Moggerhanger

Chapter Twenty-Seven

The tang of leafmould and wood damp blew through the open windows, refreshing yet sinister, telling us to get away quick, so we bumped our way to do so at top speed. Just before the tarmacked road Bill stopped the car. “I’ve been thinking.”

“No.” I passed a Henri Winterman. “I won’t hear of it. Have a smoke instead.”

“Didn’t you hear? I said I’d been thinking.”

“I know you did. But my answer is no.”

“What are you on about? I have a particularly foolproof plan.”

“No plan is foolproof. You said so yourself.”

He let smoke drift away. “You haven’t even heard what I’ve got to say yet.”

“I have. I’m tuned into your brainbox. I’ve heard it several times already in my mind. While we’re wasting time, imagination, and no doubt intelligence on your loony proposition, our survival gets more and more unlikely. We’re too near the scene of the crime to talk. I don’t like courting disaster. If Delphick’s daft enough he’s halfway up the lane to the telephone box. The longer we linger the more dangerous it gets.”

“Do you think I don’t know? Listen, it won’t take a minute, then we’ll be off like a rocket. What I propose is that we race down to the Channel and get across to France. There’s nothing more pleasant than spending money in that lovely country. After a few easy days at the fleshpots we’ll make a royal progress to Marseilles. I know how to dispose of the stuff there. We’ll be out of the territory of the Green Toe Gang. We’ll be beyond the range of Moggerhanger’s long arm. We’ll make ourselves into millionaires.” He gave his great berserker freebooting laugh. “We’ll be rich for life!”

“Listen to what would really happen,” I cautioned. “If Lanthorn’s son isn’t on duty to stop us getting across the Channel — though he probably will be, because Moggerhanger is no fool, and already has him on red alert in case we make such a move — the French police, under the eagle eye of Inspector Javert, will be laughing their tits off while waiting for us. Ten years later we’d get eaten by sharks, trying to escape from Devil’s Island.”

“I was only testing you, Michael.” He put the car in gear, and we were on the road. My only wish was to deliver the load to Moggerhanger, then clock out of his employment with the appropriate golden handshake. Handling and transporting drugs was finished for me. All I wanted was to live modestly — though in idleness. If and when the money to do so ran out I would apply for a job in Blaskin’s fiction factory, churning out Sidney Bloods, because writing, from all I had seen, was far from an unpleasant life, almost the same as pulling in a private income out of what, after all, was your hobby, since you halfway liked doing it.

And yet, as we threaded the lanes, if the shitwork Blaskin wanted done was beyond me, I could turn gigolo and live off women, which would be even more pleasant, since I loved them so much. Then again, even that might not bring in a tolerable income, because I wasn’t as young as was necessary for such an occupation, and in any case I’d so enjoy what I was doing I wouldn’t want to charge anything.

Moggerhanger’s thousand or two for the present job would soon melt, in this land of galloping inflation, and when it did I’d be on the pavement outside a London terminal begging pence for cups of tea, and slurping so much that my insides would rot, and I’d soon pop my clogs beside a cardboard fire under one of the bridges.

“Think of it,” Bill said, “leaning against a palm tree on the island of Runna-Runna in the South Pacific, a smiling bint in a grass skirt coming towards you with half a coconut shell brimming with the local brew, her lovely brown breasts moving up and down in the sunlight with every step. Canoes fishing for our dinner would dot the blue briny, and there’d be the mouth-watering smell of a whole pig roasting on the beach. Oh yes, and yams boiling in the pot. I can see it all.”

“Knock it off,” I shouted. “You stopped me from putting Moggerhanger behind bars three years ago, and now you’re trying to do him down. I don’t understand.”

“Michael, the past is history. If you learn from history you make more history, and never get anywhere. But it’s your choice. Only think about it though, you and me and Dismal free of all worldly cares. We’d sit on the deck of a schooner, with the shape of Runna-Runna in the distance getting closer and closer, pleasure island just waiting for us to enjoy. We’ll have the natives build us a shipshape palm-thatched abode, and our bone-idleness wouldn’t be the half of it. Now and again a tourist ship would stop for twenty-four hours, and not only would we get all the fags and booze in exchange for what local produce our native wives could weave or dig up, but bevies of lovely young tourist girls would come ashore in white shorts and sun hats to see how the locals lived, meaning you and me. We’d have the time of our lives, forever and forever with no amen.”

