I did the business with my camera, now there was plenty of light with the barn doors open, and was in the process of replacing the tarpaulin when the alarm bells went off and scared the hell out of me for the second time in five minutes. This was becoming Stress City, and I was too old for it.
It wasn’t an alarm bell, of course, it was a telephone rigged to an extension bell fitted to the wall of the farmhouse, so that people working outside could hear it. There were four long rings and then it cut out, but before it stopped, Cawthorne was coming out of the farmhouse and walking quickly towards the Paddock.
I checked my watch: 10.40. That couldn’t be Patterson calling for Airborne yet, but it might well be Airborne out on another document delivery somewhere else. The four rings and then cut-out sounded like a fax line connection. Why bother having an outside bell if the delicious Private Boyd was sitting on reception?
Cawthorne had disappeared around the northern end of the farmhouse, so I ran back the way I had come, around the south end, and climbed the fence back into the hop field. I ran between the bines, parallel to the farm, until I reckoned it was safe to crawl to the fence and risk a look.
I could see the Wood to my right, and way across the Paddock I could see Waters in the Shogun patrolling the edge of the Orchard. There was no sign of Cawthorne, and I thought I’d come too far. Maybe the fax machine was in one of the outbuildings; but they were the other side of the yard near the barn, and Cawthorne had been walking away from them.
Another ‘combatant’ suddenly appeared from the Orchard end of the course, hurrying towards the farm. Even at this distance, I could see he was liberally spattered with yellow paint. Werewolf was on the move.
Then I realised that I could hear an engine getting louder and the Shogun was bouncing across the Paddock straight towards me.
I was convinced that the grass near the fence was long enough to conceal me, so they couldn’t possibly have spotted me. Not unless they had radar or heat-seeking missiles, which they didn’t. Did they? I was less convinced about that.
I was about to dive back in among the hops, though I probably smelled like last night’s barmaid already, when the Shogun veered off to my right, and then pulled up about 20 feet from me.
A very angry Sergeant Waters jumped out of the driver’s door. I could tell he was angry, because he was red in the face and his fists were clenched and he was swearing like a trooper. Well, I suppose that was in character. I could see why he was angry: the windscreen of the Shogun was well-smeared with yellow paint, and he’d obviously reacted by turning on the windscreen-wipers, the worst thing he could have done.
What I couldn’t work out was why he’d driven all the way over here. There was nothing here except the field and the old, disused pillbox Cawthorne had warned us about.
The door of the pillbox opened and Cawthorne stepped out, so close to me that if the wind had changed I could have sniffed his after-shave. Any closer and I would have fallen over him too.
‘What’s the panic? Don’t you know to stay away from here?’ Cawthorne was not pleased.
‘Look at this!’ Waters shook a fist at the windscreen. ‘Just look. One of those buggers is deliberately spoiling the exercise.’
‘Which one?’
‘I don’t know. I was over by the Orchard, and then this. He must have been up a tree. We’ve had four reported in for penalty hits already. Two of them twice.’
Cawthorne nodded towards the farm. ‘There’s another one.’
Sure enough, another player was trudging out of the Orchard towards base.
‘It must be those two in the BMW with the flash suits,’ said Waters. I was glad we’d made an impression.
‘I didn’t rate the weedy one with the glasses,’ said Cawthorne, ‘but the one with the beard looked a hard case.’
‘What do we do?’
‘Has anybody asked for their money back?’
‘Well, no.’
‘Then let the game run and say nothing, but tell Sandy to make sure those two don’t get another booking.’ He turned to the pillbox. ‘And don’t come here again, I’ve told you this is private property. And go and clean my fucking vehicle, okay?’
Waters reversed the Shogun and did a backward handbrake turn, shooting off in a cloud of exhaust fumes and clods of grass and earth. Temper, temper.
I crawled closer to the pillbox. It was the same hexagonal design as any of the thousands you can still see along the south coast, or that you suddenly come across in the wilds of East Anglia for no apparent reason until you realise that the fields you’re driving through were once airfields littered with empty Lucky Strike packets and B52 bombers. The whole concrete structure was sunk into the ground so it seemed only about four feet high. There were double firing slits on three sides and a metal door set in the side nearest to me. Cawthorne had had to duck his head to get in there, but he’d left the door wide open.
I had to get halfway under the bottom strand of barbed wire to see inside properly, and as I did so, my hand closed on something smooth and rubbery half-buried in the ground. I parted some grass and wondered why Cawthorne had bothered to run electric and telephone cables to a disused toilet for farmhands.
I could see why – and hear. There was a fax coming through. The machine had a plastic cover over it, like stereo systems used to have before they became furniture, I suppose to keep the dust out, but there was no mistaking the whirr-buzz sound. Cawthorne was leaning over the machine, blocking my view of anything else inside the bunker, and I slid around to check if I could see in through the slits.
No go. It would have to be the front door. But not while Cawthorne was in residence.
The door got me thinking. I crawled along the line of the fence to the nearest point I dared, so I could get a good view of it. There didn’t seem to be any sort of lock on the door;
wartime pillboxes wouldn’t have needed one, would they? Sorry, lads, can’t beat back the Nazi hordes today, Fred’s left the key at home.
The door was metal, on hinges four inches deep. There was a metal grab bar and two bolts on the outside, one-at the top, which could have had padlocks on at some time, to keep playful kids out. Then again, the pillbox was on private land, so maybe that hadn’t been a problem. But I couldn’t believe that Cawthorne would be so lax.
He wasn’t. Above the door’s right corner was a small black box burglar alarm, almost certainly wired back to the farmhouse, or more likely electronic, triggering a bleeper that Cawthorne could carry with him. It wasn’t likely that it was connected to the local cop shop. He might have had to explain why he’d put a fax machine out here for the sheep to use on a quiet day. Perhaps the sheep were monitoring the futures market in wool.
I guessed that it was set back in the farmhouse, unless he had some sort of remote control toy. If it was, I reckoned I had a few minutes while he walked back there. If it wasn’t, and he came back and caught me, then I’d have to fall back on my story as an over-enthusiastic games player. Trying that on Sergeant Waters was one thing. On Cawthorne, it could be a different ball game, and the balls on the line were probably mine.
The fax machine stopped whirring, and Cawthorne moved about, picking sheets from its output tray. Then I heard the snap of a lighter, and a cloud of blue smoke came out of the doorway, followed by a rattle sound. He was burning the fax message in a metal waste bin or my name was Roylance Maclean. Careful bugger, wasn’t he?
He came out before the smoke had cleared and swung the door quietly on well-oiled hinges. He flipped just one of the bolts in a casual way and strode off towards the farmhouse across the Paddock.
He hadn’t touched the black box alarm, so it was now or never. I guessed I had no more than four minutes before he got back to base, so I began to count on the old one-and-one, two-and-two, and so on principle in order to concentrate on the job in hand without looking at my watch. I told myself that I had up to two hundred and no more.
By ten, I’d crawled as far as the door. It took me to 20 to stand into a half crouch and reach up for the bolt. The door swung open and I scuttled in.
It wasn’t as dark as I’d expected. The four-inch-wide gun slits let in plenty of light, although there were electric wall lights. Everything was covered in plastic casing to keep the elements out. Apart from the fax machine, there was an Amstrad PC with monitor and printer. No phones – Cawthorne would have mobiles – and apart from the two benches for the machinery and a single typist’s swivel chair, nothing else. Except a long metal trunk on the floor, which removed a couple of inches of skin from my right shin as I scraped round it.
That got me to 30-and-five. Better do something.
I rattled the plastic cover over the Amstrad, but it was firmly locked in place. It was probably just as well. I am totally computer hostile, so I wouldn’t have known what to do with the damn thing. I’ve nothing against them, they just hate me, so I became a founder member of the Campaign for Quill Pens and Ink. It’s not a big organisation.
The trunk had a hasp and padlock, which looked new, though the trunk itself was war surplus. If I’d had my nail-file with me I’d have had a go at it.
Sixty. Don’t hang about.
I wound up my Olympus and took shots of everything there was.
That took about ten more seconds. I couldn’t think of anything else to do except get out.
That seemed sensible. I crouched down through the doorway and checked the coast was clear.
As I slid the door bolt home, I stopped counting at 92. A second later, there was a loud click and buzz, which could only be the black box alarm being activated.
Either I’d counted wrong or Cawthorne walked faster than I’d thought. Still (Rule of Life No 1), it’s better to be lucky than good.
I worked my way back through the hop field until I could get over the fence and into the wood. It was just after 11.00 when I made the conifer where I’d split from Werewolf. My Exhilarator visor was still in the grass where I’d left it, and I sat down beside it to take stock of my stings, bruises and cuts. I didn’t have time to get paranoid about blood poisoning, as my heart suddenly stopped beating.
The cause of this was somebody trying to spear me with a javelin, but a javelin with a yellow pennant tied to it. It landed six inches from my face, and before it had stopped quivering in the ground, a red one slapped down next to it. Before I’d stopped quivering, I realised that they hadn’t been thrown, but dropped from above. And then a shadow passed over me and Werewolf came out of the tree to land perfectly balanced right in front of me.
‘Jeeeesus Christ!’ I said, holding my heart.
‘Nice handle, but I’d stick to Roy if I were you,’ Werewolf said matter-of-factly. ‘Less aggro signing on at the Social Security.’
‘Hey, if I ever did sign on, I’d need a pseudonym.’ I looked at the pennants and so did he. He was proud of them.
‘You had to get them both, didn’t you?’
‘I got bored,’ he said. ‘And you wanted a diversion. Find anything?’
‘Some. Maybe not enough, though. But it should rattle him. I’ll see what Sorrel’s dad can turn up. Listen.’
In the distance, we could hear the outside telephone bell at the farmhouse.
I checked my watch and stood up so I could look across the Paddock.
‘That should be Patterson’s fax coming through if he did what I asked.’
‘What happens?’
I explained rapidly about the pillbox, and sure enough we saw Cawthorne set out from the farmhouse, walking diagonally across the Paddock towards the fence. The pillbox roof was just visible, but you had to know it was there to spot it.
Just before he reached it, I used the last two shots on my film, though at that distance I didn’t think I’d pick up much.
‘We’ve done all we can, I reckon. Let’s blow while he’s busy in there.’
‘Okay. You’d better have this.’ Werewolf placed one of the paint pistols in my belt holster, then offered me one of the pennants. ‘And one of these. It’d look suspicious if I took all the glory, now, wouldn’t it?’
I stuffed the Olympus inside my overalls and we jogged back across the Paddock, studiously ignoring the pillbox off to our left. We were the first back into the changing-rooms, and we dumped our holsters and visors on the folding table near the door. I didn’t know if we were supposed to check them in with Private Boyd or not. Maybe she was warming up the showers. Werewolf left the two pennants in the doorway, crossed like ceremonial assegais.
We peeled off our khaki overalls and hung them on hooks. Mine was ripped and stained around the knees and elbows and had a bright yellow crutchpiece. Werewolf’s, with a quick press, could have come off the peg at any Army and Navy store.
I chivvied him into a quick shower. Ever since we’d been at university together, I’d known him as a bit of a shower freak, staying in there for ages. His idea of heaven would be for someone to design a device that would allow him to read a book in there. If you see Terence Conran, pass it on.
As we emerged wearing only our towels, the rest of the games players drifted in. Without exception, they were splattered in paint as if they’d gone in for action art. The guy with the hedgehog pullover – Jenkins – was probably the worst of the lot; even his visor was obscured.
Nobody said much. Werewolf softly whistled Mark Knopfler’s Going Home from Local Hero and didn’t stop even when Jenkins walked up to him and said in a plummy voice:
‘I know this is only a game, but there are rules, old boy.’
Werewolf stopped towelling his armpit and looked at him. I concentrated on zipping the flies of my trousers, head down, nothing to do with me. The other players carried on getting changed and opening lockers and stuff, but you could hear a pin drop.
‘Who dares wins, old boy,’ he said quietly.
Jenkins just stood there, unsure of his next six moves. He was saved by Private Boyd, who appeared in the doorway and began to scoop up the gun belts and equipment.
‘Good game, gentlemen?’
‘Fine, absolutely fine. We were just saying, weren’t we?’ said Werewolf loudly.
‘Er ... yes. Exhilarating. Quite exhilarating,’ said Jenkins, moving away.
Private Boyd walked through, unfazed by the half-clothed bodies scrabbling for cover. ‘Good, good. Come again soon.’
Werewolf gave her a big smile as she approached. He was still stark naked, but had decided to get dressed. He started by putting his tie on. Private Boyd allowed herself a raised eyebrow as she went by.
