Angel Hunt

by Mike Ripley

  ‘Friend of yours? Owes you money?’ grinned Doogie.

  ‘I’ve never met the man,’ I said honestly. I was bemused but not worried.

  ‘I told you he was looking for you,’ said Fenella from somewhere at the other end of the tree.

  ‘Well he’s still looking for you,’ said Miranda. Then, to Doogie: ‘Come on, snuggles, we’ve got our Christmas shopping to do.’

  ‘Snuggles’ blushed slightly and followed his beloved out on to the street, heading for the bus stop to take them up West.

  Lisabeth decreed that we did the tree decorations now and began to produce boxes of tinsel and even a string of cheap tree lights shaped like small plastic candles.

  ‘I want to put the angel on the top,’ said Fenella with a twinkle in her eye.

  ‘As long as I don’t have to watch,’ I said.

  We stuck the tree upright in an old waste-paper basket and Lisabeth selected the appropriate site behind the front door. If we’d put it where she wanted it originally, as I pointed out, the reclusive and slightly weird Mr Goodson wouldn’t have been able to get out of his flat.

  The problem was the tree leaned at an angle of about 30 degrees. What we needed, said Lisabeth, was some sand to hold the trunk in place. I pointed out that we were in Hackney and not on Brighton beach, and she pointed out that there were such things as builders’ merchants even in Hackney and open on Saturday mornings. So I had to point out that they didn’t sell it by the bucketful and how about if I ventured out to the back yard and liberated a couple of half bricks from the crumbling back wall to use as wedges?

  They seemed to do the trick, as long as nobody actually leaned on the damn thing, and Fenella set to with a will, draping the branches in tinsel and streamers of coloured paper. Lisabeth said she had some aerosol spray snow (almost certainly not ozone-friendly) in her room and she’d fetch her cards. Each year she kept any Christmas card she received and the following year she’d cut out the pictures, thread them on to cotton and hang them on the tree.

  Even though the tree wasn’t of the scale of those given by Norway to Trafalgar Square every year, Fenella was having trouble reaching the top branches. So I got her a chair to stand on and she was on it, making a right song and dance about keeping her balance, and I was checking the power plug on the tree lights when I heard the key go in the front door lock.

  As we never ever saw Mr Goodson at weekends, I assumed it was Doogie and Miranda returning early from their shopping trip. Very early. Too early, if I’d had time to think about it.

  I didn’t even turn around. I just felt a whiff of cold air on the back of my neck, and the next thing I knew, something had exploded in the middle of my back and I was pitching forward into the Christmas tree.

  I hit the tree, the tree hit Fenella. She screamed and fell off the chair, clutching at the tree for support that wasn’t there. I had armfuls of tree as well, and between us we pulled the whole thing loose, flipping the wedging bricks onto the floor, which I promptly fell over.

  Fenella, the tree and I ended up on the floor, and somehow my head ended up between her legs. Now that wasn’t quite as bad as it sounds, as at least I was on my back and looking towards Fenella’s feet. And the doorway.

  Shifty-Eyes and Pointy-Beard had got new suits for Christmas.

  Pointy had also got a new cricket bat, or maybe it was for his son who one day would lead the Pakistan cricket team out onto the cricket field to knock seven bells out of England. Why not? Everybody else does.

  It didn’t take me long to associate the shooting pain in the small of my back with the business end of the bat, but it didn’t seem worth commenting on. Through Shifty’s legs, I could see a big BMW parked at the kerb. There was somebody in the back. I took a wild guess.

  ‘Sunil?’ I hissed. Christ, my back did hurt, and Fenella squirming and squealing under me didn’t help.

  Shifty moved closer and looked down at me.

  ‘We waited till your wild man friend had gone. You’ve got nobody to help you now.’

  There was a deep growling noise from above me. I tilted my head back deeper into Fenella’s legs and could see – upside down – Lisabeth standing outside her flat door, about eight steps up. She had a can of spray snow in one hand and a pair of very sharp kitchen scissors, for cutting Sellotape, in the other. She didn’t say anything, she just stared at the two invaders who had put Fenella into such an undignified and compromising position with A Man; and even I count as such some days.

