Free The Cuckoo Clock Scam by Roger Silverwood Page B

took her hand away, opened her eyes, lifted her head and said, ‘You
know
already, don’t you? He’s told you.’
    Angel stared at her, trying to look expressionless. ‘I beg your pardon,’ he said.
    ‘He was with me, Inspector,’ she said in a small voice.
    Angel nodded. ‘He was not out of your sight, the entire evening? I am particularly concerned about the hour, say, between 9 p.m. and 10 p.m.’
    ‘He was here. Every minute. He was concerned about his daughter, Sonya. He was telling me all about her. He came at teatime and left at …’ Her voice became almost soundless. She looked at the floor and then added, ‘And stayed until about eight o’clock Wednesday morning.’
    ‘Thank you,’ Angel said, rubbing his chin.
    He wrinkled his nose. He took a sidelong look at Miss Freedman. She wasn’t that unattractive. She spoke nicely and sounded well educated. She must have been pretty desperate to want to spend time with Liam Quigley. Angelsqueezed the lobe of his ear between finger and thumb. The alibi was something of a setback. He would have to start looking elsewhere for the murderer of Vincent Doonan. Even though Crisp could say on oath that Doonan had told him that it was Quigley who had shot him, there was nothing and nobody else to support the fact. The CPS simply wouldn’t have sufficient evidence to make a case strong enough to get a conviction.
    After a few moments, in a soft, genteel voice she said, ‘Is Mr Quigley in some kind of trouble, Inspector?’
    ‘He might be, Miss Freedman. He might very well be. I am looking into the murder of Vincent Doonan. Do you happen to know anything about it?’
    She blinked. Her face changed again. ‘Murder?’ Her lips moved silently before she added, ‘Certainly not.’ Her chest heaved several times. ‘And I shouldn’t expect Mr Quigley to have anything to do with … anything like that either.’
    Angel noted her earnestness and nodded in acknowledgement .
    She looked relieved and eventually forced a smile.
    He glanced round. He liked Victorian and Edwardian furniture and almost everything else he saw in the shop. ‘I see the business is for sale?’
    ‘Sadly, yes,’ she said. ‘The property also.’
    Then he heard a short recurring mechanical buzzing sound. It reminded him of the ticking of the detonator of a time bomb he had heard in his training on an explosives course sixteen years ago. It was a noise he had heard several times over the past two or three days. He quickly found the direction from where it came and was looking square on at a cuckoo clock.
    The cuckoo showed eleven times.
    Angel watched the chiming with interested amusement, then he frowned, turned back to Miss Freedman and said, ‘May I suggest that that cuckoo clock is not antique?’
    ‘Indeed it is not, Inspector. It’s brand new. The justification for it being on show in the shop is that it is – as we say – a curio.’
    ‘Yes, indeed,’ he said and he walked up to the clock. On the wall next to it was a neat handwritten ticket that said: ‘Cuckoo Clock £10’.
    He frowned again. Ten pounds? He wondered if a nought had maybe dropped off the end of the ticket.
    ‘Ten pounds? Seems a fair price,’ he said, to verify the cost.
    ‘I think it’s a bargain,’ she said.
    ‘I’ll take it,’ Angel said, pulling out his wallet.
    ‘Thank you, Inspector,’ she said brightly. ‘I’ll get you one in a sealed box.’
    She turned away from the counter and opened a door into a room behind her. Angel noticed that it was stacked from the floor to the ceiling with cardboard boxes of the same shape and design. She reached in, picked up the nearest box and returned to the counter.
    Angel took a £10 note out of his wallet.

CHAPTER 6
----
    A ngel picked up the phone and tapped in a number.
    ‘DS Taylor, SOCO,’ a voice answered.
    ‘Angel here. I hope you’ve finished going over Quigley’s drum.’
    ‘Just making out the report, sir. We found nothing incriminating there.