Angel Touch

by Mike Ripley

  Lewis Luther was about 19 in age years but a lot older in street-time. He backed across the room, keeping pieces of furniture between himself and the three of us. Not that there was much furniture in the room: a table, covered with copies of Motor Cycle News, two dining chairs, a bed with a duvet cover illustrating a big Honda bike, and a chest of drawers with a midi stereo cassette unit on it. The whole place had an odour of long-gone take-away curries and engine oil.

  ‘What can I do for you, Mr Allen?’ said Lewis suspiciously, rubbing the palms of his hands down his red leathers. He’d lost the leather jacket and the boots, but maybe he slept in the trousers.

  ‘You happy in your work, Lewis?’ Lloyd put a foot up on one of the chairs and flicked imaginary dust from the toecap with his fingertips.

  ‘Sure, Mr Allen. It’s a good job. Regular pay.’

  ‘Your mum keeping well?’

  ‘Yeah.’

  ‘Still giving her housekeeping?’

  ‘Every week.’

  ‘Good boy.’ Lloyd turned to me. ‘His ma’s got six other Luthers and an Episcopalian church to support, but she’s a good lady. Would break her heart to hear of Lewis in trouble.’

  ‘What trouble? I ain’t done nuffink.’ But he was looking worried.

  ‘That’s for these gentlemen to decide.’ Lloyd waved a hand, giving me the floor.

  ‘Who’s they?’

  ‘We’re financial advisers to Mr Allen,’ I said, and Patterson nodded enthusiastically.

  ‘What’s that to me?’ Lewis spread his arms.

  ‘Your job with Airborne –’

  ‘Yeah, what about it?’

  ‘Do you always do pick-ups from Prior, Keen, Baldwin?’

  ‘What’s that when it’s at home?’

  Patterson grabbed Lloyd’s arm and said excitedly: ‘But he was there twice today and ...’

  ‘Leave it out, Tel,’ I said without looking at him. ‘Gresham Street, in the City.’

  ‘Oh, them.’ Lewis looked relieved. Like most delivery riders, he never looked at the name, just the address. ‘Yeah, I was covering them today and –’ he thought about it for a second – ‘twice last week.’

  ‘How do you get your instructions?’

  ‘Radio. The despatcher just tells us where to pick up and where to go.’

  ‘What about the Transit van? Why did you take the Gresham Street stuff there first?’

  Lewis didn’t bat an eyelid.

  ‘Take everything to the van and check it with Mr Sorley. The van’s the office, man, that way they keep the overheads down.’

  Lewis found himself looking at three puzzled faces. He tried to explain.

  ‘Look, man, Airborne doesn’t have a base in town. The whole operation is run from the van. There are six or seven riders and we split the shifts. We rendezvous every morning near Blackfriars Bridge and get the first jobs over the radio. We do a pick-up, then check in with the van. Everything gets registered by Mr Sorley so he knows how much work we’ve done and how much to bill the clients. Where’s the harm in that?’

  ‘You doing this self-employed, Lewis?’ asked Lloyd. He was either concerned for the lad or thinking up a scheme of his own.

  ‘Yeah. So?’

  ‘Paying tax, are you? National Insurance?’

  ‘I will, I will.’

  ‘How long have you worked for them?’ I asked.

  ‘Three months.’

  ‘Know any of the other riders?’

  ‘One dude, Lenny Emerson.’ He looked at Lloyd when he said this.

  ‘Lenny’s only been out of the jug five, maybe six weeks,’ said Lloyd.

  ‘Ever seen any other Airborne riders?’ I tried.

  ‘No.’

  ‘Ever drawn a night shift?’

  ‘No, I’m lucky.’

  ‘Weekend work?’

  ‘Nah. Like I said, I’m lucky.’

  I looked at Patterson and Lloyd looked at me. ‘Conference?’

  I said yes and Lloyd told Lewis to go and make a pot of tea and invite the Dennison kid in. Lewis said he hadn’t got five cups. Lloyd looked at him, then at the ceiling, sighing as he did so, and Lewis got the message. Lloyd shut the door after him and pulled up one of the chairs, straddling it.

  ‘Is the boy in trouble?’

  I shook my head. ‘He’s no idea what’s going on,’ I said. ‘But he’ll probably be needing a new job soon.’

