Angel Touch

by Mike Ripley

  I timed the operation on my Seastar. Three minutes and ten seconds later, the door opened and the jiffy bag was handed out. Mr Luther, if it was he, stuffed it into one of his saddlebags and freewheeled the bike back on to the road, kick-started and was away.

  Patterson had arranged for the solicitors in Bloomsbury to ring him immediately the jiffy bag arrived, so that end was covered, and I was pretty sure that’s where the Airborne messenger was heading without further interruptions. I decided to stay where I was and watch the van. I even took the number just to prove how professional I was, not that I had any idea how it could help.

  I kept one eagle eye out for wardens and policemen with nothing better to do than harass taxi-drivers, but I didn’t have to wait long.

  After about five minutes, the rear doors of the Transit opened and a guy hopped down. He scanned the street as he looked up, but true to form, he didn’t pay Armstrong the compliment of a second glance.

  He pulled on a pair of folding sunglasses (the sort you pay an extra load for to have ‘Porsche’ stamped across your field of vision) as he made for the driver’s door, but even with them and the soft brown leather blouson jacket, which made him look a bit like an off-duty copper (they get them cheap down Brick Lane), I still recognised him.

  He was the one who had asked Werewolf if he played in a band, and the one I’d seen being ticked off by Cawthorne.

  Werewolf had called him Robin Redbreast because of the striped shirt and red tie. I’d called him Chinless Wonder on the same basis that regular enlisted men in the Army call Sandhurst graduates ‘Ruperts.’ Maybe we’d both misjudged him. Maybe he was the sort of guy who pushes VW Golfs off hills in the middle of the night. Just for fun, of course.

  I followed the van for an hour, and dead boring it was too. I was certain he didn’t know I was following him, but he led me a pretty dance almost as if he was trying to lose me. As the traffic thickened towards the rush hour it got easier, but more boring, to stay fairly close behind him. Only once did he stop, having looped back towards the City, in Finsbury Circus. He had to double park there – doesn’t everyone? – so he put the warning indicators on as climbed in the back of the red Transit.

  Sure enough, Lewis Luther, or whoever, turned up in full Airborne rig – I was pretty sure it was the same bike and made a note of its number this time – and they did business as they had at Holborn. This time, it was an ordinary letter by the looks of things, and it took, again, just over three minutes.

  This time, though, Chinless Wonder stuck his head out of the van and said something to the rider before he went. The rider nodded and pushed off on the Kawasaki. Chinless looked up again and got back to the driver’s seat and headed east.

  I followed him out of the City until I was convinced he was packing up for the day. My guess was he would head for the Dartford Tunnel and then Kent. There was no way I could hope to keep up with him through the tunnel (a route I highly recommend if you want to lose a tail) as there were just too many imponderable lane changes and toll booth stops, so I turned where I shouldn’t and headed back. Turning around brought a couple of angry hoots from the odd civilian driver – taxis and buses never blow their horns at taxis or buses – but I was now going away from the traffic flow, and I was back outside PKB by 5.00. I even found a legal parking space. Things were looking up.

  Patterson listened to me in silence, then said, ‘I just don’t believe it,’ a couple of times to himself.

  ‘My guess is they’ve got a photocopier in the back of the van, and a typewriter and a selection of envelopes. They photocopy what you send out and then repackage it pronto. Takes a coupla minutes, and the people getting it at the other end don’t notice anything wrong. Still sealed up, addressed to them. You ring up and say, “Did you get a jiffy bag five minutes ago?” and they say, “Sure, one jiffy bag, containing one letter, just arrived.” So maybe it took one minute more than it should as the crow flies. We ain’t talking crows. We can allow for traffic, bike breakdown, rider can’t find the right doorway, whatever. All the things you take for granted that are going to screw you up in London. It’s pretty ingenious.’

  ‘It’s diabolical,’ said Patterson with feeling. ‘But we could put them out of business if we, say, used sealing wax, or special security envelopes ...’

  I shook my head slowly in disappointment with him. ‘I was thinking of something more permanent.’

  ‘Not in that,’ I said emphatically. ‘No way, not ever. Not even in daylight.’

  ‘What’s the matter with you now?’ Patterson yelled at me.

