Just Another Angel (19 page)

Back in pursuit, I was relieved to see the Sierra turn north-east towards Greenwich and the river again, running by the old dockyards and into Woolwich. Automatically I checked that I had plenty of fuel myself. I mean, this was still virgin territory, there were no tube lines running to this part of the frontier. God – I was sounding more and more like a real North Londoner all the time.

I almost ran up their exhaust pipe as they turned right off Plumstead Road down the side of a school and into the backstreets.

Fortunately, Nevil wasn't looking in his mirror; he had his head out of the driver's window as if looking for a street name. I gave them as long as I dared before cutting up a newsprint lorry and following them. I was just in time to see the Sierra hang a left once over the railway.

I was right to be cautious. The Sierra had parked about a third of the way down the street, so I went on past the junction and ran Armstrong up onto the pavement.

Leaving his engine running, I nipped back to the junction, hugging the side of a terraced house before peering round the corner.

Nevil was holding the passenger door open for Jo, but they seemed to be arguing. He was wearing a grubby trench coat with the collar turned up, so I still could not get a good look at him, but there was no mistaking his dimensions. I reckoned that his neck and my waist measurements just about matched.

He leaned inwards and seemed to lift Jo out of the car with one hand. If he'd wanted to lift the whole car, I think he could have.

On the pavement, Jo shook herself free and smoothed down the front of her leather mini-skirt. Nevil locked the door and slammed it and then indicated to her to lead on. They disappeared into the front garden of one of the houses.

I checked to see if Armstrong was still there and then risked a crouching run as far as the Sierra's tail-lights. If anybody had seen me, they must have thought the SAS was on exercise in the area.

They hadn't gone into a house as I'd thought. They'd gone down a narrow alleyway – up North they're called ‘ginnels,' but don't ask me why; I just observe, I don't translate – which led to another alley at right-angles. Running along that were the back gardens of a terrace of houses we must have driven by.

I had left Armstrong too long, and I hurried back, resisting the temptation to damage the Sierra in some small way (just for peace of mind).

Three small black kids had gathered around Armstrong's bonnet and were gazing in wonder at the gently vibrating engine.

‘Piss orf,' I hissed at them, and they calmly turned away and continued down the street, convinced I really was a genuine cabby.

The
A-Z
told me that the gardens off the alley belonged to the houses on Lee Metford Road, and there seemed no good reason why Nevil had not just driven straight there. Unless, of course, he did not want to be seen. It was fairly obvious that Jo did not want to be recognised, but then who would, with Nevil in tow?

I turned Armstrong round on his axis and backtracked until I found Lee Metford Road. The house I was after was on the south side, that much I knew, but it seemed a pretty standard sort of street with terraced houses down both sides, distinguished only by the colours of the front doors where the residents had actually bothered to renew the paintwork. There were a few cars parked, but none with anyone in it as far as I could see.

Still, I didn't risk a second run, and instead I turned left at the end and found myself back on Plumstead Road. I pointed Armstrong westwards, but pulled over near a post office and a couple of shops to have a think.

Two minutes later, I was sure nobody had ever mentioned Woolwich in connection with Jo. She hadn't, Stubbly hadn't and neither had that laid-back copper Malpass. Maybe Nevil lived here, but if he did, why didn't he use the front door?

All I could think of was that I knew that a Lee
Metford was the forerunner of the Lee Enfield .303 rifle and almost became standard issue to the British army before WW1. This close to Woolwich Arsenal, it was logical that they should name a street after it.

You see, I know stuff like that. That's why I always win at Trivial Pursuit.

Sometimes I worry me.

 

 

 

 

 

The answer was staring me in the face. She was a very tasty young mum pushing a baby in a buggy into the post office I was parked in front of, on her way to claim her family allowance, no doubt. The baby was just old enough to have allowed Mum to get her figure back, and Mum's tight wool skirt made sure everybody knew she had. She smiled in answer to my naturally inquisitive stare. Maybe Woolwich wasn't such a bad place after all.

But I had no time for that sort of dalliance. I waited until she'd swung her hips down the road before I went in. Despite what I fancied, it was the post office I needed.

A jovial Indian lady struggling to stay inside her sari helped me find the Electoral Register covering Lee Metford Road and I ran a finger down the names to see if any rang a bell. You can find most people that way unless, like me, they don't register to vote. Ah, isn't democracy wonderful?

‘Can I help you at all, chuck?' asked the Indian lady in a nasal Birmingham twang.

‘Er ... no thanks, love. I'm just looking for some old family …'

Scamp.

Ada Edna Scamp. 23 Lee Metford Road.

‘This is up to date, isn't it?'

The postmistress waddled over to my shoulder.

‘Oh aye, chuck, at least I think so. There's no much call for it round here, though.' She fumbled a
pair of glasses from the folds of her sari and looked down the register. ‘Oi think that's up to date, as far as oi can see, that is, chuck.'

She glanced down the list to where my finger was. ‘‘Ere, you're not looking for Mrs Scamp, are you?'

