Angel Touch (17 page)

‘That's where you're wrong,' I said as he reached for a pen. ‘Leave the payee line blank, will you?'

‘Just what do you want?' he asked, his pen poised above the signature space.

I sat back and crossed my legs.

‘I want to know what you told the copper, what he told you, why you sent Sal down to Cawthorne's place at the weekend, what you're going to do about her now, what you intend doing about Alec Reynolds now that he's dead, and why you're trying to give me the bum's rush. Though that's pretty obvious: you're trying to sweep shit under the carpet, and that's never a good idea.'

Patterson blinked a couple of times. It was to clear the sweat from his eyelids. I noticed that he had pressed his elbows into the desk to stop his hands shaking.

‘You don't know anything,' he snarled. ‘You were a mistake.'

‘I know how you're losing information.'

‘How?'

‘Your motorbike messenger service. I'll lay you odds that leak has come from something hand delivered.'

‘You think we haven't checked that? You think we haven't timed the deliveries? You think we haven't sent a bike off and asked the receivers to phone us on arrival? Not one delivery –' he held up one finger –'was more than six minutes later than we estimated, taking account of the traffic, and we checked every delivery over a period of two weeks.'

Well, after all, he was supposed to be in charge of security.

‘All the same messenger service?' I said confidently.

‘Yes, as it happens.'

‘Airborne?'

He thought for a second then said: ‘Yes, that's the name. So?'

‘Oh, nothing. If you've checked them out to your satisfaction, then fair enough. I just thought that them being owned by Simon Cawthorne would ...'

‘What?'

I think it was fair to say I had his attention, though the fountain pen he was strangling would never be the san again.

‘Didn't you know? Didn't you even check that far? Didn't you make the connection with Pegasus Farm? Or am I way off base thinking that's Cawthorne's little war-gaming place down in Kent? Maybe Sal and Alec really were having dirty weekend down there with the hedgehogs among the cow-pats?'

‘You're sure about this?'

‘Fairly.'

‘That's not good enough.'

‘Hey, hey, José, that's your department – finding out who owns who. I'm just the hired help, and if I'm still hired, I'll find out how they're doing it.'

His pen moved away from the cheque-book. Bad sign. He was getting his confidence back.

‘We've gone through that procedure. There's no way it can be the bike riders. How are you going to find out?'

‘Ever followed one?'

‘Christ, no.'

‘I can, without being spotted. If we know where he's supposed to be heading, even easier. Rig a delivery for this afternoon. It doesn't have to be anything important.'

‘How did you rumble them? It was more or less the first thing we checked.'

‘After Salome, that is.'

‘How did you know
that
?'

‘She's female and black. I'm surprised you didn't have her shot out of hand.'

He looked down at the cheque-book.

‘You don't think much of us, do you?'

‘Not a lot.'

‘Except her.'

‘That's right, and I want two things. First, is Salome covered by BUPA or some company medical scheme?'

‘Naturally.'

‘Good. Get her moved up to town ASAP. Private room, whatever it takes.'

He blanched at that, but it wasn't the insurance premiums he was worried about.

‘You think she's in danger?' He wasn't as daft as he looked.

‘Let's just say she's too near to Cawthorne at the moment, which brings us, mystery lovers everywhere, to this week's request on Desert Island Discs. Tell me, Tel, which eight records and which book other than Shakespeare and the Bible, would Mr Cawthorne choose?'

‘What the hell are you talking about?'

‘The second thing. I need to know all you know about Cawthorne.'

In a split second he made his mind up and decided to be decisive.

‘No.' He began writing on the cheque again. ‘The moving of Salome, yes, we'll do that. We're covered for it anyway. But the rest – forget it. Take this and we'll call it quits.' He handed me the cheque and looked at his watch. It was a Rolex.

‘Not bad for one and a half days' work,' he said smugly.

I took the cheque, folded it and put it in the back pocket of my jeans.

‘Orders from Mr Prior, was it?' I slipped into my Humphrey Bogart, but it came out more like George C Scott. ‘“Get that fella Angel's ass off this case, Patterson.” Something like that?'

‘How ...?'

‘Oh, come on, you were on the phone to him when I came in.
Reporting on what the copper said.'

He tried to get angry.

‘I don't have to listen to you. Get out or I'll have you ejected.'

I liked that. In the City you get ejected, in a pub it's chucked out.

‘No you don't.' I didn't stand up. ‘You talk to Mr Prior, I'll have a word with Mr Keen. Is there a Mr Baldwin, by the way? I wouldn't want him to feel left out.'

‘Why do you want to talk to Mr Keen?' he snapped.

‘To tell him that his son Morris is the office pusher, and I don't mean the tea-trolley.'

Patterson's mouth fell open. I thought I was getting to him.

‘Wha ... wha ...?'

‘Young Mr Morris Keen is your friendly coke machine. Deliveries at least every Friday, probably mid-week too, I'd guess, direct to your door. Well, your desk anyway. I could even put a tag on a few customers. They're all out there beavering away at their terminals right now.'

‘Cocaine?' he said loudly.

‘Look me in the eye and tell me you never suspected.'

‘Just exactly what do you want to know?' he said carefully.

‘That's more like it.'

I gave him my full smile. I've got good teeth, so why not show them? And I always like doing business with a man who knows he's over a barrel.

 

I spent just over an hour with Patterson, which, I found out later, turned out to be another first. Time is money in the City, and few people are worth an hour unless it's over lunch and only then if you're involved in a takeover bid. It was also, I learned, one of the few occasions anyone at PKB could remember that Patterson had a meeting with his door shut and nobody got fired.