  She started down the steps, shaking the aerosol slowly and giving the scissors an experimental snap.

  The pain in my back seemed to ease. I smiled up at Shifty and Pointy.

  ‘You haven’t met my other friends, have you?’

  Of course Lisabeth had been very brave; we all agreed on that, even Lisabeth. And it hadn’t really been her fault that Shifty’s hand was bleeding so much. After all, he was the one who put his hands in front of his genitals and got in the way of the scissors, so he’d really only himself to blame. And then we’d laughed at how she’d sprayed fake snow into Pointy’s face so that his beard looked like a stick-on Colonel Sanders disguise. And again, when we remembered how he’d walked into the edge of the open door and almost knocked himself out because he couldn’t see and the more he rubbed his eyes the worse it got. And then I spoilt it all by just mentioning that I thought maybe she had gone a wincy bit too far when she had marched up to the parked BMW and spray-snowed the back passenger window.

  Lisabeth had burst into tears and locked herself in her bathroom.

  ‘It’s just delayed reaction,’ I told Fenella. ‘She’ll calm down.’

  ‘After about two days and four pounds of chocolate,’ said Fenella drily.

  ‘You’re the expert,’ I admitted, ‘but why not give her one of her Christmas presents in advance?’

  Fenella was genuinely shocked. More shocked than when she fell off the chair, or when I landed between her legs or when Lisabeth beat up our visitors.

  ‘Before Christmas Day?’

  ‘It was just a thought.’

  I left her thinking about it and said I’d clear up the mess in the hall and reset the tree. It was a good excuse to get out of there before either of them asked why Pointy-Beard and Shifty-Eyes were after me.

  Or how they came to have a key for our front door.

  There is a certain school of thought that says that any half-decent policeman is always on duty at a football match on Saturday afternoons. The theory is that they either want to get to see the game free or they’re the sort of copper who goes looking for a punch-up with the hooligan element. In either case, they are the sort of cop you know where you stand with.

  I don’t necessarily go along with this. Prentice, for instance, was at his desk when I rang, and offered to come over straight away, and he seemed to be a half-decent copper. At least I hoped he was, as I was going to need him.

  Now that Sunil’s boys had a key, they could drop in any time, and God knows what might happen if both Doogie and Lisabeth were out and I wasn’t.

  By the time he arrived, I had restored order to our festive decorations (okay, so the tree wasn’t exactly upright and most of the decorations were on one side only) and was tucking into lunch while listening to a bad quality pirate tape of a Chaka Khan concert, which an American friend had sent me.

  I had defrosted and reheated a mass of frozen chilli, but Prentice said he’d had a sandwich though I wasn’t to stop on his account.

  ‘I’ll have a crisp, though,’ he said, helping himself.

  ‘They’re tortilla chips actually.’

  He pulled a face. ‘I’m impressed. Mexican beer too.’

  ‘If you weren’t on duty, I’d offer you one,’ I beamed, pouring the last of the Dos Equis into my glass.

  ‘Gee, thanks. Still, I’m glad to see you’re still eating meat. They haven�
��t converted you yet, then?’

  I shook my head and, between spoonfuls, I gave him a resume of my adventures in darkest Cambridgeshire.

  ‘So you’ve got yourself an in on this Boxing Day hunt? That’s good.’

  ‘If I should want to go, yes. And always assuming Lara contacts me.’

  ‘You could just turn up.’

  ‘Suspicious. Me hanging around.’

  ‘I thought you’d be used to that by now.’

  Cheeky devil.

  ‘Coffee?’

  ‘Yeah, okay.’ He picked up the video I’d taken from the rectory. ‘You seen this?’

  ‘No, but several like it. I’m guessing that that one is a compilation tape. What Billy would have called a master tape, full of extracts from real TV shows and some of their homemade video stuff. There were four top quality tapes among all the others. I reckoned people sent them in from all over the country. You know, concerned people.’

  ‘I spend my life dealing with concerned people. Can I put this on?’ He nodded towards my video recorder. Springsteen was asleep on top of the television.

