Bootlegged Angel (16 page)

‘Your other boyfriends are here,’ said Dan from the end of the bar, proving there was nothing wrong with his hearing except when it came to his round.

‘Hey, some of them are mine, you know,’ Ivy chipped in, putting four empty pint glasses and six half-pint ones on the bar. ‘Mel can’t handle all of them
herself.’

‘You behave yourself, Ivy Bracegirdle,’ snapped Mel, flicking her hair behind her ears. ‘I don’t need you to show me up, I can manage well enough myself.’

‘You can say that again,’ Dan came back.

As they exchanged banter I drifted over to one of the windows and stood on tiptoe so I could see out of the top half of unfrosted glass, over the yellowing net curtains.

In the car-park, a 4 x 4 Jeep had pulled up near Amy’s BMW. The interior light showed me two figures climbing out and one of them walking round from the driver’s side. They both took
a good look at the Beamer and then the one who had been driving shook his head, closed the door of the Jeep and activated the central locking so that the indicators and sidelights flashed once and
then went out.

More light appeared, silhouetting the new arrivals, from the headlights of two vehicles turning into the car-park from the village road. They pulled up alongside the Jeep and killed their
lights. One of them was some sort of pick-up truck, the other an estate car. Doors opened and half a dozen shapes gathered, all looking at Amy’s BMW.

A mobile phone trilled and startled me into reaching for my pocket even though I knew I had left mine in the car. It was a purely Pavlovian reaction and I should have known better. I would never
own a phone which was programmed to ring the first six bars of ‘When I’m Calling You’.

It was Mel’s. I hadn’t noticed the mobile in a leather holster which she had stuck to the side of her wheelchair with Velcro strips.

As she answered it, Dan moaned: ‘Bloody things, they drive the Major mad.’

I moved nearer to him and away from Mel, who turned her chair through an arc, so that it didn’t look as if I was earwigging.

‘He mentioned it,’ I said. It was about the only thing the Major had said which I had taken notice of. ‘Driving BMWs and talking loudly into mobile phones. Must be a red rag to
a bull.’

‘That’s only part of it,’ said Dan, anxious to make conversation as his glass was almost empty. ‘They always play loud music, you know, that dance music stuff. And
they’ve usually got the windows down. You can hear them coming a mile off.’

‘That gets the Major too, does it?’

‘That –’ Dan dropped his voice – ‘and that fact that they’re black.’

I made an O with my mouth and nodded wisely.

‘Is that why he went? Before they turned up?’

‘Oh, I don’t mean those computer boffins. Those lads are all right. It’s the others that get the Major’s goat.’

I was about to ask what others but never got the chance.

Mel had finished her call without me noticing and was packing the phone away as the door opened and a procession of young guys entered, each one flapping a hand and nodding and saying:
‘Mel! Ivy!’

Ivy was pulling beer into the pint glasses and pouring orange juice into the smaller ones and saying: ‘Now who’s driving tonight, lads?’

Mel was acknowledging them individually although at first it sounded as if she had taken me seriously and was trying to summon up the Seven Dwarves. But once I tuned into her wavelength, the
names did make some sort of sense, relating to what the guys looked like or what they were wearing.

‘Hi, Combo.’

(Blue denim jeans and jacket.)

‘Hi, Ginge!’

(A redhead.)

‘Elvis!’

(Because he wore glasses like Elvis Costello does.)

‘Painter, how’yer doing?’

(This to a short, chubby youth who wore white, paint-stained overalls.)

‘Yo, Axeman.’

(That one had me fooled until I saw the kid’s eyes close up as he claimed a drink at the bar.)

‘Right, lads, sort yourselves out,’ Ivy was saying. ‘There’s juice for the drivers. How many more pints?’

‘Hi, Scooter, did you bring your arrows?’ said Melanie towards the door.

‘Of course I have, you foolish female. Prepare to be thrashed.’

I turned my head slowly, though nobody was looking at me, to get a good look at Scooter. He was my height but Mel’s age, with a flop of blond hair over one eye, which hopefully got in the
way when he threw the heavy metal darts he was brandishing. His whole body language said he was the leader of the pack and the others parted to let him get to the bar first. I noticed he was
clipping a Nokia mobile on to his belt and wondered if he had just made a call.

‘Where are Chip and Dale?’ Mel asked him.

‘Right behind us. Don’t worry, the gang’s all here.’

