Angel on the Inside (16 page)

‘By the way, has anybody named Turner phoned, or tried to get into the office?' I said casually so as not to alarm her, though I wouldn't give the office security men more than half a minute up against Ron, Barry and Huw.

‘No, nobody named Turner, but there's a woman been after you all day. Well, it seems like all day, and I'm pretty sure she's mad.'

With the women I knew, that didn't narrow it down, but I put my money on it being Fenella.

‘What does she want now?' I asked, resigned.

‘She wants to invite you to a party. In fact, more than that, she sort of insisted you went. Said it was important. Vital, actually.'

That didn't sound like Fenella.

‘And she must be mad,' Debbie went on, ‘because she said the party started this afternoon, at 3.00 pm sharp. Which is a bloody funny time to hold a hen night if you ask me.'

A hen night?

‘This wasn't Fenella, was it?' I said confidently.

‘Who's Fenella? I'm talking about Stella, not Fenella.'

I didn't believe it.

‘I don't believe it,' I said.

‘Well it is a bit odd, but she was very insistent.'

‘We are talking about Estelle – Stella – Rudgard, right?' I said, just to be sure.

‘That's her. That's the name. Spelled it out for me like I was a right div. Said she was getting married tomorrow and simply had to talk to you today and that you knew her number but if you couldn't ring by three o'clock, you had to go along to her hen night at somewhere called Gerry's in Soho. She said you knew it. I mean, what sort of a person holds their hen night in a Soho club at three o'clock on a Friday afternoon?'

‘Stella Rudgard would,' I said.

‘I mean, can you really believe that?'

‘No, Debbie. Like I said, I just don't believe it.'

But what I didn't believe was the awful coincidence.

Somewhere on the floor of Armstrong where I'd dropped the paper napkins was one with ‘Private Eye' written on it to remind me to use the one real private eye firm I knew of to check out who Len Turner had hired to follow me.

The detective firm in question: R & B Confidential Investigations.

As in (Stella) Rudgard & (Veronica) Blugden Confidential Investigations.

Of Shepherd's Bush.

 

Long before I ever met Amy, I knew Stella Rudgard and had a healthy respect for her exhaustive dedication to sex as a cross between aerobics and training for the Olympics heptathlon. I suspected that her enthusiasm for sex was the one thing that kept her borderline sane, but it still made her dangerous to know. But then, I knew her only briefly. Very briefly; and it was long, long before I met Amy. Several years in fact.

Veronica Blugden was another kettle of fish entirely. From school reports that had said things like ‘This young lady has delusions of adequacy' she had graduated to dead-end jobs and annual staff appraisals ranging from ‘She has set low personal standards and consistently failed to achieve them' to ‘This employee should go far, and the sooner she starts the better', which is what she did. Moving to London with only the vaguest of ideas about being a private detective – in fact, all her ideas were vague – she found herself working for a one-man enquiry agency run by an ex-Met copper called Albert Block. Her first case, almost by accident, involved finding Stella Rudgard, even though Stella didn't actually want to be found and was working to her own agenda. Anyhow, Albert Block retired and Veronica inherited the agency, such as it was; and Stella – in a bizarre variation on the Stockholm Syndrome, where the kidnapped goes over to the kidnapper's side – joined forces with her to form R & B Investigations. They had done well. I had read a couple of magazine articles about how they employed only female operatives, which had probably been good for business, with no mention of their policy of occasionally employing unlicensed male cab-drivers with more time on their hands than sense – and then quibbling about his expenses.

I reckoned R & B Investigations owed me a favour, and maybe Stella wanted to repay me, or – if she really was getting married the next day – maybe she wanted to buy my silence. Unless she'd had a character transplant since I'd last seen her, I could guess that hubby-to-be would be (a) rich, (b) posh and (c) connected. Definitely not the sort to be impressed by stories of Stella's raucous past. That could give me an edge.

I could imagine what sort of friend Stella would invite to her hen night and what sort of hen would go to a party at Gerry's Club at 3.00 in the afternoon. I would
need
an edge. But then, an invite was an invite.

I looked in the mirror to check I was presentable enough. With the fake Ray-Bans on, I reckoned I wouldn't be the scariest thing in Soho that afternoon; and Gerry's was dimly-lit, so the spots of blood on my shirt probably wouldn't show. I could have gone home and cleaned up, but then again it was already 3.30 pm and I was missing the party.

Plus, there were two uniformed policeman strolling up the lane towards the rear of Armstrong.

I started the engine and pulled out, signalling right towards Whitehall.

Party on.

 

The traffic was snarled in Trafalgar Square and it took ages to find a place to park in one of the alleys behind Frith Street. That plus stopping off to buy a wedding present (a bottle of rice wine in a set with a transparently thin china flask and two matching bowls on special offer in a Chinatown supermarket) meant I was well late for the hen night, if it had started on time.

On Dean Street, I pressed the intercom on the wall at the door of Gerry's and said ‘Rudgard party'. The response was incomprehensible due to the background mix of music and high pitched screaming, but the door lock clicked open anyway.

Gerry's is a discrete subterranean drinking club, founded for actors and theatre people. Most of the clientele of the flashier Grouch Club, virtually next door, stumble by the front door without even noticing it, for which most of Gerry's members are eternally grateful.

The stairs go down to a blank wall and then turn almost back on themselves and take you down into the club proper. The noise washed over me before I turned the corner and could see into the place. It's not a big room, but usually you can find a spare seat or at least see a square inch of floor space. Not today. I was looking down at a sea of women, all standing, all talking, some singing along to a piano being played in the far corner, the piano and pianist taking up about 20 percent of the floor space. Some seemed to be trying to dance, or perhaps they were just swaying in the tide. Most of them were smoking, holding their cigarettes up at eye level because their couldn't lower their arms without making a pass at someone, such was the crush.

