by Mike Ripley
Prentice leaned over and patted my stretched-out leg.
‘What story, Roy? You weren’t there, were you?’
‘Oh no, of course not. I was forgetting.’
He winked.
‘Good. Oh, by the way, we found Billy Tuckett’s bicycle in the back of Peter Pres … Peter Bamforth’s van. It was in a lock-up garage in Islington. You can take it back to Mrs Tuckett if you want. I’ll have it dropped round when we’ve finished with it.’
‘What about his video camera and stuff?’
‘That’s up to Cambridge, but it’ll be released eventually. There was some interesting stuff on those tapes, by all accounts.’
‘I’ll see how I feel,’ I said. I had no burning desire to see Billy’s mum again, but there might come a time when I needed free meat.
He stood up to go.
‘Incidentally, what with all this excitement, I never checked how our inquiries were going on what’s-her-name, your friend … Zaria?’
‘Forget it.’
‘Really? I mean, I suppose I owe you one …’
‘Put that in writing and let me carry it around in my wallet,’ I suggested. ‘But otherwise, forget it. That particular problem solved itself.’
‘Fair enough. We’ll ... er ... run into each other sometime. Maybe.’
‘Maybe.’ He raised a hand in farewell. ‘Hang on a minute.’
‘Yeah?’
‘You said you’d found Billy’s bike.’ He nodded. ‘Which puts Peter Bamforth at the Dwyer Street school, doesn’t it?’
‘Yup. Pretty much.’
‘I’m sure in my mind it was an accident, you know. Billy being on that roof.’
‘So I understand from what the Reverend Bell has been saying.’
‘And what about Lara?’
‘We’ve no physical evidence to put her there, but she’s well tied to the bomb at her daddy’s place.’
‘Really? How?’
Prentice stroked his chin.
‘It was funny, really. You see, there wasn’t a single makeable fingerprint on the bomb. Not on the explosive, the timer or anything. But where it was laid out, just as if someone was going to put it together, somebody had dropped some pills and an inhaler thing. And they were just covered in young Lara’s prints. Even had her name on them – her real name, and address.’
‘Lucky, that,’ I said.
‘Yeah, it was. I wondered when you’d ask.’
As I was still classified as walking wounded by New Year’s Eve, I got out of my rash promise to get a band together for the house party. It was just as well, as there wouldn’t have been room, given the number of people who turned up.
The compromise was that the speakers of my CD player were strapped to the banister of the landing outside my flat and the volume turned up so that the whole house (and most of the street) could benefit. Doogie and Miranda opened their place up for the eats – and Doogie excelled himself there – while Lisabeth’s and Fenella’s place was cleared and darkened for anyone fancying a dance. Mr Goodson was away for the holiday – I’m pretty sure someone had checked – so we used the old communal kitchen next to his flat as a bar.
Needless to say, as always happens with parties, most everybody remained in the hallway or on the stairs until the need for more booze or a lavatory forced them to move.
My friend Duncan the Drunken, probably the best car mechanic in the world, turned up with a case of very good French wine that a satisfied customer had given him for Christmas. He handed it to me and headed straight for the kitchen muttering ‘Where’s the beer?’ Doreen, his wife, pecked me on the cheek, took off her fake fur coat and draped it over the box of wine I was holding. Then she took an engraved pint tankard from her capacious handbag and followed Duncan shouting: ‘Duncan, you’ve forgotten your Christmas present!’
I staggered upstairs to put the wine in my flat, stepping over the elongated figure of Bunny, who was saying to a slim, diminutive blonde, ‘Cats have at least eight erogenous zones, whereas humans …’
I presumed Springsteen had given him his cue. He’d be downstairs in the thick of it somewhere, as he loved parties.
I dumped the wine in my kitchenette and wandered into my living-room to check that the CD player was programmed to continue to boogie.
‘Oh, hello, Roy,’ said Fenella, scaring me half-to-death as she leapt up from the sofa. ‘This is Josie,’ she said, starting to blush. ‘An old school chum.’
Josie was a smaller Fenella, and she wore round, John Lennon glasses.
‘Hello,’ she said, without a hint of a smile.
‘We were just coming downstairs to join the party,’ said Fenella.
As they trooped out, I followed Fenella and whispered in her ear: ‘Lisabeth’s upstairs in among the food.’
‘She would be,’ she whispered back. Then she took Josie’s arm. ‘Roy got us our Christmas tree. Isn’t it pretty?’
Josie looked over the balcony at the assorted drunks milling around the battered conifer.
‘It’s not straight,’ she said to me.
‘Stick around,’ I said. ‘Nobody will be.’
The front door opened downstairs and a familiar figure in an ankle-length overcoat entered. It was Nassim Nassim, our esteemed landlord.
‘Bloody hell,’ I said to myself. ‘Who asked him?’
‘I did,’ said Fenella. ‘I thought it would be a nice gesture. I don’t know who the power-dressing girlfriend is though. It’s certainly not Mrs Nassim.’
No, it wasn’t. It was Zaria.
‘I can explain,’ she said, when I finally got her alone in my bedroom.
I’d told Fenella to get them upstairs as quickly as possible, to where the food was. Nassim wasn’t much of a drinker but he would certainly freak out over Doogie’s buffet.
Fenella did me proud, leading Nassim by the arm with Zaria following, and as she went by, I nipped out of my flat and grabbed her hand, dragging her inside.
‘Sit down and start then,’ I told her.
She perched on the edge of the bed. Fenella was right about the power-dressing. Her suit coat had shoulder pads an eagle could have landed on; the matching skirt stopped half an inch above the knee; and she wore red stockings with black seams and black three-inch heels.
‘Have you got a cigarette?’ she asked.
I gave her a cigarette, found her an ashtray, thought to hell with it and lit one myself, then got her a drink as well.
