Angel Hunt (34 page)

I followed them down the stairs and from the first landing

I could see the group of people gathered near the front door. There were still people drinking and dancing and lounging about on the stairs, and Bunny was explaining to the straight-faced Josie that the most common place to find an erogenous zone was …

Miranda forced the crowd apart, and I could see Fenella on her knees in the hallway, a large cardboard box in front of her.

Springsteen sat a foot away from her. He was motionless, looking at the box in horror.

‘Angel! Come see,' yelled Fenella, as I eased my way downstairs. ‘Mr Tomlin brought them. You know, the man who breeds pedigree Siamese down the road. He said they were our responsibility now.'

She dug her hands into the box and came up with a pair of mottled black and white kittens.

‘Springsteen!' I yelled above the music as he disappeared like a black bullet down the hall towards the kitchen. ‘I want a word with you!'

 

 

 

 

 

Mike Ripley is the author of 16 novels, including the
Angel
series which have twice won the Crime Writers' Association Last Laugh Award for comedy.  He was the co-editor of the legendary
Fresh Blood
anthologies, a scriptwriter for BBC TVs
Lovejoy
and served as the
Daily Telegraph
's
crime fiction critic for ten years. He currently writes a regular column for the popular 
Shots
crime and thriller e-zine (www.shotsmag.co.uk) and regularly talks on crime fiction at libraries and festivals.

After 20 years of working in London, he decamped to East Anglia and became an archaeologist. He was thus one of the few crime writers who regularly turned up real bodies.
In 2003, at the age of 50, he suffered a stroke and regained the use of his left hand and arm by bashing out a book on an old portable typewriter on the kitchen table. He now works part-time for the charity Different Strokes and is the author of
Surviving A  Stroke
(White Ladder Press, 2006).