Angel on the Inside (12 page)

‘No-one said anything about money, did they, Huw?'

I became aware that something was preventing me from closing the driver's door: a pair of hands gripping the top of the door frame. Huw, I presumed.

‘Wouldn't count on a tip, either,' said Huw.

They were both mid- to late twenties, clean-shaven and with short hair. They could have been Mormons, but the fact that they were the only two people wearing blue, beltless gabardine raincoats in London on a warm August afternoon singled them out as Welsh.

‘Anytime you're ready,' said the one in the back, still polite and cheerful. ‘You've got about 35 minutes.'

‘Where are we going?' I asked him casually, making no move to start the engine, like I was interested.

‘I've told you once. Jubilee Gardens near Waterloo. You've got 35 minutes.'

He stared me out with a faint smile, head slightly on one side as if he forgave me for not hearing him the first time.

‘What I really meant,' I tried, ‘was
why
do you want to go to Jubilee Gardens?'

‘Now that's a good question, isn't it, Huw?'

‘Certainly is, Barry,' said Huw over my head. ‘Can't say I want to go, and you could probably think of better things to do, but we don't have much choice in the matter really, do we?'

‘None at all in the matter,' said Barry philosophically. ‘And all this chit-chat and gay banter means you now have about 33 minutes.'

Barry on the back seat had been sitting with his hands resting on his lap on the folds of his unbuttoned raincoat. Now he pulled back the coat slowly and delicately, like a stripper revealing a flash of stocking top. Across his knees lay a big, ugly, silvery revolver.

‘I think you'd better start your engines, but try not to make it a bumpy flight, eh?'

I had no idea what he was talking about, but Huw obviously did, as he started to giggle, still hanging on Armstrong's door.

‘Not two in one day, eh, Barry?'

‘Did you bring the sick bags, Huw?' Barry replied with a laugh.

I looked from the gun to Barry and then turned my head to Huw, who was reaching inside his raincoat for something.

I started Armstrong up as quickly as I could, not fancying the idea of a gun in each ear one bit. But Huw didn't have a gun, or if he did, he didn't draw it. His hand came out of the folds of his coat with a pair of handcuffs, and before I could react, he had caught my right wrist and snapped one bracelet on. The other half of the cuffs he clicked on to the rim of the steering wheel.

‘I'll be right behind you,' he said into my face, ‘but don't go too fast if you wouldn't mind, ‘cos I'm not used to driving in the big city.'

‘Don't dawdle, though, Huw,' said Barry. In my mirror, I could see him folding his coat back over his lap and smoothing it down. I didn't know whether to be more frightened of his gun or his fashion sense. ‘We don't want to miss our flight.'

Huw chuckled some more then slammed the door on me and stalked across the road to the white Rover, shaking his head as he went.

‘He hates flying, that's his problem,' said Barry.

We were almost at Liverpool Street, the white Rover right behind us, before I realised we were going for a ride on the London Eye.

 

Barry-in-the-back wasn't giving anything away, even when I used my most subtle approach.

‘Want to tell me what's going on, then?'

‘No, I don't think I will. You'll find out soon enough. Patience is a virtue and everything comes to him who waits.'

He deserved a slap as much for the platitudes as for the sing-song accent in which he delivered them, not that I was in a position to give anyone except myself a slap, anchored to the steering wheel as I was.

‘We'll be going over Tower Bridge, then, will we?' Barry asked.

I arched my back and strained my buttocks so that I was taller in the driving seat and could get a better angle in the driving mirror. Barry had a paperback size London
A-Z
open on his knee, the bastard. For a real London cabby, that was more threatening than the gun he'd shown me earlier.

‘Can do,' I said, trying to keep my voice level, ‘but we'll lose the Taffy in the Rover. Once you ... Ow!'

Barry had jumped forward and swatted me on the left ear with the
A-Z
. It didn't hurt much as a smack; the pain came from the indignity and the humiliation of wincing away in case another blow came. It was only later that I considered the farcical nature of my situation. To an innocent observing Londoner, it must have looked like a fantasy come true or a set-up from a ‘reality television' show. The scenario: a black cab driver handcuffed to his own steering wheel, being beaten about the head with an
A-Z
guide by an irate passenger fed up with being taken the long way round.

‘He's not called Taffy. Nobody's called Taffy these days,' Barry was saying. Even though my ear was ringing, I could tell his voice was calm and reasonable. ‘Now why aren't we going across Tower Bridge?'

‘We can if you want, but on the other side we'll probably lose your friend in the Rover in the traffic system.' I chose my next words carefully. ‘Unless you know where you're going, you can end up halfway to Kent before you can turn round.'

‘Fair enough, but it's a pity. I was looking forward to seeing the Tower,' he said with a note of genuine disappointment.

I was tempted to tell him that if he tried what he was doing to me on one of the real fraternity of London cabbies then he might find himself
inside
the Tower, as there was bound to be a law still on the books to cover such outrages.

‘I'm going through the City and across Southwark Bridge, if that's okay,' I said instead.

Barry flicked a page in his
A-Z
.

‘That looks acceptable. You've got about 20 minutes before flight time.'

That was when it clicked.

‘You're going on the London Eye, aren't you?'

‘We all are,' said Barry, and his smile filled my mirror. ‘Should make a nice day out, shouldn't it.'

It wasn't a question, but I risked another burning ear by answering it.

‘So it's a day out for you guys, is it? I didn't know there was any rugby on this weekend.'

