Angel on the Inside (7 page)

It was odds-on I hadn't been seen anyway. It would take a bomb going off in the street to arouse any interest once they had settled down behind their burglar alarms and closed circuit TV cameras for the evening, even though all the latest surveys showed that good street lighting was more of a deterrent to people on the naughty than CCTV. In fact in some boroughs, street crime had gone
up
when CCTV was installed.

Which thankfully made me remember our burglar alarm, which had been repaired at vast expense after Anthony Keith Flowers – the ex-Mr Amy – had nobbled it with ridiculous ease when he broke into the house and garage and made off with Amy's BMW. (I was having as much success with the house's insurance company about that as I was about the car, my first claim form having been returned as ‘frivolous'. Bloody cheek.)

Whilst one part of my brain was trying to remember the combination as I struggled with the door, another part – the part that was prone to wandering to a land where the sun and women were warm but the beer and the music stayed cool and all were free – was thinking that Amy wouldn't have set the alarm if she was home and I wasn't. Especially not given my track record of setting the thing off by accident.

Therefore, I was home first, which meant I didn't have to be quiet or creep into one of the spare bedrooms and maybe there was time for a nightcap or I could get into bed and pretend I'd had an early night after a pretty stressful day.

It never occurred to me that Amy had come home and gone out again.

Not until the next morning.

And it looked as if she'd gone for a while.

 

I didn't twig that right away, of course. It was only when I checked the shoe racks at the bottom of Amy's wardrobe and I realised that her Manolo Blahnik flat red sandals, her Sigerson Morrison green high heels and the lime green strappy sandals by Gina, along with her favourite Jimmy Choos, had all gone, that I knew something strange was going on.

Even later, I checked the garage to discover the Freelander had gone, which sort of confirmed things. I suppose I should have looked there first, but I've never been hot on garages. You don't have to be if you drive a London cab; the kerb is your garage.

A month before, when Anthony Keith Flowers had burgled the house and also helped himself to Amy's new BMW, I hadn't thought to check the garage then, so I didn't actually get to report it stolen until I had hit it with a bulldozer. Over such technicalities lawyers can argue for years.

Once I had the immediate priorities out of the way – orange juice, coffee, shower, breakfast and a couple of games of Free Cell on the computer with some downloaded Ry Cooder on the speakers – I began to wonder where Amy was.

I could have phoned her, of course, though that would have put me on the back foot immediately.

Where were you last night?

Where were you all day yesterday when I was trying to get hold of you to tell you I had to fly to Tierra del Fuego at really short notice?

I was ministering to an injured cat.

Yeah, right.

No. Too weak.

So I did what any caring, sharing partner would do: I hacked into her computer.

Or rather, took a deep breath and tried to.

I've seen computer buffs who carry cans of compressed air in specially made holsters on their belt, and when all else fails, they will do a quick draw and shoot a couple of blasts into the keyboard. In my opinion, that's simply not punishment enough – in fact, I think the computers quite like it. My instinct, when I lose my temper, is to go for a fast southpaw combination of feint then slap to the monitor followed by the heel of the hand on the processor bit that goes beep when you turn it on.

Actually, I have learned that one beep when you switch on is good. Three rapid beeps means trouble ahead, something's about to go wrong. When that has happened in the past, it hasn't been unknown for a pint of Guinness to end up in the keyboard. But I hadn't lost my temper just yet, so I stuck to my Rule of Life Number 106: Never let machinery know you're in a hurry.

Up came the screensaver, a favourite download of Amy's of the Mr Burns character from
The Simpsons
saying ‘Excellent', and then the icon thingies started to appear to the theme from
Mission Impossible
.

And then it stopped burping and bleeping and just hummed at me, daring me to make the next move.

I stared back at it. I knew what some of the icons meant – the one for the internet, the one for e-mails and the most important one, for ‘GAMES' – but what the hell was a WinZip? Who needed an acrobatic reader or a comet cursor? And why was there a picture of Harry Potter made out of Lego building bricks? Of the others, at least 20 in number, most were art or design programs, but I suspected the really interesting ones were the ones that looked like briefcases, and they would be password-protected, wouldn't they? Even the one marked ‘DIARY' in big flashing letters.

I clicked on it and it opened immediately.

This computer-hacking business was very overrated.

 

There was only one entry for that day, Wednesday, in Amy's spreadsheet diary. In fact it was the only entry for the whole week, and it simply said: ‘WELFASH FINALS – CARD U.'

I was no wiser. It meant absolutely nothing to me. I couldn't remember Amy having said anything that remotely resembled it, and no matter how long I stared at the screen, it wouldn't tell me anything else.

There was something it could tell me, though.

I shrank the diary window and inserted a floppy disk. I know, I know, I was just working out how to use them as they became obsolete, but I firmly believe that they will make a comeback, like vinyl did, or eight-track car stereos or Betamax videos. Well, okay, not those last two.

On the disk, I opened up a new spreadsheet, called it ‘DIARY' and typed in a couple of boxes of gobbledygook, then tried to transfer it to Amy's version. The usual window came up asking if I wanted my ‘DIARY' to replace the version last modified ...

The day before at 11:32:08, just about the time I was talking to Duncan the Drunken, give or take eight seconds, and I thought she was at her office.

Of course I couldn't be sure that was when she'd put in the reference, though the computer would probably tell me if I asked it the right way. Approached in the right way, anyone will tell you anything, and it will usually be true. (Rule of Life Number 83.) But that applies only to people. You can't make eye contact with – or buy a drink for – a computer, so that put me at a disadvantage.

(The only other thing I know about computers is to put a fake address in your email address book, say [email protected]. You are never going to use it, but if some kind person sends you a virus developed by some smartarse in a California computer school, then you'll know you've got it when your server flashes up the address as undeliverable.)

