Angel Touch

by Mike Ripley

  ‘Expenses. Tel thought you could bribe the below-stairs staff, working on the premise that it’s dead easy to bribe the upstairs mob.’

  ‘Greed is All in the dirty old heart of the City,’ I said gravely.

  ‘That’s very good.’ Salome smiled. ‘Where did you read it?’

  ‘On the back of a sandwich-board man in Oxford Street. The other side said “Eat less Protein.” How much is here?’

  ‘Two loads.’

  I was impressed. ‘Load’ was Thatcherite streetspeak for a hundred nowadays, with ‘part load’ being 50. Nothing lower merited a nickname.

  ‘Do I need receipts?’

  ‘No. If you did, then the heads of the various departments might. And there’s this.’

  She handed over an Amex card. It was valid for two years and had ‘mr roylance maclean’ printed on the bottom, along with ‘prior, keen, baldwin.’

  Not bad. An Amex card within eight hours. With my credit rating, a personal one would have taken eight years.

  ‘I like the name,’ I said.

  ‘I thought you might,’ Sal said, smiling. ‘It’s not so much that we deliberately fudged your name, it was just that Tel-boy insisted you were called Roylance and ...’

  ‘And nobody had the nerve to tell him he was wrong,’ I offered.

  She patted my leg again.

  ‘I never knew you had such a fine grasp of management psychology and office politics.’

  ‘I may just be a humble heating engineer tomorrow, but by the end of next week I’ll be the Lounge Lizard from Accounts.’

  ‘You’ll be wasting your energy, son. The City is a stainless steel machine for making money. Only politicians and civil servants go in for extra-curricular rumpy-pumpy. The City gets its rocks off reading the Financial Times, not Page 3.’

  ‘Maybe I’ll liven things up.’

  ‘Keep your nose clean, Angel. And for God’s sake don’t fuse the electrics. If the screens go down for a minute, we lose telephone numbers in turnover and my quarterly bonus goes down the pan.’

  ‘Along with the flat in Limehouse?’ I probed.

  ‘If I lose this job, yeah. But listen, you.’ She inched closer. ‘Frank knows nothing about this. Well, not the detail, anyway. So not a word. Okay? No point in two of us worrying.’

  I looked at my watch. 8.30. I knew she’d want me out of there before Frank staggered home, so I had to make up my mind whether to get an early night with a good book or go down the pub and do some damage to my expenses. Ah, decisions, decisions.

  ‘Don’t worry, my dear, your guilty secret is safe with me.’

  Her face changed as quickly as a baby’s goes from gurgle to sulk.

  ‘I haven’t got a guilty secret. I’m not guilty. Don’t tell me ...’

  ‘No way, José. Not for a minute. I’m on your side.’

  She calmed down a bit and took a couple of deep breaths.

  ‘You think this guy Cawthorne is behind it?’ I asked quietly.

  She nodded.

  ‘We’re pretty sure he’s the why. You only worry about the how. Okay?’

  ‘But who is this guy? And who’s Chinless Wonder?’

  ‘They’re not your problem. Just help us find out how he’s getting the info if you can.’

  ‘So you City types can keep the poo-poo undies out of the launderette, I suppose.’

  ‘Something like that,’ she said, shamefaced. ‘Just go along with it, huh?’

  And of course I did. What an airhead.

  I left Salome to her gumbo partly to be out of the flat before Frank came back but also because I’d decided to go out on an errand. Business, of course, not pleasure. I was really taking this having a job lark seriously.

  As it happened, I passed Frank on the stairs. He must have had a helluva workout, because he was taking them one at a time.

  ‘Wotcha, Frank.’

  I had an unlit Sweet Afton between my teeth. Frank looked at it with disdain.

  ‘Still on the coffin nails, Angel?’

  ‘First of the day, Frank, and still unlit.’ Which was true. ‘And you’ll die before I do.’ Which probably wasn’t.

  ‘Ha!’ he yelled as I reached the bottom of the stairs. ‘How do you make that out?’

