Free Angel Confidential by Mike Ripley

that what they call it?’
    â€˜Er, look. Mrs Delacourt, there’s been a misunderstanding. I’m only looking after the office until the real detective gets back.’
    God, that sounded bad.
    â€˜What you mean, real detective?’
    Good question. The one in hospital or the one with three days’ on-the-job training?
    â€˜Actually, it’s a Miss Blugden who is the senior partner now–’
    â€˜That nice white girl I saw you with last night, when the police were here?’
    â€˜I suppose so–’
    â€˜She’s no detective. She looks sweet and gentle like she couldn’t curdle milk. No, yo’ having me on. You’re the main man, don’t try and con me. What’s the matter, my money not good enough?’
    â€˜It’s not that at all. I’m sure Miss Blugden will be very happy to take your money – I mean, your case. But you’ll have to see her.’
    Mrs Delacourt put down her mug and pointed a finger at me like a gun.
    â€˜But she’s no good ‘cos she don’t know my Crimson and you do. You probably know his good-for-nothing partner Chase, too.’
    â€˜Chase? No, I’m sorry, I don’t ... Chase who?’
    â€˜My Crimson’s new friend, Mr Chase, Mr Can’t-Do-No-Wrong Chase. That boy gonna get my boy in trouble, nothing surer, but Crimson won’t listen to me. That’s why I want you to find out what they’re up to of an evening and where they’re getting all this white powder from.’
    â€˜White powder? What white powder?’
    I just had to ask, didn’t I?
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Chapter Five
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    Tucked away in Bloomsbury, in a side road off Gower Street, is a little bit of London University you won’t find on any normal campus map. And since the animal liberationists turned actively violent ten years ago. it hasn’t appeared in a phone book either. It’s a combination of zoology and veterinary research departments and I don’t know what its proper title is. All I know is Zoe works there.
    I had known Zoe for about five years. For two or three months, we had known each other very well, and we’d managed to remain friends afterwards. So much so, I’d even been invited to her wedding a year or so back, but maybe she’d forgotten about the reception by now. She was doing some sort of research into animal psychology, having somehow managed to survive the cuts in funding at both the university and London Zoo. More than once I’d volunteered Springsteen for testing, but she’d always said there wasn’t enough anaesthetic. I was paying her a call not because I wanted her views on felix sociopathus but because she was the only person I knew who had access to a laboratory. A legal one, anyway.
    They had tightened up on security since my last visit, with a new reception desk and two uniformed security guards who, for once, looked as if they might know what they were doing, so it called for the old delivery trick.
    I exchanged my leather jacket for the ageing sweater in Armstrong’s boot to put me in character. (Real cabbies never wear leather jackets; too sweaty.) Then I rummaged through the glove compartment to find an empty padded envelope, a roll of Sellotape and a felt-tipped pen. I also unearthed a pad of PoDs – Proof of Delivery slips – that I had hung onto from my last job with a dispatch company, knowing they’d come in handy one day.
    Mrs Delacourt had given me a small plastic bag, the sort you use in freezers, with a vacuum snap seal, containing a white crystalline powder. I stuffed it inside the Jiffy bag and Sellotaped the end, using my new teeth to bite off bits of tape. On the envelope I wrote ‘Dr Zoe Morgan’, and felt pleased with myself at remembering her married name. Then I added ‘Personal’.
    Then I parked Armstrong right outside the office doors so they got a good look at me gelling out of a cab, stuck