Just Another Angel (12 page)

She was clutching something in her right hand, something covered in white powder, as she weaved towards us and sat down heavily and out of breath. I poured her neat tequila, which she swilled greedily. ‘How about these?' She held out her hand.

It was difficult to see what she was offering at first, but as I took them from her, I saw they were credit cards, an Access and a Visa, both made out in the name Mrs J A Scamp. I made sure I got some of the white powder on my fingertips and, not making a big deal of it, brought them up to my tongue. The powder was flour. Wholemeal. I handed them back, much to her surprise.

‘You'd steal from another woman?' said Melanie indignantly. Men, it appeared, were fair game.

‘A rich bitch who won't miss them,' Carol said dreamily. The effort of searching the bus had accelerated the effect of the alcohol and dope.

‘I don't take payment by drastic plastic, I'm afraid.' I stuck two papers together and started to make another joint. Carol's face fell and I thought she might burst into tears.

‘You can keep them ... in exchange,' she said slowly, holding them out like a magician would.

Melanie tuned in to the same image and whispered: ‘Go on, pick a card, any card,' in a Tommy Cooper voice.

‘Tell you what I'll do.' I finished the joint, lit it and handed it to Carol. It was another rich mixture. ‘I'll see what value I can get on the street in town for these and I'll leave you this bag on the basis that if I can't dispose of them, I'll be back for it.'

‘Sure, sure.' She sucked on the joint and put her head back. Now she could relax, she thought, if she was still capable of thinking. She had no intention of handing the joint back, but I didn't bother fixing another for Melanie and me. Instead, I just lit up a straight fag and shared it with her, Bogart style.

I moved the bag of grass over towards Carol, but kept hold of it.

‘So you don't remember Jo, then?'

‘Jo? Jo? Josephine ...”

It was too late; she'd gone. Three minutes later, she was snoring gently. I palmed the credit cards into my jacket pocket so that Melanie didn't see me and rescued the still-smoking joint from Carol's fingers. I half-offered it, but Melanie shook her head, so I tossed it reluctantly onto the fire. I hate waste.

‘We'd better get her inside,' I supposed.

‘If we really must. Her pit's at the back of the bus.'

Melanie took her legs and I took the bows and we struggled up the steps, Carol's bum hitting most of them, which I reckoned Melanie was doing deliberately.

The interior of the bus was lit only by a small torch made to look like an old lamp, the type you see in Westerns, and from what I could see I was glad there was no more light. The debris included empty wine bottles, food wrappers, part of a loaf of bread so hard the sparrows would bend their beaks, and a half-empty tin of baked beans with enough penicillin growing in it to supply most of Soho for a year.

Carol's ‘pit' was the back seat of the bus piled high with old coats and a couple of threadbare blankets.

‘We all had sleeping-bags when we came here,' said Melanie. ‘The Christian CND sent them. Carol sold hers.'

‘Heave.'

We dumped Carol face down and I leaned over to try and turn her. Never leave anybody in that condition face down. Not even a Carol.

As I leaned further, I felt a hand sliding up the inside of my left thigh. Christ, she's awake, I thought; then I realised it was coming from behind.

‘What about Antiope?' I asked hopefully.

‘She'll be asleep.' Melanie's voice had gone suddenly husky, as if the treble control on the stereo had failed.

‘You'd better check,' I said without turning round. ‘I'll make sure Carol's okay.'

‘That cow will sleep through anything.' The grip on my thigh tightened.

‘We don't want her choking on her own vomit, though, do we?'

‘If you say so. See you in five minutes.'

As soon as she'd gone, I finished rolling Carol on to her side and threw a coat over her. Then I picked up the lamp-torch and held it above my head. I knew roughly what I was looking for, and I found it on the floor under a seat-frame from which the seat had been removed.

It was a brown paper bag of Jordan's Wholemeal Flour, about half full. Quite a bit had spilled over the floor already, so nobody would notice any more. Carol must have just dropped the bag when she fetched the credit cards.

I lowered the torch to floor level, just in case anyone was watching, and squeezed the bag gently. Yes, there was something in there, and I bet myself it would be Jo's emerald pendant. Wasn't it Chandler's
The Lady in The Lake
where Philip Marlowe finds the jewellery clue in a box of sugar? I put my hand in and found it. Well, I supposed it was an emerald under all that flour – either that or the millers were giving away some expensive free gifts these days.

I slipped it into my pocket and dusted off my hands and clothes. Carol hadn't stirred. Mission accomplished. Almost.

Melanie was waiting by the Transit holding two sleeping-bags, the sort that you can unzip and lay flat. I picked up my fags and the bag of grass from near the campfire and motioned her around to the driver's door. I wanted to keep the back door locked, and you couldn't do that from inside.

It turned out to be a wise precaution. During the night, the handle was tried at least twice.

 

 

 

 

 

I was back on the A12 heading south for the Smoke by 7.00 the next morning, well before the Front Line had stirred – all but Melanie, that is, who had been grumpily evicted from the Transit at 6.30. I was whistling a medley of Ellingtonia, keeping an eye out for a transport café for breakfast and feeling fairly pleased with myself. Not cocky enough not to watch my speed, though, nor to keep looking in the rear-view mirror. The Suffolk traffic cops were well-known to be a lot keener than their Essex brethren, and a van like this one coming away from a military establishment was a natural target at that time in the morning.

I found one of those plastic and formica Little Chefs that were replacing the old greasy spoon eateries and went straight into the Gents. There I dampened some paper towels and wiped the flour off the goodies I'd removed from Flaxperson. So that was an emerald.

