Angel Confidential (19 page)

‘We're taking you to a safe place, please believe me.'

‘I have no money on me.'

‘We don't want money, Stella, we want to help.'

‘How do you know my
name?'

‘Please don't cry. You're safe with us.'

‘I'm not crying, I'm in pain. She's heavy.'

‘It's for your own good, Stella. Believe us, we mean you no harm.'

And it went on all the way across London, but I switched off after a while and concentrated on keeping my foot
down and running as many just-red lights as I dare. I didn't want the journey to take a minute longer than necessary, but then I didn't want to get pulled over either. Four women fighting in the back of a cab
I could explain, but not until we were in Hackney, or at least Islington.

On the Pentonville Road I saw a 32-sheet poster outside a Methodist church
hall. It read: ‘Feeling at the end or your tether? Thinking of
ending it all? Let God help.'

I laughed to myself. The others in the back were too busy to appreciate it.

 

Fenella had been left in charge of turning her and Lisabeth's living room into a deprogramming module, whatever that was, which she'd read about in an article somewhere. From the brief glimpse I got before the door was shut firmly in my face, it looked like the waiting room for an upmarket hippy tour of the Hindu Kush. I never knew Fenella and Lisabeth owned so many cushions.

I wasn't devastated at not being invited to join in the actual deprogramming. That was best left to ‘us women', wasn't it? Sure. I had no intention of adding mental cruelty to the pending charge of kidnapping.

There was one thing I could usefully do, though, and that was ring Stella's agency, as Fenella had forgotten to do so, what with all the worry about where to place the lamps, how to rearrange the cushions and whether or not to light incense sticks.

Veronica took the piece of
paper with the number for the Office Cavalry on and handed it to me on the stairs.

‘We'll all be fine,' she said. ‘She's calmed down.'

Stella had indeed calmed down, but then so would anyone after being sat on by Lisabeth for half an hour. It was Veronica I was worried about, her face
flushed and breathing rapid. And Miranda had shrunk into some sort of a mental shell, as if realising what she had just been a party to. Or maybe her hangover was back, the adrenaline buzz having worn off. And Lisabeth was no better, fuming in semi-annoyance at Fenella's fussing and clearly not having a clue what to do next. And Fenella fussing over where Stella should sit and even saying what a nice, colourful jacket she was wearing. At that point, I thought Miranda's pupils had disappeared forever into the top of her eyeball sockets.

All in all, phoning the Office Cavalry was the easy option, and so I used the communal phone near the front door, and when a woman answered I said I was leaving a message on behalf of Estelle Rudgard. I was put through to another female voice who announced herself as ‘Angie speaking', and I resisted the temptation to say what an unusual surname that was and stuck to the script.

‘We like our girls to ring in before eight-thirty if possible,' she said snottily.

‘Sorry, I'm just a friend passing on the message. I had to wait until I got to work myself,' I said, noting from my SeaStar that it was only 9.15 am.

‘Yes, it is inconvenient, Estelle not having a telephone, isn't it?' She wasn't making polite conversation, she was blaming me.

‘I'm sorry about that. She said she would ring you herself later.'

‘Make sure she does, please.'

‘Yes, ma'am.'

‘Office Cavalry have a reputation to keep up, I hope she knows that.'

‘I'm sure she does, ma'am. Goodbye.'

I hung up. With cavalry like that, Custer might have stood a chance.

I suddenly felt at a loose end. I mean, starting the day by kidnapping a young woman right off the street and driving her across London is all very well, but what do you do for an encore? This detective business was getting difficult to plan one's day around.

It must have been the same for Doogie, because when I put the phone down and turned to go upstairs, there he was in his stockinged feet, right ear pressed up against Lisabeth's door.

‘Doogie!' I hissed and he jumped, startled.

‘I was just checking if everything went off okay,' he whispered guiltily.

‘Of course it did. I was looking out for them. Can you hear anything?'

‘I think someone's singing,' he said enthusiastically.

‘Singing what?' I asked carefully.

‘It sounds like “Onward Christian Soldiers” but I'm not sure. I'm no churchgoer, nivver was. Where are you going?'

‘Back to bed. I'm getting one of my headaches.'

 

I never actually made it back to bed. I brewed a pot of coffee and made a half-hearted attempt to clean the flat. Once
the kettle boiled, I gave up the attempt and put the headphones on so I could listen to some pirate tapes of Echobelly that a sound engineer in a studio down Curtain Road had accidentally forgotten to destroy.

That killed an hour. Rearranging the books on my shelves without finding anything I fancied reading took care of another ten minutes or so. Sorting out some dirty clothes for a trip to the launderette look about five minutes. By then the only choice I had was either daytime TV or washing up my coffee cup. No contest. I went to the kitchen sink.

As I washed my mug, I thought about giving Zoe I ring to see if she had come up with anything on Mrs Delacourt's white powder. That got me thinking about what I was supposed to do next about Crimson and his non-burglar friend Chase. I didn't come
up with any bright ideas, but standing there at the sink, vacant-brained and looking out of the window, I saw Springsteen sitting in the middle of our communal back yard.

He wasn't doing anything suspicious, just sitting there. That made me suspicious. He tilted his head to one side and concentrated on something at the back of the house, but it wasn't me he was gazing at, it was something lower down.

But there wasn't anything lower down except, below and to the left of my kitchen, the window to Lisabeth and Fenella's bathroom.

