by Mike Ripley
The cause of this was somebody trying to spear me with a javelin, but a javelin with a yellow pennant tied to it. It landed six inches from my face, and before it had stopped quivering in the ground, a red one slapped down next to it. Before I’d stopped quivering, I realised that they hadn’t been thrown, but dropped from above. And then a shadow passed over me and Werewolf came out of the tree to land perfectly balanced right in front of me.
‘Jeeeesus Christ!’ I said, holding my heart.
‘Nice handle, but I’d stick to Roy if I were you,’ Werewolf said matter-of-factly. ‘Less aggro signing on at the Social Security.’
‘Hey, if I ever did sign on, I’d need a pseudonym.’ I looked at the pennants and so did he. He was proud of them.
‘You had to get them both, didn’t you?’
‘I got bored,’ he said. ‘And you wanted a diversion. Find anything?’
‘Some. Maybe not enough, though. But it should rattle him. I’ll see what Sorrel’s dad can turn up. Listen.’
In the distance, we could hear the outside telephone bell at the farmhouse.
I checked my watch and stood up so I could look across the Paddock.
‘That should be Patterson’s fax coming through if he did what I asked.’
‘What happens?’
I explained rapidly about the pillbox, and sure enough we saw Cawthorne set out from the farmhouse, walking diagonally across the Paddock towards the fence. The pillbox roof was just visible, but you had to know it was there to spot it.
Just before he reached it, I used the last two shots on my film, though at that distance I didn’t think I’d pick up much.
‘We’ve done all we can, I reckon. Let’s blow while he’s busy in there.’
‘Okay. You’d better have this.’ Werewolf placed one of the paint pistols in my belt holster, then offered me one of the pennants. ‘And one of these. It’d look suspicious if I took all the glory, now, wouldn’t it?’
I stuffed the Olympus inside my overalls and we jogged back across the Paddock, studiously ignoring the pillbox off to our left. We were the first back into the changing-rooms, and we dumped our holsters and visors on the folding table near the door. I didn’t know if we were supposed to check them in with Private Boyd or not. Maybe she was warming up the showers. Werewolf left the two pennants in the doorway, crossed like ceremonial assegais.
We peeled off our khaki overalls and hung them on hooks. Mine was ripped and stained around the knees and elbows and had a bright yellow crutchpiece. Werewolf’s, with a quick press, could have come off the peg at any Army and Navy store.
I chivvied him into a quick shower. Ever since we’d been at university together, I’d known him as a bit of a shower freak, staying in there for ages. His idea of heaven would be for someone to design a device that would allow him to read a book in there. If you see Terence Conran, pass it on.
As we emerged wearing only our towels, the rest of the games players drifted in. Without exception, they were splattered in paint as if they’d gone in for action art. The guy with the hedgehog pullover – Jenkins – was probably the worst of the lot; even his visor was obscured.
Nobody said much. Werewolf softly whistled Mark Knopfler’s Going Home from Local Hero and didn’t stop even when Jenkins walked up to him and said in a plummy voice:
‘I know this is only a game, but there are rules, old boy.’
Werewolf stopped towelling his armpit and looked at him. I concentrated on zipping the flies of my trousers, head down, nothing to do with me. The other players carried on getting changed and opening lockers and stuff, but you could hear a pin drop.
‘Who dares wins, old boy,’ he said quietly.
Jenkins just stood there, unsure of his next six moves. He was saved by Private Boyd, who appeared in the doorway and began to scoop up the gun belts and equipment.
‘Good game, gentlemen?’
‘Fine, absolutely fine. We were just saying, weren’t we?’ said Werewolf loudly.
‘Er ... yes. Exhilarating. Quite exhilarating,’ said Jenkins, moving away.
Private Boyd walked through, unfazed by the half-clothed bodies scrabbling for cover. ‘Good, good. Come again soon.’
Werewolf gave her a big smile as she approached. He was still stark naked, but had decided to get dressed. He started by putting his tie on. Private Boyd allowed herself a raised eyebrow as she went by.
Jenkins turned as if to say something, and Werewolf waved a hand at him.