  I don’t think he meant to yell, it was just that his voice echoed a lot in the underground car park. I hadn’t known before that there was an underground car park to the building, but as the building was shared, only about eight spaces were reserved for Prior, Keen, Baldwin bigwigs. Therefore, Patterson was a bigger wig than I’d had him down as. I still thought he was a dickhead.

  ‘You are a right dickhead –’ I broke it to him gently – ‘if you think we are driving down to Brixton in that.’

  ‘What in Christ’s wrong with it?’ Patterson screamed. I have to admit that on a good day I find little at all wrong with the prospect of a ride in a new BMW, and Patterson was obviously well-pleased with his material rewards of Yuppiedom.

  ‘Look, Tel, here in the City, it’s a very nice status symbol, and a fine example of German craftsmanship, but in Brixton it’s a Bob and therefore a legitimate target for any kid big enough to keep a tyre wrench in his nappy.’

  ‘A Bob? What are you talking about?’

  ‘Bob Marley and the Wailers. BMW.’ I could see it sinking in. ‘Shall we take mine?’

  He was somewhat mollified to find that Armstrong was a cab and he could ride in the back and scowl at me, but he knew I thought it was a lousy idea going down to Brixton to track down Lewis Luther.

  ‘Do you know where Marlowe Street is?’

  ‘I’ll find it,’ I yelled back at him, then slipped an old Simply Red tape into the cassette just to annoy him, although it had the added advantage that I couldn’t hear him any more.

  I’d told him in his office it would do no good, but he’d insisted. So I’d used his phone to ring Sorrel’s number and got an answerphone. I’d told it to come to the Vecchio Reccione in Leicester Square at 9.30, then I’d rung the restaurant and made a booking, using my PKB Amex card to confirm it. That’d also annoyed Patterson, as he’d forgotten about the card.

  Round about the Elephant and Castle, I decided to call a truce and talk to him. I told him I reckoned Marlowe Road to be one of the ‘poets’ run’ of streets off Railton Road, all named after Shakespeare, Milton, Spenser with an ‘s’ and so on.

  ‘What’s the plan, then?’ I asked. ‘Go up to the front door and ask if Lewis is coming out to play?’

  ‘At least we could see if there’s an Airborne motorbike parked outside. That would be a start.’

  ‘You think he’ll leave his bike outside round here?’

  I was winding him up some because I thought he deserved it. He’d probably never been to Brixton before – I could tell that from the way he was sinking down in the back of Armstrong the further along Effra Road we got. Mind you, I was a bit out of touch myself. In fact, I hadn’t lived south of the river for nearly five years, and that had been further over in Southwark until a small matter of an exploding terrace house had persuaded me to go flat-hunting. Not that that little affair had anything to do with the riots on Brixton’s Front Line. No, that was a purely personal piece of business.

  So I didn’t know the area like I should. But, as they say in the ads on the telly, I knew a man who did.

  ‘I’ve got an idea,’ I yelled over my shoulder. ‘I’ve a friend lives near here in Jonson Road.’ But he wasn’t the sort to have actually read The Alchemist, and probably thought his street was named after an American President.

  ‘Wha
t good does that do us?’ Patterson moved onto the jump seat just behind mine. I think it made him feel more secure.

  ‘My man in Brixton knows everybody worth knowing and a sackful of those you wouldn’t want your enemies to know. I think we should check in with him. It’s just down here on the left.’

  ‘Well, okay,’ said Patterson nervously. I knew Lloyd Allen was at home as soon as I turned into Jonson Road, because nobody else would have a pink (yes, pink) 1964 Ford Zephyr – the nearest the British ever got a car with fins – parked outside. Well, in Brixton they might, but only Lloyd would have had a tenor saxophone painted in gold on its bonnet. The year before, he’d been into the whole Absolute Beginners scene, and everything around him had to date from the late ‘50s, early ‘60s. Now he was into jazz, because he’d heard that the Yuppies had hijacked it after Clint Eastwood’s film on Charlie Parker, and had moved back a decade to the late ‘40s. It was only a matter of time before my more traditional sort of jazz became popular again and I’d have to think of a new image.

  I parked Armstrong in front of the Zephyr, reversing until the bumpers almost touched. A couple of black kids no more than about nine years old appeared from nowhere, hands in pockets, just sauntering by. They would be the official minders for the street.

