Just Another Angel (6 page)

‘Hello, Jo,' I said, recognising the electric-blue shoes, though nothing else seemed the same. She'd been cropped somewhere between a Grace Jones and an Annie Lennox, circa 1984 – short, square and spiky – and her make-up flared red up her cheekbones. Apart from the jeans, she was wearing a batwing-sleeved grey shirt and no bra. And it wasn't even Easter.

‘Thanks for coming,' she said, and I bit my tongue.

She paid her bill and asked if we could have two more coffees, which sent one of the Cheryls scurrying off, and sat down beside me. I watched closely to see if the jeans split, but somehow they didn't. Whatever she had to say, she was going to say in the foyer of her hairdresser's. I felt relaxed. It wouldn't be that crucial. I couldn't be that wrong.

We kissed. Just briefly. I appreciated the fact that her lipstick probably wasn't dry, and I got the impression that it wouldn't be dry for a while yet. But then, her knee came to rest near mine and she didn't move it. Sometimes I rate knee-contact as a surer sign than anything else.

‘You didn't keep in touch,' she said, but it was non-accusatory.

‘And you never wrote but then I never expected your sort would you just take what you can and disappear into the night I know your sort …' There was more, but you get the flavour. Attack is the best form of etc.

She laughed and it was a good laugh and could have been the first one she'd had for a time.

‘You're worse than I was told,' she smiled, ‘and yes, I'll have one of your horrid cigarettes if you've got one.'

I dug into the pocket of my leather jacket for them. It was a friendly old jacket that I'd had since university, and though they said that distressed leather was okay to be seen in, this was so distressed it was paranoid.

We lit up. She looked around and saw nobody was in hearing distance, but just to make sure, she waited until the duty Cheryl had brought us some coffee, which she paid for with a fiver.

Then she said, ‘I'm in trouble.'

‘Well, blow me,' I said. ‘No, on second thoughts, tell me about it.' And at least it raised a smile. ‘But we can go somewhere else if you prefer it.'

‘No, it's got to be here and now. I might not get … away again.'

She drew on the cigarette and then she watched the smoke as she exhaled. For what seemed like an awful long time, she said nothing. It got to the stage where perhaps she wasn't going to say anything, so that part of me that is really a knight in tinfoil armour blew it all by jumping up and speaking out.

‘Look, Jo, we're not old friends. We're not even good friends, but there was something between us for a brief moment, and in my book that means at the very least that we should listen to each other if we have a problem. You have a problem and you want to tell me. I don't know why me and I don't really care. If I can help, I will. If I can't, I'll tell you. Can I say fairer than that?'

Another one of the young Cheryls appeared with a saucer full of coins from behind a potted plant big enough to hold a squad of Japanese who didn't know the war was over.

‘Your change, madam,' she said as she'd been rehearsed, and waited, poised.

Jo looked up at her and smiled. As she did so, I noticed how cleverly her hairdresser had flecked silver highlights in among the mousey blonde roots. She waved the change away as if blessing a church offerings plate, then turned back to me.

‘That was a nice speech and probably more than you've ever said to me before put together. It makes it more difficult for me, but I need to ask a favour.'

(Rule of Life No 477: when a woman admits it's difficult to ask for something, leave immediately.)

‘Go ahead, it costs nothing to ask.' Why don't I listen to myself?

‘I've had something stolen and I need it back and quickly.'

‘Do you know who?'

‘Yes, but I don't know where she is. Well, not now.'

‘She?'

‘Carol. Carol Flaxman. She was a friend of mine.'

‘Until when?'

‘Last night.'

‘She's the one you were with at the club?'

‘Yes,' she said quietly, giving me an up-from-under innocent surprise look that didn't quite work now she'd had her fringe chopped. ‘Did you see her?'

‘Only from the stage. You'd both gone by the time I came looking for you.'

She glanced down into her coffee. ‘I'm flattered you looked.'

‘I'm flattered you came to see me play.' I gave her a flash of my standard charm smile but pulled the plug on it when she said, with appalling honesty:

‘Oh, we didn't come to see you. I didn't even know you'd be there. We came to see the band –'

‘Peking.'

‘Yeah, Peking. It was Carol's idea, because she knows the girl who plays the drums. That's why I thought you could help, if you knew her too.'

I decided to join her in a cigarette, though these days I tried to hold back until nightfall.

‘I don't follow. You think this Carol has gone to the drummer's pad?' She nodded. ‘Then I don't see the problem. I can get you a phone number at least, if not an address. We can go round there and see her ...'

‘No, I don't want to see her again. Ever. That's what I want you to do. I'll pay you if you help me.'

‘Help you do what, exactly? No, wait.' She was about to speak, but I reached out and touched her knee, and felt her flinch. ‘Just who is this Carol person and what has she stolen?'

Jo took a deep breath and exhaled slowly the way people are taught to by psychiatrists. It's not a bad way to ease the whirling pits in the stomach when the stress takes over. Neat gin's good too.

‘I met Carol at university four – no, five – years ago. She was heavily into women's politics; still is. She drops in and out, taking a year off from her course, then going back and then going abroad for a year or something. I don't think she's very serious about it. In fact, she's totally irresponsible about most things.'

I'd never even met Carol but I was beginning to warm to her.

‘She's been staying with me for the last two weeks. Oh, we always kept in touch, although she usually called to borrow money or clothes or when she was bumming around London and needed a bath or a bed. Anyway, this time she stayed longer than usual and it got a little tense towards the end. Last night, we got on each other's nerves worse than usual and I said something to the effect that I wished she'd piss off out of my lifestyle if all she wanted to do was bitch about it.'

