Angel Touch

by Mike Ripley

  On the personal side, there was very little about Cawthorne, except that he was the son of a Colonel in the Parachute Regiment now retired to darkest Wiltshire.

  To my mind, that clinched the connection with Pegasus Farm, the Winged Pegasus being the emblem of the Parachute Regiment, which used to be called the Red Berets (when Richard Todd was making films) but nowadays (since American Football and Rambo) referred to itself as the Maroon Machine. I’ve always said that all those games of Trivial Pursuit wouldn’t be wasted.

  I sat back and treated myself to a cigarette, determined to make it the first and last of the day. I dug out the packet of Sweet Afton I’d managed to make last most of the week and lit up.

  On the back of the packet was the phone number of Prior, Keen, Baldwin’s motorbike messenger service, which I’d jotted down while snooping in their postroom on Friday afternoon. I remembered Gerry saying she thought it must be a radio phone as it had so many digits. It wasn’t; it was a country STD code, and it matched the number printed on the Exhilarator leaflet for Pegasus Farm.

  I should have made the connection sooner, given that the company was called Airborne PLC, but nobody’s perfect.

  Lisabeth and Fenella were waiting on the pavement outside the Spring Onion when I arrived to pick them up. The restaurant was still standing, but I suspected some unpleasantness had taken place as neither of them said a word until we arrived at the hospital again. I did ask if they’d had a nice meal, but Lisabeth just ‘harrumphed,’ so I dropped the subject and told them instead that I was going to meet Duncan and collect Salome’s car. As they hopped out of Armstrong, Fenella leaned in through the meter window as if paying off a real cab. She handed me a bill from the Spring Onion and mouthed ‘Sorry,’ before skipping off to catch up with Lisabeth. Puzzled, I scanned the receipt to find, at the bottom after the VAT, an added amount of £7.50 just listed as ‘Breakages.’ I made a mental note to ask about that. One day.

  I got to Blackberry Hill before Duncan showed, and cruised by the barrier that marked the scene of the accident. A few yards up the hill, on my left, was a turning that at first I thought was just the entrance to a field. I pulled in there as it seemed a good place to get Armstrong off the road, and it was only then I saw that it was in fact an unmade road curving away round the back of the hill.

  I snuffed Armstrong’s engine and dug out the OS map I’d bought. I opened it out, knowing straight off that I’d never get it re-folded properly, and found Blackberry Hill. The track I was parked on was a back way into the village of Broughton Street and, as the crow flew, a quicker way than coming around by Blackberry Hill. Broughton Street was a collection of grey boxes on the map with nothing to distinguish it from loads of other small Kentish villages. Near the village end of the track, a ‘Fisher’s Farm’ was marked, and behind it, a green rectangle with the legend ‘Fisher’s Wood’. There was nothing saying Pegasus or Exhilarator.

  A motor horn sounded off behind me and scared me silly. It was Duncan reversing a flat-back wrecking truck complete with winch and hook gear. On the doors of the truck was stencilled ‘Ron’s Recks of Romford.’ Obviously Duncan was calling in a few debts.

  We wotchered each other as I led him across the road.

  ‘Wotcha, Angel.’

  ‘Wotcha, Dunc. Thanks for turning out.’

  ‘No problem. It’s double time for Sundays.’

  ‘Never forget you’re Yorkshire. It’s over here.’

  We looked down over the police barrier at the upside-down Golf below us.

  ‘Got enough rope?’

  ‘Should have. If the wheels turn and we can tip it rightside up between us – should be a doddle.’ He rattled the yellow and black barrier with both hands. ‘This’ll shift easy enough.’

  For the second time that day, I scrambled down the slope of the hill towards the sad little car. I hadn’t done this amount of countryside rambling since I was drummed out of the Boy Scouts.

  Duncan tested the wheels and then indicated the old heave-ho motion. The slope of the hill helped us, and the Golf flipped over after three or four big rocking pushes. When it stopped bouncing on what were left of its shock absorbers, I tried to get the driver’s door open, but it, and the passenger door, were jammed shut. As there was no windscreen left, I stuck my head in, but there was nothing to see, not even blood, thank goodness.

