Moggerhanger

Chapter Twenty-Five

At four o’clock on that fateful afternoon the gates of Moggerhanger’s palisade were opened by Bill Straw. “I don’t call this late arrival showing very willing. Michael, it’s no way to hold a job down which, though not in any way pensionable, offers very fine prospects. You should have been here a couple of hours ago.”

I told him about my acquisition of a sister: “The same woman we saw on stopping off in Italy, name of Sophie.”

“I remember. Her brother Lionel was there, a very nasty sort, with his dirty vest and an earring. She looked a tasty bint, though. I’d forego a few custard tarts for a cuddle from her.”

I ignored his too dead common observation, and followed him upstairs to the flat. Sheets and blankets were folded in a neat stack at the end of both beds, a mug, knife, fork and spoon sparklingly clean on each. “You’ve made a very cushy billet,” I said. “But I’m not in the army, you know.”

“It would have done you the world of good if you had been, though for somebody who never has you’re not in bad nick. I gave the place a shine up this morning. Can’t stand fluff under the beds. Any of that, and it’s a case of jankers. Bullshit is next to godliness as far as I’m concerned.”

I lit a cigar. “Any idea what Moggerhanger wants us for?”

“Give me one of your smokes and I’ll tell you all I know.” He took his first puff as if there was the rest of the day to do it in. “This morning he asked about my military service. Now, we know he never asks anything without good reason. I told him I was in action all through the War, that I’d been in corners as tight as butchers’ shops, but my platoon was popular because I usually got the lads out without a scratch. ‘I’ve kept up my expertise as well,’ I said, laying it on thick, which is true enough. I could see how it pleased him. When he asked about you I said you hadn’t been in the army, but I’d taught you all I knew in the last fifteen years. ‘Michael’s like me,’ I said, ‘second to none, and game for anything, otherwise we wouldn’t have got out of that spot of bother in Greece, nor that argy-bargy at Spleen Manor.’”

“Thanks a lot.”

“Don’t get like that, Michael. What’s life all about if we don’t have some excitement now and again? After that enjoyable chat with Lord Moggerhanger I went out for a hair cut. You could do with a traipse to the barber’s, as well.”

The phone rang, and he nodded at me to pick it up.

“I’m ready when you are,” Moggerhanger said.

“I’ll be down in two minutes.”

“Make it now.”

“I’ll walk as far as the kitchen with you,” Bill said. “Mrs Blemish is a lovely woman. She’s always baking pies and cakes. She thinks the world of me.”

“You’ve already had lunch, you greedy swine. How can you eat twenty-four hours a day, and stay as thin as a rake? I don’t know how you do it.”

He paused on the stairs. “Of course I’ve had lunch. A real hot dinner it was, as well. The slices of lamb melted in my mouth, with boiled spuds, garden peas and crispy Yorkshire pudding. Then there was apple tart and custard. But I tell you, forty press-ups every morning need some feeding.”

The smashing of crockery pressed a button deep inside me that I thought no longer existed, a primeval musical noise that brought out a mixture of nihilistic delight and childish vandalism. Bill was more conventionally horrified, as we ran into the kitchen and found Mrs Blemish with hands to her face, while husband Percy was gleefully throwing pots from the drying rack onto the floor.

Bill spun him round for a clap to both sides of his face that would have knocked anybody else clean out of the world, though they brought Percy straight back into it, the swivel of his eyes stopping dead as he took in where he was: “Why does everybody hit me?” he shouted, when the painful blows got through to his senses.

Bill gave him another. “It was only me, old cock, but if I catch you disturbing Mrs Blemish again, you won’t survive.”

“But she’s my wife,” he sobbed.

Bill hit him again, knocking him down. “That’s worse.”

“Please leave him alone now,” Mrs Blemish said. “He hardly knows what he’s doing.”

“He will next time,” Bill said. “Call it shock treatment. I can’t stand seeing women hit or bullied. I’m old fashioned, I suppose, but stopping somebody tormenting a woman is my only weakness, and I happen to be proud of it.” He pulled Percy to his feet. “Won’t do it again, will you? Never, eh? If ever you want to, just imagine I’m right behind you. Or above your head like the sword of Damocles. I can be a killer when my gander’s up.” He straightened his cuffs. “I’ve never witnessed such unruly behaviour, have you, Michael?”

“No,” I said. “But tell him you won’t do it again, Percy, or I shan’t be able to hold him back.”

He sat on a chair, bruised and trembling, the replica of an aging bank manager in respectable clothes, such a picture of pitiable discouragement I almost felt sorry for him. Bill pushed a broom at his chest: “Sweep up the broken pots, because if Lord Moggerhanger sees all this destruction of his property you’ll get a terrible kicking.”