‘The name seems familiar. Do you know her?'

She put her hands to her cheeks and rocked her head from side to side.

‘That Mrs Scamp is an old witch, I tell you. I come here three weeks ago to look after this place for my brother Rajiv while he does his business accountancy course. Three weeks only, and already I know that Mrs Scamp. In she comes for her pension, takes it without a by-your-leave, then calls me a bloody wog and tells me to go home to where I come from.'

‘And what did you say to that?' I asked, smiling sweetly.

‘I asked her if she knew how bloody much the train fare to Wolverhampton was.'

 

In Armstrong's boot, along with the sleeping-bag and other occasional essentials, I keep what I call my cabby's disguise. It's fairly simple: a fawn flat cap and an old, red-and-black pullover with a hole at the elbow of the right sleeve. (That's where a real musher always rests his arm on the cab window-frame during traffic jams.) For winter camouflage, I have an additional item; a sleeveless, quilted shooting jacket that slips on rather like a bullet-proof vest. I like to blend in when I can.

I checked the backstreets to see if the Sierra was still there. It wasn't, so I did another U-turn and cut back into Lee Metford Road.

No 23 had a front garden the size of a Kleenex, which was either badly looked after or was one of the new butterfly sanctuaries Greenpeace were trying to establish. The door was a scuffed and peeling blue, which had probably been painted at least once since the house was built, maybe to celebrate the toilet coming indoors. It had a tarnished brass knocker showing a pixie cobbling shoes and declaring itself to be a present from Cornwall.

I fingered Jo's credit cards, which I'd slipped into a trouser pocket. It was a flimsy pretext and might not get me anywhere, but it was the best I could do at such short notice.

I took a deep breath, pulled the cabby cap down over my eyes and knocked seven bells out of the Cornish pixie.

‘Yes? I ain't buying anyfink.'

I'd half-expected the door to be on a chain or to be asked to push some ID through the letter-box before she opened up. You know, the stuff pensioners are supposed to do. This one just flung the door open, and she'd either been standing behind it when I knocked or, more likely, she'd seen me coming. I knew several wrinklies who took hours to find their glasses when it came to signing a cheque but who could see a net curtain twitch three streets away.

‘Mrs Scamp? You ought to be careful opening this door to strangers,' I beamed, though I don't know why I was worried. The last time I saw a face like that was in
Macbeth
,
and she had sisters.

‘I am careful, sunshine,' she said without smiling, then opened the door wider. Behind her in the hallway was a grey Rottweiler no bigger than a pony and no fiercer than a cobra with a hangover.

‘Go on,' said Mrs Scamp. ‘Make his day.'

I took a step back. With lodgers like Fang there, who needs Neighbourhood Watch?

‘Hey, no problem, Mrs Scamp, I'm not selling.'

‘You buying? You totting?'

‘No.' Did I look like a rag-and-bone man? I was supposed to look like a London cabby. Maybe she had a point. ‘‘Ere on a mission of mercy, lady. Returning lost property.'

She relaxed fractionally. The dog didn't move, but I kept an eye on it, though she herself was formidable enough. Though she was no more than five feet tall in her carpet slippers, you just knew it would be best not to cross her. She was the sort of Granny who ate bayonets.

‘I ain't lost nuffink. You a rozzer?'

Rozzer? Did people in ‘Sarf London' still use words like that? Where was Henry Higgins when you needed him?

‘Do I look like Old Bill, lady?' I put on the Cockney something rotten. I'd be doing rhyming slang if I didn't watch out. I pulled Jo's drastic plastic out. ‘I've found these.'

‘What are they?' she asked, screwing up her eyes and reaching into the pocket of her flowery pinafore. ‘My specs are inside.'

‘They're credit cards …' I started, as planned.

‘I can see that,' she snapped. ‘I'm not ready for the knacker's just yet.'

‘Sorry, Mrs Scamp, but I found ‘em on the floor in the back of the cab.' I turned one round. ‘There you are, Mrs J Scamp.'

‘That ain't me. I'm not Jay anything, I'm Ay-Eee.' She paused, and I could hear her brain cells creaking into action as she reached out a hand covered in enough costume jewellery to make a decent knuckle-duster. ‘You'd better come in. There's no point letting the whole street know our business. Stay there, Nigger.'

I don't know about short-sighted, but the old crone was colour blind. The dog was grey. I knew that, as I had no intention of taking my eyes off it.

‘In here,' she said, leaving me to shut the front door, then follow her into the front room.

The dog curled a lip at me but made no sound, then took up position in the front room doorway.

‘Nigger won't touch you,' said Mrs Scamp cheerily, ‘unless you make a move towards me – sudden, like. I call him that so I can shout down the street after him and those bastards in the race relations office can't touch me for it.' She treated herself to a short cackle. ‘I enjoy that.'

Thank God we don't have proportional representation in this country. She'd get elected.

