Read Online Just Another Angel by Mike Ripley - Free Book Online Page A

another flight of stairs and through the triple-lock door, was one large, open-plan office containing half-a-dozen desks, several designer’s easels, a couple of typewriters and a variety of video-recorders, amps, decks, tape-decks and speakers all spread carelessly across a red metal shelving unit that still had its Habitat price tag on. The office hadn’t yet got to the word-processor and rented potted plants stage, but it would. Still, there was a good five grand’s worth of gear there if you counted the mobile phones I also spotted. Not that it was really any of my business, of course, but it probably was insured ...
    There was also a coffee machine, which Boot ordered me to crank into action while he started making calls on one, and sometimes two, of the mobile phones. I put him down as a phonoholic – he probably never had one as a child – for all he did while I was there was ring people. He didn’t say much to them after ‘Hello,’ he just grunted a lot.
    Staff drifted in and sat down at various workstations, though not many of them made any obvious effort to work. Mostly they found a spare phone and rang people up. Their mothers, their bookmakers, even a bank manager or two. One even rang the speaking clock just to feel part of the crowd. Maybe Boot had bought into Telecom shares.
    Being the only one not phoning anybody, I was the only one who heard Lloyd, though it was a good five minutes before I saw him.
    I didn’t identify the music until he was probably half-way up the stairs, and even then I had to listen carefully before plumping for ‘Riverside Stomp’, a Johnny Dankworth (sorry, John Dankworth) piece from a British B picture called The Criminal . (Directed by Joseph Losey in 1960 and starring Stanley Baker and Sam Wanamaker. Dankworth played alto and Dudley Moore played piano, if you ever need to know.)
    I’d forgotten that Lloyd was deeply into the whole Absolute Beginners scene, from drainpipe shiny Italian suits (nowadays made in Bulgaria) and bootlace ties to driving around in an ancient yellow Triumph Herald coupé. So not everything was absolutely authentic, but you know how difficult it is to pick up an original Bubble Car these days? Fashions change, though, and I predict a rush on the old Fiat 500s any day now. As soon as I get some cash, I’m cornering the market, which is something the Fiats never did. The other anachronism with Lloyd, of course, was the portable stereo clamped to his shoulder. Now I know that the old Ferranti Gramophone would hardly be practical let alone smart, but in truth I don’t think anything would separate Lloyd from his Brixton briefcase.
    To give him his due, he did turn the noise level down to a dull roar as he entered the office. ‘Well, hello one and all,’ he beamed. ‘And Angel-my-man, it’s you himself.’
    â€˜The one and only. How’s the wrestling business?’
    â€˜More coin there than the music business, my man, and –’ he looked around the office – ‘you get to meet a nicer class of person. But I’m a specialist, man. Female wrestlers only, and only in mud.’
    Boot managed to put down a phone for a minute and ambled over to us holding an artwork board.
    â€˜Your record cover, Mr Allen,’ he said. Then to me: ‘See how polite I can be when this pimpy poseur owes us money?’
    Lloyd flipped the cover sheet back and looked at the design, then showed it to me. It was a sepia tint of the Great Wall of China with the faces of the three members of the group Peking superimposed at intervals as if carved into the stone. In small, Chinese-style characters down one side was the album’s title: ‘55 Days’. You could have guessed.
    â€˜That’s large, man, really large,’ breathed Lloyd like a proud parent. ‘What do you make of it, Mr A?’
    â€˜Awesome, Lloyd, really awesome.’
    Lloyd’s clothes may be 1960