Angel City (9 page)

‘I don't like cleaning out baths.'

‘Oh, don't worry about the bath,' I said dismissively. ‘That doesn't need cleaning, it has water in it nearly every day.' I ducked as she flung a cushion at my head.

 

‘‘Ere, Angel, are you Oscar Seven?'

I looked up from the crossword of a
Daily Telegraph
that my one and only job of the morning had left in the back of Armstrong.

‘You know I am; we work for the same company.'

The Beast from the East creaked his leathers as he levered off the top of his carton of coffee. He had been sitting opposite me in the Baker Street McDonald's for a good five minutes (or the time taken to ingest two Egg McMuffins, whichever is longer) before speaking. I had only nodded when he sat down, because I was busy filling in the answer to three down – ‘primitive' – which had just come to me in a flash.

‘Yer, well, they were after you on the radio.'

I waited. And waited. Could the answer to eight across really be ‘dickhead'?

‘When was this exactly?'

‘As I was parking the bike,' he said.

Next to your brain; but I didn't say it.

‘Got your radio with you?'

‘Nope.'

‘Thanks. Finish that for me.' I pushed the crossword at him and stood up.

Armstrong was parked around the corner on Porter Street, opposite the London office of the Fulbright Commission. I gave their front door a longing look and wondered if they took charity cases straight off the street.

I thumped the tinny Korean radio and called in to Dispatch.

‘My God, Oscar Seven's alive and answering. Wonders never cease.'

‘Yeah, yeah, yeah. Got anything for me?'

‘A
personal
request,' said Dispatch as if it hurt him. ‘Job out at Stratford.'

‘Stratford? That's on my doorstep. I could have stayed in bed this morning.'

‘From your response time, I thought you had.'

‘Oh, very quick. Not funny, but very quick.'

‘Count your blessings, Oscar Seven. The customer is willing to wait. Specific request for Roy in the black cab to do a few deliveries around the East End. I offered any amount of better drivers but he insisted on you.'

‘Who did?'

‘Very insistent he was. Only Roy in the black cab would do.'

‘Who? Where? Who asked for Roy?'

‘Said he thought your call sign might be “Angel” but I said we wouldn't have such a daft call sign over the airwaves …'

‘Look, do I get an address or do I have to wait for the next eclipse?'

‘Didn't I mention it? H B Builders, Navigation Road Industrial Estate, Stratford Marsh. Ask for a Mr Bert. That's B for Bastard, E for Erection, R for Rectum and T for …'

‘Tosser,' I said helpfully.

 

Of course, it was Bert, as in Umberto. That nice Mr Bassotti, who was probably the ‘B' in H B Builders, who gave total strangers envelopes of money to fly-tip rubbish across our fair capital city because the reformed, privatised local councils didn't want to know or charged for the honour of taking it away.

As I threaded my way eastwards to Stratford Marsh, I thought the special request for me meant another
Wages of Fear
job driving dangerous – well, certainly dodgy – cargoes across the badlands. In
Wages of Fear
,
though, it was nitroglycerine falling off the back of the lorry. Tigger and I had been carrying nothing more dangerous than ... whatever it had been we were carrying. Paint. It had probably been old paint cans, I told myself. They had been fairly light as Tigger had carried two sacks at a time on some occasions. And empty paint cans were a bugger to get rid of, weren't they? Probably old stock and with a higher-than-permitted level of lead.

Something like that.

Yeah, I decided, it had been old paint cans, maybe even nicked paint originally. I remembered working a summer in a small fishing village near Youghal in County Cork and the local fish cannery treated itself to a new light blue paint job, all good weather-resistant, quality stuff. By the end of August every fishing boat for five harbours up the coast was light blue all of a sudden.

That sort of thing always happens, and builders use a lot of paint. Then again, builders dig a lot of holes, and holes are good places to drop rubbish in. But where was the percentage in worrying? Unless we had actually been spreading toxic or nuclear waste, my conscience would handle it; once I got around to asking it.

As I turned Armstrong into Navigation Road, I saw the sign for H B Builders leading into a yard.

Most small-time building contractors tend to be Something & Son, even though it rarely lasts a full generation. I would have thought Bassotti & Sons would have been more popular given his Italian roots, though he had been pretty lukewarm about them when I'd first met him in the pub. He must be the only Italian male in London not pleased to have Italian League soccer on TV now.

Or maybe he was being practical, thinking who would trust an Italian builder. All the potential jokes about leanings in Pisa and the Colosseum not being finished yet would be enough to piss off anyone. Maybe the ‘H' in H B stood for ‘Hubert' to distance his Italian name even further. Maybe he didn't have any sons. Maybe I should stop talking to myself.

The first person I saw as I bounced Armstrong into the yard was Bassotti, and he looked as out of place there as he had in the bar of the Grapes.

He was standing straddle-legged across a rut of mud shouting instructions to the driver of a JCB mechanical digger. The JCB driver kept revving the engine and inching forward, sending up a fine spray that Bassotti was unaware of, the hem of his £450 grey-green Jaeger overcoat gradually turning brown.

Even from inside Armstrong I could see that the weaselfaced driver was taking the rise out of Mr B, as he nodded and kept saying ‘Yes, yes, right away' and all the time blinking rapidly. Bassotti seemed unaware of the imitation, or maybe he was used to it.

He noticed me and held out a hand, palm up like a cop, then waved me over to the other side of the yard. He held up one finger, pointed it at me and then pointed to a prefabricated site office ten yards away. Just in case I got lost, the words SITE OFFICE had been stencilled on the hardboard door.