I gave Alice Whipplegate a kiss, and asked her to announce me so that I could go in and listen to a few of Moggerhanger’s boring homilies.

Pride, arrogance and self-satisfaction was so ingrained in his clock you would have thought he ran the Bank of England and had just put up the interest rates. He wore his usual pinstriped navy blue suit, with an old school tie, or one of some veterans’ association, which he had no right to either, and a thin gold chain across his waistcoat. A few bruise stains still botched his cheeks, but he didn’t seem bothered by them. “Sit down, Michael. It’s good to see you again, after that bust up at Spleen Manor, where you comported yourself with honour and, I must say, absolute loyalty to me.”

I plonked myself on a straightbacked chair so as to stay alert. “There was nothing else I could do,” I told him. “Luckily I had impeccable back up from Bill Straw.”

He gave a look of distaste at the name. “That man’s a barbarian. There’s a ruthlessness about him I can’t quite take a shine to. What’s more his violence is so free floating he’s always liable to sell it to the highest bidder. He’s only loyal to me at the moment because I’ve told Mrs Blemish to keep his feed box stocked up with cakes and custard pies. He lives for the minute, and has no discernable ambition, and lacks an overall view of the scheme of things, which means he’s more in the hands of fate than most, and needs to be kept reined in. He has no conscience, and I prefer a man with a conscience, who goes into things with forethought and consideration. Having said that. I have my uses for him, though he’ll always want watching.”

I recognised such a spiel as a fairly realistic assessment of Bill’s personality, but only because it was so close to Moggerhanger’s own, who may in any case have had a secret den with a blow-up of himself on the wall to ponder on. “I’ve always found him to be as true as steel,” I said, “though in some ways you may be right, because he’s not the sort to get on the wrong side of, or suffer fools gladly.”

He gave the kind of laugh I didn’t like. “I’m happy to hear you say so. It says much for a man who sticks up for a pal. Myself, I never care enough about people to quarrel with them. I’m so easygoing, so don’t need to. But I didn’t altogether take to the way he knocked Parkhurst about as soon as he had the upper hand at Spleen Manor. He should have left the job to me.”

“We were all a bit excited.”

“That’s when you have to curb yourself. Now, that tuppeny-ha’penny novelist Gilbert Blaskin I can trust, because he doesn’t stop talking. He gives himself away with every word. You know what’s in his mind, and what he’s up to. You may not like it, but at least he knows himself and isn’t afraid to let everybody in on it. Not that I’d ever have any use for the likes of him in my business, because he’d only write about it afterwards, but I know that if I asked him to dinner I’d certainly be entertained. He’s strictly officer class, and that’s something I can handle. And because you’re his son, Michael, or so I understand, you’ve got a bit of the same class, though without the big mouth, and that’s why I always have a use for you. Another good thing is that you don’t boast, not like that superannuated retread Bill Straw.”

I thanked him, but felt like the eternal victim of people who talked too much, so hoped he would get on and tell me what I’d been called in for.

“You don’t thank anybody for the truth, Michael.” He lit a cigar. “I won’t offer you one. You’ve filched too many already, and I don’t encourage pilfering. You’re just a little too light-fingered at times.

“I only took them in an emergency.”

“That’s why I see it in myself to forgive you. But next time take something else, and make sure it’s not mine.” He pushed a hand forward, his splayed fingers showing a line of ridge-like scars. “See these marks? That’s where my father hit me with a steel poker when I was fourteen, for half inching one of his Woodbines. I couldn’t use the hand for three months. But I could hardly hold it against him, could I? Anyway, you want to know why I asked you here today. The fact is that in this last year I’ve been thinking of retiring from active life.”

“Oh no, sir, don’t say that.” It’s about time, I thought, but where’s the catch? “What will all of us do if you go? You’ve been a factor in all our lives for so long.”

He sighed. “I know I shall be surely missed, but I’ve had a long talk about it with Agnes, and my daughter Polly, and they agreed it was time I let go of the reins, and took a well-earned rest. In fact Agnes suggested it a long time ago, God bless her.”

“The world won’t be the same without you,” I said.

He did the inconceivable, in sighing a second time, with a deeper reach than the first. “Michael, I’m not getting any younger, however much I pray to be before going to sleep at night. I shan’t see sixty again, not by a long chalk.”

