Angel Touch

by Mike Ripley

  There was a metallic clang behind my left ear. Cawthorne was beating on the inside of the door with something.

  ‘Open the fucking door ... Let me out!’ He was shrieking now.

  The orange flare had more or less petered out by now, or maybe the wind had changed. There was nothing to stop Cawthorne getting a clear shot at Armstrong at all. I could wait him out, I thought, until a few more snorts of electric snuff made sure he couldn’t hit a barn door. But you never know with snow, as they say.

  I didn’t trust Cawthorne – let’s be frank, I wouldn’t spit in his ear if his brain was on fire. But I couldn’t just blow him up, could I?

  ‘I’m going to pull the bolt, Cawthorne,’ I shouted at the slit, ‘but I want to see the artillery out here first.’

  ‘Get stuffed!’

  ‘Nobody’s going anywhere until you throw the gun out. That’s the deal. Non-negotiable.’

  I thought he might have liked that. Non-negotiable. It had a reasoned, businesslike ring to it.

  He tried to shoot me instead.

  His arm came right out of the slit to my left – he’d switched sides – and was holding the gun upside down, his wrist twisted, to get the angle. I saw the barrel and the foresight out of the corner of my eye and slammed myself back into the door, pretending to be no thicker than a coat of paint.

  I’ll swear I saw the bullet leave that barrel and fly across my face. I was so relieved it hadn’t hit me, I would have signed affidavits admitting anything, from being Kurt Waldheim’s PR man to having read and enjoyed the Booker Prize winner.

  So why did I scream? Then my ears stopped ringing from the sound of the shot and I realised it wasn’t me screaming, it had been Werewolf.

  I couldn’t see him behind Armstrong, but Armstrong had been in the direct line of fire. That did it. No more Mister Nice Guy.

  There was no point in calling him names, no point in trying to talk him down.

  Cawthorne had drawn back his gun arm and I could hear him working the action for reloading while he stumbled about inside the box.

  I bent down and put the lighter to the tissue fuse and flipped the wheel. It caught immediately, and I swept up the bottle with my left hand and pirouetted through 180 degrees. Keeping the damn thing well away from my face.

  It went through the gun slit sideways on and I was diving for the ground before it hit the concrete floor and exploded.

  ‘Are you all right?’

  ‘I might not make the Irish skateboard team.’

  ‘Where did he get you?’

  ‘In the leg, Dumbo.’

  ‘No, just now, when you screamed.’

  ‘Oh, he missed me by a mile,’ said Werewolf through clenched teeth. ‘I only screamed so you’d have an incentive to torch the bugger.’

  I stared at him for a minute without saying anything. I didn’t want to look back at the pillbox.

  ‘You’d better unlock the door,’ he said. ‘It’ll look suspicious if it’s bolted when he’s found.’

  ‘Yeah. Okay. You’re right.’

  I put my hands under his arms and helped him up. ‘You need a doctor,’ I said.

  ‘Think we’ll get a cab this time of the morning?’ he asked with a sickly grin, resting his head on Armstrong’s wheel arch.

  ‘This far south of the river? No chance.’

  I tied my handkerchief around my face for the run back to the box. There was black acrid smoke coming out of the slits now, and more orange smoke from flares that were cracking and going off inside. Great whoofs of flame would billow out and bubble off into the smoky pall as things like the inking fluid for the fax went up. There were loud cracks, which I thought at first might be ammunition but were probably the plastic casings of the wrecked machinery flexing and snapping in the heat. The whole thing looked like an overheating Aga in a satanic kitchen.

  My eyes were streaming by the time I reached the door and my hand closed over the bolt.

  I had a bizarre thought. If this was Elm Street or any one of a dozen other horror flicks, Cawthorne would come staggering out of the flames, his blackened, clawlike hands ...

  I almost didn’t do it.

  The bolt came down easily enough. It wasn’t even warm, as I’d half expected, and the door wafted open an inch or so, more smoke and fumes curling out and sweeping up to join the pall that now rose 30 or more feet up in the air.

  But by that time, I was halfway back to Armstrong.