  Duncan got behind the Golf and pushed it to prove it would move, then set off back up the slope to get the truck.

  ‘That’s a tough little motor,’ said Duncan as we climbed. ‘There’s not many would have stayed in one piece like that. I’m impressed. I think I’ll get Doreen one.’

  Back at the top, I helped Duncan carry the police barrier across the road so that it blocked traffic coming up. Duncan then marched over to the Ron’s Recks truck and opened the passenger-side door. He took out two large plastic orange cones – the sort you get on motorway hold-ups – and gave them to me, telling me to put them the other side of the bend to slow the traffic coming down. The lad had come prepared.

  He reversed the truck so that its winch poked over the edge of the drop. Then he attached a rope to it and scuttered down to tie the other end onto the front axle of the Golf. While he was getting ready, I wandered back to the turning where I’d left Armstrong and looked back across the road.

  It wasn’t exactly square on to the place where Sal’s Golf had gone for a roll, but it wasn’t far off.

  I waited until Duncan had winched up the Golf to the road and exchanged the rope for the winch hook, which lifted the front of the VW off the ground so it could be towed. I bet myself he had professional ‘On Tow’ plates in the truck, and he had, along with a seemingly authentic ‘Police Aware’ sticker, which he stuck on the rear windscreen. Then I asked him if he had any thoughts on how it had happened.

  ‘Pissed?’ he tried for openers.

  ‘Doubtful.’

  ‘Bit of nookie that got out of hand?’

  ‘Not a chance.’

  ‘Speed job?’

  ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘Either. Pedal-to-the-metal or naughty substances.’

  ‘Wouldn’t give you odds on either.’

  ‘Then I’m buggered if I know, but I’ll check the mechanics for you. I might have to unbend a few things, though.’

  ‘Don’t unbend too much – not until the insurance people have seen it.’

  We replaced the police barrier to prevent a repetition of Sal’s sudden decision to travel sideways, although I hadn’t seen another car on the hill either time I’d been there. Which, of course, would just make it that much safer a place to do the business, if business had needed doing.

  I asked Duncan to come over the road and look at the unmade road where I’d left Armstrong. Some civic-minded soul had attempted to lay gravel at some point, but the track was pretty soft, and there were tyre marks, showing somebody had been down there pretty recently.

  ‘What do you make of them, Dunc?’

  Duncan looked at the ground then at me.

  ‘I’m supposed to be fucking Tonto all of a sudden, am I?’

  ‘Not if that makes me the Lone Ranger, son.’

  And I meant it. My idea of a truth-and-justice lone avenger never appears in less than platoon strength, preferably nuclear-armed.

  ‘Well, I nivver said I could read Indian signs, but them’s some make of jeep thing. You know, one of the flash four-wheel-drive jobs.’

  ‘You mean a Range-Rover? Something like that?’

  ‘Nah, too small. More like a Shogun or one of the other smaller Jap 4Ws, or maybe a South Korean. I don’t keep up with the names any more.’

  ‘Duncan, you’re supposed to be a car mechanic. You’re supposed to know these things.’

  ‘All I know is the bastard things are good enough not to need much repair, and there’s no real second-hand market in them.
People with loadsamoney –’ he said it as one word, just to prove he had learned something living in London – ‘buy them to play with and throw them away when they’re bored with ‘em. Nobody wants second-hand toys.’

  What he really meant was there wasn’t a market in nicked ones. Yet. He’d work on that and probably end up getting a Queen’s Award for Industry.

  ‘Just what’re you getting at, young Angel?’ he asked, narrowing his eyes the same way he did when he had a cigarette going and he was looking in a petrol tank.

  ‘It was just a thought, Duncan,’ I said casually. ‘Lemme give you a f’rinstance. What if you wanted to push that there VW Golf off this ‘ere road, through that there hedge ...’

