Moggerhanger

Chapter Thirteen

When the steward knocked at six to say we’d be landing in an hour Bill dressed as quickly as only a soldier could. “Where were you last night?”

“On deck,” I told him, “getting a breath of air.”

“What, till four o’clock?”

“How did you know?”

“I sleep with one eye closed and one eye open. And you stank like Grimsby with the trawlers in.”

The subject of Rachel was too precious, so I said nothing, smoothed my suit, and followed him to breakfast before we could be called to the car deck.

A few tables away, she made a discreet move of a hand before biting into a bun. She looked tired, but happy. Her father had his back to me, but he noticed, and turned to give as much of a smile as could be mustered so early on. Was it for having let him into the car queue, or for my responsibility in sparking up his daughter’s features?

Bill finished his roll, and lifted my bun. “So it was her you were with? I always knew you had good taste.”

To stop Rachel’s father coming across and hearing Bill twitting me I went to their table. “I’d like to wish you a good journey back to England, sir.”

He was dressed for travel, a pepper and salt three-piece suit, a watch in his waistcoat pocket, well polished boots, and a floral tie. His semi-tragic sensitive eyes were the same as Rachel’s, though lit by middle-aged kindness and self-assurance. He looked as if he’d been something of a seducer himself at one time, and even now must have had a charming bedside way with his patients.

I offered a hand and told him my name, and at the flicker of his eyes thought he well knew the state between me and Rachel. “It was quite a scramble at the dock gates last night.”

He spread butter on his roll. “Thank you for letting me into the line. I appreciated it, though I was about to battle in myself.”

I had nothing to linger for, and didn’t want to, so wished them luck, and went back to my table. “You have all the luck,” Bill said.

“And you know why?” I sat down. “I’m subtle and understanding in dealing with women. I don’t go at it like a bull at a gate. Hey, where’s my breakfast?”

“You were getting on so well I didn’t think you’d be coming back.”

“You freebooting swine.” The coffee had all gone, as well. “I’m not a founder member of Weight Watchers. I’m starving.” I waved the waiter to bring another breakfast, but he pointed to the tanoy telling everybody to go on deck and have their passports stamped.

Heavy rain was sheeting over Brindisi, as if cleaning it for tomorrow when we wouldn’t be there. After queuing an hour in a corridor to get the inspection done we went to the car deck and waited again. I’d thought we would drive straight off, through the town and away, but there was a long trail of cars leading to the customs post.

“I’m not looking forward to this bit,” Bill said.

His comment made me nervous. “You haven’t got anything they shouldn’t see, have you?”

He showed the handgun thieved from the hatchback. “Only this little toy.”

My heart beat so fast I wanted to jump over the quayside and drown myself. “For God’s sake hide it.”

“Don’t get so worried.” He put it under the seat. “Anyway, what do you think is in the parcels and carrierbags they filled the boot up with in Greece? Beecham’s Powders? My handgun’s a mere bagatelle compared to that. I can’t understand, letting a little thing like a gun get on your wick. Or the powder packets, come to that. Don’t you remember all the gold and drugs we shifted in the past? It never bothered me.”

The pictures of being led away in leg irons by the carabinieri, with Rachel and her father looking on, then getting thrown into a helicopter and taken to Rome, where we’d get forty years apiece on the Island of Monte Cristo, quite frankly appalled me.

“Don’t you remember how we had our own book of rules when it came to smuggling gold bars?” Bill said, as we waited to go through what I could only think of as a meat grinder. “Maybe tactics have changed, but in those days the weekend was a bad time. The customs men tended to rely more on intuition as the crowds came through. They were on overtime, and had to justify it. Some smugglers didn’t realise that to go through from Monday to Wednesday when it was slack was also bad because they’d spot you a mile off, out of boredom. Thursday was best, I can’t think why. Probably they were still pleasantly making up their minds about what to do at the weekend. Another rule was don’t look too much like a smuggler, and never sport binoculars around your neck in their leather case, or shoulder a tennis racket, and certainly don’t swing a butterfly net. If you must wear a pocket watch carry it in your lapel, not strung across your waistcoat. And when you go through the Nothing to Declare channel try not to have the fact of what’s in your poacher’s pockets too much on your mind. Don’t, for instance, consciously look away from the customs man, and don’t try to stare him out, either. They may be the scum of the earth but they’re only doing their jobs.”

