by Mike Ripley
I’d met people like that. They were the ones who’d bought Betamax videos and 8-track stereo systems for their Minis.
I asked Purvis if he was ready for a beer, and he said he was and put on his jacket and peaked cap. I had rather hoped he would come in mufti, but he seemed to enjoy looking like a product of a South American junta. On the way down in lift, I tried to tap him about Morris Keen, but he regarded him with pity rather than suspicion. He held a unique position, though, in that he must have been the only young male under 21 that Purvis did not think would benefit from a reintroduction of national service.
‘Oh, yeah, national service. I’ve read about that,’ I said, just to niggle him.
He led me to a pub near the Guildhall and elbowed a space at the bar near a plastic display case of sandwiches; obviously his regular spot, which newcomers strayed onto at their peril. A barman caught his eye, and two pints of bitter appeared, which I was expected to pay for. I didn’t mind; I wasn’t paying.
‘So, young Mr Keen has the run of the place, does he?’
Hardly the most subtle of openings, but with somebody like Purvis, subtlety came dispensed with a hurled half-brick.
Purvis put half the beer down his face, then drew breath.
‘Don’t even think it,’ he said, and went back to his beer.
I admitted to myself that young Morris Keen was so bloody inept that he couldn’t be the leak, but then again, if I pointed out to Patterson that there was a strange bloke wandering around who could get access to almost anything, it would prove I was doing my job.
Despite my best endeavours and several free pints, Purvis didn’t let anything slip over lunch – and I use the word loosely, in its non-food connotation. According to him, security at Pretty Keen Bastards was watertight. He’d stake his reputation on it. Well, that would keep the bookies awake nights, I don’t think.
After three pints, he mellowed enough to admit that maybe security wasn’t watertight, or rather not as watertight as it had been. After four pints, he confided that he put the fact that he couldn’t guarantee security any more down to Prior, Keen, Baldwin’s employment of women, blacks, people educated at secondary modern schools (which showed how abreast of the times he was), people with degrees in sociology; so fourth, so fifth. If we’d stayed for another pint, he would have included gypsies and Jews, and I would probably have had to clout him.
As a source of information, Purvis was a dead loss. As a source of lunch, he was even worse, so I bought him a final pint but declined myself and, saying I had something to do, sneaked out of the pub and called in at a sandwich bar I’d seen down the road.
It was nearly 2.30 by this time, and the girls in the sandwich shop were packing up for the weekend. They left me in no doubt that they were doing me a favour as they stumbled around to find two bits of brown bread in which to squash the teaspoon of scrambled egg and the half anchovy I’d reserved just before they threw them out.
I waited, hopping from one foot to the other because I’d had too much beer and nothing to soak it up with. Through the shop window, I could see the street entrance to the PKB building. There are a lot of offices in that building, I told myself. And they all have lots of visitors – visitors in all shapes and sizes – so why should the hairs on the back of my neck stand up as I saw people come and people go?
Because if the leak wasn’t inside, it must be bleedin’ obviously outside.
I hadn’t got the details then, of course, but I had grasped the principle. A few judicious inquiries below stairs in the PKB set-up should confirm it. Case cracked. Sherlock Marlowe-Wimsey strikes again. Ele-fucking-mentary, my dear Poirot.
But at this rate of pay, who wanted the case closed? With luck, I could stretch it out for another week or so. Of course I could.
Take it easy, say nothing yet.
Big mistake.
I spent most of the afternoon in the postroom of Pretty Keen, etc.
It wasn’t so much an office, more an open space with a table and a franking machine, and was womanned by Gerry, Michelle and Anna, with whom I got on famously, because none of the Suits ever gave them the time of day. That, and my magnetic personality (and the fact that I brought a couple of bottles of Liebfraumilch with me), endeared me to them to the extent that by four o’clock, I knew the ins and outs of every sort of mailing that left PKB.
