by Mike Ripley
‘No, you’re wrong there,’ I said confidently. Fifteen wouldn’t. ‘Now what?’ I asked as I palmed the cash.
‘Your friend Tigger,’ he said, blinking too fast to count.
‘No particular friend of mine,’ I said.
‘Don’t say you don’t know ‘im.’
‘Oh, I know him. You know I know him. Just not in the Biblical sense.’
That fazed him. He didn’t blink for nearly a second.
‘Well, he’s done a runner.’
He waited for a reaction. I blinked at him for a change.
‘So?’
‘So he’s done a runner with the Transit you were driving on Friday night.’
I shook my head in disbelief.
‘‘Ang on a minute, Tigger can’t drive.’
‘So he said,’ Bert blinked. ‘But I never believed him. Did you? Everybody can drive.’
‘No they can’t,’ I said. ‘Lots of people don’t drive, especially in London. If they haven’t learned before they come here, the insurance alone puts them off.’
Bassotti blinked down at his shoes.
‘Whatever; the little pillock never brought the keys back like he should have. I’d hate to have to report it stolen. I mean, who knows whose dabs are on it?’
‘Dabs? C’mon, Bert, nobody’s talked like that since the Job stopped wearing hats indoors.’
He did a double-take or, given his electric eyelids, a single-take.
‘The Job – the police,’ I said calmly. ‘The people you are not going to go to in case they ask what was in the back of the van. And anyway, you’ll not find a print of mine on there – finger, palm, foot or genetic.’
Bassotti pushed his spectacles back into his face again.
‘So you’ll help me find him then.’
‘Did I say that? That’s funny, I didn’t feel my lips move.’
‘How much?’
‘There goes that echo again. I don’t remember saying anything about helping you. If I remember right, I distinctly said it was the duty of every honest citizen to report a crime.’
‘I’ll give you a hundred if you find him in the next coupla days.’
‘Bert – call the cops. Report the van was nicked sometime Friday. They’ll assume whoever did it will have done the required cosmetic surgery by now and they won’t break sweat. Get a log number off them to prove you’ve reported it and get on the phone to the insurance company. That’s what normal people do.’
‘Can’t do that,’ he said sullenly.
‘Why not?’
‘Not bleedin’ insured, was it? I’ll make it two-fifty if you can turn him up by Friday.’
‘For two-fifty you could get somebody to lift you another van. There’s a recession on, you know.’
He placed his hands palms down on the desktop.
‘Look, I’m asking nicely. You’ve earned a few quid in the last few weeks and so has that little shitbag. Now if he’s decided to play silly buggers, by my way of thinking you should help me find him – you and him being mates as it were.’
‘Mates? What’s all this mates shit?’
‘Blood brothers you are, to hear him talk.’
‘You’re winding me up.’
‘No, straight up. Angel this, Angel that. Two sides of the same coin, he said. He also said you were an ace driver and knew your way around. Somebody more suspicious than me might even think you put him up to it.’
‘Now wait a minute. If I had, would I be daft enough to come here?’
‘Maybe, maybe not. Some people have balls of brass.’
‘I’ve had enough of this.’
I turned away from him as if disgusted and appalled at his suggestion. In fact I was checking the yard and the distance to Armstrong. There were no hod-carrying heavies blocking my escape route, that was one thing. And I wasn’t scared of Bassotti himself. But then, Kelly might reappear at any time and I didn’t fancy a fair fight with her. I’d already assessed that my best chance with her was coming in out of the sun swinging a sockful of sand.
‘I’ll make it a grand,’ said Bert, and there was a nervousness in his voice.
He needed me more than I needed him. Thing was, did I need a grand?
‘Hundred up front for diesel money,’ I said immediately. He reached for his wallet again.
‘By Friday, remember,’ he said, counting out five twenties.
‘Why Friday?’
‘Never you mind. Just find Tigger for me.’
‘All right, all right. I’ll ask around and see if I can get your van back.’ I swooped on the cash. ‘But this is non-returnable – okay?’
‘Just find Tigger. I’ll get the van back.’
‘I’ll try, but it won’t be easy. Tigger doesn’t stay long in one place.’
‘Tell me something I don’t know, heh?’
He rummaged in one of the in-trays until he found a sheet of notepaper. He ripped the top two inches off it and handed it to me. It was a letterhead for H B Builders with the address and phone number and a much-photocopied logo of a lighthouse within two circles and the legend ‘Registered House Builder’.
‘Ring me any time. Leave a message if I’m not here. Night or day. Any time. Just tell him I want a chat. Don’t say anything about the van.’
‘Finding him will be the problem,’ I said.
Chapter Seven
So where do you start to look for someone who doesn’t live anywhere or work anywhere and who probably doesn’t want to be found? I didn’t know; but I thought I knew a man who did.
I blagged Dispatch into thinking I was wasting my own diesel delivering parcels in the City for H B Builders for only £15 cash. The other £15 wasn’t much, but it was tax free and in the pocket. Pocket in question: mine.