  ‘Sure, but if there’s anything nasty on there involving cats, turn the volume down. Springsteen’s a sensitive soul.’

  I busied myself in the kitchen until the coffee had filtered. That reminded me that I’d have to go back to Mr Higgins the Coffee Man, as the presents I’d bought had been scattered over the street outside and washed away by the rain since then.

  I poured out two mugs and returned to find Prentice glued to the TV screen.

  ‘What’s this?’ I asked, thinking for a second that he’d flipped channels and we were watching the Saturday afternoon movie. In this case, an early Technicolor war film with buildings exploding left, right and centre.

  He didn’t answer, but pressed the remote control and the volume came up. Over the explosions came a dull commentary talking about ‘effective blast range’ and ‘thermal diffusion’ and other stuff I couldn’t understand.

  Prentice said: ‘Now why do you think the Reverend Bell, or maybe your friend Billy Tuckett, or both, needed an army training video on the use of plastic explosives?’

  And for the life of me, I couldn’t think of a good answer.

  Like on a TV game show, the second round of questioning got harder.

  I went over every nuance of everything Bell had said to me, and I definitely could not remember anything about plastic explosives, arms caches or thermonuclear devices. And no, there had been no mention of Professor Brian Bamforth and who the hell was the guy anyway?

  ‘He’s one of the country’s leading experts on transgenics,’ said Prentice sharply. ‘Does that mean anything to you?’

  ‘Yes,’ I said emphatically. ‘Well, not a lot, to be honest.’

  I’d seen it written in Billy’s notes, but the references hadn’t meant much.

  ‘A transgenic organism, or animal for that matter, is one whose genetic composition does not exist in nature. You know what DNA is?’

  ‘It’s the double helix – the stuff of life – genetic structure. Are we talking genetic manipulation here? New species of animals? A super race of ... say, cats …?’

  Stuff of life? The stuff of nightmares.

  ‘Relax. There’s nothing weird about genetic engineering. They probably genetically engineer the yeast in that beer you drank. There’s nothing wrong with isolating genes and improving them in things like crops, for instance, or in getting rid of bacterial diseases. But what gets people freaked about transgenics is the technology of taking genes from one species and injecting them at embryo stage into animals of a different species.’

  ‘Hey, man, you’re talking fucking Frankenstein here.’

  ‘That’s what they all say. Look, I’m no scientist and maybe I put it badly. It’s not like selective breeding, it’s creating entirely new genetic formations that don’t exist as yet.’

  ‘And no doubt there will be failures along the way.’

  ‘It happens, but it’s very tightly controlled. Professor Bamforth himself is up for the Advisory Committee for Genetic Manipulation.’

  ‘So he’s a target?’

  ‘Absolutely, and this is prime time. Or do I mean open season?’ He smiled thinly.

  ‘What, the season of peace on earth and goodwill to all transgenic cross-breeds?’

  ‘Christmas, Easter, the Bank Holidays, they’re the favourite times for the activists. They have the spare time and their targets are low on security. Look at that school on Dwyer Street.’

  ‘That’s hardly a military establishment,’ I observed.

  ‘Okay then, the famous attack on the Royal College of Surgeons’ research farm in Kent back in ‘84. That was turned over on a Bank Holiday.’

  I’d had enough of this.

  ‘Come on, Sergeant, I know some of the animal libbers are two bricks short of a wall, but if they hurt people they’ll alienate themselves from any public sympathy. And you can always get sympathy by showing how badly treated the fluffy bunny-wunnies in the laboratories are!’

  ‘I hear what you’re saying, Roy –’ (Rule of Life No 279: people who say, ‘I hear what you’re saying,’ really mean they didn’t want you to raise the subject in the first place) – ‘but we’re not dealing with sit-down demonstrators or protest marchers any more.

  ‘You’ve seen how well-organised the anti-hunting lot are now, and the anti-factory farming faction have organised Animal Investigation Units to carry out daytime inspections of farms. The fanatics, though, they’ve gone for the arson and sledgehammer technique. That’s what we call it: A and S. But it looks as if some are going beyond that. Do you know what the guy on that video was talking about?’