“We’d be too dead to enjoy it,” I said. “And don’t keep slowing down.”

“You’re too pessimistic to live. What’s happened to my old Michael Cullen? I’d take my time on the island at first, to get the lie of the land, but in a year or two we’d mount a coup d’état, and the place would fall into our hands like a ripe plumb. I’d be crowned king by the inhabitants, and you’d be my prime minister. Think of it. William the Conqueror back from Normandy, and the Right Honourable Michael Cullen! We’d make a model country out of it, and get a seat at the United Nations. I’d have a palace built, and organise a small standing army, the best trained force in the region, and if any neighbouring island objected to our presence (I could soon arrange that) we’d land our battalion and take that place over as well. Can’t you see it all? Field Marshall Straw whistling his lads up the beach like shock troops! Before we knew it we’d have an archipelago. And you say we couldn’t do it? Where’s your vision? Where’s your optimism and confidence? Where’s your sense of purpose? You might want to stay a nonentity in Blighty forever, but I don’t. I want a bit of dolce fa niente in my life.”

On a straight bit before the A1—which road I was longing to see, because then maybe the mad bastard would smell enough of London to belt up, and realise there was nothing to do but get there, unload the stuff, and take our pay. We caught up with a police Range Rover, and the road wasn’t free enough of traffic to overtake with the horsebox, so Bill had to follow it for a while.

“As I see the situation, there’s a great opportunity,” he babbled, “which you’re thinking of passing up so blithely. It would be dead easy, no risk at all. I’ve worked out how to get there. In Marseilles we’d pocket a cool million, maybe two — or even three — then fly to New Zealand. Once there we’d buy a boat and cruise around the South Seas till we found a pleasant island. Maybe we would even stop a month in Fiji, and talk to people about the most suitable place, and how to get there. I say, what the hell’s that cop car doing? He’s down to twelve miles an hour, and probably inviting us to overtake so’s he can do us for speeding.”

He was too lit up by his insane Utopian scheme for colonising Straw Island to bother with his rear mirror, and when I leaned out to look, another police Range Rover came from a turning and placed itself right up against the horsebox bumpers. “We’re being topped and tailed.”

They nudged us into an oh-so-convenient lay-by and, as soon as Bill stopped, Dismal leapt out into a patch of oil and began a long piss. “I’m glad you pulled us up, officer,” Bill said. “Our dog’s been wanting to do that for at least ten miles.”

The tall brutal looking bastard of the silver pips in charge wore a cap with the Sillitoe tartan across the headband. His mate was a sergeant, as were a pair in the car which pulled up behind the horsebox. I don’t know why I wasn’t as frightened as I should have been, because they were now about to start the process whereby only Dismal wouldn’t get twenty years.

“Fucking amateurs,” the smallest sergeant said, and he was six feet tall. They don’t make them small in Yorkshire.

“Get out, you,” one said to Bill, who smiled and complied, though he showed no hurry, as if to put out his hand for a shake, because he had been in this situation many times before, and knew how to behave. “Good afternoon, officer.”

“We want a look in your vehicles.”

Bill put on his most inane smile. “Certainly, sir.” We crowded around, while he made a show of sorting the key.

“Fucking hell!” one of them cried when he pulled the door wide open. “We’ve got a murder on our hands.”

Kenny was stretched and unmoving on the floor. Bill wagged his head. “He’s not dead, sir, only asleep. He’s had a drop too much, that’s all. It’s a very sad case. He took in such a quantity of alcohol as would have stymied an elephant. In fact I was in Burma during the war, when one of the lads in my platoon gave a bull elephant a quart of arak. I soon wished that great thing had gone to sleep as well, because it caused such a swathe of destruction between Mandalay and Rangoon they must still be talking about it. But don’t worry about our pal Kenny, sir,” he said to the inspector. “We’re taking him home to his wife and five little kiddies. He’ll be able to sleep it off there. She’s used to it, poor woman.”

The four of them stared at Bill, as if not unappreciative of his narrative, till one who considered he had gone on too long said: “Shut the fuck up. We aren’t here to listen to arseholes like you. Just be careful of everything you say, because whatever you come out with will be used in court in any way we like, to get you the maximum possible sentence.”

