by Mike Ripley
Wearily, I reached for the Band Aid.
Chapter Four
There was very little cross-town traffic that morning – lots of real cabs with their For Hire lights on giving me the dead eye because they thought I had a fare – and we made it to Wimpole Street with bags of time to spare.
Time enough for a mobile scouting session. I showed Veronica the Angel pub on Thayer Street and said we could meet there at a prearranged time if she felt like it. It wasn’t that I thought the Angel a better boozer than the Black Horse just down the road (and that one has a Thai restaurant in the back), it was just I figured she might remember the name.
‘I don’t like going into pubs on my own,’ she said prissily.
‘I don’t like leaving them on my own,’ I said, but she wasn’t listening. She was keen to get on with her surveillance and wanted to be dropped across the road from Mr Linscott’s consulting rooms.
I pointed out that the person she was looking for was there to do a job of work, so she might see her arrive, but then it would be quiet until lunchtime, if this Rudgard woman decided to go out for lunch. The thought of Veronica hanging around outside and remaining unnoticed was too much for me at this hour.
‘What if she tries to shake me?’ she blurted suddenly. ‘What if she gets on a tube.’
Right, that was something we could do to kill some time.
I drove her round to Baker Street station and told her to dive in and buy herself a one-day travel card covering all zones, so she could be ready for anything. She liked that idea and I had been illegally parked for only about ten minutes when she reappeared and asked to borrow some money as she hadn’t enough cash. Once she’d got it, I pointed Armstrong to Wimpole Street and we slowly cruised it to see if we could spot Stella Rudgard heading in for her first day at the office.
I have to admit I was curious by now. Whether she knew it or not, Stella Rudgard had a lot to answer for. Introducing me to Veronica would do as a holding charge.
‘There she is!’ Veronica yelled in my ear. ‘Can’t you turn the music down? She might suspect.’
Suspect what? I was a black Austin London cab. There were thousands of us. We were anonymous; the perfect private eye’s vehicle. Okay, so they don’t all play INXS quite so loudly. I pulled over to the kerb and let the engine idle.
‘Well, I wouldn’t turn up for my first day at work looking like that,’ Veronica said through the partition.
‘Like what? She looks fine to me.’
And she did too. She was about my height with straight blonde hair that would have reached most of the way down her back if she hadn’t put it in a ponytail with a wide green hairband and hung it over her left shoulder. She was wearing a snug small black jacket with rounded edges over a short summer dress that rah-rah’d as she walked, about four inches above the knees of her bare, brown legs.
‘She’s not wearing any make-up,’ said Veronica.
‘Can’t say I’d noticed,’ I said.
‘And that skirt’s too short.’
I said nothing.
‘And she’s wearing trainers.’
She’d got me there. Still, two out of three wasn’t bad.
But as she drew near to the house with the consulting rooms, Stella stopped and dug into the Harrods carrier bag she was holding. She produced a pair of patent white high heels, dropped them on the pavement and kicked off her trainers one at a time. I admired the way she did it, not giving a sod if anyone was watching. Then she bent down and picked up her Nikes and shoved them into the carrier and sauntered up to the green door of the Linscott practice.
‘I suppose she loses points for the white stilettos,’ I said into the driving mirror.
‘Why? They’re very smart and very fashionable these days.’
I turned my head slowly to look at her to see whether she was serious or not.
‘What? What have I said now?’
‘Nothing. Skip it. You’re young. There’s time.’
‘Look, she’s going in.’
‘Good, you’ve got her trapped now for maybe seven or eight hours. Unless she gets fired before then, of course.’
Veronica pursed her lips. I almost heard her do it.
‘I don’t think anyone dressed like they’re going to a party really intends to make a career of the job.’
‘Well, that says two things about you, Veronica,’ I smiled sweetly. ‘Firstly, you don’t go to the sort of parties I do. And secondly, if you were a man and her employer, assuming she can actually speak English, you’ll get her into the pension plan by lunchtime and she’ll probably have a company car by the time she makes the tea this afternoon.’
