by Mike Ripley
St Chad’s Hostel had a rusted metal plate on one of its gateposts saying just ‘St Chad’s’. It was just like any of the other detached houses on Sydney Gardens: two brick gateposts, though no gate, either side of a yard-wide concrete path that ran all of ten feet across a Kleenex-sized garden to a porched front door. The house was detached from its next door neighbours by a gap you could see but not squeeze through. Unlike its neighbours, St Chad’s paintwork was bright and fresh. Indeed, there was a white-haired old geezer wearing blue overalls halfway up a ladder painting a window frame as I arrived.
He nodded to me as I walked up to the front door, and tried to draw on a thin, hand-rolled cigarette as he did so. The coughing spasm almost shook him off the ladder, and I felt there ought to be something in the health and safety legislation about people like him being allowed to work more than three feet off the ground, or even with chunky heels.
‘‘Mornin’,’ I nodded back. ‘St Chad’s?’
‘So they tell me,’ said the old man, concentrating on his painting again.
I pressed the doorbell and a single chime sounded somewhere inside.
The inner door opened and I saw a blurred figure through the frosted glass reach for the lock on the outer door, and then up above to a deadbolt, and then bend over and lean down for another bolt. The door opened six inches – on a chain.
‘Yes?’
The voice came from behind the moustache of a man in late middle age, balding and with that stiff, upright posture that means either ex-serviceman or fallen arches or perhaps both.
‘I’m looking for Warden Roberts,’ I said politely.
The chain came off and the door opened. He wore dark, heavyweight trousers with creases that could have sliced bread, shined black shoes I could see my reflection in and a white shirt and dark blue tie with a logo I didn’t recognise. His one concession to informality was a green cardigan buttoned up the front, which failed to hide the key chain running into his trouser pocket. I had the feeling he had so many keys on the end of that chain that he clanked when he walked.
‘You’ve found him,’ he said. Then, slightly louder, ‘Hasn’t he, Spider?’
‘If you say so, Mr Roberts,’ said the old man on the ladder, exhaling smoke and hot ash and tobacco shreds as he did so.
‘So, what’s your business here?’ he turned back on me.
‘Detective Inspector Hood of West Hamp–’
‘You’re not DI Hood!’ Roberts snapped and I saw him think about reaching for the door.
‘Of course I’m not,’ I said smoothly. Damn. It had been worth a shot. ‘Inspector Hood of West Hampstead is investigating a burglary about a month ago at my house ...’
‘It wasn’t me, guv,’ said the old man on the ladder. ‘I was securely elsewhere at the time, whenever it was.’
‘Shut up, Spider. I’m sorry if you lost any valuables, sir, but whatever you think your grounds are, it is highly improper to bring them here. Now please leave before I call the police.’
It suddenly dawned on me why they had so many locks on the inside of the door here: to keep angry civilians out.
‘I wish you would,’ I lied, ‘but they can’t help. Inspector Hood and I spoke last night. He’s unlikely to be able to follow up the burglary because the ... the ... er ... perpetrator faces more serious charges elsewhere. It’s likely that the burglary charge and the theft of a very expensive car are going to be dropped. Meanwhile, I’m in the middle of a very complicated insurance claim.’
It was a bit thin but not bad for being made up on the spot. I only wish we had the charge of grand theft auto like they do in America (rumoured to carry the death penalty in some States still). It sounds so much more impressive than ‘TWC’ – taking without consent.
‘And what has this got to do with St Chad’s, if anything?’ Roberts growled, but he must have known what was coming.
‘The car thief was Anthony Keith Flowers, and he was living here at the time of the crime.’
‘If this person was one of our residents at the time in question, and I’m not saying he was, I cannot possibly think what I could or should tell you, Mr ...? I didn’t catch your name.’
‘Angel,’ I said, not seeing any percentage in lying about it, ‘and really all I’m after is some idea of what Keith Flowers did during his stay here. It was a month, wasn’t it? I just need to know anything about his movements ...’