  ‘Explosives.’

  ‘Semtex H. The best of the new generation of plastics.’

  ‘That’s the stuff the dogs at the airport can’t detect, isn’t it?’

  ‘The very same. The Czechs manufacturer it, and the Government’s been pressing them to add something in so it can be sniffed out.’

  ‘Any particular flavour?’

  ‘It’s not funny.’ He frowned at me.

  ‘Oh, come on. Where is a country vicar and – ‘ I almost said ‘and a legal secretary’ but stopped myself – ‘a backwoods parson, where does he put his hands on Semtex H?’

  ‘Stranger things have happened. That’s why I want you to keep your eyes open on Boxing Day.’

  ‘You think they’re going to blow up a fox-hunt?’

  ‘Don’t piss about; of course not. That hunt meet is a target for the hunt saboteurs, we know that. Oh, they’ll cause trouble and so will the bloody huntsmen; they’re just as bad as each other. There’ll be a punch-up, no doubt, and pictures in the newspapers the next day. But think. It’s perfect cover for the real loonies to get together.’

  ‘And you’ll have your informers in there as well, won’t you?’

  He shrugged that one off.

  ‘Even better if we have you as well. Keep an eye on those not getting involved in the direct action. The real loonies are quite paranoid, you know. They’re convinced we photograph everybody and have stacks of computer time to trace their movements. Most of them won’t even learn to drive because they think we use the driving licence computer against them.’

  Interesting. They should do what I do – don’t rely on just one licence.

  ‘Anyone with a record of any sort,’ Prentice went on, ‘even a parking ticket, is regarded as a liability. That’s what makes it so difficult to track the bastards down. They’re all clean.’

  ‘Until they blow someone up?’

  ‘No. Until they get nicked.’

  I broke my fast for the second time in 24 hours and lit a cigarette.

  ‘If I do this for you – and it’s a big “if,” mind you – then you’ve got to do something for me.’


  ‘That depends,’ he said firmly. I reckoned it was the best I could hope for.

  ‘I want you to locate somebody for me,’ I said, then added quickly: ‘Without knowing why. It’s personal.’

  ‘And totally innocent?’

  ‘Not likely, not if I find her!’ I gave him a real male chauvinist leer and a wink, hoping I wasn’t overdoing it.

  ‘Who is she?’ he sighed, reaching for his notebook.

  On his way out, he stopped in the hall and looked at the Christmas tree.

  ‘It’s crooked,’ he said.

  ‘Naw, it’s genetically engineered that way for houses with dodgy foundations.’

  I made a list of things I had to do. High up on it were: find Zaria (with or without Prentice’s help), avoid Sunil, buy more Christmas presents, organise some musicians for a New Year’s Eve party (the rods I make for my own back …) and stock up with booze for it, and restock the larder, which was getting rather bare.

  I put the domestic shopping to the top of the list. After all, this was the last Saturday before Christmas and British housewives are always convinced that the shops will never open again, so they rape the supermarket shelves as if stocking up for a siege.

  I made a couple of phone calls about getting some booze in for the party, and ended up mostly leaving messages as most people were out and about. Then, not able to put it off any longer, I zipped round the corner to Mrs Patel’s delicatessen and piled up some essential provisions. Cat food, cat snack biscuits, cat litter, and food for me. And all the time, peeping around corners watching for pointed (white) beards, cricket bats and BMWs with snowed-out windows.

  I got back to No 9 and shut the door with such a sense of relief that I celebrated by opening a bottle of tequila I’d been saving as an emergency Christmas present in case I found I’d forgotten anyone. Truth was, just then, I couldn’t think of a more deserving cause.

  Springsteen wanted feeding, which is a bit like saying Springsteen was still breathing normally, so I opened a tin of something that was definitely not cruelty free as far as some other animal was concerned, and he buried his face in it. I left all my shopping on the kitchen work surface after cutting a slice of orange for my drink and wondering for the millionth time why we couldn’t get decent fruit from politically acceptable regimes. Then I flicked on the CD for some music and tore up the rest of the list of things to do.