I put my knee on the edge of the sink and hauled myself up so I could raise the sash window enough for me to stick my head out. Below me, to my left, a pair of Nike trainers followed by a very impressive length of legs were emerging from the bathroom window. Then came thighs and buttocks, a green mini-skirt bunched around the waist. The trainers flapped like wounded seagulls as she scrabbled for a foothold that wasn't there.

Of all the times I've wanted to avoid Lisabeth and Fenella, I'd never thought of that one. Building a glider in the attic, yes, but the bathroom window trick? It just went to prove, the old ones are the best.

By the time I got downstairs and out through the back door, which we seldom use, she was dangling from her fingertips, trying to gauge the distance to the ground.

Springsteen was still in the middle of the yard, either contemplating the clumsiness of the human form, which didn't allow it to climb sheer brick walls like he could, or maybe sizing her up for an attack. When he saw me come out of the house, he lost interest in Stella. He stuck a back leg in the air and thought about licking some inaccessible part of his anatomy, then thought the better of that and got up and walked off, flicking just the top third of his tail at me in farewell. The cat equivalent of ‘You're on your own, mate.'

I moved under the dangling legs, which
were still two or three feet above my head. She had her head turned to the right, so she couldn't have seen me. Her skirt was still high; she'd probably hitched it up on her hips to give her more mobility, I reckoned, marvelling at her ingenuity and not really enjoying the view at all.

‘If you let go, I'll catch
you,' I said cheerfully.

She closed her eyes and gasped softly, her chest and arms relaxing so much I thought she might drop right then.

‘I suppose I look pretty silly,' she said, resigned.

‘Not at all.'

‘Well, I feel pretty silly. How far down is it?'

‘Eight or nine feet,' I said helpfully.

‘Is that about two metres?' she asked. She was younger than she looked, or maybe I was getting old. Or maybe she just knew how to hurt a guy.

‘Nearer three,' I said, idiotically smug that at least my maths was better than hers.

‘Okay,' she said, taking a breath. ‘Coming down.'

She slithered down the front of my T-shirt, my hands catching her waist and slowing her descent and quite acci
dentally, because of the momentum, sliding up to the sides of her breasts. It was a sensation that in other circumstances would have been highly erotic. Let's face it, in those circumstances it was a sensation you wouldn't ring your mother about.

She turned around, loosening my grip and pulling down her skirt with a fluid movement of both hands. Then she rubbed them together to ease her cramp after hanging onto the window sill and looked me in the eyes, shaking her blonde pony tail in that getting-settled gesture that only women and cats can do without moving their feet.

‘Sorry,' I said, for the sake of something to say.

She looked me square on.

‘Are you with this lot? You're the taxi driver, aren't you?'

‘Taking your questions in order: sort of, and yes.' I was 90 per cent sure she wasn't going to slug me and do a runner. ‘Their hearts are in the right place, you know. They want to be on your side.'

She tipped her head back slightly and the tip of her tongue snaked out to moisten her upper lip.

‘You're not from Connie, are you.' It wasn't a question.

‘No way, Jose. My idea of a shining doorway is a night club with no dress code.'

She stared at me some more, then stretched her neck and exhaled through her nose.

‘Want to go back in and start all over again?' I tried.

‘Will you tell me what this is all about?' she asked.

She looked down, registering the distance between us; maybe the thickness of a newspaper. I took half a step back.

‘I was hoping you'd tell me.'

She was back with the eye contact again, and I'm pretty sure I had to blink before she did.

‘Okay. But only if I can talk to you. Those women make me nervous. And they couldn't deprogram a video recorder.'

 

 

It appeared that I had missed an Oscar-winning performance from Stella during her ‘deprogramming' session. The technique the Fab Four (her description) had used had been to each take a different line in questioning. Miranda had done the ‘Why are you running away?' bit, Fenella had done the ‘Are you really happy?' line. Veronica had tried to get her to talk about her family, and Lisabeth had been left with trying to discover if she had been used or abused by the men of the Shining Doorway.

‘I suspected early on that you weren't for real,' said Stella, exhaling from a cigarette I had found for her and managing to keep a straight face.

‘But you were so convincing,' breathed Miranda, forgetting for a moment that the allocation of questions had been her idea. ‘She was, you know, Angel. She just kept on about how the Shining Doorway would lead her to heaven and how she just had to have faith in the family of believers.'

‘And you were acting? All the time?' Fenella was open-mouthed in admiration, ‘Even when Lisabeth asked you those questions about … sex?'

Lisabeth glared at her, then glared at Stella, who had flicked ash onto her carpet.

‘Don't worry about that,' smiled Stella. ‘If you do it as much as I do, you should be able to talk about it. And I've been acting for 24 hours a day for weeks now.'

‘Why didn't you tell us you weren't really a committed member of the sect?' This from Veronica, who had been thinking about it.

Stella drew hard on the Sweet Afton I had lit for her, and she hadn't once complained about there being no filter tip.

‘Why should I? I didn't know who the fuck you were. You could have been set up by Connie – that's Constantine, our hallowed leader. I wouldn't put it past him. He's fond of coming up with little tests of loyalty for his disciples. I couldn't be sure, so I toed the party line, saying just what
he
would want to hear or have reported back to him. After three cups of that horrible herbal tea – sorry, no offence – I thought you'd have to let me go to the toilet and that would give me a chance to scout out an exit. I saw one and tried to leg it back to Connie. Good little sheep returning to the fold. Where the hell are we, by the way?'

‘Hackney,' said Lisabeth sullenly, looking around for an ashtray.