Harker frowned. ‘Hmmm,’ he said slowly. He was thinking.

Angel looked at his eyes. He had slowed him down. He was weighing the pros and cons. His pupils were bouncing and moving from side to side. The cogs were moving like a Heath Robinson time machine.

Angel concealed a smile and turned away.

After a few moments, Harker said: ‘Very well, as you are certain it isn’t Reynard, we needn’t bother SOCA. That’s all I really wanted to know. Carry on then.’

Angel looked across at him. He wasn’t happy. What Harker had said was not exactly correct. If Reynard proved to be the murderer of Alicia Prophet, and SOCA had not been advised early in the investigation, SOCA would be furious and a big rocket would be sent from them to the Chief Constable. Somebody would be in trouble. But it wouldn’t be Harker. Oh no. He’d simply say that he, Angel, had misled him.

He closed the door.

Ahmed passed two envelopes across the desk. One was a large A4 Manilla with the one word, EVIDENCE, printed across it in red, and a smaller one bearing the name and logo of the Northern Bank PLC in small black letters in the corner.

‘The bank was a bit funny about releasing Mrs Prophet’s statements to me, sir,’ Ahmed said. ‘Until I showed my ID and told them about her death.’

‘They would be, and a good job too,’ Angel said as he slit open the envelope from the bank with a penknife.

Ahmed nodded, went out and closed the door.

Angel took the bank statements out of the envelope. There were twelve sheets. He looked at them carefully. There hadn’t been much activity in the account, but he did note that for the past six months a regular amount of £1,000 a month had been deducted from her balance. There was no payee’s name; the entries simply said that the withdrawals were in cash. He checked them over again then wrinkled his nose. That six thousand pounds needed some explanation.

He turned to the thicker envelope. He opened the top and peered inside. It contained photographs, mostly black and white, in all sizes. He closed the flap and put the envelope back on the desk. He looked at it thoughtfully for a few seconds and then reached out a hand to it and tapped it twice with the fingertips. He had made a decision. He stood up. The phone rang. He raised his eyebrows as he reached out for the receiver. It was Harker.

‘There’s a treble nine,’ he said urgently. ‘A man’s body found in a skip down the side of The Three Horseshoes, off Rotherham Road.’

Angel pulled a face. His pulse began to race. Another body. Here we go again. Would it never end? Another murder, and he’d quite enough on his plate.

‘Reported by a workman, a James Macgregor,’ Harker added. ‘He’s waiting there on site.’

‘Right, sir,’ Angel said, then he phoned SOCO, Dr Mac and Gawber. He passed on the information and instructed them to make their way to the crime scene A.S.A.P. He also advised Ahmed of the recent developments and instructed him to tell Crisp to join him as soon as the money under the floorboards in the flat had been dealt with and deposited in the station safe. He then grabbed the thicker of the two envelopes and dashed down the green-painted corridor to the rear door exit that led to the station car park.

Five minutes later, the white SOCO van, Dr Mac’s car and Angel’s BMW arrived at The Three Horseshoes in quick succession. The pub was on the corner of the Mansion Hill and Rotherham Roads, not the best part of Bromersley. It had a small car park on one side of it, but locals would take the shortcut between the two roads, across the car park and park behind the pub, thus cutting off the corner and saving half a minute or so walking round the front of the pub.

Angel parked on the street. He noticed a small skip in the car park by the rear wall of the pub and advanced determinedly towards it. The green-painted skip had the words ‘For hire’ and an 0800 telephone number stencilled in white on each side. As he got nearer he could see that it was three-quarters filled with stone, dust, bricks, plasterwork and builder’s debris. At one end, there appeared to be a bundle of brown rags with a man’s shoe on top. That was the dead man.

SOCO were setting up blue and white tape bearing the words POLICE LINE – DO NOT CROSS, while Mac had found a bottle crate and was preparing to stand on it to lean over the skip. The car park was bathed in brilliant sunshine so extra lighting on the body was not necessary.

Angel met James Macgregor, who was in the pub drinking tea from a vacuum flask. He told Angel that he was working on some conversions in The Three Horseshoes, knocking an inside wall down to make two rooms into one and that in the course of bringing out a wheelbarrow of rubble, a few minutes ago, he had pushed it up a plank and found this body.

‘Yeah. I’d noticed what I thought were some old clothes someone dumped in the skip earlier this morning, you know. People do that, you know. Get rid of rubbish in any old skip they see hanging around the streets, you know. So. Well then I didn’t think anything of it. I’d tipped in a few loads before I had a closer look, and of course, it was this poor man.’

‘Did you touch him?’

‘Who? No. No. I snatched at his coat but soon let go when I seed him inside it, of course. Well, you would, wouldn’t you?’

‘What time did you finish work yesterday?’

‘Five o’clock. Always finish at five, you know.’

‘Was everything else as you left it?’

‘Exactly. Yeah. I fetched all my tools and gear in here.’

Angel thanked him and then spoke to the landlord and his wife, who had nothing useful to add. They had had a busy but peaceful evening in the bar, and nothing unusual had occurred.

Angel nodded and came out of the back door of the pub as one of the SOCO team in standard disposable white paper overalls was snapping photographs of the pub, the skip, the body and everything else that didn’t move.

Gawber arrived and came rushing across the car park.

‘Do the door-to-door, Ron. All I’ve got is a dead man in a brown suit, who wasn’t here at 5 o’clock yesterday afternoon.’

‘Right, sir,’ Gawber said and set off back the way he’d come.

Angel turned back to the skip.

Mac was in the skip, kitted out in the white paper overalls, hat, rubber boots and gloves. He hovered over the body.

Angel called over to him. ‘Cause of death, Mac?’

The doctor wasn’t pleased. He muttered something including an expletive he’d no doubt learned in his student days while washing pots for beer money in a Glasgow pub.

‘Didn’t quite catch it, Mac,’ Angel said knowingly.

‘I don’t know the cause of death yet,’ he snapped testily. ‘Give me a chance! Wound to the chest. Lot of blood around. Lot of bruising. He’s been badly knocked about. Might take me a day or so.’

Angel’s eyes narrowed.

‘Nasty. Sounds like a gang-type attack, more than one assailant?’

There was a pause before Mac snapped out his reply.

‘Don’t know. Ye’ll have to wait.’

Angel looked away. That was the problem – he couldn’t wait. He looked back at the body and tried to get a square look at the face. Mac had turned the head over to pull up the eyelids. There were blue bruises to the forehead and the cheeks. There was blood dried on his lips, which also seemed swollen. Nobody could ID him in that state.

Angel wasn’t prepared to hang around.

‘Look in his pockets, Mac,’ he said patiently. ‘I need to know who he is.’

Mac had just put something in a small transparent packet. He zipped across the top of it to seal it, wrote on it and put it in a white valise over his shoulder.

‘Aye. All right. Anything to shut you up.’

He pulled the body round more easily to reach the inside pocket. He reached inside found something. He brought it out, carefully holding it by the edges.

‘I think I’ve found ye a cheque book.’