Angel City

by Mike Ripley

  ‘Local call,’ I said weakly, smiling at him. He rarely looked you in the eye, and he wasn’t about to start, but it seemed as if he had something he wanted to say.

  ‘I couldn’t help but overhear,’ he said politely, shuffling his slippers, ‘and I certainly didn’t mean to.’

  I waved a hand in an all-purpose gesture that was meant to say ‘Think nothing of it’ but was probably obscene in several countries.

  ‘It’s just that …’

  ‘Yes?’ I encouraged.

  ‘Well, you said somebody was monstering, and you seemed to think it meant going to a party.’

  ‘And it isn’t?’ I asked gently, as if I was in no hurry; and, as long as we had an ozone layer, I wasn’t.

  ‘No. It’s a game.’

  ‘A game? You mean a game show, like Wheel of Fortune or something?’

  ‘No, an interactive game.’ He began to blush. ‘A roleplaying game, part physical, part philosophical.’

  I looked at him. He went from pink to medium rare. I couldn’t think of anything to say all of a sudden.

  ‘You know. Er ... er … fantasy scenarios.’ A bizarre thought hit me across the frontal lobes, and it must have showed as Mr Goodson’s colour deepened to crimson.

  ‘No, er ... not ... er ... It’s more the seeking of a quest acted out in a fantasy dimension. The characters require adversaries – monsters.’

  ‘Oh, you mean like Dungeons and Dragons?’

  ‘We prefer to call them Adventures in the Nether World.’

  ‘You play?’

  ‘I’m a Grand Vizier. First Class. Level Four,’ he said proudly.

  Impressed? I was gobsmacked.

  Chapter Ten

  I was late checking in with Dispatch but I doubted it would damage our working relationship further.

  Breakfast with Mr Goodson had been an eye-opener in more ways than one. Not only the juicy details of being a Grand Vizier in the Nether World, but also the chance to have a good snoop around his flat. The fact that people could live without microwaves, VCRs, CDs and still use toast racks and marmalade spoons, was difficult to take in at first, but it’s still a free world, more or less, and I could make allowances. The Nether World stuff was a piece of cake to take on board after that. Let’s face it, even a Mr Goodson has a Dark Side.

  Dispatch kept me busy with fiddling little jobs in Soho most of the morning. Two at least could have been done by bikes, avoiding the traffic the way they drive, as they were small parcel deliveries. But it was payday and I had been late, so somebody had to suffer and it might as well be me.

  I signed myself off for a coffee break just after 11.00 am and, out of habit, parked on Porter Street. I decided it was a habit I really ought to kick when I saw the Beast there, side-saddle on his bike, chewing on a styrofoam cup.

  ‘Popular dude,’ he said for openers. At least I think that’s what he said, as he still had the coffee carton in his face. When he took it away I could see there were teeth marks around the rim. As in so many other ways, the Beast wasn’t equipped with a full set.

  ‘So, what’s happening?’

  ‘You are in deeee-mand,’ he drawled.

  ‘Dispatch?’ I asked, knowing it wasn’t as I had only just turned off their tinny radio.

  ‘Personal services,’ pronounced the Beast, like he’d heard it somewhere else. ‘Your customers come to the door these days.’

  ‘Who?’

  ‘Some fat old spick in a red Alfa.’

  I felt oddly comforted that our position in any future fraternal United States of Europe seemed assured as long as people like the Beast were about.

  ‘I told him you’d be along. He’s waiting round in Old McDonald’s for you. Looks the worried type. Sort that has daughters who might well have been boffing. How is your sex life these days, Angel?’

  ‘Like my credit rating: short, uninteresting and not worth paying to have checked out.’

  I made sure it was Bassotti by walking by the window twice before going in. He was sitting on a stool balancing an elbow on a ledge just wide enough to double park hamburger cartons. I bought a large black coffee and joined him.

  ‘I got your message,’ he said. ‘Thought I’d better double check.’

