by Mike Ripley
Just like that. Some nerve, and of course I went for it.
‘If I did, how the hell do I find her and how do I make her part with your pendant?’ From what I’d heard of La Flaxperson, a crowbar might help. Jo certainly wasn’t going to.
‘Well, you could always try one of those women’s groups, dear. I hear they’re very popular. And don’t worry about the child. They always see sense in the end. I don’t think you’ll have any trouble.’
‘Okay, then, I’ll give it a go if you’ll pay for the diesel and if I can see you Saturday night.’
‘What’s on on Saturday?’
‘Party night. I’ll give you a ring around lunch-time.’
‘I’ll have to see about that, Celia, but it sounds a nice idea. Talk to you tomorrow.’
She hung up, leaving me thinking that if she wasn’t actually a spy, she was wasted. But then, what was she?
I finished my lager and walked outside to wind up Armstrong. I’d just turned on to York Way when I spotted the two city gents who’d been drinking in the pub. One of them hailed me and gave me a fiver to take them to a private clinic in Harley Street. On the way, they shared from a silver hip flask. Thank God there was still the National Health.
And so, despite all my years of philosophical training (Rule of Life No 2: don’t be a mug) and against all my better judgments (judgments in question, on a scale of 0-ten: 0), I went. Not that I minded the actual going, as it were. It was the heavy scene that followed that was the problem.
To anyone who hasn’t been to, taught at or scrounged off, a modern university, the prospect of tracking somebody down with basically only a name to go on must sound daunting. It’s a piece of piss really, if you have a few clues. I’m not bragging, but by the time I really started to look for Carol Flaxman, I knew it would be a matter of hours rather than days.
Well, look at it from my point of view. I knew she was registered at Essex, I knew she was basically dishonest, a boozer, a feminist and – from the brief glimpse I’d caught of her in the Mimosa Club – featherweight. Okay, so I was looking for a politically active, fat, drunk kleptomaniac. There couldn’t be that many around. I mean, Essex only has 3,000 students on a good day, and modern university campuses may be foreign turf to you, but they’re happy hunting grounds to people like me.
But like all good hunters going into the jungle, I needed camouflage. Armstrong was too clichéd to be a student vehicle these days, unless it was a London-based medical student; they are well-known to be from another planet ten years behind the times. So first priority was to find a vehicle not out of place at somewhere like Essex.
What do students drive these days? In my day we had taxis or Beetles or the old-style Escorts, and Australians always had VW Dormobiles. (You can still buy one cheap in the car park round the corner from Victoria, as they’re auctioned off by young Ozzers looking for the fare home.) Knowing my luck, they’d all be driving Golfs or Saabs with green windscreen visors with their names – Tarquin and Petra – on them.
I settled for convenience and anonymity. What I needed was something like a slightly battered Ford Transit van, and I knew exactly where I could borrow one.
The early evening rush-hour slowed my return to Stuart Street, but I was still the first home to No 9, and even Lisabeth seemed to be out or at least locked in her cage. I used the privacy to make some calls on the house phone without logging them in the red exercise book Mr Goodson had drawing-pinned to the wall. The first was to Duncan the Drunken in Barking, who agreed to do me a weekend deal on a Transit in exchange for a loan of Armstrong. I agreed and arranged to pick it up the next morning on the way.
The second call was to someone else and necessitated me going out later that night to pick up two ounces of best Lebanese Red and three of mixed grass and seed, on a sale-or-return basis.
I do have some scruples, though. I refused this week’s special offer of £15 Lucky Bags of H (probably cut with arrowroot) point blank.
Duncan the Drunken ran a small lock-up garage off Longbridge Road in Barking, and he and the wife, Doreen, lived in a two-up-two-down round the corner. I say ‘the wife’ with impunity as Doreen is one of the few wives I know who actually calls herself that. Some marriages are made in heaven, but Duncan’s and Doreen’s was forged in Sheffield. She was one of the last of the anachronistic breed of Northern women who only spoke to men when spoken to, or after three port and lemons, whichever came first. Yes, she was also the only woman since Freddie and the Dreamers had a hit who still drank port and lemon.