  I could still see the smoke in Armstrong’s rear-view mirror from the motorway, but Werewolf said I was imagining things.

  I’d piled Werewolf into the back seat, and he’d taken a shirt from his bag and tied it around his leg. He kept saying he was okay, but he had lost a lot of blood and he was furious that I’d used the poteen before he’d thought to take a drink. I leaned over to the glove compartment and almost ran us off the road fumbling for the quarter bottle of vodka I always keep there for emergencies. I handed it over my shoulder to Werewolf, and he did it severe damage. I wasn’t sure that it was good medical practice, but Werewolf bleeding over my back seat was Emergency with a capital E in my book.

  Medical treatment had been the subject of another brief debate as we’d careered down Blackberry Hill.

  I’d opted for the hospital in Maidstone because it was closest and I knew where it was. I was beginning to call there on Sundays more regularly than the chaplain. But Werewolf vetoed that straight off.

  ‘Hammersmith, and put the pedal down,’ he said.

  ‘Hammersmith? Is there a hospital in Hammersmith?’

  ‘I don’t know, but there’s a pub.’

  ‘Hey, come on, man ...’

  ‘I’m serious.’

  Ever known an Irishman joke about booze?

  ‘The Robin Hood and Little John.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘It’s a boozer near the Hammersmith flyover. The Boys use it. They’ll know what to do.’

  ‘Christ, if we’re going that far, you can go to Charing Cross Hospital.’

  ‘I could go to Hammersmith Cemetery, but I ain’t gonna.’ I heard a painful intake of breath. ‘Look, neither of us wants to have to explain this hole in my leg. This way, it’s no questions asked.’

  ‘It’s run by the Boys, isn’t it?’ I knew how little Werewolf enjoyed the prospect of being in debt to the Boys from across the Irish Sea.

  ‘Relax, man. They owe me one, but the bastards don’t own me.’

  ‘How deep are you in with them?’

  It was something I would not have dared ask if he’d been on two legs.

  ‘Nowhere near as deep as they’d like, old buddy. And believe me, it’s going to stay that way. They think they can use anybody they want to, and sometimes you have to go along with them or there’s trouble back home. Damn it, man, let’s use them for a change.’

  ‘There must be another way,’ I said, as Armstrong juddered up to 75.

  Who said the FX4S cab was as aerodynamic as a brick?

  ‘Relax,’ said Werewolf. ‘It’ll be okay. Just get this crate out of second gear, will yer?’

  I cut across south London, through Dulwich, and we hit Wandsworth just as the doors were opening in the pub next to Young’s Ram brewery. The company mascot, a prize ram, was tied up outside the front door. Pedestrians wisely chose to pop in the pub for one rather than try and sneak by it. That’s what I call marketing.

  We crossed the river by Hammersmith Bridge, and Werewolf directed me from there. Our speed had hardly ever dropped below 50, and I’d run at least two red lights, but we’d been lucky.

  The Robin Hood and Little John was a dark brick building now standing alone at the end of a street, but at one time would have been the end of a terraced row of houses. It had a faded plastic sign in one of its dirty windows saying that you could play pool there. That seemed to take
care of the nightlife in the area. The whole impression was of the sort of pub you might have called in to get change for a pay phone so you could ring the tourist board for directions to the nearest museum.

  ‘Round the side,’ said Werewolf faintly.

  I parked Armstrong but left the motor running. The pub had a side door, with a bell and a hand-written sign saying ‘Function Room.’

  I propped Werewolf up against the wall and got his bag for him.

  ‘You’d better blow,’ he said. ‘It would take too long to explain you to the management.’

  I looked up and down the street. It stayed empty. Then I looked at Werewolf.

  ‘You look like your passport photograph,’ I told him.

  ‘I feel like it.’ He grinned faintly. ‘Now blow.’

  How could I leave him there, clutching his leg, blood dripping on to the pavement? My oldest mate, my auld mukker. The guy I’d been through thick and thin, mostly thick, with. The guy who’d just saved my life. I couldn’t just walk away, could I?

  ‘See yer,’ I said.