“Open the boot,” said the inspector.

Such words I had dreaded, so knew that things were far from all right. Yet I had the itch at thinking I had seen him somewhere before, though couldn’t say where. As well as having no trace of the local accent their procedure showed few genuine characteristics of a police raid. Neither Bill nor I were up against the horsebox with hands in the air while they searched for guns, as they should have made us do. They were carrying on as if they had never bothered to look at the telly.

Bill wouldn’t reign in Runna-Runna, and that was a fact, though he seemed the king of insouciance now. “Certainly sir, anything you say sir.” All of us crowded around, Dismal as well, as he fumbled with the lock, unnaturally slow for a man of his appearance, till one of the coppers piped up: “Shall I get the crowbar, sir?”
Bill and I were even more astonished than the coppers — who gloated at the packages of drugs when the boot shot open, one of the sergeants running a finger along the top of a box to lick it — when a defiant voice, though close to tears, shouted: “Don’t touch them. They aren’t yours. It belongs to Lord Moggerhanger.”

Kenny, who had somehow roused himself, stood by the horsebox, pointing his undoubtedly loaded revolver at our concerned and curious group. “I’ll kill the first berk who touches any of them packets.”

I thought this a right old time for him to pull a Sidney Blood stunt, and so did the inspector who said: “Put that down, lad.”

Such a development was no solution to the problem all of us now shared. Bill’s face screwed into rage: “Kenny, you want the George Medal? Drop that replica pistol and stop larking about. These gentlemen have every right to know what’s in the boot of Lord Moggerhanger’s Rolls Royce.”

“No they haven’t.” He was even conscious enough to smile. “It’s his personal property. And you shut up, Straw, or you’ll get it first. Making me shine my boots!”

“If we survive this,” the tallest sergeant said, “we can look forward to a bit of counselling — I haven’t had any for a while. I hope they send me a nice young girl again.”

“It’s nothing to what he’ll need if he don’t drop that shooter and say he’s sorry the idea of killing us ever entered his Jack Lantern,” another sergeant said who, I now noticed, had a scar down his left cheek. “Come on, lad, be sensible.”

Though Kenny was right off his loaf I had to admire him. We had underrated how perilous circumstances could jerk him into his London gangster self, though if Moggerhanger ever got to know he wouldn’t thank him for it. Maybe he was still deranged by the hangover, and didn’t yet realise he was offering his life for the sake of his employer’s washing powders. I considered nodding Dismal onto him, but why should a poor dog die in such a cause?

“Go on, close the boot, so that we can get going,” Kenny shouted, his voice steadier now, “or I’ll let you have it. I fucking well mean it.”

A smile wiggled across the inspector’s thin lips. “Do as he says, lads. You can’t negotiate with someone like that.” One of the sergeants must have been away in the bushes for a piss, or somewhere to admire the wet and deadly landscape that went for scenery, or even to snaffle some of the whisky that had sent Kenny bonkers, Moggerhanger never supplying his horsebox with less than half a dozen bottles. He crept around the corner with truncheon raised, and sent down a swipe on Kenny’s skull that proved him not to be indestructible after all, in spite of his South London upbringing, though he didn’t let go of the gun as he crashed to the mud.

After the policemen had taken a turn giving his senseless body a few spiteful kicks they made a human chain between the boot of the Roller and one of the Range Rovers, which made me feel stupid and helpless to watch, knowing that our effort of the day had been for nothing. They’ll let us drive in our own car to the copshop now, I thought, blue lights flashing and all sirens threatening before and behind, so that we wouldn’t be able to escape.

Bill went to the inspector, who was about to get in the front car. “May I know what we’re going to be charged with, sir? All those packets are filled with toys for our children.”

The inspector pushed him in the chest. “Fuck off, Straw. We know you. Wakefield jail, wasn’t it? They’re our toys now. If we see either of you two or that fucking dog again in these parts we’ll chop you all up and make a stew to feed the local down and outs in Tadcaster. Won’t we, lads?”

With energy and much laughter they pulled the blue lights off their cars, peeled back the police labels, painted graffiti along the jam-sandwich lines, and shot off at a speed that real policemen wouldn’t emulate for fear of injuring innocent bystanders or crawling motorists around the next bend.

