Angel Touch

by Mike Ripley

  ‘You get several colleagues and the latest British Telecom touch dial screen technology with all the market-makers’ numbers pre-programmed, and you ring ‘em up at exactly the same time. If you’ve spare people or even just another pair of hands, you ring their second numbers as well just to block the lines, and it never hurts to put a few idiot inquiries through to the dealing house main switchboard.’

  ‘So you stop the market-makers dealing with each other.’

  ‘Exactly. I think I will, if you don’t mind.’ McInnes reached out and took one of Werewolf’s Sweet Afton. He lit it with the air of a man considering big moves in the Irish tobacco market.

  I noticed Sorrel’s expression. Her eyes could not have bulged further if Werewolf had told her he only wanted her for her mind.

  ‘I’ve never seen you smoke before, Daddy. What’s this?’

  McInnes blushed slightly. ‘I only indulge on special occasions, darling.’

  ‘It’s my influence, I’m afraid,’ said Werewolf, straight-faced. ‘The last time I went to Confession, the priest called for a packet of green Rizlas and an ounce of Lebanese Gold.’

  ‘The last time you went to Confession,’ I stirred it, ‘they still allowed smoking on the underground.’

  ‘Really?’ said Sorrel, joining in wide-eyed. ‘I’ve read about that.’

  ‘The point,’ said McInnes, drawing the meeting to order, ‘is that there is little change in basic share prices, unless a real story hits the wires. Of course, it doesn’t have to be true. It can cover any number of things. Expectation of good results, mergers, a takeover of a competitor or by one, changes in top management, rumour, innuendo, boredom among the market-makers or sheer bloody-mindedness.’

  ‘So speculation pushes up the price based on rumour. Is that what you’re saying?’ I asked to give him a lead.

  ‘Of course, though I think Karl Marx put it better.’

  ‘He was more long-winded,’ I conceded.

  ‘Agreed. But you see now why Salome’s job is vital. The backroom analysts provide “the story –” or they refute someone else’s story – on which the jobbers make a market. They need to be able to convince the big players – the pension fund managers, the insurance companies ...’

  ‘The institutionals,’ I offered.

  ‘... the institutionals, that’s right. They have to be persuaded to buy a stock, or indeed, sell it. If Cawthorne has been accessing the research material of somebody like PKB – and who knows who else? – then he knows in advance, or can at least have a damn good guess, which way the market-makers are going to go.

  ‘So, if you get wind of a rumour from Salome on, say, Bloggs International, which says that tomorrow they’re going to be taken over on very generous cash terms, then you buy as much Bloggs stock as you can. If money or credit is no problem, you buy as many as there are on the market, and there is always a market unless the stock is suspended.’

  McInnes put out his cigarette and looked at his daughter. ‘Is there any coffee, petal?’

  ‘Only if you promise not to talk Man’s Talk when I’m in the kitchen making gagging noises so that you think I’ve got an Espresso machine,’ said Sorrel, eyeing him suspiciously.

  ‘Promise. And I’ve got the message. One coffee-machine added to the birthday list.’

  ‘Oh Daddy!’

  She flushed and stamped into the kitchen.

  ‘It never fails,’ said McInnes quietly.

  Werewolf looked puzzled.

  ‘It always pays to spoil the child, if female, but not in front of her friends. Unless you want her out of the way,’ I explained.

  Werewolf mouthed an innocent O. Well, about as innocent as he was capable of. He could make Satan standing at the Gates of Hell shouting ‘Come on down!’ look innocent.

  ‘She’ll expect us to be plotting among ourselves, then,’ he said.

  ‘So let’s do it,’ said McInnes, putting his elbows on the table. ‘What did you have in mind?’

  ‘You said that as if you have something in mind.’ It was my turn to narrow my eyes. I realised that was how people got migraines.

  ‘I might have, but you go first.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘I’m paying for the booze.’

  ‘Fair enough. Francis and I –’ Werewolf looked at his fingernails; anything to avoid my smug look – ‘are going down to Kent tomorrow to do the Exhilarator. Or rather, Francis is actually going to play soldiers, I’m going to be sneaking around the place to see what I can see and maybe take a few incriminating photos with my trusty Box Brownie.’

