Angel on the Inside

by Mike Ripley

  ‘So there’s a good chance she’ll turn up for that?’

  ‘Oh yes, that’s a seriously large lunch.’

  I liked that expression, though I suspect my definition and Debbie Diamond’s definition were somewhat different.

  ‘Has she ever gone missing before?’ I asked her.

  ‘You mean you’ve never noticed?’ she gasped, pulling back well out of knee-clutching range.

  ‘I mean missing from big business affairs, meetings, lunches, dinners, cocktail parties, that sort of thing. The sort of thing she never invites me to.’ I saw Debbie’s eyes narrowing, so I softened that. ‘Because she just knows how embarrassed I get being in the public eye. I think she tries to protect me from that side of things.’

  ‘Hmmm,’ said Debbie, not convinced. ‘Short answer is, no way has she missed anything that important; in fact she doesn’t miss anything if she can help it. If she’s likely to be five minutes late for something, she’ll get me to phone ahead with her apologies. This really isn’t like her.’

  That wasn’t like the Amy I knew, but I didn’t want to go into that.

  ‘So the stuff she missed today wasn’t important?’

  ‘Nothing I couldn’t handle, and normally I probably would have dealt with, except for the mad woman who said she had an appointment, but I don’t believe she had for a minute.’

  ‘And this would be ...?’

  ‘This afternoon. She turned up about an hour before you did. In fact, I only got rid of her about ten minutes before you arrived.’

  ‘Not when, who?’

  ‘She said she was from the Probation Office in Romford.’

  ‘Romford?’

  As far as I knew, neither Amy or I had any connection with Romford. It’s a place you tend to go through – quickly, because of an unenviable reputation for the speed with which parked cars are stolen – not have dealings with.

  ‘The Probation Office there covers Chadwell Heath, or so she said.’

  It took a full minute for the penny to drop, and I suspected that Debbie Diamond would have waited patiently for several more rather than help me out.

  ‘Keith Flowers,’ I said, and she just nodded, almost approvingly.

  By sheer dumb luck I had discovered that Keith Flowers had spent his initial month out of prison at a halfway house in Chadwell Heath. I hadn’t been looking for him, he’d been looking for me and had rung the Stuart Street number and talked to Fenella, who had, naturally, grassed me up a treat and told him where I was. Thanks to the magic of 1471 last number recall (and why the cops on TV shows don’t use it more often beggars me) I had got through to something called St Chad’s hostel in Chadwell Heath and a very chatty warden there, whose name I couldn’t quite recall but who was a very helpful guy, and it wasn’t my fault that he somehow got the impression that I was Detective Inspector Hood of West Hampstead. Well, not entirely.

  ‘She said she was the case officer for that Flowers person and that she had an appointment with Amy, but there was nothing in the diary and Amy had certainly never mentioned anything to me.’ Debbie took a deep breath. ‘When I told her Amy wasn’t here, she said then I would just have to do and started asking all those questions.’

  ‘About what?’

  I was genuinely confused. I didn’t think Debbie had even seen Keith Flowers, unless he’d been picked up by one of the security firm’s CCTV cameras.

  ‘About how many times Flowers had visited the office, had he met with Amy, where had they gone, that sort of thing.’

  ‘Did he? Did they?’

  ‘No, not to my knowledge. Amy came in one day and said there was a guy following her and she’d talked to her solicitor and he’d advised a restraining order. I had to screen all her calls of course, but if anyone rang I didn’t know, I’d ask for a name, and if they wouldn’t give one, they got snipped.’

  She made a scissors movement with two fingers as if cutting a phone cord. At least I hoped that’s what she meant.

  ‘So he tried to get through?’

  ‘I don’t know if he tried, I just know he didn’t get through me. I’m good at my job, and we get a lot of rogue journalists trying it on all the time, not to mention models who are getting career-desperate and agents who are just desperate. If he called, he didn’t get past me. But the bloody woman just kept on and on about him.’

  ‘Did she say why?’

