by Mike Ripley
‘“Look at this broken fence,” says God. “What are you going to do about it?”
‘“Hey,” says Nick. “I didn’t do it.”
‘“Well, aren’t you going to fix it?” says God.
‘“Why should I?” says the Devil.
‘“Because this fence is the only thing that keeps your demons of hell away from my innocent angels,” says God, getting annoyed now.
‘“So you fix it, if it bugs you,” says Old Nick, real cheeky.
‘“It fell down on your side, so it’s your responsibility to rebuild it,” says God.
‘“How you gonna make me?” asks the Devil.
‘“If you don’t,” says God, “I’ll get my solicitor on to you.”
‘And that’s when the Devil smiles and says: “Where are you going to find a solicitor?”‘
So I wasn’t expecting applause.
All I got was: ‘That wasn’t a story, that was a joke.’
‘Yes,’ I conceded. ‘It was. Once.’
Chapter Ten
By the lime I got Veronica back to Hackney, it was too late to ring Zoe at her lab at the university. She and the switchboard would have finished for the day by then, and she knew me too well to trust me with her home (married) phone number. I did check with Lisabeth to see if there had been any messages, but got the standard lecture in response.
‘Some of us have jobs, you know. I’ve only just got in and I’ve had to send Fenella out for muesli because she was supposed to do the shopping this week. And I haven’t time to run up and downstairs to answer that thing.’
Now she’d mentioned it, I tried to think of the last time I had seen Lisabeth using the communal phone by the door, and I couldn’t remember a single instance. Come to think of it, I’d never seen her in a room with mirrors either.
‘Well excuse me, but I only asked because Veronica’s expecting a rather important call concerning …’
‘Oh, is Vonnie here again?’ she asked, brightening. She ran a hand through her short, cropped hair. For her that was the equivalent of a complete make-over.
‘Yes, and look,’ I said conspiratorially, ‘I’d really appreciate a favour. I have to go out tonight. Do you think you could keep her entertained?’
She almost smiled.
‘Why, of course. We can’t have her sitting up there all alone …’
There was a scream from my flat above.
‘Oh, shit. I thought Springsteen was out.’
By the time Lisabeth and I got there, he’d disappeared, leaving Veronica dabbing at her neck with a piece of kitchen roll.
‘I told you not to try and make friends,’ I said, once I had seen that there wasn’t that much blood really.
‘Make friends?’ she gasped. ‘I didn’t even see him. He must have been on top of the fridge. I wasn’t doing anything.’
‘When he’s in one of his moods …’
‘Moods? He attacked me.’
‘And you didn’t expect him to. That’s where you’re going wrong.’
‘Going wrong? I didn’t do anything.’
‘Listen, Veronica, how can I put this? We have here a cat who chases cars. Anything less than four-wheel drive is counted as wounded prey. Got that?’
‘He’s a man, that’s the trouble,’ said Lisabeth coldly.
‘Lisabeth, he’s a dumb animal.’ I said in his defence.
‘I rest my case,’ said Lisabeth smugly.
When Mrs Delacourt had appeared earlier and rescued me from the Lost Boys of Shepherd’s Bush, she had been quite explicit in her thoughts on how I should be conducting her investigation. Her son Crimson was meeting his dubious friend Chase that night, in a pub called The Palmerston over in Cricklewood, and, assuming I knew what was good for me, it might be an idea if I was there too.
Quite what I was supposed to do was anybody’s guess. I had no idea what the mysterious white powder was, so I would just have to assume the worst until proven naïve. I didn’t know Crimson’s new friend Chase, or whether he was a friend or mentor, good influence or bad, though there was no doubt in Mrs D’s mind on that score. I didn’t know what they were up to, if they were up to anything. I didn’t know their motivation or their moral stance on whatever it was they were doing. I didn’t even know how big Chase was.
Still, according to Veronica’s business card, I was now in the business of Private and Confidential Enquiries. Mrs Delacourt had asked me, privately, to follow her son, and I was keeping it very confidential, at least as far as Veronica was concerned. Therefore, I reckoned, I was in line with the two key planks of the Detectives’ Charter, if there was such a thing.
So I hacked it back up west and out towards Hendon for the second time that day, turning off the Finchley Road where Crimson’s mum had indicated, just after the big Mercedes dealership. The garage itself was dead easy to find and famous for having a dance exercise school on the floor above it. The sight of the early-morning, multi-coloured-leotard jazz tap class strutting their stuff to a Beiderbecke version of ‘Goose Pimples’, through those large picture windows, had calmed down many a fuming driver stuck in the rush-hour traffic jam between there and Swiss Cottage. I’d seen them, and I didn’t know what they did for the art of tap dancing, but by God they terrified me.
The Palmerston had all the advantages of a late-Victorian urban pub. The problem was it had run out of late-Victorian customers who would have been impressed. If it wasn’t haunted, it deserved to be.
As close as it was to a main road, it had no car park, but the side-streets were quiet enough. If Crimson was here already, I couldn’t see his motorbike, but that didn’t mean much. There weren’t any lorries parked nearby with ‘Drugs ‘R Us’ on the side either.
