by Mike Ripley
Another one of the young Cheryls appeared with a saucer full of coins from behind a potted plant big enough to hold a squad of Japanese who didn’t know the war was over.
‘Your change, madam,’ she said as she’d been rehearsed, and waited, poised.
Jo looked up at her and smiled. As she did so, I noticed how cleverly her hairdresser had flecked silver highlights in among the mousey blonde roots. She waved the change away as if blessing a church offerings plate, then turned back to me.
‘That was a nice speech and probably more than you’ve ever said to me before put together. It makes it more difficult for me, but I need to ask a favour.’
(Rule of Life No 477: when a woman admits it’s difficult to ask for something, leave immediately.)
‘Go ahead, it costs nothing to ask.’ Why don’t I listen to myself?
‘I’ve had something stolen and I need it back and quickly.’
‘Do you know who?’
‘Yes, but I don’t know where she is. Well, not now.’
‘She?’
‘Carol. Carol Flaxman. She was a friend of mine.’
‘Until when?’
‘Last night.’
‘She’s the one you were with at the club?’
‘Yes,’ she said quietly, giving me an up-from-under innocent surprise look that didn’t quite work now she’d had her fringe chopped. ‘Did you see her?’
‘Only from the stage. You’d both gone by the time I came looking for you.’
She glanced down into her coffee. ‘I’m flattered you looked.’
‘I’m flattered you came to see me play.’ I gave her a flash of my standard charm smile but pulled the plug on it when she said, with appalling honesty:
‘Oh, we didn’t come to see you. I didn’t even know you’d be there. We came to see the band –’
‘Peking.’
‘Yeah, Peking. It was Carol’s idea, because she knows the girl who plays the drums. That’s why I thought you could help, if you knew her too.’
I decided to join her in a cigarette, though these days I tried to hold back until nightfall.
‘I don’t follow. You think this Carol has gone to the drummer’s pad?’ She nodded. ‘Then I don’t see the problem. I can get you a phone number at least, if not an address. We can go round there and see her ...’
‘No, I don’t want to see her again. Ever. That’s what I want you to do. I’ll pay you if you help me.’
‘Help you do what, exactly? No, wait.’ She was about to speak, but I reached out and touched her knee, and felt her flinch. ‘Just who is this Carol person and what has she stolen?’
Jo took a deep breath and exhaled slowly the way people are taught to by psychiatrists. It’s not a bad way to ease the whirling pits in the stomach when the stress takes over. Neat gin’s good too.
‘I met Carol at university four – no, five – years ago. She was heavily into women’s politics; still is. She drops in and out, taking a year off from her course, then going back and then going abroad for a year or something. I don’t think she’s very serious about it. In fact, she’s totally irresponsible about most things.’
I’d never even met Carol but I was beginning to warm to her.
‘She’s been staying with me for the last two weeks. Oh, we always kept in touch, although she usually called to borrow money or clothes or when she was bumming around London and needed a bath or a bed. Anyway, this time she stayed longer than usual and it got a little tense towards the end. Last night, we got on each other’s nerves worse than usual and I said something to the effect that I wished she’d piss off out of my lifestyle if all she wanted to do was bitch about it.’
‘And you were disappointed when she did just that?’
Jo stared down at her electric-blue shoes and smiled at them.
‘Well, I was surprised, I’ll say that. She actually went and did it after threatening to at least a dozen times.’
‘When did you find out?’
‘About two in the morning. I couldn’t sleep and thought I’d make a pot of tea, maybe offer Carol some … you know … peace offering. And there she was – gone. Along with a leather jacket, a bottle of vodka, my credit cards, some make-up and about 30 quid in cash.’
‘And you want me to get your make-up back, huh?’
‘There was also an emerald pendant. It was the only piece of jewellery she took but, true to form, she took the one thing that was most likely to hurt me.’
‘Was it valuable?’
‘About two and a half thousand pounds.’
‘Is it insured?’
‘No.’ She shook her head slowly.
