Just Another Angel (25 page)

‘I told you this was personal,' was all he said.

 

I could have screamed and kicked and refused to go. I could have threatened to hold my breath until I went blue. I could have called a policeman. I did the fourth most stupid thing; I went along with it.

‘We'll take the cab,' ordered Malpass. ‘Drive up and down a couple of times, check the area.'

Yes, sir.

I not only drove, I pointed out the darkened entrance to the Mimosa. I'd be a Special Constable before you could say ‘fuzz.' Then I quartered the block and pointed out the fire exit, which was a battered red door in between a Greek restaurant and a graphic art studio.

‘Is it ever used?'

‘Never been known. The exit is by the Ladies and usually blocked with beer crates.'

‘That's illegal,' said Malpass, but as he was in the back of Armstrong, I couldn't see if he was serious or not.

‘Then slap the back of somebody else's legs,' I said. ‘Not mine.'

I did two more lefts and then stopped about 30 yards down the street from the club. There were cars parked down both sides even if I'd wanted to get closer, which I didn't.

Armstrong ticked over. There was no other traffic, there were no other sounds. For a minute, I thought my luck had changed and something good had happened, like Malpass had had a heart attack and I had a corpse in the back.

‘All right, this'll do.'

Bugger. The sod still breathed.

‘Do for what, Mr Malpass?' What I'd really meant to say was: can I go home now?

‘You stay here and keep the road blocked; nobody'll get past you. I'll go in and see if Jack's still there. If he comes quietly, I'll come out and signal.'

‘And if he doesn't come quietly?'

‘I reckon he will.'

I gripped Armstrong's wheel – not a totally impressive gesture with only one hand – and took a deep breath. Time to assert myself. Now or never; the situation was well out of control already.

‘I want it understood, Mr Malpass,' I said as evenly as I could, ‘that I'm not here.'

‘That's okay, sonny, I hear what you're saying.'

(Rule of Life No 279: people who say, ‘I hear what you're saying,' really mean they didn't want you to raise the subject in the first place.)

My mouth had gone very dry and my bladder suddenly seemed very full. None of these symptoms seemed to affect Malpass. He climbed out of Armstrong on my side and stood over me until I pushed down my window.

He had a black trench coat on and his right hand was deep inside the right pocket. In his left hand he held the torch.

‘Just stay here until I come out. You'll keep the street blocked, and if you see any pedestrians wandering about, tell ‘em to piss off. Once I'm out, you can disappear and we'll say no more about it.'

He wasn't looking at me as he spoke; his eyes were fixed on the tatty door of the Mimosa. He was breathing deeply and exhaling loudly. I wondered if John Wayne ever had to.

‘What if Nevil shows up?' I had a bad thought. Then I had a worse one. ‘What if he's in there?'

‘No way.' Malpass shook his head but still concentrated on the faded yellow door. ‘They wouldn't risk travelling together.'

‘What if he's already skipped?' I was clutching at straws. ‘What's to say he hasn't skipped already? I don't know he's still there.'

‘He will be. He was always an early bird, was Jack. Did most of his naughties just before dawn. Early to bed, early to rise, early to steal, that's Jack. Human nature, you see. Study human nature.'

And with that he stepped across Armstrong's headlights and walked towards the Mimosa, right hand in his pocket.

 

I hadn't asked him how he thought he was going to get in, and for one terrible minute I thought he was going to shoot the lock and kick the door in. No such dramatics. He produced what looked like a bunch of keys and very quickly had the door open, but he didn't go in immediately. He paused, looked up the street past Armstrong and went into a crouch.

He had seen something I should have, which was a car turning in from Soho Square and coming up behind me.

My right foot hovered over the accelerator pedal and I balanced Armstrong on the clutch. I wasn't as convinced as Malpass that Nevil was out of harm's way. Seeing him lying in a coffin with a stake through his heart might have gone some way to convince me.

The car drew up slowly behind me and stopped. I don't know what else I expected; after all, I was the one blocking the street.

From the shape of its lights, I guessed it was one of the small Peugeots. I relaxed a little. Surely Nevil couldn't fit in one of those?

The driver pipped his horn, almost apologetically. I couldn't blame him; nobody likes to pick an argument with a London cabbie. Then a posh voice came out of the window: ‘What's going on?'

In my mirror I could see a woman in the car as well. It was late and maybe she wanted to get home, or to a hotel, or maybe a car park.

I pulled my window down and twisted round so I could stick my head out.

‘Geerrrahtoffit!' I yelled. ‘Ain't you got eyes? Can't you see there's been an accident?'

The driver didn't need any prompting. He put the Peugeot into reverse and disappeared, one of the millions not wanting to get involved. Maybe Malpass had something about human nature after all.

When I looked back to the Mimosa there was no sign of him, but the door was open.

If I had any sense at all, I would have left then. Of course, if I'd really had any sense, I wouldn't have been there in the first place. But what proved conclusively that too many of the little grey cells had finally dissolved to mush was the fact that I still stayed there after
I heard the shooting.

 

I knew what it was immediately. I suppose I'd half-expected it; seeing Malpass's pistol, the rest was almost auto-suggestion.

But even as I heard it, I knew it was not a revolver. Not that I'm any sort of expert, but I had misspent much of a happy youth in the ‘Feeling lucky, punk?' school of cinema, and I could tell Clint Eastwood's Magnum from, say, the Magnificent Seven's
Colt .45s, blindfolded. (There was never any blood when people got shot in
The Magnificent Seven
. Ever noticed that?)

This was much more of a cannon type of thump, almost like a distant firecracker, and it was quickly followed by a second.