“That’s that, then,” I said. “We’ll get poor Kenny back into the horsebox. Coppers my arse, though. The thieving bastards didn’t even take his gun.”

We made Kenny comfortable, as they say in hospital, where he should have been, though he was twitching a footpath out of his stupor, his head somewhat more bloody than before. Bill sulked at the wheel, Dismal reoccupied the back seat, and I opened the flask and food packages. “We might as well fortify ourselves, before deciding what to do.”

“Oh Michael,” Bill wailed, “why didn’t you agree to my scheme? If we’d turned right at the paved road instead of left we’d have been clear away by now. We could have gone in ever diminishing circles to Dover and crossed the Moat to the mainland with no trouble. As it is, we’re done for. Even if we sell the horsebox it won’t get us anywhere near Runna-Runna. And how can we turn up in Ealing with an empty car? Moggerhanger will do you in.”

I ignored the implication of that, and passed Dismal another sandwich, who ate quicker than us. “No he won’t. Those jailbirds were cops in disguise, ordered up here to take the stuff away as soon as we had moved it out of Delphick’s. Moggerhanger couldn’t take the chance of someone as crooked as you and me embarking on a hairbrained stunt to Runna-Runna with the loot. Don’t you see? He’s more cunning than we could ever be. That’s how he got to where he is. He sat in his office, had a good giggle, and worked it all out. He’ll expect us to go back in fear of our lives — and emoluments — and have a long belly laugh saying what he’d done, and gloating over his trick. I might be dim, but I know him like the back of his hand. If I’d put my thinking cap on earlier we could have shot across the moors into Lancashire and gone back to him in triumph, to his unexpected surprise if not discomfiture.”

Bill began to eat. “We lost the chance of a lifetime, and I’ll regret it to my dying day. It would have been so easy.”

I poured the sweet coffee. “We’d never have got to enjoy it.”

“Let’s sell the Roller. It’s in good nick. And it’s only had one owner.”

“As far as we know. You never can tell, with Moggerhanger. But listen,” I said, “even if we sold the spare tyre, to pay our way to Zeebrugge he wouldn’t rest till he’d had our guts for garters.”

“I’d have his first. I wouldn’t mind swinging for him. He shouldn’t treat us as playthings. Imagine him not trusting us. That hurts.”

“It wouldn’t be any use killing him. And people don’t get strung up anymore. They get out in ten years, no matter how many people they’ve killed. You might not get that much if you plead self-defence, but even if you only got six months some of Moggerhanger’s lads inside would take the hint and top you. So don’t think about it. There’s no point. We’ll have a slow ride down to London, and hope those fake cops get the drugs there before us. Let Moggerhanger have his laugh. We’ll get paid all the same.”

“I say, though,” he laughed, “wouldn’t it be just the ticket if those blokes took off to Runna-Runna instead of us? They must be thinking about it, the same as we did.”

“It wouldn’t be good at all, because in that case Moggerhanger would have a reason for being extremely cross at us for having let it go.” I closed the window against the rain. “We must go back and face the music. There’s no other way, is how I see it.”

“It doesn’t sound good to me,” he said. “Moggerhanger can be very vicious when he thinks he’s got the upper hand. Perhaps it would be better if we drove the car to the Forest of Bowland, abandoned it, and took off overland. Dismal will come, to catch rabbits and pheasants for us, but we’d leave Kenny to his first experience of Outward Bound survival. It’ll be invigorating for us to do a bit of yomping, say twenty miles a day to start with.”

“What do you mean? Training for when you break out of Dartmoor? Forget it. Turn the ignition back on, and let’s get going.”

“Do you know, Michael, you’re no fun. I always used to think you were, but you’re not. You aren’t getting old, are you? It don’t look like it. Think of the lads in the Falklands, sixty miles from the enemy, not even a footpath, and suddenly they’re on the Argies who’d never expected them. The whole battalion went sixty miles across a swamp. The indirect approach again. That’s the British Army for you.”

“Pity you didn’t go with them.”

“Do you think I didn’t try? I almost ran to enlist, but they said I was too old. Too old! Me! I cried all the way to the pub. I couldn’t think what the world was coming to, turning down a born soldier. You should have seen me as a young lad of eighteen, though, when speed was of the essence. I was over the assault course before the others had even got started.”