Jenkins turned as if to say something, and Werewolf waved a hand at him.
‘Hey,’ he said quickly before Private Boyd was out of earshot. ‘Do you know the sound of a truly satisfied woman after love-making?’
He said it like it was a joke to be shared, but I winced, knowing what was coming.
‘No,’ said Jenkins, going along with it.
‘Didn’t think you did,’ said Werewolf.
With Werewolf driving the BMW, we covered the two miles to the village of Broughton Street at Warp Factor Five. I spotted a pub called the Hop Pole and asked Werewolf if he fancied a drink.
‘Do fish swim?’ he said, whipping the power steering over and bringing the car to rest in the pub car park in a shower of gravel.
Fortunately, the landlord hadn’t seen our arrival, and he served us with a smile and an offer of menus. We ordered pints of bitter and ploughman’s lunches and he brought them personally to us as we sat in the bay-window seat of the public bar. I wasn’t used to such good treatment, then it clicked: we were wearing suits. Maybe there was something in this respectability lark after all.
Werewolf filled me in on his blitzkrieg across the Exhilarator course and had to admit that he’d enjoyed himself. He was getting more beer in when I saw a motorbike pull into the car park. The rider, in black leathers, stood the bike, a big Honda, near the BMW and began to remove a black crash helmet. Even from the back, I knew it was Private Boyd.
She left the helmet on the bike – how trusting people are out of London – and unzipped her jacket as she walked to the pub door.
She didn’t look at me as she came in, just walked straight up to the bar. Without turning round, Werewolf said: ‘What’ll you have?’
I was impressed, then I noticed him clocking her in the mirror behind the bar.
‘Pernod and blackcurrant,’ she said.
‘Glad you could make it,’ he said. How had he managed that?
‘Hello, Sandy,’ said the landlord as he served her. So she was a regular.
‘You two caused quite a stir back at High Command,’ she said as she joined us. ‘You’re far too rough for most of our customers.’
‘Now isn’t that just too bad,’ Werewolf said with a smile.
‘I wouldn’t try for a rebooking for a while,’ she said, sipping her drink.
‘Blackballed, are we?’ asked Werewolf innocently.
She looked at him over the rim of her glass. ‘I wouldn’t say that.’
I bought her some lunch, and while Werewolf flirted, I tried to pump her about Pegasus Farm and the operation there. When Cawthorne was mentioned by name she put her forefinger and thumb together in a circle and made the universal sign for self-abuse. Not the sort of thing you see in the sign-language translations for the deaf.
‘He gets off playing soldiers like you wouldn’t believe,’ she said between mouthfuls of cheese. ‘Even has a secret little den where he takes the other members of his gang. The big kid.’
‘Is that the pillbox?’ I chanced.
‘Yeah,’ she said, without a flicker of suspicion as to why we were interested. Maybe I’m too cynical. ‘No girls allowed, not in the boys’ secret camp!’
‘What do they get up to, then. Songs round the campfire?’
‘They play with guns, don’t they?’
‘Is one of them a guy called Sorley?’ I asked.
‘Yeah, that’s right, and there are a couple of others. Any chance of the other half?’ She held out her empty glass to me.
‘So they have private games of the Exhilarator, do they?’ I asked as I stood up to go to the bar. ‘What do they do? Use luminous paint after dark?’
‘Nah,’ said Private Boyd. ‘Real guns.’
She held her hands out as if she held a sub-machine-gun and went ‘Rat-tat-tat-ta.’ I was grateful the bar was empty.
‘Cawthorne collects them. Thinks I don’t know. Keeps them in a tin trunk in his pillbox. He’s got grenades and smoke bombs and other stuff like my kid brother had a box of toy soldiers.’ She smiled up at me, ‘Not so much blackcurrant this time, eh? Ta.’
Sandra, but she preferred Sandy, told us that she’d worked at the Exhilarator for five months but was just biding her time before she could move away from her mother and get her own place in London. Werewolf admired her motorbike; I asked her about weekend games at the farm. She’d been into hiking since she went out with a Hell’s Angel called Rafe when she was 16. She didn’t work weekends, she said; Cawthorne and Sorley handled things then.
And then it was thanks for the drinks and time to get back as another gang of wallies was booked in for one o’clock.
Before we left, she wrote her phone number on a beer mat, and in the car park she slipped it to Werewolf before she put her crash hat on and fired up the engine.
As she roared down the village street, Werewolf unlocked the BMW. I looked at him over the roof.
‘Watch it, Sundance,’ I said. ‘Sorrel wouldn’t like it.’
‘Ah, don’t fret yourself.’ He shrugged. ‘We have the same philosophy. Get your appetite where you can, just remember to eat at home.’
Werewolf pulled up near the Barbican and said he would walk to Sorrel’s flat. I said I would get the BMW back to Patterson before the police helicopters were called out.
‘Do the suits have to go back?’ he asked, fingering a lapel.
‘No way.’
‘Shit. I would’ve picked a good one.’
‘Thanks for this morning,’ I said. ‘I owe you one.’
‘I know you do. Just add it to the list.’
‘I’m on a promise to meet Sorrel’s dad tonight,’ I said casually.
‘We’ll be out all night. And tomorrow.’
‘Going anywhere nice?’
‘Nope. Staying in her flat with a crate of wine and the lights off. She doesn’t know it yet, though.’
‘Message received and understood.’ Sorrel was to be kept out of things. ‘See yer when you get back from Ireland.’
He paused at that, and I’ll swear he almost looked behind him to see if anyone was earwigging.
‘Actually,’ he said, ‘I’ll need to borrow your gaff on Sunday, if that’s okay.’
‘Sure. You know me. Open house.’
‘Thanks. I’ll be on the first flight on Sunday. I’ve no intention of staying over there longer than I have to, and Sorrel’s away for the weekend herself.’
I wondered if she was hunting up an appetite, but I didn’t ask, just like I didn’t ask about Werewolf’s trip to Dublin. My teeth are one of my best assets, and I’d like to keep them that way.
‘Okey-dokey. I’ll get something in for breakfast – you bring the duty frees.’
‘Yer on. Take care, Angel.’
Don’t I always?
As I drove into the underground car park of Pretty, Keen, Bastards, the garageman looked (a) amazed that I had returned at all, and (b) staggered that there were four wheels and no obvious dents on the car.
I took the lift up to Reception, and Purvis delighted in telling me that Patterson was still at lunch.
‘I’ll wait,’ I said, and headed off towards the postroom.
Michelle was the only one on duty there, but she put down the latest James Herbert long enough to tell me that yes, they had sent for an Airborne messenger just after 11.00, and that Anna kept asking if I’d called.
I slunk through the dealing room to Patterson’s office and got there just as he did. His tie was askew and his breath smelled of brandy. If I was a less trusting soul, I’d have said he’d had a good lunch.
‘You,’ he said, and I nodded agreement. ‘What did you find out?’
‘Just what we thought. It’s Cawthorne all right. The other end of the leak is down at his farm.’
Patterson sank down into his chair. ‘Get any evidence?’
‘Nothing that would stand up in court.’
‘Court? Who said anything about a court?’
‘Calm down, man. Keep the blood pressure down to a dull roar. It was a figure of speech.’
‘Is my car all right?’
I wondered when we’d get round to that.
‘Yeah, yeah, don’t get your knickers in a twist, it’s in one piece.’ I flipped the keys on to the desk to reassure him. ‘We’ve got enough to let Cawthorne know we’re on to him, or we have by tomorrow night. All you have to do is send a couple more things by messenger.’
‘What sort of things?’ He looked suspicious.
‘I’ll tell you tomorrow.’
He shrugged, losing interest.
I perched on the edge of his desk.
‘Whatsamatter, Tel? Come on, cough it.’
‘It’s just –’ he reached for a paperclip to fiddle with – ‘I – we’ve been thinking. Now we know how stuff is leaking, we can plug the leak – get another delivery service. Cawthorne cuts his losses and goes somewhere else. Leaves us lone.’
I gave him my killer look; the one I reserve for Springsteen. It didn’t work on Patterson either.
‘Makes sense,’ I said. ‘No fuss, no inquiry in the City, no cops.’ He was nodding. ‘No need to worry the senior partners, ‘specially not Mr Keen and his son Snow White, the Homepride Flour Grader. But what about Alec Reynolds, Tel? Well, he’s out of it, isn’t he? Got him buried yet, or cremated and his ashes scattered down Threadneedle Street or round the corner in your wine bar on the floor with the sawdust? But there’s Salome to think of, Tel; don’t forget her, because I won’t.’
‘Now look.’ He pointed a finger at me. Werewolf would have snapped it off. ‘She’s getting the best attention money can buy. Strictly speaking, I should have informed the Kent police when she was fit for visitors, or rather the hospital should have. But I told them not to, protecting her ...’
‘She’s conscious?’
He’d pulled his finger back or I would have bitten it. Springsteen is always showing me how.
‘Yes, this morning. I’ve been meaning to phone her husband, but ...’
I was halfway out of the door.
‘You shitehouse!’ was what I yelled over my shoulder.
Or so the girls from the postroom told me later.
They’d heard it quite clearly.
I bus-hopped back to Hackney, feeling a bit of a prune sitting there in my suit in between a gaggle of wrinklies who’d been blowing their pensions down the supermarket. They probably thought, at that time of the afternoon, that I’d just been made redundant. It was too early for me to be a Yuckie – the tabloid newspapers’ shorthand for the young city slickers who celebrated the end of a day’s trading with too much lager and then reverted to type as the football hooligans they really were under the skin. They were supposed to terrorise London Transport after dark. Maybe they did. Certainly, it was almost impossible to get a taxi in the City after about 8.00 pm these days. If I’m ever strapped for cash, I’ll cruise around. You never know who might mistake Armstrong for a real taxi and offer me a few quid as a friendly gesture for giving them a lift.
My third bus dropped me two streets away from home, which gave me a chance to call in at the local florist’s and buy a 20-quid bouquet on PKB’s Amex card. Normally, I get my flowers on Oxford Street just after 7.00 pm when the barrowboys have knocked off and gone to the pub, leaving loads of blooms for the Westminster Council rubbish collectors later on.
Nobody could have recognised me walking up Stuart Street. I don’t think anybody could see me behind the bouquet, and I had trouble finding the keyhole.
I don’t know who frightened who more. I almost dropped the flowers when I saw Lisabeth on the phone in the hallway as I kicked the door shut. She jumped back a pace and would have gone further, but the phone cable prevented it. I couldn’t blame her; I must have looked like a platoon of Japanese snipers behind all that foliage. She clutched a hand to her ample bosom – actually not so much a bosom, more a shelf (a cheap shot) – and motioned that the phone was for me.
‘Just one moment, Mr Angel is free now,’ she said into the mouthpiece in a voice I hadn’t heard since Fenella’s parents had paid us a visit once.
We pantomimed an exchange of flowers for phone, which resulted in her crushing about half a dozen carnations and me getting the phone cord wrapped around my neck. It was Innes McInnes.
‘Angel?’
‘Yo.’
‘How did it go today?’
‘We survived the Exhilarator, and I think we got some candid camera shots that may come in handy. You had any ideas?’
‘A few. What do you think Pegasus Farm is worth on the open market?’
That threw me for a minute. So now I was an estate agent. Well, I had the suit for it, but then, you see, I’m basically honest.
‘I dunno. Million and a half?’
‘Mmm. That’s what I thought. Come and see me later, at the office, about six-thirty. Know where it is?’
‘Houndsditch, isn’t it? Near the Clanger.’
‘The what?’
‘The pub, the Clanger. Best pint of draught Bass for – ooh, two hundred yards.’
‘Er ... yes, if you say so. Parking is impossible around here, I’m afraid.’
‘Not for me it isn’t. See you.’
Lisabeth handed over the bouquet, her nose twitching a warning of hay fever sneezing on the Richter Scale.
‘So you’ve remembered Salome at last, have you?’ There’s appreciation for you. ‘Well, Frank was there all night, and then he went straight to the office, but they sent him home at lunchtime. He looks very ragged, so I made him go to bed and get some sleep.’
‘He’ll get up for me,’ I said, moving towards the stairs.
‘Don’t you go disturbing him. He’s had ...’
‘Salome recovered consciousness this morning.’
Lisabeth squealed and advanced on me, beaming.
I backed rapidly up the stairs, holding the bouquet between us like Peter Cushing used to hold a crucifix up to Dracula.
Frank sat in the back of Armstrong, occasionally kneeling up on the rumble seat so he could yell in my ear, but all the time talking. Before we reached the BUPA hospital in Paddington, I felt I knew every temperature change Salome had gone through in the past five days, what her grandmother – phoning twice daily from Jamaica – thought about life, the universe and young people driving around in fast cars, and how difficult Frank had found going to the launderette.
