Angel Touch (12 page)

The only thing left to work out was where to take Anna for dinner.

By 4.30, PKB's main dealing room was virtually deserted, but the sounds of telephones and typewriters still came from some of the analysts' offices. I saw Salome only briefly, with Alec Reynolds, going through swing doors towards Patterson's office, but she didn't see me. From what I could tell, she seemed cheerful enough.

I gathered my tools together and screwed back the odd duct cover I'd left off. By the time I was putting on my White Sox cap, there was only one dealer left, way down at the end of the room in the last chair.

He was maybe 22, blond and quiffed, and had regulation-issue red stripe shirt, red dot silk tie and red check braces. I watched him for a minute or so as he sat looking at a blank VDU screen. I had the feeling he'd been like that for some time. Then he sniffed loudly, wiped the palms of his hands down the sides of his face and stood up to put his jacket on.

He brought a natty, inch-thick briefcase out from under the desk and opened it on his chair. The only thing he put in it was a carefully folded copy of
The Times
;
the ‘White'
Times
as we call it in the City, as opposed to the ‘Pink'
Financial Times.
Then he snapped the case shut and headed for the door.

I don't think he even saw me, let alone registered my presence.

Maybe it was because I wasn't wearing a suit.

Maybe it was because he was zapped out of his head.

 

But why worry? It was the weekend and
nothing
(Rule of Life No 31) interrupts a weekend. Nothing, that is, except the odd case of murder.

The Friday night went by pleasantly enough. I got back to Stuart Street, showered, changed and was out again by 6.30. I remembered thinking to myself that I hadn't heard Salome or Frank come in, but I just put it down to them working late.

It took me an age to get across north London in the rush-hour traffic. Anna lived in Willesden, and as I crossed Hampstead to get there, every other car seemed to be a Volvo estate with its sidelights permanently on, heading for the M25 and, eventually, a weekend cottage in Suffolk or Norfolk. I'd heard more than one coastal village in East Anglia referred to quite seriously as Hampstead-on-Sea; still, I suppose it was good for somebody's property values.

Anna shared a flat with another girl, who was away for the weekend. That was duly noted. There are some things I don't have to be told twice.

I'd decided to take her to Break for the Border, a Tex-Mex restaurant in Soho, because I thought it would impress her. Bui I could have settled for a Big Mac and saved money, as the thing that really impressed her was Armstrong. Once she realised that the black cab outside her flat was mine and that it had a four-speaker sound system (and a tape of the new LP from the Christians – a band to watch), she could talk of little else. She stayed off the booze and even showed me her driving licence (and by decoding the licence number I could work out her age, which surprised me, but she didn't look it) to persuade me to let her drive us home. Back to her place? Why not? I've never regretted buying Armstrong, you know.

I got back to Stuart Street on Saturday morning, too late to do a book swoop (checking out all the church jumble sales and charity bashes in the area for first editions to flog to the dealers around Leicester Square; you'd be surprised what I could pick up for 10p and get more than the author did the next day). So, facing the harsh realities of life, I decided to do my laundry round at the local launderette.

On the way there, I did notice that Salome's VW Golf wasn't parked in its usual place. But I paid it no never mind and spent an hour in the company of Mrs Patel, the launderette manager, discussing the Pakistani cricket team and the price of green peppers at Patel's (no relation) round the corner.

On the way back, I picked up a pizza from our local pizzeria. It's a friendly, neighbourhood, family-run little joint that serves drinks all afternoon even if you only look as if you're thinking of ordering food. It had a picture of a different Roman emperor on each wall panel, and I'd often wondered if they knew that they'd all, except Julius, been poisoned. I wondered if they wanted a PR man.

I was balancing the pizza on my knee and holding laundry and trying to find the key to the front door of Stuart Street when it opened suddenly. I lunged forward inadvertently and the pizza was somehow suspended in mid air between my chest and Lisabeth's ample bosom. I didn't give odds on the olives surviving the encounter.

‘Angel! Just the person we wanted to see!' she boomed. Maybe she had a thing about being massaged with pizza. The mind boggles.

‘Hello, Angel,' said Fenella from somewhere behind her.

‘Er ... what can I do for you two?' I said, struggling to recover my balance, and when I realised I was looking down Lisabeth's cleavage, I added ‘Ladies' pretty quickly.

‘Come and pick us up from Sainsbury's in about an hour,' she said, examining her blouse for leaking tomato paste.

‘Make that two hours,' added Fenella, then she prodded Lisabeth in the ribs. ‘You know what you're like in supermarkets.'

Lisabeth ‘hurrumphed', a noise only she and submerging hippopotami can make, then said cockily: ‘We're doing Salome's shopping for her, even though it does mean buying
meat
.'

She said it quietly, like people over 30 say ‘condom.'

‘That's why I'm going as chaperone,' Fenella chipped in. ‘To stop her assaulting the staff at the butchery counter.' Then, with a sideways look: ‘Like last time.'

Lisabeth pursed her lips and said: ‘All
you
have to do is handle it, dearest. That's all.'

I'll never say that Lisabeth doesn't feed me the good lines, but with my hands full and no obvious route of escape, I bit my tongue and held back on that one. Instead, I asked why they were doing Salome's shopping.

‘Because she's away for the weekend,' said Fenella primly. ‘On a self-improvement course.'

‘A what? Come on, my pizza's congealing.'

‘Well, I think it's some sort of a health farm,' said Lisabeth, before Fenella could get another word in. ‘Frank's away on business in Edinburgh until Monday at some sort of legal seminar on Scots law, so Sal's taken the opportunity of sneaking off to some health club without telling him. She's left
you a note to tell you what to say if Frank rings the house.'

