The Trade of Angels

By Derek Parker

John Opie, a young artist, falls under suspicion when a teen-age boy he has been using as a model disappears. But this is only the start of a story which involves him in murder and suspense as he and his girl-field Penny discover that young Jonny has been kidnapped by a world-wife paedophile ring run by a plump, amoral Englishman. They follow the trail to Athens, then to a remote village in the Peloponnese and the headquarters of the organisation. Opie, innocent of any knowledge of guns or violence, is captured and faces a highly unpleasant death as a participant in a snuff movie. The wild and still relatively unknown countryside of the Mani makes a wild background to an unusual story.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Derek Parker
• Release date: Sep 8, 2015
• ISBN: 9781311706430

Derek Parker

Derek Parker was Educated at Fowey Grammar School, and started his working life as a reporter on The Cornishman, a weekly newspaper in Penzance, going on to become drama critic of the daily Western Morning News in Plymouth. Having made his first radio broadcast at the age of fifteen, he left newspapers to join the staff of TWW, an independent television station in Cardiff, Wales, as announcer, newscaster, scriptwriter, presented and interviewer. From 1960 he worked as a freelance writer and broadcaster. Between 1965 and 1970 he edited Poetry Review, and in 1968 published (as his first prose book) a short biography of Lord Byron. During the 1960s he wrote and introduced innumerable programmes for both the domestic and World Service of the BBC, most of them concerned with the arts. He reviewed television and books for The Times and various periodicals. He has been a member of the Grand Council of the Royal Academy of Dance, and was for many years a member its Executive Committee, for some time as chairman of its Development Committee. He has been chairman of the Radiowriters’ Committee of the Society of Authors, was for two years (1981-2) chairman of its Management Committee, and between 1985 and 2002 edited its journal, The Author. He remains a member of its Council. Between 1969 and 2002 he was a member of the General Committee of the Royal Literary Fund (as Registrar between 1977 and 2002). His publications include: The Fall of Phaethon (poems, 1954); Company of Two (poems, with Paul Casimir, 1955); Beyond Wisdom (verse play, 1957); Byron and his World (1968); The Twelfth Rose (ballet libretto, 1969); The Question of Astrology (1970); The Westcountry (1973); John Donne and his World (1975); Familiar to All: William Lilly and 17th century astrology (1975); Radio: the great years (1977); The Westcountry and the Sea (1980); The Memoirs of Cora Pearl (fiction, as William Blatchford, 1983); Fifteen erotic novels, published anonymously (1988-96); God of the Dance: Vaslav Nijinsky (1988); The Trade of Angels (fiction, 1988); The Royal Academy of Dancing: the first 75 years (1995); Writing Erotic Fiction (1995); Nell Gwyn (2000); Roman Murder Mystery: the true story of Pompilia (2001); Casanova (2002); Benvenuto Cellini (2004); Voltaire (2005); Outback (2008); Banjo Paterson (2009) (2010); Governor Macquarie (2010) He has collaborated with his wife, Julia Parker, on over thirty other books, including The Compleat Astrologer and Parkers’ Astrology.

Book preview

THE TRADE OF ANGELS

Derek Parker

Published by Smashwords, 2015

This book is licenced for your personal enjoyment only. This ebook may not be re-sold or given away to other people. If you would like to share this book with another person, please published an additional copy for each recipient. If you are reading this book and did not purchase it, or it was not purchased for your use only, then please return to Smashwords.com and purchase your own copy. Thank you for respecting the hard work of this author.

THE TRADE OF ANGELS

Chapter One

‘A chocolate smoothie,’ said the boy, ‘and one of those.’ He pointed decisively at a very large cream cake.

The woman with him – his mother? perhaps mid-twenties, fair, slim, pretty – laughed. They sat down. She ordered a flat white.

Opie finished his orange juice and ordered another.

Doll, behind the counter, said, ‘That’s your third.’

‘Never mind. Could be worst – could be macchiato, Or beer.’

‘Some of ‘em go straight down the pub,’ Doll said. ‘If they’re open, and put back on what they’ve just taken off. Then they come in next time and grumble about their weight. Tossers.’

She turned her back and began clattering cups in the sink.

