The Angel Tapes (11 page)

“I wouldn't know, Elaine.” He didn't like where the talk was going.

“You may be great in the hay, Blade Macken,” she said with a grin, “but you don't seem much of a detective to me.” She squeezed his thigh again, higher up. “I'm only kidding. It's funny though.”

“It's a funny old world, yeah,” Blade said, for want of anything better.

Just then his cellular phone rang.

“
BLADE! DID I CATCH YOU AT A BAD TIME
?
YOU WEREN'T WASHING YOUR SMALLS OR ANYTHING LIKE THAT, WERE YOU
?”

He stiffened and put his hand over the mouthpiece.

“Ehh, it's business,” he told Elaine. “I'll have to take it outside.”

“Work away. Don't mind me.”

But Elaine de Rossa had minded Blade Macken, had caught his startled expression, and had wondered about the identity of a caller who could have that much effect on a man she'd regarded as being tough as nails.

She hadn't seen Blade's scars. It had been a hunch: men like Macken usually had scars. He'd told her that Thursday night that he'd been a soldier, and soldiers have scars. He hadn't told her much else, hadn't been able to. When she'd helped him into the cab she'd ordered to bring him home from the club on Leeson Street, he'd gone to sleep almost before she'd shut the door.

*   *   *

Same street, different nightclub. Blade had tried to make it clear to her in the pub that he'd planned on having an early night; the investigation took priority over carousing. Elaine hadn't listened. Now here they were again on Leeson Street, sharing overpriced wine at a wall table in the semidarkness of a club that could have been the one where they'd met. Only the brash, blue neon at street level had distinguished it from the others on “The Strip.”

She was irresistible, that was the trouble. She sat with her head against Blade's shoulder and a hand brushing his thigh with soft motions. Her perfume made him lightheaded.

An invisible disc jockey was playing the Carpenters, music Blade detested, but he hardly noticed it. He was mesmerized by a pattern of tiny, rainbow-colored squares of light that winked on and off in two pillars that flanked the dance floor. If there were other Sunday-night patrons, then Blade didn't see them in the darkened club. There was no indication, apart from the miniskirted waitress, that Elaine and he were not completely alone.

“You were great that night,” she said softly into his ear. “It's true what they say: older men are better.”

Oh God, not again. He couldn't keep up the pretense forever.

“Hmm. Look, I know hardly anything about you, Elaine.” He took a shot in the dark. “Tell me about the horses again.”

“My father's horses?”

Bull's-eye. “Yes, how many did you say he owns?”

“Oh, heaps. But he's never had a horse win the Derby and that kills him. It's not the prize money, Blade; it's the prestige he's after. But somebody else always pips him at the post. It drives him batty.”

Blade saw two figures huddled together in the shadows on the far side. There was the flare of a cigarette lighter. Not alone after all. Dead, rake-thin Karen Carpenter still dispensed the saccharin.

“Do you still ride yourself?” he asked.

She giggled. “Now what's
that
supposed to mean?” He felt her fingers undo two buttons of his shirt and slide inside. Her fingertips were cool against his chest. “But if you mean do I still hunt: yes, now and then. You can't beat that sensation of the wind in your hair and a big stallion between your legs.” He laughed; Elaine giggled again. “Now you have
me
at it.”

The waitress glided past and Blade ordered another bottle of wine, though he couldn't afford it. Twenty pounds! He'd have to economize on something else this week. Food, maybe. He was suddenly conscious of the luminous face of his watch glowing in the dark. He stole a surreptitious look at it.

Two
A.M
.

“Elaine, listen. I can't stay much longer. I've a busy day tomorrow. Today.”

“Criminals to catch.”

“Yeah.”

“What a pity, now. I'm as randy as hell tonight.” She poked her tongue into his ear and breathed. Elaine de Rossa was driving him crazy.

Blade allowed his hand to slide from her waist down to the curve of her hip. He felt no contour of underwear through the shiny, thin material of her dress. Jesus, when had she taken her panties off? She wriggled against him sensuously. Blade felt his blood pumping.