  ‘Because Amy wasn’t around. I said she had better talk to Amy as she was the one with the complaint against the guy, but I couldn’t tell her where Amy was, could I? It made it sound as if we were covering something up.’

  ‘No,’ I said gently. ‘Why was she asking about Keith Flowers?’

  ‘It’s her job, I suppose. She said she had to put together a complete picture – case file she called it – of what he did from the day he left prison to the day he was rearrested. I guess it’s something to do with his trial.’

  ‘Nobody’s asked me,’ I said sulkily. After all, it was me who put him back in prison. Well, hospital actually, then prison.

  ‘Maybe you weren’t around when she called,’ said Debbie through gritted teeth.

  ‘But you’d have thought the police would have given me a bell at least, even if this probation officer person hadn’t got round to it ... What did you say her name was?’

  ‘I didn’t, but she left me a card. It was Alison George.’

  ‘Let’s go,’ I said, snapping to my feet and waving a hand in the air for the bill.

  A white-coated waiter swung towards me like a homing pigeon. I’ve always found that in posh hotels. My bill is ready the minute I call for it, almost as if they were waiting for me to leave. Odd, really.

  ‘Where are we going?’ squealed Debbie, between gulps of tea.

  ‘Back to the office to check the security tapes on your CCTV for this afternoon.’

  ‘Why?’ she asked, but she was not looking at me, she was hypnotised by a final slab of marble cake on the plate in front of her.

  I pointed to it as I slapped cash down on to the waiter’s tray and said: ‘To go.’ Debbie scooped it up like a croupier.

  ‘I want to get a good look at this Alison George,’ I said.

  ‘She’s not your type,’ she said automatically.

  ‘How do you know that?’ I said, caught off guard.

  ‘If Amy’s your type, she’s not. Anyway, she’s far too young for you.’

  Now it was my turn to glare at her through slitted eyes.

  ‘I don’t want to ogle her,’ I said haughtily. ‘I just want to see if she limps.’

  If Debbie Diamond thought I was suspect before, I had just gone off the scale of her weirdometer.

  Oxford Street was thick with buses, and I got honked by a Number 7, a Number 10 and a Number 159 – London buses being the only thing on Earth brave enough to honk a London taxi – for illegally parking outside the piazza again, though I couldn’t see what business it was of theirs. Perhaps it was something to do with the fact that I was near a bus stop, but that was just silly. During rush hour the punters stepped on and off the still-moving buses as if they were little more than a bright red horizontal escalator.

  At the security office I made Debbie get them to open up and demand the tapes for the time the mysterious Alison George – part-time probation officer, part-time rating revaluer and occasional cat-kicker – entered and left the piazza. Debbie was quite specific about her arrival and departure times, and one of the guards reckoned her appearances would be on one tape but of course we couldn’t see it there and then as his VCRs were recording and he didn’t have one for playback.

  ‘Hasn’t Amy got one in her office?’ I asked casually, not knowing whether or not she had a desk or a chair in her office.

  ‘Good thinking,’ said Debbie.

  Amy’s office had not one but two VCRs, a DVD player, a widescr
een digital TV, a hi-fi with twin turntables and shiny steel speakers shaped like bullets and a glass fronted fridge stocked with Rolling Rock beer and fancy mineral waters. No wonder I’d never been allowed in there before.

  ‘You could do some serious mixing with this gear,’ I said as Debbie turned things on and inserted the security tape.

  ‘Some of the designers do,’ she said casually. ‘They find it difficult to create without the right ambiance. Fashion is a mood, you know.’

  ‘Absolutely,’ I agreed, opening the fridge.

  She stopped fiddling with the tape and looked at me over the top of her big round glasses. My hand moved away from the beer section and chose a bottle of mineral water. The bottle was moulded plastic twisted to look like a corkscrew and quite stylish. The water was Ty Nant, a natural spring water from Wales of all places. Just my luck, but I opened it and took a swig as if I was really looking forward to it. I suppose it tasted better than London tap water, but then, how would I know?

