Angel Touch (10 page)

I thought about this for a minute.

‘Probably not,' I said finally.

Salome cracked some crab with a wooden mallet and dumped it in the pot, then wiped her hands on her apron.

‘Okay, smartarse, down to bizz. Go through.'

She followed me into the living-room and we parked ourselves at either end of the sofa. She picked up a wad of folded papers from the coffee table and handed them to me.

‘You'll need these,' she said.

I lifted a corner of the top one. It looked like an architect's plan with a map of the Underground superimposed on it.

‘What the ...?'

‘Wiring diagrams showing the telephone and computer link cables and the air-conditioning.'

‘Silly question, I know, but why do I need these? I mean, it's not even as if I've finished my library book.'

‘It's your cover,' she said impatiently. ‘You're our new heating engineer. What's the matter?'

‘Oh, nothing,' I sighed.

‘You look peeved.'

‘Well, I had a vague notion I could hang around as some smoothy stockbroking troubleshooter – and put the Armani suit on the expense account.'

‘What do you know about stocks and shares?'

‘Slightly less than what I know about air-conditioning.'

‘Now don't sulk.' She patted my knee and I forgave her everything. ‘I've seen you in your overalls, working on Armstrong. You look really professional.'

‘Thanks a bunch. Is there a real heating engineer in the building?'

‘Yes, but he covers the whole building. You just stick to the floor we occupy. Don't worry, we're always getting in plumbers and suchlike to do odd jobs. All you need to do
is say you're checking out the conduit routes for additional cabling.'

‘What does that mean?'

‘I don't know, but nobody else will. Just unscrew a few panels and
look
as if you know what you're doing. If you don't interfere with the dealers or the market-makers, they
won't even notice you're there. If anybody asks, say you reckon the job will take a week or so. Turn up sometime tomorrow morning – note: morning – and check in with Sergeant Purvis on reception.'

‘Is that the guy who was on duty today?'

‘Yeah. So?'

‘So won't he think it weird that I turned up for lunch with the top brass one day and the next I'm back in the proletariat?'

‘We've told him you are a computer buff with a new system and you always check out the installation personally.'

‘Did he swallow that?'

To me he had looked like the sort of person you want to take on one side and say: what was it like in the Waffen SS?

‘Yes, because Patterson told him it was “confidential.”‘ She made quotation marks in the air with her fingers. ‘And he loves secrets. In fact, he adores Patterson and refers to him as the Head of Security Confidential. Incidentally, we're all calling him Tel since your visit. He hates it.'

Well, that was all right then. As I always say (Rule of Life No 7): no day is wasted.

‘Don't contact me or Alec, and we'll be polite but not friendly. If you spot anything or hear anything, find an internal phone and ring 2001. That's Patterson, and he'll arrange to meet you.'

‘In a safe house in East Berlin?'

‘Probably. He does go OTT on things like this. Oh – I almost forgot.'

She stood up and fetched her shoulder-bag from the table, delved into it and produced a wad of ten-pound notes.

‘Expenses. Tel thought you could bribe the below-stairs staff, working on the premise that it's dead easy to bribe the upstairs mob.'

‘Greed is All in the dirty old heart of the City,' I said gravely.

‘That's very good.' Salome smiled. ‘Where did you read it?'

‘On the back of a sandwich-board man in Oxford Street. The other side said “Eat less Protein.” How much is here?'

‘Two loads.'

I was impressed. ‘Load' was Thatcherite streetspeak for a hundred nowadays, with ‘part load' being 50. Nothing lower merited a nickname.

‘Do I need receipts?'

‘No. If you did, then the heads of the various departments might. And there's this.'

She handed over an Amex card. It was valid for two years and had ‘mr roylance maclean' printed on the bottom, along with ‘prior, keen, baldwin.'

Not bad. An Amex card within eight hours. With my credit rating, a personal one would have taken eight years.

‘I like the name,' I said.

‘I thought you might,' Sal said, smiling. ‘It's not so much that we deliberately fudged your name, it was just that Tel-boy insisted you were called Roylance and ...'

‘And nobody had the nerve to tell him he was wrong,' I offered.

She patted my leg again.

‘I never knew you had such a fine grasp of management psychology and office politics.'

‘I may just be a humble heating engineer tomorrow, but by the end of next week I'll be the Lounge Lizard from Accounts.'

‘You'll be wasting your energy, son. The City is a stainless steel machine for making money. Only politicians and civil servants go in for extra-curricular rumpy-pumpy. The City
gets its rocks off reading the
Financial Times,
not Page 3.'

‘Maybe I'll liven things up.'

‘Keep your nose clean, Angel. And for God's sake don't fuse the electrics. If the screens go down for a minute, we lose telephone numbers in turnover and my quarterly bonus goes down the pan.'

‘Along with the flat in Limehouse?' I probed.

‘If I lose this job, yeah. But listen, you.' She inched closer. ‘Frank knows nothing about this. Well, not the detail, anyway. So not a word. Okay? No point in two of us worrying.'

I looked at my watch. 8.30. I knew she'd want me out of there before Frank staggered home, so I had to make up my mind whether to get an early night with a good book or go down the pub and do some damage to my expenses. Ah, decisions, decisions.

‘Don't worry, my dear, your guilty secret is safe with me.'

Her face changed as quickly as a baby's goes from gurgle to sulk.

‘I haven't got a guilty secret. I'm not guilty. Don't tell me ...'

‘No way, José. Not for a minute. I'm on your side.'

She calmed down a bit and took a couple of deep breaths.

‘You think this guy Cawthorne is behind it?' I asked quietly.

