The Wigmaker Read Online Free

were printed underneath, but he didn’t recognize any of them. He swished his way through more water to a door in the rear wall. He frowned as he looked back at it. He felt a dribble of water on his head; it ran down his face. He moved quickly.
    There was a loo by the back door and a window next to it. A semicircle in the windowpane had been scored round the latch and a piece of glass neatly removed. He nodded knowingly. He had seen it many times before. He wasn’t best pleased. It had professional written all over it, which meant that SOCO were unlikely to lift any usable fingerprints around the point of entry or anywhere else.
    He retraced his steps, kicked his way through the puddles to the bottom of the stairs and made his way up to the first floor, being careful not to touch the handrail. As he reached the top the smell of a mixture of sulphuretted hydrogen and burning sofa hit his nostrils. Bad as it was, he had smelled worse. A man in whites, holding a flashlight and flicking a brush over a metal filing cabinet heard him approach and turned round. Angel didn’t know the man behind the white protective clothes hood and mask.
    ‘Got any gloves?’ he said.
    The man broke off the dusting for prints and reached down to a large white plastic bag by his side. He fished inside and pulled out a thin white packet and handed it to him.
    ‘Ta,’ Angel said. He tore off the top of the packet and took out the gloves. ‘When you get downstairs, you’ll see the rear window has had a segment scored out of it.’
    ‘I’ve seen it, sir. Don’t worry. I won’t miss it. But it’s hard to get prints … everything covered in soot.’
    Angel smiled knowingly. ‘Aye. But if there are any prints, they would be there before the soot fell. You can blow the soot off with something like an ordinary drinking straw. All right?’
    The man’s eyebrows shot up. ‘Oh yes, sir. Yes.’
    The SOCO man seemed surprised at Angel’s comment. There was a short pause and the man added, ‘Come to think of it, I’ve got a pipette in the kit, sir.’
    Angel turned away from him and shook his head. He looked round the room. It was a black, smelly mess. Almost everything had been destroyed. On the wall by the stairs were lots of smoky cuttings of newspaper ads pinned to the wall with Blu Tack. Angel read one. It was four inches, double column. It had a photograph of a young woman with a flamboyant hairstyle trying to look beautiful. The photograph was positioned in the middle of the text. Written across the corner in blue ballpoint pen were the words ‘Brom Chron 23/5.08.’ It read:
    Peter Wolff,
    Wig maker to the stars.
    38 Market Street,
    Bromersley.
    Telephone 12574.
    Wigs, buns, extensions, pieces. All colours and shades, perfectly matched. Hair bought (minimum length 12”). Personal attention. By appointment only.
    Angel wrinkled his nose. The ad seemed a bit terse, but no doubt Mr Wolff knew what he was about. Above the cuttings at eye level was a short shelf, crammed with a dozen or more jars, like he remembered seeing in chemists’ shops. They had elegant stoppers in them and mysterious labels printed in Latin in gold on black. SOCO would look into them, but he surmised they would be dyes, bleaches and that sort of thing. He turned back into the room. Very little else had survived the flames and water. The workbench, the chair where he assumed Wolff had worked threading and cutting the wigs were black wrecks. In a corner away from where the main seat of the fire had been was a tall metal four-drawer filing cabinet. The green paint was blistered in places. He pulled the rubber gloves on to each hand with a satisfying snap, took a pen out of his pocket, placed it behind the handle of the top drawer and pulled the drawer open. There were files neatly labelled and seemingly in alphabetical order. They were untouched by the fire. That was good. He slammed it shut.
    ‘Great. Is Dr Mac up the next flight?’
    ‘With the body, sir,