The one thing he didn’t ask, for which I was grateful, was what Salome had been doing with Alec Reynolds at midnight on a Saturday down in darkest Kent. Then again, he’d no reason to think I knew.
A nurse in a pale blue designer trouser suit (how unlike the dear old National Health!) gave Frank a dirty look, as he had rushed out in T-shirt, jeans and trainers. I still had the suit on – and Fly’s glasses if I needed any props – so I got a ‘That’ll do nicely’ sort of smile and the up-from-under look that tells you that there are advantages to private medicine. I made a mental note to ask for an application form on the way out.
She asked us to wait and indicated a nest of Bauhaus leather armchairs. I’d hardly got comfortable when another lady – older, but still born after the Beatles had their first Number One – wearing a pink trouser suit with waistcoat, announced herself as the hospital administrator and told us to follow her.
Frank saw me watching the sway of her buttocks as we trooped down a corridor.
‘That reminds me,’ I said out of the corner of my mouth, ‘I must get my watch fixed.’
It was an old one – one of Groucho’s actually – but he smiled and relaxed a bit, so it did the job.
The administrator took us one floor up in a lift big enough to ferry a helicopter to the roof. Maybe some of their patients arrived that way.
‘Mrs Asmoyah is in Primrose,’ she said to Frank. I thought she was being sarky about my bouquet, but then I realised all the rooms were named after flowers. Primrose was second on the left after Violet if you hung a right after Tulip. I wondered if they had one called Hemlock for the really ill.
‘We moved her there just before lunch when she came to.’
‘Has a doctor seen her?’ asked Frank anxiously.
‘Of course,’ said the Obergruppenfuhrer administrator in her ‘What-do-you-think-we-are?’ voice. ‘Two in fact; the duty doctor and a consultant – a very distinguished one, I might add.’
‘You see, Frank,’ I said, slapping him on the back. ‘Nothing’s too good for our Salome. I told them to spare no expense.’
The administrator smiled. I’d said the right thing, and she’d buttoned me as the one who signed the cheques. I was in there.
We discussed the administration of the hospital, especially the shift times of the nurses, to allow Frank a few minutes alone with Salome. I tell you, I’m always thinking of others. Then I asked the administrator, who was called Lucy (I was right about the Beatles), what the real form was on Sal’s case.
‘Nothing unusual really, although of course it’s not usual to get yourself smashed up in a car accident in the first place. But for people who do suffer head injuries like Mrs Asmoyah, it’s not uncommon for them to suddenly come round a week or even ten days later and be perfectly okay. There may be problems: damage to the eyesight, loss of sense of smell, perhaps amnesia. That’s why we’ll keep her in for a week or so, for tests, but our consultant is very pleased with her – and very optimistic. She’s very lucky, having a caring employer like you.’
I had to agree. I was the soul of philanthropy as I entered the Primrose room. Strike that. Make it Primrose Suite.
There was a flat-screen TV and video recorder on a two-tier trolley, both remote controlled, headphones for a radio and tape system, remote-controlled blinds and curtains and a small fridge with the words ‘Personal Bar’ printed on the door. So this was how the other half got sick. I could handle it.
‘Angel!’ croaked Salome from the bed, which seemed to have Frank draped across it like a spare duvet.
There was a lot of hand-clasping, cuddling and a few tears, some of them from Salome. Then she asked what had happened to Alec, because nobody had told her, and I just looked at a spot about a foot above her head and let Frank do the dirty work.
When Sal stopped sobbing, I asked her how much she remembered about the accident. It wasn’t much.
‘We’d done the Exhilarator course in the evening, but we hadn’t found anything – except that Cawthorne doesn’t like women much, and blacks not at all.’
Frank tensed, but I lifted a finger slightly to shut him up.
‘We were staying in a hotel in Maidstone and we went back for a meal, then later, about tennish, we sneaked back to see if there was anything going down. Cawthorne seemed to be having a private party. There were a lot of cars at the farm but nobody around. They were all off in the woods somewhere.
‘We got as close as we dared, and we could see torches and they were using ... Alec called them thunderflashes ...’ I nodded to show I understood. ‘And then we heard guns. Real guns. Alec said we’d better get out of there, so we did. I’m sure we weren’t seen, but I was pretty scared.’ Her brow creased in puzzlement. ‘I remember getting in the car and driving through the village back to the main road ... but ... nothing else.’
She reached for Frank’s arm and grabbed it with both her hands.
‘Frank! I just can’t remember anything else! I just don’t recall the accident.’
‘Good,’ I said, patting her arm. ‘Let’s keep it that way.’
McInnes’s office was a suite on the second floor of a four-storey block sandwiched between other late-’60s developments, all now owned by Japanese or Canadian banks for some reason. Most of them had bistros or wine bars on the ground floor or in the basement, but they came and went. Above them, business went on.
A big, black security guard practised his mean look on me through a plate glass door, but eventually released the electronic lock after I’d asked for McInnes through a squawk box. He pointed to a door at the end of a short corridor. I smiled at him, but he didn’t look a better person for it.
There were three or four offices, all with doors open but lights off. I got the impression that McInnes had let the staff go early. His door simply had ‘Chairman’ embossed on it. I knocked and there was another electric buzz before the door clicked open. Another careful man.
His jacket hung on an old oak hat-stand, probably the only thing in the room not electronic or plastic, apart from the chunky gold cufflinks on his blue-striped shirt and a digital watch that looked as if it not only gave you the exchange rate for yen but ran the traffic lights in Tokyo as well. His desk was modern pine and no bigger than a baseball diamond. Most of it was occupied by a word processor and printer, leaving just enough room for two small televisions and a multi-purpose phone console. There were no personal knick-knacks or executive toys, but with that little lot, he didn’t need them.
‘Angel! Hello. Good man.’ He wasn’t looking at me, but at the VDU screen on the WP. ‘Come and look at this.’
I sauntered round the desk to get a view of the screen. The only chair in the room was his swivel one, though there were two sofas near the window. Good psychology. Your visitors were either friends you could relax with or minions you made stand. I stood, but put my hands in my bomber jacket pockets just to show I was chill.
The screen showed a balance sheet for a company headed LTN, but it might as well have been in Chinese for the sense it made to me.
‘Linton’s,’ said McInnes. ‘You must have heard of them. Surely?’
I looked as if I was thinking. He wasn’t fooled.
‘Holiday camps, man. Linton’s-by-the-Sea. Oh I Do Like to Linton by the Seaside ...’
‘Does that thing play the organ as well?’
‘Oh, come on ...’
‘Yes, okay. Linton’s holiday camps. I’ve heard of them.’ Then I added quickly: ‘But I’ve never been to one.’
‘Och, I have,’ he said, laying on the Highland Mist accent. ‘When I was a wee boy.’
‘I know, you could have a week’s holiday, ice-cream and fish ‘n’ chips every day and still have change from 25 pence.’
‘It was called five shillings in those days, but I don’t suppose you remember the old money.’
‘I wouldn’t own up to it if I did.’
He smiled.
‘Sir Frederick Linton started his holiday camps just after the war ...’
‘Well, there were plenty of guards looking for work.’
‘There isn’t one we haven’t heard, Angel.’
‘Sorry.’
‘He was never as big as Butlin or Pontin, with far fewer sites, but they generated a good cashflow and he was able to move upmarket. Farmhouse holidays in Dorset, salmon fishing in Scotland, even grouse-shooting.’
‘But?’
He looked at me.
‘There has to be a but ...’ I said.
‘You’re right. The problem was Sir Frederick himself. He got his knighthood for services to the Countryside Commission, not for being a good businessman. He disliked credit, so any expansion was paid for by generated cash and consequently he got left behind the operators who didn’t mind borrowing. Sir Frederick also has a profound distrust of marketing and advertising, so – surprise, surprise – very few people ever heard of his expansion into holidays abroad.’
‘He doesn’t sound to be the Club 18-30 type.’
‘He isn’t. He still thinks there is a sedate lower middle class out there wanting communal family holidays. Over the past six years, he’s bought eight derelict farmhouses in northern France and attempted to turn them into blocks of self-catering flats with pretty basic amenities. He’s been taken for a ride by every French builder south of Dieppe. The units are not up to standard, late, and in the wrong place. Britanny Ferries showed what you could do if you marketed them right. Sir Frederick just bumbled along.’
‘And now he’s in trouble?’
‘Going downhill, shall we say. Profits have been lousy for the last couple of years and he can no longer generate cash to reinvest in his property.’
‘Can’t he borrow?’
‘He could, but he doesn’t want to. He’s 68 now and looking to retire. The French venture was meant to add value to the company so he could sell up and settle the proceeds on his three daughters.’
‘What about the Linton holiday camps in this country? Surely they’re worth a bomb nowadays?’
McInnes pushed his chair back from the screen. ‘You’d think so, but Freddy’s a funny old cove. I told you about the Countryside Commission. Virtually every site, every piece of land he owns, is tied up to the National Trust or is in a green belt or nature conservancy area. His major asset – his only asset – was his land, and he virtually gave it away. I wouldn’t mind having a piece of it myself, but there’s nothing you could do with it. There’s no way it could be developed.’
‘But that doesn’t apply to the property in France, does it?’
He winked at me. ‘You’re catching on.’
McInnes gave me a quick lecture in company share structure, followed by a seminar on desk-top publishing. The last bit I found interesting; the bit about the company went in one ear and almost straight out of the other without a pit stop.
Roughly, though, it went something like this.
Linton Plc – the LTN abbreviation on his screen – had a thin spread of shares, about 42%, publicly owned, Sir Frederick and his family owning the rest. McInnes had identified five dealers who were market-makers in LTN and three major institutionals with an interest who were also clients of Prior, Keen, Baldwin.
‘If we use PKB to leak the suggestion that I am considering going into a partnership with Sir Frederick to develop the French end of things – I’m known to have interests in France as it is – then an unscrupulous person would have a good go at buying up any stock on the market, maybe even approaching the family for some of their allocation.’
‘And before the news got out, so the price wouldn’t rise.’
‘Naturally, and by taking out the market-makers all at once, you could guarantee that.’
‘How much would the price rise – normally?’
McInnes swivelled to the WP keyboard and tapped away.
‘Shares today closed at 113p each, but there hasn’t been any trading for weeks. I’d guess that if a merger was announced they could go to 350p. If the land didn’t have so many restrictions, a lot more than that.’
‘But you’d double your money?’ I said, wishing I had a cigarette.
‘Yes, you’d expect to.’
‘And you think because of the French connection, Cawthorne won’t be able to resist it? Given his speculations over there near the Tunnel, could this be another branch of the same thing? What do you call it?’
‘A fit. Yes, it could seem as if Linton’s French properties would fit with Cawthorne’s Yuppie commuter homes.’
‘So – let me get this straight – we’re leaking to Cawthorne the opportunity to at least double his money, possibly even get control of more land in France?’
‘Mm-mm.’ McInnes smiled and nodded.
I shook my head. ‘Well, he’ll certainly go for that,’ I said.
‘So would I,’ said McInnes, ‘if I could raise nearly five million on a credit line quickly enough.’
‘You probably could.’ He made the modesty gesture, palms up. ‘Can Cawthorne?’
‘I think so, but it’ll stretch him badly. He’ll have to put the Exhilarator and his French land up to do it.’
‘But he could walk away with ten million.’
‘If he’s willing to take the risk.’
‘Just how much of a risk is it?’
McInnes looked at his fingernails.
‘A stupid one. If you know that the French government is about to announce plans for a nuclear reactor near the prime Linton site in east Normandy and you know that Sir Frederick Linton is going to declare himself bankrupt next week.’
If I’d had a hat on, I would have taken it off.
‘You devious bastard,’ I said.
‘Why, thank you, Roy.’
McInnes drafted himself a letter. Well, not actually a letter, more a press release. He headed it for his attention only, marked it ‘Draft Announcement: For Approval’ and dated it for the next day. The text outlined a merger between Linton Plc and Glen and Island Securities, which I presumed was one of McInnes’s companies, to take effect within a week. The date of the announcement was for Monday at 11.00 am, and there was also a lot of stuff about share options and cash alternatives.
He put all this up on the WP himself and then took a wedge of PKB circular paper out of a drawer and fed it into the printer. He tried one out, adjusted the margins and pressed a few buttons until a perfect copy came out. He put it in an A4 envelope without folding it and stuck a pre-printed address label on it.