  The security tape was even less help than I’d feared. The quality was, as always, uniformly grey, grainy and crap. Why firms go to the expense of installing CCTV and then don’t spend the extra penny providing enough tapes to stop constant over-taping or, even cheaper, a head-cleaner tape, never ceased to amaze me. Also, as I pointed out to Debbie, and she actually made a note of it, the piazza’s cameras were so geared towards spotting shoplifters legging it from the boutiques that they didn’t actually have a camera covering the security office itself. Therefore the best view we would get of the mysterious Alison George would be walking away from the office towards the lifts.

  Debbie zapped the tape fast forward using one of half a dozen remotes, one eye on the time clock counter in the corner of the screen. Then she stopped the tape and rewound.

  ‘I’m sure this is the right area,’ she said, pressing ‘Play’ again. ‘In fact I know it is, because I’d just had to cancel a conference call with New York and I’d waited until ... There she is, the cow! Look at that.’

  ‘Look at what?’

  I could see a grainy figure, or rather the back of one, hurrying towards the lift. Until I got my eye in and noticed the hips, I wasn’t even sure I could tell which sex it was, but in the few seconds she was on screen, I took in some sort of plastic showerproof jacket (though it hadn’t rained for days), a baseball cap and the fact that she was carrying a large square bag of the sort that have wooden handles and look as if they’ve been made out of Inca rugs.

  The figure got into the lift and studiously kept her head down whilst pressing the buttons. No sooner had the lift doors closed then Debbie was fast-forwarding the tape, muttering ‘Bitch, bitch, bitch’ under her breath.

  ‘Hey, chill out there, Debs. What’s your problem?’

  ‘Don’t you see?’ she hissed, her eyes fixed to the flickering screen. ‘She deliberately deceived me. When she got out of the lift there was no see-through rain coat and no baseball hat. She had her hair bunched underneath it for the cameras and I bet they went in that bag she was lugging.’

  ‘Maybe she just wanted to look smart for her meeting with Amy – with you,’ I tried.

  Debbie stopped the tape. Eagle-eyed, she had freeze-framed on the lift doors opening as ‘Alison George’ emerged, complete with rain coat and baseball hat pulled down over her eyes. She kept looking at the floor as she walked quickly out into the piazza and out of shot.

  ‘Now tell me that’s not suspicious behaviour,’ said Debbie. ‘That’s an act for the cameras.’

  ‘You could be jumping to conclusions,’ I said, screwing up my eyes but still not able to be sure. ‘Did you notice what shoes she was wearing?’

  After half a minute of silence I turned to find Debbie staring at me, her eyes large behind the round glasses.

  ‘Just what the fuck are you jumping to?’

  Chapter Five

  I was lucky to find Detective Inspector Hood still at his desk in West Hampstead police station, just catching up on some paperwork on unpaid overtime. Or so he said.

  When I said who I was and that I wanted to talk about Keith Flowers he couldn’t have been nicer. He asked if this was off the record – as if policemen know the meaning of the words – and would I prefer to meet somewhere other than the police station; a pub, say? Despite my own Rule of Life Number 38A (You know you’re getting old when the policemen appear helpful), I agreed and stifled a laugh when he named a pub on Shoot Up Hill that was as well-known for drugs deals as it was for after-hours CID parties.

  I left Debbie Diamond in her office, putting the flowers I had brought into a glass vase that looked as if it had been designed for medical samples. She said she didn’t need a lift anywhere as she could walk to Oxford Street tube, which was just as well as I hadn’t offered. Well, she’d never said thank you for the flowers.

  The traffic thinned out at Regent’s Park and I was sure I would make the pub before Hood did, but I was wrong. He was there already, leaning on the bar drinking a bottle of Budweiser by the neck. He looked just about old enough to be doing so legally.

  We had met once before when he had taken a statement from me about Keith Flowers’ burglary, but what had happened subsequently in Suffolk was out of his patch. I had assumed that the more serious charges Flowers now faced in Suffolk would have meant that Hood’s interest in him had diminished, so I was keen to know why he had been visiting Amy at her office.

  ‘Mr Angel,’ he said, tipping his bottle at me.

