Moggerhanger

Chapter Nineteen

“Peppercorn Cottage here,” I announced.

“I know it is. I didn’t think I was giving Downing Street a bell.”

Bill Straw’s hectoring tone was clear enough. “Where the fuck are you?”

“Michael, if I’ve told you once I’ve told you fifty times, a man who’s sure of himself doesn’t swear.”

“I only asked where you were.”

“That’s no excuse. You’re a grown man. It doesn’t become you. But for your information I de-bussed at the top of your lane a short time ago, and will be down at your present residence about soon, providing I step out at a hundred and twenty paces to the minute, like we used to in the old Sherwood Foresters.”

“Where did you come from? How did you get here?”

He laughed. “There are trains and buses in this country, though I don’t know how long it will last. Just unroll the red carpet for my arrival.”

I pushed the phone away, knowing that with him in the house there wouldn’t be a crust of bread left by tomorrow.

He stood by the sink to unload a rucksack almost as big as himself. “I can’t think how I managed to carry all this. It weighs about seventy pounds, but at least I didn’t have a Bren and ammo as well.” Tin after tin of provisions were stacked on the draining board. “I didn’t expect you to keep me, Michael. I do think of others from time to time. I also think you might put the kettle on though, now I’m here. I got thirsty on that plank wagon they called a bus.”

I set out cups, eccles cakes, crisps, bread, butter and jam as fast as my arms would move. “Why did you come, then? I won’t say I’m not glad to see you, but it is a surprise.”

He sat, waiting to be waited on, as was his habit. “I’ll tell you in a bit. Meantime, let me have a fag, duck. I’m right out.”

“I suppose you’re broke, as well?”

“Buses don’t come cheap. And put another spoon in the pot. You know I like it strong. It’s starting to rain. I got here just in time.” He looked around. “What a squalid little slit trench. I thought Moggerhanger would have done better than this.”

“He’s never stayed here. He wouldn’t last ten minutes. Spleen Manor’s his usual bolt hole, which is warm and smart.”

“I know the place,” he said. “It’s got a better field of fire for one thing.”

I laid out the tea, and gave Dismal his share before sitting down to mine, by which time Bill had already bolted two of the cakes. “When I left you, Michael, I went to Major Blaskin’s, and he allowed me to stay a few days. Of course, I had to pay my keep by scribbling a couple of chapters of a Sidney Blood, but it was easy work after our time in Greece. Just listen to that rain. We’ll need a kayak to get us out of here.”

“Then where did you go?”

“I bummed around Liverpool Street, but there wasn’t enough generosity coming my way, so I lit off as soon as I had enough cash to get a few groceries and pay my way up here.”

“What about the twenty quid I gave you in Ealing?”

His face broke into the usual berserker laugh. “It’s stitched into my coat as a reserve. I never like to be flat broke, you know that. I say, now that I’m here do show a bit of hospitality and butter me a crisp.”

I was in no mood to spoil him. “Do it yourself, then you can go on with your pack of lies.”

“There are times, such as now, when I wish I was spinning a yarn but, alas, the reality is worse than any lies, as you’ll hear in a minute or two.”

“You’ve got me sweating.” I buttered him a crisp with such alacrity, though care, that it didn’t even break. “You must admit I’ve got a right to be surprised at you turning up here, just when me and Dismal were getting used to some peace and quiet.”

The serious expression only emphasized his devious and built-in villainy. “Michael, I’ve never had any peace and quiet in the whole of my life, so I don’t think anybody else has any right to it. Peace and quiet is a snare and a delusion, a most dangerous and unprofitable state. For one thing, no wise man who’d stumbled into peace and quiet ought to hope for it to last forever. Another thing is, he hasn’t even got any right to expect it at all. And if he even imagines he’s living in peace and quiet he’s a menace to his fellow men who would rightly want to deprive him of it, and commit mischief they shouldn’t have been tempted by his peace and quiet to indulge in. Not only that, but the man who’s found peace and quiet is a menace, and to his family as well if he’s got one. And not only that, again, whenever I think I deserve a spell of peace and quiet I pull myself together and make for the hills. Is there anymore tea in that pot? Talking makes me dry.”

“I’ll mash another, after you’ve told me why you’re here.”