‘Do you think this … Carol … will try and hock it?’
‘No.’ She was staring at her shoes again. ‘Carol has no real idea about how much things are worth. Money and property mean nothing to her.’
‘She took your credit cards and 30 quid,’ I reminded her.
‘The credit cards I’ve reported lost already, though I’ll bet she’s flushed them down the loo out of spite. I’ll be surprised if she tried to use them. The cash will keep her in drinks and smokes for a couple of days, and good luck to her. It’s only the pendant I want back. I must have it back – for sentimental reasons – and I don’t care what happens to Carol.’
‘That’s not true, or you’d have called the cops.’ She nodded silently. ‘So why didn’t you?’
‘She’s got what she calls “previous”; a couple of suspended sentences for shoplifting and a conviction for assault.’
‘Assault?’ I was going off Carol; rapidly.
‘On a police horse during a student union demonstration.’
‘Well, she could hardly expect a fair trial after that,’ I said, not kidding. Let’s face it, there are some crimes no-one should have to face the animal-loving British jury with.
‘I don’t want the police involved; well, not by me. If she brings them herself, that’s her lookout. I don’t want anything to do with her any more. I just want my pendant back.’ For a second, her bottom lip jutted like a child’s.
‘Okay, I can relate to that, but why me?’
I mean, this wasn’t my normal line of work, but why worry? She’d as good as said there would be a few quid in it.
‘Because I saw you last night and because I couldn’t think of any other single person to turn to. Have you ever been in that situation? Having nobody, nobody at all to go to? Jesus Christ, I couldn’t tell my husband, could I? He gave me the fucking pendant.’
It was time to worry.
Of course, looking back, it was time to say goodbye, walk out of there and get on the first available Greenpeace boat heading for New Zealand. It would have been safer.
She didn’t tell me much more – then. Yes, she did have a husband, and why should I be so shocked? (I couldn’t really think why I should be either, except on the old hurt pride angle. I mean to say, the lover is always the last to know, isn’t he?) Hubby was older, much older, than her and he was away a lot. Didn’t I just know. He had splashed out on the emerald pendant for her 21st birthday and she had another birthday coming up. He would expect her to wear it then, and if he knew Carol had half-inched it, he would have the law on her without a second thought. It was worth ten percent – £250 – to her to have it back within a fortnight. Hubby would never twig it had gone walkies.
As I steered Armstrong back to Limehouse to pick up Frank’s sander, I did wonder why Jo had refused to leave Champnas with me even though they seemed to have finished tweaking her hair into shape. Then I thought of 250 reasons why finding the girl drummer from Peking and then Carol and then the pendant would be a piece of cake. But just in case this Carol person mistook me for a police horse, it might be an idea to take Dod’s 16 stone along for moral support.
Which made me think of where I’d heard thi
s scenario before, the having the jewels back before the damsel in distress was put into a compromising position. Of course, it was the Queen’s Diamonds in The Three Musketeers.
Shit. There were four of them on that job.
Chapter Four
Lloyd Allen was my first connection, as he was supposed to be Peking’s manager, or so Bill Stubbly had said.
I had thought about ringing Bill, but he was such an old woman I just couldn’t face it. Lloyd would deal straight with me and he owed me a favour or two, mostly to do with unofficial deliveries of Red Stripe lager to unlicensed West Indian drinking dens that no one except the police, BBC documentary film crews and the entire West Indian community knew about.
Trying to track Lloyd down by night, unless you had a homing device on him, would be impossible, but I knew he shared an office in Curtain Road that I could try in the morning. So for the rest of that evening, I let Frank and Salome treat me to an additive-free, meatless and fairly tasteless meal at a vegan wine bar they’d discovered in Southwark. Fortunately, Frank was in a mood to impress and lashed out on more white Bordeaux than he would have normally. With both of them watching their waistlines, I had to do the decent thing and drink most of it, and while I have a pretty good head for white wine (though not, oddly, for red, which is why I prefer red), I have to admit that Armstrong weaved slightly as we turned into Stuart Street and liberated the parking space nearest to No 9.
