Read Online Angel on the Inside by Mike Ripley - Free Book Online

know the phone was downstairs?’
    â€˜What?’
    â€˜How did she know,’ he said patiently, ‘the phone was a flight of stairs away?’
    â€˜Fucked if I know. Point is, she did.’
    Damn. Another good question.
    â€˜Sounds a bit thin.’
    â€˜A bit thin ? Is that all you’ve got to say?’
    â€˜No, mate, I can say we’re ‘ere and that’ll be 14 pounds, please.’
    â€˜ Fourteen quid ?’
    â€˜Hackney to Hampstead, this time of night, guv .... A black cab would have cost you more.’
    But the advice would have been better.
    Â 
    I hoped none of the neighbours saw me arrive home by mini-cab.
    I couldn’t have cared less if they saw me weaving towards the house swaying, ever so slightly, in the breeze, which strangely did not seem to be affecting the trees or flowers in the local gardens. But a mini-cab: that was letting the side down. When I first started parking Armstrong in the driveway, some of the neighbours probably tried to get a rate rebate. Not that I gave a hoot. I didn’t know any of them and was happy to avoid the rota of Christmas parties we were no longer invited to. Well, not since that first one.
    It was odds-on I hadn’t been seen anyway. It would take a bomb going off in the street to arouse any interest once they had settled down behind their burglar alarms and closed circuit TV cameras for the evening, even though all the latest surveys showed that good street lighting was more of a deterrent to people on the naughty than CCTV. In fact in some boroughs, street crime had gone up when CCTV was installed.
    Which thankfully made me remember our burglar alarm, which had been repaired at vast expense after Anthony Keith Flowers – the ex-Mr Amy – had nobbled it with ridiculous ease when he broke into the house and garage and made off with Amy’s BMW. (I was having as much success with the house’s insurance company about that as I was about the car, my first claim form having been returned as ‘frivolous’. Bloody cheek.)
    Whilst one part of my brain was trying to remember the combination as I struggled with the door, another part – the part that was prone to wandering to a land where the sun and women were warm but the beer and the music stayed cool and all were free – was thinking that Amy wouldn’t have set the alarm if she was home and I wasn’t. Especially not given my track record of setting the thing off by accident.
    Therefore, I was home first, which meant I didn’t have to be quiet or creep into one of the spare bedrooms and maybe there was time for a nightcap or I could get into bed and pretend I’d had an early night after a pretty stressful day.
    It never occurred to me that Amy had come home and gone out again.
    Not until the next morning.
    And it looked as if she’d gone for a while.
    Â 
    I didn’t twig that right away, of course. It was only when I checked the shoe racks at the bottom of Amy’s wardrobe and I realised that her Manolo Blahnik flat red sandals, her Sigerson Morrison green high heels and the lime green strappy sandals by Gina, along with her favourite Jimmy Choos, had all gone, that I knew something strange was going on.
    Even later, I checked the garage to discover the Freelander had gone, which sort of confirmed things. I suppose I should have looked there first, but I’ve never been hot on garages. You don’t have to be if you drive a London cab; the kerb is your garage.
    A month before, when Anthony Keith Flowers had burgled the house and also helped himself to Amy’s new BMW, I hadn’t thought to check the garage then, so I didn’t actually get to report it stolen until I had hit it with a bulldozer. Over such technicalities lawyers can argue for years.
    Once I had the immediate priorities out of the way – orange juice, coffee, shower, breakfast and a couple of games of Free Cell on the computer with some