Angel City

by Mike Ripley

  From behind, and lower, came another bark, then a second, from over to my left. Of course, the sod had said dogs – plural.

  ‘What is it, Simba? Go on, boy, seek!’ came the voice. I was beginning to take against him.

  But the sound that frightened me most was the scrabble of doggy claws on metal. One of the beasts had worked out that the quickest way through a junkyard was up and was trying to get purchase.

  I risked the torch out in front of me. Three more rows of cars and then darkness. A Ford, something so beaten I couldn’t recognise it and then a Fiat. A mere hop, skip and a jump.

  From close, too close, behind me came a deep ‘Woof!’ but I didn’t look back. I jumped and jumped again, knowing that if I slipped, Simba’s sister or brother or live-in doggy lover would be waiting to pick up the pieces.

  There wasn’t time to use the torch when I hit the roof of the Fiat; I just leapt on into space, landing hard but not falling, still moving. I hadn’t time to worry about being out of breath or unfit. No time to regret that last cigarette. I had twin Dobermans on my tail, or maybe pit bulls or Irish wolfhounds. And I was running out of space.

  I saw light reflecting on the water of the canal, but whether it was moonlight or reflections from the nearby block of flats, I didn’t know and couldn’t care.

  At the edge, I turned around for the first time. Simba, if that was he, was on top of one of the wreck piles, silhouetted like he was auditioning for the Hound of the Baskervilles. He wasn’t a Doberman, so that was okay. He was a German Shepherd, and his sister, or whoever, had come around the piles of scrap and was heading for me like a bullet. Clever doggy.

  I didn’t think about it, I just lowered myself over the bank and dropped down into the dank waters. I was scared, but not stupid enough to jump into water you can’t see through. (Rule of Life No. 124, and that includes jacuzzis.)

  Doogie’s torch went to the bottom straightaway, but I had other things to worry about. Such as keeping my head out of the water, which was not only cold but almost certainly riddled with typhus. Such as laying odds on whether the dogs fancied a moonlight swim. Such as wondering where the hell the Grand Union Canal came out anyway. In a sewage works or off the coast of France?

  I sculled backwards, keeping to the scrap-yard side, and I had made about ten feet before the first dog appeared, leaning over but not wanting to come in and contenting itself with a volley of barking.

  From beyond I could hear: ‘Simba, come here you thick bugger! It’s only a rat. Leave it now. Heel!’

  Go on, Simba, I willed, looking him in his gleaming dead eyes. You heard your master. Piss off and leave us rats in peace.

  Then dog number two appeared as well and the volume of barking went up by 60 watts per channel.

  I sculled some more, trying to raise as little wake in the water as possible. The dogs didn’t seem to want to follow me along the bank. They stayed at the spot where I had slid in. Maybe they just didn’t want to get wet. Maybe they were amateurs at this game and really just chasing me for a bit of exercise. They had barked, of course, and no decent attack dog ever lets you know it’s coming. They were just puppies. The hell with that. They were the ones with full sets of teeth.

  ‘Simba, Darlene, will you get the fuck back here?’

  Yeah, go on, do it, you animals. Darlene? Christ, no wonder the bitch had an attitude.

  ‘Start the car, Sammy, that usually brings them.’

  Do it, Sammy, don’t dawdle. Turn the key and fire up the Jag, I’m getting cramp here.

  I was 20 feet away and treading water carefully when I heard the voice very close.

  ‘Come on, you two, you’ve had your run.’

  I heard a clicking sound, like a lead being clipped on to a collar.

  ‘Let’s get you home to Mummy.’

  Yeah, go on, Fang, go home. Mummy will have your pound of red meat waiting for you.

  ‘Darlene, come here, will you? Bad girl, heel!’

  Darlene wasn’t the giving-up type. She couldn’t resist one last look over the edge of the canal, and she came so close that I could smell her doggy breath. I hugged the bank, which had been lined with wooden posts to prevent erosion, though most of the wood was now well rotted and eroding itself.

  ‘Darlene! Heel!’

  Darlene and I were staring each other out, me scarcely daring to breathe. She curled a soft black lip over her side teeth and growled quietly at me. I did the same to her without the growl and she looked at me curiously, head on one side.

  Behind me somewhere there was a plopping sound in the water.

  ‘There, I told you it was rats,’ said the voice. ‘Now sit!’ There was a click as a lead snapped on.

  ‘Now, let’s go, you daft animal.’

  But Darlene, typical woman, couldn’t let it lie. She strained over the banking, tugging the lead and whoever was holding it into view.

  I thanked Doogie for lending me the black bobble cap, took a deep breath, closed my eyes, and went under.

  Using touch only, and precious little of that through the two pairs of gloves, I tried to work my way along the bank by clawing at the wooden planking. I did this for about three hours and estimated that I’d moved nearly two feet. Actually, it was probably no more than 30 seconds, but I was right about the two feet.

  The worst thing of all was coming up slowly and breaking the oily surface as quietly as possible. When I did open my eyes, there was no sign of the dog, but a pair of rats not much smaller were scampering along the edge of the banking, about six inches from my face.

  The man with the dogs had been right; there was nobody down here but us rats.