The pub was a one-long-bar affair, with beer dispensed from three multi-tap chrome fountains that would not have looked out of place on the bridge of the Starship Enterprise. From the smell of the carpet, and its tackiness underfoot, most of the beer dispensed had missed.
I played safe and ordered a bottle of Beck’s, getting a filthy look as well as change from the barman when I asked for a glass as well. As I poured, I scanned the bar, which was about half full.
It was no different from a thousand backstreet London boozers that early in the evening. Two or three groups having a drink after work, several pairs of couples at various points on the chat-up graph, and a few solitary drinkers who could have been there since lunchtime or, in one case, February. I reasoned that this Chase character would be one of the solitary drinkers, hopefully one of the ones minding their own business and reading the Evening Standard, and not the one who had probably outstayed his welcome and who was the only one willing to make misty-eyed conversation with a stranger.
Fortunately, I didn’t need to test the theory. Crimson entered the pub, wearing his biker leathers and carrying a crash helmet, and raised a gauntlet towards one of the groups sitting at a table across the bar from me. He didn’t see me until he had walked over, nodded greetings all round and checked if anyone wanted a drink. The group moved around to make room for him and he put his helmet under a chair, checked who wanted what and approached the bar. Then he clocked me, and surprise registered on his face just before the smile.
‘Yo, Angel-man, what you doing here? This is way off your usual turf, ain’t it?’
‘Tell me about it,’ I said with mock anger. ‘I’ve been stood up before and will be again, but not by someone who works at Brent Cross Shopping Centre.’
‘O-oh. Babe trouble, huh?’ He pointed a long black finger at my glass, and I pushed it towards him with a nod. ‘How are the pearlies?’.
I flashed him a smile, but he wasn’t impressed. He saw better every morning in the mirror. But the last time he’d seen me I’d been in a hospital and couldn’t talk properly.
‘They look expensive.’
‘They were.
You still dispatch riding?’
‘Naw, got myself a regular job in a factory, out at Elstree.’ He concentrated on paying for his round of drinks for a moment. ‘It’s boring but it’s regular.’
‘I thought that was marriage,’ I said, and he laughed.
‘You still drivin’ that pile of junk of a taxi?’
‘Yeah, and unlike your flash and very phallic BMW two-wheeler, it’s paid for. Meeting somebody, or just thirsty?’
I gestured at the round of drinks.
‘Oh, yeah, just a few mates from work.’
‘Need a hand?’ I reached for two of the pints of lager, but he beat me to them.
‘No, that’s okay. Hey, Chase, come here!’ he called out.
A short, stocky black guy, as square as a box of cornflakes, stood up from one of the groups at the table and started to come over towards us. I normally distrust anyone who wears a beard but no moustache – they’re either sociologists or religious fanatics – but I always make an exception if they are twice as wide as me and have hands that could juggle engine blocks.
Chase smiled at me and two pint glasses disappeared into his hands.
‘See you around, Angel,’ said Crimson.
‘Yeah, sure,’ I said.
So I wasn’t going to be asked to join the party. That meant I could either hang around the pub and force myself on Crimson’s party or hang around outside until the party broke up. I chose the latter, partly because Crimson was a sociable guy and if he’d wanted me in he would have said, and partly because the seats in Armstrong were more comfortable than those in the pub.
In fact, they were so comfortable, I almost fell asleep. I’d been there the best part of an hour when they emerged. As cars had come and gone, I had manoeuvred Armstrong into a better position so I could see the door of the pub in the mirror. I had spotted Crimson’s big BMW bike and put as much distance as I could between it and me. I had tucked Armstrong into the kerb in front of a small Ford van. Unless he was looking for me, he ought not to notice me at the other end of the street.
When they did show, it went like a scene from a movie. A movie directed by Buster Keaton, that is.
Crimson and Chase appeared on the street together, and in best film noir tradition, I caught their act through Armstrong’s nearside wing mirror. They stood there for a moment, back-lit with yellow light from the pub’s window, both hunched into their jackets, both scanning the street to make sure it was empty, whispering to each other out of the corners of their mouths. If it had been raining, or a cat had disturbed them, or Orson Welles had stepped out of the shadows asking if the pub sold sherry, then the picture would have been complete.
Chase, the short one, took something from his back pocket and handed it to Crimson. Crimson took a white envelope from his jacket and handed it to Chase. Chase put a finger to a point between his eyes and flicked a salute. Crimson put his crash helmet on and walked away, out of view of my mirror.
If I’d been a real detective, I thought to myself, I would have had a camera with really fast film that would have caught all that. And then I could casually drop some glossy ten-by-eights on the desk in front of Mrs Delacourt. But what would she do with them? Frame them? Then again, one of today’s super-discreet surveillance experts would probably be a quarter of a mile away with a laser microphone or similar, taping their conversation. And, of course, a really smart private eye wouldn’t have parked six inches in front of Chase’s small Ford van.
I flipped the dashboard mirror down in an attempt to see something, then I squeezed down as far as I could go in Armstrong’s driving seat. Unless he actually walked up and looked in, Chase wouldn’t see me, but then again, I hadn’t left his van much room for an exit, and if he was worried about clipping a corner as he pulled out, he might just come and take a closer look.