I moved up a few yards. “You’re scaring me sick. I’ll be a snivelling wreck by the time we get there.”

“No you won’t. Let me remind you of that woman June. Now there was a cool one. She worked in one of Moggerhanger’s strip clubs, till he spotted her as having the potential for better things. She was his girlfriend for a time. When she was little more than a kid Ron Delphick got her pregnant. He once tried to tap me for a few quid, but my way of refusal must have given him a sore behind for a week. Anyway, me and June did twelve trips altogether, and she was a pleasure to work with. We got through the customs every time, and shall I tell you how we did it?”

With barely a dozen cars before us, I tried to stop my legs shaking. “Don’t. I can’t take anymore.”

“It was cocaine. She was very clever. She made us buy identical suitcases and this is how it worked. The man goes in front with the suitcase that’s got the coke inside, and if he’s stopped and they find it he looks shocked and nonplussed, and swears he had the wrong case. He turns around and sees his wife behind who has an identical one. Her clothes and fancy underwear are in it, and his as well. They’re a very swinging couple, right? So where the other suitcase came from neither of them knows. Either some bloke at the carousel was still looking for it, or he had done a runner on seeing our charming couple stopped. We never had occasion to try the ruse out, but it gave us confidence. Neither of us wanted to go on trip number thirteen, obviously, both of us being very superstitious. I once saw a bloke though who thought thirteen was lucky, and he got caught. It was terrible, and I couldn’t help but feel sorry for him. A gang of customs men dragged him kicking and screaming away. It fair turned my stomach over to watch. But June and I gave up while the going was good.” He hopped out of the car. “We weren’t born yesterday.”

“Don’t leave me,” I cried.

It was no good. “You’ll be all right,” he said. “If I don’t see you when I get through the cars I’ll thumb a lift back to Blighty. And if the police wonder what I’m doing walking out this way I’ll just say I got lost coming off the ship. Good lads, them Italians. They’ll understand a momentary weakness.”

My face felt like a slab of chalk. “It won’t work.”

“It will. And I can’t stay in this car. The boot’s spilling over with hard drugs. If I’m lucky I’ll get a lift with your girlfriend’s father. He looks a decent chap. I don’t mind motoring in a Vauxhall.”

“So that’s your game. Get back in, you rat.”

His usual laugh told me that self-preservation was, as always, at the top of his list, yet there was a glimmer of sense in his callousness, for he assumed I’d be more resilient, if not lucky, on my own. “You’ll be as safe as houses,” he said. “I’ll most likely see you beyond the customs sheds in a couple of minutes.”

Because he had been coward enough to abandon me in my hour of need I would run him down rather than let him back in the car. He’d need all the pills, potions and jollop of the earth to recover his health after I’d done thumping him to death. Then I would drive to London with his blood drying on the front bumper of Moggerhanger’s smart Roller.

On the other hand, being hooked up with the most devious man I’d known, how could I not offer to take him back, knowing that if he was given a lift in the car with Rachel he would not only defame me but do his best to pull her into bed, and succeed due to the heightened state I had brought her to the previous night.

The customs man looked in. Everyone was being asked what goods they were bringing through, so I whistled a mindless tune as if knowing little about that sort of thing, and cared less, self-confidence coming back to bluff me through every peril. To seem worried about anything at all would encourage suspicion, so I put on the sort of slightly tired and daft expression he must have seen before on English faces.

“Nothing, I think,” till recalling that for his sake I must admit to something, so smiled at the recollection of an ornamental plate, which I began to describe in a loud voice at two words per minute, remembering the tourist tat piled on stalls along Greek highways. I twitched a leg and both hands as if intending to get out and find it for him, but after his appreciative look at the AA and RAC badges, as if he would like one or both to flaunt on his hat, he indicated that I stay in the car and move on.