  I had my hand on the Yale catch of the front door and he was almost at the top of the stairs when I said:

  ‘It’s breathing, Frank. Think of the strain on your heart. Your chest going in and out all those times a day. It’s bound to kill you after about 80 years. Have a nice night.’

  I’ve always said it costs nothing to bring a little comfort into somebody’s life. Duncan the Drunken believed that too, but then anything that cost nothing was tops in his book.

  I knew he’d be in a pub in Leytonstone, because it was his darts night and he’d cobbled together a team of reluctant players from his Barking local to play ‘away,’ an excursion that involved about a hundred phone calls and the hire of a minibus to travel nearly three miles. I knew all this because Duncan had tried to recruit me into the team. I’d declined because I’d given up darts after a five-hour marathon at a university reunion, which had ended with me betting my double bed on a double eight and missing.

  Duncan was an incorrigible optimist and a Yorkshire-man moved south to boot. Now, the two don’t normally go together, but when they do, it’s awesome. Duncan had appointed himself social secretary of his street, organising parties, outings for the kids, planning applications, petitions against planning applications and so on. He always said he didn’t have the brains to go into politics. If he had brains, he’d be dangerous.

  But he was a soft touch and an ace mechanic, so it was best to keep in with him if you wanted anything, and I usually did.

  He was propping up the public bar with a pint of bitter in one fist and three metal darts in the other. The darts were long enough to have been bought second-hand from Robin Hood, and they had plastic flights with pictures of the Queen Mother on. Duncan was nothing if not patriotic.

  I asked the landlord for a pint, pointing at Duncan. He pointed at two full ones lined up at Duncan’s elbow but agreed to put one in the barrel for him. I ordered a pint of alcohol-free lager, as I had Armstrong outside and I didn’t fancy losing any of my driving licences.

  ‘Come on, the Flying Horse!’ somebody yelled behind me. ‘Hello, Fitzroy, luv. Joining us?’

  I knew without turning that it was Doreen, Duncan’s wife – actually ‘the wife,’ as Duncan always said. She was the official scorer and unofficial cheerleader for Duncan’s team.

  I waggled a limp wrist at her and said: ‘Sorry, luv, but the eyesight’s not what it was,’ and she hooted with laughter and threw a piece of chalk at me. From the look of the scoreboard, the Flying Horse were getting slaughtered, and the team spent more time looking at their watches than the board.

  ‘So what are you after, young Angel?’ said Duncan between deep breaths of beer. I’d bought him a drink, so there s no point in wasting any more time.

  ‘A tool kit. One of the belt jobs that looks professional.’

  ‘Sure. What sort of work?’

  ‘Mostly electrics, laying cables, that sort of thing.’

  ‘Domestic, three-phase, telephone or undersea across the Atlantic?’

  Oh, very droll.

  ‘I don’t know. Telephone, say.’

  ‘Got something in the back of the car would do you. Planning a job?’

  Duncan strode off suddenly, and I thought for a second it was something I’d said, but in fact it was his turn at the dartboard.

  ‘Ninety-eight out, Duncan, luv,’ screamed Doreen. ‘You can do it. Go on! Give it some welly!’ Then, in a rather subdued tone, she announced, ‘Twenty-seven,’ as she turned to do the chalking. Duncan rejoined me and took out most of another pint in one swallow.

 
; ‘I’ve got a job, Duncan, I’m not going on one.’

  ‘Well, just tha be careful, laddie.’ His Yorkshire accent came on strongest when he was being patronising. ‘You could get done for going equipped, with this little lot. The bloke I bought ‘em off was, bang to rights.’

  ‘Was he a sparks?’

  ‘No, he was a burglar.’

  Oh well, that was all right then. Doreen shrieked as the Flying Horse missed another double, and I knew that if I stayed much longer I’d get roped into the darts match.

  ‘So, what’s the hire charge, Duncan?’

  Dunc was signalling to the landlord for the pint I’d bought him. He raised an eyebrow at my glass but I shook my head. When he’d got his pint, he said:

  ‘Use of Armstrong one Saturday?’

