Angel on the Inside (10 page)

‘I wouldn't join any Neighbourhood Watch that would have me as a member,' I quipped before I could bite my tongue.

Ivan Dunmore looked as if he just had bitten his tongue.

‘But seriously, I came to say thank you for being so vigilant,' I pressed on. ‘We're trying to be careful. You know we were burgled about a month ago?'

‘The police did mention it,' he said cautiously.

That was one up to the Neighbourhood Watch, wasn't it?

‘So I was wondering if there was anything you could tell me about the person who was hanging around the other day?'

He shrugged his shoulders as if it didn't matter. He'd done his bit, after all, telling the cops. Why should he have to give a repeat performance for me? Because I was standing at his front door making his driveway look untidy and giving the rest of the Neighbourhood Watch something to watch.

‘She was young, about 20 I'd guess. Blonde, quite long hair. I suppose you could say pretty if we're still allowed to say that without being a sexist pig.'

There was something in the way he said it that made me think a nerve had been struck and I really didn't want to go there.

‘How was she dressed?' I said, to change tack, but that only made him look down at me as if I was a pervert.

‘The same way all girls of that age dress – in things that look as if they come from Oxfam and they wear only once even though they actually cost a small fortune.'

Woops, I think he had a history here. I hoped he didn't know what Amy did for a living.

‘Oh, the usual. White T-shirt with something written on it and those tight blue jeans with flares and the faded stripes up the legs and over the arse cheeks where there should be back pockets.'

On reflection, a Neighbourhood Watch this observant might just be worth joining.

‘Can you remember what was on the T-shirt?'

‘Yes I can, actually. It was “Fuck” but the letters were jumbled up.'

He meant ‘FCUK', or I hoped he did. I knew several taxi drivers who had had T-shirts made up with ‘FUCK OFF' printed backwards so that drivers who cut them up could read it in their mirror and be afraid.

‘She had a bag as well, a big shoulder bag thing that looked as if it could carry the kitchen sink.'

‘And you noticed her when?'

‘First thing in the morning three days ago. She was hanging around behind some parked cars watching your house as I was going to work. Then I saw her that evening as I came home. Miss May was unloading some things from her Land Rover and there was the girl again, just down the street, watching her. She was there the next morning according to Mrs Cohen two properties to the west.'

I liked the ‘two properties to the west' bit. Normal people would have said ‘two doors down', but this was Hampstead.

‘So you know Amy, do you?' I said with a smile.

‘Not really, no. We did ask her to join the Watch when she first moved in here.' Then he added: ‘When she was living alone.'

‘What did she say when you asked her to join the Watch?'

‘She laughed.'

That's my girl.

‘Was this young woman acting at all suspiciously? I mean, did she do anything that would be a cause for concern?'

Other than just be on a piece of pavement that you claim by divine right, I thought, but didn't say.

‘Mrs Cohen is quite firm about the fact that she saw the girl taking photographs of Miss May as she was leaving for work the other morning.'

He let the implication hang in the warm night air. Amy got up and went to work; I didn't.

‘Did she follow Amy, when Amy went to work?'

‘I have no idea where she went, but she left the area shortly after, in a taxi.'

‘She could be a journalist,' I said reasonably, and I could see that the prospect of that worried him more than a bus load of burglars or somebody organising a street party for the gay, black, disabled homeless.

‘That's for the police – or you – to sort out. Now if you'll excuse me, I have some paperwork to finish.'

‘One last thing. Did you notice what sort of shoes she was wearing?'

He stared silently at me for a full minute before he closed the door in my face.

 

I scoped the street before I went back into the house, hoping to spot a trenchcoated figure under one of the streetlights, a cigarette cupped in a curled hand, trilby brim snapped down over the eyes. But there wasn't a living soul in sight, not even a cat. They had probably all been rounded up by the Animal Branch of the Neighbourhood Watch. I had been right not to inflict a move here on Springsteen.

Which reminded me that I ought to check up on him.

Back indoors, I cracked another Leffe and phoned Stuart Street, knowing that Fenella would be the one sent to answer the house phone.

She said she had to be quick as she had three separate text chats going at the same time and she'd broken two nails already that evening. Springsteen was still growling and moving about in reverse, but he was eating well and drinking a lot of water. I said that was a good sign, though I had no idea if it was or not, and that she should try him with some lean minced beef or lamb. Fenella made the ‘eeeuuu' sound only teenage girls can really make and said that handling meat was going a bit far. I told her not to worry, just buy a pack at the supermarket and throw it in the flat. Springsteen could easily unwrap it himself as long as it wasn't frozen – which just took longer. She said okay, if she really had to and, by the way, that car mechanic friend of mine had called round on the off-chance I would go to a pub with him and his wife but I wasn't to worry as he'd give me a ring.