He was silent while I took this in and stared at the six-foot bottle of whisky on wheels. “Of course,” he went on, “I don’t want to go out like a cloth-footed mouse so that no one will know I’ve gone, or that they won’t miss me when I have. You know me. I want to go out with a bang, and a big one at that. I’ll still have my seat in the House of Lords, which will keep me amused, though the thought of it doesn’t stop me wanting to mark my retirement with an event which will be remembered by my main business rivals, should they be in a state to remember anything at all afterwards.”

I knew we were now getting down to what he wanted to see me about. He handed over a tubed cigar, and poured us both a goodly splash of whisky from the wheeled bottle. “And that — chin-chin — is where you come in.”

He took up some papers from his large deep-dyed Harrod’s desk with a rectangle of blood red in the centre. “First of all, I owe you, and I hope you will accept this as a mark of appreciation for your effort at Spleen Manor.”

I looked at the amount on the cheque. If I didn’t he’d be chagrined, and embark on another futile homily, perhaps much to my detriment. “Thank you very much. Seven hundred pounds is more than generous.”

“Straw got five hundred. I don’t want him getting above himself. He was, however, more than satisfied.”

Delphick hadn’t been too far wrong in claiming that ‘class’ still thrived in England. Moggerhanger, having come from the bottom, would never let it die. “I’m sure Bill appreciated his payment.”

“Just don’t tell him what you got, that’s all.”

“I don’t think he’d mind.”

“I’d take the cheque back if you believed that, except I see it as another indication of how you value friendship, which I’ll never be one to complain about, especially if I get the benefit of it now and again.”

The whisky was top malt, and encouraged me to say: “I find it hard to believe your seat in the House of Lords will keep you busy enough when you retired, sir.”

“I know, Michael, but I shall hang on to a scrapyard or two, for old times’ sake, so that I can motor over and see the lads at work once a week, and feast my eyes on how I got my start in life. I had my first scrapyard when I was eighteen, so I was a pioneer at recycling waste. Greenpeace owes me a medal. In those days, though, anything was game, especially lead. I couldn’t afford to ask questions as to where the men got it when they wheeled it in by the barrow load, but I suspect a good many devout people had to unfurl their umbrellas when they prayed in church on Sunday. I made enough money at it to move on to motors, and the rest, as you might say, is history.”

I had no option but to keep quiet, and let him have the last word, or at least the next one, which was easy with seven hundred smackers keeping my wallet warm. He buffed up a thumbnail with an ivory-handled file. “The fact is, I’m retiring from my work because times are changing. The riff-raff are taking over, foreigners who think nothing of killing each other on the streets, to the detriment, I might say, of innocent passersby. Your English criminal has never put the man in the street at risk, any of whom might be his father, or even cousins and in-laws. The homegrown criminal knew and knows that there are limits as to how far you can go, established by tradition, and one thing out of bounds was that you never used a shooter. Oh, I know there’ve been exceptions, but whoever employed a gun was either sick in the head, or a newcomer from up North, and if the law didn’t deal with them, and hang them, the fraternity soon found a way to put them on the straight and narrow. Everybody knew the rules. Number one was that you mustn’t endanger women and children, and number two was that if a bobby pulled you up you didn’t resist. A fair cop was a fair cop, and that’s all there was to it. And let me tell you this, Michael, the English criminal who abided by the rules was as close to being a gentleman as a man of his class could get.

“Nowadays, though, it’s getting to be that there aren’t any rules except those of greed and the gun. Human life isn’t respected. Any bother, and out comes the gun, as if that will help you, and before you know where you are there’s another policeman shot dead, someone who’s got a wife and kiddies just like the next man. A corpse on the street. And what’s it going to do to children coming out of school who see a thing like that? What kind of example will it give them for the future? Any man I caught with a gun would have it turned on him before ever he got to court. The message would soon get around. So you see, I shall still be able to talk about matters in the House of Lords that the other sleepy heads know nothing about. For one thing I’ll try to persuade them to make this country safe for free born Englishmen — and women, bless them! Where was I, though? Oh yes. You know that the Green Toe Gang has been giving me aggravation for a long time? Don’t say you don’t. When I want your opinion I’ll ask for it. But they have, and I see the perfect way of taking them out before I retire. But before I tell you how it’s going to be done I’ll have that gun from your pocket.”

I put it on the desk. “It isn’t loaded. I’ve double checked it.”

He opened the magazine. “It’s a good job you’re right.”

“Keep it, if you like. I’ll never use it.”

I didn’t like the way he said: “Not even for me, to save my life?”

“If you put it like that, the answer’s yes.” But it wasn’t. “Of course I would.”

