The Angel Tapes Page 8

  Eleven

  She was even lovelier than Blade remembered: groomed to perfection, expensive clothes and accessories. Her legs were bare and suntanned.

  He was glad she’d agreed to meet him in the bar on Purcell Street, his favorite. It was plain and honest, right down to the bare flagstoned floor. But, most important, it was affordable.

  “You look great,” he told her.

  In reply she kissed him lightly on the cheek. He’d no idea what her perfume was called but suspected that a bottle would set him back a full week’s salary.

  “What are you drinking?”

  To his great surprise she asked for a glass of stout. He wondered if Elaine de Rossa was slumming. Perhaps not; perhaps she was doing as the Romans did in Rome.

  “Did you get home all right?” she asked. “I was a bit worried about you.”

  Shit. He hoped she wouldn’t start on about Thursday night. Blade could remember parts of it now but most remained a blank. He used the excuse of getting up to order drinks, to call a halt to Elaine’s line of inquiry.

  The bar was already full, although it was only a little after eight. There was the usual Sunday-night crowd and Blade nodded to familiar faces. Old Sandy O’Rourke was tuning his fiddle at the far end of the counter. There were two full pints in front of him and Blade knew from experience that the tuning could take several hours yet: Sandy was a perfectionist; he usually got it right—by his lights—somewhere around eleven o’clock, when the cry came: “Time, ladies and gents now, please!”

  The barkeep glanced up from pulling a Guinness.

  “Blade! How’s she cutting? Nice bit of frock you have there. Where did you pick her up?”

  “Never you mind, Joe, never you mind. Give ’s a pint and a glass, would you.”

  Joe’s three young assistants sped from one end of the long counter to the other, taking orders, pulling pints, squirting shorts, and handling money with a speed that always astounded Blade. You wouldn’t, he reflected, see this in any other country. They were probably earning half his bloody salary, too, among the three of them.

  “Desperate altogether about Friday,” Joe said.

  “The pits.”

  “I hear there’s thirty people still in hospital. And they’re the lucky ones. They reckon the little toddler’ll be blind for life.”

  “It’s fucking awful.”

  The barkeeper slowly poured more stout into the glasses. A customer, a stranger with a broad, country accent, shouted for service.

  “I’ll be right with you!” Joe called back. “Jayziz, they don’t give you a bleeding minute, Blade. Fucking boggers.”

  He leaned across the counter. “What’s this I hear about a bomb?”

  “Give ’s five Hamlet as well, while you’re at it. Who said anything about a bomb?”

  “Fuck’s sake, Blade, don’t be acting the gom with me. Was it or wasn’t it? Yeah, yeah, I’ll be right with you!” The customer from the provinces was deciding whether to move to more accommodating licensed premises.

  “It wasn’t a bomb, Joe,” Macken said softly.

  “Ah, who are you codding, Blade? A gas main! Sure if I heard it from Mother Teresa’s holy lips, I’d make her say three decades of the rosary for telling lies. If you think I’d be stupid enough to believe a story like that, then you might as well dream here as in bed.”

  He topped off Macken’s order with a practiced flourish of froth and tossed a pack of Hamlets on the counter.

  “I hear they put you on it.”

  “News travels fast.”

  The barman winked. “Listen, if I hear anything, I’ll let you know.”

  “Thanks, Joe. Now you better serve that Kerryman before he wrecks the shagging place.”

  Blade returned with the drinks. Elaine was leafing through a tabloid newspaper that a customer had left behind.

  “Gosh, you took your time.”

  “Just saying hello.”

  “Well, cheers.” Elaine sipped her stout and wiped her lips with a brilliant white handkerchief. Blade saw no lipstick smear left on the fabric. He’d thought her makeup flawless; now he realized she wasn’t wearing any; she’d no need to.

  “Listen,” she said, “there’s something I’ve been wanting to ask you. Did you mean that: what you said on Thursday night?”

  Fuck. He’d hoped she wouldn’t start on about that night. He prayed it wasn’t anything embarrassing.

  “Er, what’s that, Elaine?” Blade tried to sound as casual as he could. He took a long swig of stout.

  “Oh, you know: about your being a Special Branch man. It’s not true is it? You were just trying to impress me?”

  Macken breathed a sigh of relief; Elaine interpreted it as a Guinness drinker’s sigh of pleasure on sampling the first pint of the evening.

  “No, no. It’s true.”

  “Golly! Is it dangerous?”

  “It can be.”

  Her eyes were shining; Blade relaxed.

  “You’re not on the Drug Squad, are you?”

  “No. Serious crime: murder and stuff.”

  “Gosh.” She took another nip of Guinness. Blade nodded to a newcomer of his acquaintance and lit a Hamlet. “Is that how you got those scars?” she asked then.

  “Scars?”

  “The ones you showed me.”

  Blade almost choked on a mouthful of cigar smoke. He went red in the face, his eyes began to water, and he had to swallow a third of his drink before his throat returned to normal.

  Had he heard her correctly? His scars. Jesus, had they done the job on Thursday night? He studied his companion. Had he actually been to bed with this beautiful creature? And he didn’t remember a thing.

  The waste, the bloody waste! He cursed himself, cursed his drinking, swore to cut down—or maybe cut it out altogether. This was what came of overdoing it. She’d probably been like a demon in the sack, too. And he couldn’t remember a blessed thing.

  He decided to feel his way.

  “Er, I wasn’t much use to you, was I, Elaine? I mean … er, on Thursday night. The drink.…”

  Her eyes opened wide and he saw her hand go to her breast.

  “You must be joking. You were fantastic!” She slipped a hand onto his thigh and whispered in his ear. “I told you that night that I’d never come before. At least, not that way—and never with a man. You were brilliant.” She squeezed his knee.

  He didn’t know what to say. He was flattered—over the moon, in fact—that this young woman could say such things about him. But Christ and his blessed mother in a handcart, she could have told him he’d screwed her till dawn and he’d no way of knowing if it was the truth. He was definitely going to give up the booze.

  But not right this minute. Blade went to the bar again for more stout. When he returned, Elaine was nowhere to be seen. But she reappeared five minutes later from the direction of the restroom. He saw Joe sizing her up.

  “There were two girls in the ladies talking about Friday,” Elaine said. “One of them knew somebody who’s still in the Mater. On life support.”

  “It’s terrible.”

  “They’re saying it wasn’t a gas leak. They’re saying it was a bomb.”

  “Who is?”

  “Everybody. It was in the paper again today.”

  “Oh? Which paper’s that?”

  “The News of the World.”

  “That’s not a paper, Elaine. Jesus, I wouldn’t have thought you’d be caught dead reading a rag like that.”

  “I don’t. I only saw the headline when I went to get my own paper.” She was peeved and Blade could have kicked himself.

  She reached for her drink.

  “Is it true, though? Was it a bomb and is someone covering up?”

  “No one’s covering anything up, Elaine. And even if they were, I wouldn’t be allowed to talk about it.”

  She cast him a strange look; he couldn’t read it.

  “I saw something odd, too, today. In D’Olier Street.”

&nb
sp; “Mmm?”

  “Yeah. There was this Alsatian with some Corporation men. If you ask me they were sending him down a manhole. Isn’t that funny? On a Sunday.”

  “Probably sniffing for a gas leak.”

  “I’ve never seen that before. Don’t they use detectors for that?”

  “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 Bl
ade’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?”