Angel Touch (7 page)

So I had to go to lunch with Salome; what's so bad about that? Normally, of course, absolutely nothing. Normally an honour worth lying, cheating and maybe even wearing a tie for.

But this was lunch at the office. A working lunch, a real finger-tap table-top session. And I had a nasty feeling that I was being served up as dessert.

Come and have lunch in our Directors' Room, she'd said, with Alec and their section boss. Have a shave and put on a suit and find some black shoes, she'd thought.

Well, the suit was out for a start, as I don't possess one, or at least not at the moment. I'd had one once, but a lot of my possessions had formed a lengthy insurance claim after a previous residence of mine down in Southwark had sort of blown up one day. I'd learnt a lot from the experience: travel light and rent north of the river.

I settled for a dark blue blazer that I hadn't spilt much down, a baggy, grey-wool shirt with buttoned down collar and some black slacks that would have been pressed if I'd remembered to put them under the mattress.

That was going to have to do. I didn't really care what impression I made in the City; for Hackney I was sharp as a pistol.

I took a bus, not Armstrong, into the dirty old heart of the City. For a start, I was probably still over the limit from the pub and the party, and it would really peeve me to get breathalysed for a piss-up where I'd made a conscious
decision not to drink and drive. You see, I can be socially responsible. And anyway, my hands were still shaking and I had trouble focusing – hence the dark glasses – and I couldn't remember where I'd left Armstrong's keys.

Salome's office wasn't actually in the Stock Exchange, but I didn't think it was my place to complain. It was round on Gresham Street on the third floor of a building occupied by, among others, a Japanese bank, a Malaysian bank and an Australian investment trust. I didn't have accounts with any of them, and I wondered if that meant I was deprived. Certainly, from the look he gave me, the doorman of the building thought I was.

I don't suppose they called him a doorman, mind you, even though he was wearing enough gold braid on the shoulders of his uniform to settle the balance of payments.

I told him I was there on business with a luncheon (note that: luncheon) appointment with Prior, Keen, Baldwin, and eventually he had to believe me.

In the lift, I allowed myself a significant thought. Why are there no ‘ands' in the names of City firms? For example, Sal's firm: Prior, Keen, Baldwin,
not
‘and Baldwin.' Maybe Baldwin objected. He probably would if he knew the firm was referred to as Pretty Keen Bastards among the financial press, although knowing a fair cross-section of City half-life, Baldwin was probably secretly pleased.

If he'd done what most of the old brokers had done and sold out to the meganationals, he was probably in Switzerland teaching the gnomes to fish. In fact, Prior, Keen, Baldwin was almost certainly called something like Durban Kuwait Broken Hill Den Haag Prior Keen Baldwin Suisse nowadays. But as the switchboard operators could never get that out before the pips went, they stuck to their old name.

At the third floor, the lift doors opened on to a sort of lobby area with a big oaken desk and another uniformed ex-SAS man in residence. I trudged across a carpet that really exercised the ankles to get to him.

‘Yes, sir? Can we help you, sir?'

There was nobody else around, so it must have been me he was growling at. He'd probably never seen anybody not in a suit before.

‘I'm here for lunch with Ms Asmoyah and a Mr Reynolds. Which way's the canteen?'

‘One moment, sir.'

He was impervious to my best charmer smile, but his eyes never left me as he picked up a phone and pressed a button or two. I couldn't understand it. There was nothing nickable around except his desk.

‘There's a visitor for you, Mr Reynolds.' Then to me, with a smirk: ‘Mr Angel, is it?'

‘Yes,' I said seriously, ‘of Fitzroy, Maclean, Angel, Dealer and Bonk.'

‘Mr Reynolds will be out directly, sir. Have a seat.'

I noticed one single, straight-backed chair near the lift doors, so I pulled it over to his desk, turned it round and straddled it, folding my arms on the back. I tried another smile on him and struck up a conversation.

‘So what do you think of Arsenal's chances in the Cup, then?'