“That’s what I like to hear.” He took a box of cartridges from a drawer, filled the magazine, and gave the gun back to me. “That’s in case you ever need it. But never use it unnecessarily. And keep the safety catch on while you’re in here. I don’t mind you putting a hole in your foot, but not in my carpet. It was only cleaned last week.”

First chance, and I’d throw it away, not caring to have the weight in my pocket, not even for his sake, especially not for him. Bill carried one because he was like a baby with its favourite rattle, but not me. “What do I have to do with it?”

“If I let myself go, Michael, I’d say I wanted you to kill Oscar Cross, but as I always insist that violence ought only to be administered in homeopathic doses, I’ll be more than satisfied to bring about his downfall, so that after he’s good and truly ruined I can throw him a quid whenever I pass through Cardboard City. At the moment I happen to know he’s just amassed the biggest consignment of drugs that ever came into the country. It’s at Doggerel Bank. I know you know where that is.”

“And Ronald Delphick’s babysitting on it?” I was starting to sound like Sidney Blood.

“When he’s not pushing his panda pram up and down the Great North Road he is. He and Oscar Cross were at school together.”

“Lord Moggerhanger, I’ve never asked you directly for anything in my life, but may I have another whisky, so that my reeling mind can process the information you’ve just given me? I never for a minute supposed that Delphick’s panda wagon was full of straw, but I didn’t realise he had been educated with Oscar Cross, or that he was using Doggerel Bank as a warehouse.”

The level of booze in the bottle seemed never to go down. “It’s the perfect cover,” he said. “Who would suspect a barmy poet?”

“As I understand it, you want me and Bill to go up and do a house clearing act?”

“The speed of your mind never fails to please me.”

“Am I to kill Oscar Cross, should we find him on the premises?”

“I heartily wish I could say so, but I’m not vindictive. I’ll be satisfied with the haul. Oscar Cross is in Amsterdam, in any case, so you’ll only have Delphick to deal with, and what bevy of dollies happen to be sucking him off. Put a stocking over your head and terrify them if you like, but don’t let them suck you off as well. Business first. And tell that to Straw.”

“When do we go?”

“In the morning.”

“What about transport?”

“Take anything you fancy.”

A plan was forming. “I’d like the Rolls Royce, and the horsebox. We’ll need the space to bring everything back.”

“You follow my thoughts so exactly I like you more and more.”

“A narrow lane goes to the house, which I’ll block one way with the horsebox and the other with the Roller, so that we won’t be interfered with, and will have the house to ourselves.”

“I leave the tactics to you and Straw. All I want are the powders, every grain. On retirement the number of golden handshakes are going to cost me, so I’ll need what collateral I can get. Now you can go, but be ready for take off in the morning.”

When I outlined the scheme to Bill in the flat he was like a pig in clover. “We’ll want three hours to get there, so leave at ten, and hit ’em at lunch time. Bone idle Delphick will be having breakfast, and just as the smell of bacon and fried bread’s wafting above the dugout, we’ll go in. If there’s any high trees near the house I’ll abseil to the roof and get in through the slates. Maybe Lord Moggerhanger will lend me a rifle and sixty rounds so’s I can pick ’em off from half a mile if they try to escape with the stuff in rucksacks.” He rubbed his hands. “They won’t forget us in a hurry.”

“We aren’t going to storm the Atlantic Wall,” I said, “so curb your lunatic enthusiasm.”

He unfolded papers from his wallet, a leaflet given out on the street showing the words in big block capitals: ALL YOU CAN EAT FOR FIVE POUNDS, and the name of a foolhardy restaurant at Notting Hill Gate. “I called there,” he said, “and had the feed of my life, but the next time I went it was closed. Now let’s go over the details again. You can draw me a sketch plan on the back of this paper. Then I’ll ask Mrs Blemish to fill every flask she’s got in the morning and make us three days supply of sandwiches.”

“For a start,” I said, “we’ll leave at nine o’clock so that I can call at Upper Mayhem, and not to write my will there either. Nor will there be any call for firearms. Another thing is we’ll need two days at the most to do the job, not three.”

“Michael,” he got me by the lapels, “you never know when a day’s reserve of sandwiches won’t save your life,” so I had to agree on that one.

Back in the office, when my hand rested on Alice Whipplegate’s shoulder as she sat at her computer, she knew what I wanted, because so did she. “I always keep my promises,” I said, “with the woman I’m going to live with till my dying day.”

She turned with a wry smile, which was no less welcome for that: “As long as it’s till tomorrow morning then. Lord Moggerhanger is around, so I don’t want any hanky panky at the moment, though I wouldn’t mind a bit of argy-bargy in my big bed at home. As soon as I’m finished I’ll drive you off in my faithful little Astra.”