“That’s what I’m doing. I got a bit tired of London, so jumped on the train to Upper Mayhem, thinking I’d find you there. Oh, I know all about London being a continent you never need to leave, and that if you’re tired of London you’re tired of life. Doctor Johnson said that, didn’t he? He said so much he must have been a real motormouth. But there are times when even I want a break from the Smoke, so I thought I’d call on you, and I was very disappointed to find you weren’t there. All I could do was put two and two together and decide you were keeping out of the way of the Green Toe Gang, which led me here.”

I stood up to boil more water. “The quality of your intuition is so good it worries me.”

“And well it may because, Michael, I’ve got news for you. You can’t escape the Green Toe Gang so easily. You must clear out of here, because they’re on to you. When I got to Upper Mayhem I didn’t breeze in there like any old tyro, because there was a car outside I knew wasn’t yours. I went through the gate and up to the house as silent as a cloth-footed fly, and when I looked through the window I saw Clegg tied to a chair, with two of the worst villains about to bludgeon him over the head. Poor Clegg was as white as whitewash. I don’t know what he’d told them already, but he didn’t need to say anymore, because the Campbells had come.

“You remember that gun from Greece you wanted me to throw away? I don’t like throwing things away when I think they might come in handy. I had it with me, and kicked the door in before they could reach for their shooters. I hadn’t had such a time since that little set-to in Greece. What a good day for the infantry! I had them so well covered it looked as if they were about to mess themselves, because by the state of my face they could see I wouldn’t stand any nonsense. I made them put their guns on the table, and after I’d booted them out I left a pistol for Clegg in case they were daft enough to come back. Not that I think they will in a hurry, because Clegg was in the Home Guard as a lad during the War and knows how to use firearms. The other gun I brought for you is at the bottom of my pack. I’ll pull it out in a bit.

“Anyway, I let them go off in their car. I could have demobilised it, but it don’t pay to be too vindictive, though I had to resist the impulse to kneecap them.” He lit one of my cigars. “The fact is, I knew then that I had to get here and put you in the picture, so I loaded the rucksack with as much as it would hold from the stores in your freezer and larder — and, well, the rest is history, as they say. Or it might be soon, so you’d better forget all about peace and quiet, because as sure as my name’s Bill Straw the Green Toe Gang will track you down sooner or later, and I can’t look after you forever. So far you’ve been like a cat with nine lives, but you must be getting near the end, so it behoves you to take care and look sharp.”

Even Dismal seemed halfway alarmed at such talk, while I’d never seen Bill so relaxed and happy. “What, do you suggest we do?”

He grinned. “Search me.”

“We can’t stay here like sitting ducks.”

“Ducks don’t sit, old cock. They float.” An arm went deep into the rucksack, and came out with a revolver, which he handed to me. “From now on this is your best friend. In the meantime let’s call it a training exercise, and walk to the top of the lane to see what we can see. You stay by the left hedge, and I’ll keep to the right. That way we’ll have each other covered. Dismal can walk in the middle, and finish off the wounded.”

I handled the weighty piece. “I’ve never fired one. I’ve only ever used a shotgun.”

He pointed out the various parts: “Backsight, foresight, magazine, safety catch, trigger for the squeezing of. But never shoot to kill. Aim low, if you have to. Now you’re fully trained. Forget the bullshit and squarebashing. Let’s go.”

I felt a bloody fool as we Three Musketeers — one of them a dog — walked slowly and well concealed up the track, low grey cloud spitting bits of rain. Beyond a slight rise at the top the horizon was clear, no traffic along the paved road, not even the noise of aircraft. There couldn’t be a quieter place. At a touch of damp breeze on our faces Bill motioned us back. Every dozen or so paces he circled quickly left and right to make sure no one was following. Such behaviour, he said, was common sense, though I saw it as inviting the sort of trouble he thrived on. He should have been working — if that was the word — as a mercenary in Africa, getting paid in dollars and diamonds. I asked him about this when we were back at the house and the kettle was on the go.

“Michael, I admit that not everything I’ve done in my life has been blameless. You’ve got to live, after all. I also know that if I had been a freebooting soldier in Africa, training one set of blacks to go about murdering another set of blacks, I’d have made enough money to retire by now.”