“Another time then,” she whispered in her Gauloise smoker's voice. “I'll ring you, darling. We can have an early meal somewhere, and then…”

They finished the second bottle of exorbitantly marked-up cooking wine without speaking, listening to Barry Manilow's greatest hits while the other couple shuffled as one entity around the dance floor.

Later, as they were stepping into the cab that would bring them to their respective apartments, a police car raced past, siren screaming. Blade was reminded of the work ahead of him.

It struck him now why the distorted voice he'd listened to outside the bar had disturbed him more than ever. An old drinker like himself should have known straight away: The bomber had been far from sober.

His quarry was even more dangerous and unpredictable than he'd intimated to Sweetman. Angel could lose control just as easily as the next man.

But the next man hadn't got his finger on the detonator.

Twelve

Blade woke in a sweat on Monday, the fourth day of Angel.

“Sweet mother of holy divine fuck,” he groaned. On a scale of one to ten, he'd have accorded this particular hangover a six: less severe than that of Friday, but blinding and distressing nonetheless.

His doorbell was ringing, a playback of that morning. But this time it wasn't Sweetman. Groggily, blearily, Blade tried to come to terms with the fact that his visitor was Lawrence Redfern, soberly dressed as before, bright of eye and sharp of wit.

“Jesus … you!” was all Blade could think to say.

“Might I come in? It's important.”

Redfern didn't even try to hide his disgust on seeing the condition of the apartment. He set his attaché case down carefully on a relatively clean portion of carpet.

“I've got a little something for you. Compliments of the agency.”

Redfern looked around, saw a copy of Saturday's
Irish Independent
on the sofa. He folded it open—and stopped what he was doing when his attention was drawn to the five large photographs that dominated the front page. They showed the shocking harvest of Angel's deadly work. One was of a smiling young woman wearing a lace bridal veil; it was probably the only shot of the deceased that the picture desk could find at short notice. Redfern bit his lip when he saw the chubby, round face of the youngest victim of the atrocity: Little two-year-old Hughie Power had died in his baby buggy.

Redfern had a daughter that age.

With brisk, angry movements he spread the newspaper on the sticky surface of the coffee table and placed his attaché case flat upon it.

The insult wasn't lost on Macken.

Redfern flipped open the case and took out a smart, leather pouch about seven inches long. It contained a matte black cellular phone.

“I already
have
a mobile,” Blade said sourly.

“Sure you have, but not like this baby.”

Redfern extended the antenna and punched in four numbers. He held the instrument to his ear, listened for a few moments, then said, “Thank you very much. Have a nice day.”

“Who was that?”

Redfern grinned. “A lady with a lovely voice.”

Then he pressed a button on the back of the phone and held it a little way from Blade's ear.

“At the signal, it will be seven, forty-two, and twenty seconds.”

An electronic blip sounded.

“Thank you very much. Have a nice day.”

“A memophone,” Blade said dismissively. “Big deal.”

“It's more than that,” Redfern said, retracting the antenna and shutting off the power. “This is different. Won't be on the market until the fall. This is
strictly
a limited edition.”

He flipped up a semitransparent cover on the back of the unit and extracted a tiny audiocassette.

“Digital audio technology. A thirty-minute tape. Anything you or your caller says is recorded in high quality, twenty-four-bit digital sound. Oh, and there's even a built-in fax, too, if you need it.” He replaced the little cassette and handed the phone to Blade.

Despite himself, Blade was impressed.

“I don't suppose it'll do my laundry though, will it?”

Redfern remained impassive. “We programmed it to the same number as your present unit. When Angel calls you, he's got no way of knowing that the switch has been made.”

He reached into his attaché case again.

“Here. There's a pack of twenty tapes in there. Best to carry a couple with you at all times. It's unlikely he'll stay on the line that long but we can't be certain.”

