive, sir.'

The lines on Angel's forehead became more defined. ‘Would a man buy another man flowers? Particularly lilies?'

Crisp grinned. ‘Not unless they were dating, sir.'

He looked at Crisp knowingly. ‘I suppose many men like flowers. I like some flowers, but I would never think of buying another man flowers, and I wouldn't be really that pleased if a man bought
me
flowers.'

Crisp smiled. ‘Are we dealing with the phenomenon of a man who wanted to be a woman, sir?'

‘I don't know,' Angel said. ‘I simply don't know.'

He remembered that they had found lipstick on the dead man's lips. It had been explained away by the suggestion that the murderer was a woman and that they had kissed. It wasn't beyond the realms of possibility, and Angel had not dismissed the idea.

‘I wouldn't want to be a woman,' Crisp said.

‘We're not talking about us, lad,' he said. ‘Anyway, I'll go and have a word with Mr Truelove myself. In the meantime, I want you to go to Norwich.'

‘Norwich?' Crisp said.

Angel updated him and told him that he wanted him to look into the background of Patrick Novak, to see what similarities – if any – existed between the two victims. He reckoned that that could greatly assist his investigation into their murders.

‘Right, sir,' Crisp said, then he looked at his watch. ‘I'll have to see what time the trains leave for Norwich tomorrow.'

‘Take your issued car, lad, it'll be quicker.'

Crisp frowned. ‘It's a long way, sir. I must set off first thing in the morning.'

‘You can nip home now, pack a bag and be off in less than half an hour,' Angel said.

‘But sir, I need to find a place to stay and then I have to find my way round. I could do all that tomorrow and be ready to start on Saturday.'

‘Aye. And that's the weekend, lad. You've a satnav to find your way around, and a phone call will soon get you booked into a hotel. It's about a three-hour drive. You can be there by six o'clock. I'll phone you in the morning … see what you've managed to find out.'

Crisp wasn't pleased. He turned towards the door.

Angel said, ‘Just a minute, lad. Where have you been this last twenty-four hours, and what's wrong with your mobile?'

Crisp turned back. He assumed a most innocent look. ‘There's nothing wrong with my mobile, sir, as far as I know. Ahmed phoned me a few minutes ago. It's working all right.'

Angel ran his hand through his hair. ‘Well, keep the damned thing switched on. How else can I keep in touch with you?'

‘I never switch it off in working hours, sir.'

‘But it was switched off!'

Crisp frowned. ‘Well, I don't understand it.'

‘I do. Keep the bloody thing switched on all the time, so that I can contact you. Where were you anyway?'

‘I've been very busy, sir. With a different case. There was a posh old-time dance in the ballroom at the Feathers, and the women's powder room was systematically searched and robbed. Also at one point, the lights in the ballroom went out and in the darkness two ladies had their valuable necklaces stolen.'

‘Didn't they feel them go?'

‘They heard the snip of a pair of pliers, felt them whisked off their necks, but they couldn't see who took them. It all happened so quickly.'

‘Who was there?'

‘Everybody who is anybody. You know, sir, the usual mob.'

‘Lady Muick, Mrs Mackenzie, Sir Rodney Stamp. …'

‘Oh yes, sir. All of them. By the way, young Stewart Twelvetrees asked after you and sent his good wishes.'

‘That was kind of him. I expect he was there with his wife, Lydia, and her sister, Nadine?'

‘Oh yes, sir. All of that brigade. And his dad, Twelvetrees Senior, and that sexy Juliet Gregg woman.'

‘Any suspects, lad?'

‘There was nothing to go on, sir. The place was searched from top to bottom but nothing was found. And it was a bit difficult dealing with la crème de la crème.'

‘There's no difficulty at all, lad. They're exactly the same as us except they've got more money, and can pay their gas bill without worrying about it, that's all.'

Crisp shrugged. Then he noticed the pot monster on the desk and took the opportunity to change the subject. ‘Got a new paperweight, sir?'

Angel nodded.

‘What is it?' Crisp said. ‘Is it a centaur, half human and half horse? Very smart, if you're into that sort of thing.'

Angel looked at him.

‘No, it isn't,' Crisp said. ‘It's a Cyclops. No it can't be. It's got three eyes. A Cyclops only has one eye, doesn't it, sir?'

Angel continued to look at him.

Crisp frowned. ‘I know, sir. It's one of the creatures in
Dr Who
, isn't it?'

Angel blinked. ‘Is it?' he said.

‘I'm not sure.'

‘Do you watch
Dr Who
, lad?'

‘No, sir. Not now. I used to.'

Angel smiled. ‘Would you like it, to remind you of those days?'

‘Oh no, sir. No, thank you.'

Angel wrinkled his nose.

Angel pointed the bonnet of the BMW in the direction of the railway station until he reached a scruffy little greengrocer's lock-up shop, on the corner of Station Road and Main Street. He saw a sign above the window that read ‘Enoch Truelove – Greengrocers' and a smaller sign plugged into the wall and pointing upwards to a staircase, which read, ‘Fancy Dress Hire – 1st Floor.'

He parked right outside the front of the greengrocer's shop. He pushed open the old shop door. A bell on a large coil sprang up and down and rang above his head. As he closed the door, it rang some more.

An elderly man in shirtsleeves, khaki shorts and a well-worn straw hat came shuffling up to a doorway three steps higher than the floor of the shop. He stopped at the doorway, looked down on Angel and said, ‘And what can I get for you, young man?'

‘Mr Enoch Truelove?'

The old man looked over his glasses and said, ‘Yes. Who wants to know?'

