The Curious Mind of Inspector Angel Read Online Free Page A

business, here,’ he snorted. ‘You’re good at handling the girls, that’s what it is.’
    ‘I’m better than you, that’s a certainty, and I can keep my hands off them as well, which is more than you damned well can.’
    ‘There you go with the wise cracks again.’
    ‘It’s a fact. Merle wouldn’t have stuck with you if she knew the half of it.’
    She had gone too far. His face went scarlet. ‘But she doesn’t know,’ he bawled. ‘That’s the point, you stupid bitch!’
    She stared at him with eyes as cold as stilettos. ‘Thanks to me,’ she stormed. ‘And only thanks to me. And don’t you ever dare call me that again.’
    He licked his lips. He knew he’d pay for that slip of the tongue.
    ‘It’s two million. Cash ,’ she snapped. ‘And this house. And you’re getting off cheap.’
    He brushed a hand through his thinning hair. ‘Can’t be done, Violet. Simply can’t be done.’
    ‘Oh yes, it can,’ she said confidently. ‘One word. One phone call from me and you’ll be in the brown stuff up to here,’ she said, glaring at him and pointing to her own neck.
    His face went the colour of chalk. He ran his hand across his mouth. He realized that she meant what she said. ‘Look, there’s no point in going on like this,’ he said.
    ‘Five years ago, you said you’d find a way, but you never did. You just kept putting it off and off, and now you want out . At my bloody age. And you want out . Huh!’
    ‘Please, Violet. Be reasonable. If it hadn’t been for Merle’s money, we wouldn’t be in the position we are today. It was her money that bought the very first lease on the offices, paid the insurance, the advertising, the photographers.’
    ‘Stop snivelling,’ she stormed. ‘I can’t stand you when you’re snivelling.’
    He began following her round the room. ‘I am not snivelling!’ he roared.
    She stopped, turned and stared at him. ‘I don’t know what the hell I see in you,’ she said. ‘You’re going bald, you can’t write your name on a cheque without specs and you’re useless in bed.’
    He stared across at her, his eyes the colour of blood.
    ‘This house and two million quid,’ she shouted. ‘And I’m not waiting for ever!’
     
    DI Angel and Mary Angel lived three miles out of the centre of Bromersley, on the Forest Hill Estate. On the morning of Monday, 19 February, Mary Angel was coming into town on the bus to do some shopping and was sitting next to the window immediately behind the driver. The bus had to stop at some temporary traffic lights because of road works at the bottom of Creeford Road. The Northern Gas company had a van standing in the road next to a hole in the pavement surrounded by traffic cones.
    As the bus stood there, Mary Angel was uniquely positioned to see up a narrow alleyway. She observed a girl on her stomach across the top of the wall, her long, thin legs hanging down. She had plenty of black hair, was wearing a raincoat, long socks and leather shoes. Mary saw her jump down to the narrow footpath, land badly and fall backwards. At the same time, something shiny dropped among the sprinkling of weeds on the edge of the path. The girl didn’t seem to notice. She was more concerned with her inelegant fall. She quickly scrambled to her feet, shook her leg and then put her weight on the ankle to try it out. It seemed all right. She looked round, saw the bus and the faces at the windows, turned away and ran quickly away down the alley out of sight.
    The traffic lights changed to green and the bus pulled away.
    Mary wondered what the girl had been up to. The wall she had come over must have been the perimeter of the garden of the end house on Creeford Road. It was not the usual way for a visitor to leave a house. She couldn’t ignore it, her husband being an inspector in the local constabulary. The girl had looked very furtive; her method of leaving the premises left Mary in no doubt that she had been up to something dishonest, and she was