The part of rich and innocent traveller had got me through, but I felt less relaxed now that it had, shattered in every fibre as I drove carefully out and into freedom. On pulling up beyond the dock gates Bill gave the autostop sign with his thumb, so I took him back on board before Rachel’s father came along in his Vauxhall.

He lifted his suitcase, a prominent GB sticker plainly showing, and from what car he had unpeeled it during his short absence I was too bemused to wonder. He was nothing if not resourceful. “You’ve got a lot of explaining to do.”

“Michael, I can’t see that it’s needed. You’re here, aren’t you? You’re unscathed. And you know why? Because there was nobody in the car except you. If there had been two, and one of them was me, who has criminal written all over his face — the Italians aren’t daft — they would have searched the car and found everything. Also, the unusual fact of you being on the wrong side of the car to the customs window preoccupied the man quite a bit, as I’d known it would. I realised you were upset and distrustful, not to say horrified, when I jumped ship, but that frame of mind helped to throw you back into your usual state of confident equilibrium. All that was going around my brainbox at a rate of knots, and I knew it was the only thing I could do to save the day for both of us. If instead of being a soldier of fortune I’d grown up to be an accountant I could say once again that you owe me.”

“You’re a bastard,” I said, “but I love you all the same.”

“I’m sure it will come as no surprise to you that I’ve been called that word a number of times in my life, but shall I tell you something? My mother and father were married when they had me, though they had a right miserable time of it till I was old enough to join the army. Then all I had to think about was how not to get killed, which was dead easy, and a step up in life compared to the hard times before.”

Rain sluiced down as if we were under water. “Don’t tell me you were turning your mother’s mangle when you were five, and she took in colliers’ washing. And she was pregnant for the tenth time.”

He flashed a smile in the mirror. “I was only three, if you want to know, which reminds me, breakfast on the boat was a bit skimpy, and it’s twelve o’clock now because we’ve changed our watches. To say my guts are rumbling would do them an injustice. There’s a banging down there like drums along the Congo.”

I’d had nothing since eating spuds and octopus in Greece, so pulled into a service station beyond Bari for petrol and something to put in our mouths. Opening Alice Whipplegate’s envelope of lira I made the mistake of asking Bill to go in and order while I filled the tank at the pumps.

I bought a detailed map of the area around Sophie’s house, then went into the café part of the building and saw six bottles of beer, three coffees, a plate of fancy cakes, a brace of enormous sandwiches, and several packets of cigarettes on the table. “Are you expecting company?”

His crocodile chops were ably managing a long crispy loaf with sheets of salami hanging out. I had to take mine to pieces, otherwise my jaws would come adrift. “You know I always eat on the assumption that you can never be sure where your next meal is coming from.”

“I suppose that’s why you stay so thin. But I have bad news for you, I’m afraid.” Problems kept you young, or so I had heard, and the next one coming up was how to get rid of Bill before turning off the motorway near Ancona to call on Sophie. I had memorised her address and pencilled the location in on the map. I pleasantly reflected that adventures with women had happened reasonably often in the last few weeks, with Frances my everloving wife first of all, then Claudine Forks the bereft Nottingham widow, followed by Sophie on the train, Marie in Greece, and Rachel on the ship. Now it was to be Sophie again. After checking through the list to make sure I’d left no one out I realised I’d almost forgotten what Sophie looked like, but supposed that when she opened the door with a welcoming smile I would know her well enough.

Bill swigged off the second cup of coffee, and on me picking up the third turned to a bottle of beer. “There’s no such thing as bad news for me,” he said.

“South of Ancona,” I told him, hoping he’d weep at the news, “I’m going off into the hills on my own. I’ve got a woman to see.”

He looked as if this was the best news for months. “That bint on the train you told me about? We can both see her.”

I didn’t swear, so that he would know I was serious. “No we won’t.”

“I promise to behave, and leave the field clear for you.”

