Angel on the Inside (20 page)

‘There was a cat there, and it attacked me!' she said.

‘No! Really?'

‘Yes it did. Me – who loves cats ...'

But she hadn't found anything worth reporting to her client, so it had hardly been worth the effort.

So what had she reported to her client?

Very little.

She had been able to prove that Keith Flowers had had contact, or attempted contact, with Amy at her office and with me (albeit briefly), but that had been about it. Yes, she had photographed everything she could and express-delivered a set of prints, but it had all seemed a bit thin.

The gaping hole in the enquiry had been that she had not been able to find out where Flowers had been living during his month of pre-release. The Suffolk police didn't know or wouldn't tell her; the Prison Service certainly wouldn't tell her; and her own sources had drawn a blank.

‘You just wouldn't believe how out of date the Police National Computer is,' she said.

I said I believed it and was probably grateful for the fact, but how did she know? Who were these ‘sources' she had?

For the first time, she avoided eye contact. Gazing at the floor, she murmured: ‘My dad.'

An ex-policeman, by any chance? Of course. Retired early and now working as a risk management assessor, whatever that was. And why shouldn't she use his old network of contacts? That was how she'd checked out Haydn Rees, with the help of one of daddy's old mates now on the South Wales crime squad who knew a bloke on the
Western Morning Post
who had a whole file of cuttings on him. And yes, he was a solicitor, one of the brightest and best in Cardiff, with his own practice in the regenerated docks. More of a company law man than anything else, highly thought of in the Rotary Club, prize-winning trout fisherman, supporter of Welsh rugby club football, schoolboy air pistol champion, charity worker, trustee of Cardiff prison library and once named as South Wales' most eligible bachelor.

But, there was black mark, or at least a question mark, against him. He had been Keith Flowers' solicitor when Flowers was arrested the first time. No sooner had Flowers gone down for the count than Rees had been named in his divorce petition. That sort of thing made you think, didn't it?

Too right it did. If I had been Flowers, it would have made me think that the sod hadn't been trying very hard to get me off, so he could get off with the wife. But then, I have a suspicious mind.

And that was it, really. I was welcome to a copy of the report, even though it went against all her ethics of client/detective relationships, because Stella had told her to give me it. It seemed that old friendships meant more than ethics or principles.

Well I bleeding well hope so, I said.

 

‘But that's just not
right
,' she said, as if a door had slammed on her high-minded future.

‘It is when your client is actually covering for a bunch of hoods willing to beat the crap out of me,' I said, pointing to my face, which I have to admit I hadn't looked at in a mirror since Gerry's Club, and which had stopped hurting about five drinks earlier.

‘Stella didn't know about that when she called you,' she said, which was a fair point.

‘But her instincts were right on the button,' I said primly.

‘That comes with age, does it?'

I let that one go.

‘One last thing, then you can drive me home. Did this Haydn Rees at any time mention anyone called Turner? Len Turner? Ron Turner? Anyone called Barry or Huw?'

‘No, never.'

‘Did he give you any indication that he was representing somebody else?'

‘Not at all. If anything, he gave me the impression he was representing Keith Flowers. You mean he wasn't?'

She gave me another of her limited range of facial expressions: the dumb one.

‘I would think that extremely unlikely. For a start, Flowers' solicitor would have access to his pre-release details, so he would know where he'd lived and how often he'd checked in. Then there's the awful coincidence of you sending your report, mentioning me, with photographs, featuring me, down to Rees in Cardiff – when?'

‘Yesterday lunchtime.'

‘And lo and behold, I get sorted by a Welsh gangster this afternoon – a Welsh gangster who has the pictures you took and, call it a coincidence if you like, who has a solicitor called Haydn Rees.'

‘The bastard! He used me.'

‘Of course he did. He hired you. Hello? Isn't that what you're in business for? Private dick for hire?'

I thought that funnier than it was, and realised my glass was empty.

‘So what did he want, this Len Turner?'

And there she was again, staring expressionless into my face. It wasn't a come-on, it was a curious puppy, but without the endearing cuddly factor.

‘Oh, I couldn't say what transpired between us. That would be breaching client confidentiality,' I said, waving my empty glass under her nose. ‘Buy my me another pint and I might reconsider.'

It took her a good ten seconds to pull a purse out the back pocket of her jeans, and then she grabbed my glass and was at the bar in a flash. As she strained on steel-tipped toes to attract the barman, I noticed that the dolphin was breaching again. Though I wouldn't swear to it, as my eyes were having trouble focusing (no doubt due to sinus trouble), the dolphin had a distinctly depressed look about him.

‘So what was this Turner after?' she asked, all keen, almost panting. If she'd had a tail, she would have wagged it.

‘More or less the same thing your client Rees was after,' I said, tucking into my pint.

‘So what did you tell him?'

‘Same as I'm telling you,' I said, opening the pack of cigarettes. ‘Absolutely nothing. Smoke?'

She sat back on her stool, rocking it slightly.

‘When you've finished that, I'll drive you home, but only because Stella said I had to.'

I toasted her with my glass.

‘You can drop me off and get back here for the rest of the party. It's still early.'

And by God it was. It was still daylight outside, although only just. Or maybe the contrast control on my eyesight was going.

‘No thanks. Going clubbing with two dozen pissed-up girlies dressed like tarts isn't my idea of fun on a Friday night,' she said.

‘What's it like to be a minority?'