I kissed the back of her warm neck, applauding her plan. The trouble was, if trouble it turned out to be, that I always felt like cohabiting for life with whoever I was going to bed with at that moment. Of course, it had advantages for yours truly, in stoking us both into uxorious couplings that could not be bettered for mutual satisfaction.

She parked by a modern bijou gem at Ham Common, and carried a shopping bag of pizzas up the narrow path, me behind with a bottle in each hand. We’d talked of eating right away, but a more deliciously insistent hunger struck us as we got inside, and no sooner had the door clicked than we went up two steps at a time into her chintzy sweet smelling bedroom.

We stripped off, and she spun into my arms. “Now what do we do?” a sly little smile at the feel of my appurtenance against her thigh, as if that was its permanent home, though I soon let the wanton predator into a more comfortable place.

Two hours later we were in the kitchen, and I uncorked a bottle of red before tackling the pizzas, food I normally loathed — though every scrap went down.

Her arse against the still warm stove, she pulled the peignoir off her shoulder. “I’ve always fancied having it this way.”

So I took her as she wanted, her eyes closed and mine wide open, knee tremblers not the easiest of positions, but one had to fall in with those preferences no woman was shy these days of demanding. In my experience they’d rarely been lax in saying what was wanted, and it had never turned out a disappointment for me.

I reached for a roll of paper towelling to swab us dry. “I have an early start in the morning, so I’d better get back soon.”

She made coffee. “Where are you going?”

I was about to tell her. We worked for the same firm, after all. But I didn’t. Moggerhanger demanded button lips. “I’ll go to Upper Mayhem, and wait for further orders. There could be a consignment to pick up from Spleen Manor.”

“By a process of elimination,” she said, “I imagine you’re off to Doggerel Bank.”

“I’d rather storm Barclay’s Bank.” But I knew she knew. There was no harm in it, and even less for us when she said: “What I want is a nightcap on the bed before you go.”

At midnight it was all I could do to crawl up to the flat, and even Bill’s snoring, which sounded as if he was trying to saw his way out of Colditz and not doing badly either, didn’t stop me falling asleep after putting on the alarm for seven.

He was bulling up his boots when I woke, reeking of aftershave and holding each one aloft to see his inane reflection in the glisten. “I’ve shone yours up as well, old cock. I got up at five, so thought I might as well. Always go into action with your boots polished.”

“Stop trying to put the fear of God into me.” I reached for my towel. “We’re only going north to lift a few packets of lemonade powder.”

“That’s as may be, but smart soldiers are always the last to get shot. Scruffs just ask for it. That’s why so many in my gang survived, bar a scratch or two. They fought harder to get in my platoon than they did to get at the Gerries. When a man asked me to take him on I insisted on short hair, a clean shaven face, boots well buffed up, and fifty fags. So get yourself a shower then put your kit on so that we can go down to breakfast. I’m clambed to death.”

While we were eating our way through a Blemish special Moggerhanger came in puffing his early morning cigar. “Two won’t be enough. Kenny Dukes is coming with you.”

It was useless saying he would be superfluous to requirements, though Bill piped up: “Private Dukes, sir?”

“Not all that private,” the boss laughed. “He can never keep himself from himself. But I’m sure the pair of you can keep him in order, and he’ll have his uses, so do as I say, and take him.”

When Kenny presented himself at the bottom of the steps Bill looked him up and down, at longish hair, an earring, and suede shoes. “We’re going into rough country, lad, so go and put on a pair of good boots. Make sure they’ve got the regulation shine. And get rid of that earring: no identifying badges are to be worn in action. And stand up straight,” he bawled. “You might break your mother’s heart but you won’t break mine, you slovenly tike!”

Kenny turned to me. “Is he fucking mad, or what?”

“He’s serious,” I said, “so you’d better do exactly as he says. It’s an important operation we embarking on. In any case he’s Sidney Blood’s first cousin, and stands no nonsense. They were brought up in the same slaughterhouse.”

“Oh, well, I didn’t know, did I?”

He came back looking a little more purposeful, but when he climbed into the front with me Bill’s hand went in and tapped him on the shoulder: “Other ranks behind, and make it snappy, or you’ll be on a charge.”

Kenny looked vicious for a moment, then stunned, finally shrugging to obey. I flicked the engine into life, as Jock the handyman swung the gate. Every time I set off in the Rolls I felt young and irresponsible again. How was I to know that this was to be the last jaunt for Moggerhanger, though I would have been surprised had anyone hinted as much.

“O-nine-hundred-hours,” Bill said. “Dead on time.”