She wouldn’t have anything to do with a scumbag like him, but I knew that if I dropped him on the motorway he would display his GB sign, which he’d stuck on the lapel of his jacket, and wait for Rachel’s father who, being a decent bloke, wouldn’t leave a smart-looking Englishman by the roadside. I wished I had never met him begging at Liverpool Street. “All right, we’ll stay together, but no hanky-panky, or I’ll cut you off without a crust.”

He tapped my hand. “It’s not that I’m after your woman. Why should I want to run you off? They’re all over the place. My only purpose in life is to see you safe to the White Cliffs of Dover and beyond, and make sure Moggerhanger’s powders don’t come to harm. If you tell him what a help I’ve been he might give me a job. I could do with a spot of work. I won’t have to do anymore begging then.”

You couldn’t discourage someone who needed employment, especially a friend from too long ago. We motored through one monsoon after another, water belting down like flak against a bomber. I was as anxious as a helmsman at his wheel, but kept the old ship ploughing on. When clouds moved aside near Pescara we saw the spectacular coast, and rivers with lushly wooded banks coming from the mountains, crossed by long viaducts. Tunnels under the connecting spurs were dim and narrow from the steering of a Roller, though I soon enjoyed whatever peril there was, Bill meanwhile telling stories of accidents he’d been in. “Some were so serious the cars were write-offs, but none of it was my fault.”

“After a night or two with Sophie we’ll drive fast to Switzerland, and get over the Alps.”

“No, Michael,” he said. “We won’t go that way, not with all that there is in the back. The Swiss will be sure to find it. Every cuckoo in the land will burst with laughter as it pops out of its clock and sees us being led away. We’ll make our way home through France, then there’ll be only one frontier to cross before the Channel. I’m doing another good turn telling you this. I know Moggerhanger said you should go home through Jugoslavia, but we don’t know what his motives were, do we? Maybe he doesn’t have any. He isn’t all that clued up nowadays, if you ask me. He’s getting old.”

I had wondered about that myself, but would age make him more cunning, or less? I turned off the autoroute and drove through a village. “By the way, I told Sophie I was Lord Blaskin, and that my chauffeur had gone down with appendicitis. I’ll have to say you recovered, and met me in Athens.”

He settled himself more comfortably, and with binoculars spied out the landscape of vines and mulberries on low hills like a cavalry colonel from his scout car. “I’ll back you up. Rely on me. If that’s the case, though, you’d better let me take over the car, or she won’t believe you.”

I didn’t want that, because though he could drive anything from a soapbox on wheels to a hundred-ton motorhome I couldn’t bear the thought of the gaffer’s pride and joy getting into someone else’s hands, not even Bill’s. “I’ve broken nearly all Moggerhanger’s rules on this trip, but the one I’ll stick to is not to let anybody else get at the wheel. If Sophie remarks on me driving I’ll tell her you’ve had eight bottles of beer since leaving the ship, and can’t be trusted.”

His reply came soon enough. “Michael,” he scoffed, “nearly all accidents are caused by people who haven’t touched a drop. And watch out for that little old man crossing the road, by the way. You know I can drive better when I’ve had a couple or two. I say, that looks a comfortable café up on the corner.” He belched. “I could do with another sandwich.”

I passed it. “There’s nowhere to park. Tell me what the map says.”
“You’re a cruel bloody taskmaster, Michael.”

“So which way now?”

“Beyond the next little town we turn right and go up a hill. Another three kilometres, and the house should be on the left.”

Even after last night’s delectable bout with Rachel, and knowing I would be half dead on stepping out of the car, I was beginning to twitch for another cakewalk in Sophie’s velvet lining. “Stop by the roadside,” he said. “I want to check the map.”

I used the binoculars for a closer look: a typical Italian farmhouse on a low hill, almost surrounded by trees. Exactly as she had described it. A BMW, a Rover, and an old Fiat were parked outside, but I didn’t like the fact that every shutter was closed except one, which had a white towel hanging from the sill. Maybe she wasn’t there. She could be shopping in the nearest town. Or squatters had got in. Things didn’t seem right.

