Bootlegged Angel (23 page)

I spotted Melanie in a corner, sipping delicately from a bottle of Beck’s, staring lovingly into the eyes of a young man sitting across the small round table from her. He wore the only
three-piece suit and the most expensive haircut in the building and had a glass of orange juice in one hand. With his other he occasionally reached out and stroked Mel’s arm as he talked. She
nodded and smiled at everything he said. You didn’t have to be a psychologist to tell she was in love. We publicans tell you things like that for free.

I pushed my way over to her, picking up some empty glasses on the way to make it look as if I knew what I was doing.

‘Hi, Mel, how’s Ivy?’

It took her five seconds to realise someone was talking to her but eventually she tore her eyes from the guy in the suit and looked up. I realised it must be worse than I thought.

‘Oh, hello . . . Roy,’ she said eventually.

I could see her thinking:
What was the question
?

‘Ivy, the landlady. Hospital?’ I prompted, but sarcasm was wasted on her.

‘Oh, yes. Christian drove me there. And back.’

She had no idea how goofy she sounded.

‘You must be Christian,’ I said, ‘the chauffeur.’

The suit made to stand up and offered his hand to shake. He had the best set of manicured nails I’d ever seen on a man – and quite a few women.

‘I don’t mind driving Melanie around,’ he said smoothly as we shook, then looked down into her eyes. ‘I’ve offered to do it on a permanent basis.’

Christian smiled, Mel blushed, I felt nauseous.

‘Your friend Ivy’s going to be laid up for quite a while, I’m afraid,’ he said. ‘Bones get very brittle at her age and she has got a break, but it’s a clean
one.’

‘Christian’s a doctor, you know,’ said Mel soppily. ‘Actually, a consultant in private practice.’

He didn’t look old enough to be a medical student to me but perhaps that was a sign of me getting older, when the consultants start looking younger.

‘How long?’ I asked him.

‘Three months, perhaps longer, before she can even think of coming back here unless she has someone to look after her and she certainly won’t be able to run a pub single-handed.
I’ve told Mel to tell her she really should think about retiring.’

‘I’m not going to tell her
that
,’ said Mel sharply, snapping back to reality.

‘Me neither,’ I agreed. ‘Look, I’ll have to ring the brewery tomorrow and tell them. Let them put it to her. I’m sure they’ll want to send a bunch of flowers
or something anyway.’

‘I’m sure that’s the best way,’ said Christian, dripping with concern. ‘Does she have private medical insurance?’

Mel and I both shrugged. Behind me a cheer went up as somebody put ‘Be Happy’ on the jukebox again and the girls behind the bar went into their routine.

Christian looked at the Rolex on his wrist.

‘We ought to going, Mel dear. I really must get back to town tonight.’

Mel immediately placed her beer on the table even though it was still half full and pulled her jacket around her shoulders.

‘Ready when you are,’ she said obediently.

‘Let me see you out,’ I said, dumping the glasses I had collected on their table. So much for my career as a pot boy.

Christian positioned himself behind Mel’s chair so he could push and I stepped in front of her and acted as a crowd marshal, touching people on the shoulder, asking them to give us room to
move.

Once in the car-park, Christian wheeled Mel towards a top-of-the-range Mercedes and he bleeped the remote locking from ten yards away.

‘Could you get the passenger door, please?’ Christian asked me politely.

As I did so, he picked Mel up out of her chair – the classic bride-over-the-threshold pose – and they gazed longingly into each other’s eyes. For a moment, I thought Mel was
starting to drool.

Christian placed her carefully in the front passenger seat and even clipped her seat belt in for her. Then he pushed her chair to the back of the car, opened the boot and folded it with
practised ease so that he could pack it away.

‘Goodnight,’ he said with a wave before he climbed into the car and started the engine.

Mel didn’t even look at me let alone wave. She only had eyes for the driver as the Mercedes pulled smoothly away.

I memorised the number plate and made a mental note to add it to my next report to Nick Lawrence, just for the hell of it.

My watch told me it was ten minutes to eleven and that seemed as if it should somehow be significant. Then I remembered, that was closing time or at least ‘last orders’. I had been a
publican for a whole day almost and still not pulled a pint for a real customer. The least I could do was ring the bell on the bar and shout at them, asking if they had homes to go to.