Why Duncan and Doreen had come to London in the mid-’70s, and why they stayed, was a mystery. Duncan had been appalled to find that women had the vote ‘down South,’ and had got off to a shaky start in the motor trade when one of the local spivs conned him into thinking a Pina Colada was the latest model Ford built in Spain. In ten years, he had alienated his neighbours (all races and ethnic minorities offended equally) by playing the nosey, over-matey Yorkshireman to excess. Now the area was being done up by the young middle class, he stubbornly refused to paint his house and remained firmly working class to the extent of asking the Council to bring back his outside toilet. All his attempts to organise street parties, coach outings and singalongs in the local pubs ended in abject failure. Yet he remained disgustingly cheerful and unputdownable, and his capacity for what he called warm, flat, sloppy Southern beer was legendary.
Duncan had his head inside the engine of a rather tasty BMW. The registration plates said it was only two years old, but I stopped believing registration plates about two years before I gave up waiting for the tooth fairy.
‘Ah’ve come for mah van, Duncan,’ I drawled from the garage doorway.
‘Well, I nivver thought I’d catch you up and about at sparrowfart, young Angel.’
Duncan straightened up and tucked a wrench into the leg pocket of his dungarees. ‘Cuppa char?’
‘Why not?’ I might as well; there was bargaining to be done, and so the ritual had to be observed.
As the pubs weren’t open yet, this meant a brew-up in the little office annexe at the back of the garage. I could tell from the amount of condensed milk that Duncan dripped into his Queen’s Jubilee china mug that he had a hangover.
We all have our pet remedies and recipes. I have two, one (a pint of ice-cold Gold Top milk – not for the faint of stomach) based on a need for nourishment and the other (about a pint of tonic water over lots of ice and Angostura bitters) to combat dehydration and that ashtray mouth feeling.
Duncan must have followed my thought-train.
‘So what do you reckon’s good for a hangover, then?’
‘Well, drinking heavily the night before usually works for me,’ I said, pinching an old Ben Elton line.
‘We supped some stuff last night, I can tell you.’ Duncan handed me a cracked Royal Wedding souvenir mug. He was nothing if not patriotic – that is, he drank only at pubs called the Queen’s Head or Arms.
‘Any particular cause for celebration?’ I asked, to pass the time until the tea cooled.
‘It was Thursday.’
‘Fair enough. How’s Doreen?’
‘Champion, lad, champion. Started going to night school. Think she needs an interest now the kids are growing up.’
‘That’s nice. What’s she taking – cookery?’ Doreen’s cooking was notoriously bad.
‘No, that’s what I wanted her to do, but she’s got her own mind now.’ I wondered where she’d found one, but I said nothing. ‘She’s gone for panel beating and auto mechanics.’
‘You’ll be out of a job soon.’
‘Nivver, lad. I was on the dole in Sheffield once and I swore I’d sweep streets rather than going back.’
I wasn’t sure whether he meant to Sheffield or the dole. Maybe both. I glanced towards the garage entrance, which was ankle deep in litter.
‘The street needs sweepi
ng, Duncan. Set up a company and get the Council to privatise the refuse collection.’
‘It’s a thought, Angel, lad, it’s a thought.’
‘Does this mean you’ve got me a dustbin van?’
‘No. Could’ve done if you’d wanted one, though.’ He slurped the last of his tea. ‘I stuck to me brief, as the Archbishop said in court. You wanted a Transit, I got one. Took it in part exchange last week, and I’ve got a buyer coming Wednesday, so I want it back in one piece. It’s out back.’
As he led me through the back door and onto the waste ground he used as an unofficial parking lot, he said: ‘Good runner, only 30,000 on the clock.’
‘How many on the engine?’ I asked.
‘Oh about 115,000, but only 30 on the clock. There’s a problem, though.’
Other people say ‘Yes, but …’ Duncan used ‘though’ in the same way.
‘It’s left-hand drive.’
