by Mike Ripley
‘So feed your own damned livestock.’
And off she flounced.
I trudged upstairs and picked up the tin and the opener. Outside Lisabeth’s door, I said in a loud voice, as if talking to someone: ‘That’s the trouble, you just can’t get the staff these days …’
Then I ran the rest of the way just in case she’d heard.
The Calthorpe Arms at that time on a Monday evening was so busy and bustling that you could hear a beermat drop. There were about a dozen customers, mostly middle-aged men sitting alone reading Evening Standards, who troubled the barman only to the extent that occasionally he had to turn down the corner of a page of his Stephen King paperback. It must really be business that had brought Bunny here, as it wasn’t his sort of pub. There were no women. Come to think of it, I wasn’t that keen on it either, though it did serve a cracking pint of Young’s bitter.
So good, I ordered a low-al lager so as not to get locked into a session.
Bunny saw me and gave me a brief nod, then went back to talking to a young black dude wearing a blue trenchcoat and nursing a colour-coordinated Filofax. Only the die-hards used them now; that was the first one I’d seen in captivity for some months. Maybe only the really bad cases, those who were hooked, had to keep their habit going.
After five minutes or so, they did their deal and the black guy left in a jangle of car keys, a big bunch on an ostentatious metal Mercedes key-ring. I bet myself he had a Skoda parked round the corner.
Bunny joined me at the bar and bought us both another drink. ‘This isn’t your turf, is it?’ he asked, checking his change carefully and obviously in front of the barman. Bunny knows lots of little irritating bits of behaviour.
‘No, I was looking for you, and I wouldn’t have figured you for this particular humming and vibrant example of the capital’s nightscene.’
‘Business.’ He shrugged. ‘Had to see Elmore there about some instruments. Also got a job if you’re interested, on Wednesday.’
I hesitated just that millisecond too long. Bunny works on the principle that if he asks every woman he meets to sleep with him, a certain percentage are going to say yes. If they say no straight away, he moves on. If they hesitate, he reckons he’s in with a chance. He gets a lot of noes that way, but a remarkable number of yesses, and when he didn’t register an instant negative from me, I was as good as signed up.
‘It’s a peach of an earner,’ he went on quickly. ‘And it’ll be a giggle, guaranteed.’
‘All that means is it’s cash-in-hand and there are women involved somewhere. Where, when and, lest we forget, how much?’
He looked at me disapprovingly. Well, he tried to.
‘You can be really mercenary at times, Mr Angel. Don’t you ever think of anything but dosh?’
‘Of course. I’ve got a lot on my mind: the state of the economy, interest rates, disarmament in the Warsaw Pact, lead in petrol, why nobody lets England win at cricket any more, does the Aids scare mean we’ll never have another vampire movie, are 48 satellite TV channels enough …’
‘Okay, okay, lay off the ear-bashing. Do you know St Christopher’s Place up West?’
‘The precinct, off Oxford Street?’
‘That’s it. All the shopkeepers there have chipped in and hired a promo agency to drum up Christmas trade. One of their ideas is to put a band on a lorry and drive round the block at lunchtime belting out the old traddies – the stuff you play. If nothing else, it’ll annoy the hell out of Selfridges.’
‘And on the lorry will be a clutch of nubile young ladies in red Santa Claus miniskirts and fishnet tights handing out leaflets saying “Come and shop in St Christopher’s Place.”‘
He looked staggered.
‘Somebody’s asked you already?’
‘No, Bunny, I just know the way your mind works.’
‘There’s 50 in it for you. An hour’s work. Two, tops.’
‘Who else is playing?’
‘I’ve got Trippy on piano ...’
‘Does it have a full set of keys?’
‘The piano does. I don’t know about Trippy.’ I nodded I agreement. ‘He’s got his mate Dod bringing a snare drum and high hat – I didn’t think there was much point in a full drum kit.’
Again I agreed. I didn’t personally think having a piano I on the back of a truck was much use either, but it looked good and gave the band somewhere to balance their beer cans.