He turned red and made a strangled sobbing sound.

‘No,' I agreed, ‘I don't rate them this season either.'

 

Alec Reynolds appeared and rescued me before the porter could get to me across the desk.

He was wearing a double-breasted suit probably the equivalent in value to, say, the 19
th
Century cloth trade with India. His shoes had probably removed the crocodile menace from a grateful Third World country.

‘Hello, there,' he said as we shook hands. ‘Thanks for coming. It's Roy, isn't it?'

‘Sure.' Among other things.

‘I've already got quite a few punters interested in your fish and chips in newspapers ideas, you know. Hope you don't mind.'

I fumbled through the memory banks to remember what I'd told him the previous night.

‘No, that's fine.' I smiled. Was he joking? ‘I'll take ten percent.'

‘Excellent.' He patted me on the shoulder. ‘Come on through.'

He held open a pair of swing doors – the sort you get on kitchens in hotel restaurants, with round windows in them – and ushered me down a corridor. To one side, the offices had all been knocked into a single, open-plan unit with double banks of computer terminals and phones, including the sort of phone where you just touch a name on the video screen and it gets the number for you.

‘This is our main dealing room,' Alec was saying. ‘Though most of the real business is done before 9.00 am. That's the bread-and-butter stuff. The jam comes when the market opens.'

Only about half the swivel chairs in front of the consoles were occupied, and some of them only had jackets draped over them. No-one turned to look at us. Every five feet or so, there was a monitor tuned in to Extel or Ceefax or Topic, the Stock Exchange's private network, or a fax machine or a telex, and there was a teleprinter receiving Press Association copy.

Littered in between were sandwich wrappers, empty fruit juice cartons, glucose drink bottles and Mars bar papers, as well as a couple of hundred coffee cartons. A woman in an apron was working her way down the far side with a plastic dustbin liner collecting the junk. By the time she got to the end she could start again.

‘The analysts and backroom boys – and girls –' Alec added as an afterthought – ‘have a bit more privacy.'

He gestured to the left, where thin partitions had carved out about a dozen offices. Some of the doors were open to reveal a desk, two chairs and a hat-stand. With luck there might have been room for three people to stand in each. If they were good friends, that is, and it wasn't a hot day.

‘And this is Salome's little empire,' said Alec, rapping a knuckle on the door frame.

The door wasn't shut, and I could see Sal coming round from behind her desk trying to slip her suit jacket on and speak into the phone at the same time. I thought for a minute she was doing a good juggling trick, then I realised the phone had one of those shoulder-rest attachments, which left her hands free. I made a note to ask her to get me one. That way, I could play cards and answer the phone at the same time. (Why else would I need one?)

‘... Yes, of course. Naturally. Yes, certainly. I'll be back to Mr Stavoulos this afternoon. Yes, before three o'clock certainly. Thank you.'

She put down the receiver and allowed herself a brief smile.

‘Hi.'

‘Hi. So this is where it all happens, eh?'

‘Too right. Let's go before the phone rings again.'

‘Busy morning?' asked Alec.

‘Somewhere between hectic and paranoid. Is the dining-room ready?'

‘Yes, according to Mrs Pilgrim, but Terry will be a few minutes late joining us.'

I mouthed ‘Who's Terry?' at Sal as Alec opened another door at the end of the corridor.

‘Terry Patterson. He's our head of Security Systems,' Sal whispered.

‘Your boss?'

‘On this one, yeah.'

Alec led us into a dining-room complete with oak table, four place settings and a cruet that would have paid off my mortgage if I'd had one. At the far end was a bar.

‘We've got everything except beer,' Alec said proudly, waving a glass in my direction.

‘Tequila Sunrise, please.' I hate show-offs.

‘Er ... sorry ...' Alec looked in one of the cupboards. ‘Except beer and tequila.'

‘Just the orange juice then, please.'

‘Coming up. Perrier, Salome?'