  ‘Double check what?’ I realised he was nervous but I could not work out why. It wasn’t as if I’d demanded money or anything; well, not recently.

  ‘What you said. You said you reckoned you knew where Tigger was at the weekend.’

  ‘And you came up West on the strength of that?’

  He shrugged it off. ‘I had business round here. Anyway, like I said, it’s worth a few quid and a bit of effort to find that little bleeder. So what you got?’

  I saw no harm in telling him.

  ‘There’s a chance Tigger’s into RLRP – Real Life Role Playing. That’s where people dress up and play Lord of the Rings and stuff like that.’

  I could see I wasn’t getting through.

  ‘Look,’ I tried, ‘just say it’s like a weekend retreat where grown men – and women for all I know – run around in some caves playing cowboys and indians, except it’s wizards and warlocks and warriors and probably other things beginning with “w”, and there’s also monsters. And they go on quests and expeditions and the third prize is the Holy Grail or whatever. I’m just telling you what I’ve been told.’

  ‘And Tigger goes on these things, does he?’

  ‘I think he might work there. They’re always looking for people to play the monsters. The paying punters want to be heroes, don’t they, struggling against the forces of evil. Nobody wants to have to be the forces of evil, ‘specially not if they’ve paid good money to get there.’

  ‘He works there ... ?’

  ‘It’s a possibility. A friend of his just said he “went monstering” at weekends. These role playing games require monsters – well, somebody to play monsters – and a guy I know assures me that there’s only one place open Friday, Saturday and Sunday and that’s down in Surrey. Which would tie in with what Tigger’s friend told me, that he was doing it south of here. I’d assumed south of the river, but maybe he meant south of London.’

  ‘What sort of a place are we talking about here?’ Bassotti still wasn’t sure this was kosher.

  ‘A place called Nether World, and it’s run from some caves in a place called Badger’s Bottom. I was saving that till last, just in case you didn’t believe the other stuff. It does exist, really. It’s off the M25, not far from Biggin Hill. You know, the old wartime airfield.’

  Even I thought this was beginning to sound like a con. Bassotti wasn’t old enough to remember the war either. And if he had been, which side would he have been on?

  ‘So we’re talking running around in fields here, are we?’ he tried, his mind wandering as much as mine was starting to.

  ‘No, it’s all done underground. There’s some caves, natural ones. You know, holes in the side of a big bit of ground. During the war they were enlarged to be used as air raid shelters and places for stashing files and things. They go on for miles they say. You could get a coupla hundred people in there ... if you stack ‘em right,’ I ended lamely.

  Bassotti rubbed his chin thoughtfully. Then he glanced around before putting his hand in his pocket and producing a roll of notes. If he had wanted to look any more suspicious I suppose he could have taken his trousers down and balanced a hand grenade on his dick, but it would have been close.

  ‘Go down there and have a look around, will you? You’re the expert, you’ll find him. Tell him to come and see me, okay?’

  He began to rub the wad of notes with his thumb, like a magician gearing up for a card trick. I was happy to be hypnotised.

  ‘I’m only guessing he’s there,’ I said coyly, trying to work out if the notes were twenties or not. Before they changed the colour strip, it was
difficult to tell under fluorescent light from even a foot away. ‘It could be a wasted trip.’

  ‘I’m a builder, I pay people to waste time,’ he said, but he wasn’t joking. ‘And, anyway, you know where it is.’

  That wasn’t strictly true, though I could easily find out.

  But if I gave him a road map and a set of directions, he wouldn’t need me and there would be no ‘finder’s fee’.

  ‘Look, if you’re willing to pay for my time and my gas, I’ll pop down there tomorrow and mingle.’

  He shook his head.

  ‘Not tomorrow, today. This afternoon.’

  ‘Ah, slight problemette there. You see I have this problem called work. Like I’m at it, now, and if you don’t show, they get really unreasonable and don’t pay you.’

  ‘They’d pay you if you were on a job?’

  ‘Sure.’

  ‘Then I’ll ring them and book you to take me to ... where’s good?’