I was on a first-back-puts-the-coffee-on promise, so I was fiddling with filter papers when there was a knock on the flat door and I yelled, ‘It’s open.’
To my surprise, it was Lisabeth from the flat below. I’ve always maintained that Lisabeth stopped buying clothes in 1974. In fact, she’s probably never bought anything except at jumble sales since then and lives in a late-hippie timewarp. I’ve even known her to wear bells when she’s being going somewhere special, though that’s rare. I think she had been a secretary somewhere along the line, but no-one seemed to know much about her. She took in typing for a living, rarely leaving the house and getting ‘Binky’ to run her errands. Maybe she was self-conscious about her size, but I don’t see why she should be. Sea-lions aren’t.
‘Hello, Angel, glad I caught you.’
When the day comes when Lisabeth catches you, God help you.
‘Hi. I’m just brewing up for Frank and Sal. Do you fancy a cup?’
‘No, thanks, not stopping, wanted a favour.’ I’d never noticed how talking to a male upset Lisabeth’s speech pattern. ‘Next week.’
‘If it is in my power, my dear, you have but to command.’ That was gallant enough and without double entendres. You have to be careful with Lisabeth. Frank Bruno would have to be careful with Lisabeth.
‘I want to move in here for a few days,’ she said, looking me straight in the eyes.
I wasn’t shocked. I’ve been around, it’s happened before. But Lisabeth? I decided I could pick up the coffee later.
‘It’s because of Bin … Fenella.’
‘You’ve had a fight?’ I must have sounded incredulous, but the thought of Fenella standing up to this Amazon was just that.
‘Good God no!’ Lisabeth roared. ‘Nothing like that. It’s her parents, they’re coming up from Rye for a few days and they … they don’t know about me … us.’
I looked down at the floor as if considering it heavily.
‘Are you telling me that we are really going to have the Binkworthys of Rye in this house – this very house?’
Lisabeth’s upper lip began to curl. She was not the best person to try and wind-up.
‘I’m sure we can work something out,’ I said quickly. ‘But you’ll have to be nice to Springsteen.’
‘It’s a deal.’ She smiled and turned on her heel. Without looking back she said: ‘Do you mind him peeing in your coffee?’
Lloyd shared an office with a small record-sleeve-design company called Boot-In Inc. On the top floor of what seemed to be an otherwise deserted four-storey building in Curtain Road on the other side of the railway tracks that feed Liverpool Street station. Having cruised the area to find it, I could understand why Boot-In Inc had invested in a triple lock on their office door and a padlock and hasp big enough to have been nicked from Windsor Castle on the street door. Somebody was opening up as I arrived just after 10.00 am; the sort of office hours that could tempt me back into the rat race.
It was a white guy with long, black hair and a short, thick beard. He was taller and broader than me and running to the sort of fat that comes from too many hamburgers. He was carrying a parcel under one arm while struggling with the padlock. He was wearing white Kickers, white Levi’s and a green nylon bomber jacket with ‘Porsche’ embroidered over the left tit. There was a six-year-old Hillman Avenger parked at the kerb.
We recognised each other. Maybe we’d gatecrashed the same party once.
‘Angel, isn’t it?’ he said.
‘Yeah. I’m looking for Lloyd. It’s Danny, isn’t it? Danny Boot.’
‘If you’re a friend of Lloyd’s, it’s Mr Boot to you.’ He did not smile when he said it. I remembered that about him. He never smiled.
‘Give me a hand and you can come on up. Lloyd checks in about 11.00.’ He gave me the parcel to hold while he worked on the padlock, and then added: ‘Sometimes.’
The parcel was bulky but not heavy and about 18 inches square. It was wrapped in strong, brown paper and had a label with Boot’s name on it and underneath simply: ‘London Heathrow’. He got the front door open and led the way up a narrow flight of uncarpeted stairs, leaving me to carry the parcel.