  I saw the headlights of the Jaguar swing through the night sky above me as it turned round. Then I listened until I was sure someone had closed the gates and the engine noise had disappeared into the distance.

  I was hanging on to the banking now, too tired to tread water, and feeling for purchase so I could haul myself out. My clothes weighed a ton and I had convinced myself that I had taken in canal water, typhus and bubonic plague bacilli in equal parts.

  Right then I would have settled for a nice quiet life in front of the television. Go home, get dry, have a drink or three, forget all about Tigger and Bassotti and Hubbard and dogs and unthinkable piles of hospital waste carelessly scattered over who knew how much of the city.

  What was it Doc had said? Life didn’t suck, just the people in it. I wasn’t sure she was right.

  My right hand found something to hang on to, the edge of a plank at a part of the bank where three or four planks bulged out into the water. I put both hands on the top edge of a pair of planks and pulled myself up, scrabbling for a toehold as I went. I had my forearms over the edge when the planks started to crumble under my weight.

  I reached out wildly and grabbed a gloveful of mud. I lunged again and this time came away with something altogether different.

  As the banking planks gave way and I pitched back into the slimy water, I realised that what I had been trying to grip was a black plastic dustbin bag just like the ones in the wrecked car. I had found where Tigger had dumped the rest of the sacks. Not in the canal itself but, either by accident or design, down the side of the planking that shored up the bank.

  The one I had a hold of came with me and ripped open as I fell backwards, pulling it over the rough wood. The bag burst and I hit the water in a shower of plastic hypodermics.

  I remember thinking that screaming wasn’t a good idea as it involved opening my mouth, but I have no recollection of swimming through that ghastly flotsam or of climbing out of the canal with a speed and strength born of desperation.

  I stood on the bank dripping wet and cold and looking down on at least half a dozen more sacks uncovered behind the rotting planks.

  Now I was really pissed off.

  Chapter Seventeen

 
It could have been the sight of the syringes floating up to form a bizarre, bobbing scum on the surface of the canal that pushed me over the edge; seeing the red mist.

  I pulled two of the bags out of the banking and tore the wire seals from them. One I carried, the other I dragged so that the contents spilled out in a trail behind me. When one sack was empty, I tipped up the second, leaving a trail from the canal to the middle of the scrap yard.

  I slipped and scrambled over the wrecks to get at the bags I had found earlier. I ripped those open and scattered the contents in front of the building where Sammy had hidden the Transit. I think I might have been crying by the time I dragged the last bag, the one I’d hidden, out from under the wrecks, and I used the contents of that one to lay a trail right up to the front gates.

  The security lights in the yard were still on, probably working on a timer arrangement. As I climbed up the pile of wrecks nearest the fence, I looked back across the yard and saw the unholy twinkling of a thousand shiny needles and felt sure that Tigger would have approved.

  I half fell over the fence, and I heard something rip as I cleared the barbed wire, but I was past caring. I pulled off my right glove by holding it between my knees and then peeled off the rubber one underneath. I dug Armstrong’s key out of my jacket and squelched into the seat, firing up the engine and cranking the heater up to maximum.

  I didn’t even glance at Hubbard’s Yard as I drove by. Two streets later I found what I was looking for: a phone box.

  I still had gloves on my left hand, which held the receiver, and I used the knuckle of my right index finger to press the nine button three times.

  When they asked which emergency service I required, I said, ‘Police,’ and there was a pause while they put me through and made sure the tape-recorder was running.

  They asked who I was and where I was phoning from. I said my name was Christopher Robin O’Neil and I was in a phone box near Hubbard’s scrap yard off Roman Road in Globe Town.

  ‘And what exactly is the problem, sir?’

  ‘I want to report a serious health hazard.’

  Three days later, after a dozen baths to take away the smell and taste of the canal, I found Lee early one morning down at Lincoln’s Inn.

  He was walking out of the Fields, his dome tent rolled up and slung over his shoulder. A supermarket carrier bag seemed to contain everything else he owned.

  I slowed down and signalled him to get in the back of Armstrong. He stood bemused for a minute until he recognised me.

  ‘I’ve got something for you,’ I said as I pulled over to the kerb. ‘Something I think Tigger would have wanted you to have.’

  I held the building society passbook out to him through the cab’s sliding glass partition. He had to let go of his tent and carrier bag to take it. He was beginning to trust me. ‘What is it?’ He opened it and saw the money I had placed inside.

  ‘It’s Tigger’s building society book. If you look in the back there’s a sample of his signature. Learn how to do it and you can get up to three hundred pounds in cash at one go. That’s what I did. But don’t use any of the branch offices in the West End. The odds are that he opened the account up West and they’re not likely to forget him, are they?’

  ‘You got this?’ It was all too much for him. Literally, he thought. ‘But I can’t take it. It’s too much.’

  ‘There’s over eleven grand in there, Lee. Take it out gently or get them to do you a big cheque and open your own bank account. Just remember to sign things C R O’Neil and don’t be greedy. It could keep you going for months, maybe years.’

  ‘No, you don’t get it.’ He looked at me wide-eyed. ‘It’s too much at one go. I can’t be trusted. I promised Doc …’

  ‘What would you feel happier with?’