There were only the three customers in the snack bar, and Opie couldn’t quite work out what the other two were doing there. It was men’s day, as you could tell from the grunting and groaning coming from the gym, the other side of the slatted wooden screen at the end of the counter. She must be a member. Just brought the boy in for a coffee and cake. Opie stretched, his muscles still aching agreeably from his work-out, his body still glowing from the warmth of the sauna. He looked at the boy and his mother.

The boy was as complete an image of a British child of ten or eleven as you could hope to see: blond hair brushed foreword in a fringe, a sort of tough slimness about him, a lively, inquisitive face, bright eyes and a rounded cheek on which could you sense a slight down. A light blue pullover picked up the colour of his eyes. A touch pretty? You could say so – yet not in the least girlish.

They had been to see The Good Dinosaur, and he was talking about it animatedly, his arms waving, his face brightand humorous, enquiring, scornful by turns. His mother leaned towards him, absorbed in what he was saying. Opie suddenly realized that the boy was exactly what he needed. He sipped his juice for a while, wondering how to make the approach. Finally, he put his glass down and leaned forward.

‘Um – excuse me.’

The woman looked up, rather doubtfully.

‘Could I have a word?’

She was wary. She looked at him. Not unattractive, she thought. Middle to late thirties, maybe, open, agreeable face with darkish hair which badly needed a comb, and was still dark with perspiration at the neck. A nice body, she guessed.

He moved a couple of stools towards them.

‘There’s no way of making this sound anything but strange, but I wonder if I would loan me your – is it your son? – for an hour or two?’

As he’d expected, she didn’t look happy.

‘I’m an artist, actually,’ he said, ‘and at the moment I’ve a set of drawings to do for a magazine, and your son is absolutely the type of boy I need to draw. I’m illustrating a set of educational books for children, for the overseas market – Teach Yourself English – and I need to show a typical English boy in various situations – you know, at shool, at home, on the bus and so on. The thing is, I’ve not been doing conventional drawings for a while – been concentrating on other things. I make my living drawing a cartoons strip, actually. All I’d want to do would be to make some quick sketches, and of course I’d need you to come with him – I’ve got a studio just down the road, in my flat at Shepherd’s Bush.’

‘Oh, I don’t think so,’ she said.

‘Oh, go on, Mum. It sounds good fun. I wouldn’t mind being all over the world in a picture book. Would they know who I was?’

‘Well, not exactly,’ Opie said, ‘but you’d be all over the world, all right. And you might find it rather fun – there’ll be plenty for you to look at in the studio. Do you know Stanley the Spartan, I wonder?’

‘Yes,’ the boy said, ‘you know, Mum, in the Echo.’

‘Well, I draw it – it’s written by a friend of mine.’

‘Awesome!’

‘If necessary,’ Opie said to his mother, ‘I could get a letter for you from my publishers. Doll here’s known me for years – well for the years I’ve been coming here.’

She was piling oranges into the juicer.

‘I’m ever so respectable, aren’t I , Doll? Despite being an artist, and that.’

She knew when she was being sent up.

‘Mrs Brackenbury,’ she said, ‘I had Mr Opie’s probation officer in here only yesterday, and he was saying he’s improved so much he hardly recognised him, what with him having the tattoos taken off his face. He was saying he’d be allowed to get a proper job soon, instead of all that drawing on the back of envelopes.’

‘Right,’ said Opie, ‘I’ll be sending round some of the boys to rough you up after work.’

Doll grinned.

‘He’s all right,’ she said, ‘ really quite respectable, for an artist. He’s been coming here long enough for us to turn him into quite a decent bloke, really.’

‘Look, I tell you what, Mrs – er – Mrs Brackenbury,’ said Opie, ‘please think it over. Perhaps I could text you sometime? Or better still, I’ve got a card here somewhere . . .’ He rummaged in a pocket. ‘Yes, here – my mobile number’s on it. Perhaps you’d have a think and drop me a text if you’d be prepared to bring him along for a couple of hours one afternoon. I suppose he’s still on the Easter break . . .’

‘Oh, Mum, please,’ said the boy. ‘It does sound fin, and I’ve sort of run out of things to do. I say, would you do me a drawing of Stanley?’

‘Certainly,’ said Opie, ‘and you with him if you like.’

‘Cor! Hear that, Mum?’