‘Isn’t that sexist?’
‘Very probably. You must be getting through to me.’
She gave me the sort of look a spaniel gives its owner just after they’ve thrown a stick into an icy pond, and of course you never really mind if the damned dog doesn’t go. It was only a stick, anyway.
‘So what are you gonna do now?’
‘Find a place to wait and watch the door. When she comes out, I’ll follow her and find out where she lives.’
‘There must be easier ways of earning a living.’
‘Oh, I’m sure you could get her address out of her given five minutes in the back of this cab.’
‘Now that’s sexist.’ I was pretty sure it was.
Suddenly, her tone changed.
‘What about my case?’ I wondered when she’d think of that, even though it had been banging against her knees all through the journey. ‘I can’t do surveillance carrying that. I’d look like a door-to-door brush salesman.’
Maybe they still had them where she came from. I didn’t have the heart to tell her she was more likely to be picked up as a cocaine mule on this patch; and I don’t mean by the police.
‘Now look,’ I said, just knowing I was going to regret this. ‘I’ve got a few errands to run this morning, but I’m quite happy to pop round to Shepherd’s Bush when Dod is there, if only to make sure he fixes the door for you. I can dump your case there.’
‘What about keys? How do I get in?’
She had a point.
‘Is there anywhere Dod can leave them?’
‘Not really. The only person I know in the neighbourhood is Mr Block and he’s …’
In the hospital where that nice Irish receptionist works.
‘What say I drop your new keys round there? You’ll be visiting him tonight anyway, won’t you?’
‘That’s really, really kind of you, if it’s not too much trouble.’
‘It’s not too far out of my way,’ I said generously.
She stuck her hand through the open partition. It took me a moment to realise she wanted me to shake it.
‘You’ve been really, really kind, and I’ll tell Lisabeth that when I ring her.’ She must have felt me stiffen. ‘She gave me the number.’
I hadn’t.
‘Well, good luck.’
‘Thank you.’
‘You’ve got your tube ticket?’ She nodded. ‘It works on buses too, but if you’re on the underground, just remember to sit near the doors. Normally they open for ten seconds in a station, but with some main line interchanges it’s 15 seconds.’
‘I’ll try and remember that. You know,’ she paused, the door half open, ‘I think you’d quite fancy my job. You’d be good at it. You know so much really useful stuff.’
Yeah. And you really ought to get out more.
And that, genuinely, is how I would have left it, driving off into the sunset (well, early-morning Soho) and never seeing her again. If it hadn’t been for what happened later that day.
I blame easy living, looking back. I had acquired a building society account earlier that year. It wasn’t mine, but my teeth had got smashed up acquiring it, so I felt I had a stro
ng claim on it. No-one else did. No-one living, that was. So I didn’t really need a job just at the moment. I did the rounds of the clubs and the music agencies and one or two tour agents, like Turkish Dan, to see if there was any session stuff or even the odd driving job going, but my heart wasn’t in it. Turkish Dan did have a tour planned for some northern universities with a grunge band going unplugged for the first time, but I turned down the opening for a vehicle tech. (There are no ‘roadies’ any more, just ‘techs’ – vehicle tech, sound tech, light tech, etc.) It was partly because I’d heard the band plugged and didn’t rate them. Unplugged, their mistakes would be more obvious. Anyway, the tour started in Salford and, though I’d never been there, travel doesn’t broaden the mind that much.
Consequently, I had nothing to do by lunchtime except meander over towards Shepherd’s Bush to dump Veronica’s case and check that Dod was on the job.
Of course he wasn’t, but I had the padlock key he’d given me, and his temporary rehanging of the front door seemed to have held up. The postman, at least, had noticed nothing unusual, pushing the daily fistful of circulars and brown envelope bills through the letter box.