I jumped into his pause for breath. “But what if another mercenary soldier, with the same experience as yourself, had been training his blacks to murder your blacks? Might you not have got killed before the chance came to take early retirement?”

“There you’ve put your finger on it,” he smiled. “But look at it this way. If there had been another bloke like me training his lot to murder my lot we’d have known about each other, and when the balloon went up, as balloons always will by which I mean that when the two gangs had got together and tried to turn on one or the other of us, or both, we’d have sped out of it in the same jeep with all guns blazing. You know me. I’d already have thought of a thing like that. But that sort of caper’s not up my street, though I’ve been headhunted a time or two by a firm called Coup d’État Guaranteed. I just didn’t like the killing of women and children that went with the job. It’s no work for a real Englishman.”

He swallowed half a cake. “I’ve still got some moral feeling, though I can’t say how long it would last if I was really on my uppers. All I like is to keep myself ready for any eventuality, like when I rescued you from that bit of bother in Greece.”

“You don’t have to keep reminding me. I might have got out of it on my own, anyway.”

“Michael, we all tend to forget favours after they’ve happened.”

A denial of his statement was stopped by the ringing telephone. “You pick it up,” I told him.

He listened. “It’s William Straw here.” Indecipherable words muffled through. “I’ve just got here, sir. I called to say hello to Michael Cullen, and make sure he was all right.” He paused. “I’ll put him on, sir.”

A right bollocking was on the clock. “I’m just back from a run up the lane with Bill.”

“I’m glad you’re keeping in trim,” Moggerhanger said, “but I don’t like you turning my hideaway into a bed and breakfast establishment. Where were you when I phoned yesterday? Twice, if I remember.”

“I must have been out jogging. I got soaked, but it didn’t bother me, because I like to keep physically fit.”

“Next time the phone goes, answer it, even if you’re in bed with some fiery little tart, as I expect you were.”

“Yes, sir, but I wasn’t.” Then I decided to be conciliatory. “Is it all right if Bill Straw stays the night here? He was very useful to us in Greece.”

“Keep him with you. I’ll need both of you soon.” He put the phone down, and I told Bill what he’d said.

“Michael, you’re a brick. I knew you’d put in a good word for me. I’ve always liked working for Moggerhanger. But I wonder what he’s got in mind?”

So did I. “I don’t know about you, but it would be healthier in the long run to pack up, get in the car, and flee to where not even Moggerhanger can get at us.”

He sorted the provisions to decide what we’d have for supper. “Such an idea coming from you doesn’t seem right. Where’s the old Michael Cullen, to say a thing like that? Did that advertising agency break your morale? In any case, where would we go? We might get as far as Land’s End, but what then? Chuck ourselves off the cliffs and swim to America? It’s a long way to New England, and the water’s rough. The sad fact is, Michael, that both of us are marked men by the Green Toe Gang, so the only thing to do is get in with Moggerhanger, the deeper the better.”

“Self-preservation tells me to cut and run,” I insisted.

“Michael, nobody knows more than me that self-preservation is no bad thing, because it always means a more exciting life, but we’re in a situation where there’s a bit more to it than that. Apart from anything else, think of the financial advantage after a stint with Moggerhanger. Another thing is that, in my humble opinion, anything’s preferable to staying in this so-called cottage. Look — no, listen — the rain’s doing a fandango on the slates, and though it’s only five o’clock it’s already getting dark. In fact it hasn’t been properly light all day. As soon as it’s dark I either feel like going to sleep, or I get hungry, usually both, so I end up eating till I’m so tired I fall asleep. There’s got to be more in life than that. I don’t lack guts, Michael, but if I had to stay here long I’d chuck myself in that stream with the greatest pleasure.”

He picked up a crystal from a heap near the wall, and was about to taste it for sweetness. “That’s rank poison. A chap came today and set it out for the rats. Do you want to die?”

He looked between his fingers as if at a scintillating diamond, and threw it away. “Thanks for saving my life, but do you really think it would kill me? I don’t look like a rat, do I? Did you see that one that just ran off with a bit in its mouth? They’ll be queuing up all night for a takeaway.”

He spooned five tins of meat and vegetables into the biggest saucepan. “In a miserable place like this you’d go off your batch if you didn’t eat. I hope you’ve got enough fags and cigars to last the night.”