  They stopped and examined the half-inch gap between Armstrong and the pink Zephyr. I think they were impressed.

  ‘Lloyd in?’ I asked, not expecting an answer.

  I didn’t get one. They just shrugged their shoulders. I opened the door for Patterson and then locked the cab up after he’d stepped gingerly onto the pavement.

  Lloyd’s house was a three-bedroom semi-detached in a street that about 60 years ago would have been classed as a greenfield development. The front door was open and at least two sorts of music were oozing out onto the street. I recognised some pirated recordings of Sade in cabaret coming from the upper floor and, louder, some mid-period John Coltrane from the living-room. I knocked on the open door and strode into the front room, trusting that Patterson was right behind me. He was. I could smell his after-shave.

  The room had stripped pine flooring and white walls. All the lights were white golfball shapes on stands about four feet off the floor. The furniture was expensive wood and leather and probably Danish. There were two cases of Red Stripe lager in the middle of the floor, roughly a couple of thousand record covers in various piles, and about six people in the room. One of them stood up and took off his sunglasses.

  ‘Angel! Hey, my main man. Where’ve you been for the last six star signs?’

  ‘Hello, Lloyd, you cooking?’

  ‘I’m gettin’ by, but you – you just disappeared off my screen, man. What’s going down?’

  Lloyd was wearing the bottom half of a pale grey pinstripe suit with turn-ups that probably took on board water when it rained. His braces were vivid blue and yellow zigzags, and were button fasteners not clips, worn over a see-through white shirt that didn’t have a collar. He almost certainly had a pearl fedora to go with the image, and brown and white two-tone shoes, if he’d been wearing any.

  ‘Low profile, Lloyd, that’s me.’ We shook hands. Both of us were too old to ‘slap skin.’ We left that to the teenyboppers with personal stereos and skateboards.

  ‘Man, I ain’t heard you play since the days of the old Mimosa Club,’ said Lloyd with a thoughtful expression.

  In the past, I’d seen a fair bit of Lloyd. I’d played at a club in Soho, even backed a few rock bands Lloyd had claimed to manage, and he’d run a string of female mud wrestlers, mainly in the clip joint next door.

  ‘And are you still into mud – or is the record business paying off?’

  ‘I get by, Angel baby, I get by.’ He grinned. ‘Meet the guys – and the next superstar I’m grooming.’

  He put an arm around my shoulder and steered me to one of the leather sofas, which had a girl where other sofas have cushions. She was wearing a plain white T-shirt. Oh yes, and sunglasses.

  ‘Hi, Mr Angel,’ she said, stretching her legs together just enough to produce static electricity.

  ‘Hello, Beeby,’ I smiled.

  ‘You know each other?’

  ‘Mr Angel sort of put me on to you, Lloyd,’ she purred. ‘And I’ve never looked back.’

  The kid was going to make it.

  ‘Well that’s just wicked, man, really wicked. Mr A, I’m in your debt.’ Lloyd slapped my shoulder.

  ‘Good,’ I said.

  ‘I thought so,’ Lloyd said, grinning. ‘But first, meet the Dennison brothers.’

  The three black guys didn’t get up or anything – I was pretty sure two of them couldn’t – they just nodded as Lloyd reeled off their names.

  ‘That’s Derek, Selwyn and Melvin, and I know what you’re thinking.’ He prodded me playfully in the chest. ‘And you’d be right. Del, Sel and Mel. Would you credit it? Your ma had a weird sense of humour, boys.’

  The boys took this all in good heart, as they probably had all their lives.

  ‘‘Nother coincidence,’ I said. ‘Meet my mate Tel.’

  ‘Hey! Welcome! Del, Sel, Mel and now Tel. Beeby, get the Guinness Book of Records on the horn. Pull up a beer, you guys, and utilise the accommodation.’

  Lloyd picked up a beer can, lifted Beeby’s legs up with one hand, sat down on the sofa and let her legs fall across his lap.

  I sat down on the cases of beer, and Patterson perched on the edge of an armchair.

  ‘Tel here works in the City,’ I opened. ‘He’s got a problem.’

  ‘I can relate to that, Angel my man. No decent food, no place to park and almost zero women. Good street prices for Jaws though, gotta admit that.’