‘DI Angel, Bromersley police,' he said, offering his ID card.

Truelove came quickly down the steps, ignored the ID card and looked Angel up and down.

Angel said, ‘I'm following up the inquiries my sergeant made about the man who bought a bunch of flowers from you – oriental lilies – on Sunday last.'

‘Oh yes,' he said. ‘What about them? There was nothing wrong with them, was there? They were fresh. They were only delivered from the wholesalers that morning. You can't come making a complaint about them four days after they were sold. I mean, I sold them in good faith.'

‘As far as I know, Mr Truelove, the flowers were fine.'

‘I even knocked a few pence off because the man said that that was all the money he'd got on him.'

Angel rubbed his chin. Something occurred to him, something rather odd. Don Taylor had said that Robinson had no cash on him either, not a coin. But Robinson was the victim, not the murderer. It could, of course, be that the murderer went through Robinson's pockets and had taken all his money, because the murderer was penniless!

‘Mr Truelove, you said you knocked a few pence off the cost of the flowers?'

‘Yes, I did.'

‘Can you tell me how that came about?'

‘Of course. He wanted a bunch of flowers for his girlfriend, he said. I only had the bunch of lilies left, and they were six pounds. He said, could he look at them, so I took them out of the window and gave them to him. He looked at them. I could see he wanted them. He asked me how much they were and I said six pounds. He opened his wallet and took out a five-pound note. I could see that he only had the one fiver in there, no other notes. Then he rummaged about in his pocket and pulled out a few coins. He looked at them and they came to sixty-something pence. He looked up at me shyly and asked me if I'd take that instead of the full pound because he hadn't any more. Well, I don't like bartering with customers, you know, Inspector, and he seemed to be genuine so I said all right.'

Angel nodded. ‘Right. Thank you,' he said. He rubbed his chin. He had an idea.

‘Was that helpful, Inspector?' Truelove said.

‘It was,' he said. ‘Tell me, Mr Truelove, would you recognize the man if I showed you a photograph of him?'

‘I think so.'

‘I'll be back later.'

Angel was delighted. He came out of the shop as if he was floating on air. He couldn't get in the car fast enough. He dialled up the number of the mortuary and asked to speak to Dr Mac.

‘Yes, Michael,' the Glaswegian said.

‘Ah, Mac. I've maybe got a man who can identify Norman Robinson. Now I know he's been in the wars and whatever, but can you make him look presentable enough to be photographed head and shoulders and shown to a witness?'

‘I don't know, Michael. The lines on the man's face will be much more pronounced than they were when he was alive, and his eyes will still be staring in that unrealistic way, that could disturb some people.'

‘You can close his eyelids, can't you?'

‘I could for the purposes of a photograph, yes.'

‘If you think it will look better, please do that. And powder his face. That'll soften the hardness of the wrinkles.'

‘Yes. I can do that as well.'

‘I'm sending a chap from SOCO to take the photograph. He should be with you in about a quarter of an hour. Is that OK?'

‘I'll be ready for him.'

‘Thanks, Mac.'

Angel then tapped in the number of Don Taylor at SOCO and arranged for the photograph to be taken ASAP and brought straight to his office.

Then he drove the BMW back to the station.

ELEVEN

Angel arrived at his office a few minutes later to find a large brown ‘Evidence' envelope on his desk. The label stuck onto it advised him that it contained the personal effects of Patrick Novak and that it had come from the SOCO's office for his attention.

He quickly sat down, opened the seal and carefully poured the contents onto his desk.

There was a leather wallet that had £100 in £20 notes, a return rail ticket to Norwich, a folded newspaper cutting and a tiny photograph of a very young baby, apparently taken while in a hospital incubator.

Angel frowned as he turned the photograph back over and gazed at it. It seemed to be a very small baby. It had a plastic mask across its nose and mouth fastened with sticky tape to the cheeks with a length of piping leading from it, a tiny attachment to an ear with a thin wire leading from it, another attachment concealed by bandages to the baby's chest with a thin wire leading from it and another wire or tube attached to the foot. The photograph was fuzzy and slightly out of focus. Angel turned it over. In pencil on the back was scrawled, ‘May 2nd 2002'.

He put it back in the wallet and opened the newspaper cutting. It turned out to be the top half of the front page of the
News Chronicle
. He opened it up. It read:

Angel was rereading the cutting when there was a knock at the door. ‘Come in.'

It was a detective constable from SOCO. ‘I've brought the post mortem photographs of Norman Robinson, sir.'

He handed Angel four postcard-size photographs, all four slightly different computer printouts of the head and shoulders of the dead man.

Then the DC's eyes alighted on the monster ornament on Angel's desk.

‘My, that's a remarkable model animal, sir. What is it?' he said.

‘I don't know, lad,' Angel said without looking up. His attention was on the photographs; he was studying each one in turn.

The DC was still looking at the monster, but he said, ‘Are they all right, sir? I tried the light in different positions to try to minimize the hardness of the corpse's wrinkles.'

‘Aye. They're great. I think I'll use the one with the light on full-frontal. Thank you for closing his eyes and powdering him up. He looks almost human.'

‘That wasn't me, sir, that was Dr Mac,' the DC said and then he added, ‘I didn't know you were into modern art, sir. Some works of art sell for thousands.'

Angel blinked. ‘Do you reckon that animal in best china is in that category?'

‘It's not what I think, sir. It's a matter of what the market decides. Personally I think it's hideous, sir, but what do I know?'

He turned to go. He looked back. ‘I hope that photograph fits the bill, sir.'