Free The Fruit Gum Murders by Roger Silverwood Page B

terms with it. Angel then thanked the two patrolmen and instructed them to report back to their team leader.
    He still had Johnson’s mobile phone in his hand, so on his way back to his office he called in at the CID room and went across to Ahmed’s desk.
    â€˜Check that off, Ahmed, ASAP. It belongs to Thomas Johnson. I’ve just taken it from his pocket. He’s in the cells.’
    â€˜Right, sir,’ Ahmed said.
    Angel then returned to his own office, where he phoned and instructed Don Taylor to send a team of SOCO to search Johnson’s home, 22 Sebastopol Terrace, for the usual things: drugs, firearms, pornography, excesses of jewellery, gold, silver, cash and items reported stolen, and to report back to him ASAP.
    As he replaced the phone, it began to ring. He reached out for it. It was DS Flora Carter.
    â€˜I am still going through that CCTV, sir, and I have just come across that man again … leaving the hotel.’
    â€˜Thomas Johnson, Flora?’
    â€˜Oh, you found him?’ she said brightly.
    â€˜Great stuff, Flora. What time did he leave?’
    â€˜9.15, sir.’
    â€˜Hmm. He arrived at 8.30 and left at 9.15. That would have given him plenty of time. Tell me, Flora, was Johnson carrying anything, like a bag?’
    â€˜No, sir.’ She frowned.
    The fact that he wasn’t carrying anything worried him.
    â€˜I’m wondering, Flora,’ he said. ‘How would he manage to dispose of the two glasses and the bottle? We know they were in Robinson’s room at the time of the murder, and that they are not there now.’
    â€˜Can’t think, sir. Not just like that.’
    â€˜Right, Flora. Carry on.’
    He returned the phone to its cradle.
    He couldn’t get the matter of the disposing of the glasses and the bottle out of his mind. He leaned back in the swivel chair and looked up at the ceiling. He rubbed the lobe of his ear between finger and thumb. Then it came to him in a flash. Johnson could simply have emptied the glasses and the bottle down the sink, rinsed them out, taken them with him in the lift to the ground floor, and then on his way out he could have dumped them almost anywhere on the floor, windowsill or any convenient ledge, and the busy hotel or bar staff would have collected them, and put the glasses in the washer and the empty bottle in the waste or the returns without hardly thinking about it.
    He didn’t know what the glasses or the bottle looked like precisely, he only knew the marks they made standing on a surface. Therefore he couldn’t see much point in trying to see if any of the items could be located in such a large and busy hotel like the Feathers where there must be thousands of drinking glasses and hundreds of wine bottles. So that was decided upon.
    All he had to do now was find a motive. Thomas Johnson’s criminal speciality was extracting money by deception with menaces and assault, so one would naturally expect his alcohol-sodden brain to use the same modus operandi in his dealings with Norman Robinson. Maybe he simply tried to terrorize the poor man into parting with whatever money he had? Angel expected it might all be uncovered in the course of his further investigations.
    The phone rang.
    He leaned forward in the chair and reached out for it. ‘Angel?’
    â€˜This is PC Tomelty at reception, sir. Sorry to bother you, but we’ve got a small crowd of men … newspaper reporters … there’s five of them. They’ve been asking for you and they’re getting difficult and noisy. Will you see them, or shall I report it to the duty sergeant and—’
    â€˜I’ll see them,’ Angel said. ‘And be nice to them, Tomelty. You don’t want to give the station a bad name. Is the interview room up there empty?’
    â€˜Yes, sir.’
    â€˜Right. Tell them I’m coming straightaway and show them in there.’
    â€˜Right, sir,’ Tomelty said.
    Angel