Angel Hunt (24 page)

This time she did sneeze, and when she drew breath afterwards it went in with a wheeze.

I stood over her.

‘Are you all right, Lara? What's the matter.'

‘I'm so sorry, this hasn't happened in a long time.' She tried to breathe again, and it was an effort and she was going red in the face. ‘H ... ha ... have you ha ... had a cat in here, or a d ... d ... dog?'

‘What?'

‘I'm all ... allergic ... to fur.'

‘Thank God for that, I thought it was me,' I said without thinking.

I could tell from the way she gasped that she didn't think it was funny. Then I thought: an animal libber allergic to fur? Pull the other one. Then I thought: Springsteen!

‘I'm sorry,' I said, ‘it must be awful for you. I've not been here long and I think the people before me had a cat.'

Not bad for thinking on your feet, I reckoned.

‘There are cat hairs on this … this …'

Another sneeze snapped her head forward as she ran a hand over one of the cushions.

‘The place came furnished,' I said desperately. ‘Let me get you a drink.'

‘Water … just water,' she wheezed.

I dived into the kitchen, and the first thing I did was hide Springsteen's dinner bowl and water dish in the cupboard under the sink. Then I opened the freezer door to get some ice, and half a dozen packets of hamburger meat, veal, lamb's kidneys, you name it, tumbled out on to my bare feet.

I was cramming them back into the freezer drawers and swearing fluently but softly to myself when something made me look up to the kitchen window, which on clear days gave me panoramic views over the ten-foot-square back yard.

Balanced on three legs, one paw extended like a pointer dog, was Springsteen. He was on the window-frame and must have jumped six feet straight up from the roof of the kitchen extension downstairs. He had landed on a two-inch-wide frame through a half-open window in total silence, but I knew that if he moved down onto the sink, a mere three inches below the window, he would somehow manage to smash all the plates in the drying rack, disturb the washed-up pans and send cutlery flying all over the floor. It would sound like a brass band on crack during an earthquake. Cats are like that.

He wasn't looking at me, he was looking at the packs of meat that still seemed to want to jump out of the freezer as much as I wanted to cram them back in. He showed me a millimetre of pink tongue and hissed through his fangs. From the living-room, Lara went into another round of coughing, which sounded positively terminal.

I straightened up and squared off to Springsteen with my best John Wayne voice, at the same time reaching for a pack of lamb's kidneys that were still unfrozen.

‘Okay, Springsteen,' I said quietly. ‘This is serious. Either you leave this kitchen immediately or I'll see you skinned and stuffed as the prize exhibit in the London Dungeon. Which'll it be?'

He hunched his shoulders as if to pounce. Reason wasn't going to work.

‘Then fill your paws, you son of a bitch!' I said and flipped the kidneys, pack and wrapping, over his head like a frisbee They sailed out of the window and he turned without a sound and launched himself after them.

I bet myself that he took them before they hit the ground.

 

‘Inhaler,' gasped Lara, which for a second I took to be some sort of bizarre instruction. Then I twigged.

‘Where? Did you have a handbag?'

She shook her head, and the long fronds of her ginger mane totally hid her face.

‘Didn't bring it,' she mumbled. ‘It's back home.'

‘Then let's go.'

She looked up at me wildly.

‘But … I …'

Then she coughed violently and clutched herself with both hands under the breasts.

‘No arguments; come on,' I said. ‘I'll put some shoes on.'

I dived into the bedroom and found some clean white socks, then hopped around finding my trainers, wallet and keys. I grabbed a black trenchcoat, because it was the first thing I could put my hand on that wasn't either leather or fur-lined, then I put an arm around her and helped her downstairs.

Even by the bottom of the stairs, her breathing had recovered to something like normal; well, normal for someone who'd just finished a three-minute mile. But the strain was genuine and she was putting most of her weight on me.

As I fumbled with the door catch, she pushed the hair out of her eyes and looked around.

‘I'm sorry about this. It's unforgivable,' she panted.

‘Nonsense,' I said reassuringly.

She looked at the Christmas decorations and then the tree.

‘I know,' I said, getting the door open. ‘I'll straighten it later.'

 

By the time we reached Muswell Hill, she had recovered enough to move to the jump seat behind me, and through the open glass partition was desperately trying to talk me out of taking her home.

‘I'm fine, honestly.'

I'd bundled her across Armstrong's back seat and locked open the windows in the back so she could get fresh air into her system, and it certainly seemed that the further away from Springsteen we got, the easier she could breathe.

‘Come on, I'll survive. I want to take you to this restaurant. It's in the West End. I've made reservations.'

Reservations? Confident lady.

‘Look, I'll be a lot happier if you get your inhaler or something, just in case. I feel responsible, you know. That's a frightening thing to suffer from. Do you take drugs for it?'

‘I have some that will hold off the symptoms, but you have to take them in advance. Look, it's okay now.'

I checked her in the rear mirror. There was anxiety in her eyes. Something definitely wasn't going to her plan.

‘Let's just pick up your inhaler and then we can go straight up West. No problem; it's a straight run down through Swiss Cottage and the traffic's no sweat.'

‘Well, all right,' she said slowly. ‘Take a left up here, then left again.'

She gave me more instructions until we were in a quiet avenue off Ballards Lane.

‘Pull in here. Will you wait here? It's my flatmate. She's not expecting me back so soon and I don't want to upset her. I'll just nip in and get my stuff. Won't be a second.'

