Angel on the Inside (4 page)

Before I could come up with the obvious reply, which would probably have earned me a fist in the face, Springsteen took matters into his own paws. One of his back ones actually, which burst out of his towelling shroud and lashed at Amber, missing her arm but sending the white plastic phone crashing on to the floor.

Amber kept on smiling, not a tooth out of place, not an eyelid batted.

‘The vet will see you straight away. And the name is?'

‘Springsteen,' I said, leaning on him in a vain attempt to muffle his growls.

‘Like the old rock star?'

‘I prefer legendary.'

‘My mum really liked him,' she smiled.

‘Er … the vet. Can we see him?'

‘Oh sure. It's a cat, right?'

‘Right.'

Just to prove it, Springsteen produced the sort of smell only nervous cats can. The towels were no substitute for a gas mask and personal oxygen supply.

‘Any idea of the problem?' Amber said, her nose wrinkling but the smile still cemented in place.

‘A totally meat diet plus a metabolism designed in the seventh circle of Hell, if you mean the smell,' I said helpfully. ‘In more general terms, a psychotic personality that has not mellowed with age. Specifically, a broken leg, which, if it's not treated soon, will bring that metabolism and that personality into play full whack, in which case I would fear for everything you hold dear and every living thing in this room.'

In the waiting room behind me, you could have heard a pin drop. Then I heard the big bald guy whispering to his pit bull: ‘Come on, Laydee, we'll come back later.'

Amber still held me in her gaze and I couldn't help but stare at her smile. Under fluorescent lighting, I would have needed sunglasses.

‘Will you be paying cash, Mr Springsteen?' she said.

‘Absolutely.'

‘Then let's go through, shall we?'

 

When we finally emerged, the waiting room was empty apart from Fenella, sitting there good as gold, changed out of her pyjamas, knees together, reading a copy of
Hello!
magazine.

I wasn't surprised she was alone. Once Amber had led me into the surgery, the vet's shout of ‘Oh fuck, not that cat!' must have disconcerted some of the waiting patients.

The following cries of ‘Amber, lock the door!' and ‘Just bloody believe me, this one
can
do door handles, it's happened before!' and particularly ‘For the love of God, don't let go' were also probably upsetting if you heard them in isolation coming from somebody, obviously hysterical, to whom you were about to entrust the health and well-being of your pet.

Of course I kept calm throughout – I think blood loss does that to you – and I warned him that trying to inject the anaesthetic through the towels was at best a hit and miss affair. But he had it his way and it wasn't my fault that Springsteen only pretended to be knocked out until the vet was in range.

Fortunately, I hadn't totally let go of him, so we managed to isolate part of his rump and the vet got a needle into him. He did get off one parting shot before he went under, though, which meant that Amber refused to speak to me ever again. She would also need a new white smock and probably six or seven showers before she got her squeaky clean confidence back.

The vet, who seemed to have aged rapidly over half an hour, took my credit card and swiped it himself – probably twice, to pay for the cleaning bill. Then he gave me my instructions and, for the unconscious Springsteen, a cardboard carrying basket, which I lined with the few strips of unstained shredded towel I could find. Reluctantly, the vet agreed that I would have to come back to have the plaster cast removed.

‘Try an evening surgery,' he said. ‘Tuesdays or Thursdays are nice and quiet.'

‘Your nights off?' I suggested, and he blushed deeply.

Fenella wanted to know why I had asked her to come and meet us.

‘To sit with him in the back of Armstrong to reassure him if he comes round,' I told her as we walked out of the surgery.

I didn't like to point out that the carrying basket was made of cardboard and that wouldn't hold him for ten seconds if he did wake up with a headache and a leg in plaster in the back of a cab. At least Fenella might buffer some of the initial impact.

As it was, he was still out when we got back to Stuart Street. Not even Fenella's constant coo-ing and ‘poor boy' lullaby woke him up, which was just as well.

I didn't say much on the journey. I was too busy thinking about what the vet had said about the x-rays and how somebody had probably kicked him first and then stamped down on his leg.

I was going to find them, and find them I would. There couldn't be
that
many women who wore heavy, probably steel-capped, boots and Chiffon coloured tights. Even in Hackney.

From what Springsteen had kept as a trophy, I could narrow it down even further to a woman wearing only half a pair of tights.

Who had a limp.

 

 

 

 

 

‘So what woke you the first time?' I asked.

‘What? Who? Why? Please, Angel, I'm trying to cook.'

We had set up our observation post in the doorway of Fenella's flat, having decided that it was better to let Springsteen come round in his own good time and when he did, not have the distraction of human targets. I had opened the folding lid of the cat transporter and turned it on its side so he could simply roll out. There was food and fresh water for him and I had put anything breakable out of harm's way, so he had Flat 3 all to himself.

I had borrowed one of Fenella's chairs and parked myself in her doorway so I had an unrestricted view of the landing and the cat flap in my door. After five minutes I searched her flat for something to read that wouldn't improve my spiritual being or teach me to be a better vegan and settled on the latest
Harry Potter
. Then I borrowed a large scallop shell from the kitchen (and how was I to know it wasn't an ashtray?) while Fenella nipped round to Mrs Patel's off-licence for a couple of bottles of Cahors, having ascertained that she had nothing in her flat worth drinking that didn't contain elderflower.

At least she offered to make lunch: smoked tofu on toast. I had helpfully suggested that she add red pesto, sliced tomatoes dusted with white pepper, fresh basil and Worcestershire sauce, but she just looked at me like she was the only one who had worked up an appetite that morning and she was going to do it her way. Pah! Call that cheese on toast?