  ‘Of what?’ McInnes came back sharpish.

  ‘First off,’ I said, thinking as I spoke, ‘I’m looking for a four-by-four. A four-wheel drive vehicle of some sort with a cow-catcher fitted to the front. Hopefully, it will be a cow-catcher with some paint missing, or even better, a cow-catcher with smears of paint on it that belong to a VW Golf of my acquaintance. Then there’s a fax machine to check out – the other end of the Cawthorne conduit.’

  ‘That’s good, I like that,’ said McInnes.

  ‘And if what you’ve said is kosher, then somewhere there’ll be a bank of phones for him to do his dirty dealing on. I’ve got Tel – Terry – Patterson lined up at PKB to send a hand delivery via Airborne at eleven-thirty am tomorrow, when we’ll be there to see how it’s received.’

  ‘It sounds as if you will,’ said Werewolf, looking around for something else to drink. ‘It looks like I’ll be doing my famous General Custer impersonation. You haven’t mentioned any of this up till now.’

  ‘A good general only briefs his troops the morning of the battle. Before the pubs open.’

  ‘Rule of Life?’ asked Werewolf, out of the corner of his beard.

  ‘It will be.’

  If it worked.

  ‘Then what?’ McInnes asked anxiously, one eye on the kitchen door.

  ‘Then I thought we’d set up the nice Mr Sorley and his mobile fax van and photograph him in the act of reading other people’s mail.’

  I didn’t think that was bad, considering I’d just thought of it.

  ‘Then what?’ He was beginning to irritate me.

  ‘Then we threaten to hand over the negatives to the City Squad or the Stock Exchange or its watchdog committee – it’s bound to have one. I don’t think for a minute we’ll have to.’

  ‘And you think Cawthorne will just sit back and take this?’

  ‘He’ll have to.’

  Werewolf offered McInnes another cigarette and said: ‘Won’t he?’

  McInnes shook his head slowly. ‘You’re not hitting him where it hurts.’

  ‘We’re showing up his operation so he’ll never be able to use it again.’

  ‘He’ll think of another one.’

  ‘He won’t like being bested by friends of a black lady,’ said Werewolf seriously.

  ‘You’re right there,’ said McInnes ruefully. ‘He was always a bit twisted that way. Flirted with the National Front at one time.’

  ‘So we hurt his pride,’ I said, hoping that clinched what was sounding to be a very skimpy argument.

  ‘But you’re still not hitting him where it really hurts.’

  ‘In the wallet?’ suggested Werewolf.

  ‘Exactly,’ said McInnes with the sort of grin Colonel Sanders gave when he saw a ‘Free Range Eggs’ sign. ‘And I think I can help you there.’

  He punched Werewolf gently on the shoulder.

  Oh God, he was warming to him.

  After coffee, Werewolf offered to wash up. Sorrel, fearing for her crockery, offered to help him. I don’t think she was fooled for a minute by Werewolf’s professional decoy act, but she went along with it. After five minutes of running water, scraping plates and chinking glass type noises, it went very quiet in the kitchen, but I don’t think her old man n
oticed. Not even that low humming sound, which I knew sure as hell wasn’t the thermostat on the fridge. If the kitchen had had a serving hatch, I could have scared the living daylights out of them. No, scrub that. Knowing Werewolf, he would have sold tickets.

  McInnes was keen to press his thoughts on me.

  ‘You need to turn the tables on Cawthorne if you really want to stitch him up.’

  ‘You mean go for the jugular – his bank balance?’

  ‘Correct. What we need is a terminal with a thin spread.’ He jabbed a finger into the table-top to emphasise his point.

  I poured myself some more coffee from the jug Sorrel had left on the table. I felt I needed a drink, but was determined to keep a clear head for the next day.

  ‘Could I have that in English, please?’ I asked him.

  He took a deep breath. ‘We need a company that has come to the end of its natural life. A “terminal.” Its products are no longer in demand, it hasn’t the capital or the rating to expand or diversify; its management is moribund. The company is, shall we say, clapped-out.’

  ‘Knackered,’ I offered.