‘Okay,' I said. ‘I'll turn around.'

She was out of Armstrong and sprinting towards a three-storey block of apartments before I could argue. I whipped the wheel over and Armstrong turned beautifully, as all London cabs do, within the width of the road.

Leaving the engine running, I watched the block of flats until a light came on, then another one, in the top two windows on the left. If she had a flatmate, she liked sitting in the dark.

I put my arm out of my window and opened the back door for her as she skipped across the road. She clutched a small metal canister.

‘All set,' she laughed. ‘And running upstairs gives you an appetite.'

‘Where to, madame?'

‘Baker Street. Do you know anywhere to park?'

‘With a black cab? Who needs car parks?'

‘That's what I thought,' she said.

 

The restaurant was vegetarian, of course, called No Gravy, which I didn't think was a bad effort. The menu was imaginative, the food forgettable, and the wine list included kosher wines from Israel. We drank mineral water and talked. We talked about animals, about food, about me. A lot about me.

Lara proved an expert in turning the conversation away from herself, and by the end of the meal I knew little more about her other than that she said her surname was Preston, and that yes, she was a legal secretary and how had I known? (Three types of shorthand, good salary, negotiable working hours and familiarity with a Coroner's Court, plus a good guess.)

She insisted on paying the bill, and she did it with a roll of ten-pound notes that she produced from her jacket pocket. I'd wondered about that, with her not carrying a bag, and I'd expected a credit card or two, but it seemed she was a cash-on-the-barrelhead type.

I suggested a drink for the road or maybe a club, but she said she'd rather go home, and would I like coffee?

I said sure, thinking that if every time anyone said ‘Come in for coffee' and they actually got coffee, then coffee futures were the thing to put your investments in.

It was the top-floor flat, a spacious, two-bedroomed affair decorated in pastel blues, immaculately tidy, comfortable and pretty much characterless. There was no sign of a room
mate.

‘Do you really want coffee?' she asked, slipping off her coat.

‘No. Not really.'

I watched fascinated as she hung her jacket on a metal hanger.

‘The bathroom's through there.'

She took the jacket to a built-in wardrobe and slotted the hanger in, then she crossed her arms and took her shirt off over her head, leaving the necklace of wooden beads around
her throat.

I stepped up behind her and undid the metal clasp for her, sensing her shoulders tense as I did so.

That's okay,' she said softly and relaxing a little against me. ‘I can manage.'

I kissed her lightly on the shoulder and went into the bathroom like I was supposed to, but not really knowing what I was expected to do there. At least I'd been right about the brand label on her bra.

I took off my coat and then the rest of my clothes and left them in as neat a pile as I could on the old fiddle-back chair next to the bath. Then I filled the sink with hot water and washed face and hands and then took a new toothbrush from the inside pocket of my trenchcoat (well, you never know), removed the wrapping and cleaned my teeth.

On the shelf above the sink, in front of the mirror were three carefully arranged contraceptives in their shiny foil packets. Each was a different brand. I couldn't swear to it, but I was sure they were the three brands I'd last seen in the Reverend Bell's bathroom cupboard in West Elsworth. I reached for my coat again.

Lara was in bed, the only light coming through the doorway from the hall, her hair splashed over a pillow framing her white face like an aura. She turned down the duvet to her left so I didn't even get a choice in which side of the bed I had.

‘Did you see what I left for you in the bathroom?' she said calmly.

I showed her what I had in the palm of my right hand.

‘It's okay. I roll my own.'

 

 

 

 

 

‘And that was it? She just told you to go and you went?'

‘She said she had things to do. Hell's teeth, it was a one-night stand – and carefully stage-managed at that – not an invitation to share the rent.'

‘Did you get a chance to look around?'

Prentice dunked a chocolate biscuit in his tea. We were in a scruffy, formica-lined café, which during the summer made a fortune selling ice-creams and soft drinks to the tourists struggling between the Houses of Parliament and Buckingham Palace. Across the road, through the bits of the window people had rubbed the condensation from, was a wet and deserted St James's Park. It was Monday morning and also Christmas Eve, so most of the offices had closed for the holiday. The few that were still working would be deserted by noon, and the staff well ensconced in the nearest pub by five past.

‘Briefly, when she took a shower.'

I didn't tell him that she had insisted on showering immediately after making love. That had thrown me for a minute, but then I'd thought that as the act itself had been so clinical, why shouldn't she prefer a cold rub-down with a wire brush in preference to the more traditional sweet-nothing pillow talk? (And I hear rumours that some people still smoke afterwards.)

In any case, I was pretty sure she was going through my clothes and wallet, which were still in the bathroom, not that she'd find anything there. And it did give me the chance to pad a quick circuit around the flat.

‘And what did you find? What's the matter? Who are you looking for?'

I shook my head. Maybe I'd just imagined that black BMW in the wing mirror.

‘Nothing. Nothing's the matter and I found nothing in her flat.'

‘What's the address of her gaff?' He made a note in a flip-top notebook.

‘That was the interesting thing, of course,' I said, knowing it would wind him up. ‘There was nothing to say who she was, where she worked, what she did when she wasn't at work. No cheque-books, credit cards, photographs, nothing. And there was no flatmate either; or rather, he hasn't been around for a few days.'

Prentice raised both eyebrows. ‘He?'

‘Yup. I had about three seconds in the spare bedroom, but it was a man's room. And I think I know why she showed me earlier. I told you she had this attack at my place.'