  Lloyd scratched the underside of his chin.

  ‘What have we got?’ Patterson asked me.

  ‘A very sensitive operation. I think they’re targeting one or two City firms and getting the inside track by reading their mail. Airborne gets a reputation for quick service from the companies they’re interested in because the bikes are cruising round outside just waiting for a call. They probably have three riders on call in case one goes sick or gets delayed or is already on a job, but I’ll bet they never deal with more than two companies at a time. It sure as hell ain’t a full-time job for Mr Sorley, if that’s his name.’

  ‘It is,’ said Patterson thoughtfully.

  ‘Go on,’ I prompted.

  ‘Jeremy Sorley-Smith to be exact. Long-time gopher to Simon Cawthorne. I think they were at school together.’

  ‘Cawthorne, eh?’ Lloyd let out a low whistle. ‘Bad news baby if ever there was.’

  ‘How come you know of Cawthorne?’ I was getting annoyed about everybody knowing more than me.

  ‘Just because you don’t read the financial pages, Angel-face ...’

  ‘Later,’ said Patterson, looking at his Rolex. I hoped he remembered to pull his cuff down over it when we got out in to the street. ‘What do we do now?’

  ‘Well, I’d like to get a look inside that van,’ I said. ‘So maybe tomorrow we arrange for me to do one of Lewis’s runs. Think he’ll agree?’

  ‘It’ll cost,’ said Lloyd, weighing up Tel’s wallet with his X-ray vision.

  ‘Can he be bought?’ asked Tel.

  Lloyd and I just looked at him. (Rule of Life No 28: Everybody can be bought. The trick is to make them think you’re buying them from Harrods, not Woolworth’s at sale time.)

  ‘Okay. Negotiate what you want,’ he said with a defeated air.

  ‘As Lewis’s agent –’ began Lloyd, then he saw my face – ‘recently appointed, I’ll handle that. Just give me a bell as to when and where you want him. He’ll be all yours.’

  Tel and I didn’t stay for tea.

  Lloyd had the Dennison lad escort us back to Jonson Road while he had a word with young Lewis, who seemed remarkably nonplussed by the whole affair.

  Armstrong was still there and in one piece, though I walked around him to check that all four wheels were in place before we got in. Beeby came to the door of Lloyd’s house and waved us goodbye. She was fully dressed; she had her sunglasses on. I still didn’t know why she was called Beeby.

  ‘How did you know it was the motorbike service?’ Patterson asked over my shoulder as we left Brixton. ‘You were convinced that was where the leak was from the start. Why?’

  ‘Because that’s the way I would have done it, Tel-boy.’

  I dropped Patterson back at the PKB office so he could pick up his BMW and, though he didn’t say it, I think he was glad he’d left it behind. At least he had something to drive home in.

  I made it back to Stuart Street just before 8.00. I needed a shower and a change of clothes, and if I was meeting Werewolf and Sorrel in Vecchio Reccione’s it was wisest to leave Armstrong behind.

  Besides, there were my domestic duties to perform, such as getting updated on Salome’s condition from Lisabeth at mission control, and feeding Springsteen.

  Lisabeth was out of her flat before I’d closed the front door behind me.

  ‘Frank’s been back but he’s gone again,’ she sa
id, quivering with importance. ‘Salome’s had her operation but there’s no change in her condition which is a good sign rather than a bad one ...’

  ‘Stable!’ Fenella shouted from inside their flat. ‘Don’t forget to tell him she’s stable.’

  ‘Thank you, Binky,’ Lisabeth said, in a voice that would have sliced vegetables. ‘Don’t have a dog and bark yourself, dearest. Concentrate on your macramé.’

  She said it the way judges passed sentence at Nuremberg.

  ‘Salome’s condition is described as stable. We’ll know more tomorrow night.’

  I was almost up the stairs level with her by this time. ‘How’s Frank taking it?’ I asked.

  ‘Quietly,’ said Lisabeth. ‘Very restrained. He’s gone back to spend the night near the hospital.’

  I have to admit I was relieved. I dread having to go through the sympathetic ear act, even when it’s merited. I’m no good at it, and I hate doing things I’m no good at.

  ‘Anything he wants doing?’

