Angel City (24 page)

On the inside cover of a book of matches advertising the restaurant I drew four horizontal lines and three vertical ones to give me a grid for 16 numbers. I wrote in numbers 4 and 7, then added 14, which I'd tried with Tigger's key. Then I put in the numbers of the three keys the shop lady had said were still free: 2, 8 and 9. That left me ten boxes to choose from. Ten-to-one were not the best odds I could wish for, but as I ate and drank another Kingfisher, two no-doubt scrupulously honest citizens going about their lawful business came along and improved the odds. One was a man in a sharp suit who left his Porsche parked half on the kerb as he opened box number 16. The mail almost fell out on to his brogues, there was so much in it. I put money on him running a reclaim scam. (You mailshot people saying that, for instance, £500 worth of camera has been left at, say, Chicago O'Hare airport with their name on it and if
they
send £15 pounds now to cover postage ... well, you can guess the rest.) The other was a small Chinese girl who opened box number 11. I saw her shoulders sag and almost heard her sigh as she gazed into the empty box.

That brought the odds down to eight-to-one. Still not good, if anyone was looking, and in view of the fact that there was a police station around the corner. Still, it had to be tried.

I paid the bill on a credit card in the name F MacLean Angel, which put me under ‘M' in the computer instead of ‘A'. Apart from that, it was a genuine card and the only one I had not up to my credit limit. It wasn't that the meal had been so good that I didn't mind paying for it, it was that I didn't want to give the restaurant any reason to remember me.

I said a cheery goodnight to my waiter and, as a party of four entered, I left and headed straight across the road. I had the key in my hand, and in rapid succession tried it in boxes 5 and 6.

No go. I risked one more, number 3, and again it refused to turn. At that point, a gang of young men fell noisily out of the nearby pub. I wasn't prepared to risk it, so I turned on my heel and set off back towards Armstrong.

It was now five-to-one and I felt confident that I could do the lot under cover of Armstrong. I cut through the side streets and drew up outside the shop, mounting the pavement. Armstrong now effectively shielded me from passers-by, though I wondered why I was worried. I could probably have unscrewed the entire lot and taken them away in a truck without anyone noticing.

I left box number 1 as a last resort, as numbers 10, 12, 13 and 15 were lower down and out of sight behind Armstrong's gently idling engine. Ten and 12 were bad calls. Number 13 came up trumps.

Unlucky for some 13. It just had to be.

There were about a dozen envelopes in the box along with some sort of plastic sheets rolled up and secured with an elastic band. I grabbed the lot, hugging everything to my chest, locked the box and piled back into Armstrong.

I drove around Portman Square and cut across into Manchester Square, parking on an empty meter. Only then did I start to sift through my booty.

All the envelopes except one contained money. All were addressed to ‘A A Milne' care of box 13 at the accommodation address. Nice one, Tigger, taking your creator's name in vain.

Some of the envelopes had postmarks from a year before. Some of the more recent ones hadn't even been opened. They were addressed in a mixture of handwriting and typing, and while most of the postmarks were London, there were two from Reading, one from Norwich and one from Canterbury. They all had sums of at least £50 or £100 in used notes, mostly twenties, except the most recent of all, which was a brown foolscap envelope bearing a commercial postmark rather than a stamp. That one had been slit open and positively bulged with £20 notes; on a quick flick count, about £2,000.

Two of the stamped, handwritten envelopes contained slips of paper as well as cash. On one, a pink piece of card the size of a visiting card, was scribbled: ‘Call me. Please.' On the other, a sheet of cheap writing paper, was written: ‘Tigger, this is the last. No more.' Neither was signed.

One envelope did not contain cash. That one held a building society passbook showing that C R O'Neil had an instant access account with a credit balance of £11,953. I had found not only Tigger's own personal hole-in-the-wall machine, but his life savings as well. And there were no prizes for guessing how he had come by these voluntary donations.

Except the latest and biggest. I peered at the franking machine stamp. Somebody had been careless, sending blackmail money through the office post. Although maybe they had been pretty sure they could recover it. Somebody at H B Builders, that is.

I dug into my wallet and found the slip of headed notepaper that Bert Bassotti had given me bearing the company's phone number. I hadn't looked at it closely enough before now, but under the bit that said ‘Registered House Builder' came, in very small print, the names of the directors:

U Bassotti, E Bassotti, L Hubbard.

The ‘H.B.' stood for Hubbard and Bassotti, partners in more than just the building game. What was it I'd heard down in Nether World? ‘Mr Hubbard said no marks, Sammy' – something like that. I hadn't met Mr Hubbard, and it seemed sensible to keep things that way.

But partners in what? Illegal fly-tipping was, well, illegal, but hardly a reason to cough up two grand in blackmail. Or reason enough to kill somebody.

There was one package I still had not opened, the roll of plastic material rather like the tape the police stretch across the road when there's been an accident. Except this wasn't a roll, it was a bundle of adhesive notices about the same size and shape as a car bumper sticker. They had all been used, the backing sheets ripped off them, and several were stuck together with what remained of the adhesive.

They all said the same thing: HAZCHEM – BIOLOGICAL WASTE – AUTHORISED DISPOSAL ONLY.

Suddenly I didn't want to touch the money any more.

 

Fenella was waiting in ambush on the stairs outside her flat when I got back to Stuart Street.

‘Angel, I just had to tell you,' she whispered, having put a finger to her lips to tell me to be quiet. ‘Mr Goodson thinks I should put in for my driving test. What have you got inside your jacket?'

‘Oh, nothing, just some papers. Did he say when?'

‘Well, he thinks there's quite a waiting list and it might be a year or more before I get a test.'