She nodded.

‘We're pretty sure he's the why. You only worry about the how. Okay?'

‘But who is this guy? And who's Chinless Wonder?'

‘They're not your problem. Just help us find out how he's getting the info if you can.'

‘So you City types can keep the poo-poo undies out of the launderette, I suppose.'

‘Something like that,' she said, shamefaced. ‘Just go along with it, huh?'

And of course I did. What an airhead.

 

I left Salome to her gumbo partly to be out of the flat before Frank came back but also because I'd decided to go out on an errand. Business, of course, not pleasure. I was really taking this having a job lark seriously.

As it happened, I passed Frank on the stairs. He must have had a helluva workout, because he was taking them one at a time.

‘Wotcha, Frank.'

I had an unlit Sweet Afton between my teeth. Frank looked at it with disdain.

‘Still on the coffin nails, Angel?'

‘First of the day, Frank, and still unlit.' Which was true. ‘And you'll die before I do.' Which probably wasn't.

‘Ha!' he yelled as I reached the bottom of the stairs. ‘How do you make that out?'

I had my hand on the Yale catch of the front door and he was almost at the top of the stairs when I said:

‘It's breathing, Frank. Think of the strain on your heart. Your chest going in and out all those times a day. It's bound to kill you after about 80 years. Have a nice night.'

 

I've always said it costs nothing to bring a little comfort into somebody's life. Duncan the Drunken believed that too, but then anything that cost nothing was tops in his book.

I knew he'd be in a pub in Leytonstone, because it was his darts night and he'd cobbled together a team of reluctant players from his Barking local to play ‘away,' an excursion that involved about a hundred phone calls and the hire of a minibus to travel nearly three miles. I knew all this because Duncan had tried to recruit me into the team. I'd declined because I'd given up darts after a five-hour marathon at a university reunion, which had ended with me betting my double bed on a double eight and missing.

Duncan was an incorrigible optimist and a Yorkshire-man moved south to boot. Now, the two don't normally go together, but when they do, it's awesome. Duncan had appointed himself social secretary of his street, organising parties, outings for the kids, planning applications, petitions against planning applications and so on. He always said he didn't have the brains to go into politics. If he had brains, he'd be dangerous.

But he was a soft touch and an ace mechanic, so it was best to keep in with him if you wanted anything, and I usually did.

He was propping up the public bar with a pint of bitter in one fist and three metal darts in the other. The darts were long enough to have been bought second-hand from Robin Hood, and they had plastic flights with pictures of the Queen Mother on. Duncan was nothing if not patriotic.

I asked the landlord for a pint, pointing at Duncan. He pointed at two full ones lined up at Duncan's elbow but agreed to put one in the barrel for him. I ordered a pint of alcohol-free lager, as I had Armstrong outside and I didn't fancy losing any of my driving licences.

‘Come on, the Flying Horse!' somebody yelled behind me. ‘Hello, Fitzroy, luv. Joining us?'

I knew without turning that it was Doreen, Duncan's wife – actually ‘the wife,' as Duncan always said. She was the official scorer and unofficial cheerleader for Duncan's team.

I waggled a limp wrist at her and said: ‘Sorry, luv, but the eyesight's not what it was,' and she hooted with laughter and threw a piece of chalk at me. From the look of the scoreboard, the Flying Horse were getting slaughtered, and the team spent more time looking at their watches than the board.

‘So what are you after, young Angel?' said Duncan between deep breaths of beer. I'd bought him a drink, so there s no point in wasting any more time.

‘A tool kit. One of the belt jobs that looks professional.'

‘Sure. What sort of work?'

‘Mostly electrics, laying cables, that sort of thing.'

‘Domestic, three-phase, telephone or undersea across the Atlantic?'

Oh, very droll.

‘I don't know. Telephone, say.'

‘Got something in the back of the car would do you. Planning a job?'

Duncan strode off suddenly, and I thought for a second it was something I'd said, but in fact it was his turn at the dartboard.

‘Ninety-eight out, Duncan, luv,' screamed Doreen. ‘You can do it. Go on! Give it some welly!' Then, in a rather subdued tone, she announced, ‘Twenty-seven,' as she turned to do the chalking. Duncan rejoined me and took out most of another pint in one swallow.

‘I've
got
a job, Duncan, I'm not going on one.'

‘Well, just tha be careful, laddie.' His Yorkshire accent came on strongest when he was being patronising. ‘You could get done for going equipped, with this little lot. The bloke I bought ‘em off was, bang to rights.'

‘Was he a sparks?'

‘No, he was a burglar.'

Oh well, that was all right then. Doreen shrieked as the Flying Horse missed another double, and I knew that if I stayed much longer I'd get roped into the darts match.

‘So, what's the hire charge, Duncan?'

Dunc was signalling to the landlord for the pint I'd bought him. He raised an eyebrow at my glass but I shook my head. When he'd got his pint, he said:

‘Use of Armstrong one Saturday?'

I winced, but agreed. It was not so much that I minded Duncan driving Armstrong, it was just that when he used it for wedding parties at the weekend, it was a bugger to clean the confetti out.

‘Okay. Can we get it now?'

‘Wait till I get the double, lad. You're not in a hurry, are you?'

‘I had hoped to get it while I was still in my thirties.'

I needn't have worried. The home team finished the game in the next throw, and as it was the beer game, there was a lot of to-ing and fro-ing as the Flying Horse team bought their opposite numbers a drink. I stood back from the bar and avoided Doreen, who, like many Northern women, had a Messiah complex about feeding up anyone with a less than 40-inch waist.