  ‘And down that there hill?’ He scratched his chin. ‘I’d probably wait here in my 4 by 4 with the lights off and then charge out so they have to swerve, only there ain’t anywhere to swerve to.’

  ‘What about hitting them side on?’

  ‘Possible. It would be difficult to prove anything from the VW – it got pretty crumpled going down the hill. And you’d expect some broken headlights or something here on the road. Look. Nuffing.’

  He was right. There wasn’t really any trace of another vehicle, and neither the cops nor the Fire Officer had mentioned anything.

  ‘You’re not happy about this, are you?’ said Duncan.

  ‘No. I’m not. Take the Golf back to Barking and stash it somewhere. Don’t do any work on it till you hear from me, okay?’ Duncan nodded. ‘And don’t worry if you don’t hear from me for a few days. I think I’m going to be busy.’

  Even then, I knew roughly what I was going to try and do, although I had no idea how to go about it. But first things first, and while Duncan headed back to town with the VW riding piggyback on his truck, I turned back towards Maidstone and the hospital.

  The corridor outside Intensive Care was about as organised as Euston Station on a Friday night when I got there. Our friendly policeman had gone, but there were nurses there for the first time that I’d seen, and even the odd doctor. Maybe all that stuff about cuts in the health service wasn’t true.

  Lisabeth and Fenella were being moved out of the way and generally harried from pillar to post. Fenella told me, breathily and all excited, that they were going to operate and we’d all have to leave, but it was all right really because Salome’s mum (who was ever so nice) had turned up, having been called by Frank, and was in there talking to the surgeons. Oh, and yes, Frank was on his way.

  I told them there was nothing much more we could usefully do there and we’d better leave before we were ejected. Truth was, I wasn’t that keen on meeting Salome’s mother again. Not because she doesn’t approve of me (few mothers do), but she was bound to have a lot of questions I had no intention of answering.

  Lisabeth reluctantly agreed after I put her in charge of phoning the hospital for twice-daily reports, which was exactly the sort of thing she liked to take charge of. Fenella was easily bribed with the promise of an ice-cream on the way home, and Lisabeth kept her company by devouring a couple of choc ices, which meant I had to wash down the upholstery of Armstrong’s back seat that evening. I thought about the real taxi-drivers in London who took parties of kids to the seaside on day trips each year, and realised just what courage was.

  The next morning, I was up and on my way to work by eight o’clock. Not bad for a Monday, I thought. For me, that wasn’t bad for any day with a ‘y’ in it. Even so, the overbearing Purvis looked at his watch when he saw me and said ‘Good afternoon.’

  ‘I need to see Mr Patterson,’ I said, as if I was letting him in on a big secret. ‘It’s urgent. I was told I could get him on 2001.’ I nodded to the phone on the reception desk.

  ‘No chance,’ Purvis said with a smile. Saying no seemed to suit him. ‘He’s in the Monday morning conference with the dealers, and that’ll go on till nine, then he’s got a policeman waiting to see him. You’ll have to join the queue.’

  ‘Thanks, but no thanks. I’ll wait. Catch him later.’

  I sneaked into the main dealing room and found a heating vent near the skirting-board at one end, which I could unscrew and look as if I was doing something professional. Only two or three of the terminals were occupied, by guys who looked as if they’d been up all night and who were already on to their second pack of cigarettes.

  Shortly before 9.00 there was a general hubbub down the corridor and the Suits began to appear from their conferences, most of them holding styrofoam cups of coffee. Patterson was one of the last out, but it seemed he’d got the message about his visitor, as he hurried towards his office without a sideways glance.

  I decided to join Anna and the girls in the postroom and scrounge some coffee. I think Anna was pleased to see me, despite the knowing looks from the other two, and none of them seemed to have heard about Salome, so I stayed tight-lipped. I did drop a bit of business into the pleasantries, like asking if there were likely to be any hand deliveries that morning. When they said it was almost a certainty, I made an excuse and nipped out to see Purvis.

  ‘Mr P wants you to do something for him, Sergeant,’ I whispered.