I put down Veronica’s case in order to pick the mail up and noticed that one envelope obviously wasn’t a bill. It had a frank on it instead of a stamp, but the address was handwritten, and by holding it up to the daylight I could see what it contained. So there was some good news for Albert Block. The cheque really was in the post.
I carried the post and Veronica’s suitcase up to the first floor, where Albert’s office was in exactly the same state of chaos as when I had last seen it.
I straightened some furniture and sat in Albert’s swivel chair behind his desk. I put my feet on the desk and tipped the chair back until it almost fell over. I tried a few lines like, ‘So when did you last see your sister, Ms Quest?’, but decided I needed a hat.
I opened the desk drawers looking for the office bottle but didn’t find one. If I had, it would probably have been Sanatogen. I did find a phone book and a London business Yellow Pages. There were no ‘Private Eyes’ listed, then I looked under ‘Detective Agencies’ and found 65, including: A Block, Enquiries. In fact, Albert’s was just about the most modest entry. The rest all promised peace of mind and security of investment through the wonders of electronic surveillance. Like there were no roadies anymore, there were no private eyes, just techs who could wire you up right.
I heard the door downstairs crash open and feet on the stairs. I remembered thinking that even Dod, not the most delicately balanced of men, was making a bit of a meal of thundering upstairs, then I realised that Dod didn’t have four feet.
The only weapon I could spot was Albert’s camera and tripod that I had picked up the night before. I bunched the legs together in two hands and put the desk between me and the door. If it turned out to be the police returning or the milkman or some very early carol singers, I could always pretend I was folding the damn things up.
My first instinct, to use it as a weapon, turned out to be the correct one. After all, they’d brought weapons.
They were no more than 15 or 16. One wore an LA Raiders blouson and the other an Arsenal football shirt. The Raider held a two-pound masonry hammer like he didn’t know how to use it but was willing to learn. The Arsenal fan clutched a retractable-blade Stanley knife as if he’d had work experience. They were black and their combined ages probably didn’t total mine. They didn’t seem half as scared as I was and they didn’t seem to want to say much.
‘Sorry, guys, the Masons don’t meet here any more,’ I said for the sake of saying something. ‘Or was it a photograph you were after? I can normally do you a nice passport job with extra prints, three quid.’
I hefted the camera tripod. It suddenly seemed a very light and flimsy sort of weapon, and in that space I could maybe get in one swing.
The Raider pointed his hammer at me.
‘What you doin’ here?’
‘Oh no, you first. You tell me what you’re doing here and then I’ll tell you what I’m doing here. You show me yours and I’ll show you mine. Those are the rules.’ I hoped it came out tougher than it sounded to me.
The Arsenal fan joined in.
‘Don’t dis’ him, man, he can’t take that.’ Then, to his mate, as if I wasn’t there: ‘He pig?’
‘Nah, no pig. He drove the fat white gash here last night,’ said Raider.
‘That’s right, man.’ I tried being reasonable. ‘I’m just the cab driver. Whatever you’ve got going down here is nothing to do with me.’
‘Then why this, fool?’ Raider grabbed at the camera with his free hand.
I pulled the tripod out of his reach and jabbed half-heartedly at his stomach, missing by miles. It didn’t seem to deter him. The Arsenal fan took a step to the side, putting space between them. Just what I didn’t want.
‘I’m just looking at the merchandise, that’s all. They had a break-in here yesterday; maybe you noticed. They didn’t take the camera. Funny that, eh?’
I didn’t think it was funny either, and my mouth had suddenly gone very dry.
‘Maybe they wasn’t thieving, man,’ said Raider with a smile, making another feint towards the camera. The Arsenal fan moved another pace away from him and another pace nearer to me, though I still had the desk between me and them.
‘Not thieving? Then what? The old man behind on his rent?’
Or his protection money? Anything was possible.
‘Maybe the old pig just ain’t wanted round here.’ This from the Arsenal fan, the one I was going to have to watch.
‘And why’s that?’ Anything to keep them talking. As long as they were talking they weren’t hitting or cutting me.
