by Mike Ripley
‘Such as?’ he sneered.
‘Like I’m the one driving, and you’re not wearing a seat belt.’
We left the van roughly where we’d picked it up and reclaimed Armstrong.
Tigger still wanted to go to the Ritz even though Big Ben showed it was 2.00 am as we recrossed the river.
I dropped him on Piccadilly near Green Park tube station. ‘I can’t tempt you, then?’ he beamed as he climbed out of Armstrong on the driver’s side.
‘No way.’
I should have said ‘Take care’ or something similar but I didn’t. Over towards Berkeley Square, a car alarm went off, and when I looked again, Piccadilly was empty and Tigger had disappeared.
Chapter Six
‘Angel?’
‘Yeah?’
‘Are you still busy?’ Fenella’s pleading was getting close to a whine by now.
‘You know I’m busy every Sunday afternoon, Fenella.’ In this case, reading a second-hand Sunday newspaper someone had left down the pub at lunchtime.
‘I’ve finished the washing up,’ she said from the doorway of the kitchenette. ‘And I’ve cleaned all the surfaces and decrusted Springsteen’s dish.’
That was odd. I hadn’t heard her using a flame-thrower.
‘If you move the meat, I’ll clean out the fridge for you.’
She was desperate and I couldn’t stand it any more. ‘Okay,’ I said, folding the newspaper and taking my socks off the coffee table, ‘what do you want?’
‘Just some advice, really.’
She came into the room and sat primly on the chair farthest from me.
‘Okay, the doctor is in and the meter running. Tell me where it hurts.’
She looked at me blankly, shook her head slightly and took a deep breath.
‘Do you need a licence to drive a caravan?’
It was my turn to ring up the ‘Vacant’ sign. ‘Er ... you mean a camper?’
‘No, a caravan, a proper caravan. You know, a gypsy caravan – a Romany caravan – sort of upside-down horseshoe shape with a chimney with a triangle on top and a split door you can lean over and–’
‘Little wooden steps at the back,’ I offered without enthusiasm.
‘That’s it!’ she squealed. ‘And my ... a little pony to pull it, with a long mane and white socks, which we could ride at the weekends.’
‘You and Lisabeth, huh?’
She nodded, her face flushed.
‘You’re gonna need a bigger horse. Maybe a Shire or a Suffolk Punch.’ Her face said she ought to be taking this in, maybe making notes.
‘This is your latest, is it? Going native and joining the New Age travellers in the West Country.’
‘That’s right, we need a change of life, not just lifestyle.’
I wondered where she’d read that.
‘I never knew you were into drugs and trespassing and scrounging social security hand-outs. I would have said that went against everything the Binkworthy family stood for.’
Fenella stood up and stamped a foot. I hoped it wasn’t a signal to Lisabeth in the flat below.
‘Mr Angel, you are the last person I would have expected to hear that from. Just because the newspapers say things like that doesn’t mean it’s true. I’m talking about free spirits who can’t and won’t be tied down by an uncaring, materialistic society. I thought you would have understood.’
‘Okay, calm down. Does Lisabeth know about this?’
‘No, not yet.’ She sat down again and licked her fingers before rubbing cat hair off her trousers. ‘It was going to be a surprise.’
Knowing Lisabeth’s aversion to Springsteen, the idea of her living with anything bigger, especially something that could produce manure on a commercial scale, would certainly be a surprise.
‘You’re really set on moving out, aren’t you?’
‘Yes, we are. London is bad for the inner self. Doogie and Miranda are moving north, we’re going west.’
‘Doogie’s going to work for some rich capitalists in Scotland and will probably start a salmon rustling business on the side. There’s a difference.’
‘Well, we’re set on it because we want to find ourselves before the millennium.’
She fingered something hanging around her throat. It looked like a velvet spell-pouch, but knowing how sensitive her skin was, it probably contained dried parsley or basil from Sainsbury’s.
‘Fine, whatever you say. I’m convinced I’m going to be the only one left in London throwing a New Year’s Eve party in 1999.’