“Just about.” While I washed knives and forks he set on the biggest pot of water to boil four tins of steamed pudding, which I knew came from Upper Mayhem. “Four’s too many.”

“No they aren’t. One’s for you, one’s for that dog’s supermarket stomach, one’s for me, and one’s for second helpings.”

“You must have cleaned my place out.”

“I did. Clegg advised me to. He filled the pack till he couldn’t get anymore in. He said the thought of you on short commons made him cry. He’s a very compassionate batman, is Clegg, when it concerns you. But I left enough iron rations for him to live on for a couple of days.”

I opened tins of anchovies and a jar of Mrs Ellswood’s, carved up a loaf, and bubbled out some vodka. I’d no sooner taken a swig than the phone belled again. I snatched it up: “Peppercorn Cottage. Michael Cullen speaking.”

“That’s better,” Moggerhanger said. “Now listen, and this is an order. In the morning I’m going up to Spleen Manor in the Rolls Royce, which will be towing the horsebox. Alice Whipplegate, my secretary, will be with me. We will arrive about sixteen-hundred-hours. Pay attention carefully to what I say. I want you and Bill Straw to drive over during the day and meet me there. Take your time, if you like, but as long as you arrive at Spleen Manor by six o’clock it’ll be all right. Is that clearly understood?”

“Absolutely, sir.”

“Don’t let me down, or the least I’ll do is skin you alive.”

I made myself sound offended. “You know I’ve always followed your orders to the letter, Lord Moggerhanger. When have I not come up to scratch?”

“Don’t take it personally, Michael. I’m only having a laugh,” and he had another on hanging up, me hoping a time would come when he would have a laugh too many at my expense.

“I can’t wait,” Bill said at the news. “Maybe there’ll be a slice of action. You can never tell with Moggerhanger.”

He regretted not having emptied the contents of more tins into the stew, though by the time we’d done eating he was farting and belching fit to bring a gaze of wonder even from Dismal, possibly also from the rats, who were a lot more lively in playing around the heaps of crystals. “That was a blow out.”

“Eating so much must make you fit for anything,” I said.

He stood. “I’m the fittest man in the world. There’s nothing wrong with me. Every night on my way to sleep I think about what I’m going to have for breakfast. I ate so much just now I think I’ll take the flashlight and go for a stroll as far as the road, otherwise I shan’t sleep.” He picked up the airgun. I wanted him to take Dismal, but he said a dog would spoil his luck with the rabbits. “I’ll pot one in the beam and we’ll have another course with our breakfast.”

I plucked a Sidney Blood from a shelf on the wall, and settled by the fire for a read, but after a few minutes fell into a doze.

More than an hour later I went out to the stream, and saw Bill’s light flickering on his way down the track. “That was a long walk,” I said.

“It was. I nearly got to the town. Such a lovely night, I couldn’t stop. And I dawdled coming back, to get this.” He held up a good sized rabbit. “I’ll skin and butcher it before going to bed, then it can simmer all night on the embers.”

He heaped a plate with fresh pink meat, chopped a couple of onions and put the lot in a stewing pot half full of water, then laid it on the fire with a solid lid on top. “That way the rats won’t get at it. I’ll sleep nearest the hearth, and keep a slug in the airgun. We might have rats for breakfast as well, like the Chinese.”

The three of us lay in a row, Dismal in the middle. I expected the luxury of undisturbed rest, but with the smell of cooking it was like sleeping in the kitchen of a restaurant. Then I was awakened several times by Bill letting off the airgun at rats carrying away the crystals to put in storage for next winter’s famine. He would occasionally pull Dismal out to look at the stars, knocking my shoulder while stepping over the paillasse. The noise of the running stream permeated every cranny of the house, so that I had to answer the call half a dozen times as well, and when at last the dim light of dawn showed the squalid kitchen I knew it was time to get up, make tea, and start the day which I hoped would turn out to be a good one.

We made a breakfast of tender rabbit and delicious bacon. Bill crashed three fried eggs each, saying we might as well finish them off, since they’d only get broken in the car. After our smokes he turned into a dynamo for cleaning the house, packing our gear, and loading up. “Never leave an untidy billet,” he said, “so give a last check that everything’s shipshape — otherwise you’ll be on a charge.”