  ‘Twenty, thirty.’ Not enough for a big fix, in other words. ‘Then give it here.’

  I took most of the notes out of the book, leaving him with four £10 notes.

  ‘There’s forty. Are you sure?’

  ‘Yeah, that’s better. That’s manageable, man. No temptation.’ He did genuinely seem happier. ‘And anyway, you need something for your trouble, don’t you?’

  I looked up and down the street. ‘I’m taken care of,’ I said, thinking about the stash of cash back at Stuart Street. ‘Keep the book.’

  ‘What if they catch me forging Tigger’s name?’

  ‘Tell them he gave it to you and then disappeared, or just say you found it. What the hell can they do to you?’

  He cheered up at that.

  ‘Hey, you’re right. I’m still a minor. Not legally responsible for my actions. Isn’t that cool, or what?’

  ‘Yeah, cool.’

  It was another week before the story hit the newspapers, or, at least, the London ones.

  Doc told me about it as we shared a cigarette while sprawled across the sofa bed in her flat. Smoking was the second politically incorrect thing we’d done that afternoon.

  Police were holding two men, and looking for a third, in connection with illegal dumping of medical waste and pending possible corruption charges to do with contracts for refuse disposal from various local councils. The two men had not been named as yet but bail had been refused as there was reason to believe the men would abscond, just as Bassotti had.

  Unusually, reporting restrictions were partly lifted in that the cops were anxious to locate the dumping grounds of the scam, which, it was suggested, had been going on for over a year. Warnings were being broadcast and posters printed telling people to watch out for black plastic bags tied with wire seals, but not to touch them at any cost.

  ‘No mention of any link with Tigger,’ said Doc.

  ‘Somebody may put two and two together eventually,’ I said. ‘Or maybe they already have but are just keeping it under wraps. If they find Bassotti, he’ll talk. He’s not the sort to go down quietly, and I never really saw him as condoning the rough stuff. He was being used by Hubbard.’

  ‘Like you were used?’ she asked gently.

  ‘Sure, like me. They used me to find Tigger. There, I’ve said it. Does it make me feel any better? No. Should I give back the 30 pieces of silver they offered? Would that help Tigger? I doubt it.’

  ‘Don’t get heavy, Angel. I was only trying to figure out why you did what you did.’

  ‘Well figure away. Are you doing psychiatry on the side as well?’

  ‘No, I’m not,’ she snapped angrily, then thought about it. ‘As well as what?’

  ‘Never mind. Have you formed any conclusions then? About my behaviour, I mean?’

  ‘Well, from what you’ve told me, there was an affinity with Tigger that you always denied.’

  ‘That’s bollocks. He might have thought that, but I never did.’

  ‘Hmmm. Denied violently, it seems,’ she murmured. ‘So you didn’t see Tigger as another side of your personality?’

  ‘Where do you get this stuff? There’s a couple of ladies I house-share with would like the book when you’ve finished with it.’

  ‘Classic macho rejection syndrome. Is this because Tigger was gay?’

  ‘Oh, I see. If I don’t accept that Tigger was the dark side of my personal force it’s because I’m homophobic, is that it?’

  She sat up, naked, and held a clenched fist in front of my face.

  ‘Right then, let’s stop playing Nice Doctor, Nasty Doctor. Tell me what your motive was or the orthodontist will have twice as much rebuilding to do tomorrow.’

  ‘That’s it, fight dirty. You know I’m scared of dentists.’

  I pushed her gently away and rolled over to stub out the cigarette in the coffee-jar lid she used as an ashtray.

  ‘I didn’t do it because of any weird personality bonding with Tigger. Don’t fool yourself that Tigger felt anything for me or anybody else, except maybe Lee. And I didn’t do it to ave
nge him either. He was involved in a dirty business, a very dirty business, and one where he of all people knew the nastiness in those bags. But he was also a blackmailer and he took on the big boys and he lost.

  ‘And I didn’t even do it particularly because I was conned into playing the Judas and leading them to him. He’d got himself into the shit without my help.’

  Doc looked genuinely interested.

  ‘So why? Why did you set them up and drop the dime on them, calling the cops? You didn’t have to. Why?’

  ‘Like you once said, Doc, somebody had to.’

  About The Author

  Mike Ripley is the author of 16 novels, including the Angel series which have twice won the Crime Writers’ Association Last Laugh Award for comedy. He was the co-editor of the legendary Fresh Blood anthologies, a scriptwriter for BBC TVs Lovejoy and served as the Daily Telegraph’s crime fiction critic for ten years. He currently writes a regular column for the popular Shots crime and thriller e-zine (www.shotsmag.co.uk) and regularly talks on crime fiction at libraries and festivals.

  After 20 years of working in London, he decamped to East Anglia and became an archaeologist. He was thus one of the few crime writers who regularly turned up real bodies.

  In 2003, at the age of 50, he suffered a stroke and regained the use of his left hand and arm by bashing out a book on an old portable typewriter on the kitchen table. He now works part-time for the charity Different Strokes and is the author of Surviving A Stroke (White Ladder Press, 2006).

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