Bill went to the gate, and signalled that the name on the postbox was the right one. He came back. “If I go up on my belly with the gun I’ll have the place on our side of the line in two minutes.”

“Any unnecessary violence,” I said, “and I’ll have you put down.”

“Oh you are a hard man. I’ll stay in the car, then, if that’s your express wish.”

I drove up the track and, in the space available, did a three-pointer till the car faced roadwards, a wise manoeuvre in an unknown place. Bill got into my seat, while I walked until a heavy lion-headed knocker stared me in the face. I let it bang a couple of times, thinking the hinges needed a squirt of WD-40, when the door squeaked open like one in Castle Dracula.

A tall thin bloke in khaki shorts and singlet, with a raddled face and a pot belly, asked what I wanted. He had a spur of short grey hair on an otherwise bald head, and wore an earring, not the person I cared to know. Sophie, angled behind, put a finger to her lips, so I assumed him to be her husband.

“I’m Lord Blaskin,” I drawled, “wandering the area. Heard in town there was a house for sale this way. Pretty landscape, don’t you know? Be nice to find a bolt hole here.”

His suspicions dissolved like milk in a cup of tea. “Do you know of any place?” he asked Sophie, in a halfway civilised voice his appearance denied.

“I heard the Thompsons had notions of selling up, but I think the place went.”

“No problem,” I said. “We’ll go on with our exploring. It’s a pleasant enough pastime. So sorry to have troubled you.” Hopes crushed in a rubbish wagon, is how it was. If he wasn’t her husband he was some toerag the trollop had picked up on the motorway, who’d spun better tales than I had.

“Lord Blaskin,” she said, “I’m Sophie, and this is my brother Lionel. He doesn’t like me being here on my own, so came from London to make sure I’d be all right. Didn’t you, Lionel, darling?”

Brother my arse. I couldn’t bear to look as if I cared.

“Would you like to join us for a cup of tea?” she said. “I’ve this minute made it.”

Halfway behind the man she made a hand movement for me to say no. “Thank you so much. Awfully kind, but I must get on. It’s rather late, and we ought to be in Ravenna by sundown.” I disliked the look of the house, and them. Even if I wangled a way into staying I didn’t fancy playing Box and Cox in and out of her bedroom all night. And it was plain from Lionel’s sour clock that he didn’t want me to have that cup of tea, either, being the real bloody Englishman abroad who thought I might run away with the sugar spoon. I turned to go. “Thank you for your kindness.”

“I must have a closer look at your marvellous car. We haven’t had one of those in the grounds before, have we, Lionel?” The surly bastard didn’t even grunt. “I’ll be back in a moment,” she called to him over her shoulder, and followed me outside.

“What’s going on?”

“I didn’t know how to get in touch with you and say not to call. Oh, Michael, I was so looking forward to us being in bed. I can’t tell you. Then damned Lionel had to come and look after me. Can you imagine, at my age? My family’s always treated me like a child. I suspect my mother had a hand in it. They probably had an emergency general meeting. Lionel didn’t even want to come. That’s why he was so short with you. But he had to do as he was told. If I put a foot wrong while he’s here he’ll tell my husband, just to upset him, because they hate each other.”

“What a family,” was the only thing to say.

“You don’t know one half. But please, Michael, phone me in England. I’m only staying here a week. Come and see me in Highgate. I gave you my address on the train, remember?” She made cooing noises over the car so that bloody Lionel could hear. “Must go now,” she said. “Have a good trip back. Love you!”

After I had watched her into the house Bill moved over to let me in. “I saw what was going on. My heart bleeds for you, but you can’t win ’em all.”

I was too dispirited to shut him up.

“Now let’s get back to the coast,” he said, “and find a nice cushy billet in one of them lovely seaside resorts we’ve been passing since leaving Brindisi. I’m looking forward to dinner and a few quarts of wine.”