  ‘Oh yes? Seen him, have you?’

  ‘Yes, as he came out of the conference,’ I said without a word of a lie.

  ‘What?’

  ‘If a motorbike messenger turns up today–’

  ‘Do you mean a Don/R?’

  ‘Yes, a despatch rider. If it’s an Airborne guy, ask him for some ID.’ He liked the idea of ‘ID’. He would. ‘And see if you can get his name. But be discreet.’

  He looked offended, but I guessed his idea of discretion was swapping his length of lead pipe for a rubber truncheon.

  I was back in the dealing room looking vacantly into an empty conduit when Patterson emerged from the end office and escorted a guy to the lobby. The visitor was wearing a suit, but you could tell he wasn’t in the City as it was double-breasted.

  On his way back to his office, Patterson caught my eye and, without breaking his stride, he tapped his wristwatch (I put odds on a Rolex) and held up five fingers. I nodded my White Sox cap in his direction and bent down to start screwing back the vent cover.

  As on Friday, no-one seemed to notice me and certainly no-one challenged me as I walked through to Patterson’s office whistling cheerfully (a Tommy Smith riff that I wished I could transfer from his tenor sax to my battered trumpet) and holding a plan of the air-conditioning system out in front of me. It was only as I rapped on the open door of his office that I realised the plan was upside down.

  Tel-boy was a worried man. I could see that from the way his knuckles whitened around the telephone. He wasn’t saying much; mostly ‘yessir’ and ‘certainly,’ and he ended with the words ‘Very well, Mr Prior’ and hung up.

  He looked at me as if I had trodden in something on the way in.

  ‘You’ve heard,’ he said.

  ‘Yeah, and I think we’d better talk.’ I closed the door and sat down in the one chair this side of his desk. From his reaction, that was probably A First.

  He narrowed his eyes.

  ‘What do you want?’

  ‘I want to know what Salome and Alec Reynolds were doing down in Kent on Saturday.’

  ‘How should I know?’ He avoided eye contact immediately. ‘Husband away, cats will play. Alec and Salome were very close.’

  ‘Is that what you told the copper who just left?’

  Patterson reached for a paperclip to fiddle with.

  ‘That’s none of your business.’

  ‘Who was he? Road Traffic?’ Patterson’s eyes flickered as if I’d given him a straw to grasp, but I pressed on. ‘Or was he City Squad?’

  Even I knew about the CS, which had been set up the year before in the wake of a couple of real humdinger scandals in the Square Mile. They were a cross between the most intelligent members of CID and
the hardest cases in the Fraud Squad. They were computerised, all young enough to be looking for promotion and supposedly as mean as hell. They had replaced private wheelclamp units as the bogeymen of middle-class London.

  ‘That’s certainly none of your business,’ he said, but his heart wasn’t in it.

  ‘Come on, Tel. Don’t play hard to get, I’m on the payroll – remember?’

  ‘Not any more you’re not.’

  He reached into a drawer down to his left and produced a cheque-book, one of the big fat jobs that meant it was a company one, not a personal account.

  ‘I think a thousand should cover it. After all, you haven’t been here anywhere near a week and you don’t seem to be getting anywhere.’

  ‘That’s where you’re wrong,’ I said as he reached for a pen. ‘Leave the payee line blank, will you?’

  ‘Just what do you want?’ he asked, his pen poised above the signature space.

  I sat back and crossed my legs.

  ‘I want to know what you told the copper, what he told you, why you sent Sal down to Cawthorne’s place at the weekend, what you’re going to do about her now, what you intend doing about Alec Reynolds now that he’s dead, and why you’re trying to give me the bum’s rush. Though that’s pretty obvious: you’re trying to sweep shit under the carpet, and that’s never a good idea.’

  Patterson blinked a couple of times. It was to clear the sweat from his eyelids. I noticed that he had pressed his elbows into the desk to stop his hands shaking.

  ‘You don’t know anything,’ he snarled. ‘You were a mistake.’

  ‘I know how you’re losing information.’