Angel City

by Mike Ripley

  It was dark and raining by the time I made Holborn. It was the quiet time there, around 9.00 pm, with few people on the street and dozens of taxis with their signs on cruising up and down. You could tell there was a recession on: empty taxis and queues at the bus stops even though it was raining. Funny, though, that in two hours when the pubs emptied out, you wouldn’t find a cab for love nor money.

  I cut round the back of the Fields and parked illegally on Portugal Street. I rummaged around in the boot some more until I found a California Angels baseball cap to combat the rain, and while looking I came across a pair of plastic diesel pump gloves. Those went on too. You never knew.

  I entered the Fields themselves from the south-east end. They aren’t fields as such, of course. Fields are big green things which wave in the wind and live beyond the M25 and are eligible for European Community subsidies. Lincoln’s Inn Fields is really a big lawn with a criss-cross path and iron railings round the perimeter. It is flanked by Lincoln’s Inn itself, where the legal beagles hang out, and the Royal College of Surgeons, where the medics pontificate on the health of the nation. It is home to a movable population of the homeless, many of whom are sick and all probably breaking the law.

  I was holding my torch down at the side of my leg, my thumb on the flash on/off button. It reminded me of drinking sessions years ago in Southwark with an old robber called High Interest, who used to hold a pickaxe handle that way while waiting in the queue for a cashier to come free. He maintained he’d once waited 20 minutes like that, edging his way forward, and nobody had said a word until he started smashing at the cashier’s glass window. That was in the days before video cameras, of course, and he couldn’t ever have been a very successful robber; after all, he used to drink with me and live in Southwark. He was called High Interest because he specialised in Building Societies, but that was the most imaginative thing about him.

  The largest concentration of tents and makeshift bashas was in the corner to my left, though in total there were no more than a dozen of them. At one time there were supposed to have been nearly two hundred people living here, but harassment, fear and the winter had thinned them out much more successfully than the government’s attempts at rehousing.

  In the centre of the Fields was the bandstand, or the folly, or the gazebo. It had many names, including Timothy Whites after an ageing newspaper columnist had suggested that more drugs changed hands there than in a branch of the former high street chemists. That was not on my agenda if I could avoid it. Derek had said he’d seen Lee with a tent; though even if the tent was there, it didn’t mean Lee was.

  I played the beam of the torch on to the ground between the path and the nearest tents. Most had well-worn muddy tracks thanks to the rain. The furthest two did not, therefore they were the recent arrivals. Much more of this, I thought, and I might consider reapplying to the Scouts, assuming they’d forgotten a particular incident 20 years ago.

  A black cab went round the square. He was empty but not showing a light on his meter. In the beam of his headlights I could make out the detail of the tents, one a standard four-corner guy-rope affair, the other a light blue dome tent shaped like an igloo. It was impossible to tell if either was inhabited. That was the weird thing about the Fields; it was so quiet.

  The only sound I’d heard had been a creaking and then a soft thud from the folly in the centre of the Fields. The dwellers there had long since learned not to draw attention to themselves after dark. Hence, there were few lights. Nobody gave dinner parties round here.

  My eyes were as accustomed to the dark as they ever would be and I wasn’t finding anything out standing there on the path, but I was increasing the chances of being spotted as an intruder.

  From somewhere behind me, I heard glass break, followed by a wail of obscenities. That spurred me on. Keeping the beam of the torch aimed just in front of my feet, I crept towards the nearest tent, the grass squelching underfoot.

  A yard away from its zippered fly-sheet I thought I could hear voices from inside. Two voices, banter going back and forth, but the words indistinct under the patter of the rain on the canvas. I went down in a crouch and strained to try and make out the murmurs. In truth I had no idea what to do next. I was badly in need of a doorbell or a piece of wood to knock on.

  I shook some rain out of my ears and tilted my head nearer the tent flap. I began to make out some words. It was almost as if whoever was in there was playing a game like ‘I Spy’ or something. One of them tossing out an idea, the other answering.