By eight we were ready to roll, or would have been if the wheels of the Picaro hadn’t been halfway sunk in the mud. All Bill’s ingenuity with planks and brushwood, me and Dismal breathlessly pushing, couldn’t get it onto a firmer part of the path. “We used to pull tanks out of the dreck in Normandy,” he said, “but this is the limit. Of course, we could wait three months for the ground to dry, except by then it’ll be wet again. If we don’t get out today Moggerhanger will have us on the carpet, and no mistake.”

“We need a tractor.”

He took a map from the car. “There’s a farm five hundred yards east, so it shouldn’t take you long. I’ll go in the house meanwhile, and have a cup of tea, till you get back.”

Knowing his non-com attitude would only rile the farmer, I took on the task, and crossed the stream by several huge stones, then pushed against four-foot nettles and pestiferous brambles, keeping the farm’s chimney in sight. My trousers turned into wet tubes of clinging cloth but I waded on, till three dogs out of hell came from the gate barking for my blood. The woman at the door, who called them off, was youngish, wore a woolly hat, a checked pinafore over her dress, and laced-up shoes.

I wished her good morning, told her where I lived, that I was in trouble with the car.

Her blue eyes glinted laughter as she called in an attractive Welsh accent: “People do get stuck there now and again. It’s difficult to park. Come in the kitchen. The rain hardly ever stops around here.”

Four chairs were set around a well scrubbed table, blue and white crockery shining from behind glass on the walls. “Even Lord Moggerhanger’s Rolls Royce had to be pulled out last year,” she said. “He swore like a trooper. I was quite shocked. But won’t you sit down?”

“I don’t want to dirty your floor.”

“Don’t you worry about that. David will be in for his breakfast soon, then he’ll run the tractor over for you. I’ll make you a cup of tea while you wait.”

It was such a pleasant scene, an odorous smell of meat coming from the stove, that David could have taken the whole day for all I cared, and if Bill went ragged with anxiety and impatience, and we weren’t on time to meet Moggerhanger at Spleen Manor, so what? Many people in the country lived like this, so settled and happy, and I remembered how my children used to bewail that I wasn’t a farmer so that they could have a lot of animals and ride around the fields with me on a tractor.

When the water was ready she put three spoons of tea into a small pot. No teabags here. “I’m sorry to cause so much bother.”

My remark surprised her. “No trouble at all. I see you got wet on the path. I must ask David to scythe it down, but there’s so much else to do at this time of the year.”

“I imagine that’s always the case.”

“Well, it is, but we manage as best we can, and never complain, though I suppose some people would think we farmers often have cause to.”

The tea cleared my brain, and I accepted another, as she poured one for herself. “You’re at the house with a friend, aren’t you?”

“Yes,” I told her. “Lord Moggerhanger sent us up to check the place out.”

“You get some funny characters around here, but we try to keep an eye on it. David saw your friend last night, on his way back from town, a tall chap waving a flashlight on the main road, and then going into a telephone box on the corner. I thought there was a phone in the house now, but if anything goes wrong with it you’re always welcome to come here and use ours.”

“Thank you. I think my colleague wanted a chat with his wife, where I couldn’t overhear.” My suspicions were up, because who would Bill want to talk to just after I had told him of Moggerhanger’s movements for the day? I sweated with a worry I couldn’t show, and wondered whether he’d betray me for some reason and, if so, what price he’d get for it. Then I felt ashamed, on recalling how he had rescued me in Greece.

The dogs barked, joyfully this time. “That must be David now,” she said.

A tall thin man of about forty, wrinkles of work about his eyes, but a smile all the same at seeing a stranger, heard his wife explain my problem. “I’ll do it now,” he said, “and have breakfast afterwards. You must be anxious to get away.”

Back at the cottage he attached the car to his tractor and hauled it out of the mud, then pulled it to the top of the slope, where he set it facing the right way for the main road. I offered him a cigar, but he didn’t smoke, so I took a ten-pound note from my pocket and, realising I might offend him by the offer, told him it was for his favourite charity.

“In that case,” he smiled, “I’ll take it. I have a few of those.”

