Angel Touch (15 page)

I was beginning to think I might have an idea about that. But Salome had said to say nothing, so nothing was what I said.

 

By the time I got back to the hospital, I'd missed the doctors' rounds. The policeman on duty was a different one, but he seemed to have already struck up a friendship with Fenella. Lisabeth was sitting apart from them reading a newspaper and eating a bar of chocolate. They vied with each other to fill me in on the gruesome details.

‘Salome's got a brain clod,' said Lisabeth.

‘Clot, you idiot,' said Fenella. ‘A blood clot on the brain.'

‘They're going to operate tonight.'

‘They've done the operation hundreds of times, though.'

‘And they won't have to shave
all
her hair ...'

‘And it'll grow back anyway ...'

‘And they don't know if it's affected her brain ... her memory ...'

‘Or her eyesight ...'

‘Or sense of smell. That happens too sometimes.'

‘Well, thanks, ladies, now I'm really depressed. Still, who comes to a hospital to be cheered up, eh?' I put an arm round them both.

‘Pregnant women,' said Fenella.

‘Pardon?'

‘Pregnant women. They come to hospital and are cheered up.'

‘Oh yes, I forgot. Sorry.' Sometimes you just couldn't
open your mouth with those two.

‘Ignore her, Angel. I think the smell of this place has gone to her head. Or maybe it's that nice police
man
,' she hinted, emphasising the last syllable.

Fenella blushed, and I changed subjects quick.

‘Any word on Frank?'

‘Ooh yes,' cooed Lisabeth. ‘Fenella's policeman told us. They've found him in Edinburgh and he's on his way to Heathrow or Gatwick, I forget which. But anyway, he's hiring a car.'

‘You'd have thought the police would have sent a car,' said Fenella loudly.

‘Who for, miss?' asked the policeman.

‘Salome's husband. He must be worried sick.'

‘Sorry, miss. You heard the doctors. There's not likely to be any change until they operate, and that probably won't be until late this evening. We just haven't got the manpower to play at taxis.' He was gentle enough about it, but of course Lisabeth got the hump.

‘Well, what are you doing here?' she snapped.

I moved between her and the constable. That way he might live to make sergeant.

‘He's waiting to give her a breathalyser if she comes round,' I said under my breath. ‘He's only doing his job, and pretty soon he'll give up and go away. It doesn't sound like she is going to come round, so he won't have to do anything.'

Lisabeth fumed but I went on.

‘Now make up your minds where to go for lunch. I've got something to do. Oh, and remember, this is the countryside, not the big city, and it's Sunday, so your choice is limited.'

I approached the copper and held out Davis the Fire Chief's card.

‘Hi there. I've seen the Fire guys and they told me to ask for an Inspector Ball. It's about the car Sal – Mrs Asmoyah – was driving. I wondered if I could arrange for the wreck to be taken back – er – back home. Where can I find him?'

‘Down the Shop, I ‘spect. You a relative of ...' He jerked a thumb at the Intensive Care doors.

‘We all live together.' Did I lie?

His eyebrows would have disappeared if he'd been wearing his helmet.

‘I could get him on the radio and ask for you if you like.' He tapped his collar radio – his ‘talking brooch'.

‘That's decent of you,' I said, and I meant it.

He moved down the corridor nearer to the window to get better reception.

‘Fenella says there's a vegetarian café down the High Street, which does Sunday lunches, or so her policeman fiend tells her.'

‘Okay, we'll find it.'

Lisabeth's vegetarianism made it difficult to take her into pubs at lunch-time. Her temper made it inadvisable at other times.

‘It's expensive, so Clive says,' said Fenella.

Behind her, Lisabeth mimicked ‘Clive says' silently.

‘Don't worry, this is on expenses.' I peeled off 40 quid from the wad in my back pocket. ‘But keep the bill.'

Clive the Constable came back with as much of a smile on his face as uniformed coppers ever allow themselves.

‘I got through to Mr Ball. He's quite happy if you want to move the car; we've finished with it. In fact, he reckons you'll save us and Kent County Council a few quid by doing so.'

‘That's magic. Great. It's ... er … something to do instead of hanging round.'

‘Yer, I know what you mean.'

I was warming to young Clive.

‘Any idea what's going to go down over this?' I asked, making sure we were not overheard by Les Girls.

‘Depends. Could be drunken driving, manslaughter, who knows? Did the chap who copped it have family?'

‘I don't know. Would it make a difference?'

‘It might. Mothers Against Drunk Driving, that sort of thing, though usually it's the mums of young daughters who beat the drum. The present Chief Constable's very keen on causes like that. I'd line up a brief if I were you.'

‘Her husband's a solicitor,' I said, which wasn't strictly true, but he was in the legal profession, and they're all thick as thieves as far as I'm concerned. (Rule of Life No 24: If you ever find yourself needing a solicitor, it's too late.)

I looked at my watch. There were 15 minutes to opening time, which meant I might just be able to head Duncan the Drunken off at the pass.

‘Look,' I said to Clive. ‘Er ... thanks for everything, but I've got to get these ladies some food. See you later, eh?'

‘I'm off at two. I don't think there's much point in hanging around.'

‘No, I'm sure you're right.'

He came closer and bent towards my ear.

‘Tell me something. Are those two really her sisters?' He nodded towards where Salome lay in traction.

Well, they were Sisters, if not sisters, but I didn't know if he'd get that. So I said:

‘Oh yes. And that one –' I pointed discreetly at Fenella – ‘is the black sheep of the family.'

 

 

 

 

 

I rang Duncan from the phones on the wall in the hospital entrance as time was running out. As it was, I got Doreen, because Duncan was halfway down the garden path (all three feet of it) on his way to the pub. I told her I had a job for Duncan and there was money in it, and that was enough for her to yell ‘Duncan!' so loud I felt I heard it without the need of the phone.

