Angel Confidential (21 page)

She pronounced it ‘bizyness' as if quoting him.

‘And he specifically mentioned Shining Doorway?'

‘Yes. The Church of the Shining Doorway. I couldn't make that up. It was in Islington, he said, but by the time I got to town, they'd moved down to Sloane Square.'

‘What sort of “bizyness”?' I said it like she had.

‘He didn't say specifically, but from what I've found out after living with them for three weeks, it's bound to be dodgy.'

‘Dodgy?' echoed Veronica.

‘You bet. I never said Carrick was white as driven snow, but Connie's mob are into everything. You thought Fagin had a gang? Meet the master. He likes all his female disciples to work as temps, and not just so he can lift their pay packets.'

Miranda turned to me with a ‘don't follow' expression.

‘Temps get paid weekly rather than monthly,' I explained, ‘and they move around a lot. So they could case an office for valuables but be working on the other side of town, probably forgotten, when the burglary takes place two weeks later. Plus, they have access to all sorts of information, and leaks are difficult to trace back to them.'

‘Tell me about it,' said Stella, wearily.

‘Connie gets you to look through files?' I guessed. ‘Stuff like that.'

‘Yep.'

‘And your present employer, this Mr Linscott, is a consultant, isn't he? A consultant in what?'

‘STDs,' said Stella, and three of the Fab Four turned towards me.

‘Sexually Transmitted Diseases,' said Lisabeth suddenly.

And three pairs of eyes turned on her. Four, including mine.

‘Spot on, if you'll pardon the expression, and his patient register makes interesting reading.'

‘That's why you were getting into work early,' I said, taking the faint smirk off Stella's face.

‘Yeah, ‘fraid so. Connie asked me to snoop around, see what I could find and photocopy.'

There was a group silence.

‘I'm not proud of it,' she said, ‘but I need to get in with them if I'm to find Carrick.'

‘Does Connie have a target in mind? Someone he knows is a patient?'

‘Nothing so elaborate. It's a magpie operation, we're all out there foraging for scraps, anything we can pick up that might be useful to him.'

‘And people do this for him?' Veronica was aghast.

‘Women do this for him?' Miranda demanded.

‘Especially the women,' said Stella, and Lisabeth shook her head in dismay.

‘Have you found out what happened to Carrick?' I tried to steer us back to business.

‘No. Not a thing. They don't talk about past members. I daren't approach the other girls; they'll run straight to Connie. And the men all get favours from him if they behave themselves. There are two. Paul and Julian, who are sort of lieutenants, very close to Connie. They've been with him for some time and they've talked about being in the Islington house together. They'd know, but I can't get close to them. Connie regards me as his personal property just at the moment, though I'm told by some of the others that it doesn't last long. He gives all his disciples names, you know. I'm Helena, would you believe?'

‘So what are you going to do now?' Veronica got in to stop me hogging the questions.

Stella shrugged her shoulders.

‘Hang in there for a while, see if I can find a chink in their armour. Maybe get something on Connie I can use against him. Get him to tell me what happened to Carrick.'

‘You're sure something's happened to him?' Miranda said quietly.

‘Pretty sure. He would have been in touch by now. I know that for a fact, after what we did together. He wouldn't just disappear off the face of the earth.

She had them eating out of the palm of her hand with that. No-one wanted to break the spell, but she did so herself.

“Now I really do have to use a toilet. For real this time.'

‘Through here,' I said, leading the way.

Veronica grabbed her arm as she followed me.

‘Let's see if we can help, Estelle. We all understand. The first love is the best.'

Stella smiled at her warmly, but once in the corridor to my bathroom she crossed her eyes and whispered: ‘Where did you find that one? She really should get out more.'

‘I keep telling her that,' I said.

 

‘Thank you for your concern, but no, I must get back. It'll be bad enough if Connie has tried to ring me at work, but if I'm late for our evening group meeting, then it's contemplation for me.'

‘Is that bad?' Fenella, all innocent.

‘It's a room with no windows called the Contemplation Room. If you like sitting in the cold and dark with nothing to eat and no way to wash, then it's not bad. Not for the first 12 hours or so.'

‘You let the men do that to you?' Lisabeth growled.

‘They wouldn't do it if the women didn't agree with them. There are seven girls living at the squat in John Brome Street, and five men. They put one of the girls – Francesca – in there for 36 hours because she told the group meeting that she had strayed. She'd sneaked out on a Sunday morning and gone to Mass. She was a lapsed Catholic.'

‘But that's awful,' exclaimed Miranda.

‘Too right,' Stella agreed, ‘the silly bitch should have kept her mouth shut. Nobody had noticed she was missing and if she hadn't confessed at group meeting, they would have been none the wiser. Never confess to anything is what I say.'

‘Sounds like one of your Rules of Life,' Fenella said to me, but I ignored her.

‘This Connie,' Miranda started, ‘what's his real name? There may be something on him somewhere. I'm a journalist, I could go through the cuttings files.'

I knew that Miranda's north London local paper had nothing more interesting in its cuttings morgue than the results of school prize days, hardly an MI5 database. But I let it go.

‘Constantine Smith. It really is, I've seen his passport, and he's an American, though he knows his way around London.'

‘How did Carrick get his job with your father?' I asked. And they all looked at me.

‘What?'

I repeated my question for her.

‘He was recommended by Simon Buck, Daddy's solicitor,' she said slowly, her face a question mark.