Scooter reached into the pocket of his jeans and produced a wedge of notes, peeling off a twenty for Ivy.

‘How’s my favourite landlady?’ he asked, dripping with charm.

‘The better for seeing you, my dear, but I’d settle for you being ten years older and me being ten months younger,’ cackled Ivy.

The gang laughed along, as did Mel.

Dan took a few seconds to work it out then joined in.

I let myself smile but over the laughter I was straining my ears.

Scooter had left the door to the pub open and from the carpark came the distant but unmistakable sound of breaking glass. Just the sort of sound you get if you feed empty bottles into a bottle
bank.

I thought it might be a good idea to stick around.

But what did I know?

If there was such a thing as a final exam for private detectives, then one of the papers – or at least forty per cent of practical course work marks – should be
dedicated to the Hanging Around In Pubs unit of the curriculum. You find out so much so easily, and some of it is probably true.

Just by listening to their smalltalk and observing their body language as they played darts with Melanie, it was obvious that there were differences within the ‘boffins’.

Combo, Ginge, Elvis (Costello) and Painter were all of student age and almost certainly contemporaries of Scooter. One of them, Ginge, had a battered paperback edition of Marcuse’s
Eros
and Civilisation
in the pocket of his jacket, which was a bit of a giveaway, as was his total inability to score accurately at darts. But there were other clues, such as their constant
references to daytime television, especially children’s programmes, and up-and-coming bands still flogging around the campus circuit.

The two Mel had referred to as Chip and Dale were the same age as the others, but not in the same peer group. They wore anoraks and had tried to grow beards and they sat to the side of the darts
players rather than joining in, drinking orange juice and not talking. After a while, Chip (or it might have been Dale) produced a small travelling chess set from a deep pocket and they began to
play. I would bet my own money they were vegetarians.

Axeman was the odd one out and in more ways than one. He was older than the others for a start and certainly not a student, now or in the past. He kept himself apart from the group, back to the
bar, watching them – and especially Melanie – with wide, flashing eyes. He was thin and twitchy and his eyes really did bulge, which suggested he had a hyperactive thyroid. Either that
or he was a heavy drug user.

I couldn’t work out where he fitted into the group. If he was a software programmer, then so was I.

I offered to buy Dan another pint and asked for a tomato juice for myself, hoping that Ivy stocked such exotic cocktails.

‘You driving tonight as well, Roy?’ she asked and I almost missed the look the Axeman flashed me.

‘Yeah, I’ve got the car,’ I said without thinking anything much of it. ‘And I’d better go after this one, find myself some supper.’

‘Stay here, my dear. I’m doing my specials for the lads so you might as well. One more won’t make any difference and I’ve got the water on.’

How could I refuse? If I had she would have flayed me with her pearls.

‘If you’re sure . . .’ I said hesitantly.

‘It’s no bother.’

She disappeared through the back of the bar into her living quarters. At my side, Dan chuckled quietly.

‘You’re very lucky, yer know. To get offered one of Ivy’s specials.’

‘She’s a good cook, then?’

Before he could snigger a reply, Ivy’s head appeared in the bar again.

‘Plain or spicy, Roy?’

‘Er . . . spicy, thanks.’ In for a penny.

‘Good choice,’ hissed Dan, his shoulders heaving.

‘Should I send out for pizza?’ I asked him.

‘You haven’t time,’ he said smugly. ‘It’ll be ready in three minutes.’

He was almost spot on, perhaps twenty seconds out, but then that is as long as it takes to boil an egg. Or about sixteen eggs to be accurate.

‘Who ordered spicy?’ Ivy shouted. ‘Haven’t you got the spoons out yet, Melanie?’

Ivy appeared clutching a huge tray on which were eight double egg cups complete with boiled eggs and two plates of toast which had been cut into strips an inch wide. One plate had buttered
‘soldiers’ and the other had been spread with Marmite. Plain or spicy. It all made sense.

‘You know I can’t get behind the bar these days, Ivy,’ Melanie was moaning. To illustrate the point, she drove her wheelchair at the gap where the bar flap was open and
juddered to a halt. Her chair was about an inch either side too wide for the gap.

‘No wonder you haven’t had to change the vodka recently, Ivy,’ Scooter piped up and the others, all except Axeman, giggled politely.

‘You watch your lip, Mr Scooter-Computer. Now where’s the salt?’