‘Hey,’ he said quickly before Private Boyd was out of earshot. ‘Do you know the sound of a truly satisfied woman after love-making?’
He said it like it was a joke to be shared, but I winced, knowing what was coming.
‘No,’ said Jenkins, going along with it.
‘Didn’t think you did,’ said Werewolf.
With Werewolf driving the BMW, we covered the two miles to the village of Broughton Street at Warp Factor Five. I spotted a pub called the Hop Pole and asked Werewolf if he fancied a drink.
‘Do fish swim?’ he said, whipping the power steering over and bringing the car to rest in the pub car park in a shower of gravel.
Fortunately, the landlord hadn’t seen our arrival, and he served us with a smile and an offer of menus. We ordered pints of bitter and ploughman’s lunches and he brought them personally to us as we sat in the bay-window seat of the public bar. I wasn’t used to such good treatment, then it clicked: we were wearing suits. Maybe there was something in this respectability lark after all.
Werewolf filled me in on his blitzkrieg across the Exhilarator course and had to admit that he’d enjoyed himself. He was getting more beer in when I saw a motorbike pull into the car park. The rider, in black leathers, stood the bike, a big Honda, near the BMW and began to remove a black crash helmet. Even from the back, I knew it was Private Boyd.
She left the helmet on the bike – how trusting people are out of London – and unzipped her jacket as she walked to the pub door.
She didn’t look at me as she came in, just walked straight up to the bar. Without turning round, Werewolf said: ‘What’ll you have?’
I was impressed, then I noticed him clocking her in the mirror behind the bar.
‘Pernod and blackcurrant,’ she said.
‘Glad you could make it,’ he said. How had he managed that?
‘Hello, Sandy,’ said the landlord as he served her. So she was a regular.
‘You two caused quite a stir back at High Command,’ she said as she joined us. ‘You’re far too rough for most of our customers.’
‘Now isn’t that just too bad,’ Werewolf said with a smile.
‘I wouldn’t try for a rebooking for a while,’ she said, sipping her drink.
‘Blackballed, are we?’ asked Werewolf innocently.
She looked at him over the rim of her glass. ‘I wouldn’t say that.’
I bought her some lunch, and while Werewolf flirted, I tried to pump her about Pegasus Farm and the operation there. When Cawthorne was mentioned by name she put her forefinger and thumb together in a circle and made the universal sign for self-abuse. Not the sort of thing you see in the sign-language translations for the deaf.
‘He gets off playing soldiers like you wouldn’t believe,’ she said between mouthfuls of cheese. ‘Even has a secret little den where he takes the other members of his gang. The big kid.’
‘Is that the pillbox?’ I chanced.
‘Yeah,’ she said, without a flicker of suspicion as to why we were interested. Maybe I’m too cynical. ‘No girls allowed, not in the boys’ secret camp!’
‘What do they get up to, then. Songs round the campfire?’
‘They play with guns, don’t they?’
‘Is one of them a guy called Sorley?’ I asked.
‘Yeah, that’s right, and there are a couple of others. A
ny chance of the other half?’ She held out her empty glass to me.
‘So they have private games of the Exhilarator, do they?’ I asked as I stood up to go to the bar. ‘What do they do? Use luminous paint after dark?’
‘Nah,’ said Private Boyd. ‘Real guns.’
She held her hands out as if she held a sub-machine-gun and went ‘Rat-tat-tat-ta.’ I was grateful the bar was empty.
‘Cawthorne collects them. Thinks I don’t know. Keeps them in a tin trunk in his pillbox. He’s got grenades and smoke bombs and other stuff like my kid brother had a box of toy soldiers.’ She smiled up at me, ‘Not so much blackcurrant this time, eh? Ta.’
Sandra, but she preferred Sandy, told us that she’d worked at the Exhilarator for five months but was just biding her time before she could move away from her mother and get her own place in London. Werewolf admired her motorbike; I asked her about weekend games at the farm. She’d been into hiking since she went out with a Hell’s Angel called Rafe when she was 16. She didn’t work weekends, she said; Cawthorne and Sorley handled things then.
