Angel Hunt by Mike Ripley Page B

have been here on Sunday on some sort of animal liberation commando raid?’
    â€˜If that’s what it was, they were too late. The animals were shipped out on Friday, but maybe they didn’t know that. And yes, I think your mate Billy was here … broke in here ... on Sunday. Didn’t you say he was keen on animal rights when he was a student with you?’
    â€˜No, I don’t think I did,’ I said, looking him in the eye. ‘And anyway, how did he get up on the roof?’
    â€˜I’ll show you; but first, look inside the huts.’
    â€˜Which one?’
    â€˜Any of them.’
    I opened the door of the nearest one, but gingerly in case there was a puma or something the RSPCA had forgotten. The interior stank of wet fur, and there was dirty, dried straw on the floor. It was ten seconds or so before I realised I was supposed to be looking at the inside of the wooden door. Someone had spray-painted, about a foot high, in bright red, ‘AAAA,’ so the letters overlapped.
    â€˜Aaaarg?’ I asked Prentice, but this time he didn’t smile.
    â€˜The four As. Sometimes they just put figure 4 and capital A. It stands for Action Against Animal Abuse.’
    â€˜So we are talking animal libbers.’
    â€˜Not your average flag-day collectors or the sort who give out leaflets on market day. These are the animal fundamentalists organised into hit squads. The SAS of the animal rights movement. Let’s get inside, the rain’s set in for the day.’
    Prentice kicked the iron block away so the fire door slammed behind us. He motioned towards the classroom door with the ‘Blue Tit Patrol’ sign.
    â€˜Look in here.’
    I went in first, and all I saw was a standard classroom with a blackboard down one wall, two lines of plain tables and some wooden chairs. A broken chair lay on its side in the far corner, its two front legs about a yard away.
    â€˜So?’ I shrugged.
    â€˜The caretaker swears blind that there were no broken chairs in here on Friday.’
    â€˜You’ve lost me,’ I said truthfully, parking my bum on the edge of a table.
    Prentice pulled out a chair and sat down.
    â€˜I think your friend Billy and his fellow commandos were a bit peeved to find themselves here after the horse had bolted, so to speak.’
    â€˜Or the donkey,’ I added helpfully. He ignored me.
    â€˜I think there’s a good chance that Billy was brought in here and asked a few nasty questions by his fellow liberationists, and maybe there was a fight.’ He stood up and picked up his chair in a sweeping movement.
    â€˜I think Billy might just have been desperate enough to smash that chair over somebody’s head so he could make a run for it.’
    â€˜Hang on a minute. Just rewind that, would you. Why should Billy’s Action Man friends take it out on him – unless they thought he’d set them up?’ I was getting a bad feeling deep down about what I was saying. ‘Unless they thought he was a plant or a snitch?’
    â€˜You’ve been watching too much Hill Street Blues ,’ he said. ‘We still call them grasses over here. And yes, Billy was contemplating becoming my grass.’
    â€˜You make it sound like a mid-life career move. Does it come with a personal pension plan?’
    â€˜Billy was into some serious shit with these loonies. It sounds trivial – what’s a bit of spray-painting? Who would notice? But believe me, whatever they had really intended to do here was just the opening shot in their Christmas campaign nationally.’
    â€˜And they aim to be in Paris by spring?’ I did my ‘Let’s invade Poland’ impersonation, which isn’t very funny at the best of times. It didn’t impress Prentice one bit.
    â€˜Don’t underestimate these people,’ he said seriously.
    â€˜Why should I?’ I asked, meaning: what business is it of mine?
    He didn’t answer,