‘Get PKB to send this to me by messenger first thing tomorrow, and I’ll guarantee Cawthorne will be buying Linton stock before the pubs open.’ As he spoke, he ripped up the first version he’d printed off and dropped it in a waste bin. Then he fiddled with the WP keyboard again.
‘Wiping clean?’ I asked, tucking the envelope inside my jacket.
‘Yes. I told you, I’m staying squeaky clean on this one. When that comes tomorrow, I’ll burn it. PKB won’t have any knowledge of it and Cawthorne could never admit where he got his copy from. I don’t have any shares in Linton. No comebacks.’
I remembered what he’d said at Sorrel’s place.
‘Didn’t you say it might cost you?’
‘It has. A day of my time – how do you cost that? Plus it will cost me for the information on Linton and for keeping that info out of the City until Monday at least.’
‘I won’t ask how you got it.’
He levelled a finger at me, like a gun. ‘Good.’
‘But I’d like to know why.’
He sat down in the swivel chair again and did a couple of complete turns.
‘Cawthorne had a thing going with Sorrel once – a few years back when he was starting out in the City. They met on some skiing trip and went at it like knives for about six months, then he dumped her for some Sloane Ranger with a quarter claim on some title nobody’s ever heard of.’
There was bitterness there.
‘And Sorrel got hurt,’ I said knowingly.
‘Oh no.’ He shook his head. ‘Sorrel couldn’t give a monkey’s. She shacked up with a heavy metal bass player two days later and forgot all about him.’
I bet she forgot where she lived, her name and other stuff too.
‘So ...?’
‘So nobody – but nobody – treats my daughter as second class.’
‘I see,’ I said truthfully. I could relate. ‘But I thought all decisions in the City were taken on a cold, rational, logical, profit-motivation basis.’
‘They are,’ said McInnes. ‘Until you’re rich enough to indulge yourself a bit.’
McInnes wouldn’t join me for a pint in the Clanger, even though you could see it from his office. I went anyway, partly because it really does serve a decent pint of draught Bass and partly because it has a relatively private pay-phone. I got a pound’s worth of change from the barman and tried Lloyd Allen’s number in Brixton. Amazingly, he was in.
‘Lloyd, it’s Angel.’
‘My man. Did your scam go down?’
‘Partly, but I need more help from our motorbike friend.’
‘Lewis Luther is yours to command. For a fee, that is,’ he added.
‘Agreed. You might also tell him to scout around for a new job. He shouldn’t have a problem. And I’m going to need some muscular help for about an hour on Friday.’
‘What d’you mean, man? Anything heavy and you should talk to the Yardies, not me.’
I had no intention of talking to the Yardies full stop. Never would be too soon. Their homespun Jamaican blend of violence, thuggery, extortion and more violence for good measure made the Triads who now ran Chinatown look like graduate social workers.
‘I want a few lads to cause a diversion, that’s all. A bit of steaming, but innocent like. Definitely not World War III, okay?’
‘In dat case, honey –’ Lloyd laid it on – ‘I can offer you the Dennison boys. Three for the price of four.’
‘Sounds reasonable. Where can I reach them tomorrow afternoon?’
‘Here, if that’s where you want ‘em, my man.’
‘Good enough. Oh, and Lloyd ...’
‘Yes ...’
‘There’s something else.’
‘With you, my man, there usually is.’
I did one more thing before I soaked under the shower and slept the sleep of the truly shattered. I checked my personal war chest for cash and liquid assets and made sure my passport (well, one of them) was in order. You never know.
The first thing I did on the Thursday morning was get up. As stiff and bruised as I was after the Exhilarator, that was no mean feat. I vowed that I would get myself back into shape, and even thought about rejoining the Gym ‘n’ Tonic club again. They should have got over the incident in the ladies’ jacuzzi by now.
I was nosing Armstrong through the City by 8.00, and even with stopping off to leave the film from my Olympus at a quick-photo booth, I was outside PKB by half past.
Patterson was emerging from his early morning conference by the time I’d blagged my way past Purvis. He didn’t exactly welcome me with open arms. I couldn’t think why.
‘What do you want?’
‘Cup of coffee and a minute of your time.’
He thought about this, but not for long.
‘In here.’ He nodded towards his office and led the way. I closed the door after me.
‘I know you’re bursting to ask, so I’ll tell you now; Salome’s vastly improved. There, I knew you’d feel better.’
‘Is that it?’
I do hate it when people get overemotional.
‘No. I want you to get me an Airborne bike to deliver something this morning.’
‘What?’
‘An envelope.’
He snorted at that.
‘To whom?’
‘You don’t wanna know.’
‘Then no bike.’
I took McInnes’s envelope from my jacket and showed him the address label. His eyebrows shot up and he reached for it but I leaned back. I can do that quite well since Springsteen taught me.
‘What’s in there?’ Tel licked his lips.
‘A leak.’
‘About what?’
‘You don’t want to know,’ I said slowly. ‘Watch my lips: you do not want to know.’
He narrowed his eyes.
‘Did you bodge something together? You know bugger-all about how things happen.’
‘Oh, I wouldn’t say that, Tel. I know you shouldn’t wear Argyll socks with a dinner jacket, you should never tell an Irishman that Guinness is exactly the same over here, and you shouldn’t listen to Leonard Cohen if you’re anywhere near a razor.’
‘I meant about the City,’ he said nastily. ‘You’re clueless.’
‘Oh yeah, I admit that, but he isn’t.’
I pointed to Innes McInnes’s name on the envelope.
‘What’s that got to do with it?’
‘He wrote what’s inside.’
‘To himself?’
I nodded.
‘Then I don’t want to know.’
‘Knew you’d see it my way, Tel,’ I beamed.
Anna was on duty in the postroom, and she phoned for Airborne to collect the envelope. I had been a bit worried, because McInnes’s office wasn’t more than a brisk stroll from Gresham Street, but nobody in the City worried about biking stuff next door.
‘It sounded as if Tel was giving you a rough time,’ said Anna as she handed me coffee.
‘Aw no. He’s a pussycat,’ I said. Then I thought about Springsteen and realised that was a stupid thing to say.
‘He’s about as threatening as a Chris de Burgh LP.’
That was better.
The rider wasn’t Lewis Luther. I couldn’t see him because of the riding gear and the helmet, but he was much shorter than Lewis. Perhaps it was the Lenny Emerson that Lewis had mentioned and that Lloyd had said had just come out of chokey. What the hell, I didn’t want to meet him, I just wanted to be sure that he did the usual dishonest thing. It would be a real pain if this one turned out to be a legitimate messenger.
He wasn’t. He pulled in near Liverpool Street station behind the red Transit and Sorley’s hand came out of the back to do the business. The envelope, resealed, was delivered to McInnes’s office no more than a minute or so later than you could have reasonably expected.
The scam was rolling. It was also more or less out of my hands now.
I collected my photographs on the way back from following the despatch rider. I’d asked for enlargements, and they’d obviously had two or three goes trying to get the quality better, but for me they did just fine.
A pleasant young lady with her hair ponytailed with a rubber band to keep it out of the machinery, apologised like mad and charged me half-price.
Back at Pretty Keen Bastards, I played around with a couple of prints on the Xerox machine until I had A4-size paper copies. By that time, the grainy prints were even grainier, but one of the shots I’d taken inside the pillbox was still detailed enough, if you knew what it was.
I kept the photocopy and the negatives, but put the prints in an envelope for Patterson, then took Anna out to lunch and bent the Amex card some more.
It’s all go in the City.
I called in to see Salome again in the afternoon and, I have to admit, was relieved to find she was asleep. Still, Lucy the administrator and I got on famously. I think she was flattered that I took such an interest in medical working conditions, such as how long the shifts were and when did they finish, whereas most men would just have tried to chat her up.
Before I drove down to Brixton to see Lloyd that evening, I rang McInnes at his office and told him things were moving.
‘If you can get to a Topic screen tomorrow morning, you’ll see if he’s taken the bait,’ he said.
‘That quickly?’
‘He won’t be able to resist it. He just can’t. And if he thinks he’s stuffing me, so much the better. He’ll go for a dawn raid before the market opens tomorrow.’
I thought he was winding me up.
‘A what?’
‘A dawn raid – that’s what it’s called. A Monday would be better, but he won’t dare leave it that late, and from what I’ve heard about Linton’s business, the sooner the better. There’s one thing we should take into consideration.’
‘Somebody else catching on and getting drawn into the con?’
‘So you had thought about that?’
Yes. Just then.
‘Is it likely?’
‘Well, I think Sir Frederick Linton will jump in and stop things if he sees innocent money going after bad. You see, he’s basically a very honest man.’
‘I guessed that.’
He must be. He was the one going bust.
When it happened, it was with a whimper.
Nobody opened champagne or jumped off a skyscraper. No one dipped their Vick inhaler in neat coke, no one rushed out to order a Porsche. By City standards it was probably chicken feed. It made a few paragraphs in the papers but nobody yelled, ‘Hold the financial page!’
I arrived at PKB before 8.00 on the Friday and, as I was wearing the suit, I walked straight in. I put on Fly’s clear-glass specs and straightened my tie and became totally invisible.
Patterson said he hadn’t time to mess around with me, and I told him all I wanted to do was watch the market. Despite the suit, he didn’t trust me with PKB equipment, so he called Howard Golding – the fax expert – to sit with me and press buttons.
‘What are we looking for?’ asked Howard, as we sat on swivel chairs near a terminal.
‘Linton Plc. I want to see if there are any movements.’
He made a ‘What the hell for?’ sort of face but began to whistle up the details on the screen.
The dealing room was the busiest I’d seen it, and by quarter past 8.00 most of the guys were in shirtsleeves and the empty coffee cups were piling up.
‘There’s nothing much going on,’ Howard told me. Then he yelled across the room. ‘Hey, Sean, anything doing on Linton?’
I flapped at him to keep his voice down.
‘Not a lot,’ yelled back Sean. ‘Somebody bought small yesterday. Price rose on spec to 119 but fell back to 116 at day-end. First movement for ages. I’d class it as moribund stock if you’re asking.’
Sean yelled all this back without looking up from what he was doing.
Howard shrugged. Then he picked up a phone. ‘Let’s see if we can get one of the dealers. What are you after?’
‘Just interested,’ I said dismissively as he dialled.
‘That’s funny,’ he said, puzzled. ‘I can’t get through.’
That was the start of it.
As soon as the Exchange opened proper, there was a public announcement that Pegasus Investments had acquired over five percent of the stock of Linton Plc and was still buying, though by then the price had gone up to 280p. By mid-morning, Howard estimated that nearly 15 percent of Linton shares had changed hands.
He had a furtive meeting with Tel-boy and I distinctly heard ‘Somebody took out the market-makers in a dawn raid ...’
Patterson looked worried for a second, then shut himself in his office.
What did cause a stir in the dealing room was the announcement at 11.00 by Sir Frederick Linton, or rather a financial PR company acting for him.
Basically, through the jargon, it said that because of untoward speculation in Linton shares, Sir Frederick had advanced the news (scheduled for Monday morning anyway) that he was seeking a suspension of his company listing on the Exchange prior to calling in the receivers.
‘There is, as we say around here,’ confided Howard, ‘a distinct smell of burnt fingers in the air.’
I was whistling to myself – maybe ‘Satin Doll’, but something jolly – as I sneaked out of the dealing room and took the lift down to meet the Dennison boys.
I had primed Anna to send for an Airborne messenger when I tipped her the wink (okay, so I hadn’t mentioned that Patterson knew nothing about this one), and Lloyd had primed Lewis Luther to make sure he was the Airborne rider in the area.
That was the chancy bit, of course, as I hadn’t been able to specify a time exactly.
The Dennison boys were in place, in the sandwich bar round the corner, pigging out on Danish pastries. I paid their bill for them, although Sel – but it could have been Mel – insisted on a tea to go. I told him not to spill it over Armstrong as they piled into the back.
I moved Armstrong to the front of the PKB building, and we had only a minute or so to wait before Lewis Luther pulled up, parked the Kawasaki and dismounted.
I called him over before he got to the entrance.
‘There’s nothing for you to collect, Lewis.’
He stopped in his tracks, then sauntered over to the passenger window I’d pulled down. I wouldn’t need the Dennisons for Lewis, but it didn’t hurt to let him see them.
‘But I got the call ...’ he mumbled through his helmet.
‘I know, Lewis, relax. Get on the radio and fix a rendezvous. Here you are.’
I handed him an empty envelope on which I’d written McInnes’s name and office address.
‘Then what?’ asked Lewis, though it came out as ‘En ot?’
‘Then tell us where it is and go home, put your feet up.’