  ‘… drinking out of a chipped cup …’

  ‘… medium to low …’

  ‘… bath together …’

  ‘… low risk ...’

  ‘… anal intercourse …’

  ‘… outstanding risk ... How am I doing?’

  ‘… a minute ... few more yet. Strawberry flavoured condoms.’

  ‘Low risk. What ... hey! Visitors!’

  ‘Who’s there?’

  There was a scuffling from inside the tent, then a clanging of metal on metal that sounded like nothing I’d heard before.

  ‘Er ... sorry to intrude,’ I said, knowing it sounded lame, ‘but I’m looking for a guy called Lee.’

  There was a silence while they considered this.

  ‘Piss off,’ came a voice pretending to be deeper than natural.

  I hadn’t expected a warm welcome but it wasn’t as if I was trying to sell them a conservatory or double glazing.

  ‘Sorry to disturb you. Incidentally, they’re high risk.’

  More scuffling and more silence.

  ‘Strawberry flavoured condoms. They’re higher risk than you’d think. Most of them don’t come up to British Standard specification. It says in very small print that they are for amusement only and not to be used as an effective barrier. Most people just hear “condom” and assume it must be low risk.’

  Another cab zipped round the square, his headlights filtered through the railings. If he saw me, he didn’t slow down. Why should he? There I was, kneeling in the rain at night having a perfectly sensible conversation with an apparently empty tent, in an historic square in the heart of the most civilised capital city in the world. All I was trying to do was score points in the High Risk/Low Risk game everybody was playing with one of the latest generation of helpful pamphlets from the health authorities. Get in on their wavelength. Indicate that I was informed and concerned.

  ‘Piss off.’

  I never need telling three times. I squelched over to the dome tent and as this was the last dwelling on that side of the Fields, I risked more of the torch. There was no light from the tent, but I could make out the door flap wasn’t closed properly.

  There was also definitely someone at home. I could tell by the smell.

  I crouched down near to the door, but to the side, and held the torch ready to either flick on or brain somebody with.

  ‘Lee?’ I said quietly, then louder when I got no response.

  ‘Lee, I’m a mate of Tigger’s, okay?’ I tried. Still nothing.

  I bit the bullet and loosened the tent flap and shone the torch inside.

  At first I thought he was a stiff, an overdose at least, at worst the victim of a maniac serial killer who collected not just heads but the top half of the whole torso. All I could take in to begin with were the hi-top trainers sticking out of the end of a pair of mud-spattered denims with the traditional horizontal rip just under the right buttock.

  From buttocks upwards, the body was encased like an Egyptian mummy in a sleeping bag and curled into as near as he could get to the foetal position. The air in the tent had the tang of chemicals mixed with singed hair and fabric from the sleeping bag. The dipstick had crawled inside there to do crack. To say, as we are supposed to say these days, that he was chemically challenged was putting it mildly.

  I tucked the torch into my armpit and crawled in
to the tent to tug the sleeping bag off him, to make sure it was Lee. It didn’t occur to me then that he might have suffocated, drowned in his own vomit or burnt his eyebrows off. I knew all three were worth each-way bets.

  The sleeping bag came off and I felt and heard a variety of things fall out of it apart from Lee. It was Lee, and he was breathing, and when I flashed the torch full face I distinctly saw an eyeball move. Scattered around the floor were the items he’d taken in there with him – there was nothing else in the tent – and I scanned them. Bits of glass from a crushed phial, some strips of metal foil paper, a Zippo lighter, a penknife on a keyring but no key, a stub of a candle and a quartz travelling alarm clock about two inches square. There you had it. A kid not yet old enough to drive crawls into a sleeping bag upside down, inside a dome tent, and sets the alarm for 7.00 am before voluntarily parting company with his brain. Freud would have had a field day. Hell’s teeth, there could be a PhD in it for me.

  Lee’s breathing changed. He was probably remembering to exhale. Maybe it was the fresh air and the rain spitting in from the open flap that were reviving him, or at least inducing the shivers. He certainly ought to have been shivering, for he was wearing only a T-shirt advertising the band Suede’s first CD.