  I got Duncan the Drunken to fix Armstrong’s headlight and aerial and to patch up the other damage, which included three bullet-holes in the bodywork. Duncan actually found a spent .22 bullet on the floor and offered me it for a souvenir. I took it and dumped it in a Keep Westminster Tidy litter bin.

  While Armstrong was off the road, hidden in Duncan’s lock-up garage in Barking, I borrowed a set of wheels from him – a five-year-old Fiat Uno. If my luck held, nobody I knew would see me in it. And when I say ‘borrowed,’ it did cost me and over the odds, but then I could rely on Duncan to be discreet.

  Werewolf reappeared on the scene after two days and five phone calls from Sorrel asking where he was. Whatever he told her about his limp and the bandage on his leg, she never said anything. I took them out to dinner a couple of times, and we talked about everything except Cawthorne. Then he got word of a roadie job with a band on a short tour of northern Europe, ending in a jazz seminar weekend in Zurich, where Gene Krupa used to hold drum schools.

  Sorrel said she had the use of a flat in Zurich and she’d go on ahead. Maybe there was still some skiing to be found. Werewolf said he thought that sounded dangerous.

  I saw Innes McInnes once, at his invitation, to try the Bass in the Clanger near his office one evening.

  ‘It’ll take months to sort out Cawthorne’s affairs,’ he said between sips of beer, though he looked ill at ease handling a pint.

  ‘What happened to Linton Holdings?’ I asked.

  ‘Oh, the company went down, taking Cawthorne with it. But that was inevitable. I’m putting Sir Frederick on one of my boards next week. I think I’ll send him to France to look over Cawthorne’s properties there. They’ll have to be sold to someone.’

  ‘Of course,’ I agreed sympathetically.

  ‘You did all right for yourself,’ he said, narrowing his eyes.

  ‘A modest punt, is the expression I think.’ Then I tried to change the subject. ‘Did you ever hear what happened to Cawthorne exactly?’

  He shrugged. ‘Took it worse than I thought he would. On the Saturday – the day after – he rang just about everybody he knew to try and offload the Linton debt. When he didn’t get anywhere, he went on a lone bender down at that farm of his. The word is he was playing with his guns and there was some sort of fire. Nobody else was involved, from what I hear.’

  I looked at him, but he wouldn’t meet my eyes.

  ‘It’s being put down as a nasty accident. There’s no hint of suicide.’

  Well, that was true enough.

  ‘And the Kent police found a ... cache ... a ... what-do-you-call-it? A load of cocaine ...’

  ‘A stash,’ I said. Then added: ‘So I’ve heard.’

  ‘That’s right, a stash worth nearly 100K on the street.’

  Then he did look at me. ‘Just how much did you make on those Linton shares?’

  ‘That’s for me to know and you to wonder, bonny lad,’ I said in a hammy Scottish accent as I finished my beer. ‘Another?’ I held up my glass.

  ‘You were right about one thing,’ he said, then polished his off.

  ‘What?’

  ‘This is the best pint of Bass around here.’

  I held my arms out.

  ‘Would I lie to you?’

  Lloyd came round one evening to hand over, as he put it so delicately, my ‘winnings.’

  I’d taken nearly four thousand pounds from my war chest (actually a copy of Hugh Brogan’s History of the United States turned into a fireproof combination safe) to help Lloyd buy a few Linton shares. He gave me nearly six grand back, which he said was less commission, whatever that meant. I didn’t ask how much he’d made.

  He agreed to stay for a drink, having left one of the Dennison boys outside watching his car because he didn’t trust the neighbourhood.

  I popped a couple of cans of lager and gave him one. Springsteen had curled up on his knee and was having his ears scratched. If he clawed Lloyd’s trousers, that was probably my share of the profits blown.

  ‘I’ve had another idea, Mr A,’ said Lloyd. ‘A money machine, got to be.’

  ‘Do tell, do tell,’ I said, flipping on a tape of the Andrews Sisters singing ‘Rum and Coca Cola’, one of the best anti-imperialist songs since Trotsky gave up writing lyrics.