Hope had never been more completely dashed, and all I needed was silence in which to brood on my loss. I went up the motorway as fast as the Roller would roll. I was not unfamiliar with disappointment, knowing that whenever I went too far out of my way for love or gain the results were negative more often than not. I should have known better than to make the detour, though hope could never be denied or resisted. My blood had run on hope from as far back as I could remember, hardly a minute going when hope for something or other wasn’t making hundred-watt fantasies lighting every dark place of my mind to such an extent that I wouldn’t stop and question the purpose of life, which we are all supposed to do so as to get to know oneself.

But why should I want to know myself? Whatever I found out about my nature wouldn’t alter the way I wanted to go on living. I found the world interesting enough without knowing myself. In any case hadn’t I known myself from birth? And if you didn’t you might as well kill yourself as know yourself. Imagine somebody sitting on the sofa with fingers in the armholes of his waistcoat and saying with stupid pride: “Ah, that’s that, then. At last! I know myself. That’s one thing out of the way. Now I can start to live. Can’t I, mother?” How fucking ridiculous, or hopeless, could anyone get?

Such reflections brought me back to as much contented mental health as I was capable of putting up with. Mountains dimmed beyond Ancona, the sea turning to a lake of wax. Hope thwarted could only lead back to happiness while waiting for the next hopeful situation to turn up, was all I cared to know.

Bill slept like a grown up baby, only waking now and again to wonder when we were going to get where we were going and ask were we there yet?

In the middle of Ravenna I went in ever decreasing circles trying to get out, till a smart young policeman waved me down. God knows what I’ve done, I was so knackered it could have been anything. He must have seen me coming ten times along the same street, so I got the window down and told him we were looking for a hotel.

He pointed his baton to a sign indicating the Marina di Ravenna. We’d find one on the coast a couple of miles away. “Good car, sir,” he said in English, his smile reinforced by such a salute that even Bill was impressed.

“Aren’t policemen nice in Italy?” I said to him, on getting out of town with no trouble at all.

“Michael, the police are pleasant everywhere, except when they think you’ve done something wrong. In some countries they’re very stonefaced and unhelpful.”

The land to either side of the straight road was flat, with what looked rice fields to either side. I soon pulled up under a palm tree in the courtyard of the best hotel, and a lovely dark-haired girl at the desk showed us into an opulent old-fashioned room with two solid beds.

Bill fell on the one nearest the bathroom. “I’ll have half an hour’s shut-eye before dinner.”

I craved the same, but a sense of duty forced me to find a phone and get in touch with Moggerhanger. I didn’t particularly feel like talking to him, and hoped he wasn’t at home, but it was dead easy to get through.

“Michael, is that really you? I had put you down as missing presumed killed in action, and was wondering what sort of headstone I’d ask the undertakers to make when your body was brought back in a refrigerated train. Then again I thought I might have to fit up an expedition to find out what exactly had happened to you. The kindest thing I can say is that you haven’t reported back for nearly a week. I was about to pull all the pins out of the map and cut my losses.”

The sound of them tinkling into his metal waste bin chilled my bones. “There aren’t any losses,” I said. “Everything’s safe in the back of the Roller. It’s just that I had a bit of bother in Greece.”

“Of what kind? You know I like to be kept in the picture.”

I began to sound like Bill, on saying: “Do you mind if I tell it all at the debriefing?”

“Since I can’t get at your throat I suppose I shall have to. But would you mind telling me the locations of your recent nightstops?”

I did. “And now I’m in Ravenna.”

“I’m working overtime with the pins, but at least your route is beginning to come clear. Damn! I’ve pricked myself. You’ve made me bleed. That’s a serious misdemeanour. But weren’t you supposed to come back through Jugoslavia, the way you went? Correct me if I’m wrong.”

I wanted to correct the old bastard in a way he wouldn’t like, and promised myself to do it as soon as the chance turned up. “I know you’re never wrong, Lord Moggerhanger, but my intelligence suggested that the route through the Balkans would be dangerous, in which case you might never see the Roller and its contents again, or the driver. In the meantime I’m absolutely done for, and need some sleep. You can stop worrying, though, because I’ll be back in a couple of days.”