The punters, though, showed no signs of wanting to go home as I elbowed my way through them to get to the bar. By the time I got to the bar flap it was exactly eleven o’clock.

‘There’s a bell somewhere,’ I said to Neemoy. ‘Let’s tell ‘em it’s chucking-out time.’

I made to lift the bar flap but it wouldn’t move. A leather-jacketed forearm was resting on the edge, holding it down.

I did say ‘Excuse me’ but there was a lot of noise and perhaps I did jerk the flap up rather hard. Whatever, the arm was dislodged but so too was its owner who took a pace backwards
as lager from the glass in his other hand missed his mouth and soaked the front of his T-shirt.

It just had to be Axeman.

‘Sorry, mate, you’re blocking the bar exit. Health and Safety at Work Act. They could have my licence for that,’ I waffled, moving quickly behind the bar.

With superb timing, Neemoy found the bell and began to ring it, almost decapitating Sasha who obviously thought it was the start of some bizarre form of karaoke.

Neemoy and Max yelled: ‘Time, ladies and gentlemen, please! Can we have your glasses?’ in unison, like they had rehearsed it, with Sasha following about two beats behind them. Neemoy
rang the bell a final time and Sasha finished: ‘. . . your glasses?’

To my amazement, people started to pack up and leave. It was like the climax of
The Wild Bunch
where an entire Mexican army starts to surrender to the four heroes, but then that
didn’t go to plan either.

‘You spilled my beer,’ slurred Axeman, steadying himself by holding the edge of the bar.

‘Sorry about that, sir. Get you one tomorrow. We’re closing now.’

I was being nice to him, I really was, though I refused to make eye contact.

‘You don’t fucking treat me like that!’

He was getting louder but there was still music on and glasses clashing and chairs being scraped so nobody took much notice.

‘I want another lager!’

‘We’re closed.’

I looked around for something to do to ignore him. Sasha swayed by me to open the flap on her way to collect glasses. Axeman grabbed it and held it open.

‘Get me a fucking top-up drink!’ he snarled. His eyes were near to bursting and a vein on his nose began to throb.

Neemoy, well aware of the situation, squeezed in front of me so I could hide behind her.

‘Come on, lover, it’s time to call it a night. I need my beauty sleep, you know.’

She had a cloth and was wiping the bar in front of Axeman. Smoothly, she lifted his pint glass to wipe underneath and somehow just forgot to give it back to him. She swung away and poured what
was left of his beer down the sink, putting the empty glass in the open dishwasher, then turned back to him with a big smile.

It was the smile that defused things. Axeman had to smile back, even though it looked as if it was being wrenched from an intestinal tract.

‘See you tomorrow?’ Neemoy asked him sweetly.

‘Yeah, oh yeah. Definite.’

He began to step away from the bar, zipping up his jacket over his soaked T-shirt, trying to look cool, making for the door as if he’d planned to leave that way all along.

I put an arm around Neemoy’s waist. In the cramped conditions behind the bar I was surprised it hadn’t happened before.

‘Thanks,’ I whispered into her ear as she leaned back into me. ‘I thought you were going to have to get down and dirty with him.’

She laughed, put her head back even further and said: ‘He wouldn’t like me when I’m angry.’

Unfortunately, he didn’t like her when she was being friendly, or at least not with me, for that was the moment he chose to stop and turn round and catch us in what must have seemed a
compromising position. (And to be honest, I’d seen porn movies with less sense of direction.)

‘Oi! Don’t you fucking touch her,’ he growled as he stomped back towards the bar.

The pub was emptying and I looked around frantically for any of the other ‘boffins’ from Scooter’s set-up but they had all disappeared. None of the remaining customers seemed
to have noticed anything untoward and none seemed likely to rush to my aid.

‘I said don’t touch her like that!’ He had his finger out like a gun, stabbing the air as he said each word.

‘Now calm down, lover boy,’ said Neemoy.

‘Let her go, you shitarse!’

I presumed that was meant for me as I somehow still had my arm round Neemoy’s waist and it must have looked –
looked
, mind you – as if I was keeping her in front of me
as a human shield.

‘Hey, no trouble in here, OK?’ I said over her shoulder.

‘I’m having you,’ he snarled and lunged for the open bar flap.