And then it was thanks for the drinks and time to get back as another gang of wallies was booked in for one o’clock.
Before we left, she wrote her phone number on a beer mat, and in the car park she slipped it to Werewolf before she put her crash hat on and fired up the engine.
As she roared down the village street, Werewolf unlocked the BMW. I looked at him over the roof.
‘Watch it, Sundance,’ I said. ‘Sorrel wouldn’t like it.’
‘Ah, don’t fret yourself.’ He shrugged. ‘We have the same philosophy. Get your appetite where you can, just remember to eat at home.’
Werewolf pulled up near the Barbican and said he would walk to Sorrel’s flat. I said I would get the BMW back to Patterson before the police helicopters were called out.
‘Do the suits have to go back?’ he asked, fingering a lapel.
‘No way.’
‘Shit. I would’ve picked a good one.’
‘Thanks for this morning,’ I said. ‘I owe you one.’
‘I know you do. Just add it to the list.’
‘I’m on a promise to meet Sorrel’s dad tonight,’ I said casually.
‘We’ll be out all night. And tomorrow.’
‘Going anywhere nice?’
‘Nope. Staying in her flat with a crate of wine and the lights off. She doesn’t know it yet, though.’
‘Message received and understood.’ Sorrel was to be kept out of things. ‘See yer when you get back from Ireland.’
He paused at that, and I’ll swear he almost looked behind him to see if anyone was earwigging.
‘Actually,’ he said, ‘I’ll need to borrow your gaff on Sunday, if that’s okay.’
‘Sure. You know me. Open house.’
‘Thanks. I’ll be on the first flight on Sunday. I’ve no intention of staying over there longer than I have to, and Sorrel’s away for the weekend herself.’
I wondered if she was hunting up an appetite, but I didn’t ask, just like I didn’t ask about Werewolf’s trip to Dublin. My teeth are one of my best assets, and I’d like to keep them that way.
‘Okey-dokey. I’ll get something in for breakfast – you bring the duty frees.’
‘Yer on. Take care, Angel.’
Don’t I always?
As I drove into the underground car park of Pretty, Keen, Bastards, the garageman looked (a) amazed that I had returned at all, and (b) staggered that there were four wheels and no obvious dents on the car.
I took the lift up to Reception, and Purvis delighted in telling me that Patterson was still at lunch.
‘I’ll wait,’ I said, and headed off towards the postroom.
Michelle was the only one on duty there, but she put down the latest James Herbert long enough to tell me that yes, they had sent for an Airborne messenger just after 11.00, and that Anna kept asking if I’d called.
I slunk through the dealing room to Patterson’s office and got there just as he did. His tie was askew and his breath smelled of brandy. If I was a less trusting soul, I’d have said he’d had a good lunch.
‘You,’ he said, and I nodded agreement. ‘What did you find out?’
‘Just what we thought. It’s Cawthorne all right. The other end of the leak is down at his farm.’
Patterson sank down into his chair. ‘Get any evidence?’
‘Nothing that would stand up in court.’
‘Court? Who said anything about a court?’
‘Calm down, man. Keep the blood pressure down to a dull roar. It was a figure of speech.’
‘Is my car all right?’
I wondered when we’d get round to that.
‘Yeah, yeah, don’t get your knickers in a twist, it’s in one piece.’ I flipped the keys on to the desk to reassure him. ‘We’ve got enough to let Cawthorne know we’re on to him, or we have by tomorrow night. All you have to do is send a couple more things by messenger.’
‘What sort of things?’ He looked suspicious.
‘I’ll tell you tomorrow.’
He shrugged, losing interest.
I perched on the edge of his desk.
‘Whatsamatter, Tel? Come on, cough it.’
‘It’s just –’ he reached for a paperclip to fiddle with – ‘I – we’ve been thinking. Now we know how stuff is leaking, we can plug the leak – get another delivery service. Cawthorne cuts his losses and goes somewhere else. Leaves us lone.’
I gave him my killer look; the one I reserve for Springsteen. It didn’t work on Patterson either.