The front room was full of everything front rooms were full of when they had the sale after the Festival of Britain. There was a fireplace, now housing an electric fake-log affair, with a mantelpiece. On it were a variety of jugs and china vases from the same school of design as the pixie doorknocker. Behind one souvenir from a day trip to Brighton was a crumpled 100-franc note. There was nothing wrong with my eyesight.

There was also a pair of blue-rimmed glasses that Dame Edna Everage wouldn't have looked amiss in. Mrs Scamp levered them onto her face and I handed her the Access card.

‘No, this isn't Jack's ...' she said to herself.

‘I'm sorry, missus?' I played it thick.

‘It's definitely Mrs Scamp, but it ain't me. Anway, I've not been in a black cab in years. Them minicab jobs is miles cheaper than your lot. And they come when you call ‘em.'

I tried to look suitably aggrieved.

‘It must be ‘ers,' she said suddenly.

‘You said “Jack”,' I offered helpfully. ‘Could that be Jacqueline?'

‘Nah.' The old lady dismissed my pathetic attempts at logic. ‘Jack's my son. These'll be ‘is missus, silly cow. Left ‘em in the back of a cab, did she? Was she with another bloke, eh?'

‘I'm sorry, lady, I don't know what you're getting at,' I said, without a word of a lie.

‘Jack's wife,' she said with emphasis. ‘I told him she was trouser-happy as soon as I saw her, but he wouldn't listen. Infatuated with her, he was; had to have her. She'd be out running up the bills, I suppose.'

‘Who … er …?'

The old woman dropped the Access card into her pinafore pocket and picked up a framed photograph from a small table near the window. She held it out for me to see.

‘That's her, ain't it?'

Through a fine layer of dust and a couple of smudged fingerprints, it was easy to pick out Jo, despite her hair being much longer and the unflattering white trouser suit. The guy with her I'd never seen before. He was shortish and wiry and had a straight, thin moustache, and I guessed he was anywhere between 40 and 45. If you couldn't see that they were outside a Registry Office, you might have thought it was a man out shopping with his daughter.

‘Yeah, that's the lady,' I said.

‘And she with another feller, eh? When she was in the cab?'

I thought quickly. ‘She was with a bloke, but not this one ...'

‘Well, it wouldn't be Jack,' she said quickly, then stopped herself.

‘A much bigger bloke,' I went on. ‘Really broad shoulders. Huge guy.'

She cracked her face for a while. Once seen, even the briefest description of Nevil seems to suffice, and she recognised it – and relaxed.

‘Well, give me the other one,' she said, holding out the handful of rings again. ‘I'll see she gets them.'

I made a show of hesitating. ‘Well, I really ought to give them to her personally, or send them back to the bank. That's what we're supposed to do.'

‘So you can tap her up for a few quid petrol money, eh? Is that the game?'

She made a sudden move towards me and, from the doorway, Nigger started to growl softly. I came round to her way of thinking and handed over the Visa card.

‘Didn't consider that for a minute, lady,' I said, playing the part. ‘But come to think of it, I have gone out of my ...'

She wasn't listening.

‘Or maybe you fancied your chances with her, eh?' She was getting shrill and moving closer. I had a feeling that so was Nigger. ‘Fancied my Jack's wife, did yer?'

Then she put her hands on her hips and threw back her head. It took me a couple of seconds to realise she was laughing. I hoped Nigger had a sense of humour too.

‘Well, you'd be lucky, my lad! She's too stuck up to look for it in the back of a cab just yet, but it'll come to it one day when she gets a few more years on her; even the milkman won't be safe, and she'll be grateful. I warned our Jack, I did. Did he listen? Hah!'

It was a profound philosopher (or maybe
The Hitch-Hiker's Guide to the Galaxy
)
who said bad things always happen on Thursdays. Here was the empirical proof: trapped in Woolwich with a geriatric nutter and the Hound of the Baskervilles.

‘Look, lady, I've done my bit and I'll be off now.' I edged towards the door.

‘You wait till I tell him she's been spending up West. It was up West, wasn't it?'

She moved after me. From the corner of my eye I saw Nigger retreat a couple of paw lengths, perhaps to get a better run at me.

‘Well, it might have been. I can't honestly …'

‘Spending like there was no tomorrow, I'll bet. Was it clothes? Did she have clothes with her?'

‘I think it was more like Sainsbury's, actually …' Christ, what a daft thing to say.

‘She always ‘ad more clothes than she could wear. Four or five outfits a day, the spoilt bitch. I told ‘im he spoiled her and no good would come of it …'

There was other stuff in similar vein, but by this time I had my hand on the Yale latch and was opening the door.

‘Fine … Well, cheerio, missus.'

It was then that Nigger decided to get in on the act, and launched himself the length of the hallway.

I was out of the house faster than a rat up a drainpipe, and I'd slammed the door shut before Nigger banged into the back of it. He was so miffed at missing me that he head-banged the door a couple of times, making the pixie doorknocker rattle on its hinge.

That dog had problems, but living there, I could see why.

I didn't hang about getting to Armstrong and getting him started and headed back to Plumstead Road.

Thank God tomorrow was Friday, it couldn't be worse.