  I winced, but agreed. It was not so much that I minded Duncan driving Armstrong, it was just that when he used it for wedding parties at the weekend, it was a bugger to clean the confetti out.

  ‘Okay. Can we get it now?’

  ‘Wait till I get the double, lad. You’re not in a hurry, are you?’

  ‘I had hoped to get it while I was still in my thirties.’

  I needn’t have worried. The home team finished the game in the next throw, and as it was the beer game, there was a lot of to-ing and fro-ing as the Flying Horse team bought their opposite numbers a drink. I stood back from the bar and avoided Doreen, who, like many Northern women, had a Messiah complex about feeding up anyone with a less than 40-inch waist.

  Duncan did the honourable thing and then sidled towards the door, and we sneaked out into the car park, Duncan leading me over to a battered white Thames van.

  ‘I thought you hired a minibus for the team,’ I asked, genuinely curious.

  ‘Aye, I do. It’ll be back at closing time to pick us up.’ That way, the team couldn’t leave early. ‘This is Doreen’s. She went to her evening class earlier.’

  The van may not have looked much, but Duncan was a wizard with engines, and if the van had his Barking garage’s seal of approval, then it would shift even if the bodywork got left behind at the lights. Duncan opened the rear doors with what looked suspiciously like a metal toothpick and began to rummage around inside.

  ‘Doreen still doing panel-beating at night class?’

  ‘Nah, she’s moved on to welding. Here we are.’

  He handed me a heavy canvas roll a bit like a cowboy’s gunbelt. I unwound it and tried it around my waist. It contained a full arsenal of wire-clippers, screwdrivers, pliers and even a small hammer. There was probably something for removing stones from horses’ hooves, if only I knew what it looked like.

  It weighed a ton and would probably spoil the line of my chino’s, but as camouflage it was perfect.

  ‘It’s magic, Duncan,’ I said.

  Chapter Five

  Camouflage is nine-tenths of success in a sneak attack. If a famous retired general didn’t say that, then I’d better write to one. People usually see only what they want to see, so give it to ‘em.

  I wasn’t too sure what Prior, Keen, Baldwin expected from a freelance heating engineer who could re-route computer lines, but then I reckoned you could get away with most anything in the City if you were confident enough. My uniform for the day was: clean jeans; a denim jacket that almost matched; red trainers; a plain-white T-shirt not advertising anything; and a baseball cap supporting the Chicago White Sox. I packed the tool belt and the plans Salome had provided in a sports bag and added a pair of brown leather gloves in case I was called on to get my hands dirty.

  There was no way I could roll up in Armstrong, and nowhere to park him for the day anyway, so I took a bus to St Paul’s and walked round to Gresham Street for about 10.00 am, which I thought showed I was keen for an early start.

  Sergeant Purvis, that Guardian of the Third Floor, was not impressed.

  ‘Mr MacLean. Welcome. We were expecting you this morning. First parade is seven-thirty.’

  I smiled a big smile on the basis that the best way to upset his sort was to be nice to them.

  ‘I’m so sorry I missed it, but you see, I have a medical certificate excusing me from working with asbestos, heavy lifting and the hours of daylight prior to 0900.’

  I liked the ‘0900’ touch, but Purvis wasn’t impressed. ‘I was told about you,’ he said, but I could tell he wasn’t sure what to make of me.

  I leaned over his desk.

  ‘And I’ve been told you’ve been briefed by Mr Patterson, so you know this is a delicate matter.’

  ‘Oh yes. Of course. Mr P put me in the picture.’ He was bluffing, I knew, but he did it well. Years of experience. ‘What do you need ... er ... in terms of ...?’

  I held up a hand and shook my head. ‘Nothing, just the run of the place. If anybody asks, I’m measuring up the heating ducts with a view to running computer cables and

  phone lines through them. Treat me like a minor nuisance, but take note if anyone asks too many questions about me. Know what I mean?’

  He put a finger to the side of his nose and gave me a long, slow wink. Dead subtle.

  ‘Good. Let’s compare notes at lunch-time over a pint. On me.’

  ‘Okay, son.’ He was warming to me.

  ‘Catch you later.’