‘There’s me on clarinet, you on horn, and I’ve a tuba player called Chase. Know him?’
‘He’s a miserable git, isn’t he?’
‘That’s him. I’m still short of a trombone, though.’
I took a felt-tipped pen out of his jacket pocket and wrote a number on a beer mat.
‘Ring this first thing in the morning. It’s a direct line into the BBC. Ask for Martin. He’s very good and he’ll probably do it for nothing if he can get a couple of hours off.’
‘Cheers,’ said Bunny, pocketing the mat as he had done a million others, though the phone numbers on them were not usually trombonists’. ‘What are you doing here, anyway?’
‘Came to see you. Your answering service said you’d be here.’
He looked down into his glass.
‘Ah yes ... Edwina.’
‘Edwina? Where did you find her?’
‘She found me, and I’m having trouble getting rid of her.’
‘I never thought that was your problem.’
Bunny pursed his lips and whispered: ‘Bitch.’
‘I wanted to pick your brains,’ I said.
‘Find ‘em first.’
‘Think back to your carefree youth before the cares of the world descended on your manly shoulders.’
‘Last week, you mean?’
‘Ha-chortle-ha. A bit further back, to uni days. Remember a kid called Billy Tuckett?’
He thought for a minute.
‘Yeah – vaguely. What’s he to anybody?’
‘I ... er ... came across him the other day, that’s all.’
I indicated that Bunny’s glass was empty, but he shook his head. ‘I’ve been trying to recall what Billy did at uni, or afterwards,’ I went on. ‘Did you ever come across him?’
Bunny looked at the ceiling.
‘Didn’t we used to call him …’
‘Yes, of course we did, but we were young and unsophisticated then.’
He nodded agreement.
‘Yeah, I’ve caught him a coupla times. I think he lived out Romford way, but I never had much to do with him. I saw him at the odd university reunion. You know, when I was married to that ball-crushing, vicious old cow Sandra.’
‘I’m glad to see you’ve got over your matrimonial difficulties without rancour,’ I said, draining my glass, knowing he wasn’t listening.
‘We used to have to go to them all and raise funds for the old alma mater. Actually, that sow Sandra only went to see how we were doing in the rat-race compared with her contemporaries. Obviously we weren’t keeping up with the Joneses, so she started screwing the boss.’
‘And Billy used to go?’ I tried to get him back on to the subject.
‘Oh yeah, hanging around moonfaced like he did ten years ago, all ill-fitting clothes and two halves of shandy because he had his pushbike with him.’
He saw my expression.
‘No, straight up, he always rode a pushbike. Never learned to drive. It was against his principles. Cars pollute the atmosphere, all that shit.’
‘Is that why I remember him? He was into the environment? A Green?’
‘Sure, anything like that. He was in all the conservation groups when he was a student, but his big thing was animals.’
‘Animals. You mean like “Save the Whale”?’
‘And the rest.’ Bunny zipped up his jacket and made to go. ‘S
ave the Whale, rescue the rabbit, free the anaconda. Stop animal experiments, stop fox-hunting, abolish police horses, vote your gerbil into Parliament.’
‘That’s been done. Many times.’
‘Too bloody right,’ he grinned. ‘He couldn’t hold a conversation about anything else. That was Billy. Any chance of a lift?’
I said okay and we wandered out. The barman didn’t say goodbye.
On the street, as I unlocked Armstrong, Bunny said: ‘You never got conned into any of that, did you?’
‘What, the rat-race or going to uni reunions?’
‘Both.’
‘No, that’s right,’ I agreed. ‘I never got into the rat-race – or the brat-race as it is now – because I never wanted to. And I only ever went to the first reunion after graduation.’
‘Couldn’t hack it, eh?’ he asked, climbing in the back.
‘No, I was barred after the first one.’
Chapter Three
The heavy mob came round the next morning; all one of him.