  I patted him gently on the cheek.

  ‘Lee. Lee. It’s me. Can you hear me?’

  I reckoned there was no point in confusing him with tricky details like my name.

  I patted both cheeks.

  ‘Lee, can you hear me? I’m looking for Tigger. Lee?’

  I shone the torch in his eyes and slapped him. ‘Anybody home? Tigger. Where’s Tigger?’

  He smiled, but I think he was smiling at something at the back of his retina, not at me. ‘Monster ... man …’ he slurred.

  ‘What? Lee, I’m looking for Tigger. Where is he?’

  ‘Monstery ... man ... Tigger monster …’

  ‘Christ, Lee, straighten out, man. I don’t want a character analysis, I want to know where he is. Tigger, remember? Your mate and mine.’

  He looked hurt. I must have been getting through. When Vitamin C and methadone programmes fail, try sarcasm.

  ‘I’m telling you. Weekends Tigger goes monstering.’

  What the hell does that mean? I wanted to ask, but now I had his attention I had to keep it simple.

  ‘Where, Lee? Where does Tigger go monstering?’

  ‘That’s it, monstering.’

  He began to scratch his chest with both hands, his nails dragging threads on the cotton T-shirt. He had no idea he was doing it.

  ‘South. In the country. South of the river. Long way. Alarm clock.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘Alarm clock. Whereisit?’

  His scratching became louder but he didn’t seem to notice. If he hadn’t been wearing the T-shirt he would have drawn blood.

  ‘... clock …’ There was panic in the voice now.

  I flashed the torch around and picked up his clock for him, holding it to his face. He stopped scratching and took it with both hands.

  ‘Got to sleep,’ he said, and his eyelids began to droop. He was not faking.

  I put my hand on his chest to sit him up again but it was as if I wasn’t there. He reached over me and opened the neck of the sleeping bag and made to crawl back inside. I tried to restrain him, to make him comfortable, to settle him, but I admit it must have looked as if I was trying to strangle him. Especially to the couple who were suddenly shining beams into the tent.

  ‘Leave him alone, bastard,’ said a female voice.

  ‘What do you think you’re doing?’ added a male voice.

  They were the couple from the next tent, the two who had been playing High Risk/Low Risk with a sex manual.

  ‘Get out of there, this minute,’ said the woman.

  I pulled the peak of my baseball cap down to shield my eyes from their torches, which were the lantern type of halogen beam and far more powerful and blinding than mine. Shone upwards they could probably distract aircraft. I edged out of the tent, knee-high to them in a crouch, and I heard the metallic clanging sound I had first registered outside their tent. Through the glare of their torches I caught a glimpse of a metal cylinder, and I guessed they had armed themselves with the sort of personal fire extinguisher you get as standard issue in big German cars, or you find in homes or, logically enough, on camp sites.

  Now there is a lot of bullshit in the movies about what fire extinguishers can do when sprayed into the face and eyes. Water extinguishers and carbon dioxide ones can give you a nasty shock if you’re not prepared for it, but the smaller ones are more likely to be dry-powder based or contain a chemical cocktail known as BCF. Both those can be highly irritant and cause temporary blindness, and some are popular with second-generation glue-sniffers if a quick spray of butane (cigarette lighter fluid) fails to hit the spot.

  But this was not the time to check the small print. I dug my toes into the soft ground for purchase and launched into a run, keeping low. I think it was the woman I hit with my shoulder, but either way one of them grunted as the air went out of them and they slipped and fell backwards.

  I wasn’t stopping, not even when one of them shouted, ‘Hey?’ After all, I had offered to stop and chat earlier and they had been positively rude.

  Back at Stuart Street I stripped off and soaked in a bath for an hour, which involved getting out twice: once to fiddle the gas meter and get more hot water and once just to make sure that neat tequila was the only thing to drink in the place.