‘That won’t worry us,’ Fenella said primly. ‘Lisabeth hates parties.’
‘I didn’t know she liked horses.’
‘She will, she’s just not experienced them before.’
Nor they her.
‘Then you’re on your own, kid, but I think you do need a licence,’ I lied, neither knowing nor caring if you did or not.
‘You mean a driving test?’
‘That’s the way most people get them. But if you get one, you might as well get a car or a van or a camper. That might go down better with Lisabeth.’
Her face brightened at that.
‘You’re right. She’d like it if I could drive her around.’ Then came the frown. ‘But you have to have lessons, don’t you?’
‘Lots.’
She thought about this.
‘Would you teach me?’
‘Er ... I ... it’s never ...’
‘I’d pay. Whatever the going rate is.’
Was I that desperate?
‘I don’t know what the hourly rate is, but I’ll find out – leave that to me.’
‘And Lisabeth mustn’t know,’ she whispered.
‘That could be difficult, and I don’t know how I could deceive her like that. It wouldn’t be right.’ It was my turn to act the primp.
Fenella’s eyes lit up with an idea.
‘If you wanted things doing round the flat, you know, the washing-up and cleaning and things, I’d help out when she wasn’t around.’
‘Let me think about it,’ I said, trying to figure out where to get a car. There was no way I was trusting her with Armstrong.
‘I won’t do baths, though.’
‘What?’ I said vaguely, trying to work out how long I could spin this out.
‘I don’t like cleaning out baths.’
‘Oh, don’t worry about the bath,’ I said dismissively. ‘That doesn’t need cleaning, it has water in it nearly every day.’ I ducked as she flung a cushion at my head.
‘‘Ere, Angel, are you Oscar Seven?’
I looked up from the crossword of a Daily Telegraph that my one and only job of the morning had left in the back of Armstrong.
‘You know I am; we work for the same company.’
The Beast from the East creaked his leathers as he levered off the top of his carton of coffee. He had been sitting opposite me in the Baker Street McDonald’s for a good five minutes (or the time taken to ingest two Egg McMuffins, whichever is longer) before speaking. I had only nodded when he sat down, because I was busy filling in the answer to three down – ‘primitive’ – which had just come to me in a flash.
‘Yer, well, they were after you on the radio.’
I waited. And waited. Could the answer to eight across really be ‘dickhead’?
‘When was this exactly?’
‘As I was parking the bike,’ he said.
Next to your brain; but I didn’t say it.
‘Got your radio with you?’
‘Nope.’
‘Thanks. Finish that for me.’ I pushed the crossword at him and stood up.
Armstrong was parked around the corner on Porter Street, opposite the London office of the Fulbright Commission. I gave their front door a longing look and wondered if t
hey took charity cases straight off the street.
I thumped the tinny Korean radio and called in to Dispatch.
‘My God, Oscar Seven’s alive and answering. Wonders never cease.’
‘Yeah, yeah, yeah. Got anything for me?’
‘A personal request,’ said Dispatch as if it hurt him. ‘Job out at Stratford.’
‘Stratford? That’s on my doorstep. I could have stayed in bed this morning.’
‘From your response time, I thought you had.’
‘Oh, very quick. Not funny, but very quick.’
‘Count your blessings, Oscar Seven. The customer is willing to wait. Specific request for Roy in the black cab to do a few deliveries around the East End. I offered any amount of better drivers but he insisted on you.’
‘Who did?’
‘Very insistent he was. Only Roy in the black cab would do.’
‘Who? Where? Who asked for Roy?’
‘Said he thought your call sign might be “Angel” but I said we wouldn’t have such a daft call sign over the airwaves …’
‘Look, do I get an address or do I have to wait for the next eclipse?’
‘Didn’t I mention it? H B Builders, Navigation Road Industrial Estate, Stratford Marsh. Ask for a Mr Bert. That’s B for Bastard, E for Erection, R for Rectum and T for …’
‘Tosser,’ I said helpfully.