  ‘Brighton? That’s usually good for an afternoon job; and I bet that’s been said more than once before now.’

  He didn’t get it or he wasn’t listening.

  ‘Okay, we’ll say you have to come out to the office, pick somebody up and take them to Brighton. By the time you get back, that’s your afternoon accounted for, right?’

  ‘If you’re picking up the bill, yeah. This finding Tigger is getting to be a big deal with you, isn’t it?’

  ‘You don’t know the half,’ he said.

  He rubbed the roll of notes some more and peeled a few off, but he wasn’t so much counting them as using them to mop the sweat from his hands.

  I found a phone box on Baker Street and rang the house. The only person who should have been home at that time was Mr Goodson, and it was.

  ‘Great, you haven’t left yet.’ Sometimes I think I should get prizes for stating the bleeding obvious.

  ‘I was about to. My train leaves at …’

  ‘How does the Grand Vizier fancy arriving in Nether World by taxi?’

  Mr Goodson talked more on the ride down to Surrey than I had ever heard before, and he’d been living at Stuart Street when I moved in. Maybe he was conscious of going for some personal record himself, for he kept stopping and saying things like ‘Oh dear, I am going on, aren’t I?’ He was, but I didn’t stop him. It was a useful briefing.

  He had been visiting Nether World for four years or so as and when he could afford it. Normally this meant day-trips on Saturdays or Sundays but occasionally, like now, he flexed his flexi-time schedule at the local government office and took a Friday off so he could stay the weekend. (Local bed and breakfast. Mr and Mrs Lambert. Very reasonable. You get sausages with breakfast.)

  You got a game card every time you played, he explained, and he was up to Level Four, first class, as the points had mounted up.

  ‘What do you get points for?’

  ‘Inflicting damage, damage limitation to your game role character and bonus ones for the amount of treasure or trophy returned from a quest.’

  And I had to ask.

  ‘This damage business. Sounds a bit violent.’

  ‘It’s not, really, though some of the monsters go over the top sometimes. Some of them can’t, of course. Zombies are supposed to be the slowest of the Undead and you can always hear them coming.’ (I bit my tongue and said nothing.) ‘And the Skeletons move quick but are relatively weak. The Vampires are powerful but can be defeated by spells. The ones to watch out for are the Ghouls. They’re sneaky and powerful and fast. Very tricky - they play dumb and pretend they can’t understand the Spell of Warding.’

  I put money on Tigger being a Ghoul if he was there. ‘And just what do these characters do ... er ... ?’ I tailed off because I couldn’t go on calling him Mr Goodson now he was sitting in the back of Armstrong and I was picking his brains, but I was damned if I could remember his first name, assuming I’d ever been told it.

  He didn’t notice, because he was on his pet subject, which just proves what I always say: ask the right question and you can get anyone to tell you anything (Rule of Life No. 83).

  ‘Their role is to stop the questors and the valiant from reaching their goal, or at least slow them down and soak up their life-force.’

  ‘You have life-force?’ I asked, like other people swap brands of deodorant.

  ‘Every game player is allocated a life-force. Combat damage’ – there was that word again – ‘and hostile spells can all diminish your life-force value. The more points you retain, the more you carry over into the next game, then the next level and so onwards.’

  ‘Sounds like life, really. And you’ve got to Grand Vizier level?’

  I was watching him in the mirror. He was serious about all this.

  ‘Yes, and that’s my game name as well. You’ll need one too if you’re coming into the caves.’

  ‘Game name?’

  I flashed my lights to overtake a Fiat Panda driven at 22 mph by a large blue hat that I guessed had a little old lady somewhere under it. A few names sprang to mind.

  ‘Oh yes, no-one uses their real names in Nether World.’

  Which probably cut down on the insurance claims, I thought.

  ‘The younger fraternity,’ Mr Goodson went on, ‘go for names like Simeon or Ragnor or Hakklon. There’s a very competent Warrior Priest at my level who goes by the game name Schmeichel. That sounds Dutch to me.’

