Angel Hunt (7 page)

No 2's fitted on to half the back of the house, leaving a downstairs and an upstairs window free. The extension's roof sloped up at 45 degrees to within about four feet of the roof proper. The owner, wisely not trusting London tap water for his greenhouse, had installed a network of guttering to catch rainwater in a pair of large, aluminium beer barrels (worth over a hundred quid to the brewery and a thousand a ton to the illegal smelting operations over in Barking). The barrels had holes cut in the top to funnel the rainwater in, and plastic taps knocked into the side to let it out.

It was perfectly possible to see how Billy could have vaulted the fence, got onto the kitchen roof via one of the barrels and from there onto the main roof and all the connecting ones down to Sunil's house. If you were desperate enough, it was the only way to travel, but on a frosty night in the middle of December, you had to be desperate.

‘The caretaker's house?' I asked.

‘He didn't hear a thing,' Prentice said, nodding.

Well, neither had I until Billy had either slipped or tried to open that skylight window.

I lowered myself down off the fence.

‘So?'

‘So Billy Tuckett gets badly scared and starts running for where he thinks his old friend Lucy Scarrott lives.'

‘I'd got that far. I meant, so what's it got to do with me?'

‘You knew Billy …'

‘Like hell. Briefly and very much in the past tense, and I don't mean ‘cos he's dead. I knew him once, a long time go. I don't see where I come into this at all.'

‘What if Billy knew Lucy wasn't there and it was you he was running to?'

‘Impossible.'

‘Sure?'

‘He hasn't seen me or thought about me for ten years, as far as I'm aware, and he couldn't have known I'd be in that house. How many more times?'

‘Okay.' He put his hands in his pockets and walked off. I caught up with him halfway to the gates.

‘You said Billy was your grass. Who was he grassing on?'

‘I don't know.' Prentice didn't stop walking, but he slowed. ‘We never got that far. He was worried about what the cell was planning, thought they were going too far, and he was almost ready to come over.'

‘Cell? What are you talking about?'

Prentice began to swing the schoolyard gate shut.

‘The 4As are organised on a cell basis, with four or five members per group. Each acts independently but to a central timetable. This – whatever it was they planned – was just one of eight incidents across the country on Sunday night. This one came to nothing, but you must have read about the others.'

‘No, I don't take much notice of newspapers.'

His look made me feel guilty, though I couldn't think why it should.

‘We found incendiary bombs in department stores in Leicester and Huddersfield – fortunately before they'd gone off. A chicken farmer in Norfolk had the front of his house sprayed with liquid manure, and a pharmaceutical laboratory was broken into in South Wales and about 50 white mice released.'

‘That means there'll be a hundred on the run by now.'

He squared up to me.

‘These people are not funny. 4A is out on a limb compared with any of the animal rights organisations that have gone before. Pretty soon they're going to kill somebody.'

‘Aw, get out of town. You're winding me up.'

He began to unlock his car door.

‘If you won't help, fair enough. I'll see you at the inquest.'

‘Help? How the hell can I help? And why should I?'

He held the Escort door open.

‘Billy came to me because he was in with a bunch of fanatics. That's what he called them, and he was worried because something big was coming up and it would get out of control. He wouldn't say any more until he'd had a chance to talk it over with a friend, he said.'

‘And you think that was me?' I snapped. I was getting ratty, and the rain was going down the back of my neck.

‘Or Lucy Scarrott, or maybe somebody else. You knew Billy. You could find his friends, find out what he was into.'

‘A bit thin, isn't it?'

‘You're all I've got.'

‘And why should I?'

He exhaled slowly and rested a forearm on the top of the car door.

‘Billy dropping in on you was a big coincidence, and we don't like coincidences, so further investigation may be necessary.' He put his head on one side, but kept a straight face. ‘If I read you right, you're not the kind who would welcome further investigation much.'

‘You mean really deep, persistent scrutiny and monitoring of my day to day existence? What a less law-abiding, trusting soul might well call harassment, if they were feeling uncharitable?'

He smiled and climbed into his car.

‘Remember, the Force is with you.'

 

I let him get clear before I turned Armstrong around and cruised down Dwyer Street.

Nassim's battered Nissan (Nassim Nassim's Nissan? Why couldn't he have a Ford?) was outside No 16 and there was a builder's flat-backed truck parked in front of it. They would be repairing the skylight, I guessed correctly, and were probably a firm Nassim had shares in, so he could fiddle the invoices for the insurance company.

I popped in to see what the form was, and to find out if I'd been fired as a house-sitter. That was all I had in mind, but I ended up, five minutes later, knowing something the police and the probation service didn't know.

I found out where Lucy Scarrott was living.

And I should have kept it to myself.

 

 

 

 

 

Of course, I didn't realise at the time just how deep I'd get in, and I can't be blamed for not seeing what would happen in the end. As far as I'm concerned, a Tarot card is of no use unless it fits one of those hole-in-the-wall banks, preferably on somebody else's account. (The bank card I want to get hold of is the one issued by an Arab bank called Watani Express. No kidding, a credit card with a camel instead of a hologram!)

To be honest, I didn't give it much thought. The morning was wasting away and I was on a promise to deliver women for Simon down in Southwark.

Simon the Stripping Vicar had also in his time been Simon the Sex Ton, the Curvy Curate and even the Randy Rabbi. You name it, he's taken off the clothes for it. He used to work for an outfit in the City called Even Rudergrams, but about a year ago the market fell right out of the bottom of the stripping kissogram girl (or boy) business, and the company packed up and moved into something else. Probably private health insurance or personal pensions. Ever wondered where the old door-to-door encyclopaedia salesmen went?

