Angel City (20 page)

I was in the bathroom, easing off my face mask and, in the cupboard mirror, checking all the places I'd missed while trying to shave over the last few days.

I grunted something to her and opened the cupboard door to find a plastic jar that rattled with pills and had a handwritten label saying ‘Arnica'. There was a leaflet with the jar printed by a company called Pain Relief From Plants Ltd, which told me all about the healing properties of arnica, a natural plant extract. I touched my cheek and jaw and felt like ordering a fieldful. The leaflet said it was ideal for the reduction of bruising and had no harmful side effects or hallucinogenic qualities. What a waste of time.

‘Soup's on,' yelled Fenella, ‘and I've put some more stuff down for Springsteen.'

‘Meat,' I mumbled, ‘it's called meat.'

‘No, I can't stop to eat. Anyway, there's only enough for one. Mr Goodson is doing three-point turns with me tonight, so I've got to get ready. See you.'

Now if ever anything needed a smart-mouth answer, that did, but although I thought it, my mouth let me down. It also almost refused to accept the three bean and chive soup she had left for me, but somehow I slurped some down, knowing I would need all my strength to do the really difficult things I had to do, like use the phone.

As it turned out, it was a brief call.

‘H B Builders. Please leave a message after the tone.'

 

I probably shouldn't have driven after all the painkillers I had chewed that afternoon, but there are lots of things I probably shouldn't do. (Rule of Life No. 11: A ‘probably shouldn't' has approximately half the risk factor of a ‘Why did I?' and 30 per cent of that of a ‘Why the hell not?')

It didn't take me long to get over to Stratford Marsh, despite the rush hour traffic, though there was one sticky moment when two young lads in a Thames van advertising their window-cleaning business pulled up alongside Armstrong at some lights. Even above the sound of Armstrong's diesel and their idling engine and the Bryan Ferry tape played at full whack, I could lip-read one saying to the other that I looked just like the Phantom of the Opera. Two hundred and three.

I turned into the Navigation Road Industrial Estate and did a drive-by of H B Builders to scout the lie of the land. The gates were closed and there was no sign of life. Not unusual. It was a little after 6.00 pm and few builders' yards stayed open that late. What was unusual was that a big CLOSED sign had been hung on the padlock and chain that bound the gates together.

I turned Armstrong round and did a run back, slowing down to scope the place properly. Nothing. No sign of life, no lights, no vehicles.

The only place open at all in the area seemed to be a greasy spoon (greasy fork, greasy knife) café round the corner. That had a sign in the window saying ‘Breakfasts All Day'. It sounded like a threat.

I parked Armstrong and, after checking in the mirror, decided to remove my cheek mask. People might gasp at the multi-coloured bruise, though it was fading, but at least that might get me some sympathy instead of Lon Chaney jokes.

The café was just called ‘Café', which was just as well, as even that probably contravened the Trade Descriptions Act. It was certainly the freshest thing about the place. The tables only matched in the sense that they were all made of wood and plastic to some degree or other. They all had salt cellars and sugar bowls and ketchup but no two containers or brands matched. Even the menu chalked on a wall-mounted blackboard had been written in a variety of coloured chalks, although obviously by the same person as the spelling was consistently bad. Actually, thinking about the overall chaotic effect, if they could have moved the place up to the West End, or maybe Chelsea Harbour, and served something other than chips, then they could have tripled their prices and made a fortune.

The tall, lanky youth behind the counter glared at me from under the shank of black hair he had trained to fall over his right eye. He wiped the counter with a dirty grey cloth as I drew near. The body language was clear. Don't try asking for a full breakfast at this time of night. Mate.

‘Just a coffee, please,' I said, and the words came out roughly right, at least he seemed to understand me. Maybe people talked like that around here.

‘Cappuccino, espresso or ordinary?' he asked, spoiling me for choice.

‘The frothy one,' I said, not convinced I could manage ‘cappuccino', and anyway, it was the least suspicious one to have to drink with a spoon.

It was surprisingly good cappuccino and seemed to be a popular item judging by the rings of foam that had dried on the outside of the cup. The lad behind the counter watched me through his curtain of hair, waiting for a complaint. There was no-one else in the place to complain, so I felt sorry to have to disappoint him.

I was wondering how to engage him in conversation short of picking a fight with him, when I spotted the notice board next to the blackboard menu. It was just a pin board with numerous visiting cards drawing-pinned there offering a variety of services, though not those you find advertised in telephone boxes. There were minicabs and 24-hour plumbers, as you might have expected. There were also a couple of surprising ones, like ‘Shiatsu Massage in Your Home' (I hear in the street, it's still an offence) and an advert for the Convention on Cryptozoology (Barking Branch) offering lectures on ‘Unknown Hominids'. The New Age had even reached Stratford. Was nowhere safe?

I stood up and pointed to the one printed on pink card that advertised H B Builders.

‘Is that the firm just down the road?' I tried, and the youth understood me perfectly.

‘Well it was, mate, until they turned up their toes this week,' he said chattily. ‘Last Friday, they was there working full belt. First thing Monday morning, shop shut, gone away, staff all get given the DCM medal.'

The DCM – Don't Come Monday – redundancy.

‘That was a bit sudden, wasn't it? I was round there last week asking for a price on a job.'

‘Too bloody right it was. Dead previous as me mum would say. ‘Course, it's hit our trade as well. This place used to be a gold mine.'

If he meant by that dirty and ill-lit, you had to agree with him.

‘So, what's the score? Somebody do a runner?'

‘Looks like the boss did.' Then, over his shoulder he yelled, ‘Doesn't it, Kelly?'