‘The man who paid Veronica £800' – there were two sharp intakes of breath at that – ‘to hear that you were tied up with a crazy cult called Shining Doorway, but who never pressed for an address. It's been niggling me. It's the solicitor who didn't bark in the night. No solicitor pays out money for half a story. He didn't push for the address because he knew it.'

‘There's a connection?'

I had Stella's full attention. I was getting vibes that perhaps she liked solicitors almost as much as I did.

‘You just didn't like him,' Veronica chimed in.

‘Come on, he's bent. You could tell a mile off.'

‘Male intuition again?' Miranda smiled a smile that would have made yoghurt.

‘There was something else,' I said, trying to remember. ‘Yes. Think back, Veronica. When we told them about Albert, it was Buck who was concerned, not Stella's father. It was as if he knew him.'

They all turned to Veronica, who took off her glasses and made an elaborate play of finding a tissue to wipe them with.

‘Well, now you mention it,' she said in a hoarse croak, ‘when Sir Drummond came to see Albert that first time, he did perhaps say his solicitor had recommended him.'

‘And?'

‘And, yes, I think Albert knew of a Mr Buck. In fact' – she brightened – ‘I think he's got a file on Mr Buck back at the office. I could go and get it if you think it'll help.'

‘I'll go,' I said wearily.

‘Who's Albert?' chirped Fenella.

Sometimes I feel so alone.

 

I dropped Stella at Oxford Circus. She had opted for a tube journey back to Sloane Square just in case Connie had put his disciples on duty at the station.

She didn't talk much on the journey. She'd talked enough today. But she did ask the usual questions about was this a real cab and why was if called Armstrong and what did I do for a living? The last one was quaint, I thought.

‘Apprentice detective,' I said.

She laughed at that. She had a nice laugh.

‘And you've taken your first day as a kidnap victim very well, if I may make so bold.'

‘Please do. I go a bundle on bold.'

I looked in the mirror and her eyes were there, waiting for me to do so.

‘Will you really keep in touch with them?'

‘I said I would, didn't I? I'll ring from the office. Lisabeth – it was Lisabeth, wasn't it? You know, the bull dyke with the military bearing. She gave me your number.'

I corrected my steering after almost getting on board a No 13 bus.

‘Oh yeah, I know the one you mean.'

‘Can I ask you something?' She leaned forward from the back seat, but looked out of the window rather than into the mirror.

‘Ask anyone anything,' I said. ‘It's in the Apprentice Detective's Charter.'

‘Have you got a thing going with any of them? Back there at the house, I mean.'

‘No, not a thing.'

‘Good.' She sat back on the seat. ‘I didn't think so. By a process of elimination, it could only have been one of them, and she was spoken for anyway.'

‘Miran ... ?' I started, but she wasn't listening.

‘Fenella certainly has the hots for you,' she said casually.

‘Maybe you should be a detective,' I said when I had recovered from the shock.

Well, why not? She was just as bad at it as we were.

 

I decided I had just enough time to get out to Albert Block's office and then back to the Fitzroy to meet Zoe, if the traffic went for me and if I didn't hang about once there. I had no intention of doing so; in fact, I wasn't too keen on going at all, not without an armed escort. But I reasoned it was best to do it before dark and alone rather than with Veronica in tow.

I did a drive-by to check that the coast was clear of marauding bands of bad-attitude black kids and parked Armstrong round the corner from Albert's place, trying not to draw attention to my visit. I still had a key to the new lock Dod had fitted, and I walked to the door and got it open without actually breaking into a run.

As my cash-flow situation had actually flowed recently, instead of the usual slow ebb, I had treated myself to a new torch, a long, powerful four-battery rubber-cased job, which I normally kept in Armstrong's boot. As I eased the door open, I let it slip from inside my jacket and weighed it in my right hand. On other occasions, I would probably have complained about the weight and bulk of the damn thing, but now it seemed light and insubstantial.

The place seemed just the same as the last time I'd seen it, the staircase to Albert's office stretching gloomily upward in front of me, the only natural light coming from the doorway. There was a light switch to my right, but when I hit it nothing happened.

I
stepped back and checked the street again, then I swallowed hard, stepped inside and closed the door.

He was behind the door, waiting to jump me. Of course he was. Where else would he be? He'd probably seen the same private eye movies I had, where the hero gets slugged on the back of the head and the cameraman goes into a vomit-inducing tailspin.

It didn't work out that way. Partly it was because I instinctively pointed the torch at him and turned it on, blinding him, and partly because he had no intention of clocking me in the first place.

‘You!' we both said together.

‘Jesus, but you scared the shit out of me,' he gasped. ‘I thought it was those black kids come to get me.'

So did I, I said to myself. I lowered the torch slightly and remembered to start breathing again.

‘So who's looking after the car parking at Sandpit Lodge today?' I asked him.

 

His name was Bobby Lee. He was Carrick Lee's younger brother. He was looking for him too. He seemed pleased that I remembered him.

‘You made an impression,' I conceded coolly. ‘You were obviously interested in us. How did you find this place? Did you chat up the headmistress on the front desk?'

He was impressed.

‘Miss Rocket was dead chuffed. She'd never met a private eye before.'

‘We gave her a card.'

He reached into the pocket of his denim jacket and produced Veronica's card.

‘If she's Blugden, are you Albert Block?'