‘I’m sorry, Mr Angel, if that really is your name, but that sort of information is none of your concern, and without instructions from an officer of a court, none of your business. I am certainly not prepared to help you on the doorstep, out of the blue like this. If there is any ongoing legal action, then the proper authorities will have all the facts. I suggest you consult your solicitor. Good day.’
I was left looking at the door and hearing the slam of deadbolts and the snick of the chain going back on, still thunderstruck by his advice.
See a solicitor? Things couldn’t be that bad, could they?
I could still see Warden Roberts’ distorted figure through the frosted glass when a voice from above me – though not very far above me – whispered:
‘End of the road; five minutes.’
‘Got anything to smoke, then?’ asked Spider, leaning into Armstrong through the nearside front window.
‘Only tobacco,’ I said.
‘Factory or roll-up?’
‘Ready made.’ I pointed to the glove compartment. ‘In there.’
His hands shot out as if on springs form his arms and he had the compartment open and was helping himself to one of my emergency Benson & Hedges, which he lit with a disposable lighter. A hand shot out again – I thought to put the packet back – and retrieved my emergency half bottle of vodka (mostly full), which quickly disappeared into one of the large, flapped pockets of his paint-stained overalls.
‘Hey, you’re having a laugh now, aren’t you?’ I said, but made no move to take it back. I noticed the cigarette packet had vanished too.
‘Can’t help it, mate,’ he said, drawing on the cigarette. ‘I’m a thief, in’ I? A persistent offender, a ree-sid-ivisit. Or so they tell me. You shouldn’t give people like me the time of day.’
I resisted the urge to check that my watch was still on my wrist.
‘That’s probably the only useful thing you’re going to tell me, isn’t it?’
‘How do you know that? I ain’t said nothing yet.’
I put both hands on the steering wheel and began to tap out a little rhythm with my fingers, looking straight ahead and whistling Take the A Train loudly, but in the wrong key. That was usually good for sending Amy ballistic within two minutes.
Spider didn’t last that long.
‘You wanna hear what I’ve got to say, then?’
‘Sure. Whenever you’re ready. Take your time. But preferably while I’m still in my thirties.’
Spider hissed something that could have been ‘chopsy little git’ as he took another drag on the cigarette. He held it in between two fingers, but backwards, pointing into the palm of his hand. I bet he could nip the end out in an instant, with thumb and little finger if he had to. He was 60 if he was a day and he’d been smoking like that for a long time.
‘There’s somebody wants to see you.’
I stopped whistling. ‘There is? Why would somebody you know want to see me?’
‘‘Cos you’re that Angel guy that’s shacked up with that clothes designer Amy May.’
I kept a blank face.
‘And you got this where? Cosmo or maybe Vanity Fair? I don’t remember Hello! magazine coming round.’
Actually they had, but I had made sure I had a darts match to go to and Amy hadn’t minded. In fact she’d seemed quite relieved.
‘Got it from the ‘orse’s mouth – her husband hisself. Okay then, ex-husband, but he talked abo
ut her all the time.’
‘You know Keith Flowers?’ I tried to keep my voice down, but I wasn’t sure I managed it.
‘Yeah, I do. Did. No, I do. He’s not dead, is he?’
‘Not for the want of trying.’
‘Ooooh! Now you’re scaring me,’ Spider shrilled.
‘Look, you old toe-rag, where’s this going? And how much is it gonna cost me?’
‘Nuffing. I’m taken care of. I get paid to deliver the message. No concern o’ mine what happens after that.’
I looked into his pale, wrinkled face. Another year and he could model for garden gnomes.
‘Let me get this straight: you had a message for me and I just happen to turn up on your doorstep?’
‘Being up that ladder and thereby able to earwig your every word was a bit of a bonus, I admit,’ he said, nodding sagely to himself, ‘otherwise I’d have had to come looking for you.’
‘To deliver this message?’
‘Yep.’
‘That somebody wants to see me?’
‘Yer getting there.’