He didn’t give it a second thought. As his lights came on full beam, flooding Armstrong’s interior, I breathed a sigh of relief. It probably was a company van and he was not responsible for minor cuts and bruises to it. Thank heavens for the code of irresponsibility that all company van drivers have to sign before they’re given the keys.
He reversed about a foot then swung out into the street. From my position I couldn’t tell, but I was willing to bet you couldn’t have got a cigarette paper between the nearside wing of his van and Armstrong’s rear offside wheel arch. No respect for paintwork, some people.
I let him get to the end of the street before I started my engine, and he had turned right into Finchley Road before I put my lights on. That was something else they did in the movies, though God knew why I bothered, as the streetlights were more than adequate if he was going to spot me. I was banking on the fact that he wasn’t expecting to be followed, and that seemed to me to be a good enough reason to follow him. I didn’t have many other reasons. It is almost impossible to follow a motorbike rider, especially one as good as Crimson, in London unless you are on a bike yourself, added to which, Crimson had seen me in the pub and knew about Armstrong, so that ruled him out. And although the detective’s credo was always to ‘follow the money’, I had a good idea where the money was going – straight back to Crimson’s gaff. What I didn’t know was where the white envelope, which I guessed contained more of the white powder Crimson’s mother had given me, was going. So that was my logic: follow the white powder.
The van turned off into Golders Green Road and picked up speed along one of the longest residential streets without a pub in London. (That’s not strictly true, it just feels like it.) Then it suddenly turned left without indicating and I slowed as I drove by the side street, deciding to risk it and swinging in after him.
There was no other traffic here, so I let him get eight or nine car lengths ahead. He did a left then a right, finally slowing and parking in among the Volvos and small Peugeots that seemed to be obligatory for the area.
All the houses had front gardens, with walls, hedges and sooty trees forming the first line of defence in keeping the street out. Such considerations didn’t seem to worry Chase with the house he chose; he just got out of the van and walked in through the gateway of a short gravel drive.
I had parked on the opposite side of the street, way down from him, and killed Armstrong’s engine and lights. I wasn’t going to see much from where I was, so I climbed out, easing the door shut as quietly as I could. Maybe this wasn’t what I thought it was, but then, with the best will in the world, Chase didn’t look like your average resident of this part of Golders Green.
Come to think of it, a house on a street like this in an area like this, didn’t exactly strike me as Drug Central, west London, but these days you never knew. Maybe somebody’s parents were away and the kids were having a party and had decided to send out for something more interesting than pizza.
I was crouching behind one of the new Volvo 850s when I heard a doorbell ring across the street. Funny, though, there was no sound of a party in progress. I eased round the bonnet to get a look up the driveway and saw Chase walking towards me. I registered that there were no lights on in the house before ducking down and, crablike, scuttling back behind the bulk of the car.
My big worry was someone emerging on my side of the street to walk the dog or something. There are some parts of town where if you saw someone almost on their knees in the gutter, you would quietly walk around them. There are other parts where you would get down and join them. This parish was neither of those.
I sneaked a look around the rear of the Volvo, not wanting to touch it in case it was alarmed, as some alarms go off in a stiff breeze.
Chase had gone to the rear doors of his van. He looked up and down the street once, then at his watch. Then he opened the doors and reached in to pick up what I at first thought was a large toolbox. It was light from the way even he hefted it, and it was blue with a white lid. He put it down to close the van doors quietly, and when he reached for it again, he snapped th
e carrying handle secure with a plastic click. Only then did I realise it was a cool box, the sort you take on picnics that are supposed to keep your beer chilled. He picked it up and entered the driveway again.
I switched positions, running across the road in a crouch and hiding behind a Renault Espace parked 50 feet behind Chase’s van. I was convinced that if anyone had seen me, they would have called the cops by now. I was acting far more furtively than Chase was.
He emerged from the driveway again, opened the van doors and carefully placed the cool box inside. Then he got in and drove away.
I walked down to the house and took a clear look. It was a detached, 1920s suburban house, in total darkness. It had a garden mostly laid to lawn, with a fish pond and, down the side, a little summerhouse. No sign of a rave party, no suspicious characters hanging around except me. No sign of a break-in, no burglar alarms going off – and I could see they had one.
I did what any self-respecting detective would do. I said sod it and went home.
At home, I found the self-respecting detectives had been holding a seminar – or maybe that should be coven – to decide what to do next. I found this out from Inverness Doogie from upstairs, who came banging on my flat door before I’d managed to prise the top from my first beer.
I let him in and thrust the beer into his hand, going back to the fridge to get myself another, even as he spoke.
‘Angel, just what the fookin’ hell are yer doing wi’ ma wife?’
I looked around, astonished, then opened the fridge and pretended to look in there. Doogie caught sight of the massed ranks of bottled beer.
‘Miranda!’ I yelled into the fridge. ‘It’s all over between us. He’s found out. You might as well take your anorak off and come out. It was never meant to be.’
‘Stop pissing about, Angel, you know what I mean.’ He took a swig of his beer. ‘Are these duty-frees?’
