Read Angel Hunt for Free Online

was getting close to foot-stamping time.
    â€˜The man on the roof.’
    â€˜What are these men doing on my cousin’s roof? Just how many people are going on roofs? I don’t have anybody on my roof.’
    I nodded to where Mrs Patel had strung ‘MERRY CHRISTMAS’ in large red letters across the drinks shelf, anchored by a bottle of Bailey’s Cream at one end and a six-pack of headbanging lager at the other.
    â€˜Well, if you don’t have a visitor on your roof at this time of year, it probably means you’ve been naughty, not nice.’ I handed my basket to Mrs Patel. Next to the till was a box of chocolate Christmas tree decorations. I picked out a chocolate Santa Claus and showed it to Nassim.
    â€˜He checks twice, you know.’
    Â 
    I cooked and ate and even washed up; tried to get into some music; and resisted the temptation to open a bottle of wine.
    Nothing worked. My sleep/wake clock had bust a spring, and I was worried about the fact that it had been Billy Tuckett who had dropped through the skylight. Why couldn’t it have been a total stranger? Then I could have left it alone.
    Instead I rang Bunny, which nine times out of eight is a dangerous thing to do. I didn’t ring him to borrow money, because he never has any to lend. I didn’t ring him because he plays a mean alto-sax, though he is one of the best reed men currently not working out of a studio in the Windward Isles (wherever). I didn’t ring him to ask his advice on how to pick up women – and if I did, it would only be to find out where he buys his chloroform.
    I rang Bunny because he too had been at university with me, though, funnily enough, I didn’t really know him until later. As a student, he had very quickly shacked up with a second-year chemistry undergraduate who had very definite ideas that Degree Day was rapidly followed by Wedding Day. And once Bunny graduated, so it did. He got a job in insurance, and the marriage lasted about three years and three months, then Bunny found out that his quiet, dutiful wife had been having an affair with her boss at the food research place where she worked for roughly three years and two months. Bunny threatened to chainsaw the flat in Muswell Hill and torch the goldfish, although maybe it was the other way round. What in fact he did was give up his regular job, take his half of the Muswell Hill flat in cash and go out and buy an alto, followed by tenor and then soprano saxes. Then he dedicated his life to music and the pursuit of women, and we found we had something in common.
    Music, that is.
    A female voice answered Bunny’s phone and told me he was out seeing a man about a second-hand tenor sax but I could leave a message after the beep. Then she yelled ‘Beep’ so loudly I ended up a yard away from our communal house phone, which is nailed to the wall just inside the front door. I wondered where Bunny had found her.
    I played along, saying I was acting on behalf of Boot-in Inc Recording Studios – an outfit Bunny and I had actually done some backtrack recording for when they wanted a sound they couldn’t synthesise – and that it was vital that I contact Mr Warren immediately to consult on his availability for a major recording contract, and which pub was he in anyway?
    â€˜Calthorpe Arms, Grays Inn Road,’ she said, and I said thanks and hung up.
    As I turned from the phone, I realised the stairs were blocked by Lisabeth, hands on hips, outside her flat door.
    â€˜What are you doing here?’ she said, as if reading from a Gestapo training manual.
    â€˜I live here,’ I said innocently.
    â€˜You’re supposed to be away for the week.’
    The prosecution rests, m’lud. Case closed. Pass the black cap.
    â€˜I’m back for a couple of nights,’ I said weakly. Why did I feel intimidated? Maybe it was because she had the advantage of the high ground and was looking down on me.
    No. It was