He said he was called Prentice and he was a detective-sergeant and he’d been well trained in the most vicious of police techniques: politeness and reasonableness. From the off, he had me convinced that by helping him I was doing no more than carving out a new life for myself as a better citizen, a better human being. Maybe this was my chance to make up for all those little oversights and lapses in the past, which we all have no matter how hard we try to forget or overlook them. If I could help him – and, after all, he was only doing the job we paid him to do, wasn’t he? – then it would be a personal shot at redemption on my part.
He almost had me going, but my Rule of Life No 14 is that when somebody offers you the chance of a lifetime, they usually mean theirs, not yours.
I was on the communal house phone, which is chained to the wall tighter than a medieval Bible, when the doorbell rang. Most everybody in the house had gone to work, or whatever it was they did during daylight, and as I was only two feet away, I reached over and slipped the lock, taking the phone receiver with me.
‘With you in a tick,’ I said, signalling at the phone.
He nodded politely and showed me the palm of a gloved hand. I went back to sorting out a schedule for the day with Simon, the proprietor of Snogogram International. But I felt the hairs on the back of my neck stand up and decided that maybe I’d better not say too much in front of the stranger.
‘Okay, Simon, 12 sharp down in Southwark. You can fill me in then,’ I said, and hung up.
I took a closer look at our visitor. The soft, black leather bomber jacket, the steel-rimmed glasses, the light blue Ford Escort parked out in the street behind him. I should have known immediately. If he’d actually had a flashing blue light on top of his head, I might have rumbled him sooner.
‘Mr Angel? Glad I caught you in. My name is Prentice. Detective-Sergeant.’
‘I suppose it’s about …’
‘Yes. Mind if I come in?’
I couldn’t think of a good reason why not, so I ushered him towards the stairs and told him I lived in Flat 3. Half way up, Springsteen shot through his legs and passed me at about Mach 5, doing a handbrake turn at the bottom of the stairs and heading for the back door. With his eyes flashing, he looked like a black, furry guided missile.
Prentice turned his head to see what had just missed him, making the finger-rubbing gesture and whispering ‘Puss … puss …,’ which is something I’ve noticed a lot of people who haven’t met Springsteen do. Maybe it works on other cats, but I wouldn’t attempt it without asbestos gloves.
‘Yours?’ he asked.
‘I pay the rent and he lets me sleep here.’ I shrugged as I opened the flat door. He waved me in first.
‘I’m a dog man myself,’ he said conversationally.
‘Well, naturally. Dobermans, Rottweilers, attack Alsatians ...’
He pushed his spectacles back into his face with the middle finger of his right hand. I was to learn that it was his way of controlling his temper.
‘Jack Russells, actually. My father bred them. Of course, it’s not fair to keep dogs like that in London, not natural hunters like them.’
So that’s where I was going wrong with Springsteen. Maybe I should buy him a place in the country. Maybe a foreign country.
‘Is this going to take long, Sergeant? I have to go to work, you see.’
‘I shouldn’t think so. Just what exactly do you do, Mr Angel?’
Now I had a number of answers to this. Self-unemployed was the usual one, though I didn’t think that would wash with Prentice. And I would never say that to anyone who was unemployed but didn’t want to be. To anyone who was claiming unemployment benefit or social security, which I don’t, I would imply that I’d registered as ‘outdoor clerical’ or similar, and wasn’t it a disgrace they couldn’t find me a job? Sometimes I stick to ‘driver’ – well, I have a cab (though you’d better not be talking to a real musher), and a Heavy Goods Vehicle licence. But ‘driver’ has dodgy implications if you’re a copper. So I compromised.
‘I’m a musician.’
‘Oh, so you have a degree in electronics?’
He said it with a faint smile. I knew what he meant. Possibly he was human after all.
‘Not me. Strictly crash-bash saloon bar trad jazz.’ I pointed to where my trumpet was balanced on top of one of the stereo speakers. People think I put it there as a piece of pop art to decorate the room. Only I know I forgot to pack it away.