Of course, it was Bert, as in Umberto. That nice Mr Bassotti, who was probably the ‘B’ in H B Builders, who gave total strangers envelopes of money to fly-tip rubbish across our fair capital city because the reformed, privatised local councils didn’t want to know or charged for the honour of taking it away.
As I threaded my way eastwards to Stratford Marsh, I thought the special request for me meant another Wages of Fear job driving dangerous – well, certainly dodgy – cargoes across the badlands. In Wages of Fear, though, it was nitroglycerine falling off the back of the lorry. Tigger and I had been carrying nothing more dangerous than ... whatever it had been we were carrying. Paint. It had probably been old paint cans, I told myself. They had been fairly light as Tigger had carried two sacks at a time on some occasions. And empty paint cans were a bugger to get rid of, weren’t they? Probably old stock and with a higher-than-permitted level of lead.
Something like that.
Yeah, I decided, it had been old paint cans, maybe even nicked paint originally. I remembered working a summer in a small fishing village near Youghal in County Cork and the local fish cannery treated itself to a new light blue paint job, all good weather-resistant, quality stuff. By the end of August every fishing boat for five harbours up the coast was light blue all of a sudden.
That sort of thing always happens, and builders use a lot of paint. Then again, builders dig a lot of holes, and holes are good places to drop rubbish in. But where was the percentage in worrying? Unless we had actually been spreading toxic or nuclear waste, my conscience would handle it; once I got around to asking it.
As I turned Armstrong into Navigation Road, I saw the sign for H B Builders leading into a yard.
Most small-time building contractors tend to be Something & Son, even though it rarely lasts a full generation. I would have thought Bassotti & Sons would have been more popular given his Italian roots, though he had been pretty lukewarm about them when I’d first met him in the pub. He must be the only Italian male in London not pleased to have Italian League soccer on TV now.
Or maybe he was being practical, thinking who would trust an Italian builder. All the potential jokes about leanings in Pisa and the Colosseum not being finished yet would be enough to piss off anyone. Maybe the ‘H’ in H B stood for ‘Hubert’ to distance his Italian name even further. Maybe he didn’t have any sons. Maybe I should stop talking to myself.
The first person I saw as I bounced Armstrong into the yard was Bassotti, and he looked as out of place there as he had in the bar of the Grapes.
He was standing straddle-legged across a rut of mud shouting instructions to the driver of a JCB mechanical digger. The JCB driver kept revving the engine and inching forward, sending up a fine spray that Bassotti was unaware of, the hem of his £450 grey-green Jaeger overcoat gradually turning brown.
Even from inside Armstrong I could see that the weaselfaced driver was taking the rise out of Mr B, as he nodded and kept saying ‘Yes, yes, right away’ and all the time blinking rapidly. Bassotti seemed unaware of the imitation, or maybe he was used to it.
He noticed me and held out a hand, palm up like a cop, then waved me over to the other side of the yard. He held up one finger, pointed it at me and then pointed to a prefabricated site office ten yards away. Just in case I got lost, the words SITE OFFICE had been stencilled on the hardboard door.
As I parked Armstrong, I watched in the mirror as the JCB driver leaned out of his cab and blinked Bassotti straight in the eyes. Then he nodded in the universal ‘Sure, sure, ‘course I’ll do it’ way and pulled away. Bassotti turned, picking his footsteps carefully, and walked towards the office. Weasel-features in the cab of the JCB stuck a hand out and gave the finger gesture to Bassotti’s back.
The yard was splattered with builder’s junk. There were two piles of old bricks that needed cleaning up and pallets of new ones that were worth only half as much as the ‘seconds’, which were what the trendy home-improver went for. Similarly there were piles of old roofing tiles that were worth more in Hampstead than the houses they had once roofed in Shoreditch. There were two small flat-back lorries with ‘H B Builders’ on the front in faded lettering, as well as the odd pile of sharp sand and a pallet of bags of cement under a flapping plastic sheet. All seemingly legit builder’s stuff.