In fact, it was not only left-hand drive, it had German number plates, a hefty dent in the nearside panel, a window sticker saying ‘Stop the Bloody Whaling’ and a bumper sticker saying ‘Nein Danke’ to nuclear power, and the whole thing had been garishly resprayed in two-tone brown and purple.
‘Duncan,’ I said, ‘it’s perfect.’
Like a lot of modern universities, you get into Essex one of two ways – from the side or underneath. The campus buildings are based around five squares raised on concrete stilts, which were officially known as podia. The architect had got the idea from the piazzas of small towns in northern Italy. What he hadn’t counted on was the tunnel effect of putting five together and pointing them into a wind that came more or less straight from the Urals after turning left over Norway. That and the rain, which stained the concrete dirty brown, gave the place a deserted look even during term-time; but the fact that it was so close to London meant that it really was deserted at the weekends as students and staff headed for the bright lights.
It was just after noon on a Friday when I arrived, so the weekend exodus was just starting. I parked the van in one of the perimeter car parks and walked through the campus buildings reading the graffiti until I saw the amended sign reading ‘Stundent Onion,’ and one that hadn’t been vandalised saying simply ‘Bar.’
Most of the Students Union offices seemed to be below square level, under the podia. As the floor-numbering system at all modern universities is totally unintelligible to everyone except the drug-crazed mathematician who thought it up, I just followed my nose.
There’s something about student bars, mostly the smell, that you never get in even the roughest pub. I rarely used them when I was a legitimate student, much preferring the local pubs. They always had uncleanable carpets and too few ashtrays (prime targets for students living in halls of residence) and the service is usually lousy. In recent years, they’ve all got the real ale kick and always have too many pumps, which means that the throughput is slow and four out of five beers go off before they’re half sold.
I bypassed the bar, which was slowly filling with shuffling students, and read a Letrasetted sign: ‘Union Print Room – Affiliated to National Graphical Association (Pending).’ The door it adorned was open, and inside came the familiar sound of a photocopier on print and collate.
The guy operating the machine seemed a likely touch. He was about my age (though he looked it) but taller and stringier than me, and he had a close-cropped beard but no moustache, which is usually a bad sign. (Rule of Life No 81: never trust a man with a beard but a naked upper lip – he’s either a sociologist or a religious fanatic.) The rest of him, though, ran true to form: an old school blazer, jeans so faded they could appear in a Levi’s ad any day now, and what appeared to be a genuine, official Born To Run tour T-shirt. There you had it, the archetypal should-know-better-at-his-age professional student. You’ll find them all over the country. They nearly always end up in local government or the probation service. (Rule of Life No 307: when a student, remember – the comrade on the march today is the police chief of tomorrow.)
‘Need a hand?’ I asked, knowing that his type just couldn’t wait to get you involved.
‘Can you use a stapler?’
‘Do I get a retraining grant?’
‘We don’t make jokes at the expense of the unemployed.’
My God, if he wasn’t the genuine article! I didn’t think they bred them like that any more. Still, it’s nice to know some things hardly change.
‘Why not? The Government does.’
He grinned and pointed to an electric stapler clamped to the edge of the table.
‘They’re all collated,’ he said, reaching for another pack of paper. ‘Clip them once, top left-hand corner, and stack ‘em anywhere.’
He was running off some sort of three-page newsletter under a clenched-fist-wrapped-in-barbed-wire masthead. The articles were badly typed on at least three different machines and had headings like: ‘Pretoria: Sanctions NOW!’ and ‘No Nukes Is Good Nukes.’ I resisted the temptation to read more.
‘Are you up for the weekend?’ he asked.
‘Yeah, flying visit. Does it show?’ I was upset. I thought I looked more like a student than he did.
‘Nobody round here ever volunteers to help. You here for an interview or something?’
‘Oh no. I’ve served my time already, elsewhere. No, I’m looking for a friend.’
Young Trotsky finished his printing and began to pack the copies I had stapled into an old US Army haversack. In the bar upstairs, a juke-box started up loudly. Diana Ross’s ‘Chain Reaction’ (nice video, shame about the song).