By noon I was back in Baker Street (‘Sorry, Dispatch, there’s something wrong with my radio. Better try another frequency. That’s F for …’) looking for Crimson. Even if he didn’t know Tigger’s whereabouts, he had introduced me to him and so, in my book, he was down for a share of the problem. I’ve always hated the oil-slick public relations credo, ‘If you ain’t part of the solution, you’re part of the problem’. According to my rules of life, if you ain’t in my solution, it’s your problem.
Unfortunately, Plan A failed at the off because Crimson was nowhere around. He wasn’t in the McDonald’s, he wasn’t in the Burger King across the street. He wasn’t round the corner sitting on a bike in Porter Street. And there was nobody from his dispatch outfit I could ask. Maybe they were all out on jobs and maybe I was working for the wrong firm.
I realised I was doing something wrong because although Crimson wasn’t on Porter Street, the Beast from the East was. Twice in one day. I was going to have to start helping old ladies across the street, though the trouble with that these days is they think you’re trying to mug them and they get the mace spray out.
‘Wotcher, Angel. Skiving again?’ he greeted me, parking his bike.
‘Looking for somebody,’ I said, sliding past him towards Armstrong.
‘I heard you on the radio,’ he said smugly, taking his helmet off. I hadn’t noticed his single swastika earring before. ‘Oh yeah? Can’t stop. Might have a job on.’
‘Dispatch reckons you have.’
I turned to face him. He placed his helmet in his crotch on the petrol tank and began to peel off his gauntlets.
‘They think you’re moonlighting – running jobs and not telling them. Asked me to let them know if I saw yer. ‘Course I won’t. No skin off my nose, what you’re up to, though I could always use a few ready notes if there’s something going down …’
Blackmail, from the Beast. I had no idea he had it in him.
He went up a notch in my estimation, but it would take a whole turn of the ratchet to get him as high as subhuman.
‘You mean the black bastard?’
‘Well …’
‘The black bastard with the poofy friend, the one who can’t stand still for two seconds?’
‘Yeah, that’s right, the–’
‘Ain’t seen him for weeks. Not that I’d give ‘im the time of day.’
‘Oh, well, in that case …’
‘‘Course you could ask ‘is bum chum. He’s always hanging around the toilets at Baker Street with the other trouser bandits, looking for an easy mark among the dirty raincoat brigade.’
‘You mean the one who can’t stand still?’
‘Yeah, ‘im. Me and my mates ‘ave our eye on him. One of these days we’ll pay a call round there and sort out him and his homo friends. It’s probably down to them, all these rapes on the tube, you know.’
There had indeed been a number of male rapes on the Underground that year. Not that it was unheard of, just it had been reported in the newspapers. For the Beast and his friends it had added to the homophobic hysteria that had been regenerated by some notable AIDS-related deaths in the showbiz world. Not, I imagined, that the Beast and his mates ever needed much of an excuse, but the incidents on the Underground had grown into folk legend status. Everyone had a Northern Line horror story, just like at one time, everybody knew the actual family who strapped a dead grandmother to the roof of the car as they went on holiday.
He looked at me and mistook the expression on my face for impressed respect. Perhaps he’d never seen gobsmacked disbelief before.
‘He hangs around the gents near Platform Five every evening, ‘bout rush hour. Got a mate known as Steel Rule. That says it all, don’t it?’
‘Do it? Does it?’ I stammered.
‘Notorious, ‘e is,’ said the Beast, showing he knew some long words. ‘Smirnoff’ was another one.
‘Who is?’
‘Steel Rule. He has one of those expanding metal rules that builders use. Has it on his belt and he stands in the next stall to you and measures what you’ve got.’
‘You’re dreaming this.’ He glared at me, so I softened it and cursed myself for a coward. ‘Surely you’re winding me up.’
‘No way. On my mother’s heart.’
There he went, bragging again. If his mum had a heart she would have strangled him at birth.
‘So you’ve seen this guy Steel Rule with Crimson?’
He had to think about this.
‘No, not exactly. But I’ve seen him with Crimson’s poofy mate loads a times, laughing and poncing about.’
‘So you’ve been there, have you? I mean, you’ve used the toilets yourself, have you?’
‘Only to do a recce. Like I said, me and my mates will pay ‘em a visit one Saturday night and sort them out. Bloody perverts. Fancy a burger?’
‘Not now. I’ll catch you later.’
He shrugged, swung a leg off his bike and stomped around the corner towards McDonald’s.
I looked at the Beast’s shining Kawasaki and wondered what the penalty was for topping up the fuel tank with something unleaded but definitely not petrol.
And in public.
I stopped on Wigmore Street at a sandwich bar I knew, leaving Armstrong on double yellow lines.
It was only 12.30 but I had a choice of ‘returns’ at half-price. Most of the sandwich places in the West End operated the same system these days. They sent a kid out on a reproduction 1920s butcher’s bike to tour the neighbourhood offices with samples of their sandwiches and salads. They carried one of everything and took orders around 11.00 am, but their samples had to be returned to the kitchen for disposal, otherwise the health inspectors got shirty. The bar wasn’t supposed to sell them, not after they’d been out in the traffic fumes and handled by the oiks in various accounts departments. But they made an exception for cab drivers and the money, even at half-price, didn’t go through the cash register.
