by Mike Ripley
‘A streaker. Woman just phoned in, said she saw a nude vicar, would you believe it, wearing a dog-collar and an early edition of the Standard. Heading for the Central Line …’
Oh God, Simon. I’m sorry.
I managed to get to the wine bar the other side of St Paul’s in time to pick up Rebecca, and the bar staff did not seem sad to see her go. I told her what had happened, and she took it all in her stride. Once she’d stopped laughing about Simon, she told me to head for the pub where I’d dropped Clara. I said that she must have done her act by now, but Rebecca said not to worry and that she and Clara always followed Plan B – to hide in the Ladies – if anything went wrong.
Sure enough, Clara was sitting at the bar sipping orange juice, her nun’s habit wrapped around her, poncho style, just covering her black, lacy basque and suspender belt. If she didn’t move suddenly, nobody could spot anything unusual. I mean, nuns have to drink somewhere.
All things considered, I reckoned two out of three wasn’t bad. Not that the senior management of Even Rudergrams saw it that way, of course, and it took nearly an hour’s arguing before I got about 60 percent of my agreed fee. I was about to leave when the office got a reverse-charges call from Simon, a very angry Simon, in a call-box outside Leytonstone tube station. For the other 40 percent, I offered to go and collect him, and as there were no other takers, I got the job. Actually, Simon took it all rather well and saw the funny side of things. After all, he’d run twice around the Stock Exchange and travelled over six stops on the underground stark naked with no aggro. I’d got arrested (well, virtually) just sitting in a traffic jam.
By the time I got him home to Walthamstow, it was nearly 5.00 and the rush hour was warming up, so it was nearer 6.00 when I got to Stuart Street.
I had intended to try and ring Jo as soon as I got in, to find out what the hell was going on, but I never made it, for the house was in turmoil.
Or to be more accurate, Fenella was in a Turmoil because Lisabeth was in one of her States.
Fenella was half way down the stairs to meet me before I had my key out of the front door.
‘Angel, you’ve got to talk to her – you’ve got to tell her you forgive her. She’s being impossible, absolutely unbearable, and only you can make her come out.’
‘Come out of where, Fenella dearest?’ I said, putting an arm around her shoulders.
‘Your toilet – bathroom, I mean – she’s locked herself in. Two hours ago. And it’s all because of me.’
Why me? Pulled in by the cops, having to rescue a naked vicar, and now it looked as if I was going to have to talk down a paranoid lesbian.
‘What’s she on?’ I asked Fenella, guiding her upstairs. ‘Has she been taking pills or sniffing any …’
‘Oh, it’s nothing like that, you galoof.’ She punched me lightly on the chest. Now I was galoof as well. ‘She’s just dying of embarrassment.’
‘She’s done something to Springsteen?’
‘No.’ Fenella looked genuinely shocked. ‘She wouldn’t dare!’
I wouldn’t have put anything past her, personally.
‘Your parents, then?’
‘No, thank heavens. They’re out. They’ve gone to a matinée of Starlight Express. I’ve seen it.’
Oh well, that was a relief.
‘So where’s the problem?’
‘It was this friend of yours who turned up this afternoon. He was ever so rude, I must say, and he tried to push his way into the flat.’
‘Your flat?’
‘No, yours. I don’t know how he got in the house, but suddenly he was knocking on your door. I was visiting Lisabeth, you see, while my parents were out.’
We were outside the door by now. It was open and I could see inside, and the closed loo door took on the semblance of the Berlin Wall.
‘You said a friend of mine called. Did he say who?’
‘No, he just kept asking for you and swearing a lot. He was ever so big and he wore a dinner jacket. That’s why Lisabeth thought he might be a musician or maybe somebody giving you work or something. That’s why she’s so upset about what she did.’
‘And just what did she do that was so terrible?’
Fenella took a deep breath, and I noticed for the first time just how impressively she could breathe.
‘Well, you see, it was partly my fault, because I just kept saying you weren’t in and he got very abusive because he didn’t believe me. And then Lisabeth came to see what the noise was and he must have thought she was you for a minute – we had the curtains drawn, you see. Well, the blinds, actually, ‘cos you don’t have curtains.’