You don't actually have to know anything about Rugby Union to know when they're playing the Six Nations championship and the games are in London, you just have to hang around the pubs. All London publicans – and customers – love it when the Irish fans are in town, because it guarantees a party; they don't mind the Scots, because they keep to themselves and get on with the serious drinking; the French pop in for some pub grub before hitting Marks & Spencer's, so they aren't really any trouble; and the Italians – well, nobody is quite sure what they do, as they've never been seen. But when the Welsh hit town on the Friday before a Saturday match, publicans give their best staff the night off and employ only those who don't mind the constant whining about London prices, the fact that there are no public bars any more (where the beer is traditionally a penny cheaper), or that no-one sells mild ale (cheaper) in London nowadays.

It didn't seem a good idea to share any of this with Barry-in-the-back-with-a-gun.

‘No, there's no rugby on,' he said chattily. ‘We're here on business. The sightseeing is just a perk of the job, you might say. Travel broadens the mind, and all that.'

I hoped he had lots of Airmiles stacked up.

‘Can I ask what business you're in?'

‘Oh, I don't think you'd want to know that, and if the boss wants to tell you, he'll tell you.'

‘The boss?' I asked, but he didn't reply.

Trying to psych me out with a menacing silence is quite a good tactic, and it always works for Amy, but Barry was Welsh and just couldn't stand the pressure of not hearing his own voice.

‘You'll be meeting the boss. He's waiting for us and we'd better not be late. He's been looking forward to his trip on the big Ferris wheel for ages. He's just a big kid at heart, but don't tell him I said that, will you?'

‘Gets upset easily, does he? This boss of yours?' I tried, pushing it.

‘Best hope you don't find out,' said Barry.

 

I parked Armstrong in the shadow of the archway that carries the rail line over Hungerford Bridge, and the white Rover pulled up behind me.

Barry got out and stood there looking at the few passenger capsules you could see from this angle, suspended up in the air and rotating so slowly it didn't look as if they were moving at all. I didn't join him, because I couldn't. I had to wait for Huw to climb out of the Rover, lock it with an electronic remote and take his own sweet time approaching my door and opening it.

He looked down at me and at my wrist still cuffed to the wheel.

‘Tut-tut,' he scolded, ‘and they said you big city boys were smart.'

He reached in and grasped the cuff on the wheel with two fingers and it sprang open immediately, falling off the wheel and dangling from the one still on my wrist.

I held my wrist up and examined the bracelet still intact. If you looked carefully you could see that what was supposed to be a keyhole was actually a raised button in the metal. I pressed it and that half fell away with a ratchety click.

Huw held out his hand for the cuffs.

‘Just toys, really,' he said. ‘Get them in the local sex shop, we do.'

‘Sex shops in Wales?' I said before I could stop myself. ‘I thought they were called farms.'

I remember being impressed as to how strong he was for a man of his size, and how he must work out down at they gym, maybe doing the weights. That was as I was being lifted out of Armstrong by the ears and slammed against the bodywork. It was only when I'd got my breath back from the three punches he put into my stomach – pausing only to reflect on the fact that he'd been so quick he'd had time to slip the steel handcuffs over his right fist as a knuckleduster – that I realised he must be a boxer. There were other telltale signs – like the way he had positioned his feet and balanced his weight and not wasted effort, taking short-distance jabs rather than wild swings – but mostly it was the pain that convinced me.

He put a hand on my shoulder to keep me from sinking to my knees while I frantically tried to remember how to breath. To passers-by heading to and from Waterloo Station just across the road, it must have looked like we were having a friendly chat about the current programme at the National Film Theatre.

Barry appeared from behind Armstrong, or rather the bottom half of him did, for I could only register his shoes, trousers and the bottom half of his raincoat without raising my head, and that seemed just too damned difficult.

‘Oh dear me,' said Barry. ‘You didn't mention sheep-shagging did you? The Welsh national sport. Something like that? Huw doesn't like that. None of us likes that, now I think about it. ‘Specially not Mr Turner. He definitely doesn't like such talk. Better keep it to yourself for now, eh? Come on, he'll be waiting and raring to go. It's this way, is it?'

I staggered after him as he strode across Jubilee Gardens, mostly propelled by Huw's hand in the small of my back. If I'd been able to think, I would have remembered I had left Armstrong unlocked and the key in the ignition.

If I'd been able to speak, I would have asked who the fuck Mr Turner was.

 

 

 

 

It's London's fourth tallest structure at 450 feet, has 32 ovoid capsules carrying 25 people each, it takes 30 minutes to rotate through 360 degrees, and on a clear day can offer views of up to 30 miles out as far as Windsor Castle and Heathrow. What else did I know about the London Eye? It was the only worthwhile remnant of the Millennium beanfeast – the famous wobbly footbridge down by the Tate Modern had already been forgotten and everyone pretended that the Dome had never happened at all. It had been interrupted twice, once when a WWII unexploded bomb had been dredged up by Hungerford Bridge and once when the river police had to fish out a ‘floater', and when it had opened to the public the Ministry of Defence building in Whitehall directly across the river had issued instructions to its staff to keep the windows closed and the office curtains pulled in case the Eye carried coach parties of spies with binoculars.

The other thing I knew was that even though the novelty had worn off, you could still queue for an hour or more to get on at quiet times in the winter. Now was summer and London was tourist central, which should have given me plenty of time to find out a bit more about the mysterious Mr Turner by quizzing Barry and Huw when I got my breath back.

No chance.

With Barry and Huw so close to either side of me that I could have slipped under their raincoats in the event of a sudden shower, we marched straight up the switchback concrete ramp to the head of the queue – and then beyond it.