Just Another Angel (20 page)

Then I was arrested.

 

They did it very well, that I'll grant them, but then they've had plenty of practice.

An unmarked Ford Escort pulled out from the kerb slow enough to give me plenty of time to ease up and reach for the horn. But the Escort didn't stop, it came on until it blocked the road completely, and before I could react, my door had been pulled open and a warrant card thrust in my face.

One of them sat in the back – again – and made me follow the Escort, but at least this time they were plainclothes men, not uniformed, so my street cred didn't suffer.

We headed back to the dockyards and onto the approach road for the Blackwall Tunnel. I asked the copper in the back if that was where we were heading but he said, ‘Just follow,' so I did, and it was.

The old India and Millwall docks are situated on the one huge horseshoe bend in the river. It's a sobering thought that in a million years or so, the Thames will break through somewhere around Poplar High Street and turn it into a proper island. No, it's not a sobering thought, it's a weird one. Why should I worry about such things? I mean, it's not as if I owned property there.

I followed the Escort through the tunnel, when it hung a left down towards Cubitt Town but turned into Coldharbour and the cop shop there before then.

This time it was a room with three armchairs and a view over the river. There was a table near the window on which were three Carlsberg ashtrays (no wonder you can't find one in a pub) and a pair of professional-looking binoculars. I could see a barge or something out there in the middle of the Thames, but I've never been much good with boats. My experience on Old Father Thames is limited to the
Tattershall Castle
just down the Houses of Parliament. That has the double advantages of being (a) stationary and (b) licensed.

‘Don't do it, laddie,' said a voice behind me. ‘The drop's not enough to kill you and the water's pig-filthy.'

‘I thought there were salmon in the Thames nowadays.'

‘Yeah, in tins, from Tesco's.'

‘Another illusion shattered. And what have I done this time, Mr Malpass?'

‘You tell me, laddie, you tell me.'

He picked up one of the ashtrays and sat down in an armchair, crossing his legs and balancing it on his knee. He fished out a packet of cigarettes and kept them to himself.

‘You can start with old Edna. What didya make of her, then?'

‘Edna who?'

‘Oh tut-tut, laddie, my time's valuable, you know. D'you know, it seems like only yesterday we were having one of these happy little talks.'

‘It was yesterday.'

‘My goodness me, was it really?' he said, laying on the Scottish accent so that it sounded more like Scotch by absorption rather than birth. ‘So yesterday we had our chat and today you go social calling on Mrs Edna Scamp, well-known geriatric reprobate and old slag of the parish of Woolwich. That's what I call interesting. Wouldn't you say that was interesting, Mr Angel?'

I put my hands in my pockets and rocked on my heels. I hadn't sat down because he hadn't asked me to. I notice things like that.

‘I find a lot of things interesting. The thought of a Labour Government, interstellar travel, Phil Collins writing a song with a comma in it, why there aren't any walnuts inside a Walnut Whip any more. All that, and more, including why I seem to be this month's centrefold in
Police Gazette.
'

‘You're a popular laddie, laddie.' Malpass beamed at that. I suspected that he didn't laugh much, probably on religious grounds. Something to do with the Kirk, and I don't mean Captain James T.

‘But let's cut the crapola, shall we? What were you doing with our Edna, eh?'

‘How did you know I was there?' It was worth asking. He wasn't going to tell me anything, so I tried to trade info.

‘Like the Listening Bank, sonny, we have branches everywhere.'

‘That's a relief, I thought you were going to say, “Ve ask ze questions,” and then whip the rubber truncheons out.'

Malpass put the fingers of his right hand on the chair arm and pressed them down one at a time until all four knuckles cracked loudly. When he'd done that, he took the cigarette out of his mouth, tapped some ash off and studied the glowing end. I think he'd been practising his pauses.

‘We don't need the truncheons, Mr Angel, do we? Because you're going to cooperate with me.'

‘I always like to help the Thin Blue Line,' I smiled, not adding that in Brixton it was called the Thick, etc.

‘You're bright, laddie, try and catch on. I said help me, ‘cos this is a bit personal.'

Oh God. A policeman with a problem I needed like a politician wants a lie-detector test.

‘And you're going to help me.' That wasn't a question, and I was getting an awful bad feeling about this. Deep in my stomach the whirling pits started a few trial revolutions, and it wasn't down to the meat pie I'd had.

‘Gonna tell me how?'

Malpass stubbed out his cigarette.

‘Let me tell you why. First off, you drive a cab but you're not a licensed Hackney Carriage.' Well, I park in Hackney, but it probably doesn't count. ‘And we can make life very difficult for you. Give somebody a lift and take cash for it and we've got you, so you might have to be very careful who you travel with, if you get my drift.'

I did.

‘Then there's a small matter of your presence at two locations within a week that have been under police surveillance. That's going to take a bit of explaining. I'm sure. But best is last, as we've got you bang to rights handling stolen property.'

If he expected me to break into tears and confess, then he was a good judge of character, but I had Dod to think about, and Dod had a missus and kids and anyway was bigger than me and after all was a pretty good drummer. I should have known. Fire-damaged gin! What an airhead!

‘Bang to rights, eh?' was all I could think of to say.

‘Yup,' drawled the detective. ‘We have a signed statement from a Mr Nassim Somethingorother to say that –'

Nassim? What the hell had he got to do with it?

‘– he accepted the notes in good faith from you as payment for rent on –'

‘Pardon?'

I sat down on the edge of the table. Malpass didn't seem to mind. Well, at least he didn't hit me.