Simon bought up the costume store and set himself up in premises in Southwark, under the name Snogogram International. It was basically the same old idea of stripping kissograms, but he had one or two speciality lines. The most popular was undoubtedly the stripping policewoman or traffic warden – always good for a laugh among London's paranoia-ravaged motorists. Once, when very drunk, Simon had phoned me late one night to try out a new concept, the ‘Uzi-O-Gram,' which had the catchline ‘Shoot up your girlfriend's wedding, just for fun!' I had explained that while this was probably in the best of taste and unlikely to be very illegal, it was already being done in California and he'd be pushed to get third party insurance cover. This latter piece of logic had been the clincher, and he'd dropped the idea as soon as he'd sobered up, the following week.

He had come up with one idea, though, that had turned out to be a blinder at Christmastime. He called it Boozebusters, and the idea was that wives (and, more rarely, husbands) who were fed up with their partner's non-stop round of office parties would hire a Boozebuster squad to snatch the miscreant from the pub or wine-bar or restaurant, or even the office itself at a pre-arranged time. Needless to say, the ‘snatch squad' (yes, I know, but that's what they called themselves) were usually scantily-clad kissogram girls armed with water-pistols and cans of projectile shaving foam. The girls all had wodges of visiting cards in their stocking tops, which they threw as they grabbed their victim, and these had the Boozebusters logo – a picture of a drunk in a red circle, with a red slash – and Simon's phone number on them. That Christmas, the Boozebuster girls were the sharpest thing in town.

Naturally, Armstrong was the perfect vehicle for transporting a hit team, especially if they were dressed as policewomen. At Christmastime in the City these days, there were more fancy dress police than real ones.

I checked in with Simon just after 12.00.

‘Got a good one for you, Roy,' he said. ‘A four-hander at the Princess Louise in Holborn. Know it?'

‘Do fish swim? There's no parking around there.' I like to think Simon paid me for my expertise.

‘That's why I wanted Armstrong,' he said.

Okay, so he paid me for my taxi. I didn't mind; I was happy that he still talked to me at all. I'd once had to miss a rendezvous with him after he'd done his own stripping vicar act for some giggling secretary's twenty-first birthday, and he'd shot out of the pub stark bollock naked to find me somewhere else. Ever-resourceful, he'd stolen a copy of the
Evening Standard
to hide his blushes and gone home by Underground.

The Snogogram building wasn't really a building, it was a converted railway arch. There was just one room, rather like a small warehouse. Simon had a desk and three telephones near the door, and the rest of the place was taken up with racks of costumes and boxes of party stuff such as balloons and streamers. There was even a cardboard birthday cake about ten feet across, which a couple of girls could leap out of if somebody paid for their time and the hire of a van.

I sat on the edge of Simon's desk, as there were no chairs. Behind it were several sets of screens at different angles, behind which the stripogrammers or Boozebusters got changed.

‘What time?' I asked him.

‘About two-ish. It's some guy called Harding, and it's his last work day before he goes on holiday. His secretary–'

He broke off as a natural brunette called Kim came from behind one of the screens. She was wearing a red basque and matching knickers, with four suspender straps hanging loose around her white thighs. It was a nice piece of lingerie, but I'd never worked out why they named it after Spanish terrorists.

‘Will you do this bleedin' thing up for me?' She offered Simon the drawstrings round the top of the basque. ‘Oh, hi, Angel. Christ, but it's as cold as a witch's tit back there. Ever thought of investing in any heating, Simon?'

Simon didn't answer, just turned in his swivel chair and began lacing up the front of Kim's basque while still giving me my instructions.

‘– his secretary has ordered a full four-hander policewomen buster to make sure he's back in the office by two-thirty so he can sign all the staff's petty cash vouchers. He is a bit of a late lunch merchant, by all accounts.'

He finished tying a big bow dead on Kim's cleavage and, as she turned to go, she winked at me.

‘Here's his office address.' Simon had swivelled back to me and handed me a piece of paper with an address in Theobalds Road.

I was watching Kim walk back to the screens. She was holding a suspender in each hand like she had a skipping rope. I had a bizarre thought. Maybe they named the Spanish terrorists after …

‘No problem,' I drawled, checking the address. ‘Who else is coming?'

A full four-hander meant that two girls dressed as policewomen would go into the pub, locate the victim and intimidate him in front of his office cronies, then start taking their clothes off. Two others, wearing raincoats over their underwear, would be waiting at the bar or similar, ready to join the fray shouting ‘Boozebusters' and things like ‘Your wife/secretary/boss is taking you out of here now!' And then they would spray foam, throw cards, pop party-poppers and so on and drag the victim out to a waiting fast car. Or in this case, Armstrong. Suitable scenes of red-faced hilarity would occur back at the office, as someone always tipped off the entire staff to be ready at the front door. It was not unusual for the orderer of the Boozebuster to specify a long route back to the office, to give the victim's fellow revellers time to get back ahead of him.

‘Kim and Jacqui will be the cops, Frances and Eddie will shadow them with the shaving foam and stuff,' said Simon, like it was Normandy beach 1944.

‘And my mission, should I decide to accept it?'

He looked at me blankly. Surely he wasn't too young to remember
Mission Impossible
? Oh God, he couldn't be, could he?

‘Make sure they don't leave their coats – or their underwear – hanging over the beer pumps.' He looked up at me sharply. ‘This time.'