‘Yes, yes, get on with it.’ What had they been doing?
‘Well, this big chap sort of pushed me out of the way a bit. It didn’t hurt, honestly, but it looked worse than it was and Lisabeth sort of saw red.’
‘What did she do to him, Fenella?’ I put on my stern voice so I wouldn’t giggle.
‘She kicked him – in the place which is most sensitive.’ She’d obviously thought carefully about that.
‘And?’
‘Well, he doubled up and went quite green. I’ve never seen that happen before. I thought it was just something people said, but he actually went green, and I thought he was going to be sick. Then he sort of pirouetted, still ... er ... holding himself, and then he fell over and rolled down the stairs. All the way to the bottom.’
Jesus, that was 24 steps. I knew, because I’d climbed them drunk before now.
‘He was all right, though,’ Fenella said seriously. ‘I mean, he got up and walked away. Well, limped, actually.’
I had to laugh. ‘Oh dear, poor Nevil.’
It had to be Nevil, from what Bunny said yesterday and Fenella’s description.
Nevil had my address.
Why the fuck was I laughing?
Chapter Ten
That settled it. There was no way now that Fenella was going to get my body, no matter how much she begged, not as long as Lisabeth was on same continent. Maybe, when Lisabeth had been forcibly retired to some maximum security retirement home in Frinton (as the sign said: ‘Harwich for the Continent; Frinton for the Incontinent’), then I’d consider it. Even then, she’d probably manage to mug me with her walking frame.
It took me nearly 20 minutes to talk her out of the loo, finally having to promise that Nevil was not a friend, that he wouldn’t call the police, and that there would be no need for Mr and Mrs Binkworthy to know anything untoward had happened that afternoon.
Fenella offered to make her some hot, sweet tea and fetch some chocolate biscuits from downstairs to comfort her. Lisabeth was really into chocolate rushes, and while she fed her face, nuclear war could break out and she wouldn’t pause between nibbles, so this gave me a chance to plan my campaign.
That took about three seconds. On the one hand, I’d been pulled by the cops for reasons that were not yet clear but had something to do with enigmatic Jo Scamp and her gaff in Sedgeley House. And on the other hand, a gorilla in a Top Shop suit called Nevil was looking for me, though he hadn’t bargained for Lisabeth’s own version of the Neighbourhood Watch Scheme.
Connections: I’d seen Nevil at Sedgeley House; I’d seen Jo at the Mimosa Club, where Nevil was supposed to work, or at least beat up barmen. The Old Bill was interested in Jo; Nevil was interested in me. They both knew where I lived.
The whole thing was like watching snooker on a black-and-white telly. You know it’s all a load of balls, but you can’t work out who’s doing what to whom. And so, having carefully assessed the pros and cons (mostly cons), the solution was clear: do a runner.
While Lisabeth was mainlining Cadbury’s Bournville, I rummaged around for a sports bag (one that advertised Marlboro fags, naturally) and began to pack a spare everything. (Rule of Life No 6: be prepared to survive on one extra pair of socks and knicker
s and a spare shirt. There are always launderettes and it could lead to a career in pop music.)
From the bathroom I took a battery-operated razor, the toothpaste and a new toothbrush from my emergency supply still in their Sainsbury wrappers. I always keep a few in stock (Rule 17A); they’re cheap enough and ever so impressive in the morning-afters.
Then I sneaked my special edition of Brogan’s History of the USA into the loo and spun the combination. The emergency stash stood at £200 in fivers, and that went into a back pocket. I also removed a building society book in the name of Francis Maclean, which I reckoned had about £450 in the account, and an Access card in the same name that I rarely used and certainly had nearly a grand’s worth of credit on it. Along with cash in hand, and the rent being paid up for a month, that should be travelling money enough.
Just in case real travel was in order, I took my passport (real name) and spare driving licence. I also packed Jo’s credit cards in the zip pocket at the end of the bag.
