Soho Angel

by Greg Keen

  ‘How?’ he asked, not unreasonably. ‘And even if they did, the exit next door was padlocked, so they couldn’t have got inside.’

  ‘What are they?’ I asked, pointing at the steel boxes.

  ‘Run-off vents. Back in the day, the Emporium used to be a furniture showroom. That’s where it got its name. Used to be a heating system that fed off a furnace in the basement. They ripped out the pipes and capped them years ago.’

  I toed the tarpaulin in case it contained human remains that had lain undiscovered for twenty years. A shoal of silverfish scattered into cracks at the base of the chimney. In the interests of due diligence, I approached the roof’s perimeter. I’m not fantastic with heights but the railings were sturdy enough, even if they were spattered with pigeon shit. Sixty feet below, Archer Street was getting on with its business.

  In a window of the building opposite, a bearded hipster in a white suit was pruning a bonsai tree. Untamed brown hair fell to his shoulders. I was trying to work out what was familiar about the guy when he looked up as though I’d called his name. Steel granny glasses glinted in the light. He raised his hand and gave me a wave.

  It was the last thing I saw before falling into a wormhole of my own.

  FOUR

  ‘Chances are it’s nothing to worry about,’ Dr Arbuthnot said, reclining in his chair. ‘Although you were out for over a minute, so it’s something we can’t ignore. Also there are a few anomalies in your vision, and your right hand is significantly weaker than your left. I’d like to arrange an MRI scan in addition to the blood test.’

  ‘How long will that take?’ I asked.

  ‘We should be able to schedule something for a couple of days. My PA will let you know this afternoon when the first slot is available.’

  ‘If it does turn out to be something to worry about, what might be top of the list?’ I asked. My brother’s doctor laced his manicured fingers and pursed his lips.

  ‘It could be a range of things.’

  ‘Worst-case scenario?’

  ‘Mr Gabriel . . .’

  ‘Kenny.’

  ‘Kenny, I think it’s best that we wait for the blood work and the scan before we start discussing specifics. It really doesn’t pay to jump the gun, in my experience.’

  In his sixties, Dr Arbuthnot’s retreating hair had retained its sandy-brown colour. His suit was made to measure and I suspected his reassuring smile had been too. On his pinkie was a heavy signet ring; wrapped around his wrist a Patek Philippe.

  ‘All the same,’ I said, ‘I’d like to know.’

  Dr Arbuthnot took a deep breath. ‘Well, if you really must look on the darker side, then a tumour would be a possibility.’

  The consulting room shimmered.

  ‘A brain tumour?’ I managed to say.

  ‘I must stress that really would be the absolute worst-case scenario.’

  ‘And if it were a tumour?’

  ‘Should that be the situation, then treatment would depend on diagnosis. And for that reason, I really would advise against doing any online research.’

  Arbuthnot took a surreptitious peek at his Patek.

  ‘We’ll have the blood work back in forty-eight hours, Kenny,’ he said. ‘Then we’ll be in a situation to think about the next step. It’s natural to be concerned, but try not to lose too much sleep. As I said, there are a number of things far more likely to be the cause of your passing out than . . . anything of a sinister nature.’

  Arbuthnot stood up and we shook hands.

  ‘How is your brother?’ he asked.

  ‘Fine,’ I replied. ‘He’s in Hong Kong for work.’

  ‘Do give Malcolm my regards.’ Arbuthnot shepherded me across the thick pile carpet towards the door. ‘Gaynor will make a follow-up appointment. If you do need to get in touch before then, for whatever reason, please don’t hesitate.’

  ‘Thanks again for seeing me at such short notice,’ I said.

  ‘Absolutely not a problem,’ Arbuthnot replied.

  The Trafalgar was a fairly unmolested Victorian boozer. A couple of snugs were intact, the carved oak bar surround looked to be original, and a bust of Nelson stared imperiously at me from a shelf above the fireplace. Had circumstances been different, I might have kicked back with my Scotch and enjoyed the ambience. As things were, I removed my phone from my pocket and googled brain tumour.