The radio crackled as I made to get out. ‘Oscar Seven, you POB yet?’
‘‘Nother ten minutes at least, Dispatch. The traffic is fucking awful. That’s F for–’
‘Thank you, Oscar Seven, sod off and out.’
I hoped that would keep Dispatch off my back for a while. I had little hope that Bassotti wanted me to do a driving job for him, or at least not a kosher one and not in a minicab. I would have to think of a way to persuade Dispatch that I wasn’t pocketing Bert’s cash and understating the job. That’s why they hated cash customers. With account jobs they never had to check on us, and the only tips we were supposed to get were a share in any waiting time the client signed for.
My client was standing behind a desk that looked as if it had been bought second-hand from some defunct government office; say the Ministry of Food circa 1948. There were a telephone and answerphone on the desktop and three plastic filing trays overflowing with invoices. Bassotti had his right foot up on the desk and was wiping mud off a black leather brogue with a tissue. At least the shoes were Italian.
‘That Sammy shouldn’t be driving a supermarket trolley.’ He blinked down at his shoe, spat on the tissue and wiped some more. The Jaeger overcoat hung on a wall peg behind him, dripping mud.
‘You wanted a cab?’ I prompted him.
‘Not exactly.’ He switched feet and reached into his pocket for another tissue. ‘Kelly!’
The hardboard door to the other half of the site office opened so quickly, Kelly must have been standing behind it.
She was about 18 and living proof that you could walk, chew gum and live in Essex. She wore a purple crossover top and mauve hot pants, with red tights underneath. She padded across the floor in a pair of Doc Martens’ a policeman would have been proud of. She gave me the twice over and maybe she liked what she saw. She didn’t actually spit at me.
‘Look what that little turd Sammy’s done.’
‘Get rid of ‘im, Mr B. You know ‘is sort’s no good. Don’t know why we have to put up with ‘im.’
Bassotti looked at her and blinked rapidly. ‘Well, nobody’s asking you, so give your brain a rest. Go get some coffee.’
Kelly chewed some more. She
was probably rehearsing a sentence.
‘How does yer visitor like it?’ she asked, moving the weight on her hips just in case I hadn’t got the message.
‘Not him, you.’ He went back to cleaning his shoe. ‘Pretend it’s your birthday. Go have a cappuccino and a sticky bun. Treat yourself out of petty cash, like you usually do.’
‘I’ve had my break,’ she moaned.
‘Take another.’
‘Well, if I don’t finish those quotations by six o’clock, I’m not stopping late.’ Her voice whined up a couple of sharps.
So she finished work at six. Subtle as a brick. Still, I filed the information away on the gift-horse principle and, to be fair, Kelly was no horse.
‘Kelly,’ Bert said patiently, ‘don’t make it two million and one unemployed, huh?’
‘If you say so, Mr B.’
She flounced back into her office and put on a white trenchcoat, leaving the door open so I could get a last glimpse. Then a door slammed and Bassotti took his shoe off his desk.
‘She’ll be gone for an hour at least. Five minutes to get to the café on the corner, five to have a coffee and ten to get poked in the pantry by Luigi or Paulo or whoever’s on duty.’
‘Allowing five minutes to get back, what does she do with the other half-hour?’
‘Puts her make-up back on. Bloody women. Bloody staff. Can’t get ‘em these days, and when you do, can’t trust ‘em.’
I held out my arms.
‘Ring us – we turn up. What’s the job?’
Bert sat down on the one chair in the office, pushed his spectacles back on his face and blinked rapidly at me. I tried to work it out but it seemed to bear no relation to the speed at which he spoke.
‘Well, I don’t need a minicab for a start.’
‘You ordered one and I’m here.’
‘Okay, an’ I’ll pay. Think of a job.’
‘Parcel delivery to EC1?’
‘That’ll do. How much?’
‘Thirty quid.’
‘Bloody hell. All right.’ He took three ten-pound notes from his wallet. ‘I bet ten of that doesn’t get to the company.’