by Mike Ripley
‘Come on, you two.’ Patterson sat back in his chair and put on a ham American accent. ‘If you ain’t part of the solution, you’re part of the problem.’
If he came out with stuff like that, I could understand why he didn’t get Christmas cards.
Alec and Salome stayed silent. It was time for a diversionary attack.
‘In my experience,’ I said confidently, ‘you’ll have to look below stairs for your leak.’
‘Your experience?’ said Salome with an incredulity that hurt.
‘Now listen, Sal baby, I may not be the high-flying executive type you’re used to mixing with, but I’ve hung around more typing pools, loading bays, postrooms and company garages than you’ve had lukewarm entrees. If you want to know what a company’s doing, ask a chauffeur.’
‘He’s got something there,’ said Alec, making it sound a bit like a disease. ‘You think that’s where our problem lies?’ Patterson looked keen. I should have been on my guard.
‘I’m not saying it is, I’m just saying that’s where I’d start to look if it was my problem. You take care of the directors’ dining-room, I’ll hang around the staff canteen.’ I shot a glance sideways at Salome. ‘And question the catering staff.’
She smirked, but Patterson was dead serious. ‘Would you do that for us? None of us could; well, not with any hope of results.’
‘We could give him a cover story to explain his presence,’ said Alec enthusiastically. ‘And make it worth his while.’
‘Naturally,’ said Patterson. They were talking as if I isn’t there. ‘We could go a K plus any out-of-pocket expenses.’
I began to feel claustrophobic and my stomach churned. Classic stress symptoms. It always happened when somebody suggested I get a job.
‘Hold everything,’ I said, holding up my hands to show I was serious. ‘There are over two-and-a-half million people out there looking for work. I’m not.’
‘It would be purely temporary,’ Patterson enthused. ‘And you’d do exactly what you want; just report to me every so often. I think we could go to K.2 and no questions.’
‘No, I’m sorry.’ Not even for K.2 – that’s a grand, two hundred in the City. Even I knew that. ‘I’m too young to start drawing a monthly pay packet.’
‘If you have a tax problem or something, we could make it cash.’
‘Brown envelope job, eh? You City boys are too slick for me.’
Salome reached out and touched my hand. ‘He means £1,200 a week, Roy,’ she said, staring at me. ‘Not a month.’
‘When do I start?’
Chapter Four
Flushed with my newfound wealth, or at least the prospect of an expense account, I took a taxi – a real one – to Dod’s place in Bethnal Green to collect my horn and Tiger Tim’s banjo from the back of his van. He wasn’t in, but his van was parked outside his block of council flats just asking to be nicked. I knew Dod had it well over-insured, but he might have given a thought to our gear. Some people have just no consideration for other people’s property.
I helped myself to the instruments and deliberately left the back doors open slightly to encourage joyriders – I knew Dod would have wanted it that way – then hopped back in the black cab and asked for Stuart Street. The driver, a real diehard musher of the old (reform) school, didn’t bat an eyelid at my apparent daylight robbery. Mind you, I got a reaction from him when we got to Hackney and I made him wait while I transferred the instruments to the back of Armstrong.
When he thought he’d been carrying a fellow musher, he didn’t swear when I didn’t tip him. For London cabbies, that’s the next best thing to discount.
I got Armstrong wound up and headed for Covent Garden. I reckoned to catch Tiger Tim on his usual pitch, before the tourists and office workers moved out and he switched to his evening pitch outside one of the theatres.
Feeling lucky, I left Armstrong parked a few yards from Bow Street court and worked my way into the back of Covent Garden through the flea market. There were at least three different styles of music coming from the Plaza – unfortunately you don’t get warnings of the white-faced-clown mime acts until you’re almost on them.
One theme came across as worryingly familiar. If I hadn’t known better, I would have sworn it was Werewolf doing his Eddie Cochran medley – a party trick of his that doesn’t last long.