Duncan took some persuading – £250 and the scrap option on the VW, to be exact – but agreed to meet me at Blackberry Hill with his wrecker truck (there isn't a vehicle known to man he can't get hold of) in two hours. He told me I should be grateful, as this was the first Sunday lunch-time down his local that he'd missed in five years. I promised to buy shares in the brewery to make up for it.

I drove the girls around the suburbs until we found a newsagent big enough to sell maps, and stuffed behind a wad of yellowing, unfunny birthday cards, I found an Ordnance Survey map of the Blackberry Hill region. I wedged it in the carrier bag with the papers I'd taken from Salome's briefcase, and then we went in search of the veggie noshery recommended by Fenella's nice policeman.

We found it easily enough, and it was open for business – at least it was when they went in. I said I'd pick them up in an hour, and then drove until I found a pub with a bar food sign and a quiet corner. I bought myself a pint of shandy and something called a French banger, which turned out to be a six-inch sausage served in a nine-inch piece of French bread. In a crisis, it could have doubled as a draught excluder or, if the pub got rough, as a cosh.

I had my bag of reading material with me, and before the pub got too crowded, I spread the map, the Exhilarator brochure and the file marked ‘Cawthorne' over a metal-legged table and got down to it. By the time the pub had filled enough so that the punters were giving me dirty looks for taking up so much room, I felt I had discovered enough to put two and two together and make five if not six.

The Exhilarator bumph advertised the latest in executive pastimes – dressing up as soldiers and running round the countryside shooting each other with paint pellets from air guns – a sort of hide-and-seek directed by Sam Peckinpah. The address on the brochure was Pegasus Farm, Blackberry Hill, Broughton Street, Kent, but there was no name to it. Yet Werewolf's new friend Sorrel had said ‘Cawthorne' and ‘assault courses' virtually in the same delicately-taken breath, and surely there couldn't be two of them? But then, how come Sorrel knew about things like that? Cawthorne's file from Prior, Keen, Baldwin didn't actually mention the Exhilarator; it was mostly financial stuff about his holdings and interests in the City. There was a lot of stuff in there I didn't understand, such as ‘MM' and ‘TF' and ‘JS', mostly in the form of cryptic notes after a company name, though even I worked out that ‘BB' meant Big Bang, when the City had been deregulated two years earlier.

On the personal side, there was very little about Cawthorne, except that he was the son of a Colonel in the Parachute Regiment now retired to darkest Wiltshire.

To my mind, that clinched the connection with Pegasus Farm, the Winged Pegasus being the emblem of the Parachute Regiment, which used to be called the Red Berets (when Richard Todd was making films) but nowadays (since American Football and Rambo) referred to itself as the Maroon Machine. I've always said that all those games of Trivial Pursuit wouldn't be wasted.

I sat back and treated myself to a cigarette, determined to make it the first and last of the day. I dug out the packet of Sweet Afton I'd managed to make last most of the week and lit up.

On the back of the packet was the phone number of Prior, Keen, Baldwin's motorbike messenger service, which I'd jotted down while snooping in their postroom on Friday afternoon. I remembered Gerry saying she thought it must be a radio phone as it had so many digits. It wasn't; it was a country STD code, and it matched the number printed on the Exhilarator leaflet for Pegasus Farm.

I should have made the connection sooner, given that the company was called Airborne PLC, but nobody's perfect.

 

Lisabeth and Fenella were waiting on the pavement outside the Spring Onion when I arrived to pick them up. The restaurant was still standing, but I suspected some unpleasantness had taken place as neither of them said a word until we arrived at the hospital again. I did ask if they'd had a nice meal, but Lisabeth just ‘harrumphed,' so I dropped the subject and told them instead that I was going to meet Duncan and collect Salome's car. As they hopped out of Armstrong, Fenella leaned in through the meter window as if paying off a real cab. She handed me a bill from the Spring Onion and mouthed ‘Sorry,' before skipping off to catch up with Lisabeth. Puzzled, I scanned the receipt to find, at the bottom after the VAT, an added amount of £7.50 just listed as ‘Breakages.' I made a mental note to ask about that. One day.

I got to Blackberry Hill before Duncan showed, and cruised by the barrier that marked the scene of the accident. A few yards up the hill, on my left, was a turning that
at first I thought was just the entrance to a field. I pulled in there as it seemed a good place to get Armstrong off the road, and it was only then I saw that it was in fact an unmade road curving away round the back of the hill.

I snuffed Armstrong's engine and dug out the OS map I'd bought. I opened it out, knowing straight off that I'd never get it re-folded properly, and found Blackberry Hill. The track I was parked on was a back way into the village of Broughton Street and, as the crow flew, a quicker way than coming around by Blackberry Hill. Broughton Street was a collection of grey boxes on the map with nothing to distinguish it from loads of other small Kentish villages. Near the village end of the track, a ‘Fisher's Farm' was marked, and behind it, a green rectangle with the legend ‘Fisher's Wood'. There was nothing saying Pegasus or Exhilarator.

A motor horn sounded off behind me and scared me silly. It was Duncan reversing a flat-back wrecking truck complete with winch and hook gear. On the doors of the truck was stencilled ‘Ron's Recks of Romford.' Obviously Duncan was calling in a few debts.

We wotchered each other as I led him across the road.

‘Wotcha, Angel.'

‘Wotcha, Dunc. Thanks for turning out.'

‘No problem. It's double time for Sundays.'

‘Never forget you're Yorkshire. It's over here.'

We looked down over the police barrier at the upside-down Golf below us.