The Angel Tapes (19 page)

She
lived
on the damn things: “What d'you mean, they'll ‘rot your teeth'? I haven't
got
any teeth of my own left to rot.” He always laughed to himself when he thought of her saying that.

Soon Blade was ascending a steep road south of the town. He looked in his rearview mirror and was gladdened by the sight of the harbor and the sea beyond, a panorama that presented almost the entire eastern coast as far as the peninsula of Howth. He never tired of the beauty of this vista.

On the CD player Phil Coulter began the intro to his masterpiece: “The Town I Loved So Well.” When the chords of the first verse came, Blade loudly sang the lyrics in his bad baritone, confident that the closed windows of the car would spare the ears and sensibilities of anybody within earshot. But there was no one; as he negotiated the winding, hedgerow-lined road that led to Katharine's home, he passed only a solitary sheepdog.

The house was big: a three-story Victorian building with stables adjacent, set back from the road and approached by a climbing driveway. There was only one car out front: the small, battered Fiat belonging to Katharine's nurse. She had the hall door opened before Blade had cut his engine. He'd an enormous amount of respect for the woman; looking after his mother was a heavy task.

“How's she been keeping?”

“Ah, you know yourself, Blade, without me telling you. She has her good days and her bad days. But she was thrilled to bits when she heard you were coming down. Sure she's little else in her life these days, the creature.” The nurse frowned a bit. “You really ought to try to drop by more often. You know how she dotes on you.”

“I know,” he said, as he looked about the hall that was filled with memories of the best of times and the worst of times. It was also filled with the smell of mustiness and decay and he wondered when the decorators had been in last. But who, Blade asked himself, was going to pay them? Louise and Barbara? You must be joking. Blade's older sisters hadn't seen their mother in years. The ferry from Wales took only ninety minutes now, but neither of the bitches ever bothered her arse to make the trip; Katharine was Blade's responsibility as far as they were concerned. He could never figure families.

“I know,” he said again. “But I've been up to my eyes the past few weeks. Has she been eating at all?”

The nurse eyed the box of candy.

“Sure you're worse to keep bringing her those things,” she admonished. “Ah, she's the same as always, I suppose. I can get her to eat the odd bit of meat for me, but she wouldn't touch a vegetable if you paid her.” She paused at the double doors leading to the living room. “Maybe you can talk some sense into her, Blade. I'm sick trying.”

He nodded, and went in.

Katharine Macken had made herself up for his coming. A mistake. She probably thought that the blue eye shadow, thick mascara, and bright pink lipstick made her look like a movie star. They didn't; Blade saw an old, painted crone, a travesty of the beautiful woman his mother had once been. But he pressed her hand and kissed her warmly on both cheeks as though she were his queen.

*   *   *

They drove to the lighthouse.

She enjoyed it so much when Blade brought her here. There are actually three lights: the oldest is a tall, massive, eight-sided structure, built toward the end of the eighteenth century. It fell into disuse when a newer tower was erected a hundred years later. That, too, is shut. Now Wicklow Head is guarded by an automatic light set halfway down the cliff face. Katharine linked Blade's arm as they descended the gently winding path.

They stood together at the low wall overlooking the old keeper's house and gazed out across the Irish Sea. A little distance out in the blue water, a small brown head appeared. A seal. Katharine grew excited.

“How adorable! One doesn't see quite so many of them as one used to.” She turned to him. “Remember that time we saw a pair of them just off Killiney strand?” She sighed. “A long time ago now. You wanted to take a photograph, Blade, but they vanished before you could go and fetch the Brownie.”

“Er, that was Dad, Katharine. Blade
senior.
”

“Of course it wasn't, silly! I recall the incident as though it were yesterday. We'd gone down for the day with that dreadful American and his girlfriend. What was his name? Slater, that was it. P. J. Slater. Whatever became of him?”

“It wasn't me, Katharine.”

She shook her head in irritation.

“I do wish you'd stop contradicting me. Next you'll be telling me I'm
senile.
”

He'd persuaded her before they left the house that the garish makeup had been “too common” so she'd cleaned most of it off. She looked quite pretty now with a silk scarf tied around her head. He squeezed her hand.

“And that frightful Catacombs crowd!” she said after a time. “I was
ever
so glad when you stopped going to that place, Blade. It was nothing but a common drinking den; the constables ought to have shut it down. I simply can't imagine what you saw in those people. Boozers and ne'er-do-wells, every last one of 'em.”

Blade said nothing. His father's ghost continued to haunt him. But he was relishing the afternoon, happy to be at his mother's side in this lovely, secluded place, where no dark angels ventured. He tried to put the investigation from his mind. To hell with Duffy, to hell with Nolan.

“And as for that Brendan Behan! How the young Salkeld girl could have thrown herself at a
person
such as he, I shall never understand.”

“He was a bit of a character right enough.”

“That's putting it mildly. When I
think
of what he got up to! I couldn't believe my ears that time when you told me that he'd had people eating human flesh for a bet.” She shuddered. “You didn't make it up, did you? It really happened?”

“So Dad said, yes.”

Some seconds went by. He heard her sniffling and when he looked, there were tears in her eyes. He put an arm around her shoulders.

“Oh I'm
hopeless,
Blade,” she sobbed. “I don't know what's happening to me. The doctor keeps reassuring me that it's not so, but I think my mind is going. Is it, Blade? Tell me truthfully. Is it?”

Blade pressed her against him. There was a lump in his throat.

*   *   *

He drove her back to the house, along the little private road, past the green pastureland dotted whitely with sheep.

The nurse's car was gone when he pulled up. He helped her inside, the old house echoing to their footsteps and her walking stick. There was a fire burning in the living-room hearth.