As I parked Armstrong, I watched in the mirror as the JCB driver leaned out of his cab and blinked Bassotti straight in the eyes. Then he nodded in the universal ‘Sure, sure, ‘course I'll do it' way and pulled away. Bassotti turned, picking his footsteps carefully, and walked towards the office. Weasel-features in the cab of the JCB stuck a hand out and gave the finger gesture to Bassotti's back.

The yard was splattered with builder's junk. There were two piles of old bricks that needed cleaning up and pallets of new ones that were worth only half as much as the ‘seconds', which were what the trendy home-improver went for. Similarly there were piles of old roofing tiles that were worth more in Hampstead than the houses they had once roofed in Shoreditch. There were two small flat-back lorries with ‘H B Builders' on the front in faded lettering, as well as the odd pile of sharp sand and a pallet of bags of cement under a flapping plastic sheet. All seemingly legit builder's stuff.

The radio crackled as I made to get out. ‘Oscar Seven, you POB yet?'

‘‘Nother ten minutes at least, Dispatch. The traffic is fucking awful. That's F for–'

‘Thank you, Oscar Seven, sod off and out.'

I hoped that would keep Dispatch off my back for a while. I had little hope that Bassotti wanted me to do a driving job for him, or at least not a kosher one and not in a minicab. I would have to think of a way to persuade Dispatch that I wasn't pocketing Bert's cash and understating the job. That's why they hated cash customers. With account jobs they never had to check on us, and the only tips we were supposed to get were a share in any waiting time the client signed for.

My client was standing behind a desk that looked as if it had been bought second-hand from some defunct government office; say the Ministry of Food
circa
1948. There were a telephone and answerphone on the desktop and three plastic filing trays overflowing with invoices. Bassotti had his right foot up on the desk and was wiping mud off a black leather brogue with a tissue. At least the shoes were Italian.

‘That Sammy shouldn't be driving a supermarket trolley.' He blinked down at his shoe, spat on the tissue and wiped some more. The Jaeger overcoat hung on a wall peg behind him, dripping mud.

‘You wanted a cab?' I prompted him.

‘Not exactly.' He switched feet and reached into his pocket for another tissue. ‘Kelly!'

The hardboard door to the other half of the site office opened so quickly, Kelly must have been standing behind it.

She was about 18 and living proof that you could walk, chew gum and live in Essex. She wore a purple crossover top and mauve hot pants, with red tights underneath. She padded across the floor in a pair of Doc Martens' a policeman would have been proud of. She gave me the twice over and maybe she liked what she saw. She didn't actually spit at me.

‘Look what that little turd Sammy's done.'

‘Get rid of ‘im, Mr B. You know ‘is sort's no good. Don't know why we have to put up with ‘im.'

Bassotti looked at her and blinked rapidly. ‘Well, nobody's asking you, so give your brain a rest. Go get some coffee.'

Kelly chewed some more. She was probably rehearsing a sentence.

‘How does yer visitor like it?' she asked, moving the weight on her hips just in case I hadn't got the message.

‘Not him, you.' He went back to cleaning his shoe. ‘Pretend it's your birthday. Go have a cappuccino and a sticky bun. Treat yourself out of petty cash, like you usually do.'

‘I've had my break,' she moaned.

‘Take another.'

‘Well, if I don't finish those quotations by six o'clock, I'm not stopping late.' Her voice whined up a couple of sharps.

So she finished work at six. Subtle as a brick. Still, I filed the information away on the gift-horse principle and, to be fair, Kelly was no horse.

‘Kelly,' Bert said patiently, ‘don't make it two million
and one
unemployed, huh?'

‘If you say so, Mr B.'

She flounced back into her office and put on a white trenchcoat, leaving the door open so I could get a last glimpse. Then a door slammed and Bassotti took his shoe off his desk.

‘She'll be gone for an hour at least. Five minutes to get to the café on the corner, five to have a coffee and ten to get poked in the pantry by Luigi or Paulo or whoever's on duty.'

‘Allowing five minutes to get back, what does she do with the other half-hour?'

‘Puts her make-up back on. Bloody women. Bloody staff. Can't get ‘em these days, and when you do, can't trust ‘em.'

I held out my arms.

‘Ring us – we turn up. What's the job?'

Bert sat down on the one chair in the office, pushed his spectacles back on his face and blinked rapidly at me. I tried to work it out but it seemed to bear no relation to the speed at which he spoke.

‘Well, I don't need a minicab for a start.'

‘You ordered one and I'm here.'

‘Okay, an' I'll pay. Think of a job.'

‘Parcel delivery to EC1?'

‘That'll do. How much?'

‘Thirty quid.'

‘Bloody hell. All right.' He took three ten-pound notes from his wallet. ‘I bet ten of that doesn't get to the company.'

‘No, you're wrong there,' I said confidently. Fifteen wouldn't. ‘Now what?' I asked as I palmed the cash.

‘Your friend Tigger,' he said, blinking too fast to count.

‘No particular friend of mine,' I said.

‘Don't say you don't know ‘im.'

‘Oh, I know him. You know I know him. Just not in the Biblical sense.'

That fazed him. He didn't blink for nearly a second.

‘Well, he's done a runner.'

He waited for a reaction. I blinked at him for a change.

‘So?'

‘So he's done a runner with the Transit you were driving on Friday night.'

I shook my head in disbelief.

‘‘Ang on a minute, Tigger can't drive.'

‘So he said,' Bert blinked. ‘But I never believed him. Did you? Everybody can drive.'

‘No they can't,' I said. ‘Lots of people don't drive, especially in London. If they haven't learned before they come here, the insurance alone puts them off.'

Bassotti blinked down at his shoes.

‘Whatever; the little pillock never brought the keys back like he should have. I'd hate to have to report it stolen. I mean, who knows whose dabs are on it?'