By the time I reappeared, Lisabeth had cheered up enough to smile weakly, having adopted the invalid-on-the-sickbed routine. Some invalid. Nevil was probably in traction.
‘Binky’s just popped downstairs,’ she said bravely. ‘Her parents are back. Are you going somewhere?’
‘What?’ I stared stupidly at the bag in my hand as if it had just been dropped there from a helicopter. ‘Oh, yeah. I’ve been invited down to Plymouth for a party at the weekend.’
‘It’s Wednesday,’ she said suspiciously.
‘It’s going to be a good party.’ I picked up my fur-lined leather jacket from the back of the chair and zipped myself into it. ‘You don’t mind looking after the place for a few days, do you?’
‘Well, no …’ she said thoughtfully. ‘But what about ...’
‘The bloke who came visiting? Don’t worry. I’ll call in and see what he wanted before I go,’ I lied. ‘Be careful of him, though, he’s a bit of a loony. Definitely two bricks short of a wall.’
‘You’re sure he’s not a friend, or anything? I mean I’d hate to have ...’
I’d never seen Lisabeth so sentimental before. She needed some iron in her soul.
I sat down on the sofa next to her and patted her hand. ‘He’s a nasty piece of work, and if he comes back, you treat him just the same as this afternoon. He has a nasty track record, you know. He follows young girls home from school, and one of these days ...’
Lisabeth’s eyes clouded and I knew I’d done enough. If Nevil did come back, even if he was giving away religious tracts, she’d castrate him before the doorbell had stopped ringing.
I stood up and patted my pockets to make sure I had keys, wallet, and so on.
‘What about your lady-friend?’ Lisabeth asked.
‘Which one?’ I said before stopping myself. One had to be careful with female chauvinist sows like her.
‘Mrs Boatman or Brightman. She rang again this morning. Didn’t Binky tell you?’
‘No.’ Oh dear, Fenella was going to have the back of her legs slapped again. ‘She must have forgotten in all the excitement.’
‘Well, anyway,’ Lisabeth went on grumpily, ‘she did ring and she wants you to get in touch with her at the local National Insurance office. At least I think that’s what she said.’
‘No problem, I’ll bell her tomorrow.’
I said I’d see her after the weekend and shouldered my bag.
Springsteen was sitting on top of the stereo stack, looking out of the window into the darkening sky. I have this theory that at such times he’s communing with the mother ship that gave him his mission on this planet, but then I could be wrong.
I playfully tickled him behind an ear and he lazily turned his head and sank a canine into my thumb. It was nice to know I’d be missed while I did a Roland.
Roland? A Roland Rat. I was going underground.
There was nobody out in the street looking suspicious. Well, there were the usual inhabitants, of course, but nobody with the collar turned up reading a newspaper under a streetlamp, say.
I threw my bag into Armstrong’s boot and checked the sleeping-bag I always kept there in a polythene bag. While I felt to see if the damp had got to it, my hand strayed over Armstrong’s tool kit. A little bit of insurance, perhaps? Better to be safe, and all that. So I removed a rubber-handled wrench from the tool kit – a souvenir of a summer working on rich people’s yachts in southern Ireland – and weighed it up and down a couple of times. As I couldn’t take Lisabeth with me, it was the nearest thing I had to a lethal weapon.
I pushed the wrench down the side of Armstrong’s driving seat and wound up the engine. There was little traffic down through Shoreditch, and I was pretty sure I wasn’t being followed, though following a black cab in London must be a pretty thankless task. Having said that, in some of the bits of Shoreditch I passed through, I stuck out like a sore thumb. I mean, Armstrong was the only vehicle with all its wheels left on. At Old Street, I passed the Gym ‘n’ Tonic health club – I’d been a member there until an embarrassing incident one evening in the female Jacuzzi – then turned up towards Islington proper.