Gerry explained that all regular mail was enveloped and franked in the postroom, then put into sacks that Purvis collected four times a day for the postman. A menial task that annoyed him intensely. Special circulars and notes to clients were sometimes sent that way, but if they contained anything confidential, they were classed as an ‘S’ (for sensitive) mailing. One of the executives would bring the address labels already printed out from the computer in Patterson’s office and would stand over the girls while they photocopied and stuffed envelopes.
Michelle told me about the hand deliveries; a rapidly expanding part of their work, as nobody actually trusted the post these days. It was her job to keep a chart of messenger deliveries, who they were authorised by, what time they were collected and which postcode area they were going to. Regular hand deliveries went out every two hours, or rather a messenger looked in every two hours to see if there was any work. For S-rated hand deliveries, Michelle had a number to ring and a bike rider would turn up – ‘Usually within five minutes; they’re very good’ – to be briefed by the executive authorising the mailing. In all cases, the motorbike messenger service was the same company: Airborne PLC.
Gerry added that it had a ‘funny number’ with a lot of digits, and she’d always assumed it must be a radio phone. I made a note of it on the back of a packet of Sweet Afton, saying that it was always a good idea to keep tabs on useful companies like that. I don’t know if they believed me, but they’d certainly been worth the investment of the white wine, and that was going on the expenses. All in all, a very helpful bunch of girls and an afternoon well spent.
The only thing left to work out was where to take Anna for dinner.
By 4.30, PKB’s main dealing room was virtually deserted, but the sounds of telephones and typewriters still came from some of the analysts’ offices. I saw Salome only briefly, with Alec Reynolds, going through swing doors towards Patterson’s office, but she didn’t see me. From what I could tell, she seemed cheerful enough.
I gathered my tools together and screwed back the odd duct cover I’d left off. By the time I was putting on my White Sox cap, there was only one dealer left, way down at the end of the room in the last chair.
He was maybe 22, blond and quiffed, and had regulation-issue red stripe shirt, red dot silk tie and red check braces. I watched him for a minute or so as he sat looking at a blank VDU screen. I had the feeling he’d been like that for some time. Then he sniffed loudly, wiped the palms of his hands down the sides of his face and stood up to put his jacket on.
He brought a natty, inch-thick briefcase out from under the desk and opened it on his chair. The only thing he put in it was a carefully folded copy of The Times; the ‘White’ Times as we call it in the City, as opposed to the ‘Pink’ Financial Times. Then he snapped the case shut and headed for the door.
I don’t think he even saw me, let alone registered my presence.
Maybe it was because I wasn’t wearing a suit.
Maybe it was because he was zapped out of his head.
But why worry? It was the weekend and nothing (Rule of Life No 31) interrupts a weekend. Nothing, that is, except the odd case of murder.
The Friday night went by pleasantly enough. I got back to Stuart Street, showered, changed and was out again by 6.30. I remembered thinking to myself that I hadn’t heard Salome or Frank come in, but I just put it down to them working late.
It took me an age to get across north London in the rush-hour traffic. Anna lived in Willesden, and as I crossed Hampstead to get there, every other car seemed
to be a Volvo estate with its sidelights permanently on, heading for the M25 and, eventually, a weekend cottage in Suffolk or Norfolk. I’d heard more than one coastal village in East Anglia referred to quite seriously as Hampstead-on-Sea; still, I suppose it was good for somebody’s property values.
Anna shared a flat with another girl, who was away for the weekend. That was duly noted. There are some things I don’t have to be told twice.
I’d decided to take her to Break for the Border, a Tex-Mex restaurant in Soho, because I thought it would impress her. Bui I could have settled for a Big Mac and saved money, as the thing that really impressed her was Armstrong. Once she realised that the black cab outside her flat was mine and that it had a four-speaker sound system (and a tape of the new LP from the Christians – a band to watch), she could talk of little else. She stayed off the booze and even showed me her driving licence (and by decoding the licence number I could work out her age, which surprised me, but she didn’t look it) to persuade me to let her drive us home. Back to her place? Why not? I’ve never regretted buying Armstrong, you know.