‘It would have to be a Saturday afternoon, or a Sunday,’ she said, capitulating’ ‘I work during the week.’

‘Excellent. But I really don’t want to press you. Just let me know later – or, look, you and, um –‘

‘Jonny.’

‘You and Jonny could come over and have some tea tomorrow afternoon and have a look at the studio, and some of the drawings, and you can make up your mind then.’

‘Well, yes, that sounds good,’ she said. ‘Don’t see why not.’

‘Splendid. The address is on the card. Ignore the agent’s address at the bottom – it’s a commercial card. My address is the one on the left, and when you get there it’s the top bell. Opie’s the name. About half-three, four-ish?’

‘O.K.’ she said. ‘Now, Jonny, come on – I want to call in at Sainsbury’s on the way home.’

She got up, paid her bill, after a slight hesitation shook his hand, and left, Jonny trailing behind and smiling shyly with a natural charm that made Opie long for his sketchbook.

‘Nice couple,’ said Doll.

‘She’s a member?

‘Oh, yes, has been for ten years or more, I’d say. Met her husband here. He was an airline pilot and she was a steward, but for different airlines. He used to come here to work out on men’s days and she came and did a little exercise and had saunas and whatnot on ladies’ days. Then Mr Price started the Christmas parties, and they met at the very first one. Within a month she’d left – I think it was Lufthansa – and transferred to BA, and about four months later they were married. Then Jonny came along, and only a year later Bill went west in that crash at Delhi – remember? – about seventy people killed. And the awful thing was that he was blamed, or carried some blame for it. She went through a terrible time – I think it was only having Jonny that prevented her going bonkers. We didn’t see much of her for a time – a year or two; she gave up her membership. Then she started coming in for the occasional beauty treatment about four years ago, and now she comes regularly, usually after work – I think she’s at a boutique down the King’s Road somewhere. Getting a bit old for the airline, I suppose.’

‘Dear God!’ said Opie, ‘what are things coming to? She only looks in her, well, late twenties?’

‘A good thirty three or four, I’d say. Tribute to our beautician. But the truth is I don’t think she feels like flying again. She brings young Jonny in often for a coffee when she’s passing, like today.’

‘Not remarried?’

‘No. I think she’s one of those one-man women.’

‘Not like some we could mention.’

Doll grinned.

‘Don’t be like that. All I mean, she’s never used this place for pick-ups. Jonny’s her man now. Sounds a bit unhealthy, actually, I’d say – wouldn’t suit me, anyway. What’s life without a bounce in bed from time to time? She’s absolutely fixated on the boy. Doesn’t spoil him, mind – she lets him go off on his own, and that. I think someone must have had a talk to her about that, ʼcause at one time she never let him out of her sight. Even now, sometimes when he’s just gone off to the Odeon next door with a friend, she’ll come in here and sit about worrying whether he’s been captured by IS! You goin’ to draw him, then?’

‘That’s the idea.’

‘She’ll certainly never let him alone with you.’

‘Can’t really blame her for that – wouldn’t want her to.’

‘Still, it looks as though she took to you.’

‘Can’t blame her for that, either,’ grinned Opie. ‘It’s me natural charm.’ He got up and stretched. ‘Well, I’m off.’

He put his head around the screen and said goodbye to Fred, who was on his hundredth-and-somethingth press-upon the inclined board. Fred, an unemployed professional wrestler, grimaced and panted by way of acknowledgement. Outside a blustery wind was blowing up Kensington High Street.

Back at the flat he dumped his gym things in the cupboard, took a large jug of water, plopped a dozen ice-cubes in it and went into the studio to finish plotting out Stanley the Spartan and the Turkish Hordes, episode 37. He checked Penny’s dialogue and began trying to fit it into the particularly small balloons he had allowed for it. He only half-heard Penny let herself in downstairs with her key, three hours later, only became conscious of her presence when she put her hand on his shoulder and planted a kiss on his neck.

‘How’s Stan, then?’

‘Too bleeding talkative, as usual,’ he grumbled.

‘Well, what we’re aiming at is lots of dialogue and very, very little scenery.’

‘Ha ha and O dear and thanks very much.’

‘What’s for supper?’

He felt her breasts pressed against his back, turned around in his swivel chair and put his hands on her tight buttocks, pulling her between his thighs.