I pulled the window down again and stuck my head out. I felt I ought to call out to Malpass or maybe go and see if he was okay. On reflection, I decided to let him come to me. And as it turned out, staying inside Armstrong was just about the cleverest thing I did that night.

When Malpass did emerge, only a few seconds after the shots, it was dramatic enough to make me forget my churning stomach.

The door of the Mimosa was flung back and Malpass stood there framed in it. I thought for a moment he was gathering his coat tails around him, like a woman would gather a long skirt, but it wasn't that at all. He was clutching his right leg with both hands, and that was how he tried to run across the street, like some rubber-legged Vaudeville comedian.

He yelled something as he ran/hobbled towards a parked sports car, but I just sat there hypnotised.

Then Jack Scamp appeared from inside the Mimosa, nattily dressed in white shirt, dark tie and dark blazer. He could have been anyone or anything stepping out after a night's wining and dining. Or course, the sawn-off shotgun he was reloading was a bit of a giveaway, though.

Malpass had made it across the street, about 80 feet or so in front of Armstrong. As he reached the parked sports car he went into a rolling dive, still clutching his leg, and bounced himself off the bonnet and over the other side. As he turned, the leg was straight up in the air, a position I'd only ever seen Springsteen get into voluntarily. Then he was gone from my field of vision, down behind the sports car.

He made it just in time, for Scamp had reloaded and fired again. Both barrels, I presumed, as there was only one crump, and the effect on the sports car was dramatic. Most of its soft top simply came away, but the whole car seemed to move sideways.

Scamp maybe said something to himself then, like ‘Damn' or even ‘Blast'; the sort of thing you would say to yourself when you'd just missed blowing a policeman's goolies off with an illegal weapon.

If Scamp did say something, I couldn't hear it. He just went about the business of reloading again, breaking open the shotgun and reaching into the pocket of his jacket for more shells.

I didn't know whether he'd killed Malpass, or whether he was taking it out on sports cars in general. I could relate to that; I mean, there's so little leg room in most of them. All I did know was that Scamp took a few steps forward into the street while stuffing home fresh cartridges. As he did so, he was directly in line with Armstrong's radiator.

At this point I did three things. First, and most importantly, I went out of my mind. Then I turned on Armstrong's headlights. Then I found first gear and stomped on the accelerator.

The design of the FX4 taxicab is about 30 years old now, and it was never really planned to make them more aerodynamic than, say, a brick at the best of times. In first gear from a standing start, on the level, they can't make more than about 15 miles an hour, and they scream a bit doing that. But they are heavy, and as fragile as a Centurion tank. Caught in the headlights, Scamp didn't turn a hair. He calmly snapped the sawn-off closed and swivelled it from the hip towards me.

Some people I know would revel in being able to say they looked straight down the barrel of a loaded gun. I can't, because I ducked down as low as I could, controlling Armstrong's wheel with just my left hand, the injured right tucked between my legs.

Oh yes, and I suppose I'd better come clean. I had my eyes shut.

I think I was probably screaming as well, but if I was, I didn't yell anything memorable. I heard the shotgun pellets hit the bonnet and the windscreen like hailstones on a tin roof, and for a second I wondered if I should punch a hole in the glass like they do in the movies. But then I decided I had broken enough hands that night.

And then there was another sound that I didn't like to think about at all, but that I presumed was Jack Scamp hailing his last London cab.

I felt the nearside wheel go over something, and as there were no more shots, I opened my eyes. The street ahead was clear, so I slowed and risked a look in the mirror.

What was left of Jack Scamp was lying across the middle of the road, face down, about 50 feet behind me. I put my forehead on the steering-wheel and exhaled slowly. When I looked up into the mirror again, he was moving, crawling towards something behind him.

The bastard just didn't know when to quit, did he? So there was nothing else for it but Rule of Life No 4: never hit a man when he's down; run over him.

I put Armstrong into reverse and accelerated, driving just on the mirror. I have to admit that I felt a strange sense of elation as I hit him again; in fact I plumbed the depths of bad taste by yelling, ‘Never one around when you want one, is there, Jack?' as Armstrong bounced for the second time.

 

After I turned the engine off and opened the door, I found my legs had turned to blancmange and moulded themselves into a sitting position. They had forgotten to tell the rest of my body about this, and as a result I slumped out of Armstrong, hitting the road with my right shoulder, having just remembered in time not to break my fall with my hand.

For a while, maybe a decade, I just hung there upside down.

Through the wheels of Armstrong, I could read the fly posters on a spare piece of wall on the other side of the street. I'd missed Meatloaf by over a year and Genesis's Invisible Touch tour was booked out. Life's like that sometimes; a real bitch.

Eventually I moved. I had to, as it's very difficult to throw up decently when you're upside down. In struggling upright, my face came level with the offside front wheel. Something wet and probably unspeakable was dripping from it.

I found my feet, staggered a couple of paces and spewed undigested fried chicken over a light-coloured VW Golf. I told you they get everywhere.

‘Angel!'

Christ, he was still alive! Then I realised it was Malpass. He had levered himself up so that he was leaning on the boot of the sports car Scamp had tried to demolish with his shotgun. The owner would not be well pleased. It had been an MG once.

Malpass was still clutching his leg, using his hands as a tourniquet. He was shaking, and his face was as white as a clown's.

‘Did you do for the bastard?' he asked as I approached.

‘You could say that. How about you?'

‘I'll live.'

‘But you'll never score at Wembley again,' I said, nodding at his leg.

‘I've had worse. You look like death.'