Scrivens grinned.

‘Do you want him in here, or in an interview room, sir?’

‘Interview room.’

Scrivens nodded and went out.

Angel picked up the phone and tapped in a number.

‘It’s DI Angel. Are you still at the Prophets’ house?’

‘Yes, sir,’ DS Taylor replied. ‘We broke off to attend the murder scene outside The Three Horseshoes, you know. And early this morning we swept Harrison’s flat. It wasn’t big, but there were three rooms. You told us to—’

‘I’m not chasing you, Don. Just enquiring.’

‘Oh? Right, sir. Well, we should be finished here this afternoon. There’ll be standard samples taken from here to process.’

‘Did you find anything significant at Harrison’s flat?’

‘No, sir. After eliminating his prints, there were no samples to take.’

Angel frowned. That meant there were no clues or DNA in the flat. He blew out a long breath. Thank God he had found the money and the prints on it!

‘Right,’ he said. ‘In your search there … at the Prophets’, did you come across an address book?’

‘Yes, sir. And a Christmas card list. I think it’s in a woman’s writing.’

Angel’s face brightened.

‘I’d like to have those A.S.A.P. And did you see a camera anywhere?’

‘A camera, sir?’

‘Yes. An ordinary domestic camera for taking snaps of the family and so on?’

‘No, sir. No camera.’

Angel frowned.

‘Right, Don. See you later this afternoon.’

He rang off.

CHAPTER EIGHT

The lift was out of order. Angel had to walk up three staircases to the third and top floor of Mansion House Flats. He started off well, but had to take the third staircase rather more slowly. When he arrived at the top, he hung onto the handrail and waited, breathing deeply several times. He stuck four fingers down the top of his shirt collar and pulled it away from his sticky neck. He sighed. He was thinking, he really would have to hold back on those meat pies and halves of Old Peculier at The Fat Duck for a few months. For some time, Mary had been suggesting that he took a flask, a banana and a hard-boiled egg into the office for lunch. He didn’t rate that idea much. It was the sort of thing desk-bound workers do. He hadn’t much time for people who pushed paper around for a living and got fat backsides from hanging onto a desk job for years on end. He had noticed a definite tightness of his trousers round the waist: maybe he’d give it serious thought. Last time they came back from Sketchley’s, he had thought he had been given somebody else’s by mistake.

A door banged shut on the floor below. It prompted him to move along the corridor smartly. He passed number twenty, which had been Harrison’s flat, to the one next door, number nineteen. As he approached, he could hear music blaring out from inside.

He knocked on the door.

He had to wait a little time, then it was opened by a pretty young woman in a short pink house-coat, long, white uncovered legs and imitation fur slippers with rabbits heads on them. She was holding a child aged about a year. Its eyes were closed and it had a comforter in its mouth. The radio blared out loudly behind her.

Angel blinked.

The young woman had a ready smile and a bright twinkle in her eyes. ‘Yes? What can I do for you?’ she said.

‘Miss Gaston? Margaret Gaston?’ he shouted.

‘Yes. Sure. Come in,’ she said pulling the door open wide.

‘Thank you,’ he shouted over the blaring radio. It was something as loud and incomprehensible as The Arctic Monkeys. ‘I’m Detective Inspector Angel from Bromersley Police.’

‘Oh yes,’ she said with a smile.

She had even, white teeth, a lovely mouth and long blonde hair hanging partly over her face like a film star of yesteryear. She looked straight into his eyes.

She carried the sleeping child with one arm, closed the door, reached down to a transistor radio on the floor, pressed a button and switched it off.

The silence was golden. Angel blew out a quantity of breath with relief.

‘I’ve already given a statement to Trevor,’ she added, looking concerned. ‘Wasn’t it all right?’

Angel licked his bottom lip. It had not exactly been a statement, and he was a little irritated to hear her refer to DS Crisp so familiarly. Young people talked that way. He knew it was his age.

‘That was fine,’ he said. ‘There are some other matters.’

She looked down at the child in her arms. ‘I’ve just got him off to sleep.’

Angel looked round the little room. It was sparsely but adequately furnished with brightly coloured plastic bricks scattered on the rug by the hearth, two teddy bears on the floor by the door, and baby clothes everywhere.

Margaret Gaston carefully put her baby in a cot, pulled up a blanket to cover him and lifted up the cot side. She kicked off the rabbit slippers across a rug on polished bare boards and flopped onto a huge leather settee and lifted her legs onto the length of it. Her bare feet showed bright red toenails. She went through the business of pulling down her housecoat to cover her underwear. Angel had noticed and tried to remember he was old enough to be her father.

‘Phew! It’s taken me an hour to get him off,’ she said. ‘Sit down.’

There was only the one easy-chair opposite, so choice wasn’t a problem.

She leaned forward to the settee arm, picked up a packet of Silk Cut, shot one out, looked at Angel and waved the packet.

Angel shook his head. ‘No thanks.’

She clicked a disposal lighter into life and then pulled hard on the cigarette. Then she laughed and said, ‘If he doesn’t want to go to sleep, it doesn’t matter how tired he is, he just won’t bloody go.’

Angel nodded sympathetically.

‘What do you call him?’

‘Carl Alexander Gaston.’ She said it like making an announcement, and enjoying the way it sounded. ‘What’s yours?’ she added taking a big drag on the cigarette.

‘Detective Inspector Angel.’

‘No. Your first name.’

‘Michael.’

‘Michael?’ she said thoughtfully. ‘It’s a nice name. But it’s so old-fashioned. Now, Carl Alexander is, sort of, cool and posh, isn’t it?’ she added with a smile.

‘Aye, it sounds very good,’ he said politely and pulled out an envelope and a ball-point. ‘There are some questions I need to put to you.’

‘Yes. Of course. It’s dead awful about Alicia. Perfectly dreadful. However will Charles manage? Have you found out who’s done it yet? Is it that Reynard that they keep on about on the telly?’

‘We haven’t found out yet, but we will. Now you used to clean for the Prophets didn’t you?’

Her eyes suddenly flashed. ‘Still do, I hope.’ She said, her mouth dropping open. ‘I have to have money, Michael. I get some from Social Security but it isn’t anything like enough. You think he’ll still want me to do the house and that, don’t you? I’ve never let him down, and I wouldn’t let him down now that she’s … that he’s on his own.’

Angel shook his head and wondered about his next question. Those long, shapely bare legs and feet moving about on the dark leather were distracting his concentration. She seemed to be unaware of it. He tried to look somewhere else.

‘I do three hours a day for four days a week. I do Tuesdays to Fridays inclusive.’

‘Yes. So you didn’t go to the Prophets on Monday last?’

‘No, Michael. Not Mondays.’

He blinked when she called him Michael. Hardly anybody ever did. He was not sure whether he objected. He let it go.

‘Who looks after Carl when you’re at the Prophets’?’

‘I take him with me. That’s what made the job so great. He’s happy in his pram. He would sleep most of the time. Alicia didn’t mind. She said she enjoyed the company. If he woke up, I either fed him or changed him. Alicia was very good about it.’

‘Did you ever see Mr Prophet?’