  ‘Jaws –’ I explained to Tel – ‘otherwise known as the Great White Powder. Very naughty substances.’

  He made an O with his mouth. I turned back to Lloyd and tried not to look at Beeby’s legs.

  ‘Tel’s problem’s a wee bit more specific than that. It involves a Brother, a local one. Thought you might know him.’

  ‘He got a name or am I psychic suddenly?’

  ‘Lewis Luther. Rides a Kawasaki 125. Know him?’

  ‘Maybe.’

  ‘Lives round the corner in Marlowe Road.’

  ‘So does my tailor.’ Lloyd beamed, and a couple of the Dennison brothers laughed dutifully at the in-joke, which went over me.

  ‘If I were your tailor, so would I, but I wouldn’t tell anyone.’

  Beeby laughed at that until Lloyd lifted one of her legs and sank his teeth into her inner thigh until she squealed.

  ‘Know your place, woman!’ shouted Lloyd, and Beeby wriggled more into his lap, laughing like a drain.

  Patterson coughed to cover his embarrassment.

  ‘So what’s this Loo-is been a-doing then, Mr A?’

  ‘That’s what we want to ask him, Lloyd. It may be that Lewis doesn’t know he’s doing anything out of order, but some of the messages Lewis is delivering ain’t getting through, or at least not in one piece.’

  ‘What sort of messages?’ Lloyd ran his fingers up Beeby’s legs like a concert pianist warming up.

  ‘Mostly financial stuff.’

  ‘Any firm in particular?’ Lloyd was concentrating on miming what looked to me like Mozart’s ‘Turkish March’.

  ‘Tel’s company.’

  ‘Which is?’

  ‘Prior, Keen, Baldwin,’ Patterson said nervously.

  Lloyd stopped tuning up Beeby’s legs and looked up in genuine surprise and then disgust.

  ‘Shit! Has that little jerker Lewis been messing with my brokers? I’ll kill him.’

  If I was surprised to hear that Lloyd had a stockbroker, Patterson was dumbfounded. But a client is a client, and he perked up no end as we walked round to Marlowe Road, Lloyd between us and one of the Dennison boys about ten feet ahe
ad acting as an outrider.

  I’d been right about Lloyd’s two-tone shoes, though I had I expected him to put socks on, and I was wrong about the hat – it was a white Panama. I was glad he chose to wear it, for otherwise, in his shirt-sleeves and braces walking between us, it could have been mistaken for an arrest or at least a ‘helping with enquiries,’ and the last thing I wanted was a street riot.

  By the time we were out of Jonson Road, Lloyd and Tel were getting on famously, talking ‘fundamentals,’ ‘half-yearly growths’ and ‘sell options.’ The Dennison lad had pulled ahead of us and disappeared round a corner. He emerged giving Lloyd the thumbs-up sign, and Lloyd jerked his head without pausing in his conversation on the future of the British economy. Dennison crossed the road and disappeared again. He would be covering the back door of No 24 if I knew Lloyd.

  The front door of No 24 was a yard back from the pavement. Lloyd didn’t knock; in fact he didn’t stop talking to Tel. He pulled a key from his trouser pocket and slipped lit into the lock.

  ‘You do know Lewis, then,’ I said, looking at the key.

  Lloyd pushed the door open and showed me his teeth. ‘‘Course I do. He’s one of my tenants.’

  ‘This is your house?’ asked Patterson, impressed.

  ‘One of ‘em,’ said Lloyd modestly. I wondered if he had just the one broker. ‘This way, gentlemen. Ground-floor ap-art-ment if my memory serves me well. And we know he’s home.’

  I followed his gaze down the hallway to where a Kawasaki was parked on a spread-out copy of the Evening Standard. The number plate told me it was the same one I’d followed earlier.

  Lloyd rapped his fist on a badly-stripped fake pine door with a metal numeral 1 nailed to it. Further down the corridor was a kitchen, and across it I could see young Dennison loitering with intent outside the window.

  ‘Looo-ees,’ Lloyd cooed. ‘It’s your friendly landlord. Social call.’

  The door opened an inch and a yellow and brown eye looked out.

  ‘Do I lie?’ said Lloyd, pushing the door.