The long pause tempted me to hang up, but before I could do so more cloth-footed words came into my ear from the shit pit of his mind. “Michael, you’re close to my heart. From what you tell me it sounds as if you’ve done a remarkably efficient job. I always knew I could rely on you to bring things off. I’ll be sure to coordinate your reentry through the English customs.” It wasn’t nearly as bad as I had expected. “Phone me again tomorrow, that’s all I ask.”

I took a short walk to the nearby stream, water scummy and still because the tide was out. Back inside I found Bill in the dining room being served the equivalent of two dinners, one of which I knew couldn’t be mine. “You might have waited,” I said.

He had changed his suit, and with a tie looked like a smart but unscrupulous British businessman, who everyone in the world would recognise as such and see through. “Wait isn’t a word in my vocabulary, and I’d be ashamed if I knew it to be in yours. The only time I ever waited was when our platoon got to a farmhouse in Normandy, and the farmer was so happy to see British soldiers he told us to queue up for a glass of Calvados each. He took it from a barrel because, such a generous bloke, it was worth waiting for. Funnily enough, I even remember his name — Yvard, it was, Monsieur Yvard — and he had a great big smile on seeing us knock it back. But why wait in this splendid hotel, Michael, when the kitchen is so full of provisions that by not having waited I’m in no way robbing you. So sit down and tell me whether that cross-chopping swine Moggerhanger threatened to kill you, or otherwise do you an injury, or even have you on the carpet, because if there’s to be any of that, I’m your man in a tight corner. I’m beginning to think you’re right, and that we should kill him first.”

“Which reminds me,” I said, “get rid of that pistol you filched from the hatchback. I’m not having it in the car. If they find it at the French border it’ll be Devil’s Island for both of us.”

His platter of hors d’oeuvres had been as big as the Battersea helipad, and now he shovelled so much spaghetti into his maw he could barely talk. “You can stop worrying, because before the hunger pangs struck at my vitals I chucked it into the river outside the hotel. Now let me chop up this delicious escalope from Milan.”

We had a long way to travel before getting home, and though I recalled Frances telling me of the famous mosaics in Ravenna, there wasn’t time to stop and see them. We steamed by Bologna, Parma and Turin, and got over the Alps into France without a look at the car’s insides. At six we were close to Lyons, where the food in our hotel was superb but the beds lumpy. I informed Moggerhanger of my position, and after another night on the Channel coast we had a smooth passage across, nearly a fortnight after I had set out. It seemed like fourteen years by the time we rattled off the boat and showed our passports in Blighty.

At the customs shed Lanthorn came towards us with his clipboard. “Back, then, are you, Mr Cullen? I’ve been anticipating the pleasure very much.”

Would he search the car, tip out the powders, call his mates over for a laugh, then nick me? I’d get at least ten years. “I see you have a passenger. You went out alone, as I recall.”

“A hitchhiker,” I said. “I couldn’t leave a fellow Englishman to die in foreign parts, could I? It’s not in my nature.”

“Fine sentiments, Mr Cullen. But he’s very smartly togged up for a hitchhiker. He must earn at least a hundred thousand a year, and I wonder where he gets it from?”

When his father had arrested me at Heathrow I’d been loaded with gold about to be smuggled out, and he had the same sneering and self-satisfied expression as now shifted across his son’s pallid mug, the same tone as well, as if the father had come out of his grave to encourage the son who had in any case been practicing the role since he was four.

“Oh, I see, Mr Straw, is it? Part of the old firm again, are we?”

He put his long thin head close, hair in his nostrils — unforgivable in any man. “I’ve heard about you, on the grapevine.”

Bill, fingers drumming against the glove box, didn’t look anywhere near as downcast as Lanthorn wanted both of us to be. I hoped it was true that the handgun was no longer in the car. “Can I ask both of you, then, if you have anything to declare?”