  I spent the next two hours sussing the lay-out of the third floor, which was bigger than I’d expected, and generally getting in people’s way. There was a thin pencil torch on Duncan’s tool belt, and I unscrewed a few heating grilles and shone it around in the holes, and I thought I looked pretty convincing.

  None of the dealers noticed me at all as far as I could gather. Being the only one not wearing a suit, you’d have thought I’d have stuck out a mile, but it seemed that because I wasn’t a Suit, I wasn’t there. Some security. I was tempted to come back as a window-cleaner and rip them off a treat.

  Trouble was, I didn’t know what was valuable, information-wise. The stuff on the screens could have been my way to a quick fortune or could have been a laundry list. I have to admit that the computer revolution had left me way behind. Six-year-old kids could hack into a bank account from their kindergarten play-pen these days, but I’d have had more chance on a Japanese Scrabble board. Maybe I should have brought a six-year-old kid with me, but there’s never one around when you need one.

  I wasn’t having any more luck earwigging the hundreds of conversations going on around me. Most of them were over the phone, but occasionally a dealer would stick the receiver into his neck and yell to a colleague in front of another screen further down the room.

  The dialogue went something like: ‘Can you get me a point on seven hundred Barclays, private sale?’

  I’d been there over an hour before I realised that they deliberately missed the last three noughts off everything, so ‘seven hundred’ was actually seven hundred thousand shares. No wonder they needed computers. I did manage to pick up one or two things, though. I got so that I could tell when the dealers were phoning each other, when they were talking to the ‘institutionals’ – the big corporate investors (where they sounded patronising and unwilling to brook any argument with the investment managers) – and when they were talking to private customers who were buying (very polite) and those they were trying to get to sell (ultra grovelling).

  As with any office environment where 95 percent of the work is on the phone, there were very few private phone calls. Or maybe the dealers actually did have wives, they just talked to them in numbers. It was not uncommon to see guys on two phones at once, and most of them had colour VDU screens in front of them where they could just touch a square and they’d get through to somebody without dialling. I was very impressed with some of the hardware, which looked state of the art – i.e. better than anything British Telecom had. I wondered if one of their computers could get me off the Reader’s Digest mailing list.

  I found a spot h
alfway down one side of the dealing room where there was a gap in the desks and a heating vent in the wall under a window. No-one gave me a first glance, let alone a second, as I unscrewed the louvred grille and sat cross-legged in front of the vent, shining my torch and occasionally examining wires with the end of a screwdriver.

  I knew that videos of the film Wall Street had been the ‘in’ present in the City the previous Christmas. I knew because I’d helped ‘import’ some of them in advance of the film company’s planned release, and one of its side-effects – that there was still a bull market in red braces – was still evident. Some of the dealers even wore ‘Greed is Good’ lapel badges, and any three of the suits in the room would probably have been taken in part exchange for a decent motor.

  At about noon, while I was under a desk trying to make head or tail of a telephone junction box, I spotted my first suspicious character.

  He was wearing a lapel badge too, but his said: ‘Mild Mannered Guardian Readers Against the Bomb.’ Yet it wasn’t that so much as the John Lennon glasses and the badly cut suit that gave him away. At a guess, and I was rapidly becoming an expert, the suit was made in Bulgaria, or at least somewhere where they worked to a five-year plan. You know the sort: the jacket fits first time but the trousers are cut round a box and the tailors use a picture of Stalin as their model.

  From my vantage point, I watched him walk up and down the dealing room three times. He carried a pile of newspapers and seemed to be collecting more as he went round. Then he disappeared into one of the analysts’ offices.

  It was nearly lunch-time, so I decided to check him out with Purvis on reception. Fortunately, I was discreet; I didn’t come right out and ask who the wally was.

  ‘Oh, that’s young Mr Keen,’ said the Sergeant. ‘He’s a bit of a problem child, but harmless enough. He’s not interested in the City. Great disappointment to the senior partner, of course. No, young Morris wants to be a journalist, so he comes in every day and collects all the newspapers. He thinks that if he reads them all regularly, he’ll get a job on one eventually.’