Angel on the Inside (40 page)

‘Just came by to say that everything you said has come to pass.'

‘It has?' I said, trying hard not to sound surprised.

‘Seven o'clock news. Helping the police with their enquires into a suspicious death. No charges yet.'

He sounded quite disappointed.

‘So, that's that, then?' I said hopefully.

‘Not quite.'

He seemed uncomfortable, almost shifting from one foot to the other yet somehow not physically moving.

‘I had some of my ... Some of my associates visited the offices of a ...'

‘A mutual legal friend?' I supplied.

‘Yes, well, there was a question of certain files to be recovered.'

‘I thought there might be.'

‘Well, they found this – and several dozen others.'

He rested his briefcase on his knee to open it and took out a video cassette in a plastic box. He put it carefully down on the table and closed the case.

‘The fuckwit made copies for the office.'

I stared at the cassette. The sticky label on the spine said: ‘17. (Amy.)'

Before I could say anything, Len Turner was leaving.

‘Good luck,' he said.

 

 

 

 

 

I never caught the news on BBC Wales. By the time I tried to retune the radio in the Freelander, I was on the bridge crossing the Severn and looking at Wales through the rear-view mirror. I found the national news headlines on Radio 4 at midday, but of course it didn't rate a mention there.

Just before the Chippenham turn-off, I thought I saw a black TX1 cab pulled up on a garage forecourt, but I could have been mistaken.

I would get back to London with 24 hours to spare before I had to collect Amy from Heathrow.

I could tidy up the house. Maybe write a letter to Malcolm Fisher. Go see how Springsteen was. I could ring Stella – no she'd still be on her honeymoon – or Veronica at Rudgard & Blugden and ask if they'd heard from Steffi Innocent. I might just drop into the conversation that Steffi must be on some financial blacklist as she wasn't allowed a credit card. (And God knows, they gave them out to just anyone. Look how many I'd got.) Were they aware of that? Had they investigated the investigators?

And then again, I might watch a video.

 

I did all that except for cleaning the house.

Springsteen was fine. Fenella looked a little more harassed than usual, running around after him, tending to his every need, and she took it badly when I suggested we should get him a bell that he could bat along the floor with his good paw whenever he needed something.

‘Did you ever find out who did this to him?' Fenella asked.

‘Oh yes,' I said. ‘It's well sorted.'

When she'd gone, I asked Springsteen if he had any relations in a place called Tregaron. He didn't deign to reply.

I wrote to Mr Creosote, or Prisoner HM 8281 Fisher as I was supposed to call him, and told him in a roundabout way that his friend's idea for an adventure holiday in Wales had misfired (I liked that) and that the main backer had lost his investment fund. The matter was effectively closed.

I didn't have Mr Creosote's faith in the European Court of Justice ruling that said no-one was allowed to read his mail.

I rang Rudgard & Blugden and got through to Veronica.

Steffi Innocent had phoned in sick – eventually, she added huffily – and was likely to be off all week. No, she didn't know where she was, but she was such a strange girl, nothing would surprise Veronica. No credit rating? No, she hadn't heard that, and she'd look into it. It was odd, wasn't it? They give those cards out to every Tom, Dick or Barry, don't they? My cat could probably get one if I filled in the form.

‘Interesting idea, Veronica,' I said, before hanging up.

She rang me back in the early evening to tell me that the basic credit check had come up immediately with Steffi's name on not one, but three, blacklists. An entire history of credit cards maxed out, one within 24 hours of being issued. A bit of a shopaholic, our Steffi, and therefore untrustworthy in a business that relied so much on trust. (It probably said that on her day-by-day tear-off desk calendar.) Sad though it was, when Stella got back, they would have to review her contract.

That was sad, and a bit like kicking someone when they were down.

But that's what she'd done.

 

Most of the night I spent watching a video – the same video of which I now had two copies – or as much of it as I could stomach at one go, which was about an hour.

And there was a fair bit of drinking involved.

 

A policeman ringing the doorbell got me out of bed just before noon.

He was by himself – his partner was in the police car parked in the street – and he wasn't wearing his hat. Good signs it wasn't serious.

‘Mr Angle?'

‘Near enough.'

‘Sorry to disturb you, sir.'

I pulled the belt on my silk robe even tighter.

‘What can I do for you?'

He pulled out his notebook and turned a few pages.

‘Could you tell me if you were in the house on Tuesday night? That's Tuesday this week.'

‘No, I wasn't. I've been in Wales for few days. Since Monday, actually, and I only got back yesterday afternoon.'

‘Wales? My sergeant's Welsh.' He flicked his head to the car, where the other uniform was doing paperwork leaning on the dashboard.

‘That's nice for you,' I said cheerfully.

‘Not really. He's a bit of pain in the arse, if you know what I mean. However, I've got to ask you, because you're the last house on our list. Is there a wife ...?'

‘Yes, but she's in Spain. Comes back this evening. She wasn't here Tuesday either.'

‘So it was a case of while the cat's away, the mice will play, was it?'

Will somebody please protect me from friendly policemen? There ought to be law against them.

‘If I wanted to play away from home, do you think I'd go to Wales?'

‘Fair point, sir, fair point.'

He wrote ‘Mr and Mrs Angle not at home' and Tuesday's date in his notebook.

‘What's this all about, officer?'