The house where Trippy was squatting was a two-up, two-down terrace cottage with a basement. It was actually a cellar, but London’s estate agents removed that word from the dictionary long ago. The squatters had made four bedrooms out of it, keeping the kitchen at the back, and a pretty basic bathroom tacked on to that, as communal areas. Trippy occupied the front ground-floor room, and a local Islington councillor lived in the basement. Who stayed upstairs I never did find out, but the house is now well and truly yuppified and owned by a couple of actresses from good families. (I’m quite fond of them, which is why I’m not giving the address. Actually, it was me who put them on to the place.)
Trippy was in and not at all surprised to see me; but then, very little can surprise Trippy any more. Anyone who once thought a 73B bus was a giant blue salamander following him down Baker Street is living proof that you shouldn’t mess around in the medicine chest. (The 73B doesn’t even go down Baker Street.)
‘Hi ... er ... Angel,’ he said fuzzily. ‘Is there a gig on?’
‘No, it’s not work, old son, I’ve come to crash on your floor for a couple of nights.’
‘Fair enough. Come in.’
He led me down the hallway and into the communal kitchen.
‘Just having a cook-up,’ he sniffed, reaching for a pot bubbling on the gas stove. Trippy constantly snuffled; a bad case of druggie pneumonia, as it’s known on the street. Judging by what he was cooking, his sense of smell had gone as well. ‘Are you in for a bite?’
I hadn’t eaten and was quite peckish.
‘No, thanks, I was going to suggest we zip out for a curry.’
‘This is curry,’ he said, hurt. ‘Tricky fella, Johnny Curry.’
He sipped some from a wooden spoon and stained part of his wispy beard a bright orange. Then he turned the gas off and poured the contents of the pan into the big metal bin that seems to be compulsory in vegetarian kitchens and that always contains enough mushy peas to drown a Rugby League team.
‘Taj Mahal or Jewel in the Crown?’
‘Is there a difference?’
‘The Jewel does Kingfisher lager.’
‘Say no more.’
Trippy didn’t ask any nasty questions. He didn’t ask any questions, full stop. That’s why I find Trippy refreshing, as long as I’m upwind. But after the cauliflower curry, a couple of pounds of onion rings and six bottles of Kingfisher, I told him that I needed a place to stay out of sight for a few days.
That was fine by him as long as I didn’t mind sleeping on the floor. I said I didn’t, and also, no, I was not short of cash – or at least not short enough to get involved in Trippy’s own line of import/export.
Trippy was not really interested in my financial situation; he was just che
cking that I was paying for dinner. I did so, and I was the one who bought the half-bottle of brandy at the off-licence on the way back.
Well, Trippy said he slept better after a nightcap. I could see why. During the night, three people came into his room from various parts of the squat – or maybe off the street – looking to score. Only two of them fell over me in the sleeping-bag.
The next day started better than it should have.
My aching back woke me around 7.30, but that gave me plenty of time to use the communal bathroom and kitchen. I needn’t have worried. I think the next person in the house to leave their pit made it just in time for Play School.
There was a local Patels open and doing good business at the end of the street, and I stocked up on orange juice, a couple of meat pies and a packet of chocolate biscuits. These would be my iron rations for a hard day’s cruising the streets in Armstrong.
I didn’t know where Bill Stubbly lived, but I did know his routine, and he seemed a far better bet than approaching Nevil direct. I mean, he was about 20 years older, two feet shorter and ten stone lighter than Nevil. That made him just about my size.
However odd Stubbly’s behaviour had been just lately, I was relying on his basic Northern canniness to keep to some vestige of normalcy when it came to money. Thursdays had always been bank day for Bill. It had been a topic of some concern, in the days when I worked fairly regularly at the Mimosa, that Stubbly always preferred to walk through Chinatown to the Piccadilly Circus Barclays, as even on a Thursday morning he could have got mugged. Not that we worried about that per se, but he could have been carrying our wages.
I parked Armstrong in Golden Square, which is known as On Golden Pond to those who work in the posh offices there, and cut through Brewer Street. There were some early tourists about, and they were easy to spot. They hit Laura Ashley’s first thing and then see the signs pointing to Carnaby Street (yes, folks, the ‘60s, like head lice, are coming back) as if it was an ancient monument. I suppose it is, from what I’ve read about it.