  ‘I’m gonna start a messenger company. Motorbike riders, all with mobile phones – leased, of course – and all delectable young females aged between 18 and 22 with fine, firm bodies. Gonna call it City Angels. Hope you don’t mind.’

  ‘Not at all. Listen, there’s a friend of mine called Sandy, lives in Kent. Recently been made redundant ...’

  I called in to Prior, Keen, Baldwin on the Monday but got no further than Sergeant Purvis at the reception desk.

  ‘Mr Patterson is tied up,’ he said before I could open my mouth, ‘for the foreseeable future. He asked me to give you this.’

  He was grinning inanely, which I should have taken for the bad sign it was, as he handed over a plain white envelope.

  There was a cheque inside, for £1500 with the payee line left blank; just the way I like them. There was also a PKB ‘With Compliments’ in there as well, with just the words ‘In lieu’ written on it.

  No goodbye, good job well done, thanks for everything.

  Still, he hadn’t asked for the American Express card back, had he?

  It really annoyed Purvis, who couldn’t work out why I was grinning as I got in the lift. He didn’t wave back.

  Salome’s recovery took about five weeks in all. It was considerably speeded by the news that the Kent police were not going to press charges about the accident that had killed Alec Reynolds.

  On my advice, she saw the assessors from her insurance company in the hospital, and naturally she won them over from her sickbed (I also advised on which shorty nightie she should wear) and her claim was settled in full. Soon, she and Frank would thrill to the patter of tiny VW Golf wheels in their parking space outside.

  Before that, on the Saturday after I’d been made unemployed again, Frank knocked on the flat door and charged in as he usually did.

  I was sitting in the middle of the floor, wiring up some new hi-fi gear. Springsteen was asleep across my Habitat sofa-bed. (How do cats make themselves longer at will?)

  ‘Hi, Angel.’

  ‘Hi, Frank. How’s the invalid?’

  ‘Fine. Hi, Springsteen.’

  He was in a good mood – he didn’t normally talk to animals – and Springsteen noted it too. I distinctly saw his eyelid move.

  ‘That’s a nice CD player. Is it new?’

  ‘Er ... yes,’ I said, scrunching up the American Express receipt and stuffing it into my back pocket. ‘What can I do you for?’

  Frank stuck his hands in his pockets and rocked ba
ck on his heels.

  ‘This BUPA hospital that Sal’s in has visiting privileges.’

  He grinned a lot and his eyebrows shot up and down.

  ‘Let me guess,’ I said, taking a screwdriver out of my mouth. ‘Tonight is the night!’

  ‘Right on!’ Frank punched the air like a footballer.

  ‘And you want a few tips. That it?’

  He gave me a sour look. ‘No thanks, white meat, I’m well equipped!’

  ‘So I’ve heard.’

  He wiggled his hips. He was in a good mood.

  ‘No, it’s just that Sal asked me to bring the birthday present you gave her tonight. I didn’t know you’d given her anything.’

  ‘It was a surprise,’ I said.

  ‘Where is it? I can’t find a thing. She said she’d put it back in the wrapping paper.’

  Thoughtful old Sal.

  ‘It’s in the bottom left-hand drawer of your wardrobe,’ I said. ‘I noticed it when Fenella was tidying up during the week.’

  ‘Oh, fine. Thanks.’ He made to go. ‘What is it anyway?’

  ‘Keep it wrapped. Let Salome surprise you.’

  ‘Okay. See you around.’

  I let him get to the door before I said: ‘Hey, Frank. Does the hospital have any spare beds?’

  ‘Why?’ he said over his shoulder. ‘Not feeling well?’

  ‘I’m fine, Frank. I was thinking of you.’

  About The Author

  Mike Ripley is the author of 16 novels, including the Angel series which have twice won the Crime Writers’ Association Last Laugh Award for comedy. He was the co-editor of the legendary Fresh Blood anthologies, a scriptwriter for BBC TVs Lovejoy and served as the Daily Telegraph’s crime fiction critic for ten years. He currently writes a regular column for the popular Shots crime and thriller e-zine (www.shotsmag.co.uk) and regularly talks on crime fiction at libraries and festivals.