Angel Confidential by Mike Ripley Page A

a stick into an icy pond, and of course you never really mind if the damned dog doesn’t go. It was only a stick, anyway.
    â€˜So what are you gonna do now?’
    â€˜Find a place to wait and watch the door. When she comes out, I’ll follow her and find out where she lives.’
    â€˜There must be easier ways of earning a living.’
    â€˜Oh, I’m sure you could get her address out of her given five minutes in the back of this cab.’
    â€˜Now that’s sexist.’ I was pretty sure it was.
    Suddenly, her tone changed.
    â€˜What about my case?’ I wondered when she’d think of that, even though it had been banging against her knees all through the journey. ‘I can’t do surveillance carrying that. I’d look like a door-to-door brush salesman.’
    Maybe they still had them where she came from. I didn’t have the heart to tell her she was more likely to be picked up as a cocaine mule on this patch; and I don’t mean by the police.
    â€˜Now look,’ I said, just knowing I was going to regret this. ‘I’ve got a few errands to run this morning, but I’m quite happy to pop round to Shepherd’s Bush when Dod is there, if only to make sure he fixes the door for you. I can dump your case there.’
    â€˜What about keys? How do I get in?’
    She had a point.
    â€˜Is there anywhere Dod can leave them?’
    â€˜Not really. The only person I know in the neighbourhood is Mr Block and he’s …’
    In the hospital where that nice Irish receptionist works.
    â€˜What say I drop your new keys round there? You’ll be visiting him tonight anyway, won’t you?’
    â€˜That’s really, really kind of you, if it’s not too much trouble.’
    â€˜It’s not too far out of my way,’ I said generously.
    She stuck her hand through the open partition. It took me a moment to realise she wanted me to shake it.
    â€˜You’ve been really, really kind, and I’ll tell Lisabeth that when I ring her.’ She must have felt me stiffen. ‘She gave me the number.’
    I hadn’t.
    â€˜Well, good luck.’
    â€˜Thank you.’
    â€˜You’ve got your tube ticket?’ She nodded. ‘It works on buses too, but if you’re on the underground, just remember to sit near the doors. Normally they open for ten seconds in a station, but with some main line interchanges it’s 15 seconds.’
    â€˜I’ll try and remember that. You know,’ she paused, the door half open, ‘I think you’d quite fancy my job. You’d be good at it. You know so much really useful stuff .’
    Yeah. And you really ought to get out more.
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    And that, genuinely, is how I would have left it, driving off into the sunset (well, early-morning Soho) and never seeing her again. If it hadn’t been for what happened later that day.
    I blame easy living, looking back. I had acquired a building society account earlier that year. It wasn’t mine, but my teeth had got smashed up acquiring it, so I felt I had a strong claim on it. No-one else did. No-one living, that was. So I didn’t really need a job just at the moment. I did the rounds of the clubs and the music agencies and one or two tour agents, like Turkish Dan, to see if there was any session stuff or even the odd driving job going, but my heart wasn’t in it. Turkish Dan did have a tour planned for some northern universities with a grunge band going unplugged for the first time, but I turned down the opening for a vehicle tech. (There are no ‘roadies’ any more, just ‘techs’ – vehicle tech, sound tech, light tech, etc.) It was partly because I’d heard the band plugged and didn’t rate them. Unplugged, their mistakes would be more obvious. Anyway, the tour started in Salford and, though I’d never been there, travel doesn’t broaden the mind that much.
    Consequently, I had nothing to do by