It was Werewolf playing Eddie Cochran, and hamming it up to the gallery something rotten. He was standing on Tiger Tim’s pitch and had a fair to middling crowd around him. Across the Plaza, trying to compete, were a talented duo I’d seen on the comedy club circuit. They went under the name of Lord Snooty, or something pinched from an old comic strip, and one played soprano sax and the other sang and filled in with a miniature trumpet, Don Cherry style – except Cherry’s good at it. I felt sorry for them. At the rate Werewolf was pinching their audience, if he got onto Chuck Berry then they might as well pack it in and move down onto the Northern Line.
I joined the crowd around Werewolf for what turned out to be his last number. He’d obviously just been minding the store while Tiger Tim went for a natural break. Tim’s break had been as far as the Punch and Judy, and he’d reappeared with a pair of bottles of lager with the tops off. He handed one to Werewolf as he finished and unplugged Tim’s guitar from the battery-run amplifier without even acknowledging the applause he was getting.
Tim raised his eyebrows at me and offered the other bottle. I shook my head.
‘Better not, I’m driving,’ I said.
‘I shouldn’t either,’ said Tim, ‘but I’m gonna.’
I knew what he meant. Since the pubs were allowed to stay open all day, the police had come down fairly heavy on drinking in the street. It was what politicians called a quid pro quo and what Tim and the other buskers called a fucking nuisance; but they had their pitches to think of.
‘I loike this place, lads,’ said Werewolf, in between swigs of lager. ‘I might take a sabbatical and work it for a year, or a summer anyway.’
‘He’s good enough,’ Tiger Tim said to me. ‘You could be too if you changed your style.’
I tried to look modest.
‘I’m no good at the cocktail jazz that goes down these I days,’ I said, trying to be self-effacing. ‘My jazz is public bar, light-and-bitter, kick-the-chairs-against-the-wall stuff.’
‘But you’re playing to an ageing audience that by the nature of economic progress declines as affluence increases and other alternatives begin to show. Why do you do it?’
‘Somebody has to,’ I said, pretty sure that I followed him. ‘And anyway, when did you get a degree in marketing?’
‘Last year. I start my Master’s in Business Administration at the LSE in September.’ Tim wasn’t flannelling.
‘Just goes to show you can’t trust anybody these days.’
I turned to Werewolf, pouting my lips.
‘And you; you never came home last night.’
Werewolf pulled on a brown, soft-leather jacket I hadn’t seen before. A price tag on a length of cotton hung from one sleeve.
‘Ah well, something came up,’ he said, grinning.
‘I can believe that,’ said Tiger Tim to himself as he examined the banjo I’d returned for scratches.
‘I came round to collect my gear and invite you for a gargle but I was told you was out to lunch. I said you’d been out to lunch for the last ten years. Come and meet Sorrel; she’s round the corner.’
Sorrel? Was this a person or some new street smarts Werewolf had added to his vocabulary?
‘T’anks for the five-finger exercise.’ Werewolf acknowledged Tiger Tim.
Tim looked down at the guitar case he used to collect his earnings. I guessed there were more pound coins in there now than when he sloped off to the pub.
‘Anytime, big man,’ he said. ‘As long as you don’t make a habit
of it.’
‘Oh, all my habits are vurry pleasant.’ Werewolf smiled, then, for the benefit of the tourists, said loudly: ‘C’mon, Angel, let’s go.’
‘Right behind you, darling,’ I said, cringing; but with a name like mine, you get to cringe a lot.
‘Nice jacket,’ I said as we walked back towards the flea market.
Werewolf shot his cuffs and did a twirl.
‘Yeah, I thought so. So I mentioned it and wallop – Sorrel bought it for me.’
‘Did it cost over the ton?’
‘And the rest, but Sorrel gets discount from the other traders. There she is.’
A tall, statuesque blonde that I’d last seen on the other side of the pub the previous night was standing behind the end stall of one of the market rows. She was wearing the sister to Werewolf’s jacket, but it looked better on her. I wondered how I’d missed her as I’d walked through.
‘Hi, lovey,’ she said as we got there. ‘With you in a tick.’