It was smaller than I'd thought it would be for two-and-a-half grand's worth, but then what do I know? The pendant itself was heart-shaped, the emerald in the centre, and no bigger than my thumbnail. I
presumed the metal was silver and the chain too. On the back of the heart was engraved ‘JJ' in flowing script. A bit twee, I thought, for a prototype yuppie like Jo. Still, mine not to reason why.

I tucked into bacon and eggs and fried bread and pondered on the great philosophical issues of life such as why you never got fried black pudding for breakfast any more. (It's now called
boudin
and is served with apple sauce and puréed carrots in
nouvelle cuisine
restaurants.) I had located the dreaded Carol easily enough, and reclaiming the pendant had been a piece of cake; well, a piece of more than cake, actually. I'd even found the missing credit cards.

All I had to do now was give them back.

Should have been easy. Shouldn't it?

 

I drove via Barking to call in on Duncan the Drunken before the traffic built up, but his garage was locked and that meant calling at the house. Unfortunately, Doreen was in.

‘Hello, Fitzroy, chuck, how yer doin'?'

‘Hi, Doreen. Where's Dunc?' I'd long since given up trying to get her not to call me that.

‘Out – but on a job. When he's earning, I'm not complaining. Come in for a cuppa?'

I declined quickly. She might have offered me something to eat, as most Northern women believe they have a mission in life to feed up any male who can still see his feet.

‘I just called to return Duncan's van and pick up Armstrong – my cab.'

‘You'll have to see the old man when he gets back. I told you, he's out earning. Be back about 5.00.'

‘Oh no, not another wedding?'

Doreen smiled. It was all right for her, she didn't have to clean up the sodding confetti.

So I was stuck with the Transit for the rest of the day. If I parked that outside Stuart Street, it would really annoy Frank and Salome if they had friends round. So that's what I did.

Disappointingly, they were out when I got home, and so, it seemed, were Fenella and Lisabeth, but that Saturday was Lisabeth's jumble sale day. And of course there was no sign of Mr Goodson from the ground-floor flat; there never was at the weekend.

I checked behind the wall phone to see if any mail had been stuffed there for me but, as usual, there was nothing. Somebody had left me a note, though, through the cat flap in my flat door.

Springsteen circled my legs and howled a bad-tempered welcome as I opened the purple – yes, purple – envelope. On matching paper with a cartoon of Snoopy wearing a Harvard T-shirt, was written:

  

Dear Mr Angel

 

A nice lady called Mrs Boatman rang this afternoon (Friday) and said she was anxious to speak to you. Please ring her on Monday at Walthamstow DHSS office. Sorry, I forgot the number. Some secretary, eh?!!!

 

Love, Fenella.

 

I screwed the note into a ball and threw it for Springsteen to play with. He took a tentative bite and then started howling again, so I had to open a tin of Whiskas – turkey flavour, full price. (If I ever get any on special offer, I have to remove the price tags before he sees them.) Then it was a shower and a shave for me before planning Saturday Night Out.

As the house seemed empty, I got in four or five unlogged phone calls around the circuit of friends and acquaintances to see what was cooking. The menu was pretty basic as it turned out. Trippy was meeting somebody at a club down at Camden Lock, but he couldn't remember who or exactly where. I could guess why though. Bunny had got himself invited to a party down in Fulham at a house rented by four air hostesses who worked for Cathay Pacific. I didn't know whether that was good or not, and even Bunny admitted it was a leap in the dark, as his experience had not got above Sealink Duty Free Shop assistants in the past. There was no point in ringing Dod. In his book, Saturdays were for racing, betting and boozing – nothing else – and he rarely strayed beyond the local corner pub. I tried the Mimosa Club to see if anyone interesting was playing that evening, but got no reply. No surprises there, as Stubbly never bothered with the floating drinking trade on Saturday afternoons. After all, some of them might be football supporters.

I didn't call any female friends, for the idea was to take Jo out. Yet the options seemed limited. Maybe I should socialise more. I settled for the party in Fulham on Bunny's recommendation, arranging to meet him in a trendy pub in Covent Garden beforehand. Then I rang Jo, prepared to hang up if a man answered.

‘Hello, Celia,' she said when she heard my voice. ‘How did you make out?'

‘Just fine. Mission accomplished. How would you like to reclaim your property? I take it I can't call round.'

‘Quite right, Celia.'

‘So you'll have to come to me. Can you sneak out tonight?'

‘Maybe later.'

I told her I'd be in the Maple Leaf in Covent Garden until about 9.00, then down in Fulham, and I gave her the address of the party and told her to ask for Louise.

‘Who's Louise?' she asked.

‘Damned if I know,' I said truthfully, and she said Okay and See Ya and hung up.

I thought it a bit off that she'd never asked how I'd got her pendant back. I mean, I might have had to shove the split match heads under Carol's fingernails, or tie her to a tree and subject her to psychological warfare by, say, reading Hemingway aloud to her.

Knowing Carol, of course, it would have made more sense to ask if I'd come out of things in one piece – the piece in question being in the genitalia region. But Jo had done neither. There's gratitude for you.

 

Duncan had not returned Armstrong by 6.00, so I presumed it would be the next morning. I had no intention of taking the Transit up West – I'd had enough trouble round the launderette, which doubles as a common room for the junior branch of the Hackney National Front – so I left it parked outside the front door in exactly the spot where Frank and Salome usually plug in the nightlight for their VW Golf. (One day they'll knit it a pullover.)

Anyway, that meant I could have a decent drink and trust to luck not to have to need a lift back.

Whenever possible, I try and make a point of taking something special to a party. Now I know what you're thinking, but I mean to drink; something more appealing to women than the Carlsberg Special Brew brigade, something more interesting than Piesporter Michelsberg.