But she wasn't going to rise to the bait this time, and she sat in silence until I had strung out my beer as long as I could. Then I said I had to visit the toilet – for the purpose for which it was intended, this time – and that might take a while as it was down a steep flight of stairs and was known locally as the Eiger of toilets.

She didn't even smile, and when I returned safe and very much more sound, she was standing by the door, arms folded, face blank.

Without a word, I followed her out into the street, where I noticed that it finally was starting to get dark. Quite a few other pedestrians noticed this, as they were stumbling along the pavements too, but most, like me, took it in good humour. In fact, Steffi was probably the only person in Soho without a big grin on their face.

I followed her without really looking where we were going, except that we'd cut through to Wardour Street and were walking in the road against the flow of traffic, which thankfully no longer included those idiot student types on bicycle rickshaws.

Steffi wasn't making any attempt to talk to me, and I thought of one thing that would cheer her up.

I hadn't noticed her tailing me – and I would have said that was impossible – so I would give her credit where credit was due and ask her how she'd managed it.

Before I got a chance to, she had turned into a small courtyard and was reaching into the pocket of her Wranglers for a set of keys.

Even in the fading light and in the condition I was, the full horror of what was lying in wait there struck home, and I knew instantly how she had managed to dog me around London without me spotting her.

The bitch owned a taxi.

 

It was only a TX1, but it still qualified as a black London cab.

When they had first appeared, about five years before, the TX1 had been hailed as the black cab for the Millennium. It was, to be fair, the first new design in black cabs since the Fairway (like Armstrong II) about 40 years earlier, but it just didn't
look
right. It has a rounded shape to the point of snub-nose, which gives the illusion that it's smaller than a Fairway although it is actually taller and a little bit longer. The 2.7 litre Nissan diesel engine is more than decent enough and was supposed to be top-notch on emission control and fuel consumption, especially on the automatic version, which was unusual, and it had been fairly priced at around £27,000 when new. Most real taxi drivers I knew couldn't quite put their finger on why they didn't like them. They would admit, begrudgingly, that the front cabin had more room for the driver and that seat adjustment, comfort and all-round visibility were excellent, but even so … One particular one, a musher of the old school, had come up with the theory that they would never catch on because the seats in the back were upholstered with fabric instead of black vinyl. ‘You try hosing that down after the Friday night drunks have thrown up in there,' he'd confided. Whether he was right or it was just that his concern was shared by the rest of the brotherhood, the TX1 (sometimes referred to as the ‘Tixilix') never caught on in big numbers, whereas the other new cab design of the 1990s, the Metrocab, did, and it's those you see most of in London these days.

Steffi saw me gawping at the cab as she unlocked it, misreading my jaw-dropping expression for approval.

‘These delicensed cabs are really very good for getting around London, aren't they? Nobody notices you in them. I bought it through LondonCabMart.co.uk.'

If I didn't have enough reasons to hate her before, I did now.

I remembered that my idiot neighbour Ivan Dunmore had said she'd left in a cab; seemingly he had failed to notice she had been driving it! Surely the Neighbourhood Watch should have points deducted or something for missing that? Perhaps he was just being snotty about it. I'd get him too one day. He was on the list.

Steffi climbed into the driver's seat and started the engine. She made no move to open the rear door for me, so I had to do it myself and climb in.

I knew she was watching me in the mirror, so I made a show of stroking the upholstery on the seat next to me, then pulling down the rumble seat in front of me and doing the same.

‘Nice material,' I said, slurring my words – something that came to me remarkably easily. ‘Bet its a bugger to get clean when somebody spews on it.'

She didn't answer, just jammed the automatic stick into ‘DRIVE'.

 

Maybe because I didn't criticise her driving (which I could have) or the route she picked (Tottenham Court Road at this time of night!) she seemed to become more relaxed on the journey home. Perhaps it was because she was at the wheel and I was a centrally-locked captive in the back behind a toughened plastic screen, which put her clearly in control.

I knocked on the dividing panel and she slid it open an inch or so with some difficulty. She wasn't used to passengers.

I pressed my hands and face against the plexiglass, a bit like Hannibal Lecter on visiting days.

‘So what was this Haydn Rees like then?' I asked, and in the mirror I saw her nose wrinkle. There must have been diesel fumes in the cab.

‘What do you mean, what was he like?' she said. I noticed she drove with the tip of her tongue protruding from her lips, concentrating too hard. I bet she ground her teeth when she got stressed.

‘You're the detective,' I said reasonably. ‘Detectives are supposed to observe, aren't they? So what did you observe about him?'

‘Early thirties, you know, younger than you –'

Cheeky cow. She was so going down for that.

‘– and smart but not flash. Good suit, but M & S, not Hugo Boss. Supposed to be top-flight provincial solicitor who didn't seem out of his depth in London. Could be he's happy being the big fish in the smaller pond.'

The trouble with big fish in small ponds is they always got caught by somebody outside the pond, using a rod or a net or a hand grenade.

‘Sort of local hero, then, down in the valleys?'

‘Not really. Valley boy made good, I suppose, but a bit squeaky clean. I mean, a grown man with all those toys.'

‘Toys? What toys?'

‘Didn't I mention it? He's won loads of prizes for making models.'

‘I didn't know they gave prizes for ...'

‘Model aircraft, model boats, radio-controlled helicopters, even steam trains. Real ones. Well, not full size, but ones that go round on rails and you can sit on. Gives rides to kids at village fetes and charity events. He's had his picture in just about every local rag in South Wales. Model engineer, that's what he is. Writes a column in
Model Engineering Monthly
or whatever it's called. He was even on
Blue Peter
once.'