She returned to the business in hand, which was wrapping an old brass miner’s lamp in tissue paper for an elderly American couple. You could tell they were Americans – or maybe they were models for the Burberry collection – and they handed over a 50-pound note without a qualm. Sorrel didn’t even attempt to make change.
After they’d moved off, she reached below her stall and produced the twin of the lamp she’d just sold. I knew a bloke in Kent who’d kept making them long after the pits closed, but I’d no idea they could fetch that sort of price. The real ones never had.
Werewolf slipped an arm around her waist. Not exactly lovingly, more like a wrestler would.
‘This is my old mate I was telling you about.’
‘Hi, Armstrong,’ she said sweetly.
‘Er ... that’s not me.’
‘That’s his cab,’ said Werewolf.
‘Oh, sorry. Hemingway, isn’t it?’
‘No, dear. That’s his sleeping-bag. This is Angel.’
‘Oh yes, of course.’ She smiled. ‘The trumpet-player. That’s right, isn’t it? What do you call the trumpet?’
‘Don’t be silly,’ I said, doing an ‘aw shucks’ routine. ‘Trumpets don’t have names.’
‘You should call it Sultan,’ said Werewolf seriously. ‘As you’re the last of the Sultans of Swing. Ever thought of yourself as a dying breed?’
‘Thanks a bunch, that’s really cheered me up, and just when I was going to tell you I’d got a job.’
‘What? Oh Jeeesus!’
Werewolf did the full phoney swoon, the back of his right wrist up on the forehead, staggering backwards to clutch at the edge of Sorrel’s stall and dislodging a collection of old blue glass bottles of the kind that some people find buried in their gardens and others pay good money for.
‘Don’t worry, it’s only temporary and it’s very well paid and I get an expense account.’
‘Ah-ha!’ Werewolf rolled his eyes. ‘Exes – my favourite word in the English language.’
‘Cut it out.’ Sorrel cuffed him playfully about the head. ‘You’re making my junk stall look untidy. Help me pack up.’
Sorrel began to hand out boxes and give us instructions on which bits of bric-a-brac went where.
‘So when do you clock on?’ Werewolf asked, stacking a pile of old postcards as if he were shuffling a deck of cards.
‘Tomorrow. I’m going to be something in the City,’ I said smugly.
‘Pretty Keen Bastards?’ asked Sorrel without looking up.
Werewolf looked surprised.
‘She’s right,’ I said, before he could butt in. ‘Prior, Keen, Baldwin – it’s Salome’s firm. How did you guess?’
‘Pretty bleedin’ obvious,’ she said, cool as anything. ‘You were rubbing shoulders with most of their broking staff last night. I thought it was a firm’s outing at first. Mind you, I didn’t know they were recruiting from the orchestra pit. But it was either them or that bastard Cawthorne – or, of course, the pub could’ve needed a relief barman ...’
She stopped and looked at me all innocent. I realised I’d dropped a couple of handfuls of silver-plated cutlery on to the floor.
‘Cawthorne? You know a guy called Cawthorne?’ I tried to sound casual while scrabbling around on one knee picking up spoons.
‘I thought everybody who was anybody in the City knew Simon Cawthorne.’
‘Be fair, love, Angel hasn’t even clocked in yet,’ said Werewolf, trying to balance about six boxes.
‘It seems to be a small world,’ I said as I straightened up. ‘What is there to know about Cawthorne?’
‘Oh, the usual City smut,’ said Sorrel casually, busying herself with some ancient cosmetic jewellery. ‘And then again, he runs his courses.’
I looked at Werewolf, but he just looked back at me and shook his head.
‘Courses? Like accountancy, or French for beginners?’
‘No. Courses as in assault courses.’
Naturally. Why hadn’t I thought of that?
Salome was chopping okra for a gumbo when I got back to Stuart Street, though she scared the hell out of me by answering the door of her flat with a heavy Sabatier knife in a potentially eye-watering position.
‘Come in, come in.’ She waved the knife towards her kitchenette.
