Angel Touch (32 page)

A pleasant young lady with her hair ponytailed with a rubber band to keep it out of the machinery, apologised like mad and charged me half-price.

Back at Pretty Keen Bastards, I played around with a couple of prints on the Xerox machine until I had A4-size paper copies. By that time, the grainy prints were even grainier, but one of the shots I'd taken inside the pillbox was still detailed enough, if you knew what it was.

I kept the photocopy and the negatives, but put the prints in an envelope for Patterson, then took Anna out to lunch and bent the Amex card some more.

It's all go in the City.

 

I called in to see Salome again in the afternoon and, I have to admit, was relieved to find she was asleep. Still, Lucy the administrator and I got on famously. I think she was flattered that I took such an interest in medical working conditions, such as how long the shifts were and when did they finish, whereas most men would just have tried to chat her up.

Before I drove down to Brixton to see Lloyd that evening, I rang McInnes at his office and told him things were moving.

‘If you can get to a Topic screen tomorrow morning, you'll see if he's taken the bait,' he said.

‘That quickly?'

‘He won't be able to resist it. He just can't. And if he thinks he's stuffing me, so much the better. He'll go for a dawn raid before the market opens tomorrow.'

I thought he was winding me up.

‘A what?'

‘A dawn raid – that's what it's called. A Monday would be better, but he won't dare leave it that late, and from what I've heard about Linton's business, the sooner the better. There's one thing we should take into consideration.'

‘Somebody else catching on and getting drawn into the con?'

‘So you had thought about that?'

Yes. Just then.

‘Is it likely?'

‘Well, I think Sir Frederick Linton will jump in and stop things if he sees innocent money going after bad. You see, he's basically a very honest man.'

‘I guessed that.'

He must be. He was the one going bust.

 

When it happened, it was with a whimper.

Nobody opened champagne or jumped off a skyscraper. No one dipped their Vick inhaler in neat coke, no one rushed out to order a Porsche. By City standards it was probably chicken feed. It made a few paragraphs in the papers but nobody yelled, ‘Hold the financial page!'

I arrived at PKB before 8.00 on the Friday and, as I was wearing the suit, I walked straight in. I put on Fly's clear-glass specs and straightened my tie and became totally invisible.

Patterson said he hadn't time to mess around with me, and I told him all I wanted to do was watch the market. Despite the suit, he didn't trust me with PKB equipment, so he called Howard Golding – the fax expert – to sit with me and press buttons.

‘What are we looking for?' asked Howard, as we sat on swivel chairs near a terminal.

‘Linton Plc. I want to see if there are any movements.'

He made a ‘What the hell for?' sort of face but began to whistle up the details on the screen.

The dealing room was the busiest I'd seen it, and by quarter past 8.00 most of the guys were in shirtsleeves and the empty coffee cups were piling up.

‘There's nothing much going on,' Howard told me. Then he yelled across the room. ‘Hey, Sean, anything doing on Linton?'

I flapped at him to keep his voice down.

‘Not a lot,' yelled back Sean. ‘Somebody bought small yesterday. Price rose on spec to 119 but fell back to 116 at day-end. First movement for ages. I'd class it as moribund stock if you're asking.'

Sean yelled all this back without looking up from what he was doing.

Howard shrugged. Then he picked up a phone. ‘Let's see if we can get one of the dealers. What are you after?'

‘Just interested,' I said dismissively as he dialled.

‘That's funny,' he said, puzzled. ‘I can't get through.'

 

That was the start of it.

As soon as the Exchange opened proper, there was a public announcement that Pegasus Investments had acquired over five percent of the stock of Linton Plc and was still buying, though by then the price had gone up to 280p. By mid-morning, Howard estimated that nearly 15 percent of Linton shares had changed hands.

He had a furtive meeting with Tel-boy and I distinctly heard ‘Somebody took out the market-makers in a dawn raid ...'

Patterson looked worried for a second, then shut himself in his office.

What did cause a stir in the dealing room was the announcement at 11.00 by Sir Frederick Linton, or rather a financial PR company acting for him.

Basically, through the jargon, it said that because of untoward speculation in Linton shares, Sir Frederick had advanced the news (scheduled for Monday morning anyway) that he was seeking a suspension of his company listing on the Exchange prior to calling in the receivers.

‘There is, as we say around here,' confided Howard, ‘a distinct smell of burnt fingers in the air.'

I was whistling to myself – maybe ‘Satin Doll', but something jolly – as I sneaked out of the dealing room and took the lift down to meet the Dennison boys.

 

I had primed Anna to send for an Airborne messenger when I tipped her the wink (okay, so I hadn't mentioned that Patterson knew nothing about this one), and Lloyd had primed Lewis Luther to make sure he was the Airborne rider in the area.

That was the chancy bit, of course, as I hadn't been able to specify a time exactly.

The Dennison boys were in place, in the sandwich bar round the corner, pigging out on Danish pastries. I paid their bill for them, although Sel – but it could have been Mel – insisted on a tea to go. I told him not to spill it over Armstrong as they piled into the back.

I moved Armstrong to the front of the PKB building, and we had only a minute or so to wait before Lewis Luther pulled up, parked the Kawasaki and dismounted.

I called him over before he got to the entrance.

‘There's nothing for you to collect, Lewis.'

He stopped in his tracks, then sauntered over to the passenger window I'd pulled down. I wouldn't need the Dennisons for Lewis, but it didn't hurt to let him see them.

‘But I got the call ...' he mumbled through his helmet.

‘I know, Lewis, relax. Get on the radio and fix a rendezvous. Here you are.'