‘I thought perhaps each other,’ he said, sliding his hands up under her jumper and undoing the straps of her bra.

An hour later, when she had followed him into the shower, he pottered about in the kitchen and started getting together the eggs and chopping the ham for a couple of omelettes while Kitten, the absurdly named twelve-year-old spaniel who had belonged to his mother until her death, nosed around licking his bare feet and waiting for any bits and pieces of bread which might perhaps fall from the kitchen table.

They sat at the table to eat, Penny with a towel insecurely wrapped around her until it fell to her waist for the third time and she gave up on it.

‘Too hot for clothes,’ she said. The flat was on the top floor of an Edwardian town house, had a flat roof, and became an oven when the sun shone.

Opie, who hadn’t even bothered with a towel, nodded. He was half watching a TV programme on the portable in which children from the industrial north were being interviewed about drugs by a rather edgy man with a thin moustache and an ingratiating air. It came to an end and the credits rolled, with a voice-over announcing that Charles Hammond would shortly be filming interviews with Russian children for a new series of his award-winning programmes Children to Children. Watch this space. Then the news.

This started well for Penny, because there was film of the Greek Prime Minister once again making an appeal to Germans to shovel a few squillion Euros into the more or less empty Greek banks. As he addressed the Parliament, a semi-inaudible Greek translator muttered in what he thought was idiomatic English.

‘That’s not what he’s really saying at all,’ said Penny. ‘At least, it’s in a way what he’s saying, but it’s all slightly off-centre. You’d get a quite different impression if you understood Greek – and I’m sure the Germans are getting a German translator giving an equally wrong impression on some other channel.’

‘Well, you’re a nefarious race, all the same.’

‘Don’t you try tarring me with your ready-made brushes. I’m only a quarter Greek, you know.’

‘Very pleasant quarter, though,’ said Opie, slipping a hand up her thigh. ‘All that lickable olive skin . . .’

‘How do you know that’s the Greek quarter? But listen . . . oh, bugger.’

The Greek Prime Minister had given way to film from Sydney of a large protest meeting objecting to the Australian Prime Minister attempting, once more, to convince the world that global warming was crap.

‘They won’t get anywhere,’ said Opie. ‘My cousin in Melbourne tells me that every voter in the country hates and despises that creep, his approval rating is about minus three hundred - but he simply ignores them and ploughs straight on with whatever he wants to say and do. Bloody democracy. Never really worked, has it?’

‘Ah, well . . .’ she said, and stood up. ‘I must dress and get away.’

‘Really?’

He stood up, went around to her and took her in his arms, feeling the familiar shape of her breasts, belly, thighs against his own. She slipped her hand between them and felt his swelling cock.

‘Ever hopeful’, she said. ‘No, really, I’ve loads to do, and I’ve got to be up at dawn.’

‘Had any new ideas for Stan? I’d really like to get him off on some new track.’

‘Not really. You?’

‘Well, I thought we might get him away from Greece and maybe meet the ancient Britons.’

‘How’d he get there?’

‘I dunno. Sail on a millstone maybe – no, that was some saint or other, wasn’t it. Or he could get into the Spartan Expeditionary Force to Ponders End.’

‘Well, I’ll do a bit of cursory thought when I’ve a moment. Not urgent, is it?

‘No – we’re well stock-piled. In fact I was thinking of a few weeks off. Could you get away? A long time since we’ve really relaxed. We could slope off somewhere – not Tunisia, I guess, but there must be somewhere where we’re not going to get shot at. Oh, by the way, you couldn’t come round tomorrow afternoon, could you? Tea-timeish?’

‘Guess so. Any special reason, apart from the usual one?’ She let go of his cock, which had in any case had second thoughts about getting really ready for action, and walked towards the bedroom.

‘Well, there was this boy I picked up this afternoon . . .’

‘Dear me!’ She put on her g-string.

‘No, no, no – I mean . . .’

She giggled.

‘S’alright. I might suspect you of all sorts of things, but not that!’

‘Well, I was at the gym, in the bar, and this girl – well, woman – came in with an absolutely enchanting boy of about thirteen, just what I need for sketches for the kids’ language books, and I’ve persuaded her to bring him round tomorrow to convince her that I’m pure as the driven snow and that she can let me make a few sketches of him. I think it’ll be o.k., but it would be good if you could be here.’