‘Don’t like snoopers,’ snarled Raider. ‘No snoopy snoopers wanted here, man.’
‘Ain’t the old pig got that clear in his mind yet?’ Arsenal fan began to circle the Stanley blade. ‘You got that message yet?’
Arsenal made a swipe at me, and though I knew he was still out of range, I reacted by trying to fend him off with the tripod. I had taken my eyes off Raider and he made his move, grabbing the camera and holding it down on the desk. He swung the hammer once and brought it down, smashing the camera casing and scrunching the lens.
They both laughed at that, and they didn’t seem to mind that I was still holding the other end of the tripod. I pulled it away and held it in front of me again. They thought that was funny too.
‘No more snoopin’ now,’ laughed Raider.
‘The old pig and the white gash – think they got the message?’ I wasn’t sure if Arsenal fan was asking me. He decided to be more direct. ‘You clear in your fucking head, man?’
Clearer than you are, sonny, but I didn’t say it. Whatever they had taken had started to kick in with the adrenaline rush of smashing the camera. There would be no pulling them round now until they came down off their high. I decided not to bother to try to reason with them any more. Face it, it hadn’t exactly paid dividends so far.
I swung the tripod in an arc just to keep them at bay. I was almost backed up to the wall, with the desk and the two of them between me and the door. On the other hand, one of them would have to come over the desk to get me, so I might get a swing in at their legs.
Raider feinted towards me and smashed his hammer down on the desk top. All noise, miles away from me, but heavy on the nerves.
Arsenal fan sensed my fear and jabbed like a swordsman at my arm. Again, he missed by at least a foot, but it seemed much closer.
Raider smashed the hammer into the desk again, laughing as I flinched at the sound. But maybe the only way to deal with them was to be as crazy as they were.
I smashed the tripod into the desk two, three times, yelling: ‘That’s it, man! That’s enough!’
It stunned them for about a second and a half and then they started laughing again. A
nd I joined in, because behind them I could see Dod’s immensely welcoming bulk filling the doorway.
‘Having trouble, Angel?’ he growled.
‘Not any more, Dod,’ I said cheerfully.
Raider swung around, saw Dod, and didn’t give me a backward glance, just headed for the doorway, which was really stupid as Dod was blocking it. I don’t know what he had in mind; probably not much. He raised his masonry hammer and yelled and just ran at Dod, expecting him to get out of the way, as most normal people would have done. Dod just stood there though and, at the last minute, raised his right arm. He was holding a blue metal toolbox and Raider just sort of ran his face into it, like a cartoon character getting whacked with a flat iron.
His legs kept going while the rest of him stopped dead. He pitched backwards onto the carpet, leaving a splat of blood on the bottom of Dod’s toolbox.
Dod said, ‘Shit,’ and then looked at me.
‘Angel, he’s only a kid …’
Arsenal fan was staring at his poleaxed mate. He hadn’t noticed me coming round the desk at him.
‘So call his social worker,’ I said as I swung the tripod.
I only hit him the once. It was enough to make him drop the Stanley knife and clutch his arm and ribs, but there was nothing broken.
I dropped the tripod with some difficulty. I had been clutching it so hard my hands hurt. Using a handkerchief, I picked up the knife and retracted the blade, then put it on the desk. On the floor, Raider groaned and began to feel for his nose with both hands, not understanding why they came away sticky and red. Dod, helpful as ever, bent over him, but only to wipe the bottom of his toolbox on Raider’s T-shirt. I bent over him to check his eyes. I reckoned the lift was working, just not getting to the top floor yet.
‘Whaddyawanna do with ‘em?’ asked Dod in a stage whisper.
I picked up Raider’s hammer by the iron head and put it on the desk next to the knife.
‘I’m keeping them, okay,’ I said to Arsenal fan. He glared at me. ‘Now, we could give you a good kicking, but we won’t. Just remember we could have.’