The swing door behind him opened and the girl I'd last seen in Bassotti's office stood there, drying her hands on a grease-streaked apron. The Doc Martens' were the same, but the punk make-up had gone, replaced by a harassed, washed-out look that would never catch on.

‘Doesn't it what?' she asked, giving me the eye. I could see recognition dawning slowly.

‘Your old boss, Bertie. Looks like he's done a runner, eh?'

‘Well, I was ready to give him the benefit of the doubt, yer know,' Kelly started generously.

‘Until Tuesday,' said the youth.

‘Well, yer know, it's just that, like, he hasn't even tried to get in touch. I mean, yer know, we all turn up for work on Monday, well some of us do, yer know, and it's like a ghost town. All locked up – padlock on the gate even. No sign of Bert – Mr Bassotti –
and
he owes me two days' overtime.'

‘Well, you can kiss that,' said the youth, though nobody had asked him.

‘Nobody asked you, Clint,' said Kelly, reading my mind.

Then she conceded: ‘But he's probably right, yer know.'

‘And no sign of Mr Bassotti since?' I asked, trying to get the most out of them before they wondered why I was asking in the first place.

‘Not a sniff. I hung around for hours on Monday but I couldn't even get in the office. A couple of the casuals turned up but didn't hang around long. So, yer know, I came round here to see Clint and use the phone.'

‘And walked straight into another job,' smirked Clint. ‘Not bad, eh, these days?'

‘Job?' snorted Kelly. ‘Bleedin' slave labour's more like it. But beggars can't be choosers, and Bassotti doesn't look like he'll be making up the wages this week.'

‘Did you ring him at home?' I tried, riding my luck.

‘‘Course I did, but there was no bleedin' answer, was there? Haven't got through all week.'

‘That's his house in – Dagenham, isn't it?' I guessed.

‘Naw, he lives in Romford, always has.' She looked at me curiously, trying to work out if she'd been conned in some way or other. (Rule of Life No. 83: Approached in the right way, anyone will tell you anything, and it will usually be true.)

‘But he's not answering the phone, eh?' I asked, filing away the idea that there couldn't be that many Bassottis with first initial ‘U' in the Romford phone book. (And if he'd been ex-directory, let's face it, he wouldn't have given his number to motormouth Kelly.)

‘Is there an echo in here?' she said sarcastically. ‘I said I've tried every day, didn't I? So anyway, yesterday I blew him out and left an earbashing on his answerphone at work.'

‘And a right earbash it was too, I can tell you,' Clint added. ‘Some serious GBH of the lugholes there, mate.'

‘He loves that answerphone,' Kelly smiled. ‘I used to call it his Godbox.'

‘I have to ask,' I said, trying to smile, but in my state it must have come out like a leer. ‘Why Godbox?'

‘‘Cos he got his orders from above on it. Every time there was a message, he'd kick me out so he could listen to it in private. Maybe he had a bit on the side, I don't know, but listening to his messages was one of the highlights of his day.'

‘He probably had some tart make obscene calls so he could pull his own chain,' Clint volunteered. ‘You know, cream his own jeans.'

‘Don't be gross,' Kelly admonished, smirking as she did so.

‘What sort of an answerphone was it?' I tried innocently, but my credit limit had just been reached.

‘How should I know? It was a black one, with long-play tapes. He bought it from Abdul's Electrics round the corner. Said it was the only thing he'd ever bought there that worked.'

‘How come you're so interested anyway?' Clint said in his most macho voice. Even in my wrecked and weakened state, I wasn't too worried about him. Kelly, on the other hand, scared the hell out of me.

‘Yeah,' she said, wising up, ‘how come you're so interested in Bert?'

‘You saw me there last week,' I said as if that explained everything.

‘Well, yeah …'

‘You were wearing those red hot pants and you can't expect me to have forgotten those.'

‘Yeah, that's right.' She blushed. She actually blushed. Clint glared at her.

‘And if it's any consolation, you're not the only one the bugger owes wages to.'

‘Well, if you find him first, don't forget me will you?' she said coyly, or what for her passed for coy.

‘How could I?' I said honestly.

 

I had assumed that ‘Abdul's Electrics' was local lazy slang to cover any East End trader not obviously white or called Harry, in much the same way that people refer to late-opening shops as ‘Patels' these days. The Patels ought to get organised and register a trade name.

As it turned out, the shop down the road was actually called Abdul's Electrics, but was in fact run by a depressive Scot who wore a badge saying ‘You can call me Jock' and who had bought the business from Abdul the year before. I knew all this because he had a handwritten sign stuck to the cash register explaining it all. I guessed instantly that here was a man who could turn ugly if he heard one more Abdul reference.

Yes, he did do a black answerphone, just the one, and his tone suggested that he didn't believe for a minute I was the market for it. Still, he went through the motions, looking at his watch to let me know I was keeping him. But then again, where does it say you have to be civil?

Naturally the one I wanted was right at the back of the top shelf. That produced a few under-the-breath curses, and while he was reaching for it, I checked my profile in the video monitor he had set up as a demo model. The bruising on my cheek was still vivid but no longer glowing in the dark. I looked up to see Jock watching me watching myself on the monitor, so I smiled at him. It did look like a leer. I must watch that.

The answerphone was a Telecom model with push buttons, a limited memory and remote function for dialling, all the standard jazz. I lifted it out of its box and tried to look interested.

Underneath the machine itself, nestling in the styrofoam packaging, was the instruction book and all the other bits and pieces they give you: the guarantee card, little bits of sticky paper to write your number on, screws and rawl plugs for mounting the thing on the wall. There was also the one thing I wanted, and when I said to Jock that I'd like to see a white one before I completed my market research, he turned with a sigh to reach for another box, and I palmed it. I wasn't even worried about the camcorder filming us; I was confident the palm went smoothly.