Behind the bar, besieged like a scene out of
Zulu
, Michael the owner and two T-shirted blondes who could have been twins (but the light was bad and I was wearing shades) were handing out bottles of wine and champagne like their lives depended on it. They probably did. Some of the bottles were passed, as if floating, over the heads of the revellers, others just sank into the mass and disappeared without trace.

I elbowed my way to the end of the bar, being twice bounced against the cigarette machine by soft but unyielding female flesh.

‘Angel, my dear chap,' said Michael, proffering his hand over the bar when I got within range. ‘Sorry about the crush, but all the regular members were told there was a private do on.'

Even with a hundred thirsty women waiting to be served, Michael couldn't resist the dig, but he did it with a twinkle in his eye and a grin thinly hidden by his blond beard.

‘Sorry I haven't been in much lately,' I said loudly, above the chatter, ‘but I'm invited to this one.'

‘You're not the stripper they ordered, are you?' Michael asked with a look of genuine horror.

One of the blonde barmaids said something to him and he listened, nodded then turned back to me relieved.

‘It seems he's been and gone,' he said. ‘Lasted about 30 seconds, I'm told. Usual?'

I nodded and he stretched out to hand me a bottle of Backs with the top off.

‘Sorry it's warm. Fridge is full of champagne.'

I shrugged philosophically. There I was in a small room with dozens of women clad in their scantiest summer clothes, many of them already the worse for drink, with some already eyeing me up, and the piano player was making a decent fist of Bonnie Tyler's ‘It's A Heartache', though few of the partygoers looked old enough to remember Bonnie Tyler, and yet the beer was warm. It was as if the gods had decided there had to be one thing to stop it being perfect.

‘I'm looking for Stella Rudgard,' I said, hoping Michael could lip read.

‘Table by the piano,' said Michael, pointing with an empty champagne bottle.

I turned but couldn't see where he meant, even though the piano wasn't more than 15 feet away. There was nothing for it but to push through the wall of female flesh, beer in one hand, present in the other, saying ‘Excuse me, coming through' as I went. I was fondled once and groped twice, which, given the distance travelled and the factor by which I was outnumbered, was probably a fair average.

And then I was at the piano, my knees no more than an inch from the stool the pianist was sitting on, and I still couldn't see Stella. So instead I tried to look as if I was enjoying the music, just swaying in time with everyone else.

The pianist was good and well worth a second glance, even from behind.

Especially from behind.

She was another blonde – long, straight hair flipped back over her ears – and she wore a tight, short-cut white top and tight, low-cut jeans. Between the bottom of the top and the top the jeans, she had a breaching dolphin tattooed right in the small of her back. As she bent forward over the keys of the ancient stand-up piano, which was almost in tune, the dolphin seemed to fly even further out of the water. As she straightened her back, it dived into the beltless rim of her Wranglers.

‘Angel! You made it!'

I heard that above the music and the background noise and turned to see Stella sitting at a table no more than a yard away. She had seen me only because two women had decided to change positions, probably to avoid cramp. I pushed between them to get at Stella, and one of them said ‘Oooh!' and flashed me a killer smile, but then Stella's arm was round the back of my neck and she drew me in until my knees hit the table to kiss me full on the lips. I had a beer in one hand and her present in the other. I was powerless to resist.

‘That was nice,' she shouted in my ear. ‘I'd forgotten just how nice. What have you done to your face?'

‘
I
didn't do anything to it,' I shouted back as the pianist pounded out the opening bars of ‘Satin Doll'. ‘Are you really getting married?'

She nodded, her face about an inch from mine. ‘Tomorrow morning at 11.00, down in Sussex. Very posh do, not allowed to misbehave. No smoking, no drugs, no boozing, so, naturally, you couldn't be invited, but I wanted one last night on the town. What dyer think?'

She shooed away the two women sitting at the table with her, then she pushed the table away so that it almost collided with the pianist's stool. The pianist didn't seen to notice; she had her head down (dolphin rising), concentrating on the high register chorus and making a good job of it.

I squeezed into the space Stella had made and examined her as she stood, hands on hips, her left leg bent slightly at the knee.

Stella was taller than me barefooted, and in heels she towered above me. She was dressed almost entirely in black: a black chiffon tie shirt over a black lace-panel corset top, and a narrow black hook-and-eye skirt that ended at the knee, with a slit up the left side that showed a lot of leg and the lacy top of her hold-up stockings plus a glimpse of white flesh. The only splash of colour was in her shoes, three-inch-heeled pink sandals trimmed with black lace from Kurt Geiger, which cost £159. Amy had a pair of them.

‘You on the pull, then?' I said, leaning in to her hair, which she'd had cut almost boyishly short since I'd last seen her.

‘No, just the tease.' I should have known. Stella had a PhD in Tease. ‘That's why I'm not wearing my engagement ring.'

‘I'd noticed that,' I said. Well, I would have eventually.

‘Not that the insurance company would let me,' she said casually. Then she put her hands gently on my face and pulled me in for another kiss, and when she broke for air, she said: ‘We could hock it and disappear somewhere.'

‘But I haven't finished my beer,' I said, ‘and you haven't opened your wedding present.'

I handed over the box I was carrying.

‘Prezzy!' shouted Stella, and in one deft movement she ripped off the gift wrapping the girl in the Chinese supermarket had slaved over.

‘Oh, sweet!' she said, then placed the box on the table and pulled the small bottle of rice wine out of its holding slot. She tapped the bottle on the shoulder of a small redhead in a green satin dress. ‘Ask Michael for some glasses and some ice for this, would you, Randy?'