Lewis sighed. He was probably wondering if there was time to get down the Jobcentre that afternoon, but he removed his helmet and activated his collar radio.
‘Liverpool Street,’ he said after getting the reply, ‘just round the corner from Blomfield Street.’
I nodded. The same place as the other messenger checked in yesterday.
Lewis put a gauntlet on the window.
‘Hang about,’ he said, as he unclipped his radio. ‘You’d better give this back to Sorley. Don’t want anybody saying I tea-leafed the office equipment.’
I took it from him.
‘Lloyd’ll see you right, Lewis. Thanks.’
Mrs Luther would have been proud of him.
I briefed the Dennison boys as I drove. All I wanted was a bit of steaming in the back of Sorley’s van: lots of bodies, noise and confusion. I did not want Sorley putting in hospital.
‘But I thought somebody needed a good seeing-to,’ moaned Del, or maybe Sel.
‘Not today, lads. We just get in there, out of sight of Joe Public and Mr Plod, and you lot sit on the guy until I’ve done my bit of business.’
By the time they’d finished grumbling and rapping among themselves, we were turning into Liverpool Street.
The red Transit was parked near a bus stop opposite the Railway Tavern, on the Broadgate side of the street. They were still building the Broadgate development, so there were cranes and trucks around and it wasn’t the sort of place you’d get a ticket or get clamped for dodgy parking.
I nosed Armstrong to within a yard of the back of the van, and the Dennison boys were out on the street before I’d killed the engine.
Poor Sorley never knew what hit him. One of the boys knocked on the van door and as it opened, the other two piled in. By the time I got there, Del and Sel (I think) had him pinned against the shelves where he stacked spare envelopes. I climbed in and Mel (possibly) closed the door, staying outside to keep guard.
‘Just what ...’ Sorley began to bluster.
He was wearing khaki slacks and desert boots and an army-style pullover with patches everywhere. The Dennisons had an arm each, freezing him in the crucifix position.
‘Is your fax on?’ I asked, reasonably enough.
‘What? Now look here ...’
I ignored him and examined the fax. A red light glowed in one corner, so I assumed it was ready to go. There was a digital dial pad and then buttons marked ‘send’ and ‘recall’ and ‘auto.’ I guessed that it was automatically programmed to go through to Pegasus Farm. But, better be sure.
‘Do I just press “send” to get through to Cawthorne?’ I asked him, though I didn’t look at him. We all had to bend our heads because of the van roof, and you can’t be threatening from a crouched position. Well, I couldn’t. The Dennison’s could.
‘Answer the man!’ shouted one of them, and then the other one butted him on the upper arm, on the muscles below the shoulder.
He yelped at that. So would I.
‘What are you doing? Who ...’
Young Sel made ready for another headbutt, and Sorley saw the better part of valour, though his arm was probably quite numb by now and the second wouldn’t have hurt so much.
‘It’s “auto” – the “auto” button. That’s all you need do.’
‘Thank you.’
I opened the A4 envelope I’d brought with me and slid out the Xerox of the photo I’d taken of Cawthorne’s pillbox headquarters. I slid it into the fax’s feed tray and pressed “auto.” It hummed, then whirred, then beeped and clicked, and then the sheet began to move through.
It took only a few seconds, and I left the Xerox in the out tray of the machine, placing Lewis’s radio on it.
‘Just serving notice, Mr Sorley.’ I looked at him over the top of my fake specs. ‘You’re going out of business. Now just sit down on the floor and be quiet and we’ll be on our way. Get his keys.’
I’m almost positive it was Sel who dug his keys out of his trouser pocket, none too gently, then twisted the arm he was holding up Sorley’s back to force him to the floor of the van.
I knocked on the back window, and Mel let us out; me first, then his brothers. Sel gave me the keys, and I locked Sorley in there without saying anything else. He had the look of a man trying to remember where he’d seen someone before. And that always makes me nervous.
I threw the keys inside the front of the van, through the driver’s window. Let him work that one out.
He could look on it as an initiative test.
Friday night. Party night.
Frank was hospital visiting, Werewolf was across the sea in Ireland, Sorrel wasn’t answering the phone (well, you never know till you try) and I couldn’t think of anyone I particularly wanted to get drunk with, so I went out on the town with Lloyd and the lads.
The Dennison boys came with us and so did Beeby. One of the brothers – I forget which – said he wanted to be a Moslem when he grew up, so he’d given up booze, which made him the driver for the night. Lloyd may walk more on the narrow than the strait but he wasn’t daft enough to go pub crawling in a pink ‘64 Zephyr without a sober pilot.
We started off in a pub in Barking. It had an upstairs room where a black trio were jamming on two alto saxes and a portable electric organ. Well, I thought they were jamming, until one of them stopped playing and said their next composition was called ‘Seabass’ and would be played in 13/11 time. At that point I lost interest and Lloyd gave up any thought of signing the band for a record contract.
After Beeby had whispered in Lloyd’s ear for a good five minutes, we moved on. She was wearing a T-shirt with a yellow Smiley face over each nipple, so it didn’t need a genius to work out our next port of call.
It was an old warehouse near the Ripple Road railway sidings in Dagenham. It had been swept out, but that was about all you could say for it. A posh-voiced young lady wearing a tweed jacket (the real Harris is back in) was about to charge us a fiver each for entry until she recognised Lloyd and waved us through. Inside, half a dozen dry ice machines were working overtime and the disco was belting out house music at around 150 beats per minute.
We didn’t stay long; just long enough for Beeby to score some ecstasy and flap her arms around for a while – there’s no way your whole body can keep up with that rhythm. Lloyd and I declined to buy anything from the resident pusher, agreeing that we both thought drugs very retro these days. Maybe we were getting old. I’d certainly never seen as much stuff openly flogged since I was a student.
There was nothing to drink – there never is at acid house parties – so around midnight-thirty we split, although everybody assured us things hadn’t warmed up yet.
They were well-hard at the party we gatecrashed in West Ham. A bouncer asked Lloyd if he’d brought a bottle. Lloyd nodded to one of the Dennison boys and they produced two cases of Red Stripe lager from the boot of the Zephyr. As long as you liked Mackeson or dark Jamaican rum, there was plenty of other refreshment, and the music was revival reggae, some early Marley and a lot of Desmond Dekker. And, of course, there was the holy ganja weed, which we indulged in just to show we weren’t religiously bigoted.
It felt good to relax, with no more cares, no more executive stress. No more job at Prior, Keen, Baldwin. Still, why worry?
We piled into the Zephyr around 4.00 am. Beeby was just about coming down from her ecstasy round trip to Jupiter, one of the Dennison boys was missing and one was asleep, and Lloyd and I were deciding which eight records we’d take to a desert island. I was on number 73, but Lloyd was having real trouble making up his mind. They dropped me off at Stuart Street just as dawn was getting a parking ticket somewhere over the Thames Barrier, and there was a lot of hooting of horns and shouted merry quips and I think it was Chaka Khan on the in-car system, which rattled the windows and completed the job of annoying the neighbours.
To avoid their wrath, I got inside quickly and tiptoed up the stairs to the flat. Springsteen was lying in the bed, having burrowed under the duvet, and didn’t move when I entered, but sighed deeply in a sarcastic manner.
The dirty pawprints he’d left across the pillow weren’t even dry, though, so he hadn’t been in long himself. But like I said, Friday night is party night.
Saturday was mostly devoted to sleep, but I surfaced in the afternoon long enough to do some shopping and laundry.
Frank zipped in and out running errands between visits to Salome, twice appearing with huge bunches of flowers. He called in once to ask how to use the microwave, so I went upstairs and showed him and remarked what a tip he’d left the flat in. He shrugged his broad shoulders and looked confused, so I said I’d clean it up for him. As soon as he’d gone out again, I went downstairs and told Lisabeth he needed help. She said she wasn’t a skivvy, and I said I knew that, but Frank was only a man after all, and she nodded wisely and sent Fenella upstairs with an armful of dusters.
Ruth rang about 5.00 and said she was on late shift again, but did I fancy supper at the Nurses’ Home before she went on duty? Are frogs waterproof? I said I’d be there at 8.00. Shortly after, Fly rang to remind me to return the glasses frames I’d borrowed, and would she see me at the Ward Bond Retrospective? I promised I’d try and make it, but I’d be late.
As I opened a tin of Whiskas for Springsteen before I went out, I reflected that being unemployed again wasn’t so bad now life was getting back into its old routine.
‘This working for a living is very overrated,’ I said to Springsteen, and he seemed to agree.
I remembered that I’d promised to visit Salome on Sunday, so I set the alarm for 10.00. Then I remembered that Werewolf was coming to stay early, so I reset it for 8.30. I’d been woken up by Werewolf before, and it’s not a pretty sight.
That was why I was bringing in the milk from the front doorstep – something I usually do only when coming home – and why it was me that Cawthorne picked on.
God knows where he’d been hiding. Probably he’d crouched down behind one of the parked cars, maybe even Armstrong. Fine watchdog he turned out to be. I mean, he could have honked, couldn’t he?
I was bending over to pick up the milk bottles – Gold Top for me, semi-skimmed for Frank and also Lisabeth and Fenella, none for Mr Goodson in the ground-floor flat as he never appeared at weekends – when I heard his footfall on the pavement.
‘Is this ...?’ he said, and I made the mistake of looking up.
In the time it took for me to straighten up, I realised who it was. Unfortunately he recognised me too, and came up the steps at me like the Miami Dolphins defence.
I wasted a few vital seconds just taking him in visually. Maybe I could have got the door shut in time if I hadn’t paused to wonder why he was wearing a dinner jacket, black trousers with a satin stripe and a white, frilly shirt with the bow tie undone and hanging loose. He also had a raincoat wrapped over his right arm, like policemen do when they demonstrate how their dogs bring down runaways.
By the time it clicked with the few brain cells I have left that he was intent on doing somebody serious damage and I was in his flight path, it was too late to do anything sensible except hang on to the milk bottles.
He cannoned into the door with his shoulder and slammed the rolled-up raincoat into my stomach. I remember thinking he must have had some lead piping in there from the way the breath suddenly left my body, then I was rolling backwards across the hallway, banging the back of my head on the skirting-board underneath the wall-mounted phone, which gave a ting in sympathy.
Cawthorne swayed on his feet, giving a passable impression of a drunken bull in an arena, then he kicked the front door shut and leaned over me, pointing his overcoat at my head.
‘Where is she?’ he hissed.
‘Hey ...’
I was looking at the milk bottles, all three still intact, and wanting him to notice how clever I’d been doing a backward roll and bouncing off the wall without breaking them. He didn’t seem too interested, just insistent about waving his coat at me.
Then my head cleared and I could see the gun barrel protruding from the coat.
‘Where is the black bitch?’
He shook off the coat and leaned closer. I could see the gun clearly now. It had a barrel at least nine inches long with a square fixed sight at the end. It didn’t look like a big calibre gun, but I wasn’t going to ask how big. I was on the business end, and that was what mattered.
Cawthorne pushed the gun at my face, scraping my right cheek with the sight. On the cold metal breech I could read the engraved words: .22 Rim Fire Long. It didn’t make me feel any better.
‘Last time, whatever your name is. Where’s that spade cow?’
He stopped stroking me with the gun then, and a puzzled look came over his face.
‘I know where I’ve seen you before. The party ... Watling Street ... last week. You were with her then ... before ...’
‘Before you tried to kill her with the Shogun,’ I said, perfectly reasonably.
‘You’re the bastard who sent those pictures ...’
He pushed his face closer to mine, and I noticed there were smears of white powder in the indentation in his mouth just below the nose. I knew that it was odds on he hadn’t spilt talcum powder, and I realised I ought to be more frightened than I was.
Somehow, I just couldn’t handle the possibility that I might get shot and end up seriously dead here on the floor of my home on a Sunday morning holding three pints of milk. I decided to treat it as a distinct possibility.
‘Salome’s not here,’ I said, finding it suddenly difficult to swallow.
‘I know that. Where is she?’
He pressed the long gun barrel to my forehead. He was serious. It was time to come clean.
‘Jamaica,’ I said, looking through his legs and up the stairs, hoping that Frank didn’t decide to come out for his morning jog.
‘Jamaica?’ He said it distantly, disappointed.
‘Gone to convalesce with her mum.’
I hoped Frank stayed indoors, but why didn’t Lisabeth come looking for her milk? She could handle him. A quick drug-crazed gunman before breakfast was right up her street.
‘How did she fix the Linton scam, then?’ The gun jammed harder, hurting.
‘She didn’t.’