I handed him an empty envelope on which I'd written McInnes's name and office address.

‘Then what?' asked Lewis, though it came out as ‘En ot?'

‘Then tell us where it is and go home, put your feet up.'

Lewis sighed. He was probably wondering if there was time to get down the Jobcentre that afternoon, but he removed his helmet and activated his collar radio.

‘Liverpool Street,' he said after getting the reply, ‘just round the corner from Blomfield Street.'

I nodded. The same place as the other messenger checked in yesterday.

Lewis put a gauntlet on the window.

‘Hang about,' he said, as he unclipped his radio. ‘You'd better give this back to Sorley. Don't want anybody saying I tea-leafed the office equipment.'

I took it from him.

‘Lloyd'll see you right, Lewis. Thanks.'

Mrs Luther would have been proud of him.

 

I briefed the Dennison boys as I drove. All I wanted was a bit of steaming in the back of Sorley's van: lots of bodies, noise and confusion. I did
not
want Sorley putting in hospital.

‘But I thought somebody needed a good seeing-to,' moaned Del, or maybe Sel.

‘Not today, lads. We just get in there, out of sight of Joe Public and Mr Plod, and you lot sit on the guy until I've done my bit of business.'

By the time they'd finished grumbling and rapping among themselves, we were turning into Liverpool Street.

The red Transit was parked near a bus stop opposite the Railway Tavern, on the Broadgate side of the street. They were still building the Broadgate development, so there were cranes and trucks around and it wasn't the sort of place you'd get a ticket or get clamped for dodgy parking.

I nosed Armstrong to within a yard of the back of the van, and the Dennison boys were out on the street before I'd killed the engine.

Poor Sorley never knew what hit him. One of the boys knocked on the van door and as it opened, the other two piled in. By the time I got there, Del and Sel (I think) had him pinned against the shelves where he stacked spare envelopes. I climbed in and Mel (possibly) closed the door, staying outside to keep guard.

‘Just what ...' Sorley began to bluster.

He was wearing khaki slacks and desert boots and an army-style pullover with patches everywhere. The Dennisons had an arm each, freezing him in the crucifix position.

‘Is your fax on?' I asked, reasonably enough.

‘What? Now look here ...'

I ignored him and examined the fax. A red light glowed in one corner, so I assumed it was ready to go. There was a digital dial pad and then buttons marked ‘send' and ‘recall' and ‘auto.' I guessed that it was automatically programmed to go through to Pegasus Farm. But, better be sure.

‘Do I just press “send” to get through to Cawthorne?' I asked him, though I didn't look at him. We all had to bend our heads because of the van roof, and you can't be threatening from a crouched position. Well, I couldn't. The Dennison's could.

‘Answer the man!' shouted one of them, and then the other one butted him on the upper arm, on the muscles below the shoulder.

He yelped at that. So would I.

‘What are you doing? Who ...'

Young Sel made ready for another headbutt, and Sorley saw the better part of valour, though his arm was probably quite numb by now and the second wouldn't have hurt so much.

‘It's “auto” – the “auto” button. That's all you need do.'

‘Thank you.'

I opened the A4 envelope I'd brought with me and slid out the Xerox of the photo I'd taken of Cawthorne's pillbox headquarters. I slid it into the fax's feed tray and pressed “auto.” It hummed, then whirred, then beeped and clicked, and then the sheet began to move through.

It took only a few seconds, and I left the Xerox in the out tray of the machine, placing Lewis's radio on it.

‘Just serving notice, Mr Sorley.' I looked at him over the top of my fake specs. ‘You're going out of business. Now just sit down on the floor and be quiet and we'll be on our way. Get his keys.'

I'm almost positive it was Sel who dug his keys out of his trouser pocket, none too gently, then twisted the arm he was holding up Sorley's back to force him to the floor of the van.

I knocked on the back window, and Mel let us out; me first, then his brothers. Sel gave me the keys, and I locked Sorley in there without saying anything else. He had the look of a man trying to remember where he'd seen someone before. And that always makes me nervous.

I threw the keys inside the front of the van, through the driver's window. Let him work that one out.

He could look on it as an initiative test.

 

 

 

 

 

Friday night. Party night.

Frank was hospital visiting, Werewolf was across the sea in Ireland, Sorrel wasn't answering the phone (well, you never know till you try) and I couldn't think of anyone I particularly wanted to get drunk with, so I went out on the town with Lloyd and the lads.

The Dennison boys came with us and so did Beeby. One of the brothers – I forget which – said he wanted to be a Moslem when he grew up, so he'd given up booze, which made him the driver for the night. Lloyd may walk more on the narrow than the strait but he wasn't daft enough to go pub crawling in a pink ‘64 Zephyr without a sober pilot.

We started off in a pub in Barking. It had an upstairs room where a black trio were jamming on two alto saxes and a portable electric organ. Well, I thought they were jamming, until one of them stopped playing and said their next composition was called ‘Seabass' and would be played in 13/11 time. At that point I lost interest and Lloyd gave up any thought of signing the band for a record contract.

After Beeby had whispered in Lloyd's ear for a good five minutes, we moved on. She was wearing a T-shirt with a yellow Smiley face over each nipple, so it didn't need a genius to work out our next port of call.

It was an old warehouse near the Ripple Road railway sidings in Dagenham. It had been swept out, but that was about all you could say for it. A posh-voiced young lady wearing a tweed jacket (the real Harris is back in) was about to charge us a fiver each for entry until she recognised Lloyd and waved us through. Inside, half a dozen dry ice machines were working overtime and the disco was belting out house music at around 150 beats per minute.