‘That's nice.'

‘But he thinks I should go to a driving school and get professional lessons.'

‘Good idea.' Mr Goodson was not as daft as I'd thought.

‘But if I do that it will mean staying here and not moving to the country. I don't know how to break it to Lisabeth.'

I eased my way around her and continued up the stairs.

‘Where is she, anyway? I haven't seen her for days.'

‘Her circadian rhythms are out of step,' she hissed.

‘Her what?'

‘Circadian body rhythms. You know, your biological clock that has 25 hours in the day. Well she's got this notion that her clock is slow and she's having to put in 26 hours a day, so she needs her sleep.'

‘I won't argue,' I said quietly, ‘not while oxygen is still precious.'

‘I think she'd miss the city, anyway,' Fenella said, more or less to herself. ‘She's really a town mouse at heart.'

‘It's the rats you have to worry about,' I said, but I don't think she heard.

Inside my flat, I locked the door behind me and went into the bedroom. Leaning over the bed, I unzipped my leather jacket and all of Tigger's envelopes fell out on to the duvet.

I sorted most of the money and the building society passbook to one side and loaded five £20 notes into my wallet as I fetched my special edition of Hugh Brogan's
History of the United States
from the bookshelf.

As part repayment of a debt some years ago, an acquaintance known as Lenny the Lathe had converted the book into a metal, fireproof, miniature safe, complete with combination lock. I referred to it occasionally as my War Chest, but times had been so thin of late I was just glad there wasn't a war on.

I crammed the money and passbook in and spun the small wheel to lock the combination. The envelopes I tore into shreds and scattered in Springsteen's litter tray along with a fresh sprinkling of non-mineral, biodegradable, pine-scented, recycled, absorbent wood chips. He rarely used the tray, but let's face it, who would go rooting around in there for evidence?

I stripped off most of my clothes and put on the black T-shirt I had worn down in Nether World, which Fenella had washed for me, along with some black brushed cotton trousers and dark blue, canvas deck shoes. So it wasn't an ensemble to be seen in; but that was the point.

The T-shirt reminded me of Nether World and the fact that I had left my torch down there somewhere, so I decided to borrow one from Doogie upstairs.

He answered the door himself, but behind him I could see Miranda sitting cross-legged on the floor packing things into a cardboard box.

‘Hello, Angel. What's up? Going burgling?'

‘Can't fool you, Doogie, but I thought I'd knock and see if you had anything worth nicking first. No, look, I've got to do some running repairs on Armstrong and I'm buggered if I can find a torch. Would you have the loan of one?'

He gave me his tough-guy look, which for him comes naturally.

‘As long as I get it back this time.'

‘What have I borrowed that you never got back?' I asked him.

‘Two corkscrews, a wine cooler and three-quarters of a bottle of malt whisky.'

‘That was a party.' I was indignant. ‘Parties don't count.'

‘Hah!' He stalked off into his kitchen.

Miranda smiled up at me.

‘You were right, Angel,' she said softly.

I don't know which surprised me more, her smiling or me being accused of being right.

‘About what?'

‘About our move to Scotland. Doogie has his heart set on it, but I wouldn't be happy playing the wee lassie tending the hearth.'

I suddenly realised she was unpacking, not packing.

‘So I'm not going with him.'

‘How's he taking it? And you didn't say I had anything to do with this, did you?'

‘He's reconsidering,' she said primly. ‘Which means he'll stay with me. We'd both miss London if the truth were told. We'd miss the excitement, the big city life.'

‘Yeah, it's just a barrel of fun isn't it?'

Doogie reappeared with a black plastic torch.

‘Just twist the head to turn it on,' he said. ‘I've counted the batteries.'

‘Don't panic, you'll get it back in the morning.'

He produced something from behind his back.

‘And you might as well borrow this.'

It was a black woollen bobble hat, and he pulled it over my hair until it covered my ears.

‘There,' he said. ‘Now you look the part.'

 

 

 

 

 

Rewind. Pause. Fast forward.

I almost had it all now. Things I should have noticed at the time but failed to. Or maybe I did but just blotted them out. Like the fact that every time Tigger and I picked up a van on Bassotti's instructions, it would be parked within half a mile of a hospital.

On the way over to Globe Town, I stopped at a 7-11 convenience store and bought a pair of extra-strength washing-up gloves.

You can never be too careful.

 

Someone had repaired the broken gate at Hubbard's Yard and they had thoughtfully added a new padlock and hasp. So that ruled out the front door.

I drove slowly along the perimeter fence and chose my spot, then I ditched Armstrong around a corner out of sight. I carried only Doogie's torch and Armstrong's keys with me, leaving anything that could identify me locked in the glove compartment. I zippered Armstrong's keys into the inside pocket of my jacket and pulled on the rubber kitchen gloves, pulling a pair of black leather gloves on top.

The double glove felt cumbersome, but I tested my grip on the large-mesh wire fence and found I could hold well enough. At my chosen spot, I reached up and grabbed the wire, hauling myself up and digging the toes of my canvas shoes in to get purchase. The fence wasn't that high, perhaps ten feet, but it had a single strand of barbed wire running along the top. I negotiated that but for a second lay along the top of the wire, swaying wildly.

The reason I had picked this spot, though, was because on the other side of the fence was the nearest pile of junked cars. There were three on top of each other and I had only to reach out a hand to grab the door handle of a gutted, partially crushed Ford pick-up to pull myself over and into the back of the truck. From there I could look down on to the empty street and the rest of the yard, stretching beyond the avenues of wrecked vehicles and into the darkness where the canal must be.