We were off by half past nine. Dismal, while not exactly a jealous dog, being too idle for that, was always inclined to eat whoever was in the front seat beside me. Even with the children I’d often had to stop the car and give a punch he would survive yet not soon forget. This time it was Bill who, feeling the preparatory nibble at his neck, turned and thumped him.

“You navigate,” I said. “Take me northeasterly across the country to join the M1. After Ripon we split right, and I’ll talk you down to Spleen Manor from there. By the way, who were you phoning from the call box last night? The farmer’s wife told me her husband saw you.” I turned onto the main road. “He has a talent for description.”

A few seconds went by. “I suppose there’s no harm in telling you. Do you remember that woman Muriel we met in Greece, married to that pipe-smoking old buffer Ernest? I shafted her rotten, if you recall. Since getting back I’ve phoned her a time or two, but it’s hard work, because she took so strongly against me after we went off with the two lovely French girls. I’m slowly bringing her round to wanting to see me again, and when I saw the phone box last night I thought I’d give her a bell. She sounded happier this time, so maybe she’ll agree to us meeting soon. I can hardly wait, and I hope she can’t, either.”

“Why didn’t you tell me when you got back?”

“It was a personal matter, wasn’t it?”

Always in a good mood when on the road, I rightly believed him. “But what about her husband?”

“Michael, show me a naive and easygoing chap like that, and I’m more than halfway there.”

He wasn’t the sort I could taunt, though I might have told him that Ernest wasn’t as simple as he had seemed. But I didn’t bother, knowing that Bill always went roughshod over such complications. “Is there any woman in your life you’ve really been in love with?”

He was gallant enough to think about it. “Generally it’s the last one I got into bed.” Cigars smouldering, we steamed towards Shrewsbury. “That’s a place to bypass,” he said. “So listen carefully to my instructions.”

A master at finding parallel routes, he would never take the main road if a lesser one wriggled in the same general direction. I couldn’t fault him for it, and told him so.

“Michael,” he said, “there’s nothing the British are better at than the indirect approach. Many’s the time it put us at an advantage. Never go head on when you can find another way. All you’ve got to do is look at the map, and use your brainbox. Nine times out of ten your enemy never expects you to come that way. In any case it pays to give all your attention to the map. The map’s the outlaw’s best friend. You can bet that anybody pursuing you hasn’t got much skill in that department, or knows how to use the information.”

“You’d have won the Second World War all on your own, with knowledge like that.”

“I might, Michael, only don’t get so sarky. Just go through this village, turn left at the church, and keep on over the island, then we’ll get into Stafford by the back door.”

With such a zig-zag route, he was as good as his word, and in half an hour we were through Stafford and heading for Ashbourne. A large tanker carrying industrial sand, with the logo of a camel above its number plate, slowed us down for a while, and I only got by after it turned off. In Matlock Town Bill insisted we stop for coffee and a plate of chocolate cake.

Under his impeccable guidance I drove in a numbed state, enjoying the scenery, and hardly knowing where I was till we went up the high hills into Tibshelf and the familiar smell of domestic coal smoke. Bill directed me over the motorway. “Are you sure this is the best way?” I asked.

“Of course I am. Navigating’s my favourite pastime. It’s in my blood. We’ll go through Worksop, and join the main road later. As Moggerhanger said, we needn’t get there till six. So just keep making easting. I’ll tell you when to edge north, and get us there home and dry.” Back in the rural landscape he went on: “Travelling like this always reminds me of finding ways through narrow lanes in Normandy. I was good at it, except I once got behind the line without realising. Saw a German officer by a staff car looking at his maps. I did the quickest three-point turn in my life, bullets flying all over the place. One of our chaps was wounded in the arm, and you should have heard the swearing when he realised it wasn’t a Blighty one. I got the four of us out of it, but the Colonel bollocked me no end. It was one of the many occasions when I nearly lost my stripes.”

I wanted him to admit we were lost, but he didn’t, because we weren’t. He got us around Mansfield and through Clipstone village. “We’re back in Robin Hood country,” he said, “so watch out for arrows. Robin will rob us blind, if he catches us, though we’ll stop for a cup of coffee and a couple of Swiss puddings at the Major Oak car park.”

“Which way now?” I said afterwards.