So if I couldn't get any joy out of one robotic, mechanical, soulless entity, then I would have to try another and ring her secretary.

Amazingly I had never actually met Debbie Diamond, even though she had worked for Amy for over two years. Then again, I rarely get into Amy's office above a flash shopping piazza on Oxford Street. In fact, I had never been
in
it, come to think of it. I was usually restricted to the sitting-outside-in-Armstrong-with-the-engine-running role, waiting to ferry her home or to the City airport or to a fashion bash somewhere. I didn't mind that. Me and offices have never got on; for a start, they're open really weird hours, like all day – as if you didn't have other stuff to do.

I had spoken to the Dreaded Debbie many a time, on the phone or over the intercom from the security desk downstairs, which served both the shops in the piazza and the office suites above them, and all I had heard backed up the mental picture Amy had painted of her. Tough, bulldog stubborn, fiercely loyal, lived with her invalid mother in Plumstead and wore cardigans. Not only that, but she wore cardigans with tissues pushed up the sleeve. Amy had repeatedly said she was lucky to have found Debbie D as they didn't make them like her any more.

I knew the type, and I knew I wouldn't get anything out of her over the phone. I decided on a plan: I would call in and see her. A social call. Surprise her, maybe with some flowers. That would even get me past security, as no-one questions a taxi driver delivering flowers to a lady in an office.

Yes, that was a plan.

All I had to do now was remember where I'd left my taxi.

 

I tubed it via the Northern Line to the Angel and then hopped on a Number 48 bus into Hackney. It seemed to take nearly forever, but I wasn't going to pay for another mini-cab. It's not the quids, it's the principle.

I lurked around the corner of Stuart Street debating with myself as to whether I should pop in to Number Nine and see how Springsteen was doing. If Fenella was there, she'd have a go at me for not bringing him some smoked salmon or grapes or something. Miranda would have a go at me for leading Doogie astray the day before; Doogie would offer me the hair of the dog; Lisabeth would just have a go at me because that was what she did best. The voices in my head decided by a clear 5-2 majority to make a run for it.

By the time I had rescued Armstrong and got up to the West End, pausing only to buy an impressive bouquet of roses at wholesale price from a corner shop florist's I knew near King's Cross and a cheap one-trip snappy camera from the chemist's next door, it was after 4.00 pm. I hardly knew where the day had gone.

On Oxford Street, I parked confidently on the double yellow lines outside the shopping piazza so the guys in the security booth could get a clear view of me. Since Oxford Street is supposedly a no-go area for civilian drivers – in theory only buses and taxis allowed during the day – I wasn't too worried about traffic wardens, but it was the summer and that meant zillions of tourists who didn't know the rules and it wasn't uncommon to see lost Belgian-registered cars or don't-care-anyway Italian ones chugging along behind the buses at an average speed of about seven miles per hour, which is slower than the Hansom cabs did it in Sherlock Holmes's day.

Unless it was a really slow day, the wardens didn't bother with taxis, and I was confident I looked the part. Not only did I have an authentic black London cab, but I had found an old leather waistcoat, smelling accurately of old diesel, in Armstrong's boot and had slipped it over my crisp white T-shirt, the one with the legend: ‘My Other T-Shirt's a Paul Smith.'

Armed with the bunch of roses and the camera, I marched into the piazza straight up to the security office and rapped on the Enquiries window with my knuckles. An elderly white guy with tinted glasses and a fast-food belly hauled himself out of a swivel chair and wheezed his way over to pull the window up about six inches. The effort seemed to drain him.

‘Yes?'

‘Flowers for a Miss D Diamond, second floor,' I said, trying to outdo him in sounding bored.

‘Pass ‘em through.'

‘Personal delivery.'

‘Is she expecting them?'

‘Do I look psychic?'

‘Then give them over. I'll see she gets them.'

‘Got to take your picture, then,' I said, holding up the snappy camera.

‘You pullin' my plonker?'

‘You wish. Listen, mate, I get the flowers and the camera given to me by a punter with more money than sense. Take the flowers, take a picture of happy lady getting nice surprise. Take camera back to punter, get return fare. That plus the tip'll do me for the last job of the day. I am well sick of fuckin' tourists who ‘ave no idea where they've just been, let alone where they want to go, and then they bitch about the fare, though the fuckin' meter's right in front of them, then they try an' pay in fuckin' Euros like I look like a bank in Strasbourg ...'

That was enough.

‘Yeah, yeah, tell me about it. Like I've not had to get a fuckin' interpreter in because some Japanese newspaper's said Stella McCartney's opening a boutique in ‘ere today. You should've seen the bleedin' queues this lunchtime. Anyway, I don't give a shit, I'm off in half-an-hour. Second floor, mate, lift at the top of the escalator then ask at reception.'

Sometimes it was a shame to take the money, I thought, as I stood on the escalator. I really would have to have a word with Amy about how easy it was to get into her office building, even though I knew she'd say you just couldn't get the staff these days.

All I had to do now, I thought, as I got in the lift and pressed ‘2', was worm my way into the confidence of the Dreaded Debbie: the only pit bull known to do T-line shorthand and audio-typing, according to Amy.

As it turned out, that proved quite easy as well.

The lift doors hissed open and I had taken no more than two steps out onto the carpeted floor when a female voice said:

‘It is you Angel, isn't it? Thank God you're here.'

I needn't have wasted the money on the flowers.

I drove Debbie Diamond round to the Portman Hotel for afternoon tea. I knew the hotel from the days when it did Sunday brunch with live jazz, and had even played there a couple of times. But that was a while back. Surely they wouldn't still remember the incident with the vintage claret?