‘And who exactly is it wants to see me?’
‘Mr Creosote.’
I burst out laughing, as I couldn’t avoid the image of the Mr Creosote in Monty Python’s The Meaning of Life, the gargantuan vomiting character who eats so much he finally explodes after being tempted by one last ‘waffer thin mint’.
Spider was clearly hurt that I wasn’t taking this seriously enough.
‘Don’t tell me,’ I sobbed, trying to get my breath back, ‘he wants to meet me in his favourite restaurant!’
Deadpan, Spider said: ‘Oh no, you have to go see him. The law’s very insistent about that.’
‘No, don’t interrupt,’ I said, ‘let me tell you what’s happened as I see it, because that’ll give me a chance to get it straight in my mind, as, frankly, it’s starting to do my head in.
‘It’s clear to me that this Alison George is not the sharpest blade in the knife drawer. I mean, she goes to all the trouble of setting up her computer to print off business cards for phoney professions and yet she uses the same name all the time. What’s all that about? If her IQ gets to 50 she should sell.
‘She’s interested in what Keith Flowers did in his month of semi-freedom, when he was out of jail but hadn’t passed “Go” and certainly hadn’t collected £200 anywhere that I know of. But he had made a nuisance of himself at Amy’s office, so this Alison George goes there. He turned over our house, so Alison George is hanging around there, almost like visiting the scene of the crime.
‘It wouldn’t surprise me to find out she’d been up to Suffolk, or maybe she just called the cops up there, but she knew about Keith Flowers’ nasty accident with Amy’s BMW and she turned up at Duncan’s garage just to see it for herself. It’s as if she’s trying to retrace his steps.
‘I know, I know,’ I held up a hand to stifle the questioning looks. ‘Flowers never came to Stuart Street, but he did ring here. Now how she knew about that is interesting, but there was never anything here to find that connected to Flowers. It’s like she’s trying to get a feel for things somehow.’
I lit up a cigarette – just to help me concentrate – despite the audible sniffs and glaring eyes.
‘I know, I know,’ I admitted, ‘but I need it.
‘So I figured the next logical place for her to go would be St Chad’s, if she really was walking back the cat.
‘No, that’s just an expression that spies used. Don’t ask me how I know. “Walking back the cat” means following a trail backwards not to find where somebody’s going but where they started from.
‘Now I can’t think of a way this Alison George would know about St Chad’s. I mean, it’s only dumb luck I did. And even if she knew about it, I don’t know how she would find it, and anyway, I shouldn’t think the cops or the Prison Service would release details like that, and if she did go there, they wouldn’t talk to her. But lo and behold, there was somebody there waiting to talk to me!
‘Would you believe a Mr Creosote? I mean, this just gets better and better. And according to his ageing messenger boy, who looks like he was the Artful Dodger’s understudy, to see him I have to go and visit him in prison.
‘Well, I suppose the authorities might look a bit askance at him nipping out for lunch down Soho for a couple of hours, though if you’ve been, say, a Cabinet Minister, you seem to get away with it.
‘So now I’ve got two problems: a rogue female dogging me wherever I go and a hardened criminal in Belmarsh high security prison snooping by remote control. And as far as I can see, both of them are trying to track not me, but Keith-soddin’-Flowers and find out what he did on his brief holiday from Her Majesty’s Prisons.
‘What I don’t know is, why?
‘Why are people suddenly interested in Keith Flowers when all the time he was inside nobody mentioned his bloody name? He comes out, and now he’s going back inside for attempted maiming and mayhem on his ex-wife. Mostly. Plus being certifiable; I suppose that helps.
‘So why the sudden interest in the month he was out? Why has it spooked Amy into doing a runner? It’s not like her just to disappear for days on end. That’s what I do. I know, I just thought I’d say it before you did.
‘But what does it all mean? Gimme a break here, think of something.’
Springsteen raised his splinted paw at me in a mock salute – if he’d had fingers, the middle one would have been upright – and limped backwards into the kitchen with as much dignity as he could muster.