“Do a left at Edwinstowe, and we’re dead set to get into Worksop by a minor road. I want a quick shufti at Slaughterhouse Yand, where I was born. We got thrown out of there and went to live in Gasometer Lane, and then to Foundry Buildings. It was downhill all the way to the Whiteout Back-to-Backs at Christmas.”

We drove for twenty minutes and couldn’t find any such places. “They knocked them down,” he said, “and put up all these ticky-tacky houses in their places. But we had fine old times around here as kids, Michael. The things we did, to make a penny or two.” He laughed at the windscreen till it was so misty he had to wipe it clean with his sleeve. “At Christmas we’d go in Sherwood Forest and cut bundles of mistletoe from the oak trees, then tie it into sprigs and sell them at threepence each to the miners. I nearly got caught by a gamekeeper once, but he couldn’t run as fast as me, because as far as physical conditioning went I had the best upbringing of anybody. Right from when I could walk I was traipsing miles, shinning up walls, climbing trees, running away from the police, swimming in the canal and ponds. Woods didn’t frighten us. We followed any footpath and jumped all the streams, and never got lost. In the town we knew so many twitchells and double entries and cul de sacs we could out-track a bobby in half a minute. Kids don’t walk anymore. Their parents drive them everywhere in case they get raped or mugged or kidnapped, but there’s no more danger now than when we was kids. It’s only the telly and the social workers who say there is, and they only tell them because they want to keep their jobs. But we walked miles, everywhere. And when I lied about my age and got into the army at sixteen the training was nothing to me. They threw us into Normandy after a month or two, and I loved it, because I had a gun as well. I’d been doing most of the stuff they called training since I was born. By the way, you’d better turn round here and go back down the main street. Fork left at the end. I don’t want to see anymore of this awful ash pit.”

I did as I was told, steering out of town and onto a byway towards Doncaster, passing all the dying pit villages. By five we’d done the Great North Road and were through Ripon, Bill routing me on lanes so narrow it was sometimes hard to do the turnings. High moors were scored with grey walls and in places speckled with sheep. We were closing in, Yorkshire living up to its name, with black clouds piling up in the west.

I pointed out Spleen Manor halfway up a hill. Ground floor windows looked over a terrace, and down to various levels of garden. The Rolls and horsebox were visible in the forecourt, with a more ordinary car by its side. Binoculars showed a large hole in one of the French windows. “He’s a tidy man,” Bill said, “and would never tolerate that. A squatter didn’t get in, either, because the Roller’s still there. Let’s look at the other side.”

I drove along the road and stopped where a track curved up to the house. The gate was open, which Moggerhanger always insisted should be closed. “Somebody’s with him,” Bill said. “But it’s a badly situated house. It’s facing the wrong way, and doesn’t have sufficient field of fire.” He pulled Dismal out of the car. “We’ll make it a two-way operation, and go up on foot.” He tapped his pocket. “Take your gun, as well. You never know what you’ll find.”

“If Moggerhanger saw me with it he’d think I’d gone bonkers.” After Bill and Dismal had gone into the bushes to play soldiers I cruised up the gravelled drive thinking of the good time I’d had with Alice Whipplegate, after a festive supper at which Moggerhanger and Chief Inspector Lanthorn shared the profits from a big consignment of drugs.

I heard no satisfying belly laughter this time to signify that anyone was in residence. The front door was locked solid, so an ambush wasn’t planned from that direction. I resisted the bell, pulled my hand away, and trod quietly in a clockwise direction to the back of the house.

I looked in at a pair of the best mock Chippendales smashed and thrown into the otherwise empty fireplace. Handsome Staffordshire pot dogs on the shelf had lost their heads, while a glass fronted cupboard of good china, pulled onto its face, was no longer priceless. A row of racing almanacks made stepping stones across the room to a vase from some nonexistent Chinese dynasty, which must have been treated to a symphony of hammers and cold chisels. The enormous painting of Landseer’s ‘Stag at Bay’ was wrapped around a lamp standard. Such a spectacle of spoiled bourgeois elegance told me there must have been an argument.

Moggerhanger, well back in an armchair like a rag effigy that had been thrown there, wasn’t seeing anything, his pig-white face streaked with blood down the other side.