  ‘Mr Hood,’ I answered, neither offering to shake hands or say his rank out loud, thus observing pub/copper etiquette. ‘Can I get you another?’

  ‘Sure, thanks.’

  A barman who didn’t seem to speak English very well – well, it was London and it was the summer – produced another Budweiser and a orange juice for me and relieved me of a fiver. There was no change. What else did I expect from a pub where the idea of classy decor was shelf after shelf of Readers’ Digest condensed books bought job lot by the yard?

  We found an unoccupied table, made level by a folded beer mat under one leg, and two chairs that almost matched.

  ‘You’ve got something for me then?’ he asked, sucking on his bottle.

  ‘Actually, I was hoping you could tell me a couple of things,’ I said, hiding my surprise. I’d never offered to tell him anything.

  He didn’t attempt to hide it. His eyebrows went up and his lips made a ‘Prrft’ noise. ‘About what?’

  ‘About Keith Flowers, the guy who burgled my house, stalked my wi- ... my partner ... and then pulled a gun on us.’

  ‘That was out in Suffolk,’ he said.

  I noticed the ‘out in’ rather than ‘down in’ or ‘up in’ or even just ‘in’. Suffolk was out there; beyond the M25; bandit country; duelling-banjos land; manglewurzles and Tractor Boys. What did I expect? Like the vast majority of CID detectives in the Met he wasn’t from London – I suspected Bolton or maybe Salford from his accent – but now he was here, nothing outside of London existed. Or nothing worth talking about.

  ‘I know, I was there,’ I said, but I flashed my best smile to show I wasn’t being lippy. ‘I was just wondering where we were with the case.’

  ‘Against Flowers? Fuck knows. I don’t. That’s down to the local force and the Crown Prosecution Service, and even they couldn’t screw this one up. Only a matter of procedure now, going through the motions and a mountain of paperwork. I don’t even think it’ll make a full trial.’

  ‘What? You mean Flowers could walk?’

  I drained my glass almost as a reflex and realised that orange juice did absolutely nothing for my blood pressure.

  ‘No way, Mr A.’ He liked that. I think he’d been rehearsing that since I phoned him. ‘Flowers is down and out, maybe for good. They might even section him.’

  ‘You mean as in “Under the Mental Health Act” or whatever it’s called these days?�
��

  Hood nodded.

  ‘He’s mad?’

  ‘Do normal sane people follow you around and pull guns on you, Mr Angel?’

  If that was a serious question I was going to campaign for a Fifth Amendment, even though I wasn’t quite sure to what. Thankfully, Hood didn’t want an answer.

  ‘What he did out in Suffolk was enough to get him a return trip to the jug without passing “Go”, and certainly not collecting £200, but now his credit rating’s shot up from Category D to B, which is enough to depress anybody. So naturally he’s thrown a wobbler and gone into clinical depression. Tried to top himself twice, word is. The psychiatrists will be all over him for months yet. I really don’t think we’ll be pressing the burglary charges. No point.’

  I knew what Hood meant by a prisoner’s credit rating. Category A prisoners are top of the tree, a serious danger to the public – or an embarrassment to the government of the day. Category B were the dangerous sods – bank robbers, anyone using guns. Category C were prisoners whose escape should be prevented – if possible. And Category D were open prison fodder – company directors, ex-MPs, writers, people like that.

  Every prisoner except the lifers or the totally bonkers would have a Release Plan with the aim of downgrading their status from A to D over a period of time. I guessed that the last stages of Keith Flowers’ plan had been a change to Category D and the month he’d spent in the hostel in Chadwell Heath. Pulling a gun on us had jerked him back up the serious list to Category B and his Release Plan had gone out the window.

  ‘What was he in for originally?’ I asked. I had asked Amy that and never got a straight answer.

  ‘I don’t honestly remember, though it’ll be on the computer somewhere. I suppose I could look up his record, but I’d need a good reason to do so as it’s not technically our case any more.’

  He pushed his empty beer bottle to one side and interlocked his fingers. He was after something but it wasn’t another drink.