‘Have you done the “in” clubs? You know, Jazz Cafe, the Wag Club, places like that?’
He was well informed, probably more up to speed than I was. ‘I’m not into Yuppie-jazz, so I’d never get asked to the Jazz Cafe, though they get some good people there.’ That was true; in fact, Stoke Newington was turning into the Storyville of British jazz. ‘But I never get past the bouncers at the Wag.’
‘Me neither,’ he grinned.
Maybe I could do business with this guy, I thought. Sometimes I have the weirdest thoughts, and I always promise to give up eating cheese late at night but never do.
‘Time for a cup of coffee?’ I asked, not keenly.
‘Sure,’ he said, moving a pile of paperbacks and sitting down in my fake Bauhaus leather and steel chair (one of a set, of one).
I went into my kitchenette and flicked the kettle on. His voice carried after me.
‘Interesting mixture of reading material,’ he yelled.
‘I try to keep the grey cells working,’ I shouted back, more to reassure him that I hadn’t done a runner out of the kitchen window.
‘Bit of military history, detective stories – is there any money in these old Penguins? – P J O’Rourke, essays by Gore Vidal, the new Jeffrey Archer –’
‘Sorry, somebody must have left that here,’ I yelled.
‘What did you read at university?’
‘History,’ I shouted, pouring water.
‘Billy Tuckett did Chemistry, didn’t he?’
End of polite chit-chat. Rule of Life No 61: there’s no such thing as off-duty.
I carried the coffee jug and filter and two cups back into the living-room and put them down on my coffee table, which sounds posh but in fact it doubles as a dining table, poker table and ironing-board.
‘Real coffee,’ said Prentice. ‘That’s a treat.’
‘Never been able to drink instant since I went to America the first time. I’ve no milk, but there’s sugar somewhere.’
‘That’s okay; as it comes.’
I moved a pile of CDs off the sofa-bed and sat down, I balancing my ‘I LOVE HACKNEY’ mug on one knee.
‘I didn’t know Billy that well, in fact hardly at all. But yes, I think it was Chemistry. Is that relevant to anything?’
‘No.’ He buried his face in his mug, which didn’t say anything but had a picture of a c
at rolling a joint. ‘But it I was a hell of a coincidence, wasn’t it?’
‘What was?’ I asked, playing dumb.
‘Billy Tuckett being the person to drop in on you like that.’
‘He couldn’t have known I’d be there. I didn’t know myself where the house was until the week before last. And anyway, I haven’t seen Billy for Christ knows how long, and I never knew him well. And –’
‘Okay, okay.’
‘– another thing: what the fuck was he doing on the roof in the first place?’
‘Ah, now I think I have a theory about that.’ Prentice leaned forward and put his mug on the table. ‘Can you spare me an hour or so?’
‘What for?’ I asked suspiciously.
‘I want you to come out to Leytonstone with me and let me show you something.’
‘Well, I ... Look, Sergeant, just what have you got on me? There is no way I had anything going with poor Billy, and no way he knew I’d be in that house.’
‘Of course not, Mr Angel.’ Prentice smiled, and that made me more nervous than anything. ‘It’s such a bleedin’ long-shot set of coincidences, it has to be true. Nobody, but nobody, would be daft enough to stick to a story like that if it wasn’t.’
I was glad somebody else saw it my way.
‘I think I know why Billy was heading for that house,’ Prentice went on. ‘He knew someone who used to live there before it was owned by a Mr ...’
He reached inside his jacket for his notebook but I said ‘Sunil’ before he could clear his shoulder-holster, or wherever it was he kept it.
‘Yes, er … Sunil. Now he’s –’
‘In Pakistan, I believe.’
‘Been living there about a year, is what I was going to say.’
‘Oh, sorry.’
Rule of Life No 37: when a policeman’s talking, shut up.
‘Before that, the house was occupied by a Miss Lucy Scarrott. Does that ring any bells?’
‘Should it?’
‘I happen to know that the late Mr Tuckett was very close to Ms Scarrott.’