  It was Danish and I didn’t want to spoil it by telling him it was the name of the Manchester United goalkeeper.

  ‘The thing to remember is not to go for anything from Tolkien. It’s frowned upon as frivolous.’

  ‘But why will I need a game name? Can’t I just ask backstage or something? I just want to see if Tigger’s here or not.’ Besides, I’d left my wand and fairy dust at home.

  ‘It doesn’t work like that. No-one gets passed by the Gatekeeper unless they are playing, and the monsters have to be there before the game players turn up. They have to get into costume, pick a route and then lie in ambush. Sometimes the monsters have to play two or three quests at the same time. So few people want to be monsters these days, they’re quite in demand.’

  I wouldn’t have said that, but it was neither the time nor the place for a philosophical argument.

  As I pulled Armstrong into the muddy field that served as the car park for Nether World, I realised I had done one thing right that morning when I had put on a black T-shirt. It seemed to be the uniform for everyone around the cars and the entrance, which was marked by a sign saying: ‘The Real World Declines From Hereon In’.

  In fact, I hadn’t seen so much long hair or so many black T-shirts since the Black Sabbath collection came out on video.

  It had been easy enough to find, despite Mr Goodson trying to give directions from the back. I hoped his sense of geography improved once he was underground. The road sign indicating Biggin Hill and Badger’s Bottom had been added to in spray paint so that it ended: ‘Nether World ½ mile further’. It read like the instructions on an elevator to hell.

  Mr Goodson climbed out of the driver’s-side door and put a small suitcase and a duffel bag down on the ground.

  ‘I’ll leave my overnight things with the Gatekeeper,’ he said. ‘You’ll want to get off once you find your friend, and my bed and breakfast place is just a few minutes’ walk into the village. But I’ll get changed here, if you don’t mind. I like to make an entrance.’

  ‘Feel free,’ I said. He left the duffel bag on the ground and took the suitcase with him as he climbed back into Armstrong.

  There were more people milling around than I had expected and something like 50 cars in the field. The entrance to the caves was sheltered by some small trees, probably planted by the local council to try to hide the goings-on in there. And with good reason, judging by some of the people coming out after a hard day in the Nether W
orld.

  Virtually everyone was wearing make-up, almost entirely black or dark green, though one or two had taken a bit of trouble and added sparkly gold eye-shadow. Black T-shirts and jeans were the order of the day, but whereas mine advertised a garage and spray-joint in Raleigh, North Carolina, most of the ones coming up from the underworld were adorned with gold or silver stick-on stars or pentacles or crescent moons. Then came a group wearing armour. Homemade breastplates and leg guards, probably cardboard but painted shiny silver and convincing enough from a distance. I spotted two guys with horned Viking helmets on their heads, one of them carrying a large double-headed battleaxe. It would have been more convincing had he not been swinging it one-handed like a golf club, giving away the fact that it was polystyrene. But still, I could understand why the residents of Badger’s Bottom didn’t especially want to run into them on a dark night.

  ‘You’ll be given a weapon from the armoury,’ said Mr Goodson from the back of Armstrong, ‘but some people like to make their own.’

  ‘Fine. Is there much light down there?’

  ‘None at all. Lanterns are permitted but if you take a torch, you have to keep it pointed upwards so the effect is like candlelight. Most of us don’t bother. The Game Guide has a torch of course.’

  ‘Game Guide?’

  ‘He’s a sort of referee. He directs your quest and calls for Time Freezers when you can alter the action or assess your level of damage.’

  There he went, talking about damage again. I walked round to the back of Armstrong and opened the boot. I found my torch, checked it worked again and slid it into my jeans in the small of my back, pulling my T-shirt out loose over it. I locked my jacket in the boot after taking out some of Bassotti’s money. I shivered in the cool afternoon breeze, but I worked on the basis that it was better to leave everything valuable in the real world. I was entering Nether World with just the bare essentials: my car keys.