  The news was mixed. If you have to have one, opt for a meningioma. It’s usually benign and often doesn’t require treatment. The one to swerve is a glioblastoma, almost always fatal with only three per cent of sufferers surviving more than five years. WebMD detailed up to eighty alternative diagnoses for my condition, including excessive caffeine use and nasal polyps.

  Chances were that a decent decongestant spray and a good night’s sleep would sort me out. The best thing to occupy myself with was work, not thoughts of invasive surgery, unsuccessful bouts of chemo, and being comforted in my final weeks by absolutely fucking no one. And yet it’s one thing deciding that you’re not going to think about something, another thing succeeding at it. It was a good ten minutes before I could turn off my phone and focus on the matter at hand.

  I knew a fair bit about Chop Montague, because everyone knew a fair bit about Chop Montague. Less prominent were the other ex-members of Mean. Once again, Google enlightened me. Jean-Jacques ‘JJ’ Freeman was the owner of a music club in Dalston called the Junction. Its website claimed that it was ‘the best blues venue in London’, and open every night from six ’til late with live music Thursdays to Saturdays.

  The proprietor was pictured with the house band. JJ’s hair was shorter than it had been with Mean but remained as black as a raven’s arsehole. He was bulkier and looked as though he spent a fair amount of time in the gym. By all accounts, JJ had been a bit tasty back in the day. Interviewing him might be interesting.

  Dean Allison had forsaken the drums in favour of something called ‘rogue taxidermy’. His Notting Hill shop was loved by the chattering classes and loathed by PETA. Its website featured creations constructed from the parts of several animals. Prominent was a pine marten sporting a fish’s tail and a pair of bat wings stitched to its back. Even more delightful was the body of a rat fused to a lobster’s shell.

  Unfortunately, Dean had gone a bit too rogue for his own good. A police raid had discovered sixteen animals that were on the endangered species list in his workshop freezers, including a roloway monkey and a hawksbill turtle. Dean had pleaded ignorance and claimed that he had bought the animals from a dealer in good faith. A sceptical magistrate had handed down a fifteen-grand fine and a six-month suspended sentence.

  I clicked on a video clip of Dean speaking at a lively press conference outside the magistrates’ court. He expressed deep regret at having mistakenly purchased the animals and said that he found the trade in illegal species entirely repugnant.

  Dean’s cheekbones remained sharp, as did his piercing blue eyes. A dark suit sat well on his slim frame and an abundance of greying hair had been slicked down against his skull. An egg sailed through the air and splattered against the lapel of his jacket. Dean wiped it off with a disdainful expression and stalked out of shot.

  Before leaving the pub, I tracked down an email address for Saskia Reeves-Montgomery, author of Play Like You Mean It. The best on offer had an ‘info’ prefix that didn’t fill me with hope. Nevertheless, I sent a message to say that I was interested in Mean and would love to speak to her as soon as was convenient.

  The transient optimism of booze dwindled as I trailed down Wimpole Street. I’d spent forty years smoking a pack a day and drinking the kind of Scotch you could run a lawnmower off. My meals arrived on the back of a moped or spent eight minutes in a microwave. Add to this an exercise regime that began and ended with only walk if you absolutely have to, Kenny, and I was living on borrowed time, regardless of what had poleaxed me on the Emporium’s roof. Perhaps it was time to turn over a new leaf.

  A cab pulled to a halt outside Flummery�
�s Hotel. I was about to trot over and bag it when I recognised the passenger. Jake Villiers handed a note to the driver and waved away the change. He ascended the hotel steps, where a flunkey in a red jacket opened the ornate brass door for him. Jake looked like a man on a mission, which was probably the way Jake usually looked. Apart from the fact that four hours ago he had told Stephie that his mission lay in Dulwich and not at the snootiest boutique hotel in Marylebone.

  Jake’s plans may have changed. Instead of checking that the builders weren’t behind schedule on his latest project, he could be meeting a business associate, his bank manager or taking tea with his Auntie Maude. And, of course, it was none of my business what he was up to. What I needed to do was go home, insert a tube of Sinex into each nostril and pray that I wasn’t on the Reaper’s to-do list for spring.

  Ultimately, what decided me against this course of action was an abiding suspicion that Jake Villiers wasn’t everything he seemed. Or was it that I hoped he wasn’t? Either way, I let the cab drive off and approached the hotel entrance.