‘Makes sense,’ I said. ‘No fuss, no inquiry in the City, no cops.’ He was nodding. ‘No need to worry the senior partners, ‘specially not Mr Keen and his son Snow White, the Homepride Flour Grader. But what about Alec Reynolds, Tel? Well, he’s out of it, isn’t he? Got him buried yet, or cremated and his ashes scattered down Threadneedle Street or round the corner in your wine bar on the floor with the sawdust? But there’s Salome to think of, Tel; don’t forget her, because I won’t.’
‘Now look.’ He pointed a finger at me. Werewolf would have snapped it off. ‘She’s getting the best attention money can buy. Strictly speaking, I should have informed the Kent police when she was fit for visitors, or rather the hospital should have. But I told them not to, protecting her ...’
‘She’s conscious?’
He’d pulled his finger back or I would have bitten it. Springsteen is always showing me how.
‘Yes, this morning. I’ve been meaning to phone her husband, but ...’
I was halfway out of the door.
‘You shitehouse!’ was what I yelled over my shoulder.
Or so the girls from the postroom told me later.
They’d heard it quite clearly.
I bus-hopped back to Hackney, feeling a bit of a prune sitting there in my suit in between a gaggle of wrinklies who’d been blowing their pensions down the supermarket. They probably thought, at that time of the afternoon, that I’d just been made redundant. It was too early for me to be a Yuckie – the tabloid newspapers’ shorthand for the young city slickers who celebrated the end of a day’s trading with too much lager and then reverted to type as the football hooligans they really were under the skin. They were supposed to terrorise London Transport after dark. Maybe they did. Certainly, it was almost impossible to get a taxi in the City after about 8.00 pm these days. If I’m ever strapped for cash, I’ll cruise around. You never know who might mistake Armstrong for a real taxi and offer me a few quid as a friendly gesture for giving them a lift.
My third bus dropped me two streets away from home, which gave me a chance to call in at the local florist’s and buy a 20-quid bouquet on PKB’s Amex card. Normally, I get my flowers on Oxford Street just after 7.00 pm when the barrowboys have knocked off and gone to the
pub, leaving loads of blooms for the Westminster Council rubbish collectors later on.
Nobody could have recognised me walking up Stuart Street. I don’t think anybody could see me behind the bouquet, and I had trouble finding the keyhole.
I don’t know who frightened who more. I almost dropped the flowers when I saw Lisabeth on the phone in the hallway as I kicked the door shut. She jumped back a pace and would have gone further, but the phone cable prevented it. I couldn’t blame her; I must have looked like a platoon of Japanese snipers behind all that foliage. She clutched a hand to her ample bosom – actually not so much a bosom, more a shelf (a cheap shot) – and motioned that the phone was for me.
‘Just one moment, Mr Angel is free now,’ she said into the mouthpiece in a voice I hadn’t heard since Fenella’s parents had paid us a visit once.
We pantomimed an exchange of flowers for phone, which resulted in her crushing about half a dozen carnations and me getting the phone cord wrapped around my neck. It was Innes McInnes.
‘Angel?’
‘Yo.’
‘How did it go today?’
‘We survived the Exhilarator, and I think we got some candid camera shots that may come in handy. You had any ideas?’
‘A few. What do you think Pegasus Farm is worth on the open market?’
That threw me for a minute. So now I was an estate agent. Well, I had the suit for it, but then, you see, I’m basically honest.
‘I dunno. Million and a half?’
‘Mmm. That’s what I thought. Come and see me later, at the office, about six-thirty. Know where it is?’
‘Houndsditch, isn’t it? Near the Clanger.’
‘The what?’
‘The pub, the Clanger. Best pint of draught Bass for – ooh, two hundred yards.’
‘Er ... yes, if you say so. Parking is impossible around here, I’m afraid.’
‘Not for me it isn’t. See you.’
Lisabeth handed over the bouquet, her nose twitching a warning of hay fever sneezing on the Richter Scale.
‘So you’ve remembered Salome at last, have you?’ There’s appreciation for you. ‘Well, Frank was there all night, and then he went straight to the office, but they sent him home at lunchtime. He looks very ragged, so I made him go to bed and get some sleep.’