‘Hmm. Interesting reasoning, Angel. Reasonable, I suppose. But I fear that wouldn’t be enough for the CPS.’

‘No sir. If I can get supporting evidence, sir … blood on his clothing … DNA … and so on, they would. Anyway, I have it in hand. SOCO are going through the farmhouse where Glazer’s gang were holed up, and which they left in such a hurry.’

Harker nodded. ‘Yes. Yes. All right. Give it a go.’

Angel was surprised to get Harker’s easy accord. He usually went against everything he said. Angel thought Harker must be in a good mood and, unusually, enjoying a good patch with his wife, Morvydd, an unusual woman. Angel had met her once at a Police Federation Dinner. He hadn’t enjoyed the experience. She was almost as objectionable as her husband. He recalled that she had pressed close up to him, smelling of pickled onions, spraying half-chewed Ritz biscuits onto his new dicky, while gushingly insisting that he called her Morvydd. It had taken almost the entire evening to shake her off and get back to the protection of his wife, Mary.

‘I’ve made thorough inquiries along all that end of Wells Street, sir,’ Scrivens said brightly.

Angel looked up from his desk, licked his lips and grunted.

‘I showed a copy of the photograph in the newspaper shop, the butcher’s and the post office nearby, and no one saw anybody that looked like her. They all said that they would have remembered if they had seen anybody like that. A woman in the butcher’s said the dress looked as if it was from the 1920’s. I hung around the steps of the baths, at the critical times of ten minutes to two and eight minutes past three, the times when the taxi driver had collected her and delivered her back, and I showed the photograph to everybody coming through the turnstile, but nobody had seen her. It’s hopeless, sir.’

‘Right lad. Not to worry. I’m beginning to wonder if she existed at all,’ he said, rubbing his chin. ‘Or was she a cardboard cut out like the Cottingley fairies,’ he added quietly.

‘The Cottingley fairies, sir?’ Scrivens said.

‘Oh?’ Angel looked up. He was surprised that Scrivens had heard him. ‘The Cottingley fairies never existed, lad. They were paper cut-outs of fairies that were photographed by two mischievous young ladies from Cottingley – it’s not far away, near Bradford. But they let the world believe they were the real thing.’

‘Fairies, sir?’ He laughed. ‘Who would believe that?’

Angel’s face was as straight as a copper’s truncheon. ‘The photographs fooled several distinguished people at the time.’ He sniffed, then sighed and said: ‘Just like – I do believe – Lady Blessington, whoever she is, is fooling us right now!’

Scrivens frowned.

‘And it’s getting right up my nose,’ Angel added with his lips tightening. ‘And wasting a lot of police time, when I am up to my neck in it.’

Scrivens scratched his head.

‘Yes, sir. Do you want me to do anything else?’

‘Yes, lad. I want you to go to the burns unit at the hospital, and beg, borrow or steal Simon Spencer’s clothes. Don’t take “no” from the hospital staff. If you have to, point out that this is a murder inquiry. I want everything he was wearing when he was admitted yesterday, including his shoes. Put them carefully in an evidence bag, seal it and take it round to Don Taylor at the SOCO office. Tell him I want him to see if there is any DNA of Harry Harrison anywhere on them. I am particularly looking for traces of his blood. If there is anything, then we’ve potentially got Spencer for murder. All right?’

Scriven’s nodded enthusiastically.

‘Right, sir.’

He went out.

Angel looked at the mountain of post, reports and general bumf piled up in front of him and blew out a long sigh. He began fingering through it. He wasn’t looking for anything specific. He was hoping that he could find some inconsequential big lump that he could drop into the wastepaper basket to make the pile instantly smaller. It was not to be. He came across an envelope from the General Hospital, Bromersley. He quickly slit it open. It was Mac’s postmortem on Harry Harrison aka Harry Henderson. He raced through it and noted that the small clumps of hair found on Harrison’s coat were his own and thought to have been pulled out of his scalp in the course of a fight; there were many bruises to his head and chest areas as the result of a number of blows thought to have been delivered by bare knuckles. All the blood samples taken at the scene also belonged to the victim.

Angel reread the pertinent facts and grunted unhappily. He could see nothing in the report that would immediately indicate the identity of Harrison’s murderer. He nodded as he considered that the victim’s assailant, if it was one person, would almost certainly have very bruised knuckles. He sighed and began pushing the report back into the envelope when there was a knock at the door.

It was Ahmed. He came in waving an evidence envelope. ‘DS Taylor dropped these in, sir. Mrs Prophet’s address book and a Christmas card list. He said you were expecting them.’

Angel took them eagerly. ‘Right, lad. Thank you.’

Ahmed went out.

Angel opened the envelope and tipped the two items out onto the desk. He looked carefully down the Christmas card list, which wasn’t dated, then looked through the address book. It was a small but thick, leather-backed book with many crossings out, additions and alterations. He looked firstly at the B’s for Blessington to no avail, then at the C’s, just in case she had been entered under C for Cora, but there was no entry there either. He leaned back from the desk and shook his head.

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

Angel looked up. He was pleased to see him. ‘Feeling OK.’

‘Bit of a sore throat, sir. All that smoke.’

‘Yeah. Yeah. Sit down.’

‘Have I missed anything, sir?’

‘I was just looking in Alicia Prophet’s address book for an entry for Lady Blessington. Of course, there isn’t one,’ he said glumly. He pointed at the chair and rubbed his chin.

Gawber sat down. He nodded his understanding at Angel’s disappointment.

Angel’s eyes narrowed. ‘This case is really infuriating me, Ron,’ he said, grinding his teeth. ‘We are just not getting anywhere. Let’s kick it about a bit.’

Gawber nodded. That’s what Angel always did when he’d reached an impasse.

‘A so-called friend of the family, Lady Blessington,’ Angel said, ‘with a title, although we now know that’s false, and also there’s no entry of her in Mrs Prophet’s address book or on their Christmas card list, called every month. She collected … or took money from Mrs Prophet, a blind woman … a thousand pounds every month for the last six months.’

‘That sounds like rent or blackmail, sir,’ Gawber said.

Angel nodded to him, then continued. ‘But on Monday last, she arrived with a handgun and murdered her.’

‘Killed the goose that laid the golden egg?’

‘Exactly, but why?’

‘Does Lady B stand to inherit anything, sir?’

‘No Ron, she doesn’t. It all goes to the husband. That’s another one of the things that doesn’t make sense. Lady B hasn’t a motive. If she does, I don’t know what it is. If she was milking Alicia Prophet to the tune of a thousand quid a month, why kill her? The husband says he knew Lady B only slightly. However we know that he took a photograph of her, having tea with his wife on their patio. I have the very photograph.’

He plunged into his pocket and took out the photograph still covered in polythene and placed it on the desk.

‘Anyway, Lady B arrived on Monday afternoon by taxi, having been picked up from the baths on Wells Street. She was seen walking up the garden path and entering the house. About an hour later, she was seen running from the house to the taxi. The taxi driver says he took her back to Well Street Baths where she then disappeared into outer space and has never been seen since.’