‘The burglary,' he said, putting his pen away.

‘We haven't been burgled,' I said.

Well, not recently. In London, it's bound to be your turn sometime.

‘No, of course you haven't. It was just in case you'd seen anything. We were looking for witness statements. It was that house over there got done.'

He pointed.

‘The Dunmores?'

He allowed himself a smirk. ‘Yeah, and him the big cheese in the Neighbourhood Watch.'

‘I bet he gave you lot some stick,' I said.

‘He was about to, be we caught the guy. Though Mr Dunmore is going to tighten up procedures in the Watch ready for a rapid response, as he calls it.'

‘Good for you, catching the bloke.'

‘Wasn't difficult. He was a bit of an old boy; an old lag, really. Had his pockets stuffed with Mrs Dunmore's jewels out of the bedside table. He should have legged it, but he said he just couldn't resist the wide-screen television. Got as far as the end of the street there and sat down on it. Had a smoke under the streetlight. God knows how he thought he'd get it on the tube. He was there when we arrived. Almost like he was waiting for us. Hard to believe, isn't it?'

‘There's just no understanding some people,' I agreed.

I hoped Spider had a Happy Christmas.

 

Amy's plane was not only on time, it was early, and she had already swanned through Customs weighed down with bags, one of them chinking.

‘You missed a treat!' she said, loading me up with shopping bags.

‘Good time?'

‘Excellent businesswise, and I've got a tan to prove I did nothing in the afternoons. It's far too hot to work out there except for about two hours a day. You'd love it.'

‘Would I have to do the full two hours
every
day?'

‘Not if you were sleeping with the boss. Don't drop that one. There's two bottles of a Spanish brandy that's even worse than that Italian stuff you drink. Do not light a cigarette after that.'

In Armstrong, which I'd parked in the taxi rank, she asked me what I'd been doing with myself.

‘Touring around with the guys,' I said, remembering my cover story. ‘We supported a Breton bagpipe band and a group called The Judith Charmers, would you believe.'

‘Believe
not
!' she yelled in my ear.

‘They're a good pub band,' I protested.

They did exist and they were.

For the rest of the journey, it was mostly her talking about the Madrid fashion scene and which ideas she could steal, which trends she could start.

‘You're very quiet,' she said as we neared Hampstead.

‘Just impressed by the jet-set world of high fashion.'

‘High fashion? Cut ‘em low, price ‘em high. That's all there is to it.'

She put her hand through the sliding partition and rubbed my shoulder.

‘I wished you'd come. It'll probably be my last freebie abroad for a while.'

‘It will? Why?'

There was a pause before she answered.

‘A change of direction is called for. No, not called for, it's actually coming. We have to adapt to it.'

‘That was a “we”, wasn't it.'

‘Yes, of course,' she said suspiciously. ‘Why wouldn't it be?'

‘No reason.'

‘Oh yes there must be. What is it? Do we need to talk?'

‘Probably.'

‘Oh, fuck. When you say “probably” like that it means you've been brooding.'

‘I have not been brooding.'

‘Yes you have. I can tell.'

‘I haven't, I've been busy.'

‘Brood, brood, brood, brood ...'

‘We'll talk inside,' I said, as I turned into the street.

I had a feeling two bottles of Spanish rotgut wasn't going to be enough.

 

We watched the tape together, or at least some of it.

Probably about 15 minutes of it, but it seemed longer. The tape was silent, so were we.

Then Amy stood up and grabbed the remote control, froze the image on the television screen and stood in front of it, hands on hips, staring at me.

She was wearing what she'd worn on the flight back: a white shirt and khaki cargo trousers with leg pockets that had never been used, and light brown suede shoes with kitten heels. With a military cap on she could have stepped out of a recruiting poster for Desert Storm.

‘A long time ago ...'

‘In a galaxy far, far away.'

‘Don't interrupt me! Just listen!'

I nodded an apology.

‘This is something I was never going to tell you, because it happened before
you
. Just like I don't want to know what you did before
me
. Can you understand? That should have gone – history. Good, bad history, gone. It was
before you
. Okay?

‘Keith and I got involved in a scam involving some European money.'

‘In Cardiff.'

‘I said don't interrupt. This isn't easy for me. You've no idea how this isn't easy.'

‘Sorry.'

‘Yes, we were in Cardiff. Keith knew this solicitor on the make, a man called Hadyn Rees. He would help us by making everything look legal. Long and short of it was, we were getting a grant for one thing but spending the money on something else. I thought we were spending it on developing what became the TALtop, i.e. on my fashion ideas. Keith had other plans; but then, he was a psycho. When it all went ballistic, Hadyn Rees had it so that Keith took the fall. He deserved to. He'd become unstable by that time – even violent.

‘Years go by, right? Keith's in prison, I meet you. Things have moved on. There's
you
now.

‘Then Keith gets out of prison and starts making a nuisance of himself. Then he gets himself rearrested and everything's back to normal. Well, it isn't. I know it's not the same, maybe it can't be.

‘Because now Hadyn Rees comes out of the woodwork for some reason. He suspects Keith has some sort of revenge mission planned and he wants to make sure that Keith is stitched up good and proper this time. He's got too big, too important, to have shadows from his past embarrassing him in court. He wants reassuring that Keith isn't going to bring up old grievances.