I took a scrambled egg and smoked salmon on brown and ate as I drove out to Barking to see Duncan the Drunken.
There were two reasons for risking a visit to Duncan’s den. As probably the best car mechanic in the world, he had access to a variety of vehicles, and if anyone was going to come up with a motor for Fenella’s driving lessons, it would be Duncan. He also had somebody working for him who just might be able to help me on the Tigger front.
As a diehard Yorkshire nationalist, he insisted on calling lunch ‘dinner’ and having it at noon. If he hadn’t gone to the pub afterwards, and therefore written off the rest of the day, he would be back at his workshop doing something unspeakable to an innocent punter’s pride and joy.
I had long ago learned not to drop in at Duncan’s house at mealtimes. His wife, Doreen, was of the old school that regarded men as eligible for food parcels unless they were 30 pounds overweight. ‘I prefer ‘em plump,’ she told me down the pub one night. ‘There’s more to hang on to and they can’t run away so fast.’
Duncan was in his workshop sitting in a swivel chair with his feet on a desk in what he grandly termed his office. In reality, it was an area the size of two coffins cut off from the bays and workpits of the rest of the garage by a partition that would have been half glass if any of the glass had remained. He was reading an official-looking report with a light blue cover. As I knocked on the wooden partition and stuck my head into the office, I could read the title: PROCEEDINGS OF THE STANDING CONFERENCE ON CRIME PREVENTION IV: CAR THEFT AND INDUSTRIAL DETERRENTS. It was published by the Home Office.
‘Do you know how long it takes to get into a Saab 9000i?’ he asked without looking up.
‘No, and I don’t want to know. Good afternoon, Duncan.’
‘Don’t bother, you’d never get the steering lock off. A Rover’s a better bet for that, though you’d have to get one with a full tank, as the fuel cap gets a rating like Fort Knox.’
‘Fascinating,’ I said in my Mr Spock voice.
‘Did you know that the Japanese are supposed to be falling behind in car alarm technology because car theft is almost unknown in Japan?’ he went on.
‘Well, nobody’s perfect. Are you by any chance open for business this afternoon? This year? Before the 21st Century?’
‘Bloody hell. Did you know, there are almost 600,000 car thefts a year and a third are done by professionals who can bypass most circuit alarms in less than three minutes? Do you know what that means?’
‘Sure. It means that 400,000 cars are nicked by amateurs, giving people like you a bad name.’
‘Ha-bloody-ha. Very funny. Did you want summat?’
Letting his native Yorkshire accent slip, he flung down the Home Office report and swung his feet off the desk.
I pointed at the report.
‘Does it give a rating for small cars that withstand bodywork impacts up to 20 miles-an-hour, that do a hundred to the gallon and have the best handbrakes?’
He thought about that for a moment, reached inside his shirt and scratched his chest and said with a grin: ‘You’ve been conned into giving driving lessons, haven’t yer? You poor daft pillock. Hope she’s worth it.’
‘Look,’ I pleaded, ‘I’m in enough trouble without getting the verbals from you. What you got?’
His grin slid sideways into an ominous smile and he came and put an arm around me.
‘Angel, you are the luckiest bugger I know.’
‘I’m not going to like this, am I?’
‘Nonsense! You, for once, are the right man in the right place at the right time. I’ve got just the thing you need.’
‘If you really have, you might as we
ll know I can’t afford it.’
‘Don’t talk daft. Local driving school just changing over cars. I’ve got a two-year-old Metro with dual control, would you believe? All I have to do is strip out the extra controls and ring the clock back and – wallop! – into the old car auction. Nice clean car, one lady owner.’
‘How do you get one lady owner if it’s been used by a driving school?’
‘It’s in Doreen’s name now. The last owner was one lady – geddit? We’ve already done a spray job and got rid of the driving school logo, but I can slap on some “L” plates for you.
‘Hey – did you hear about the Irishman who was the first one in his village to get a car? He had the “L” plates on and after the first lesson somebody said “What’s that mean, Paddy?” and Paddy says “Learner”. And after the second lesson, he has a “GB” sticker on the back and they ask him what that means, and he says “Getting Better”. Geddit? What’s up, heard it before?’
‘Bound to have, but you can’t always remember the good ones, can you?’ I smiled as I said it. I had to; I hadn’t conned him about the car yet. ‘So what would you let me borrow the Metro for?’
‘Fair words and money, as me old dad used to say.’
‘I’ve got no money, Duncan, but I have two very fair words: lock gun.’
‘Aah,’ said Duncan slowly, ‘I was wondering when you’d bring that up.’
A few months before I had come into possession of an electronic lock gun that, had it been available in Britain at all, would have been tightly restricted to the police or a handful of legitimate breakdown or vehicle recovery companies. I had shown it to Duncan and, purely out of professional interest, he had agreed to look after it for me. I had never seen it again and it hadn’t been mentioned since, but he knew he owed me one. And I knew he knew I knew.
‘So we’re not exactly in a money-changing-hands situation here?’
‘Got it in one, Duncan.’
‘How long are you gonna need it for?’
‘That’s a good question. Say two nights a week plus a Saturday or Sunday.’