Even Purvis treated me with more respect as I sauntered out. Well, at least he toned down his sneer a notch or two.

‘Have we used a Don/R at all?' I asked, remembering to slip into the Purvis jargon.

‘Just the one.' He slipped a sheet of paper out from under the blotting-pad on his desk, then put on a pair of spectacles to read from it. ‘Lewis Luther; that's Lewis with a “w.” Lives at 23 Marlowe Road – that's Marlowe with an “e”–'

‘As in Philip.' He looked blank. ‘Or Christopher?' I tried. Double blank.

‘London SW2,' he completed.

‘Brixton. Would Mr Luther by any chance be a coloured gentleman.'

‘Dark as pitch. Not that I noticed, of course.'

Not bloody likely you didn't, I thought, but bit my tongue.

‘Good work, Sergeant. How did you find out?'

‘Asked to see his driving licence.'

‘Did he clock you – did he notice you copying it out?'

Purvis bristled. ‘Of course not. I've got a photographic memory for some things. Wrote it out soon as he'd gone.'

‘Excellent.' I took the sheet of paper from him. ‘Good initiative there, Mr Purvis. I'll make sure it's mentioned in the right quarters.'

As I went down in the lift, I thought it pretty clever of Purvis to get the bike rider's licence. I was impressed. But I was also glad he'd never asked to see any of mine.

I bus-hopped down to Covent Garden to start putting the feelers out for Werewolf. The City is one of the few places left with the old London buses you can jump on and off. With most punters having travel passes with those twee colour pictures on their identity cards, the conductors rarely bother to come upstairs to collect fares any more, so you get a fair amount of free rides in if you're prepared to keep moving. The new, one-man buses that are everywhere these days are not only designed by maniacs who've never heard of the aged or disabled, but you can't get on one without flashing the cash. Sometimes I think all the fun's going out of London.

Sorrel was on duty at her stall on the corner of the flea market, so that was my first port of call.

She was wearing biker leathers and cowboy boots, which all looked as if they'd been applied with the aid of a shoehorn. The jacket had ‘Those Whom the Gods Love' picked out in brass studs across the back, and the trousers had parallel lines of matching studs down the side seams. The boots had fake spurs. She was carrying more rivets than the average U-Boat and would probably have turned a compass away from Magnetic North.

The antiques business looked slack. Sorrel couldn't have made more than a grand so far that morning.

‘Hi. Remember me?' I smiled at her.

‘Sure. It's Gabriel, isn't it?'

‘Close, but no cigar.'

‘What?'

‘A Transatlantic expression meaning –' I paused and looked in the air for inspiration – ‘meaning “almost,” I suppose.'

She studied me for about half a minute, then rearranged some of the knick-knacks on her stall.

‘The Wolfman was right,' she said, as if to herself. ‘You are a weird person.'

‘Werewolf said that? About me? About anybody?'

‘Yeah, I know what you mean. Don't worry, I'm not convinced. Not totally, anyway. What can I do for you?'

‘Loyalty to Werewolf, and the fact that he's bigger than me, rule out answers 1 to 100, so I'll settle for knowing where the lad is.'

She picked up a book from her stall and browsed. She browsed beautifully. It was an 1875 edition of
Villette
by Charlotte Bronte. I'd never read it, but I knew how much I could have sold it for.

‘The lad, as you call him,' she said, still reading, ‘or the Mad Irish Git as I prefer to call him, is in my flat nursing a Full Metal Hangover. If there's any justice in the world, that is.'

‘Good night last night?'

She shook her blonde hair. She shook her hair wonderfully. I'd better stop looking at her, I decided.

‘You could say that,' she said in a sing-song sort of way. ‘I never knew there were so many different types of stout. I never knew there were so many Irish pubs in London. And I've never been carol-singing in April before. Yes, you could say it was a good night.'

‘Is he in a state to receive visitors?'

‘The Pope and maybe a Guinness salesman, but otherwise I'd have to say probably not. But since it's you ...' She looked at me suspiciously. ‘He seems to think a lot of you.'

‘There's no accounting for taste,' I quipped, but she took it seriously.

‘No, I suppose not. I'll give you the address if you want, but I'm heading back there with some lunch for him in an hour or so.'

‘That'll do. Just ask him to ring me this evening, would you? Tell you what, let's go out and eat tonight. On me.'

‘Okay. He knows where to get you?'

‘Yeah. Tell him to ring about seven, and we'll fix a place for eats. Italian food okay with you?'

‘Sometimes I could kill for fresh pasta.'

‘Good. But you'd better give me your number just in case.'

I like to think there aren't many tricks I miss, but I have to credit Sorrel in that she did write it down on a scrap of newspaper without saying ‘In case of what?' I filed it away in my wallet.

‘Are you sure you want me along?' she asked. ‘I mean, it's not boys' night out or anything, is it?'

‘Oh no. It's purely for the pleasure of your company. The two of you, that is.' She didn't believe a word of it. ‘Well, I do want to pick your brains, just slightly.'

‘What about?'

She turned half away from me as she had, rightly, detected a brace of customers approaching down the aisle of tables. They were a couple in their mid-fifties, I'd say, but dressed like they thought they were 20 years younger. The man carried a bulging leatherette wrist bag. I put them down as Dutch, and everybody knows the Dutch buy antiques by the lorry-load.