In spite of his dislike of Redfern, despite his reluctance to accept a “gift” from the CIA, Blade had to admire the ingenuity of the device. It was moreover a beautifully designed machine: its smooth, black contours fitted his hand to perfection.

“Is there a manual to go with it?”

Redfern shook his head with a thin smile.

“You shouldn't even be
handling
the goddamn thing. If the company who built it knew we'd loaned it to you, they'd hit the agency with a multimillion-dollar lawsuit.”

Blade scratched the stubble on his chin. Something had just occurred to him.

“Who gave you my number anyway?”

Redfern smiled then in such a cocksure way that it was all Macken could do to stop himself from punching him in the mouth.

“Your chief. Duffy. Do you have a problem with that?”

Jesus, he was going to give Duffy the roasting of his life. The man ought to have had more sense. Wasn't he the very one who'd warned Blade about American interference? And now this.

Redfern shut his attaché case and picked it up, his mission completed. He barely looked at Blade as he made for the hall. He opened the front door, then turned on the step.

“I think it's worth remembering, Macken,” he told Blade, “that we're on the same side. Seems to me you have a tendency to forget that.”

The supercilious bastard! Blade had had
enough.
It wasn't the hangover—that was clearing. It went far and away beyond that.

“I don't think I like you, Redfern,” he said slowly. “In fact, now that I think about it, I'm
positive
I don't like you. But it's nothing personal, you understand. It's your country's general attitude that pisses me off. You waltz in here and think it's fucking Grenada, and that you can lord it over us and throw your weight around to your heart's content.”

He prodded the American in the chest.

“Well you're wrong, pal. This isn't some little banana republic. We already had a great civilization here when your country was nothing but a wilderness with tribes of savages living in their own shite and scalping you if you so much as looked crooked at them.”

Redfern bristled. “I happen to be third-generation English.”

“That's exactly what I mean,” Blade said, and shut the door in the American's face.

Thirteen

Orla Sweetman was looking morose when Macken got to Harcourt Square. She leafed listlessly through a morning tabloid, taking nothing in—not even the front-page story that read:
GARDA COVER-UP
? A plastic beaker of coffee with a film of congealed milk on top stood on her desk.

“What's the matter, Sweetman? Did the budgie pass away in the night?”

“Ah, it's John, Blade. He keeps ringing me here, after I begged him not to. He's put
years
on you, that man.”

Macken helped himself to coffee from the percolator, sat down at his desk, and cleared a space for the beaker between the untidy accumulation of papers.

“Why do you put up with him then?”

“Because he's my fecking fiancé!”

Blade grinned. “God almighty, Sweetman, if you're like this
before
you're married, I hate to think how it'll be when you do get round to it.”

Sweetman turned more pages.

“How long are you two engaged, anyway?”

“Five-and-a-half years.”

Blade whistled and tossed three sugar cubes in his coffee.

“Is that normal in your part of the country? I knew you were a bit traditional in County Galway, but I thought that sort of thing went out with the matchmakers and pigs in the parlor.”

“It's not funny, Blade!” she retorted angrily. “You'd be depressed as well if you hadn't worked in four years.” She folded the newspaper and laid it aside.

“There's no sign of a job then?”

“Ah, get real, Blade. In the printing industry? Sure they're letting people go every day of the week. John is sick writing job applications.”

“Jesus, it must be rough all the same, the pair of you living on your salary. Is he signing on?”

“He's too fecking proud. Anyway, it'd hardly be worth his while for what he'd get on benefit.”

Macken's phone rang. It was Duffy, wanting to see him.

“The very man,” Blade told his assistant. He picked up his coffee and pulled on his jacket. “I've a bone to pick with
him.
”

He almost bumped into two men on rounding the corner. They were the last people he wanted to see that morning. Some of his coffee splashed onto his hand and he swore mightily.

“Hello, Macken,” Superintendent Nolan said with a snide grin. “Rough night again?”

Blade grunted. “What's
he
doing here?”