‘Your rent money, sonny. Two hundred sovs in marked notes. It was hot money – nicked from a sub post office in Southend three weeks ago. We wouldn't have got onto it except it happened to be a post office where the little old lady is careful and takes a note of the numbers of anything over a fiver. All your twenties were on her little list, and when Mr Nassim put them in the bank yesterday, he got a nasty shock. Mind you, so did we when we went round your place last night and found you gone. So it was decent of you to show up today.'

‘I don't know where the money came from,' I said feebly.

‘No, of course you don't. It just gets left on the doorstep with the milk, doesn't it. Grow up, laddie, this is serious. We have good reason to believe that the Southend job was one of a string of maybe six post-office robberies. Total amount missing is close on 15 grand, and yours is the first to turn up.'

‘And if you thought you could pin it on me, you'd have had me cautioned and the bracelets on by now,' I said bravely.

‘Quite right, laddie, but I think handling should be enough to hold you for a while. Shall I get one of the uniforms in and take a statement? Do you want to call a brief?'

So, stakes were raised. Well, there's a time to call a bluff and a time to fold – fold up, roll over and beg for mercy, that is.

I told him that Jo had given me the cash, though I was suitably vague as to exactly how I recovered her lost property. I told him that I'd seen her in the company of a minder I didn't like the look of and that I'd followed them to Woolwich. They'd visited the old Mrs Scamp and then so had I, and all I'd found out was that she was Jo's mother-in-law and probably had a picture of Hitler on her bedside table.

‘How did they get in?' was all Malpass asked.

‘In the back. There's an alley running along the back of the gardens. They parked round the corner.'

‘Bugger,' he said softly, to himself.

‘You didn't have anybody watching the back, did you? Just on Lee Metford Road, and all you saw was me.' Why was I so smug about that? After all, I was the one in trouble.

Malpass brought out his cigarettes again and this time offered me one. I broke the filter off and tapped it on my thumb before I took a light from him. Joe Cool hisself, I don't think.

‘Manpower, you see. It all comes down to manpower. Not a big enough allocation for something like this, that's the trouble.'

‘I'd think 15 grand was a good reason to call out the dogs, or doesn't it work that way?'

‘Oh, the Essex lads are out in force, no problem, but I'm sure the hooligans who did the post offices were working from south of the river. That's what the grapevine says, and I think I know why.'

‘But you don't really think it was me?'

He smiled the way the German general von Moltke smiled when the Swedish ambassador told him Stockholm was impregnable.

‘No, I don't think you knock over post offices. In fact, I don't really care who actually did the jobs at all.'

‘Now there's a novel approach to police work. I bet it
keeps the filing easy.'

‘Don't be lippy. I don't like it, and it'll annoy me now we're working together.'

‘I don't like the sound of that.'

‘That's only ‘cos you don't know what you're into. You're surprisingly innocent.'

‘I bet that's not said much round here.'

He let that one go.

‘What you have wandered into, sonny, is a private feud. I'll be honest with you, it's very personal business, which is why I need you, but by Christ you need me.'

‘Go on,' I said as if I meant it.

‘I know old Mother Scamp from way back, you see, and she's a bad ‘un. Always was. Small-time South London villains have a habit of getting above themselves, and they usually come a cropper when they tangle with the East End families or the heavy mobs dealing in drugs. The Scamps have always been Third or Fourth Division, but they've spread the work in their time, and that's why old Mrs S is now calling in the favours.'

‘You mean that white-haired old lady? Maybe she diddles the Meals on Wheels people, but masterminding a string of robberies?'

‘Oh yes, I'm quite convinced of it.'

‘What for? The Whist Drive not exciting enough?'

‘Oh, there's method in it. She's raising cash to finance the springing of her son Jack.'

‘Springing? As in “from prison”?'

‘You're catching on.'

‘And when is this supposed to happen?'

‘It has. Either late last Saturday or early Sunday morning. Just about the time you've admitted taking two hundred stolen notes from Jack's wife.'

That convinced me. I definitely hated Thursdays.

 

 

 

 

 

Malpass suggested we go for a drink. It was 5.30 and the pubs were opening, jovial landlords all over London withdrawing rusty bolts from front doors to greet the homeward throng. If Malpass had suggested a swim round to Mortlake, I'd probably have agreed.

He made me drive, so Armstrong had yet another policeman in the back, and directed me towards Mile End. Limehouse, he said, was full of politicians, and Bow was being yuppified. Only in Mile End, where there used to be a fair crop of breweries, could you find a good pub with a good pint of beer.

We found a pretty hideous street-corner boozer, and Malpass ordered two pints of Charrington bitter.

‘I'll be straight with you, Angel, though I still can't believe that's your name.'

‘Suspend disbelief, Mr Malpass. I do, quite often.'

He sipped some ale and smacked his lips. ‘We're well off the record now, so I'll tell you something about Jack Scamp.'

‘This is why it's personal. That it?'

‘Yes, but also there are things you should know, as we'll be working together.'

Why did I just know I wasn't going to like this?

‘Jack Scamp is a south-of-the-river villain who was never as tough or as important as he thought he was. Not that he's not tough; oh no, it'd be a mistake to underestimate how vicious the little sod can be.'

‘You sound as if you've an axe to grind there, Mr Malpass.'

‘Not so much grind as bury in the back of the little bastard's head if I get half a chance.' He caught my look. ‘Yes, it's that personal. He did something to a friend of mine, two years ago. A young DC just out of uniform, name of Leakey, was getting in close on one of Scamp's sordid little protection rackets. I was supposed to be running the operation, but I got caught up with other business. Too busy to back him up, I was. And so one morning, he's found on a plot of waste land in Dagenham, with both his knee-caps smashed to mush by a cricket bat. A fucking cricket bat!'