Angel’s knuckles tightened. ‘Don’t tell me the fire service have been crawling all over the site?’

‘Yes, sir.’

He wrinkled his nose. ‘What’s the state of the fire now, lad?’

‘It’s out, sir. The fire service are just damping down.’

‘Right. When it’s safe, get them off the site, mark it out and treat it as a crime scene. And stay there. I’ll be with you in about fifteen minutes.’

‘You’ll need your wellies, sir.’

CHAPTER FOURTEEN

Angel soon found the country road behind the farm at Skiptonthorpe. He saw the police car with two policemen inside at the side of the road. He drove up and parked behind it.

And he certainly did need his wellies. The rain had now ceased but it had been a very heavy downpour.

He clocked the gap between some bushes where the Mercedes had been driven ten yards off the road onto the edge of a ploughed field, dumped and ignited. A lager can, several newspapers and magazines had been dumped close by and were now drenched and part trodden into the mud.

There was a smell of burning rubber and petrol.

He could see that the car’s rear window and windscreen had been smashed, most of the upholstery and carpeting burned out, and all the internal surfaces and controls were black, but the metal parts, the wheels and the tyres were intact.

He squelched precariously at a careful distance of about twenty feet from the car looking down at the sodden earth.

Two policemen came up to him wearing high-visibility yellow coats and flat hats.

‘Good evening, sir. Good evening, sir.’

Angel looked up from the muddy field, his lips tightened back against his teeth. ‘Look at all those footprints. You’ve had a bigger crowd here than there was at Reggie Kray’s funeral!’

The two policeman exchanged glances but said nothing.

‘I want you to mark out this area with DO NOT CROSS LINE tape, at a minimum of fifteen feet from the car and this break in the bushes. I want to preserve every track in the mud from around the car and up to the road.’

‘Right, sir.’

‘When you’ve done that, I shall want some illumination. It’ll be dark in a few hours. I expect to be here all night. I shall want one of you to go to the stores and get a lighting kit and generator.’

They dashed off and opened the boot of their car.

Angel dug his hand into his pocket, pulled out his mobile and tapped in a number. ‘Is that the National Crime and Operations Faculty? I want to call on your specialist to advise on motor vehicle tracks, please. It’s very urgent.’

It was 2100 hours and the section of the field and the break in the bushes had been marked out with DO NOT CROSS tape attached to stakes in the ground. The road was full of activity and thronged with police vehicles. Angel had requested more uniform to secure the site and manage the few interested members of the public occasionally rubbernecking as they passed. SOCO had arrived and also an HGV with low loader to transport the car away. Angel was with a DI Ince and a photographer from the NCOF who were working on pads on their knees making plaster casts and taking measurements with a steel tape.

It was going to be a busy night.

‘Two coffees, Ahmed. Smartish.’

‘Right, sir,’ he said and went out of the office.

Angel looked up Gawber, rubbed his scratchy chin, sniffed and said, ‘They’ve ditched the only lead we had, Ron. We had the number, colour and make of their car. Now I have no idea where they are and we have absolutely nothing to go on!’

‘You brought the NCOF in, sir?’

‘Aye. I’m clutching at straws, Ron. I’m hoping they can, maybe, save the day by reading something from the tyre tracks. There were some pretty sharp outlines in the mud.’

‘Yes. And they’ve turned nothing up?’

Angel’s miserable face told him that they had not. ‘It’s early days.’

‘Has SOCO brought the Merc back here, sir?’

‘No. It’s been taken to Wetherby. I wanted the boys in the lab to go over it. They might turn up something. There’s also a lager can and some papers and magazines that were littering up the scene. They might help. Don Taylor’s working on them now.’

Ahmed came in with two beakers on a tin tray. They reached out and helped themselves.

‘Ta, lad,’ Angel said. ‘Now, nip down to SOCO and ask DS Taylor if he’s anywhere with that lager can and those papers I brought in.’

Ahmed nodded and went out.

The phone rang. Angel picked up the receiver. It was Harker.

‘There’s something in the post. I want you up here,’ he growled. There was a loud click and the line went dead.

Angel pulled a face as if he needed a tooth pulling. He turned to Gawber. ‘It’s the super. I’ve got to go.’

He trudged up the corridor and knocked on the door.

‘Come in,’ Harker bawled. He was sitting at his desk, head down reading.

Angel closed the door.

Eventually Harker looked up, stared at him, blinked, scratched his head and said, ‘You look a right mess. I thought it was Bill Oddie dressed up for a funeral.’

‘I have been up all night, sir. I haven’t been home yet.’

‘Yes. I heard. It was only a car fire, wasn’t it? Did they really need you there to turn the hose on,’ he said sarcastically.

‘It’s the Glazer gang’s Mercedes,’ Angel replied strongly. ‘They’ve obviously changed over vehicles there. I am trying to find out what they’ve changed to, and where they are now.’

‘I know. I know, but it’s nowt to do with you, lad. I haven’t authorized it. It’s not your case.’

‘It might be, sir. Could be Glazer, or one of his gang, who murdered Harry Harrison.’

‘I thought that that was down to Spencer.’

Angel licked his lips. ‘It could still be him. I’m waiting for some forensic from SOCO. That should settle it.’

Harker sniffed.

‘Come on, lad, admit it,’ he said expansively. ‘Admit it. You’re in the dark, aren’t you? You’re just fishing. Harrison was well known among the crooked fraternity. It could be anyone of a thousand villains who might have heard of the big money he’d got hold off.’

‘No, sir. I’m not fishing,’ Angel replied resolutely. ‘There’s a reasonable bet it’s Glazer or Spencer.’

Harker shook his small, grotesque, gargoyle-like, misshapen head.

‘Well, press on with it, then. Time is money. I know you have a personal reason for trying to get Eddie Glazer back behind bars. I know he gave your pride a proper singeing, but don’t let that cloud your judgement,’ he said waving a sheet of paper he was holding. ‘But I didn’t call you in to talk about your pride. It’s about this.’

‘What is it,’ Angel said, holding out his hand.

Harker didn’t pass it to him. ‘It’s a bill from a Mrs Reid for damage to a door and door jamb, lifting of floorboards, scratching of paintwork … it goes on. Four hundred pounds. Four hundred pounds! It’s hardly a legitimate charge against this department. Who’s going to pay for that?’

‘That would be damage the Glazers did, searching Harrison’s flat. It would be down to them!’

‘Can’t charge it to them,’ Harker snapped. ‘They’re not here. We don’t know where they are. You just said so. You let them get away. They just slipped through your fingers.’

Angel’s eyes flashed. ‘They were heavily armed.’

‘So were you.’

‘You know the situation, it made attack on our part impossible. It would have been against standing orders. There could have been a bloodbath.’

‘I only know what you tell me in your reports, which I know are sometimes heavily edited.’

Angel’s jaw tightened. He pursed his lips. He breathed in and out a couple of times. This argument was going nowhere; he refused to let Harker wind him up any further. ‘If you don’t want me for anything else, sir, I’d like to go home and get tidied up.’

‘Yes. You’d better. Got to maintain standards.’