Frank and Sal, being upwardly mobile, had a mobile phone on Sal's PKB expense account, but if Frank couldn't get her on that, then he may well have tried the communal house phone in the hall. If he was out, it usually fell to me or the weird and rather reclusive Mr Goodson in the downstairs flat to answer it.

‘I saw no note,' I said, knowing it sounded stupid.

‘Well, she did, because I saw her put it through the cat flap. Which reminds me, Mr Nassim is coming for the rent tomorrow. Do you want me to give him yours so he doesn't see the cat flap, as usual?'

Nassim Nassim was our landlord, and we called him that because when we asked his surname once he said it was too difficult for us to pronounce, let alone spell, so stick to Nassim. Hence, Nassim Nassim. As landlords went – and let's face it, who likes ‘em if they don't run pubs? – he was a diamond.

‘Yeah, I'll drop it round,' I said. ‘No, on second thoughts, I'll give it to you when I collect you from Sainsbury's. Give me a bell when you're ready.'

They primped off to the bus stop and I struggled upstairs and into my flat.

Salome had pushed a note through the cat flap. It read:

 

Angel. Frank's away until Monday in Scotland. I'm going with Alec to follow up our business from the office. We might get something on the Cawthorne end, but say nothing to anybody about this. Should Frank get in touch, remember he knows nothing about anything, OK? Back Sunday pm. Love Sal.

 

The reason I hadn't found it earlier was that Springsteen had hijacked it and half buried it in his litter tray. It was his way of telling me he hadn't been fed.

I opened a can of cat food, keeping my hand over the label so he couldn't see it was on special offer that week. He's so snobby it's a pain.

Then I re-read Sal's note. Say nothing, it said. Well, I was good at that.

Just as well, really, as the police called later that night.

 

I'd been out playing with an oppo called Bunny, who really is a mean sax player and could be good at it if he laid off the women (well, you know what I mean), not like me, who's really only in it for the beer. We'd been backing a new band making their debut at Dingwall's at Camden Lock (Saturday's not a good night because of the poseurs; midweek's better), and the gig had gone down well, though I couldn't for the life of me remember the name of the band. They played what I call anorak rock, and I always dismiss bands like that out of hand. I wouldn't have paid to hear them, but I've said that before and a few months later found their albums in the charts. That's why I'll never make it in the music business; my wallet's not in it.

It was just after 1.30 am when I turned Armstrong into Stuart Street. I was singing along to a pirate tape of (Bruce) Springsteen's Wembley concert the year before and hardly noticed the police car until I'd parked in front of it. I switched off the tape pretty quick. I knew the Boss didn't approve of bootlegged concerts – since he'd made it up with the recording studios, that is – but I didn't think it merited the cops.

The Plod – or Old Bill Street Blues as they were known in some quarters – were represented by a pair of uniforms from Traffic Division. They were half way up the steps to No 9, but they'd stopped way before the doorbell and were watching me park.

I climbed out of Armstrong, confident that the only suspicious thing about me was my trumpet case. I hadn't been drinking and they wouldn't find any naughty substances on me. You see, I'd been to Dingwall's before, and some nights, anyone coming out of there is regarded as a legitimate target.

‘Good morning, sir,' said the taller of the two. ‘Do you live here, by any chance?'

They were both fresh-faced constables with nothing much to choose between them. Sure they were young, probably younger than me. But I don't worry about when the policemen start looking younger. Only when they start getting closer.

‘Certainly do, officers. Anything wrong?'

‘Do you know a Ms Asmoyah by any chance?' asked the tall one.

‘Mrs Asmoyah, sure.' Then my stomach churned. ‘It's not Frank, is it? Has something happened to Frank?'

‘Frank who, sir?'

‘Frank Asmoyah. Mrs As ... Salome's husband.'

‘We'd better go inside, sir.'

As I put the key in the lock, I thought that if there was room for a cop car and Armstrong out front, there wasn't room for Salome's Golf. In the hallway I said: ‘Sal ... Mrs Asmoyah's away for the weekend.'

‘Which is her ... apartment, sir?' asked the shorter one, and the ‘sir' was definitely an afterthought.

‘Top one,' I said meekly. ‘But ...'

They politely pushed by me. Half way up the first flight of stairs, the taller one bent over to scratch Springsteen behind the ear. Springsteen was mouthing a silent howl at to warn me that there were cops about. As an early warning system, he was about as much use as Neville Chamberlain. I made a mental note to cut his rations.

I followed them up as far as my door and, as I unlocked it, they were banging on Salome's. I flicked the lights on and put my horn down, then went back to the stairs.

The noise had woken the denizens of Flat 2, and rather than get out of her pit herself, Lisabeth had sent Fenella to see what was going on. From the little of her that she poked around the door, I guessed she was wearing only the green-striped man's shirt with the sleeves cut short that she used as a nightie when her Snoopy pyjamas were in the wash. (I hoped Lisabeth didn't know I knew this kind of stuff.)

I put a finger to my lips when Fenella saw me and shook my head slowly. She got the message and closed her door quietly. The two uniforms started downstairs, and as they drew level, I nodded them inside. They looked at each other before coming in, but then they did and they took off their hats as they came. A good sign – a British policeman never does anything unspeakable (or official) with his hat or his helmet off.

As I showed them into the living-room, Springsteen shot through my legs and into the bedroom. One thing was for sure, his conscience wasn't clear. I wondered if I should offer our boys in blue a drink. But then, my conscience wasn't crystal clear either.

‘Have you any idea where Mrs Asmoyah is, sir?' asked the taller one.

‘Not exactly where, no,' I said. ‘But I know she's away for the weekend.'

‘And you are?' The smaller one had his notebook out.

‘Angel. A,N,G,E,L.'