Angel City (15 page)

Bassotti's was dead boring. Just: ‘H B Builders. Please leave a message for us after the tone,' as if he had read it off the instruction card. He probably had. From what I had seen, he wouldn't have trusted his secretary Kelly to record the message. A pity that; I think she might have enjoyed the challenge.

I took a breath, as you do, and launched into my whining excuses, never having been one to admit to giving up a grand gracefully.

‘Mr Bassotti, it's Angel here. You asked me to try and find Tigger for you. Well, no luck so far, but I won't give up if you won't. I've found a friend of his and he says he's away for the weekend. Gone monstering, would you believe, which I reckon is some sort of rave party. If you like, I'll …' I paused to have a minor heart attack as I heard somebody cough politely just behind my right ear.

It was Mr Goodson from the downstairs flat wearing a woollen dressing gown, pyjamas and slippers. No wonder I hadn't heard him coming. He mouthed something to me.

‘What?' I said, then realised I was still talking into the phone.

‘Can I get my milk?' he said softly.

I saw that I was leaning up against the front door and all he wanted was to get his milk in off the step. So the milkman delivered that early. You live and learn.

I moved aside, whispered ‘Sorry' and said it again into the phone.

‘Sorry about that. Like I said, Tigger's gone off to this monster party out of town but I'll keep looking if your offer's still open. I'll catch you later.'

I hung up and reluctantly made an entry in the honesty book as Mr Goodson was still at my side. Who would have expected him to catch me using the phone even at this time in the morning, let alone on a Friday? He was never seen about the house on Fridays – or any part of the weekend come to think of it.

‘Local call,' I said weakly, smiling at him. He rarely looked you in the eye, and he wasn't about to start, but it seemed as if he had something he wanted to say.

‘I couldn't help but overhear,' he said politely, shuffling his slippers, ‘and I certainly didn't mean to.'

I waved a hand in an all-purpose gesture that was meant to say ‘Think nothing of it' but was probably obscene in several countries.

‘It's just that …'

‘Yes?' I encouraged.

‘Well, you said somebody was monstering, and you seemed to think it meant going to a party.'

‘And it isn't?' I asked gently, as if I was in no hurry; and, as long as we had an ozone layer, I wasn't.

‘No. It's a game.'

‘A game? You mean a game show, like
Wheel of Fortune
or something?'

‘No, an interactive game.' He began to blush. ‘A roleplaying game, part physical, part philosophical.'

I looked at him. He went from pink to medium rare. I couldn't think of anything to say all of a sudden.

‘You know. Er ... er … fantasy scenarios.' A bizarre thought hit me across the frontal lobes, and it must have showed as Mr Goodson's colour deepened to crimson.

‘No, er ... not ... er ... It's more the seeking of a quest acted out in a fantasy dimension. The characters require adversaries – monsters.'

‘Oh, you mean like Dungeons and Dragons?'

‘We prefer to call them Adventures in the Nether World.'

‘You play?'

‘I'm a Grand Vizier. First Class. Level Four,' he said proudly.

Impressed? I was gobsmacked.

 

 

 

I was late checking in with Dispatch but I doubted it would damage our working relationship further.

Breakfast with Mr Goodson had been an eye-opener in more ways than one. Not only the juicy details of being a Grand Vizier in the Nether World, but also the chance to have a good snoop around his flat. The fact that people could live without microwaves, VCRs, CDs and still use toast racks and marmalade spoons, was difficult to take in at first, but it's still a free world, more or less, and I could make allowances. The Nether World stuff was a piece of cake to take on board after that. Let's face it, even a Mr Goodson has a Dark Side.

Dispatch kept me busy with fiddling little jobs in Soho most of the morning. Two at least could have been done by bikes, avoiding the traffic the way they drive, as they were small parcel deliveries. But it was payday and I had been late, so somebody had to suffer and it might as well be me.

I signed myself off for a coffee break just after 11.00 am and, out of habit, parked on Porter Street. I decided it was a habit I really ought to kick when I saw the Beast there, side-saddle on his bike, chewing on a styrofoam cup.

‘Popular dude,' he said for openers. At least I think that's what he said, as he still had the coffee carton in his face. When he took it away I could see there were teeth marks around the rim. As in so many other ways, the Beast wasn't equipped with a full set.

‘So, what's happening?'

‘You are in deeee-mand,' he drawled.

‘Dispatch?' I asked, knowing it wasn't as I had only just turned off their tinny radio.

‘Personal services,' pronounced the Beast, like he'd heard it somewhere else. ‘Your customers come to the door these days.'

‘Who?'

‘Some fat old spick in a red Alfa.'

I felt oddly comforted that our position in any future fraternal United States of Europe seemed assured as long as people like the Beast were about.

‘I told him you'd be along. He's waiting round in Old McDonald's for you. Looks the worried type. Sort that has daughters who might well have been boffing. How is your sex life these days, Angel?'

‘Like my credit rating: short, uninteresting and not worth paying to have checked out.'

I made sure it was Bassotti by walking by the window twice before going in. He was sitting on a stool balancing an elbow on a ledge just wide enough to double park hamburger cartons. I bought a large black coffee and joined him.

‘I got your message,' he said. ‘Thought I'd better double check.'

‘Double check what?' I realised he was nervous but I could not work out why. It wasn't as if I'd demanded money or anything; well, not recently.

‘What you said. You said you reckoned you knew where Tigger was at the weekend.'