‘Yes, please,' she said as if she knew she didn't have a choice.

We all three swirled ice cubes around for a minute, then Alec decided somebody had better speak.

‘I don't think you told me what you
do,
Roy.'

‘Oh good,' I quipped. ‘I wasn't that drunk, then.'

‘Now don't be hostile, Angel,' Salome mediated. ‘Alec and I are in this together.'

I nodded sagely.

‘So Terry's the one to watch, eh?'

Alec didn't say anything, but he looked at Salome as if to say, ‘He's not daft, is he?'

‘Don't worry, love,' I reassured her, ‘I'll be on my best behaviour. By the way, it's the funny flat knife for fish, isn't it?'

She tried to smile, but it ended as a shrug of the shoulders. Behind me, the door handle clicked, and she jumped about an inch with nerves.

‘Here we go,' I said under my breath. ‘Lock and load.'

‘Morning everyone, sorry to keep you waiting.'

Patterson breezed into the room. He was a big bloke and looked bigger, because his suit jacket had shoulder pads Joan Collins would have envied. His blond hair was cropped short at the back, but a long shock fell carefully over his right eye, and I just knew he would have to brush it aside every 90 seconds or so. He didn't look old enough to be a Prefect, let alone Salome's boss.

‘Terry, let me introduce Roy Angel. Terry Patterson, Roy Angel,' said Alec.

‘Good to meet you,' he boomed, crushing my hand. How did he know it was going to be good? ‘Glad you could make it. Let's eat and talk.'

‘Sure,' I said, being friendly. ‘Time must be money to you guys.'

‘Isn't it to everyone? There just aren't enough hours in a day.'

He took his place at the head of the table and pressed a bell-push attached to the table leg.

‘I don't agree,' I said. ‘My Rule of Life No 19 is that if a job can't be done between nine and five, you're either understaffed or totally inefficient.'

Patterson looked surprised. Not impressed, just surprised. I'd got that reaction before, and always from people with jobs. That's why I prefer to be my own boss.

The door opened behind me, and Patterson looked over my shoulder.

‘Ah, here's Mrs Pilgrim. What's the recipe today?'

I bet myself he said it every day, and this was confirmed by the soft but distinct sound of Salome grinding her teeth and Alec looking straight down at his empty place setting.

‘If it's Thursday, it's Chinese, Mr Patterson; you should know that by now.' Good for her, I thought. ‘Crab and water chestnut soup, duck in hoisin sauce and then lychee sorbet.'

If I'd been expecting some ageing Lyons Corner House clippy waitress in black dress and white starched pinny, I couldn't have been more wrong.

‘Mrs Pilgrim' turned out to be a tall, long-haired brunette wearing black leather trousers tucked into high-heeled boots and a long, white frilled shirt – a man's dress shirt – outside them. She had a waitress's notepad and pencil clipped to a studded leather belt, which held the shirt around her waist, and a bootlace tie added to the gunfighter image. I doubted if she got many complaints about the soup being cool. Instead of asking if someone was ready to order, she probably said: ‘Feeling lucky, punk?'

‘Is everybody happy with that?' was what she actually said. ‘No vegans, gluten-free freaks or anti-salt campaigners?'

‘We always eat our greens here, Mrs Pilgrim,' said Patterson with a sickly smile. ‘Otherwise we don't get any pudding, do we?'

‘Good. Then I'll serve.'

‘Er ... one thing,' I said hesitantly.

‘Yes?' asked Mrs Pilgrim sharpishly.

‘Have you used fresh lime juice in the sorbet?':

‘No.'

‘Pity, it gives the lychees an extra tang.'

She smiled as if she'd just seen a child drop an ice-cream and turned away to open the door. She wheeled in a heated trolley and served out four bowls of soup, the bowls being
fine china with lids on. I thought of my meagre kitchen back at Stuart Street, and I liked my grub, don't get me wrong. But this was how the other half lived without a doubt. Strike
that; make it the other seven-eighths.