  ‘Flushed down the pan,’ he countered.

  ‘Belly up and shat upon.’

  ‘Buggered.’

  I thought for a moment. ‘I’ll see your “buggered” and raise you a “shagged out.”‘

  ‘You get the picture,’ he said, not wanting to play any more. After all, this was business.

  ‘So we find a terminally sick company with – what was it?’

  ‘A thin spread – of shares.’ He saw I was little wiser and slowed his breathing down. ‘A company where only a few outside interests own the shares. Say, a family where 55 percent of shares are owned by family members and the rest are spread between maybe ten or 12 others, either institutionals or individual punters. It could be a company where only two or three brokers can make markets in the shares.’

  ‘Something tells me you have one in mind,’ I said shrewdly.

  ‘I might have.’

  ‘And what do we do with it?’

  ‘We do nothing, except make sure that it is drawn to friend Cawthorne’s attention.’

  ‘For entirely the wrong reasons, of course.’

  ‘That depends on your point of view.’

  ‘And Cawthorne buys loadsashares and ends up with a bum company.’

  ‘And he can’t complain to anyone, because he would have to admit what made him buy the shares.’

  ‘A confidential report of some kind that only PKB customers should have seen.’

  ‘Exactly. Up the garden path good and proper – if you can fix it with PKB, that is.’

  I almost felt sorry for Cawthorne, and I must have shown it.

  ‘Don’t worry, Cawthorne deserves everything that’s coming to him,’ said McInnes in a tone I bet he’d never used on Sorrel.

  I agreed with his sentiment, of course. Though in view of what eventually happened, I did regret thinking that.

  But not enough to lose sleep.

  Chapter Eleven

  ‘I just do not believe it,’ said Werewolf. ‘This car has adjustable thigh supports. I simply cannot go another mile until my thighs are suitably adjusted.’

  ‘And supported,’ I said. ‘Don’t forget that.’

  ‘Can it massage them as well?’

  ‘I’ll ask the onboard computer. No, sorry, massager is an optional extra. Obviously Patterson couldn’t run to that.’

  ‘Mean bastard. What’s his taste in music?’

  Werewolf had been reading the owner’s handbook of Patterson’s BMW and experimenting with the passenger seat, having achieved what seemed like a dozen different positions before we got south of the river. He was in a filthy mood, first because I’d suggested he sleep on my floor instead of at Sorrel’s so we could get an early start, then because I’d made him wear a suit and tie to go with our Yuppie cover (and because I’d insisted on the shirt as well). Finally, I’d won the toss and got to drive the Bob Marley down to Kent. His cornflakes had probably gone soggy at breakfast too.

  Tel’s BMW was one of the new Series 3, two-door jobs. After years of bullnosing Armstrong through the London traffic, it was an awesome driving experience. I felt like Von Richtofen joyriding Concorde for a day.

  Werewolf had one foot on the dashboard and was sorting through Tel’s selection of tapes, grunting disapproval at most of the titles.

  ‘Find anything worth damaging the earholes with?’ I asked, while cutting up a British Telecom van – rather niftily I thought.

  ‘Nah, what you’d expect. Mostly dead hedgehog.’

  Dead hedgehog – middle-of-the road music – was one of Werewolf’s lowest classifications of taste.

  ‘I never thought he’d be into acid house, but there must be something.’

  Acid house was all the rage; multi-rhythmed electronic stuff popular on the disco circuit but comprehensible only when taken with the designer drugs now supplied as openly as condoms in some of the smarter venues.

  ‘There’s an old Huey Lewis.’

  ‘Somebody must’ve left it by mistake. Stick it on.’

  Werewolf proceeded to try and blow all four stereo speakers, and by the time he had the volume where he wanted it, and was playing along on his air guitar, we were through Sidcup and heading for the motorway.

  ‘Tell me again, what’s my name?’ he asked between tracks.

  ‘Chaney. Don’t look at me like that, it was the best I could do on the spur of the moment.’

  ‘First name?’

  ‘Up to you.’

  ‘Jerome G Chaney,’ he mused.

  ‘What does the G stand for?’ I asked, knowing I shouldn’t.

  ‘Gobsmacked – at having such a daft name. What’s yours?’