‘Well?’
‘Well, you know that packet you gave me to post when we were in Leytonstone?’
‘It has crossed my mind in the last week or two,’ I sighed.
She suddenly reached out a hand and touched my leg.
‘You’re limping. Did Sunil’s people do that to you?’
‘It’s nothing,’ I said, shrugging it off but not enlightening her. ‘Go on.’
‘I assumed the packet was drugs,’ she said firmly. So had I.
‘And I do not approve of drugs or the people who traffic in them,’ she went on. ‘So I decided not to post the packet to you.’
‘But you couldn’t resist opening it?’
She shrugged her shoulder pads.
‘I was surprised to find the disks, I have to admit,’ she said.
‘The what?’
‘The computer disks. I ran them through the word-processor at the nursing home.’
‘It wasn’t drugs?’
‘Oh no.’ She was wide-eyed at the thought. ‘It was Sunil’s own private double-entry ledger.’
‘Come again?’
‘You know he manages – managed – some of Nassim’s property for him. Well, he’d been systematically fiddling Nassim out of I guessed 20 percent of his rentals for two years. He kept one set of books on his personal computer and gave Nassim a comple
tely different set of figures.’
I sat down on the bed next to her.
‘And you started to blackmail him, and he thought it was me. I thought he was after me, and all he wanted to do was give me money.’
‘That was my first idea,’ she smiled, putting a hand on my knee. ‘But then I discovered that Nassim is a distant relation – I’m his great half-niece. I think. Anyway, I made contact with him and chatted him up and he was impressed by my business knowledge and my evaluation of his property assets, which was bigger than he’d ever thought. So I got in touch with Sunil and told him not to try and buy me off with money. I did try and get to you to tell you.’
‘It’s a good job he never got to me then, isn’t it?’ I asked carefully.
‘I suppose so, as things turned out,’ she said, and went on without pause, ‘I told him the stakes were raised and if he didn’t want exposing and the family disgrace and all that shit, then he’d better resign from Nassim’s business and go back home and manage his own.’
‘And he went?’
‘Oh yes. He knew what was on those disks, and he knows my branch of the family doesn’t mess about.’
‘I’ll bet. But still, it’s a bit much, isn’t it? Packing up and moving back to somewhere north of Peshawar or wherever.’
‘Where’s that?’
‘Pakistan. Isn’t it?’
‘Who said anything about Pakistan? I said he’d gone home. To Leicester.’
‘Oh. Sorry. So now what?’
‘So I’m the new property manager for Nassim, that’s what. And he’ll make me a director within a year.’
I gave her the suspicious eye.
‘You’re our new landlord.’
‘You could say that,’ she beamed.
‘And would I be really way off base if I said I wouldn’t be at all surprised if our rent was to rise suddenly?’
‘Well, you have to admit that at market values, this particular area of the city has been long –’
I put a forefinger to her lips.
‘Unless nice Mr Nassim finds out about one cousin on the fiddle and one great half-niece who’s a blackmailer, perhaps?’
She sucked at her bottom lip.
‘Perhaps we could arrange something,’ she said, as if thinking hard. Then she cracked into a lecherous smile and her hand moved up my leg.
‘What about nursing?’ I asked.
‘I’ve given that the elbow. Business is far more rewarding. I’ve got a company car, did I tell you?’
‘No, I meant that I could use a nurse for a few weeks. Someone to wait on me hand and foot, you might say.’
She looked at her watch.
‘I have to run Nassim home, but I could nip back later perhaps …’
‘I’ll try and keep the party going.’
It was Lisabeth who remembered to turn the radio on at midnight so we could hear the bongs of Big Ben ushering in the new year. Then, by popular demand, I had to play ‘Auld Lang Syne’ on the trumpet from the top of the stairs outside Doogie’s flat. Everybody linked arms and sang and the whole human snake turned into an impromptu conga line that once again threatened the Christmas tree.
I was sharing some of Doogie’s fine 12-year-old malt whisky and munching on a turkey leg when Miranda rushed in just before one o’clock.
‘Do come and see, Doogie,’ she yelled, her face flushed, tugging at his drinking arm.
‘Whisst, woman,’ he snapped, and carefully took the whisky glass with his other hand. ‘What have you got your knickers twisted about now?’
‘Come see, come see. That nice Mr Tomlin from No 23 came round. We thought he was going to complain about the noise. Well, he did, actually, but he also left something for you, Roy.’
‘Me? I’ve never met the man.’
‘Well, come and see, then.’
She bounded out, dragging Doogie with her.
I followed them down the stairs and from the first landing
I could see the group of people gathered near the front door. There were still people drinking and dancing and lounging about on the stairs, and Bunny was explaining to the straight-faced Josie that the most common place to find an erogenous zone was …
Miranda forced the crowd apart, and I could see Fenella on her knees in the hallway, a large cardboard box in front of her.
Springsteen sat a foot away from her. He was motionless, looking at the box in horror.
‘Angel! Come see,’ yelled Fenella, as I eased my way downstairs. ‘Mr Tomlin brought them. You know, the man who breeds pedigree Siamese down the road. He said they were our responsibility now.’
She dug her hands into the box and came up with a pair of mottled black and white kittens.
‘Springsteen!’ I yelled above the music as he disappeared like a black bullet down the hall towards the kitchen. ‘I want a word with 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.
After 20 years of working in London, he decamped to East Anglia and became an archaeologist. He was thus one of the few crime writers who regularly turned up real bodies.
In 2003, at the age of 50, he suffered a stroke and regained the use of his left hand and arm by bashing out a book on an old portable typewriter on the kitchen table. He now works part-time for the charity Different Strokes and is the author of Surviving A Stroke (White Ladder Press, 2006).
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