‘You said Springsteen's howling had woken you up
the second time
,' I explained. ‘When I arrived, that's what you said. What woke you up the
first
time?'

She paused to think, one hand on the grill-pan handle, oblivious to the wisps of blue smoke curling around her lobster-shaped oven glove.

‘That would have been Mr Nassim,' she said. Then she nodded to herself to confirm it.

‘Toast's burning,' I said.

I refilled my glass and resumed my seat in the doorway, reassuring myself that there was no way Springsteen could get out of the cat flap, across the landing and down the stairs before I could seal myself back in Fenella's flat. Not on three legs he couldn't. Surely not.

‘So what did Nassim want?' I shouted kitchenwards.

Nassim Nassim is our esteemed landlord, and it's not that he has a name so nice you have to say it twice, it's just that no-one can pronounce his family name. When he first introduced himself, he knew it would be a problem and said ‘Just call me Nassim Nassim,' so we did.

‘I'm not sure. Lisabeth talked to him just before she went to work, but I don't think she got much sense out of him,' Fenella called back over a clattering of plates. ‘You know what Nassim's like.'

‘Indeed I do, and I won't have a word said against him.'

I meant it. The old boy might be getting on nowadays and suffering from more than his fair share of ‘senior moments' in-between power naps, but he'd always done right by me. After a small favour I had done for his great-niece years ago, he had pegged the rent on my flat and turned one blind eye on my incorporation of a cat flap and another on the No Pets rule. After all those years, I was paying maybe a fifth of the rent that he could realistically get these days and that the other tenants were undoubtedly paying. He was Top Man was Nassim Nassim.

‘He had somebody with him from the Council,' Fenella was saying, ‘from the Rating Office. Is that right? A Rating Evaluation Officer or something. Does that sound right?'

‘The senile old fart!' I shouted. ‘Doesn't he know better than to let a Valuation Officer in here?'

‘I don't know about that.' Fenella handed me a plate boasting two blackened squares with white circles on them. They looked like sides of a dice. ‘Lisabeth said she was really, really nice.'

‘
She?
'

‘There's no need to shout.'

In a fit of pique she made to take the plate back. I should have let her.

‘Did she go in my flat?'

‘I don't know, I never saw her. Look, Angel just
hear my lips
: I never saw the person. I never saw Mr Nassim. I was in bed, trying to sleep.'

I kept a straight face at the ‘hear my lips' – just as she had – and pretended I was enjoying the mildly flavoured rubber charcoal she had served up.

‘Working late nights again?'

She nodded.

‘Don't those chat line phone calls wake Lisabeth?'

I knew that Fenella and her posh voice had progressed from cold caller to call centre sub-station to chat line hostess without actually realising what was going on. She just thought it faintly surprising that she got paid for talking to complete strangers about her school days and especially what she wore for PE lessons. She didn't seem to have noticed anything odd about most of the calls coming late at night after the pubs had chucked out either. I had seen three mobiles on recharging stands in the living room. Business must be good.

‘Oh no, I set the phones to silent ringing,' she said calmly, pleased that I was taking an interest in her career. ‘And anyway, it's all text these days.'

‘Text?' I said warily.

‘Text messages. I'm in three different TCRs – text chat rooms – a night now. My job is to keep the text flowing, though honestly, some of the spelling! And they use numbers for words, you know. Like four – the number four – stands for “for” – as in f-o-r. And the number two is “to”. It takes a bit of puzzling sometimes.'

‘Have six and nine come up in any combination?'

‘Several times, now you mention it, but this is just an experiment. If it proves popular, I could get a computer and go online as they say.'

‘Has anyone suggested using a webcam on you?'

‘What's a webcam?'

‘Never mind. Great tofu by the way,' I lied, not realising you could actually spoil tofu. ‘So you didn't see this Valuation Officer, then?'

‘No, I told you. Lisabeth dealt with her. Why don't you ask Mr Nassim? He was the one showing her around.'

‘Good idea. Well done that girl.'

‘You can stay here if you like and use one of the phones. I've got to do the shopping, but Lisabeth'll be home soon. If you want to stay until Springsteen wakes up. I think it's sort of sweet of you.'

It was, now I thought of it, but I couldn't face explaining my presence to Lisabeth.

‘Thanks, but I'll wait on the stairs so I can be nearer to him in case he needs me. Pass the rest of the wine would you?'

 

I was halfway through the second bottle of Cahors and had finally remembered how to sprawl comfortably on stairs (how quickly one forgets one's youth), when Inverness Doogie showed up.

I heard him long before I saw him as he must have had eight or nine attempts at putting his key in the lock of the front door. Then the door swung inwards and he stood there swaying, trying to get the key out of the lock. I wasn't sure this was a good idea, as it seemed to be the only thing holding him upright. He had a leather jacket over his white chef's coat and chequerboard trousers and in his left hand he clutched a bottle of the Macallan by the neck. From his waist dangled a striped tea towel the way chefs wear them through their belt to wipe things with. Doogie's was notable as it appeared to have caught fire quite recently.

He succeeded in yanking out his key, rocked back on his heels then weaved two steps into the house and leaned on the payphone on the wall for support, his eyes widening as he focussed on me lying on the stairs, wine glass in one hand, book in the other.

‘Honey, I'm home!' he slurred loudly. ‘What the feck are you doing here? Amy come to her senses an' thrown you out then?'