  ‘Roylance Maclean. I know it is, because that’s what it says on my Amex card.’

  ‘I’m surprised that hasn’t self-destructed after the damage you gave it yesterday. Remember, he who ...’;

  ‘... acetates is lost.’ We finished together. The old ones are the best.

  ‘How did they get Roylance Maclean?’

  ‘You know how people screw up my name. I don’t know why they do, but they just can’t accept it.’

  ‘That’s okay, Butch.’ He grinned.

  ‘Butch?’

  ‘You be Butch Cassidy and I’ll be the Sundance Kid.’

  ‘Fair enough.’

  I didn’t mind. I’m still convinced they got away at the end of the movie. Mind you, I’ve never met anyone else who is.

  I eased the BMW off the M20 at Wrotham so that by the time we got to the A227 our speed was almost legal. At Blackberry Hill, I slowed down and explained to Werewolf how I guessed that Salome, coming the other way, down the hill, had been bumped into space. The yellow and black police barrier was still there as a warning to other drivers coming over the crest of the hill.

  Over the top, the road curved around to the left, and a roadside milestone said it was two miles to Broughton Street. I told Werewolf my theory of the track leading from Blackberry Hill to Pegasus Farm, roughly parallel to us but the other side of the Down. He unfolded the map I’d brought and agreed with me.

  ‘The place marked “Fisher’s Farm”; you reckon that’s it?’

  ‘Yep – and there you are.’

  Ahead, on a right-hand bend, was the farm, but it had been a long time since a chicken had shat in that yard.

  A discreet wooden sign said: ‘EXHILARATOR ACTION COURSE – APPOINTMENT ONLY – ALL VISITORS REPORT TO HEADQUARTERS.’ There was a white wooden-arrow sign below it, pointing to the farmhouse, and that had ‘HQ’ stencilled on it in Ministry of Defence style.

  I pulled into the farmyard and bounced the BMW over the cobbles to where half a dozen cars were parked in front of the farmhouse, a long, low ston
e building probably about a century old. Its oak front door was propped open by what looked like a Howitzer shell, and there was another arrow sign saying ‘HQ’ hung over it, pointing inside.

  I parked the BMW by reversing between a Mercedes and a sleek Volvo 410 until I was pointing directly towards the yard entrance (Rule No 277). Bringing the Bob Marley had been a good idea; there wasn’t a cheaper car in the yard, it seemed, except maybe the white Vauxhall Astra with the shirt-button wheels, a car Duncan the Drunken, in a rare lucid moment, had described as a jet-propelled tennis shoe. I bet myself that was Sorley’s, as I’d had him pegged as the boy racer type and I was glad the insurance companies were uprating them. Next to it was a red Porsche 944 with a bumper sticker that read: ‘My other car’s a Porsche as well.’ How gross. That one I wanted to be Cawthorne’s.

  We dismounted from the BMW and Werewolf slipped on a pair of gold-rimmed shades, which reminded me to put on the plain glass Yuppie specs I’d borrowed from Fly. I thought we both looked pretty good: rich enough to have all the trappings, oiky enough to want to come on an Action Man course. I unloaded our holdalls from the boot. Mine advertised Marlboro; Werewolf’s had a discreet gold plate in one corner saying Mappin & Webb. I wondered if Sorrel had missed it yet.

  The holdalls contained only towels, shampoo and the ‘action footwear’ we’d bought yesterday. Except mine, that is. I’d stuffed an Olympus Trip camera into one of my Reeboks and some spare film into the other. I was using the very fast, 12-shot per roll film that estate agents use to make houses look good in the rain. If you didn’t mind a grainy look, you could slam it through any of the while-u-wait colour processing shops and get reasonable black-and-white prints in an hour. Proper black-and-white processing takes weeks these days, unless you have your own darkroom, and sometimes the photokiosks think they’ve cocked it up when the pictures come out sepia, and so they don’t charge.

  As I locked the BMW, Werewolf turned slowly through a circle, scanning the farm’s outbuildings with his shades. I asked him what was the matter.

  ‘Just checking for snipers,’ he answered, and for a second or two he had me doing it as well.