‘Of course, love. No prob. Good you spotted him. I know you’ve been a bit worried about doing such conventional work after a fair while.’

Not exactly worried - maybe a bit concerned.’

Penny, now fully dressed, kissed him and left. He had another shower, this time cold.

The following afternoon Penny poured out tea and made polite conversation while Opie first showed Jonny the Stan stuff, then gave him some paper and coloured crayons to play about with while he made a few sketches. Kitten, as usual ingratiated herself, being very good with children, and made a lifelong friend within a couple of minutes of Jonny’s arrival. Fay Brackenbury was delighted with the two quick sketches of Jonny Opie knocked off, so he gave them to her, and when he promised a finished watercolour, or if she preferred a set of the finished sketches for the book, she was completely won over.

Even so, she was not about to allow Jonny to come to the studio on his own. She came back with him next day, on the Sunday, and sat watching like a hawk while pretending to read. But by the end of that afternoon she was quite happy and suggested she bring the boy over during the week for a couple of long sessions; Opie must of course never let Jonny out of his sight, and should bring him back to their flat in Notting Hill when she telephoned to say she was home.

By the second afternoon alone with the boy Opie began to appreciate her feelings about keeping him safe. He was an absolute delight. Apart frim the completely unaffected charm of his physical presence, he had a bright mind, a parrot-like gift for imitating voices, a quick smile and deft humour, and a readiness to be helpful in any way – from brewing tea to taking Kitten for walks down the Avenue. Opie watched boy and dog from the window as they ambled along the pavement, Kitten nosing hopefully at scraps of paper in the gutter, Jonny engrossed in everything about him – the dog, the front gardens of the houses, the cars, everything, moving or still. Opie enjoyed drawing him as much as he had enjoyed drawing anything for years. He seemed completely un-boreable. He was content to sit still for ten, even twenty minutes without twitching or fidgeting, and, more important, without losing the wonderful inner liveliness that made his face so interesting. Being still seemed to help him to live that inner life while Opie was working. And his body, standing or sitting, still or in movement, had all the grace of a young animal, without any awkwardness; it was like drawing a tiger club relaxed after play. Even Kitten seemed to pick up the boy’s talent for relaxation, and would curl up with her head on his knee, or sit leaning against him with her face looking up into his as though she expected to be told something to her advantage.

Just over a fortnight after they had first met, Jonny came to the flat for one last session, somewhat reluctant for once. It was a magnificent early spring day, with the temperature in the low sixties, and the freshness of the situation having worn off he was a little restless. Fortunately, Opie just needed a couple of extra poses to finish off the collection of sketches from which he could prepare his finished drawings, and by three o’clock he was through.

‘Shall we walk back through Holland Park and give Kitten a trot?’ he asked.

‘Awesome,’ said Jonny, and fetched the dog’s lead from behind the studio door.

They walked to the Park along the quiet afternoon streets. The first sounds of working lawn-mowers were coming from behind the walls of the big houses around the Park, and there were a few cars in the car park below the Belvedere, and children climbing and swinging in the playground. The cherry blossom was out, hanging in great swags against the blue of the walls of the Commonwealth Institute below the big recreation field. One hardy sunbather lay shirtless on the grass The\y walked along the path below the tumbled walls of Holland House and turned up part the entrance to the youth hostel and through what Jonny called ‘the wild bit’, with Kitten continually tugging at her lead on the off-chance that it might break and release her to disappear into the undergrowth and gambol with the emus and peacocks and cause havoc among the moorhens.

‘When shall I be in the book?’ asked Jonny.

‘Well, it all takes rather a long time. But I can send you some proofs of the drawings in about three months.’

‘Proofs?’

‘Well, some rough prints showing how the drawings’ll look, just so’s I can check that they’re all right before they print the books. The books themselves will be out in the late autumn, I should think.’

‘That’s a bloody long time,’ said Jonny, with a sly glance to see what Opie thought of his language. Opie ignored it. ‘Shan’t I be seeing you again, then?’

‘Well, no reason why not, if you’d like. I’ve been so caught up with drawing Stan, lately, I’ve had no time for drawing real things rather than comic things, so I think I may go off and do some sketching. Then Penny and I