  There were two reasons Flummery’s employed a doorman. One of them was so that he could open it to people like Jake Villiers. The other was to make sure that it remained closed to people like me. For this reason, I bent down and appeared to pick something up from the gutter before mounting the steps.

  ‘May I help you, sir?’ the guy asked, as though he considered it unlikely.

  ‘The man who just got out of the taxi dropped this,’ I said, holding up my wallet. ‘I’ll nip in and return it to him if that’s all right.’

  ‘I’ll take care of it, sir.’

  The doorman extended a gloved hand.

  ‘No offence, mate, but I really would like to give it to him personally.’

  The doorman didn’t appear thrilled at the idea of letting someone who looked like a destitute geography teacher into a hotel costing five hundred pounds a night. That I had indirectly questioned his honesty probably ratcheted up his scowl a few degrees.

  ‘Or I could phone the manager,’ I suggested. ‘Obviously I’d have to say that you refused me admittance, though. What is your name, by the way?’

  Flummery’s reception had a polished marble floor and oak-panelled walls. Two couches and three armchairs had been upholstered in refulgent cloth. A rococo clock stood on a plinth to my left, and a spectacular vase of lilies to my right. The queue at the desk was an advantage as it meant I could slip into the restaurant unhindered.

  The room was four times the size of reception but less brilliantly lit. Presumably this was to promote the sense of privacy that Flummery’s prided itself on. All the tables were taken and the sound of lunchtime chatter filled the air. The maître d’ was on me before I could check whether any of the diners was Jake Villiers.

  ‘Do we have a reservation, sir?’ he asked.

  ‘No,’ I replied. ‘Just popped in for a drink.’

  Along one side of the restaurant was a cocktail bar. The staff mixed drinks for waiters to ferry to the tables or punters to consume at source. Its popularity meant it was a great spot to see if Jake was in the place, and, more importantly, who he was with.

  Assuming the maître d’ sanctioned it, that was.

  ‘As you can see, we are especially busy today, sir,’ he said.

  ‘Maybe this would help . . .’

  The twenty disappeared from my palm as though it had never been there. The maître d’ focused his attention on another guest. I approached the bar and ordered a whisky sour. Jake was at a table about thirty feet away. Any worries I’d had that he might notice me proved unfounded. He was engrossed in conversation with a redhead who may not have been in the first flush but wasn’t anyone’s Auntie Maude.

  Jake’s glamorous companion said something that caused him to lean back in his chair. A waitress arrived. Jake consulted the woman, who nodded her agreement. The waitress departed. Jake and his companion rose from the table and headed for the door. Lunch had been scratched, apparently.

  I followed them out of the dining room. If Jake saw me, I could always claim that I’d been having a drink with a potential client. They were waiting by the lift. Jake prodded a button that was already lit. The doors opened and they entered. I pretended to be absorbed in a rack of walking-tour guides until they closed.

  Grabbing a guide, I approached the reception desk. The woman looked up from her computer screen with a welcoming smile.

  ‘May I help you?’

  ‘It’s Harry from City Strolls.’ I brandished the leaflet as though it were incontrovertible proof of identity. ‘The lady who just got into the lift asked when Haunted Holborn starts. I’m afraid I gave her the wrong time.’ I produced a biro and clicked the button. ‘Would you mind if I left this?’

  ‘Of course not,’ the receptionist said, obligingly.

  I poised the pen above the leaflet. ‘God, I’ve forgotten her name. It’s . . . Don’t tell me . . .’ I placed my hand on my forehead for a few seconds and muttered a curse. ‘Nope, it’s gone. Go on, then . . .’

  ‘Oh, okay,’ the receptionist said. ‘I think it’s . . .’ She pressed a couple of keys on her laptop. ‘Yes, Pauline Oakley.’

  ‘Pauline. Of course.’ I wrote on the leaflet, signed it Harry and handed it to the receptionist. ‘Would you mind giving it to her when she comes down?’

  ‘No problem,’ she said.