“
Would
you straighten that picture, Blade?” his mother said, undoing her headscarf. “That woman has absolutely no eye to speak of. Hopeless.”

He went to the fireplace and lifted the heavy frame that housed the oil painting. The artist had clearly been much influenced by Rosetti: the winged being, dressed in a flowing, white garment, had features and hair that glowed with an impossible beauty, and an almost pornographic sensuality. Its flat chest seemed at odds with the exaggerated femininity of the eyes and lips.

Something tugged at a corner of Blade's mind—something too intangible to be pinned down.

He straightened the picture and returned to help his mother to her favorite chair by the window.

His cellular phone rang the moment Katharine was seated. She looked around in confusion and showed surprise when her son drew the instrument from his pocket and put it to his ear.

“Macken.…”

“
BLADE, THE VERY MAN! WARM FOR THE TIME OF YEAR, ISN'T IT? WE COULD DO WITH A DROP OF RAIN. WOULD YOU AGREE
?”

Saint Christopher on a bike! Blade pressed the
RECORD
button on the back of the handset.

“I suppose so,” he said softly.

“
YOU CAN'T TALK, BLADE, IS THAT IT
?”

“Yes, that's right.”

Blade indicated to Katharine in sign language that he was going to take the call elsewhere. She frowned, yet still knew enough to appreciate that police business sometimes took priority over aged mothers. Blade went into the kitchen.

“All right,” he said, “what can I do for you?”

“
AH FOR FUCK'S SAKE, BLADE, SURE YOU KNOW WHAT YOU CAN DO FOR ME. WHAT'S THE STORY ON MY TWENTY-FIVE MILLION DOLLARS
?”

“It's coming.”

“
YOU'RE SURE NOW
?”

“Yeah, I think the Yanks have it sorted out. They've offered to pay the full whack themselves.”

“
YOU ‘THINK' THEY HAVE IT SORTED OUT? WELL, THAT ISN'T GOOD ENOUGH, BLADE; IT REALLY ISN'T. IT'S—
”

“Look … no. I didn't mean it like that. They're doing it. Believe me. You'll have your money on time.”

“
I FUCKING WELL BETTER. YOU KNOW WHAT TODAY'S DATE IS, BLADE, DON'T YOU
?”

“The eleventh.”

“
THAT'S RIGHT. SO YOU JUST MAKE SURE THAT SEABORG AND THE OTHERS KNOW IT AS WELL. I HATE TO BE KEPT WAITING. DON'T YOU HATE THAT, TOO, BLADE, SOMEBODY KEEPING YOU WAITING? IT DRIVES ME SPARE
.”

“Yes. I do. The money'll be there, Angel. I guarantee it.”

Blade heard the grandfather clock in the hall strike five times and glanced automatically at his watch. The clock was keeping perfect time. He guessed who it was who kept the mechanism oiled and in working order. It was not an easy job—by no means. Katharine's nurse rose a notch higher in his estimation.

Then, some forty-five seconds later, as Angel was still engaging in his dangerous small talk, Blade heard a whirring sound coming from directly behind him, and turned.

He was a child again: six years old. Or had it been his seventh birthday? He couldn't recall now. But he could remember the wall clock, and was surprised not only to find it here in the kitchen, instead of in his old bedroom, but still operating perfectly after all these years.

The timepiece was a beautiful piece of workmanship. It wasn't a toy; it was an exquisite example of the clockmaker's art. He remembered his joy when Katharine's parents had presented it to him, how his grandfather had taken Blade on his knee and given him a brief lesson on how to tell the time. Granddad had waited until a half hour before the hour before taking it out of its box, and thirty minutes later Blade had discovered why.

There was a semicircular path at the base, which ran from one little closed door to another, and a miniature grass border complete with a white milestone that read “London 10 Miles,” the whole carved in wood and tastefully painted.

And at five o'clock exactly, the magic had happened. The little door on the left had opened and two diminutive figures had emerged and moved slowly in a semicircle, past the milestone, to vanish through the other door. Dick Whittington and his cat. Blade had known the story almost by heart; Katharine had read it to him more often than she would have wished. The young pauper who'd become Lord Mayor of the English capital. And his new clock had
played
the very song that Katharine had sung to the young Blade:

Turn again, Whittington, Lord Mayor of London!

Blade had carried that tune in his head for thirty-seven years. It haunted him. He sometimes woke with it in the morning; it disturbed his concentration when he was doing paperwork; it came—unwanted—when he was walking, driving, drinking. It was almost his personal anthem.

Now he heard it again. And the little painted figure of Dick Whittington, with its black tricorn hat and carrying a bundle on a stick over one shoulder, moved past the milestone and out of sight by way of the right-hand door in the base of the wall clock.

“
ARE YOU DEAF OR WHAT
?”

“Sorry?”

“
IT'S LIKE I'M BLEEDING WELL TALKING TO MYSELF. LISTEN, I'LL RING AGAIN—WHEN IT'S MORE CONVENIENT FOR YOUR LORDSHIP. ANGEL OUT
.”

The line went dead and Blade cursed himself. So distracted had he become by the unexpected visitation from his childhood days that he'd barely listened to Angel's words.

But he had them on tape.

*   *   *

“Who was that, Blade?” Katharine asked.

“Ah, just business. The usual. They never leave me in peace.”

“You work too hard. You don't get
that
from your father.”

“No.”

“What happened to the chocolates? Did that dreadful woman scoff them, as always?”

“Er, you ate them, Katharine.”

“Don't be absurd! I'm hardly likely to have devoured an entire box.”

He arranged the cushions behind her back. She patted his hand.

“You're a good boy, Blade.”

“I know. I have you spoiled rotten. Listen, is there anything I can get you from town?”