I got back to Stuart Street on Saturday morning, too late to do a book swoop (checking out all the church jumble sales and charity bashes in the area for first editions to flog to the dealers around Leicester Square; you’d be surprised what I could pick up for 10p and get more than the author did the next day). So, facing the harsh realities of life, I decided to do my laundry round at the local launderette.
On the way there, I did notice that Salome’s VW Golf wasn’t parked in its usual place. But I paid it no never mind and spent an hour in the company of Mrs Patel, the launderette manager, discussing the Pakistani cricket team and the price of green peppers at Patel’s (no relation) round the corner.
On the way back, I picked up a pizza from our local pizzeria. It’s a friendly, neighbourhood, family-run little joint that serves drinks all afternoon even if you only look as if you’re thinking of ordering food. It had a picture of a different Roman emperor on each wall panel, and I’d often wondered if they knew that they’d all, except Julius, been poisoned. I wondered if they wanted a PR man.
I was balancing the pizza on my knee and holding laundry and trying to find the key to the front door of Stuart Street when it opened suddenly. I lunged forward inadvertently and the pizza was somehow suspended in mid air between my chest and Lisabeth’s ample bosom. I didn’t give odds on the olives surviving the encounter.
‘Angel! Just the person we wanted to see!’ she boomed. Maybe she had a thing about being massaged with pizza. The mind boggles.
‘Hello, Angel,’ said Fenella from somewhere behind her.
‘Er ... what can I do for you two?’ I said, struggling to recover my balance, and when I realised I was looking down Lisabeth’s cleavage, I added ‘Ladies’ pretty quickly.
‘Come and pick us up from Sainsbury’s in about an hour,’ she said, examining her blouse for leaking tomato paste.
‘Make that two hours,’ added Fenella, then she prodded Lisabeth in the ribs. ‘You know what you’re like in supermarkets.’
Lisabeth ‘hurrumphed’, a noise only she and submerging hippopotami can make, then said cockily: ‘We’re doing Salome’s shopping for her, even though it does mean buying meat.’
She said it quietly, like people over 30 say ‘condom.’
‘That’s why I’m going as chaperone,’ Fenella chipped in. ‘To stop her assaulting the staff at the butchery counter.’ Then, with a sideways look: ‘Like last time.’
Lisabeth pursed her lips and said: ‘All you have to do is handle it, dearest. That’s all.’
I’ll never say that Lisabeth doesn’t feed me the good lines, but with my hands full and no obvious route of escape, I bit my tongue and held back on that one. Instead, I asked why they were doing Salome’s shopping.
‘Because she’s away for the weekend,’ said Fenella primly. ‘On a self-improvement course.’
‘A what? Come on, my pizza’s congealing.’
‘Well, I think it’s some sort of a health farm,’ said Lisabeth, before Fenella could get another word in. ‘Frank’s away on business in Edinburgh until Monday at some sort of legal seminar on Scots law, so Sal’s taken the opportunity of sneaking off to some health club without telling him. She’s left you a note to tell you what to say if Frank rings the house.’
Frank and Sal, being upwardly mobile, had a mobile phone on Sal’s PKB expense account, but if Frank couldn’t get her on that, then he may well have tried the communal house phone in the hall. If he was out, it usually fell to me or the weird and rather reclusive Mr Goodson in the downstairs flat to answer it.
‘I saw no note,’ I said, knowing it sounded stupid.
‘Well, she did, because I saw her put it through the cat flap. Which reminds me, Mr Nassim is coming for the rent tomorrow. Do you want me to give him yours so he doesn’t see the cat flap, as usual?’
Nassim Nassim was our landlord, and we called him that because when we asked his surname once he said it was too difficult for us to pronounce, let alone spell, so stick to Nassim. Hence, Nassim Nassim. As landlords went – and let’s face it, who likes ‘em if they don’t run pubs? – he was a diamond.
‘Yeah, I’ll drop it round,’ I said. ‘No, on second thoughts, I’ll give it to you when I collect you from Sainsbury’s. Give me a bell when you’re ready.’