  ‘No, I don’t think so.’ Lisabeth frowned for a second. ‘Oh – he did say to tell you he’d fed Springsteen. In case you were late back.’

  ‘He didn’t have to do that,’ I said, squeezing past her and on to the next flight of stairs to my flat. Then I did a double take.

  ‘How did he get into my place to get the cat food?’

  ‘He didn’t. He microwaved some steak out of the freezer. The poor little beast ...’ And this from someone who firmly believed all cats had 666 tattooed on them somewhere under their fur! ‘Just like Salome does when you’re out.’

  I found Springsteen lying in the middle of my bed. He didn’t look up when I entered the bedroom, he just put a paw on the end of the sirloin steak he was chewing to make sure I didn’t grab it.

  I shook my head at him in disgust.

  ‘You’re an animal,’ I said.

  Chapter Nine

  ‘You’re an animal!’ Sorrel shrieked in delight. Then she grabbed a handful of ice cubes from a nearby wine cooler and stuffed them down the front of her partner’s trousers. She stood back and acknowledged the applause of the crowd as the lights came on again and we were able to concentrate on our dessert.

  I suppose I’d better explain. If you want an Italian restaurant where the waiters bring you menus instead of shouting at you, where they leave the lights on instead of turning them off every 20 minutes, and where they make you get up and dance before they’ll turn them on again, then don’t try the Vecchio Reccione, however convenient it is for Stringfellows.

  I only eat at the Vetch-Retch these days when someone else is paying, which is much the same as saying when England wins at cricket. However, this was on PKB’s Amex card, the pasta had been delicious, the Frascati had flowed, the zabaglione was on its way and all was right with the world. Though I couldn’t go so far as to say that service was included, as all the waiters seemed interested in was getting the lights off so they could dance with Sorrel. Little Gino, whose ambition had always been to be taller than four foot ten, had got a little too interested when it was his turn, and even in the candlelight we could all see that he’d deliberately got his charm bracelet tangled in one of Sorrel’s suspenders. The miniature St Christopher on it had a brief treat before Sorrel cooled him off in no uncertain terms.

  The blue-rinsed grandmother from Iowa – ‘just passing through Lunnun to catch a few shows’ (like anglers collect trout) – I had drawn as a dancing partner clapped louder than anybody.

  ‘I’ve always wanted to do something like that,’ she confided to me. Then to herself, she said: ‘Never got the excuse.’

  I thanked her for the dance, and Werewolf bowed deeply to her ‘girlfriend’ (Oxnard, California), which made her day, as they say in those parts.

  Back at our table with the promise of at least a half-hour’s respite while Gino dried his trousers, I brought Sorrel and Werewolf up to date.

  ‘Why are you telling us all this?’ asked Sorrel. She was direct, I’ll give her that.

  ‘Because I thought it was more interesting than the weather, the rattle on Armstrong’s exhaust pipe, the situation in the Lebanon, additives in food, the price of ...’

  ‘What do you want us to do?’ asked Werewolf, scraping the last of the zabaglione out of his glass.

  ‘There you are,’ I said to Sorrel. ‘He understands every word I say.’

  ‘So what’s the deal?’ She raised her spoon to her mouth then sent her tongue out to meet it.

  I averted my eyes.

  ‘All you have to do, Sorrel dear, is fill me in on the gossip about Simon Cawthorne. You, Rambo, come and play soldiers with me down on Jollity Farm. Cawthorne calls it the Exhilarator. It’s in Kent; one of these paintball guns and combat trousers action games for bored executives. They run over cross-country courses and pay through the nose for it. In fact, they pay for the sort of thing they used to skive out of when they were at school.’

  ‘I nivver did games at school,’ mused Werewolf.

  ‘Lack of coordination,’ Sorrel said to me.

  ‘Bad attitude?’ I asked.

  ‘Yeah, that’s right,’ said Werewolf, genuinely surprised. ‘How did you know? That’s exactly what the priest put on my report. Not just for games either, come to think of it. Still, the pompous bugger wrote it in Latin, so my Dad never understood. Thank God. So when do we go yomping over south-east England?’

  ‘Tomorrow if I can fix it, Wednesday if not.’

  ‘Today Kent, tomorrow the world!’

  ‘Somebody must have seen that before now,’ sighed Sorrel. Then, seriously: ‘The Exhilarator can be rough, you know. I’ve played it.’