  I finished Norman Mailer’s Harlot’s Ghost, which I had been promising to do for a year. (Be honest: two.) It was now so badly damp with bathwater and steam that it could double as a small armchair.

  I fed Springsteen, who had appeared through the kitchen window I always left open, twice as silent and far more deadly than any burglar could. I have still to work out how he gets up to the kitchen window from the yard at the back of the house, because it’s a long, bare drop. But then I try not to worry about things like that. Cats can levitate at will. It’s a well-known fact; just nobody’s written a law of quantum physics about it yet.

  I asked Springsteen if he knew what monstering was. He didn’t. Or if he did he wasn’t telling. I asked him why Lee wanted an alarm clock and didn’t get a straight answer on that either. I asked him how long I ought to string Fenella out over the driving lessons and it was then I realised I’d finished the tequila and had been acting like an idiot.

  Springsteen had been asleep for the past half-hour. No wonder he wasn’t answering me.

  The communal house phone is nailed to the wall by the front door, and on the end of a yard of string is an ‘honesty book’ where we are supposed to log our calls so the bill can be shared out at the end of each quarter. Naturally, I’m very quiet when I use the phone and especially so before 7.00 am, which would be a great time for me to make all my calls except nobody I want to phone is conscious then.

  Bassotti had said he had an answerphone though, so I could sneak in a call before the house woke up. If I wasn’t going to deliver Tigger he wasn’t going to hand over any cash, so I would have to turn up for work again, Friday being payday and me now in need of any contribution to the Angel survival fund.

  There are answerphone messages and there are answerphone messages, and it’s a wonder there isn’t a university writing course offered on them. There’s the laid-back: ‘This is the ‘90s, you know what to do’ – BEEP! And there’s the pseud, where they play ‘Stairway to Heaven’ or the theme from Twin Peaks before telling you to leave a message, not caring that it’s costing the caller God knows how much to listen to it. Then there’s the: ‘Hermione, Sam, Justin and Frederick are elsewhere at the moment …’ or the nervous: ‘No-one here right now but we’ll be back very soon so please leave a message,’ which is almost invariably left by a single woman living alone who is poised to pick up
once she’s sure it’s not a heavy breather. My favourite belongs to a working girl called Trixie. It really is her name and she does ‘give phone’ on another line, but her main number says: ‘Just slipping into something less comfortable. Missing you already,’ followed by a battery-powered humming noise rather than a beep.

  Bassotti’s was dead boring. Just: ‘H B Builders. Please leave a message for us after the tone,’ as if he had read it off the instruction card. He probably had. From what I had seen, he wouldn’t have trusted his secretary Kelly to record the message. A pity that; I think she might have enjoyed the challenge.

  I took a breath, as you do, and launched into my whining excuses, never having been one to admit to giving up a grand gracefully.

  ‘Mr Bassotti, it’s Angel here. You asked me to try and find Tigger for you. Well, no luck so far, but I won’t give up if you won’t. I’ve found a friend of his and he says he’s away for the weekend. Gone monstering, would you believe, which I reckon is some sort of rave party. If you like, I’ll …’ I paused to have a minor heart attack as I heard somebody cough politely just behind my right ear.

  It was Mr Goodson from the downstairs flat wearing a woollen dressing gown, pyjamas and slippers. No wonder I hadn’t heard him coming. He mouthed something to me.

  ‘What?’ I said, then realised I was still talking into the phone.

  ‘Can I get my milk?’ he said softly.

  I saw that I was leaning up against the front door and all he wanted was to get his milk in off the step. So the milkman delivered that early. You live and learn.

  I moved aside, whispered ‘Sorry’ and said it again into the phone.

  ‘Sorry about that. Like I said, Tigger’s gone off to this monster party out of town but I’ll keep looking if your offer’s still open. I’ll catch you later.’

  I hung up and reluctantly made an entry in the honesty book as Mr Goodson was still at my side. Who would have expected him to catch me using the phone even at this time in the morning, let alone on a Friday? He was never seen about the house on Fridays – or any part of the weekend come to think of it.