Through his legs I could see Springsteen at the top of the stairs. Go on, my son, leap on his back, sink the claws in, get his veins in your teeth ...
Springsteen sat down, gave his private parts (private – there was a laugh; ask any female cat in the neighbourhood) a lick and then trotted off back into the flat. Thanks, pal.
I tried to play it cool. Ignoring the gun, I began to stand the milk bottles on the floor in a line. One of them I could use to belt him with if he got a bit closer, but I couldn’t do anything holding three.
He didn’t seem to know what to do next, so I kept talking.
‘I thought that one up. I knew you couldn’t resist it.’
‘You? You’re nobody. You don’t have that sort of pull.’
The gun withdrew a millimetre.
‘I had help, sure. A friend of mine has good information, and that’s what it’s all about, isn’t it? You did me a favour, you know. My friend and I made a few grand on Friday. We’d just bought some Linton shares ourselves.’
He let this sink in, then he straightened up and his left hand dived into the pocket of his dinner jacket. He brought it out with the thumb and forefinger clenched together and put it to his nostrils, snorting loudly. White dust fell on his lapels. If he sneezed, I was going to have a go. He didn’t. He just sniffed and shook his head slightly.
He took a couple of deep breaths, keeping the gun rock-steady on me. I’d never seen one like it before; it seemed to be all barrel and nothing else.
‘A few grand, eh?’ he said, nodding as if agreeing. ‘You punk. You’re so small-time it’s not true. You have no concept of what I’ve lost.’
He was shaking his head the other way now, in disbelief.
‘And it started with that black bitch, that ...’
There was no way I’d distract him from that train of thought, but Springsteen could.
I’d left the flat door open when I’d gone to get the milk, so when Springsteen did his usual trick of climbing over the sink to get out the kitchen window, we could hear him as he sent a pile of dirty crockery crashing over. (Well, who do you know who does the washing-up on Saturday night?)
Cawthorne looked around but was back on to me before I could move. He didn’t know where the sound had come from; he just assumed it was someone with two legs. If he’d shot me then, I could have died knowing it was Springsteen’s fault.
‘Get up,’ he said.
I did so willingly. It was better than being shot.
He grabbed me by the shoulder. I was wearing a Tunnel of Love Tour T-shirt and jeans and some old trainers I slopped around the flat in. He bunched up some of the T-shirt in his left hand and stuck the gun in my ribs.
‘You’re coming with me. Open the door.’
I did as I was told.
We walked down the steps together and then crossed Stuart Street to where he’d parked his red Porsche. He gave me the keys and told me to get in the driver’s side, then he hopped round the front, pointing the gun at me all the time.
An oik in T-shirt and faded 501s and a man in a dinner suit with a gun, getting into a Porsche and driving off at nine o’clock on a Sunday morning. Nobody gave us a second look, nobody phoned the cops, nobody even twitched a net curtain.
I suppose that’s why the rates are so high in Hackney.
He told me to drive and jammed the long-barrelled gun into my left side so that I’d have matching bruises on both kidneys. He snapped out directions and emphasised them by jabbing a forefinger into the windscreen. When he wasn’t doing that, his left hand was dipping into his jacket pocket and coming out with pinches of white powder, which he sniffed avidly, though messily, a fair few quid’s worth going down his lapels.
As if the drive wasn’t nightmare enough, Cawthorne turned on the radio. Loud. It was the Morning Service on Radio 4, broadcast live from some extremist wing of the Scots Presbyterians demanding to know if I’d made my peace with Ghawd. In between hymns, it sounded as if the congregation was passing around a rattlesnake in a bag, but that was probably my imagination running riot. Still, if you’ve gotta get religion, I prefer the hellfire no-doubt-about-it variety to the guitar-strumming all-touch-hands sugariness.
Once south of the river, it was clear we were heading for Kent. I’d more or less guessed that from the off, when I’d managed to string a coherent thought together.
Cawthorne had not fastened his seat-belt and I hadn’t tried to do up mine, partly because I’m out of the habit driving a taxi where you don’t have to, and partly because I would have had to ask Cawthorne to withdraw the gun barrel. On any other day, knowing my luck, the Law would have had me pulled within half a mile for not buckling up. And weren’t they supposed to have a down on red Porsches anyway? Where were they when you needed them?
I even kept the speed up in the hope of getting a ticket.
No such luck. Kids doing 31 miles per hour on a skateboard were probably being loaded into Black Marias somewhere in the city, but not down Sidcup way. I was doing 90 as we hit the motorway and I put my faith in the Kent County Constabulary. Maybe they were on church parade. They sure as hell weren’t on the M20.
‘Turn off. Up here.’
‘I know,’ I said.
Cawthorne hadn’t said much during the trip. Well, not much that made sense. Now something clicked inside the bit of his brain still working on demist.
‘You were snooping for the black bitch the other day. Did she put you up to it?’
‘Nobody put me up to anything, Cawthorne. I found out how you worked your little scam and I set you up. Look on it as private enterprise.’
I felt oddly calm. The guy’s hatred seemed to be reserved for Salome – he said ‘spade bitch’ to himself a million times – and I was a poor substitute. But then I was the one with the gun in my side.
‘Why? What’s in it for you? You’re nothing in the city.’
I took umbrage at that, then I realised he meant the City as in financial. In the real city, I reckoned I had more street cred than wheel clamps.
‘I told you, I made a few bob buying Linton shares that you then bought off me.’
‘Chicken feed. Peanuts. Small fucking change.’
‘Maybe,’ I said cautiously.
‘So why take the risk? Eh?’ Jab, jab.
I thought about saying ‘What risk?’ but that might have destabilised him. Keep it conversational. After all, he wasn’t going to shoot me while I was driving his car, was he? Did he know how much an upholstery valet on a Porsche cost?
‘You took all the risks, Cawthorne. Especially trying to get rid of Salome and Alec Reynolds. Why did you do that?’
My ribs told me that was a mistake. He jabbed so hard this time, the Porsche weaved across two lanes. Fortunately there was no traffic to speak of.
‘So that’s it,’ he said more to himself. ‘You’re sniffing after that black whore. You like a bit of chocolate, do you? Do you?’
He went on in that vein, getting cruder and more excitable, until the sign for the Wrotham turn-off. I suppose I could have spun the Porsche or driven into a field and risked it, but I didn’t. I just followed his instructions until we were going up Blackberry Hill and then turning left on the unmade track and coming out at Pegasus Farm and the Exhilarator.
And I knew – I think I had all the time – what he had in mind for me. It was no consolation that I was there because I’d gone for the milk that morning. He’d been after Salome in his coke-zapped imagination.
Still, if I was here, Salome was safe. It was going to be a far, far better thing, and all that.
Heroes – aren’t you sick of ‘em?
He made me park the Porsche in the courtyard and give him the keys. The main gates were shut and chained and the farmhouse and changing-rooms deserted and locked. It looked like the creditors were in already.
Cawthorne withdrew the gun an inch and looked at his watch, then showed it to me.
‘I’m leaving here in exactly 55 minutes. I’ll be in France by lunch-time.’ Via Dover, most like. ‘And I’m not coming back.’
He dipped his hand into his pocket and fed himself another snort. ‘So I’m treating myself to one last game here before I go.’
He waved the gun around, indicating towards the Paddock and the Exhilarator course.
‘What –? A paint gun against that thing?’
He shook his head. ‘You don’t even get a paint gun. All you get is two minutes’ start.’
There were a hundred things I wanted to say – pleading, threatening, joking to defuse the situation – but a look in his eyes told me there was no point.
I got out of the Porsche and started running.
I was banking partly on the fact that he would be operating below par. It was obvious from his clothes and the stubble on his face that he’d been up all night, and a fair chunk of the Colombian economy had gone up his nose since then.
I worked out that if I could get to the wood, I could cut across to the hop field and hide in there. With my luck, they would have harvested it yesterday. No, they don’t pick hops until the first week in September. How do I know this stuff? Why did I think of it then?
I’d reached the edge of the courtyard when a bullet smacked off the cobblestones about six inches from me.
I wasn’t going to get my two minutes.
I stopped dead and slowly turned around.
Cawthorne was sitting on the bonnet of the Porsche, pointing the gun at me. I’d managed about 40 yards.
‘You said two minutes,’ I shouted.
‘Just getting my eye in!’ he yelled back, quite friendly all of a sudden.
I took a pace towards him without really knowing what I was doing, and his reaction surprised me. He stood up and began to back away, fumbling in his jacket pocket. But this time, the right one. Then he stopped and worked the action of the gun. I saw a cartridge case eject and even heard it ting on the cobbles, then he was feeding another in and working the breech. Confident again, he levelled it at me.
‘Clock’s ticking.’
I ran to my left, towards the corner of the farm building, and dropped from his line of sight. That meant the wood was that bit further away for me, but it might delay him for a minute just checking to see if I’d tried to hide in the farmhouse. If he was rational, that is, and not in the process of rapidly leaving his skull.
I didn’t stop running, just veered left again and into the Paddock.
If I’d realised early that the long-barrelled gun was a single shot target pistol, I’d have had a go at him in the car or on the street back in Hackney, I told myself. Made him fire one and then got away or even disarmed him. Of course I would. I almost convinced myself. In a fair fight, he wouldn’t stand a chance. Well, not if he took about an ounce more coke and I could have first go from behind with half a brick.
If he didn’t have a gun – or if I had one ...
I damn near twisted my ankle veering right and heading away from the wood towards the pillbox.
I should have known as soon as I saw the iron door hanging open.
Cawthorne had probably spent the night there. He’d been covering his tracks but at some point had realised that he couldn’t fit the personal computer and the fax machine and stuff in an overnight bag, so he’d gone bananas and lashed out.
Everything that could have been smashed or just satisfyingly dented, had been. The Amstrad’s VDU had an empty bottle of vodka through it. The fax machine was upside down in a corner, its plastic cover shattered into slivers like broken glass. There were a couple of other bottles rolling around under an upturned chair, an empty Tequila bottle and a half-full Scotch. From the smell, most of the contents had gone on the floor rather than into Cawthorne. There was also a strong smell of the copying fluid the fax used.
The metal trunk I’d come for lay open. Whatever Cawthorne had had in his private armoury had gone now, probably to the bottom of the farm pond if he had any sense. Since the last police armistice for unregistered guns, the penalties for being nicked were seriously heavy.
It wasn’t quite empty. Rattling around on the bottom were some cardboard tubes that looked like sticks of dynamite but were probably thunderflashes and a couple of boxes of loose ammunition. Maybe he’d just forgotten them. I suspected that he’d come here in the night – the internal light was still on – and started to remove any traces of his Airborne operation. Then he’d thrown a wobbler, decided it was all Salome’s fault and gone looking for her. And found me.
I stuffed one of the thunderflash tubes into the back of my jeans. If all else failed, I could wave it at him, but there was nothing else there for me.
I crouched as I went through the door, and pushed it so that it almost closed behind me, then went down on all fours to sneak around the back.
‘I know where you’re hiding ...’
Then a bullet spanged off the concrete and convinced me that I’d better start being scared stiff.
I felt safer behind the pillbox, because it offered great armfuls of lovely, thick concrete to hug.
I levered myself up cautiously and peeped into one of the gun slits. Through the box itself and the slits in the opposite wall, I could see Cawthorne reloading his pistol and walking towards me. He was no more than 20 yards away.
‘Not much of a game, Maclean,’ he was saying loudly. He must have got that name from the Exhilarator booking. I wasn’t going to correct him. I wasn’t going to say anything.
‘I bet myself you’d last at least a quarter of an hour in the woods. I didn’t think you’d trap yourself like this.’
It dawned on me that he thought I was inside. It was the only thing I had going for me.
I risked another look and almost died on my feet. Cawthorne was standing, feet apart, aiming right at me, like between the eyes. I ducked as he fired and cringed as the sound of a dozen trapped hornets buzzed what seemed like an inch from my head.
‘You’d better come out. It’ll be quicker in the long run,’ shouted Cawthorne, walking closer, reloading again.
There was another shot, and more hornets.
He was firing into the slits of the pillbox, and the ricochets were bouncing off the walls inside. I wondered what the odds were of a bullet going in one slit and coming out the slit on the other side where yours truly was.
I looked behind me. The fence and the hop field looked too far away. He would see me if I broke that way. The wood was even further, and a run there would put me on a diagonal line of fire for him. I’d have more chance in a shooting gallery. The only thing to do was keep the pillbox between us. He was moving to his right, coming round to the door. He couldn’t fire directly in there, because I’d almost closed it. He knew there weren’t any weapons inside, so eventually he must get bored with pumping bullets in and have a look. As he got closer, though, my view of him would get less and less.