  FIVE

  I’ve had a few jobs since I first arrived in Soho at the arse end of the seventies. Twenty-six, to be exact. When the last went west, I was introduced to Odeerie Charles, an agoraphobic skip-tracer looking for someone to do his legwork. Last year I’d nearly been shot in the head by a serial killer. Last month I was trying to photograph a former milkman who would rather a credit card company didn’t have his new address. You can’t beat a career with variety, as Odeerie frequently reminds me.

  After getting back to the flat, I made a coffee and gave the fat man a call. ‘Where the hell have you been?’ was his first question.

  ‘To see Nick’s uncle, like we agreed.’

  ‘That was hours ago!’

  ‘I had to make an unscheduled visit to the doctor’s.’

  ‘Has the rash come back?’

  ‘No, it hasn’t.’

  ‘What, then?’

  ‘I’d rather not discuss it.’

  ‘Suit yourself, Kenny,’ Odeerie said after brief silence. ‘But I wish you’d let me know about things in advance. I need to keep a proper time sheet for Pam Ridley. She said you can pick up the new client form tomorrow afternoon, by the way.’

  ‘No problem,’ I replied. ‘Email me her address.’

  ‘What did your friend’s uncle have to say?’

  ‘On the plus side, Kristos was there the night Emily and Castor went missing.’

  ‘Well, that’s something.’

  ‘On the negative side, he thinks they fell into a black hole.’

  ‘A what?’

  ‘Kris hasn’t a clue where they are, Odeerie. No one does, and we aren’t going to find out either. You shouldn’t be taking that poor woman’s money. If we haven’t found anything out in a couple of days then we should quit the job.’

  ‘She’ll go to someone else.’

  ‘At least we’ll have done the right thing.’

  There was a bit of dead air. ‘Let’s get Pam signed up before we start thinking about getting rid of her,’ Odeerie said eventually.

  ‘Did you dig anything useful up?’ I asked.

  ‘The only concrete thing is the Goa photograph. At least one expert gave it an eighty per cent chance of it being Cas and Em.’

  The picture had been taken in 2009 by a backpacker who had met a quiet English couple in their early thirties. The guy had posted the picture on Facebook along with a tongue-in-cheek comment as to how he’d been hanging with Cas and Em, only to find that half the world thought he might well have been doing precisely that.

  Certainly the woman looked a lot like Emily Ridley. The guy had long hair and a st
raggly beard. It could have been Castor Greaves. It could have been Björn Borg. The whole thing provided the country with a few days of are they or aren’t they? before going back to worrying about the recession.

  ‘And that’s the only evidence out there?’ I asked.

  ‘Well, there are the People’s Inquisitor tapes. They published half a dozen tracks on their website by Castor Greaves. As far as anyone knows, they weren’t recorded in his lifetime. Voice analysts are certain it’s him. I can send you a file.’

  ‘Okay,’ I said. ‘Odeerie, can I ask you something? It’s not about the case; more a personal thing.’

  ‘Go on . . .’

  ‘Earlier I saw Jake Villiers go into Flummery’s Hotel.’

  ‘Who?’

  ‘Stephie’s boyfriend. He’d told her he was seeing some builders in Dulwich, so I followed him inside. He met this woman for lunch. At least, it looked as though they were going to have lunch, but they couldn’t wait to get upstairs.’

  ‘So what?’

  ‘Obviously Jake’s cheating on Stephie.’

  ‘Maybe.’

  ‘What d’you think I should do?’

  The fat man sighed. ‘Kenny, Stephie’s moved on, and you need to move on too.’

  ‘Just because we aren’t together doesn’t mean we aren’t friends.’

  ‘You’ve barely seen each other since she got back.’

  ‘Yeah, but—’

  ‘And Stephie isn’t going to appreciate you destroying her relationship even if you are right about Jake. Get on with your own life and stop worrying about hers.’

  My brother’s company had bought the Brewer Street flat as a place where out-of-town clients could stay for a few days. As they usually preferred to rough it in the Four Seasons, my brother allowed me to live there rent-free. The sitting room walls have faded from utility-cream to nicotine-yellow and the springs in the sofas gave up the ghost around the same time as Michael Jackson. Malcolm had given me permission to redecorate but I hadn’t quite got round to it.