Boiled eggs, Marmite soldiers and salt; what a feast.

‘It’s the only thing she knows how to cook,’ Dan whispered in my ear.

‘That’ll be £2.50, Roy love,’ said Ivy, holding out her hand.

I wondered if Amy had finished her pudding wine by now.

I drank my drink and dipped my toast soldiers into the yolks of my eggs and when I had finished I realised I was still hungry, stone-cold sober and had run out of things to
do.

Ivy was washing glasses and polishing them with a tea-towel. Dan was thinking loudly about the chances of me buying him another drink. The ‘boffin’ gang had sat in a group to eat
their boiled eggs, except for Axeman, who had pulled out a much-folded copy of
Exchange & Mart
and was scouring the small print without tiring his lips too much. Melanie wheeled herself
in and out of them, collecting their glasses and plates like a demented mobile waitress. She seemed to have forgotten I was there.

‘Well, better hit the road,’ I said to no one in particular. ‘Thanks a lot. Goodnight.’

‘Take care, my dear,’ Ivy said. ‘Drop in and see us again.’

‘You bet,’ I said, hoping she wasn’t a gambler.

I nodded to Dan and he nodded back, glumly resigned to having to spend his own money.

I walked across the bar until I was behind Melanie’s wheelchair and leaned over her shoulder.

‘Thanks for the darts lesson,’ I said softly, noting that the ‘boffins’ around the table had gone silent. ‘Hope everything works out for you. And next time you ride
in a pumpkin coach drawn by six white mice, fasten your seat belt.’

She smiled and her eyes twinkled.

‘Thanks, I’ll remember that, but quite honestly, I’ve had it up to here –’ she held her hand flat in front of her stomach – ‘with mice.’

I chuckled politely at that, then nodded to the students. The one called Scooter nodded slightly in return, studying me with his right eye only as his left was covered by his drooping shock of
blond hair.

I waved to Ivy as I moved to the door and stepped out into the night. Before I had closed the door behind me, I heard three or four of the students burst into laughter. Whatever they had thought
of me, one of them had now said out loud. I wasn’t worried, the feeling was mutual.

Once out of the door, I strode purposefully as if heading for the Gents’ toilet until I knew I was out of sight of the pub’s windows. Then I skipped between two tubs of flowers and I
was close enough to the beehive Bottleback bins to smell the stale beer.

It was at that point I remembered that I didn’t have a torch or a match or a cigarette lighter and I just knew that the two old dears on the Dover cliffs would have come better prepared,
with X-ray cameras and infra-red and such like.

Tentatively, I pushed in the rubber cover plate over the porthole opening and put my hand in. It didn’t have to go far before making contact with something, but at least it was something
cold and unmoving, made of glass. Using my fingertips I pulled until I could make out the shape of a 25-centilitre bottle, a ‘dumpy’, bearing a label saying it had come from the St Omer
Brewery in France. That didn’t mean much in itself, but the fact that my hand had only had to dip about two inches into the Bottleback bin told me that it was almost full and that the dumpy
bottle had a few hundred friends in there keeping him company.

As I walked to the BMW, I checked the other vehicles in the car-park, the Jeep, a Renault estate car and a Mazda flat-back pick-up, noting their number plates without really knowing why I was
doing it. I did realise that it would be a tad obvious to stand there with a notebook, so I was glad I didn’t have one. But I did have Amy’s Grundig dictaphone in my emergency overnight
bag which I retrieved from the boot of the Beamer before climbing in and starting the engine. With the headlights on, no one from the pub could have seen me anyway, which covered my fumbling with
the Record button until I could commit the three numbers to tape. At the entrance to the car-park, I stopped and signalled left, even though there wasn’t a hedgehog on the road for miles,
then slowly pulled out and headed away from the village, roughly south-west towards the M20, Ashford, Maidstone and then the bright, safe lights of London.

In fact I drove about a mile down the road until I found a gateway to a field where I could turn around and head back towards Whitcomb, driving on sidelights only. When I came to the bend in the
road around which lay the Rising Sun, I pulled over close enough into the hedge to scratch Amy’s paintwork and killed the engine. I reckoned that if any of the boffins came out of the pub
car-park and turned my way, I had enough time to get moving and dazzle them enough so they didn’t know it was me. (I had always been scathing about the BMW’s dipped headlights, but on
full beam they were pretty impressive.)