I risked another look and saw him moving out of my view through one of the slits. He was quite close now. So close, I could hear the snap of the breech as he worked the action of the gun.
I edged my way anticlockwise, away from the door end, hugging the rough concrete until spots of blood appeared on the palms of my hands, checking the slits as I went.
There was no sign of him, which I took to mean he was in line with the door. I hoped it did. I was running out of concrete to hug. If I went much further, I’d be heading back round towards him. But there was nowhere else to go.
Except up.
I stood up between two slits and put my hands on the roof of the box. At that edge, it wasn’t much taller than I was, and I estimated I was opposite the entrance. I held my breath.
Cawthorne wasn’t saying anything. Maybe he was too busy talking to the voices in his head. Then I heard him sniff quite distinctly. Then silence. In the distance, I could hear church bells and the drone of a car engine.
And then what I’d been waiting for; the metallic creak of the door being opened.
I risked a look through the slit to my right and, sure enough, the box began to fill with light. That convinced me. I scrabbled and heaved myself up onto the roof and rolled and scrabbled across the concrete.
I didn’t know if he could hear me through the eight-inch thick roof. I never gave it a thought. Suddenly I was at the far edge and looking over.
The left shoulder of Cawthorne’s dinner jacket was just below me. The gun, his head and one foot at least were inside the box. That would have to do.
I put both hands on the top of the door frame, which he’d opened to an angle of 45 degrees, and pulled as hard as I could.
The door hit him and propelled him inside. From the noise of crashing and breaking, right into what was left of the fax machine. There was a magnified boom as the gun went off, and a spang as the ricochet hit the door. I felt it vibrate as I scrabbled and snapped fingernails to get the bolt shut.
As it clicked home, I rolled on my back and looked at the sky and exhaled. Then I looked at my hands, scratched and pitted with bits of concrete, and wondered if I’d be able to play the violin now. It would be a miracle, as I couldn’t before.
There was no sound from below me in the box, but I could hear something else: an engine. A diesel engine.
I turned my head, and round the corner of the farmyard I saw Armstrong bouncing across the Paddock to the rescue.
Late as usual.
I was on my feet and waving both arms in the air when Cawthorne opened fire.
I didn’t see which slit the shot had come from, nor whether it hit Armstrong or not. I couldn’t tell even if Werewolf had noticed he was being shot at.
It had to be Werewolf. No-one else would have such a blind disregard for Armstrong’s suspension.
I scuttled to the edge of the box and saw the gun barrel emerge. I think I yelled in frustration and swung a kick, almost overbalancing and falling right under his gun.
It put him off, though. I was sure that shot went wild. Then I was going wild, leaping and yelling a warning to Werewolf that I knew he wouldn’t hear over the engine noise.
He slewed Armstrong to a halt about 30 yards away, killed the engine and got out.
‘Get down!’ I yelled.
‘What the fuck is ...?’ he shouted back. Then Cawthorne shot him.
I saw Werewolf clutch his right leg and go down, but after that I think all I saw was red mist.
‘I’m up here, you bastard!’ I yelled down.
‘Don’t worry, you’ll get yours, shitface. You’re dead. Dead!’
The gun barrel reappeared, pointing upwards this time, and he fired, but the angle was far too steep and the bullet zipped away harmlessly. I wondered how much ammo he had left, or how much coke.
Then I remembered the thunderflash stuffed in the back of my jeans, except it wasn’t a thunderflash, it was a smoke stick. Well, that’s what it said it was, and just above where it said ‘Made in Korea’ was printed ‘Twist top and pull.’
I did just that, and pungent orange smoke began to pour out. I knelt down and, holding my breath, leaned over the edge of the box and stuffed the thing through the nearest slit.
Cawthorne shouted ‘You fucker’ and burst out coughing. He fired once more, wildly, anywhere. Then I was off the roof and running towards Armstrong.
Werewolf had rolled right underneath and had propped himself up against the front wheel arch so he had the engine between himself and the pillbox. I scrambled round the bonnet and threw myself down beside him.
‘This is definitely not in the fucking rules, man,’ he said.
‘How bad is it?’ I asked, not really wanting to look.
He held his leg with both hands, just above the knee.
‘Flesh wound,’ he said.
‘You’re supposed to say “It’s nothing, just a flesh wound,” like they do in the movies.’
‘It hurts like buggery, but they don’t say that either. It went straight through. I heard it go into the door.’
He saw my expression change.
‘Oh, that’s nice. Best mate turns up and gets shot and you don’t turn a hair. The pigging cab gets scratched and ...’
‘Oh, shut up, you great nance. Let’s get out of here.’
‘What was it you threw in there?’
‘A smoke flare.’
‘I’ve got something better in my bag, if you can get it.’
He rolled over so he could look under the chassis.
‘We’re gonna need it,’ he said.
I got down and looked too. Cawthorne had thrown the smoke stick out of the box, but not more than a few feet. It was still spewing out orange clouds, which drifted to and fro around the pillbox.
The gun appeared at the end of Cawthorne’s arm and he fired. I ducked instinctively, but the shot was aimed higher than ground level, and the result was a tinkling crack.
‘He just shot your wing mirror,’ said Werewolf. ‘He’s going to take it out on Armstrong if he can’t get us.’
‘Maclean!’ shouted Cawthorne, then he coughed again. ‘It’s time we did a deal.’
I looked at Werewolf and he looked at me. We must have taken too long about it, as Cawthorne fired again, and the tinkle this time said he’d hit a headlight.
‘Okay, okay. What did you have in mind?’
I peeked under Armstrong. The orange smoke was wafting away from the pillbox if anything. I could see the gun quite clearly. Which meant he could see us.
‘If you try and drive that thing,’ he bawled, ‘I’ll shoot your eyes out. You know I can.’
Werewolf shuffled closer and whispered, ‘Keep talking, but get my bag out.’ He motioned to the passenger door and I squirmed over him and grabbed the handle.
‘So we wait here until somebody comes, Cawthorne. You got time, haven’t you?’
I had the door open. There was a large Aer Lingus flight bag on the floor where a passenger seat would go in a normal car.
‘Has your friend?’ Cawthorne replied. ‘This place is closed up. Nobody will come here and nobody will say anything about the noise or the smoke. They’re used to it round here. Can your friend wait it out? Just how bad is he hurt? I know I hit him.’
I had the bag out and the door closed now.
‘What did you have in mind?’
I slid the bag towards Werewolf and he unzipped it. Some socks, a paperback and a couple of packets of Sweet Afton spilled out.
‘I need to get out of here,’ shouted Cawthorne.
‘He does,’ I told Werewolf. ‘He has a ferry to catch.’
‘So what?’ I shouted.
Werewolf reached into the bag until he found what he was after. It was a clear glass bottle with a plastic stopper and a hand-printed label proclaiming ‘Kerry Mist.’ He handed it to me and went back to holding his leg. His green cords were well soaked by now and his face pale.
‘So you let me out of here and you go your way, I go mine. Simple as that,’ came Cawthorne’s offer.
‘Poteen,’ whispered Werewolf. ‘Hundred and twenty proof if it’s a day.’
‘It’s a bit early, even for me,’ I whispered.
Werewolf sort of snarled. ‘Tell him to throw the gun out and give us that pack of Kleenex.’
‘Lose the gun,’ I yelled, handing Werewolf a pack of paper tissues from his bag. ‘Then we’ll work something out.’
He fired again and something metallic bounced on to Armstrong’s bonnet. The radio aerial.
Werewolf took a handful of tissues and scrunched them into a wad. He pulled the plastic stopper from the bottle with his teeth and splashed the clear liquid over the tissues, then crammed them into the neck of the bottle.
‘A de Valera cocktail,’ he said. ‘Light the blue touch paper and run like stink.’
He reached into his jacket and fumbled out a disposable plastic lighter.
‘Get up close and bung it through a slit, then hit the ground.’ He winced again at the pain in his leg. ‘Don’t forget to light it.’
‘All right, Cawthorne,’ I screamed. ‘That’s enough. I’m coming out.’
‘Just what are you doing here anyway?’ I asked Werewolf, taking the bottle from him and pushing it down my T-shirt, cold against my chest.
‘I was coming down Stuart Street as you drove off. I told you I was getting the early flight. I was out of Thief row by half past eight and I got a lift almost to the door.’ He tried to smile. ‘A young lady I met on the plane. You damn near ran me down in that cherry red Porsche. I knew whose it was straight away, and I guessed this was where you’d end up. Thought you might need help. He’s not going to let it go, you know. It’s him or us.’
Or Salome. If not now, then later.
‘I know. How did you get Armstrong going?’
‘The spare key you keep on that magnetic pad behind the nearside back wheel.’
‘How long have you known about that?’
‘Since the week you soldered it on. Why?’ He looked genuinely puzzled.
‘Oh, nothing.’
I stood up and moved to the rear of Armstrong.
‘Don’t shoot, Cawthorne!’ I bawled. ‘I’m coming to open the door.’
Werewolf tugged at my trouser leg. He was offering me the lighter.
As I took it he said: ‘Massive retaliation. That’s the plan. Okay?’
‘Yeah,’ I said.
Rule of Life No 59: Get your retaliation in first.
I set off at a cracking pace. Once out from behind Armstrong, there was no way I was hanging around. I couldn’t run, because I had the bottle of poteen balanced against my stomach like a bizarre pregnancy, but hopefully invisible from the front under the T-shirt. I was also convinced I was going to drop the lighter, which was slippery with sweat in my hand.
I headed straight for the pillbox door, knowing the closer I got, the worse became Cawthorne’s angle of fire. Over the last few feet, I could see his dinner-jacketed arm and the gun hanging out of the concrete slit like a broken wing. It was a surrealist painter’s dream, but my nightmare.
The gun weaved figure eights in the air.
‘Just unbolt the door ... That’s all ... We can do a deal ...’
Cawthorne’s voice was almost unrecognisable. He was flying now, but I wasn’t trusting to it affecting his aim. And I wasn’t trusting him at all.
I virtually jumped the last yard to the door and put my back to it. There were gun slits to my left and right at eye level, but because of the angles in the walls of the box, I was pretty sure I was in a blind spot. I took the bottle out of my shirt and put it on the concrete square at my feet, but I held on to the lighter.
There was a metallic clang behind my left ear. Cawthorne was beating on the inside of the door with something.
‘Open the fucking door ... Let me out!’ He was shrieking now.
The orange flare had more or less petered out by now, or maybe the wind had changed. There was nothing to stop Cawthorne getting a clear shot at Armstrong at all. I could wait him out, I thought, until a few more snorts of electric snuff made sure he couldn’t hit a barn door. But you never know with snow, as they say.
I didn’t trust Cawthorne – let’s be frank, I wouldn’t spit in his ear if his brain was on fire. But I couldn’t just blow him up, could I?
‘I’m going to pull the bolt, Cawthorne,’ I shouted at the slit, ‘but I want to see the artillery out here first.’
‘Get stuffed!’
‘Nobody’s going anywhere until you throw the gun out. That’s the deal. Non-negotiable.’
I thought he might have liked that. Non-negotiable. It had a reasoned, businesslike ring to it.
He tried to shoot me instead.
His arm came right out of the slit to my left – he’d switched sides – and was holding the gun upside down, his wrist twisted, to get the angle. I saw the barrel and the foresight out of the corner of my eye and slammed myself back into the door, pretending to be no thicker than a coat of paint.
I’ll swear I saw the bullet leave that barrel and fly across my face. I was so relieved it hadn’t hit me, I would have signed affidavits admitting anything, from being Kurt Waldheim’s PR man to having read and enjoyed the Booker Prize winner.
So why did I scream? Then my ears stopped ringing from the sound of the shot and I realised it wasn’t me screaming, it had been Werewolf.
I couldn’t see him behind Armstrong, but Armstrong had been in the direct line of fire. That did it. No more Mister Nice Guy.
There was no point in calling him names, no point in trying to talk him down.
Cawthorne had drawn back his gun arm and I could hear him working the action for reloading while he stumbled about inside the box.
I bent down and put the lighter to the tissue fuse and flipped the wheel. It caught immediately, and I swept up the bottle with my left hand and pirouetted through 180 degrees. Keeping the damn thing well away from my face.
It went through the gun slit sideways on and I was diving for the ground before it hit the concrete floor and exploded.
‘Are you all right?’
‘I might not make the Irish skateboard team.’
‘Where did he get you?’
‘In the leg, Dumbo.’
‘No, just now, when you screamed.’
‘Oh, he missed me by a mile,’ said Werewolf through clenched teeth. ‘I only screamed so you’d have an incentive to torch the bugger.’