‘Drive up?’
I nodded. ‘How do I go about finding somebody here?’
‘Do you know which school?’
‘Social Studies, I think.’ It seemed the best bet. There was bound to be one.
‘You won’t get any sense out of the School Office now.’ He glanced at the Spiderman watch on his left wrist. ‘Not after 12.00 on a Friday. And the porters will only leave a message in the piggyholes if she lives on campus. Did you say you had a car here?’
‘No, I didn’t say, and it’s a van. I don’t suppose you know her, do you? Carol Flaxman.’
He stroked his beard.
‘Don’t know her as such. Wasn’t she one of the ‘84 Four?’
‘The what?’
‘The four who were suspended for a year in 1984 after the demos during the Miners’ Strike. Is it a big van?’
‘Big enough. Would that little demo have involved a slight incident with a police horse?’
‘That’s the one. Made all the papers.’
‘And that sounds like the right Carol. I hear she’s back now.’
‘If she is, she won’t be living on campus. None of them are, they’re all persona-non-fucking-grata. Alan might know, of course. He was one of the Four suspended.’
‘Can I get hold of this Alan easily?’
Young Trotsky smiled an impish smile. ‘You wouldn’t by chance be going into Colchester, would you?’
‘As soon as I track down Carol, I’m free. You want a lift somewhere?’
‘That’d be great. Alan’s upstairs in the bar. He works as a potboy on Fridays, collecting glasses.’
‘Shouldn’t that be potperson?’ I asked innocently.
‘No, that means something completely different, though in Alan’s case you might be right.’
He finished packing up his newsletters, and I followed him upstairs into the bar. A thin, gangling, blond guy was stalking the tables, emptying ashtrays into a battered wastepaper bin and snarling at the customers.
Young Trotsky said: ‘Heh, Alan, there’s a guy here wants a word,’ and then proceeded to distribute his newsletter around the tables to a less-than-rapturous welcome from the patrons.
‘If you’re looking to buy, I’ve nothing to sell,’ said Alan for openers, a
s if he was at a jumble sale.
‘I’m supplied. I’m told you can help me find an old friend, Carol Flaxman.’
‘Says who?’
‘He did.’ I jerked a thumb at the amateur newspaper vendor.
‘We call him Murdoch; he’s our would-be press baron.’ Alan banged another ashtray into the bin to make it look as if he was working. ‘Yeah, I know where Flaxperson is; I saw her the other day. She tried to score off me and offered to pay by credit card.’
Now that’s not uncommon in London these days, but then this was the sticks. I pretended to look shocked. ‘Bet it wasn’t hers, either.’
‘Dead right. I see you know Carol.’
‘Not well, but I’m not losing any sleep over that.’
He looked me up and down, not sure what to make of me. That put him on a par with most of the population, but I must have come up to his standards.
‘She’s on the front line,’ he said, and it wasn’t meant to be enigmatic.
‘And where’s that these days?’
‘RAF Bentwaters in Suffolk, though I suppose you should call it USAF Bentwaters.’
‘She’s joined the Air Force?’
‘More sort of the peace force sitting outside the perimeter wire singing folk songs and eating yoghurt.’
‘Sounds awful.’
‘It is, and if you go there you’ll be lucky to escape with your balls.’
‘I’m known as the Great Escaper. Which way to the front line?’
Alan showed me another way out of the bar, so we avoided Young Trotsky, and walked with me to the van. He showed me the location of Bentwaters in the old AA Book of the Road I always carried, and then bought the two ounces of Red from me at four times what I’d agreed to pay for it.
No day is wasted.
Chapter Six
Before I rejoined the A12 northwards for Suffolk (okay, so it lacks the ring of ‘North to Alaska!’), I called in at a Sainsbury’s to buy some essential items. These comprised a pork pie and some salami to stave off the munchies while I drove, a toothbrush and some toothpaste, and then a bottle each of tequila, lime juice and Asti Spumante for which I had plans.