‘If this is prime-cut Colombian snow and the Drugs Squad are photographing us from that Avenger, I’ll never forgive you.’
Boot snorted and stared up the second flight.
‘They’re videos, if you really must know.’
‘Oh, I must, I must,’ I smarmed.
‘Okay. They’re tapes of this week’s MTV broadcasts from the States, flown in this morning. I’ve just collected them from Thiefrow. I get them sent by door-to-door courier.’ He looked at me as if I’d just come up from the country and the mud hadn’t dried on my wellies. ‘All the airlines do it, you know. It costs about 30 quid and the stuff comes as cabin baggage with one of the hostesses. It’s rarely checked by Customs, and if the plane gets here, so does your parcel. All dead straight, no naughties involved, perfectly legal. And anyway, the clapped-out old Avenger’s mine.’
‘What about taping the shows?’
‘I didn’t, did I? It was a guy over there did that. Of course, when I copy them and sell them up West in all the poseur café-bars, that’s illegal. Oh yes.’
He would go far, would Boot. And his friends could always see him on visiting days.
Boot-In Inc, up another flight of stairs and through the triple-lock door, was one large, open-plan office containing half-a-dozen desks, several designer’s easels, a couple of typewriters and a variety of video-recorders, amps, decks, tape-decks and speakers all spread carelessly across a red metal shelving unit that still had its Habitat price tag on. The office hadn’t yet got to the word-processor and rented potted plants stage, but it would. Still, there was a good five grand’s worth of gear there if you counted the mobile phones I also spotted. Not that it was really any of my business, of course, but it probably was insured ...
There was also a coffee machine, which Boot ordered me to crank into action while he started making calls on one, and sometimes two, of the mobile phones. I put him down as a phonoholic – he probably never had one as a child – for all he did while I was there was ring people. He didn’t say much to them after ‘Hello,’ he just grunted a lot.
Staff drifted in and sat down at various workstations, though not many of them made any obvious effort to work. Mostly they found a spare phone and rang people up. Their mothers, their bookmakers, even a bank manager or two. One even r
ang the speaking clock just to feel part of the crowd. Maybe Boot had bought into Telecom shares.
Being the only one not phoning anybody, I was the only one who heard Lloyd, though it was a good five minutes before I saw him.
I didn’t identify the music until he was probably half-way up the stairs, and even then I had to listen carefully before plumping for ‘Riverside Stomp’, a Johnny Dankworth (sorry, John Dankworth) piece from a British B picture called The Criminal. (Directed by Joseph Losey in 1960 and starring Stanley Baker and Sam Wanamaker. Dankworth played alto and Dudley Moore played piano, if you ever need to know.)
I’d forgotten that Lloyd was deeply into the whole Absolute Beginners scene, from drainpipe shiny Italian suits (nowadays made in Bulgaria) and bootlace ties to driving around in an ancient yellow Triumph Herald coupé. So not everything was absolutely authentic, but you know how difficult it is to pick up an original Bubble Car these days? Fashions change, though, and I predict a rush on the old Fiat 500s any day now. As soon as I get some cash, I’m cornering the market, which is something the Fiats never did. The other anachronism with Lloyd, of course, was the portable stereo clamped to his shoulder. Now I know that the old Ferranti Gramophone would hardly be practical let alone smart, but in truth I don’t think anything would separate Lloyd from his Brixton briefcase.
To give him his due, he did turn the noise level down to a dull roar as he entered the office. ‘Well, hello one and all,’ he beamed. ‘And Angel-my-man, it’s you himself.’
‘The one and only. How’s the wrestling business?’
‘More coin there than the music business, my man, and –’ he looked around the office – ‘you get to meet a nicer class of person. But I’m a specialist, man. Female wrestlers only, and only in mud.’
Boot managed to put down a phone for a minute and ambled over to us holding an artwork board.
‘Your record cover, Mr Allen,’ he said. Then to me: ‘See how polite I can be when this pimpy poseur owes us money?’