‘Frank’s working late but we’re having a proper dinner tonight – to make up for last night’s debacle.’
‘Do I take it you didn’t get to try on your birthday present?’
She raised one eyebrow at me and went back to dissecting an okra she had pinned to the marble chopping-board. I wondered why they called them ladies’ fingers. I hadn’t seen a woman with green slimy fingers since the last time I was down the King’s Road on a Saturday afternoon.
‘Okay, well maybe tonight,’ I said.
‘I doubt it. He’s playing squash until eight, and then he’ll do his regulation 20 lengths of the pool and turn up here about nine well and truly cream-crackered.’
I leaned over her stewpot – regulation Habitat-issue as you might expect.
‘Are you putting any sausage in that? It won’t be a proper gumbo unless you do.’
She picked up a crab claw, and suddenly she looked more dangerous than when she’d had the knife.
‘Quite a little chef, aren’t we?’ she said sarcastically. ‘Sorbet lessons for Mrs P and now gumbo. Is there no end to your talents, Angel?’
I thought about this for a minute.
‘Probably not,’ I said finally.
Salome cracked some crab with a wooden mallet and dumped it in the pot, then wiped her hands on her apron.
‘Okay, smartarse, down to bizz. Go through.’
She followed me into the living-room and we parked ourselves at either end of the sofa. She picked up a wad of folded papers from the coffee table and handed them to me.
‘You’ll need these,’ she said.
I lifted a corner of the top one. It looked like an architect’s plan with a map of the Underground superimposed on it.
‘What the ...?’
‘Wiring diagrams showing the telephone and computer link cables and the air-conditioning.’
‘Silly question, I know, but why do I need these? I mean, it’s not even as if I’ve finished my library book.’
‘It’s your cover,’ she said impatiently. ‘You’re our new heating engineer. What’s the matter?’
‘Oh, nothing,’ I sighed.
‘You look peeved.’
‘Well, I had a vague notion I could hang around as some smoothy stockbroking troubleshooter – and put the Armani suit on the expense account.’
‘What do you know about stocks and shares?’
‘Slightly less than what I know about air-conditioning.’
‘Now don’t sulk.’ She patted my knee and I forg
ave her everything. ‘I’ve seen you in your overalls, working on Armstrong. You look really professional.’
‘Thanks a bunch. Is there a real heating engineer in the building?’
‘Yes, but he covers the whole building. You just stick to the floor we occupy. Don’t worry, we’re always getting in plumbers and suchlike to do odd jobs. All you need to do
is say you’re checking out the conduit routes for additional cabling.’
‘What does that mean?’
‘I don’t know, but nobody else will. Just unscrew a few panels and look as if you know what you’re doing. If you don’t interfere with the dealers or the market-makers, they
won’t even notice you’re there. If anybody asks, say you reckon the job will take a week or so. Turn up sometime tomorrow morning – note: morning – and check in with Sergeant Purvis on reception.’
‘Is that the guy who was on duty today?’
‘Yeah. So?’
‘So won’t he think it weird that I turned up for lunch with the top brass one day and the next I’m back in the proletariat?’
‘We’ve told him you are a computer buff with a new system and you always check out the installation personally.’
‘Did he swallow that?’
To me he had looked like the sort of person you want to take on one side and say: what was it like in the Waffen SS?
‘Yes, because Patterson told him it was “confidential.”‘ She made quotation marks in the air with her fingers. ‘And he loves secrets. In fact, he adores Patterson and refers to him as the Head of Security Confidential. Incidentally, we’re all calling him Tel since your visit. He hates it.’
Well, that was all right then. As I always say (Rule of Life No 7): no day is wasted.
‘Don’t contact me or Alec, and we’ll be polite but not friendly. If you spot anything or hear anything, find an internal phone and ring 2001. That’s Patterson, and he’ll arrange to meet you.’
‘In a safe house in East Berlin?’
‘Probably. He does go OTT on things like this. Oh – I almost forgot.’
She stood up and fetched her shoulder-bag from the table, delved into it and produced a wad of ten-pound notes.