Being in Moggerhanger’s pay meant little to him when it came to a spot of cruel badinage. If he took the two of us in he could still ask a price for the next consignment going through. “All I have,” I said, “is a one-armed statue of a woman with no left tit, and a few more of the Elgin Marbles.”

“Don’t be cheeky. What’s in the boot?”

I switched off the engine at this serious question, and got out of the car. “Our luggage. Do you want a look?”

“No illegal immigrants? You could get half a dozen darkies in there. Small ones, of course.”

No future in talking. Let him have his fun, then we would be all right.

“No little dogs, or kittens? Not thinking of saving quarantine expenses, are we?”

I prayed for the day when Europe from the Atlantic to the Urals was one place, and the Channel was filled in so solidly with all the bullshit that had smothered the British Isles for hundreds of years that you’d be able to drive across without paying tolls. Passports and customs would be abolished, and bastards like him on the dole. “I don’t keep animals. I don’t even like them. They shit all over the place.”

“Not even a dog, though? Man’s best friend? And you call yourself an Englishman.”

“Actually,” I said, “I’ve got Irish blood in me, and I’m proud of it.”

“Oh, one of them, are you? Any jelly, in that case, from Czecho? I have to ask you this, you realise. And what about detonators?”

“Sorry to say, I haven’t.” If I did I’d be glad to blow such a fuckface to smithereens, even if the explosion took me as well.

“I don’t suppose even the Irish would be so daft as to let someone like you try bringing it in.” He stepped back. “All I have to say to you, then, Mr Cullen, is this: make sure you don’t come this way too often.”

Bill, understandably, loathed the bastard’s repartee even more than I did. I hadn’t heard him swear before, but did now: “Fuck off, Lanthorn, and leave us alone, you big long link of prime crap. I’m a bona fide hitchhiker, and if you want to search my kit you’re welcome. But I warn you, as soon as you open the case there’s a six-foot pit viper waiting to shoot up your arse and have a four-minute feed on your guts.”

That’s done it. He’ll have us banged up for sure. A pink spot flickered across his face, then faded at someone giving even better than he had got. “Keep your hair on, Mr Straw. But I’ll remember that.” He waved us forward. “Off you go. Give my compliments to Lord Moggerhanger.”

I felt so fond of Bill as we belted out of town that even before he got to the counter of the first truckstop I’d ordered him a vast plate of bacon, sausages, chips, three eggs, baked beans, tomatoes, fried bread, black pudding, mushrooms, toast, coffee and, for good measure, butter, marmalade, two pots of tea and a Danish pastry.

To save slogging my guts out through hold ups along the Old Kent Road and the Elephant I forked onto the M25, and tackled the soft underbelly of the drab metropolis by Ewell, Tolworth Towers, Kingston, Kew and New Brentford, then on to Ealing.

“If ever you get hard up you’d make a good taxi driver,” he said.

“Too much like hard work,” I reminded him. “I’ll drop you off at Ealing Broadway.”

I dragged his trankelments out of the car when we got there, and it didn’t surprise me when he took his shooter from the glove box: “Don’t have kittens, Michael. I didn’t have the heart to throw it away. You never know when it might come in handy.”

“Sling it off Hungerford Bridge.”

“I will. I promise.”

He wouldn’t. Loot was forever precious to him. “Take this twenty quid. It’s all the cash I’ve got left.”

“You’re a gentleman, Michael. I might be able to do the same for you one day.”

“I hope not. Where do you go now?”

Traffic was honking for us to vacate the double yellow line. “I’ll report back to Major Blaskin, then I might do a spot of begging, to keep my hand in. It’s a very exhilarating occupation. Interesting, as well.”

A few minutes later I blasted the horn outside Festung Moggerhanger, knowing that overspending his coin of the realm (any realm) would have to be accounted for and wondering, as the gate opened, not when I would depart again, but whether. I decided to take a leaf out of Bill’s book, and give as good as I got, feeling foolish now at letting him walk away with the handgun. I should have had it with me till I was in the clear, not to use, of course, but to feel more secure with its weight in my pocket.