They primped off to the bus stop and I struggled upstairs and into my flat.
Salome had pushed a note through the cat flap. It read:
Angel. Frank’s away until Monday in Scotland. I’m going with Alec to follow up our business from the office. We might get something on the Cawthorne end, but say nothing to anybody about this. Should Frank get in touch, remember he knows nothing about anything, OK? Back Sunday pm. Love Sal.
The reason I hadn’t found it earlier was that Springsteen had hijacked it and half buried it in his litter tray. It was his way of telling me he hadn’t been fed.
I opened a can of cat food, keeping my hand over the label so he couldn’t see it was on special offer that week. He’s so snobby it’s a pain.
Then I re-read Sal’s note. Say nothing, it said. Well, I was good at that.
Just as well, really, as the police called later that night.
I’d been out playing with an oppo called Bunny, who really is a mean sax player and could be good at it if he laid off the women (well, you know what I mean), not like me, who’s really only in it for the beer. We’d been backing a new band making their debut at Dingwall’s at Camden Lock (Saturday’s not a good night because of the poseurs; midweek’s better), and the gig had gone down well, though I couldn’t for the life of me remember the name of the band. They played what I call anorak rock, and I always dismiss bands like that out of hand. I wouldn’t have paid to hear them, but I’ve said that before and a few months later found their albums in the charts. That’s why I’ll never make it in the music business; my wallet’s not in it.
It was just after 1.30 am when I turned Armstrong into Stuart Street. I was singing along to a pirate tape of (Bruce) Springsteen’s Wembley concert the year before and hardly noticed the police car until I’d parked in front of it. I switched off the tape pretty quick. I knew the Boss didn’t approve of bootlegged concerts – since he’d made it up with the recording studios, that is – but I didn’t think it merited the cops.
The Plod – or Old Bill Street Blues as they were known in some quarters – were represented by a pair of uniforms from Traffic Division. They were half way up the steps to No 9, but they’d stopped way before the doorbell and were watching me park.
I climbed out of Armstrong, confident that the only suspicious thing about me was my trumpet case. I hadn’t been drinking and they wouldn’t find any naughty substances on me. You see, I’d been to Dingwall’s before, and some nights, anyone coming out of there is regarded as a legitimate target.
They were both fresh-faced constables with nothing much to choose between them. Sure they were young, probably younger than me. But I don’t worry about when the policemen start looking younger. Only when they start getting closer.
‘Certainly do, officers. Anything wrong?’
‘Do you know a Ms Asmoyah by any chance?’ asked the tall one.
‘Mrs Asmoyah, sure.’ Then my stomach churned. ‘It’s not Frank, is it? Has something happened to Frank?’
‘Frank who, sir?’
‘Frank Asmoyah. Mrs As ... Salome’s husband.’
‘We’d better go inside, sir.’
As I put the key in the lock, I thought that if there was room for a cop car and Armstrong out front, there wasn’t room for Salome’s Golf. In the hallway I said: ‘Sal ... Mrs Asmoyah’s away for the weekend.’
‘Which is her ... apartment, sir?’ asked the shorter one, and the ‘sir’ was definitely an afterthought.
‘Top one,’ I said meekly. ‘But ...’
They politely pushed by me. Half way up the first flight of stairs, the taller one bent over to scratch Springsteen behind the ear. Springsteen was mouthing a silent howl at to warn me that there were cops about. As an early warning system, he was about as much use as Neville Chamberlain. I made a mental note to cut his rations.
I followed them up as far as my door and, as I unlocked it, they were banging on Salome’s. I flicked the lights on and put my horn down, then went back to the stairs.
The noise had woken the denizens of Flat 2, and rather than get out of her pit herself, Lisabeth had sent Fenella to see what was going on. From the little of her that she poked around the door, I guessed she was wearing only the green-striped man’s shirt with the sleeves cut short that she used as a nightie when her Snoopy pyjamas were in the wash. (I hoped Lisabeth didn’t know I knew this kind of stuff.)