I stared at him for a minute without saying anything. I didn’t want to look back at the pillbox.
‘You’d better unlock the door,’ he said. ‘It’ll look suspicious if it’s bolted when he’s found.’
‘Yeah. Okay. You’re right.’
I put my hands under his arms and helped him up. ‘You need a doctor,’ I said.
‘Think we’ll get a cab this time of the morning?’ he asked with a sickly grin, resting his head on Armstrong’s wheel arch.
‘This far south of the river? No chance.’
I tied my handkerchief around my face for the run back to the box. There was black acrid smoke coming out of the slits now, and more orange smoke from flares that were cracking and going off inside. Great whoofs of flame would billow out and bubble off into the smoky pall as things like the inking fluid for the fax went up. There were loud cracks, which I thought at first might be ammunition but were probably the plastic casings of the wrecked machinery flexing and snapping in the heat. The whole thing looked like an overheating Aga in a satanic kitchen.
My eyes were streaming by the time I reached the door and my hand closed over the bolt.
I had a bizarre thought. If this was Elm Street or any one of a dozen other horror flicks, Cawthorne would come staggering out of the flames, his blackened, clawlike hands ...
I almost didn’t do it.
The bolt came down easily enough. It wasn’t even warm, as I’d half expected, and the door wafted open an inch or so, more smoke and fumes curling out and sweeping up to join the pall that now rose 30 or more feet up in the air.
But by that time, I was halfway back to Armstrong.
I could still see the smoke in Armstrong’s rear-view mirror from the motorway, but Werewolf said I was imagining things.
I’d piled Werewolf into the back seat, and he’d taken a shirt from his bag and tied it around his leg. He kept saying he was okay, but he had lost a lot of blood and he was furious that I’d used the poteen before he’d thought to take a drink. I leaned over to the glove compartment and almost ran us off the road fumbling for the quarter bottle of vodka I always keep there for emergencies. I handed it over my shoulder to Werewolf, and he did it severe damage. I wasn’t sure that it was good medical practice, but Werewolf bleeding over my back seat was Emergency with a capital E in my book.
Medical treatment had been the subject of another brief debate as we’d careered down Blackberry Hill.
I’d opted for the hospital in Maidstone because it was closest and I knew where it was. I was beginning to call there on Sundays more regularly than the chaplain. But Werewolf vetoed that straight off.
‘Hammersmith, and put the pedal down,’ he said.
‘Hammersmith? Is there a hospital in Hammersmith?’
‘I don’t know, but there’s a pub.’
‘Hey, come on, man ...’
‘I’m serious.’
Ever known an Irishman joke about booze?
‘The Robin Hood and Little John.’
‘What?’
‘It’s a boozer near the Hammersmith flyover. The Boys use it. They’ll know what to do.’
‘Christ, if we’re going that far, you can go to Charing Cross Hospital.’
‘I could go to Hammersmith Cemetery, but I ain’t gonna.’ I heard a painful intake of breath. ‘Look, neither of us wants to have to explain this hole in my leg. This way, it’s no questions asked.’
‘It’s run by the Boys, isn’t it?’ I knew how little Werewolf enjoyed the prospect of being in debt to the Boys from across the Irish Sea.
‘Relax, man. They owe me one, but the bastards don’t own me.’
‘How deep are you in with them?’
It was something I would not have dared ask if he’d been on two legs.
‘Nowhere near as deep as they’d like, old buddy. And believe me, it’s going to stay that way. They think they can use anybody they want to, and sometimes you have to go along with them or there’s trouble back home. Damn it, man, let’s use them for a change.’
‘There must be another way,’ I said, as Armstrong juddered up to 75.
Who said the FX4S cab was as aerodynamic as a brick?
‘Relax,’ said Werewolf. ‘It’ll be okay. Just get this crate out of second gear, will yer?’
I cut across south London, through Dulwich, and we hit Wandsworth just as the doors were opening in the pub next to Young’s Ram brewery. The company mascot, a prize ram, was tied up outside the front door. Pedestrians wisely chose to pop in the pub for one rather than try and sneak by it. That’s what I call marketing.
We crossed the river by Hammersmith Bridge, and Werewolf directed me from there. Our speed had hardly ever dropped below 50, and I’d run at least two red lights, but we’d been lucky.
The Robin Hood and Little John was a dark brick building now standing alone at the end of a street, but at one time would have been the end of a terraced row of houses. It had a faded plastic sign in one of its dirty windows saying that you could play pool there. That seemed to take care of the nightlife in the area. The whole impression was of the sort of pub you might have called in to get change for a pay phone so you could ring the tourist board for directions to the nearest museum.
‘Round the side,’ said Werewolf faintly.
I parked Armstrong but left the motor running. The pub had a side door, with a bell and a hand-written sign saying ‘Function Room.’
I propped Werewolf up against the wall and got his bag for him.
‘You’d better blow,’ he said. ‘It would take too long to explain you to the management.’
I looked up and down the street. It stayed empty. Then I looked at Werewolf.
‘You look like your passport photograph,’ I told him.
‘I feel like it.’ He grinned faintly. ‘Now blow.’
How could I leave him there, clutching his leg, blood dripping on to the pavement? My oldest mate, my auld mukker. The guy I’d been through thick and thin, mostly thick, with. The guy who’d just saved my life. I couldn’t just walk away, could I?
‘See yer,’ I said.
I got Duncan the Drunken to fix Armstrong’s headlight and aerial and to patch up the other damage, which included three bullet-holes in the bodywork. Duncan actually found a spent .22 bullet on the floor and offered me it for a souvenir. I took it and dumped it in a Keep Westminster Tidy litter bin.
While Armstrong was off the road, hidden in Duncan’s lock-up garage in Barking, I borrowed a set of wheels from him – a five-year-old Fiat Uno. If my luck held, nobody I knew would see me in it. And when I say ‘borrowed,’ it did cost me and over the odds, but then I could rely on Duncan to be discreet.
Werewolf reappeared on the scene after two days and five phone calls from Sorrel asking where he was. Whatever he told her about his limp and the bandage on his leg, she never said anything. I took them out to dinner a couple of times, and we talked about everything except Cawthorne. Then he got word of a roadie job with a band on a short tour of northern Europe, ending in a jazz seminar weekend in Zurich, where Gene Krupa used to hold drum schools.
Sorrel said she had the use of a flat in Zurich and she’d go on ahead. Maybe there was still some skiing to be found. Werewolf said he thought that sounded dangerous.
I saw Innes McInnes once, at his invitation, to try the Bass in the Clanger near his office one evening.
‘It’ll take months to sort out Cawthorne’s affairs,’ he said between sips of beer, though he looked ill at ease handling a pint.
‘What happened to Linton Holdings?’ I asked.
‘Oh, the company went down, taking Cawthorne with it. But that was inevitable. I’m putting Sir Frederick on one of my boards next week. I think I’ll send him to France to look over Cawthorne’s properties there. They’ll have to be sold to someone.’
‘Of course,’ I agreed sympathetically.
‘You did all right for yourself,’ he said, narrowing his eyes.
‘A modest punt, is the expression I think.’ Then I tried to change the subject. ‘Did you ever hear what happened to Cawthorne exactly?’
He shrugged. ‘Took it worse than I thought he would. On the Saturday – the day after – he rang just about everybody he knew to try and offload the Linton debt. When he didn’t get anywhere, he went on a lone bender down at that farm of his. The word is he was playing with his guns and there was some sort of fire. Nobody else was involved, from what I hear.’
I looked at him, but he wouldn’t meet my eyes.
‘It’s being put down as a nasty accident. There’s no hint of suicide.’
Well, that was true enough.
‘And the Kent police found a ... cache ... a ... what-do-you-call-it? A load of cocaine ...’
‘A stash,’ I said. Then added: ‘So I’ve heard.’
‘That’s right, a stash worth nearly 100K on the street.’
Then he did look at me. ‘Just how much did you make on those Linton shares?’
‘That’s for me to know and you to wonder, bonny lad,’ I said in a hammy Scottish accent as I finished my beer. ‘Another?’ I held up my glass.
‘You were right about one thing,’ he said, then polished his off.
‘What?’
‘This is the best pint of Bass around here.’
I held my arms out.
‘Would I lie to you?’
Lloyd came round one evening to hand over, as he put it so delicately, my ‘winnings.’
I’d taken nearly four thousand pounds from my war chest (actually a copy of Hugh Brogan’s History of the United States turned into a fireproof combination safe) to help Lloyd buy a few Linton shares. He gave me nearly six grand back, which he said was less commission, whatever that meant. I didn’t ask how much he’d made.
He agreed to stay for a drink, having left one of the Dennison boys outside watching his car because he didn’t trust the neighbourhood.
I popped a couple of cans of lager and gave him one. Springsteen had curled up on his knee and was having his ears scratched. If he clawed Lloyd’s trousers, that was probably my share of the profits blown.
‘I’ve had another idea, Mr A,’ said Lloyd. ‘A money machine, got to be.’
‘Do tell, do tell,’ I said, flipping on a tape of the Andrews Sisters singing ‘Rum and Coca Cola’, one of the best anti-imperialist songs since Trotsky gave up writing lyrics.
‘I’m gonna start a messenger company. Motorbike riders, all with mobile phones – leased, of course – and all delectable young females aged between 18 and 22 with fine, firm bodies. Gonna call it City Angels. Hope you don’t mind.’
‘Not at all. Listen, there’s a friend of mine called Sandy, lives in Kent. Recently been made redundant ...’
I called in to Prior, Keen, Baldwin on the Monday but got no further than Sergeant Purvis at the reception desk.
‘Mr Patterson is tied up,’ he said before I could open my mouth, ‘for the foreseeable future. He asked me to give you this.’
He was grinning inanely, which I should have taken for the bad sign it was, as he handed over a plain white envelope.
There was a cheque inside, for £1500 with the payee line left blank; just the way I like them. There was also a PKB ‘With Compliments’ in there as well, with just the words ‘In lieu’ written on it.
No goodbye, good job well done, thanks for everything.
Still, he hadn’t asked for the American Express card back, had he?
It really annoyed Purvis, who couldn’t work out why I was grinning as I got in the lift. He didn’t wave back.
Salome’s recovery took about five weeks in all. It was considerably speeded by the news that the Kent police were not going to press charges about the accident that had killed Alec Reynolds.
On my advice, she saw the assessors from her insurance company in the hospital, and naturally she won them over from her sickbed (I also advised on which shorty nightie she should wear) and her claim was settled in full. Soon, she and Frank would thrill to the patter of tiny VW Golf wheels in their parking space outside.
Before that, on the Saturday after I’d been made unemployed again, Frank knocked on the flat door and charged in as he usually did.
I was sitting in the middle of the floor, wiring up some new hi-fi gear. Springsteen was asleep across my Habitat sofa-bed. (How do cats make themselves longer at will?)
‘Hi, Angel.’
‘Hi, Frank. How’s the invalid?’
‘Fine. Hi, Springsteen.’
He was in a good mood – he didn’t normally talk to animals – and Springsteen noted it too. I distinctly saw his eyelid move.
‘That’s a nice CD player. Is it new?’
‘Er ... yes,’ I said, scrunching up the American Express receipt and stuffing it into my back pocket. ‘What can I do you for?’
Frank stuck his hands in his pockets and rocked back on his heels.
‘This BUPA hospital that Sal’s in has visiting privileges.’
He grinned a lot and his eyebrows shot up and down.
‘Let me guess,’ I said, taking a screwdriver out of my mouth. ‘Tonight is the night!’
‘Right on!’ Frank punched the air like a footballer.
‘And you want a few tips. That it?’
He gave me a sour look. ‘No thanks, white meat, I’m well equipped!’
‘So I’ve heard.’
He wiggled his hips. He was in a good mood.
‘No, it’s just that Sal asked me to bring the birthday present you gave her tonight. I didn’t know you’d given her anything.’
‘It was a surprise,’ I said.
‘Where is it? I can’t find a thing. She said she’d put it back in the wrapping paper.’
Thoughtful old Sal.
‘It’s in the bottom left-hand drawer of your wardrobe,’ I said. ‘I noticed it when Fenella was tidying up during the week.’
‘Oh, fine. Thanks.’ He made to go. ‘What is it anyway?’
‘Keep it wrapped. Let Salome surprise you.’
‘Okay. See you around.’
I let him get to the door before I said: ‘Hey, Frank. Does the hospital have any spare beds?’
‘Why?’ he said over his shoulder. ‘Not feeling well?’
‘I’m fine, Frank. I was thinking of you.’