Fat lot of use he’d been.
As I left the Stuart Street flat, I thought that the day just couldn’t get any weirder, which was a dumb thing to do because as soon as you think that – it does.
But even I couldn’t have guessed that I was about to be kidnapped and then beaten up in full view of 11 million Londoners.
Maybe it’s to do with getting older, but I’m really beginning to hate surprises.
One of them piled into the back of Armstrong almost as soon as I had the driver’s door open. (Mental note: it was a daft idea to install central locking.) The other one had climbed out of a white Rover 600 and rapidly crossed the street on the diagonal, coming into the corner of my eye only when it was too late to do anything about it.
My first impression was that they were calm and professional, which was worrying. My second impression was that they both Welsh, which was frightening.
‘Jubilee Gardens, please, down near Waterloo,’ said the one who had climbed in the back, his voice modulated with the unmistakable Celtic lilt.
‘Sorry, mate, this isn’t a licensed cab, it’s a private vehicle and not for hire,’ I said, almost on autopilot as I had done a thousand times before when unsuspecting punters had jumped in the back at traffic lights or in pub car parks. ‘I couldn’t take your money even if I wanted to.’
‘No-one said anything about money, did they, Huw?’
I became aware that something was preventing me from closing the driver’s door: a pair of hands gripping the top of the door frame. Huw, I presumed.
‘Wouldn’t count on a tip, either,’ said Huw.
They were both mid- to late twenties, clean-shaven and with short hair. They could have been Mormons, but the fact that they were the only two people wearing blue, beltless gabardine raincoats in London on a warm August afternoon singled them out as Welsh.
‘Anytime you’re ready,’ said the one in the back, still polite and cheerful. ‘You’ve got about 35 minutes.’
‘Where are we going?’ I asked him casually, making no move to start the engine, like I was interested.
‘I’ve told you once. Jubilee Gardens near Waterloo. You’ve got 35 minutes.’
He stared me out with a faint smile, head slightly on one side as if he forgave me for not hearing him the first time.
�
�What I really meant,’ I tried, ‘was why do you want to go to Jubilee Gardens?’
‘Now that’s a good question, isn’t it, Huw?’
‘Certainly is, Barry,’ said Huw over my head. ‘Can’t say I want to go, and you could probably think of better things to do, but we don’t have much choice in the matter really, do we?’
‘None at all in the matter,’ said Barry philosophically. ‘And all this chit-chat and gay banter means you now have about 33 minutes.’
Barry on the back seat had been sitting with his hands resting on his lap on the folds of his unbuttoned raincoat. Now he pulled back the coat slowly and delicately, like a stripper revealing a flash of stocking top. Across his knees lay a big, ugly, silvery revolver.
‘I think you’d better start your engines, but try not to make it a bumpy flight, eh?’
I had no idea what he was talking about, but Huw obviously did, as he started to giggle, still hanging on Armstrong’s door.
‘Not two in one day, eh, Barry?’
‘Did you bring the sick bags, Huw?’ Barry replied with a laugh.
I looked from the gun to Barry and then turned my head to Huw, who was reaching inside his raincoat for something.
I started Armstrong up as quickly as I could, not fancying the idea of a gun in each ear one bit. But Huw didn’t have a gun, or if he did, he didn’t draw it. His hand came out of the folds of his coat with a pair of handcuffs, and before I could react, he had caught my right wrist and snapped one bracelet on. The other half of the cuffs he clicked on to the rim of the steering wheel.
‘I’ll be right behind you,’ he said into my face, ‘but don’t go too fast if you wouldn’t mind, ‘cos I’m not used to driving in the big city.’
‘Don’t dawdle, though, Huw,’ said Barry. In my mirror, I could see him folding his coat back over his lap and smoothing it down. I didn’t know whether to be more frightened of his gun or his fashion sense. ‘We don’t want to miss our flight.’
Huw chuckled some more then slammed the door on me and stalked across the road to the white Rover, shaking his head as he went.