I didn't bother to ask if ‘Alison George' had paid a return visit, assuming that to be highly unlikely. Nor did I ask if Amy had rung, as that would have sounded a bit weak and surely Fenella would have mentioned it.

Duncan the Drunken calling round to take me for a drink, now that could be serious. It probably meant the estimate for the BMW's repairs was going to be horrendous.

I dialled his home number, not really expecting him to be in and, sure, enough, got the start of his recorded voice message.

‘This is Duncan. Me and the wife Doreen have gone down the pub and we're probably shit-faced by now so you can either come and buy us a drink or ...'

There was a click as the receiver was picked up and Duncan's Yorkshire accent cut across the message.

‘Talk to me.'

‘Duncan, it's Angel. Why aren't you down the pub?'

‘Bit of a cock up, there, mate. We thought we'd try the karaoke down The Whalebone in Barking, but it seems we're barred from there.'

‘You forgot you'd been banned from the pub?'

‘Not me,' he said haughtily. ‘Doreen.'

‘Oh. Fair enough. You have some bad news for me, then?'

‘Aye, about the chassis on that Beamer. Could be up to three grand to sort it out before we start on the systems checks, and then there's the bodywork.'

‘All right, Duncan, don't sweat it. Let's cost the whole job like we said and see if it's worth getting it back on the road and maybe selling it on.'

‘Just thought you'd like to know, now the insurance company's got it on the agenda.'

What insurance company? I hadn't even sent in the claim form.

‘What insurance company, Dunc?'

‘I don't think she said the name of it.'

‘
She?
'

‘The blonde bint who came sniffing round here this afternoon. I wouldn't mind having her on my case, I can tell you. Long as Doreen didn't find out, of course.'

‘Would her name have been Alison George by any chance?'

‘Aye, that's it. But she said I could call her Georgie if I wanted to.'

‘I've got a few other names for her,' I said.

 

The next morning, I awoke with a plan. I knew exactly what I was going to do.

But first, I reached over and patted the other side of the bed. It was empty, which was a relief.

It would have been a shame to waste such a good plan and, anyway, Amy would have killed me if she'd been there, what with all those empty beer bottles scattered over the duvet.

 

 

 

 

 

It wasn't about me, or Amy, it was about Keith Flowers.

Whoever this Alison George character was, she was tracing Keith Flowers' movements in the month he spent out of prison. Flowers had stalked Amy in and around the Oxford Street office, so Alison George had been there, only to give Debbie Diamond an earful when she found Amy had done a runner having being warned by the cops that someone had her under surveillance.

She had hung around the house in Hampstead, the house Keith Flowers burgled, and she'd even been to Duncan the Drunken's garage to see the car he'd stolen. She would have known from the Suffolk cops where to go, as Duncan would have signed for the wrecked BMW when he picked it up and he would have used a kosher name and address if there was a chance of a legitimate insurance payout. The one thing I couldn't figure out was why she had visited the flat in Stuart Street. Keith Flowers had never been there – he'd phoned there when he tracked me and Amy to Suffolk (thanks, Fenella blab-mouth). But how would Alison George have known that?

There was one other place I knew Keith Flowers had been during his one moon cycle of freedom and that was St Chad's Hostel in Chadwell Heath, which I assumed was some sort of halfway house for ex-prisoners waiting to jump from the rock of confinement on to the hard place of life on the outside. I had no idea where it was or how it worked, but I had spoken to the warden on the phone a month back. I would go and see him and ask for ... well, anything he could tell me. That was my plan, carefully thought-out, immaculately researched.

About halfway round the North Circular Road I remembered the warden's name – Roberts – and felt a lot more confident.

At the ridiculously named Charlie Brown's Roundabout (Good grief!), I cut off under the M11 towards Gant's Hill and Eastern Avenue, then pulled in to a post office near the old Goodmayes Hospital, leaving Armstrong right outside with the engine running. The postmaster, a Sikh, took great delight in meeting a London taxi driver who didn't know everything and had to ask directions. After a couple of minutes of smirking, he told me that St Chad's Hostel was in Sydney Gardens on the other side of St Chad's Park.

Back in Armstrong I consulted a battered A-Z once I was out of sight of the postmaster and worked my way through the suburban back streets parallel to Eastern Avenue and round the northern end of the park until I hit an enclave of streets named after either Australian cities (Adelaide, Melbourne, Sydney) or trees (Yew and Cedar) for no apparent reason. Who knew what had possessed the local town planners? And why did these Australian ‘Gardens' all run in to Whalebone Lane, which crossed Eastern Avenue at the Moby Dick Roundabout? I swear you could make up any ridiculous street name you liked and Londoners would believe you. Don't try it on a real black cab driver, though.

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.