  Werewolf and I looked suitably impressed.

  ‘They don’t like women there,’ she offered, playing with the froth on her coffee with a fingertip. I found it disturbingly moving. ‘And they don’t make concessions, and it’s not just air pistols firing paint blobules. They have the whole works – thunderflashes, booby-traps, smoke grenades, the lot. That’s why he charges top whack and it’s a nice little earner for him.’

  ‘If it’s such a nice little earner, why does he go round prying into other people’s mail?’ asked Werewolf.

  ‘Nice little earners are even nicer when they grow into big earners,’ said Sorrel philosophically.

  ‘Is he greedy?’

  ‘Greed is everything in the City.’

  I’d heard that before.

  ‘What exactly is Cawthorne? Somebody told me something like he was “of the City” but not “in it.” Does that make sense?’

  ‘That’s very astute.’ She nodded. ‘Sums him up nicely. He was a real bright boy in the pre-Big Bang “golden hello” stakes. Built himself a shit-hot reputation and moved firms three, maybe four times, before the Bang. You’ve got to remember that at the time, deregulation was looked on as an open cash-register. The firms with the best teams – analysts, jobbers, corporate lawyers, financial PR men, whatever – those were the firms that were going to set the going rate and get it. And for a while – the Golden Time – they hired anybody, giving six-figure “golden hellos” to anyone willing to break a contract. At one point, I think Cawthorne was actually getting paid by three brokering houses.

  ‘Anyway, soon after Big Bang, things settle down and eventually start to tighten up.’

  She flicked a finger at her empty glass and Werewolf added some more white wine.

  ‘The writing on the wall for the Yuppies, eh?’ he asked her.

  ‘You could say that, but few saw it. The spray-painting on the wall came with the big double M in ‘87 – Meltdown in the Market, which started on Wall Street – but some of the bigger houses and the banks were already letting people go–’

  ‘I love that,’ I said, ‘“Letting people go.” I have this vision of a Biblical stockbroker standing in the Red Sea shouting “Let my people g
o.”‘

  ‘It was a bit like that,’ Sorrel said, smiling. ‘I know one jobber who spent his twentieth birthday in the slammer for throwing his VDU through a fifth-floor window onto the street.’

  Werewolf whistled low and slow. ‘Did it hit anybody?’

  ‘Worse than that. It bounced off the roof of another jobber’s Porsche. He got bound over to keep the peace for punching the guy who got fired.’

  ‘Was Cawthorne let go?’ I asked.

  Sorrel shook her head, and her hair stayed wondrously in place. I realised that a haircut like that was no Saturday-morning trim and blow-dry. Come to think of it, the little party frock number she was wearing (and I’m so glad hemlines are on the up) didn’t come from Oxfam either.

  ‘No. He jumped, but only just before he was pushed. He was dealing himself in too much. It becomes obvious, even to the Stock Exchange. You could say he was an insider trader before it became fashionable. Nothing was ever proved, of course. That was still before people went to chokey for dodgy dealings, but he soured his own patch. The DTI – the Department of Trade and Industry – started to check up on one or two deals, and at the first whiff of them he was away on his toes. Couldn’t get a job in the City scooping dog poop nowadays.’

  ‘So how does he earn his daily?’ Werewolf leaned over and pinched a Sweet Afton from the packet on the table in front of me. He rolled it between two fingers and tapped it on a thumbnail and generally fondled it, as I knew he would for a good five minutes before lighting it.

  Sorrel watched him for a few seconds, then snatched it out of his hands and stuck it in her mouth. Two waiters clashed wrists getting a light to her. She blew smoke out, coughed, and handed him the cigarette, and he took it without a word. She’d known him less than a week and was already on to his annoying habits.

  ‘He panders to people’s whims,’ she said pointedly, still looking at Werewolf. Then to me, as if she heard my brain going click-whirr. ‘No, not drugs. I don’t think he deals. It’s the other things, like the Exhilarator – a playground for young executives. And he has a small ticket business, you know, last-minute box at the opera or hospitality suites at Wembley for a Springsteen concert, or Centre Court at Wimbledon, that sort of thing. You pay, of course, but that’s rarely a problem for his clientele. And there’s his latest venture – Le Tube.’