He was less than a yard from me when I pushed Neemoy to the right and moved as far as I could, which wasn’t far behind that bar, to the left feeling behind me for the bell or a bottle or a
baseball bat or Neemoy’s handbag. Anything to hit him with.

As he came through the bar flap, he bunched his hands into fists and pulled his right back and up. One more step and he couldn’t miss. I could almost smell his breath. I could certainly
see the whites of his eyes. They were huge.

I slid my right foot forward and kicked the bolt on the cellar trap-door. The trap fell open inwards and Axeman, shuffling sideways through the bar flap, probably couldn’t have stopped
himself even if he had been looking down rather than straight at me.

He didn’t make a sound as he disappeared downwards as if in some invisible elevator right in front of me, but there was a hell of a crash as he bounced off the ladder and sent goodness
knew what flying once he hit the cellar floor.

Even old Dan heard the noise of breaking bottles and clanging metal barrels being knocked over and he leaned over the bar in case he missed anything.

‘What’s going on?’

Neemoy and I peered cautiously over the edge of the trapdoor. Axeman was spreadeagled on his back on the cellar floor, his head resting against a steel keg of lager. He wasn’t moving but
he was breathing.

‘One of Neemoy’s friends dropped in to see her,’ I said, then winced as she playfully backhanded me in the stomach.

‘Is he all right?’ asked Dan anxiously. I didn’t think he would ever forgive me for making his life so interesting.

‘You remember where the phone is?’ I asked him.

‘’Course I do.’

‘Well, you know the number.’

It was the same two paramedics as the night before. We were getting to know each other quite well.

‘You haven’t given this one a brandy as well, have you?’ one of them shouted up from the cellar.

‘It wasn’t me that gave Ivy brandy,’ I protested. ‘Anyway, this one didn’t need one.’

‘You’re not kidding,’ said the paramedic wafting a hand in front of his nose. ‘If I gave this guy mouth-to-mouth, I couldn’t drive the ambulance.’

‘Mmmm, mouth-to-mouth,’ Sasha said dreamily from behind me. She was sitting on the bar, legs dangling over the inside, rolling a joint between forefingers and thumbs.

‘No smoking this side of the bar,’ I reminded her primly, so she swung her legs round, giving Dan a great view, until she was facing the other way.

The paramedic standing over the trap-door shook his head slowly.

‘Can you still be charged with “running a disorderly house” these days?’ he asked me.

‘Dunno,’ I said, ‘but I’ve got a feeling we could find out by the end of the week.’

‘How long has he been unconscious?’ the one in the cellar shouted.

‘He was out for about ten minutes,’ Neemoy told him as she ripped open another packet of crisps. ‘Then he came round and started swearing and then I think he just sort of
passed out.’

‘How much had he had to drink?’

‘Seven pints and two vodka and tonics,’ Neemoy said without hesitating. When everybody looked at her she shrugged and said: ‘What? What?’

‘There doesn’t seem to be any ID on him,’ the medic shouted up. ‘What’s his name?’

‘Alex something, we think,’ I said.

‘Where does he live?’

‘No idea,’ I said, glaring at Dan so he wouldn’t say anything.

‘Is he a regular?’

‘He might be, but we’re not,’ I said. ‘We’re just the temporary management.’

‘You’re not kidding there,’ said the other paramedic.

They carted Axeman off strapped to a stretcher just as they did Ivy and I had a twinge of sympathy for him in case he woke up in the bed next to her.

The three girls and Dan made a fair fist of cleaning up the pub while I counted the night’s takings. If we stayed on here, Ivy was going to have to get a bigger safe.

Then we had a nightcap together and then another one and finally, around half-past midnight, I insisted that Dan went home and I locked the front door after him though he was still protesting
that I shouldn’t have to face a night in the pub with just the three girls (‘fashun modals’ as he called them) for company.

Unfortunately, they had decided something along the same lines amongst themselves.

Neemoy had disappeared upstairs and returned with an armful of cushions and a pair of what looked like army-issue blankets.

‘Sasha and I are taking the big bed upstairs,’ she said, all businesslike. ‘Max’ll sleep it off on the sofa in the living-room.’

‘And I . . . ?’

She pointed to the bench seat under one of the windows near the dart board in the corner of the bar, then she dumped the cushions and blankets into my arms.