‘And you were disappointed when she did just that?'

Jo stared down at her electric-blue shoes and smiled at them.

‘Well, I was surprised, I'll say that. She actually went and did it after threatening to at least a dozen times.'

‘When did you find out?'

‘About two in the morning. I couldn't sleep and thought I'd make a pot of tea, maybe offer Carol some … you know … peace offering. And there she was – gone. Along with a leather jacket, a bottle of vodka, my credit cards, some make-up and about 30 quid in cash.'

‘And you want me to get your make-up back, huh?'

‘There was also an emerald pendant. It was the only piece of jewellery she took but, true to form, she took the one thing that was most likely to hurt me.'

‘Was it valuable?'

‘About two and a half thousand pounds.'

‘Is it insured?'

‘No.' She shook her head slowly.

‘Do you think this … Carol … will try and hock it?'

‘No.' She was staring at her shoes again. ‘Carol has no real idea about how much things are worth. Money and property mean nothing to her.'

‘She took your credit cards and 30 quid,' I reminded her.

‘The credit cards I've reported lost already, though I'll bet she's flushed them down the loo out of spite. I'll be surprised if she tried to use them. The cash will keep her in drinks and smokes for a couple of days, and good luck to her. It's only the pendant I want back. I must have it back – for sentimental reasons – and I don't care what happens to Carol.'

‘That's not true, or you'd have called the cops.' She nodded silently. ‘So why didn't you?'

‘She's got what she calls “previous”; a couple of suspended sentences for shoplifting and a conviction for assault.'

‘Assault?' I was going off Carol; rapidly.

‘On a police horse during a student union demonstration.'

‘Well, she could hardly expect a fair trial after that,' I said, not kidding. Let's face it, there are some crimes no-one should have to face the animal-loving British jury with.

‘I don't want the police involved; well, not by me. If she brings them herself, that's her lookout. I don't want anything to do with her any more. I just want my pendant back.' For a second, her bottom lip jutted like a child's.

‘Okay, I can relate to that, but why me?'

I mean, this wasn't my normal line of work, but why worry? She'd as good as said there would be a few quid in it.

‘Because I saw you last night and because I couldn't think of any other single person to turn to. Have you ever been in that situation? Having nobody, nobody at all to go to? Jesus Christ, I couldn't tell my husband, could I? He gave me the fucking pendant.'

It was time to worry.

 

Of course, looking back, it was time to say goodbye, walk out of there and get on the first available Greenpeace boat heading for New Zealand. It would have been safer.

She didn't tell me much more – then. Yes, she did have a husband, and why should I be so shocked? (I couldn't really think why I should be either, except on the old hurt pride angle. I mean to say, the lover is always the last to know, isn't he?) Hubby was older, much older, than her and he was away a lot. Didn't I just know. He had splashed out on the emerald pendant for her 21
st
birthday and she had another birthday coming up. He would expect her to wear it then, and if he knew Carol had half-inched it, he would have the law on her without a second thought. It was worth ten percent – £250 – to her to have it back within a fortnight. Hubby would never twig it had gone walkies.

As I steered Armstrong back to Limehouse to pick up Frank's sander, I did wonder why Jo had refused to leave Champnas with me even though they seemed to have finished tweaking her hair into shape. Then I thought of 250 reasons why finding the girl drummer from Peking and then Carol and then the pendant would be a piece of cake. But just in case this Carol person mistook me for a police horse, it might be an idea to take Dod's 16 stone along for moral support.

Which made me think of where I'd heard this scenario before, the having the jewels back before the damsel in distress was put into a compromising position. Of course, it was the Queen's Diamonds in
The Three Musketeers
.

Shit. There were four of them on that job.

 

 

 

 

 

Lloyd Allen was my first connection, as he was supposed to be Peking's manager, or so Bill Stubbly had said.

I had thought about ringing Bill, but he was such an old woman I just couldn't face it. Lloyd would deal straight with me and he owed me a favour or two, mostly to do with unofficial deliveries of Red Stripe lager to unlicensed West Indian drinking dens that no one except the police, BBC documentary film crews and the entire West Indian community knew about.

Trying to track Lloyd down by night, unless you had a homing device on him, would be impossible, but I knew he shared an office in Curtain Road that I could try in the morning. So for the rest of that evening, I let Frank and Salome treat me to an additive-free, meatless and fairly tasteless meal at a vegan wine bar they'd discovered in Southwark. Fortunately, Frank was in a mood to impress and lashed out on more white Bordeaux than he would have normally. With both of them watching their waistlines, I had to do the decent thing and drink most of it, and while I have a pretty good head for white wine (though not, oddly, for red, which is why I prefer red), I have to admit that Armstrong weaved slightly as we turned into Stuart Street and liberated the parking space nearest to No 9.

I was on a first-back-puts-the-coffee-on promise, so I was fiddling with filter papers when there was a knock on the flat door and I yelled, ‘It's open.'

To my surprise, it was Lisabeth from the flat below. I've always maintained that Lisabeth stopped buying clothes in 1974. In fact, she's probably never bought anything except at jumble sales since then and lives in a late-hippie timewarp. I've even known her to wear bells when she's being going somewhere special, though that's rare. I think she had been a secretary somewhere along the line, but no-one seemed to know much about her. She took in typing for a living, rarely leaving the house and getting ‘Binky' to run her errands. Maybe she was self-conscious about her size, but I don't see why she should be. Sea-lions aren't.