‘And you came up West on the strength of that?'

He shrugged it off. ‘I had business round here. Anyway, like I said, it's worth a few quid and a bit of effort to find that little bleeder. So what you got?'

I saw no harm in telling him.

‘There's a chance Tigger's into RLRP – Real Life Role Playing. That's where people dress up and play
Lord of the Rings
and stuff like that.'

I could see I wasn't getting through.

‘Look,' I tried, ‘just say it's like a weekend retreat where grown men – and women for all I know – run around in some caves playing cowboys and indians, except it's wizards and warlocks and warriors and probably other things beginning with “w”, and there's also monsters. And they go on quests and expeditions and the third prize is the Holy Grail or whatever. I'm just telling you what I've been told.'

‘And Tigger goes on these things, does he?'

‘I think he might work there. They're always looking for people to play the monsters. The paying punters want to be heroes, don't they, struggling against the forces of evil. Nobody wants to have to be the forces of evil, ‘specially not if they've paid good money to get there.'

‘He works there ... ?'

‘It's a possibility. A friend of his just said he “went monstering” at weekends. These role playing games require monsters – well, somebody to play monsters – and a guy I know assures me that there's only one place open Friday, Saturday and Sunday and that's down in Surrey. Which would tie in with what Tigger's friend told me, that he was doing it south of here. I'd assumed south of the river, but maybe he meant south of London.'

‘What sort of a place are we talking about here?' Bassotti still wasn't sure this was kosher.

‘A place called Nether World, and it's run from some caves in a place called Badger's Bottom. I was saving that till last, just in case you didn't believe the other stuff. It does exist, really. It's off the M25, not far from Biggin Hill. You know, the old wartime airfield.'

Even I thought this was beginning to sound like a con. Bassotti wasn't old enough to remember the war either. And if he had been, which side would he have been on?

‘So we're talking running around in fields here, are we?' he tried, his mind wandering as much as mine was starting to.

‘No, it's all done underground. There's some caves, natural ones. You know, holes in the side of a big bit of ground. During the war they were enlarged to be used as air raid shelters and places for stashing files and things. They go on for miles they say. You could get a coupla hundred people in there ... if you stack ‘em right,' I ended lamely.

Bassotti rubbed his chin thoughtfully. Then he glanced around before putting his hand in his pocket and producing a roll of notes. If he had wanted to look any more suspicious I suppose he could have taken his trousers down and balanced a hand grenade on his dick, but it would have been close.

‘Go down there and have a look around, will you? You're the expert, you'll find him. Tell him to come and see me, okay?'

He began to rub the wad of notes with his thumb, like a magician gearing up for a card trick. I was happy to be hypnotised.

‘I'm only guessing he's there,' I said coyly, trying to work out if the notes were twenties or not. Before they changed the colour strip, it was difficult to tell under fluorescent light from even a foot away. ‘It could be a wasted trip.'

‘I'm a builder, I pay people to waste time,' he said, but he wasn't joking. ‘And, anyway, you know where it is.'

That wasn't strictly true, though I could easily find out.

But if I gave him a road map and a set of directions, he wouldn't need me and there would be no ‘finder's fee'.

‘Look, if you're willing to pay for my time and my gas, I'll pop down there tomorrow and mingle.'

He shook his head.

‘Not tomorrow, today. This afternoon.'

‘Ah, slight problemette there. You see I have this problem called work. Like I'm at it, now, and if you don't show, they get really unreasonable and don't pay you.'

‘They'd pay you if you were on a job?'

‘Sure.'

‘Then I'll ring them and book you to take me to ... where's good?'

‘Brighton? That's usually good for an afternoon job; and I bet that's been said more than once before now.'

He didn't get it or he wasn't listening.

‘Okay, we'll say you have to come out to the office, pick somebody up and take them to Brighton. By the time you get back, that's your afternoon accounted for, right?'

‘If you're picking up the bill, yeah. This finding Tigger is getting to be a big deal with you, isn't it?'

‘You don't know the half,' he said.

He rubbed the roll of notes some more and peeled a few off, but he wasn't so much counting them as using them to mop the sweat from his hands.

 

I found a phone box on Baker Street and rang the house. The only person who should have been home at that time was Mr Goodson, and it was.

‘Great, you haven't left yet.' Sometimes I think I should get prizes for stating the bleeding obvious.

‘I was about to. My train leaves at …'

‘How does the Grand Vizier fancy arriving in Nether World by taxi?'

 

Mr Goodson talked more on the ride down to Surrey than I had ever heard before, and he'd been living at Stuart Street when I moved in. Maybe he was conscious of going for some personal record himself, for he kept stopping and saying things like ‘Oh dear, I am going on, aren't I?' He was, but I didn't stop him. It was a useful briefing.

He had been visiting Nether World for four years or so as and when he could afford it. Normally this meant day-trips on Saturdays or Sundays but occasionally, like now, he flexed his flexi-time schedule at the local government office and took a Friday off so he could stay the weekend. (Local bed and breakfast. Mr and Mrs Lambert. Very reasonable. You get sausages with breakfast.)

You got a game card every time you played, he explained, and he was up to Level Four, first class, as the points had mounted up.

‘What do you get points for?'

‘Inflicting damage, damage limitation to your game role character and bonus ones for the amount of treasure or trophy returned from a quest.'

And I had to ask.

‘This damage business. Sounds a bit violent.'