Angel on the Inside Read Online Free

full tank of diesel in Armstrong II, no job to go to, didn’t have to wear a tie and the pubs would be opening in five minutes, this wasn’t the time.
    It was, however, the perfect time for me to arrive, if not in the nick of time, then right on cue to sort out the horror and chaos that had engulfed Number 9 Stuart Street that morning. Not that the place was a smoking ruin, or had fallen into a fissure in the Earth, or had been drowned in a giant chemical spill or anything. It was worse than that.
    As soon as I turned Armstrong II into the road, I was transfixed – hypnotised – by the sight that greeted me. There on the pavement outside the open door of Number 9 was my downstairs neighbour Fenella, arms aloft, jumping frantically into the air as if trying to block an invisible and considerably taller attacking basketball player. The sight was arresting because she was wearing pyjamas – knee-length shorts and top patterned with large green frog designs – under a belted pink satin dressing gown which she was having trouble keeping closed. On her feet were furry slippers in the shape of panda heads and on her back was a small bag made out of a furry monkey toy with long arms to form the straps. A vampire monkey from the way the head was pressing into the back of her neck. To top it all, she wore a hat, a battered brown canvas hat with embroidered flowers; a hat that people wore at Glastonbury Festivals when they were making an ironic post-modernist comment about the proceedings (or maybe just taking the piss); a hat Paddington Bear would have shunned as uncool.
    As all my attempts at lip-reading have ended in disappointment, or a slap in the face, I couldn’t tell what she was shouting over the throb of Armstrong’s engine. But shouting she was, and getting very agitated about something. Dressed the way she was, it was a sight that would have frightened the horses, had there been any around, and it seemed to have cleared the street of innocent civilians. It was a sight that would have made even someone as courageous as the late, great Queen Mum think twice about visiting the East End.
    I drew up to the kerb in front of her and killed the engine. At last I could hear her, even without opening the windows.
    â€˜Help! Help!’ she was yelling. Then, clocking Armstrong II: ‘Taxi!’
    â€˜Fenella, it’s me!’ I shouted from inside the cab.
    â€˜Well, it’s about time!’ she screamed as soon as she focused on me.
    Whatever was wrong, nick of time wasn’t going to cut it for Fenella this morning. I hear she has the same problem with Superman as well.
    â€˜What’s happening, dudette?’ I asked cheerfully, stepping out onto the pavement until Fenella slippered her way up to me and her panda feet were nose to toe with my trainers. I tried not to look down at them, but they were hypnotic.
    â€˜Didn’t you get my message?’ she said in a voice that could have opened the prosecution at Nuremburg.
    â€˜What message?’
    â€˜The one I left on your mobile phone, the one you said was for emergencies only.’
    Ah. The mobile phone that was switched off and locked in Armstrong’s glove compartment.
    â€˜No I didn’t. You must’ve dialled the wrong number.’
    â€˜Well when you didn’t call back,’ she said huffily, hands on hips, ‘I dialled 999, but they wouldn’t come either.’
    â€˜Who wouldn’t?’
    â€˜The ambulance people.’
    â€˜Is somebody hurt?’
    A frenetic split-screen of images fast-forwarded across my brain. Lisabeth slipping in the shower and unable to get up. Inverness Doogie drunk and running amok with a meat cleaver. Miranda, late for work, going arse over elbow down the stairs from Flat 4. Mr Goodson, his secret life as a bank robber finally revealed, gunshot and bloodied, holed up in his room waiting for the final assault from armed police. Lisabeth in the shower