Alice lay on the leather settee, mouth wide open, and she wasn’t saying anything, either. Inside, treading over glass and empty booze bottles, I heard her snoring. She had been put out by drugs, or was blind drunk, though I had never known her to indulge to that extent.

Moggerhanger’s groan didn’t soften my heart towards him, though such a noise was uncharacteristic, likewise the pitiful state he was in. I had only ever seen him ebullient and well groomed, always on top of his day, but how the mighty was fallen now that he had only too apparently been gone over in a way I had always hoped to see, though feeling narked that someone had got in before me.

My impulse was to step quietly out and not become involved in whatever had occurred, for it had nothing to do with me. Yet I hesitated out of human feeling — another failing of mine — at the sight of two people who had been so wickedly dealt with, though it was Alice who decided me on staying.

I knelt by the settee and, after a few gentle smacks at her face, she opened her lovely brown eyes and gave a very crosschecked smile. Then she fell back into the senseless land of overpowering sleep. Knowing she wouldn’t come out of it for a while I turned to Moggerhanger, whose hands were cold, mostly from shock at the fact that someone could still do him physical injury. The blood on his face wasn’t from a serious wound, the prick of a knife blade perhaps, and the nail of a knobkerrie that had caught him on the temple. Nevertheless, his blackening raw eye told me he’d taken quite a pasting. His words slewed out: “Why did you take so long?”

His look of vulnerability encouraged me to say quite sharply: “You told us we needn’t be here till six, and it’s nowhere near that yet.”

Eyes swivelled on murmuring: “Parkhurst!”

I laughed. “What makes you think you’re going there? You’ll be all right.” There were worse places than the Isle of Wight I wanted to send him to. Any notion of letting him descend into the bowels of the judicial system were put aside only because I hadn’t been the one to reduce him to his present condition.

He slumped in a half faint, head lolling, then came back, eyes angry as if trying to tell me something else. Loyalty was a quality I’d never much valued, yet the old rogue was in trouble, and maybe it was up to me to help now that he was down. You can let him stew for a while, though, I said to myself, about to go and ask Bill to give me a hand at the biggest Sidney Blood picnic we’d ever been invited to. What a chapter it would make for Blaskin.

Parkhurst Moggerhanger stood in the doorway, and the gun pointing at me was no replica. “I’ve only half murdered the fucker,” he said, “but I enjoyed it so much I’m saving the rest for later. Then it’ll be your turn, Cullen, you bigheaded interfering bastard.”

“How can you do this? He’s your father,” was all that seemed necessary to say, but like the stupid pillock I was, because when Moggerhanger had mentioned Parkhurst he had only been trying to warn me about his son, and I hadn’t taken it in.

“You think that makes a difference?” Parkhurst shouted.

“Not necessarily,” I said. “But do it so’s I can see.”

“You think I won’t?” He wiped spit from his lips. “I’ve dreamed of this ever since I was at that posh boarding school he sent me to at six. He’s not my real fucking father. He picked me out of an orphanage as if it was Battersea Dogs’ Home when I was two because he wanted a mascot. He hoped I’d grow up to be just like him.”

He was a frightening sight, and intimidating now that he had a gun on me. His eyes were bloodshot, hair dull and lank, his jacket ripped at the lapels. I’d always known him as another depraved specimen who thought that all the ills of his life were the fault of his father, when he’d been born with the lamp of evil shining all too brightly enough inside.

I knew he hadn’t done much damage to Moggerhanger by himself, and my assumption was right, on seeing Jericho Jim come in from the terrace and stand by his side, a sawn-off little relic if ever there was one, the least intelligent runt of Moggerhanger’s entourage, whom Parkhurst had obviously suborned into this stylish but insane stunt. Mogg had always prided himself on spotting those who would give him loyalty unto death, but I’d never believed in his quirky intuition from the moment he set eyes on me and thought I could be one of them. And now overconfidence had turned into his downfall.

My thoughts played leapfrog, ring-a-ring-of-roses, and musical chairs. I might have chanced a grab at Parkhurst, but with Jericho Jim keeping me covered as well I wouldn’t get much change out of a bullet. If they were going to kill me, let them do it now, or if they weren’t, I’d better do something, though what that would be didn’t bear thinking about.