Arguing had always exhausted me sooner than action. “If I hear anymore about your military prowess I get out of the car, find a nice bushy tree, and hang myself.”

“Even you ought to be inspired hearing about my experiences.” He started the engine. “I suppose you’re right. Let’s push south.”

No one was more pleased than me to hit the Great North Road and set the compass in the only possible direction. I wanted to get back to civilisation and see my steaming incestuous sister Sophie. As for Moggerhanger, I didn’t give a toss about his machinations, nor the load of drugs to finance his old age, a period of his life I hoped in any case to make very uncomfortable indeed.

Meanwhile, only interested in myself, I decided that my crazy ziggurat existence must give way to a calmer, more legitimate life. Since working at the advertising agency I had been pitched into my former love of freebooting, and now no future in it seemed in the offing. Something definite had to be possible, and though my temperament had weathered all previous perils, to get Fate by the throat and say ‘Make something happen’ hadn’t been my line. Fate had always chivvied me along, and I’d never questioned it, but from now I would resist its influence, change without its help, if only I knew how to do it — though who could? I needed some kind of plan, and thought that Bill’s notion of fleeing to the Pacific hadn’t been so crazy after all. At least he’d thought about it, instead of waiting for Fate to drive him. Not that I could have gone along with his idea, because Fate had to be backed up by a dose of common sense, a quality he spectacularly lacked.

However it was, my rake’s progress had to stop, though why I should think so at this moment was becoming harder to say. Perhaps I was afraid of landing in prison, and couldn’t bear the picture of Frances, or Sophie, or even Claudine Forks opening the paper one day and reading that I’d been sent down.

The further south we got, the better I felt, and the less inclined was I to worry. The weather improved as well, while Bill nipped gleefully in and out between juggernauts, and took us speedily along.

My despair at having been robbed so blindly of Moggerhanger’s impedimenta no longer gnawed, as Bill steered us into the enclave of a steakhouse south of Stamford. “My guts are rumbling,” he said, “like Mount Etna before an eruption,” and parked neatly between two 4WDs.

Such cars might have been common in that kind of country, but I remembered the markings, and one of the number plates. “Bill,” I said softly, as if not wanting even God to overhear, “these vehicles belong to the bastards who high-jacked our load. They must be celebrating in the restaurant, before going back to London.”

His expletive was uncharacteristic. “Do a recce at the window then, and if they’re still at their scoffing give me a signal. Looks like the powders are still in there as well. I’ll do a break-in.” He took a snazzy little leatherbound case from his inside pocket. “I’ve got just the toolkit.”

Not caring to wonder whether this was Fate or my own free will I approached the windows side on, leaned against the wall as if to clean shit off one of my shoes, and got a glimpse of a table inside at which the four of them sat. They’d changed into jeans and sweatshirts, but I’d know them anywhere. Plates were burdened with meat and all the trimmings, bottles of wine half gone, a waitress laughing at their rowdy quips, clouds of battleship grey smoke from fags and cigars flowing above the food. A positive sign to Bill, I hoped none of the revellers would come to the doorway and check that their motors weren’t being tampered with, doubting any would, for they were having such a riotous time, confident that they’d left the Range Rovers fully locked and secure.

Dismal sniffed out the appropriate car, and Bill had the door open in seconds. “How did you learn that?” I asked.

He pulled a large tartan blanket off the packets, and carried a couple to the Roller. “Did a course somewhere, didn’t I?”

I didn’t quiz as to where, while humping my share. “They won’t even know the stuff’s gone,” he said, “after I yank that ornamental bush up and stow it inside.” He returned from another shuttle, both of us working quietly, as if afraid our flitting shadows might reflect on the restaurant windows. My heart drummed as if sending a message across Africa, but we soon had the goods stashed where they belonged, Dismal looking on and thinking how clever we were.

It was a stopwatch operation, the transfer done in no time. We weighted the bush inside the car with stones from the pathway, plus odds and ends out of the Roller, and spread the tartan back over all, assuming that, too drunk and overconfident, they wouldn’t even notice the load had been tampered with.

I thought Bill was cutting things a bit fine when he said: “Before we go we’ll unhitch the horsebox and leave it over there. If they notice, though I don’t suppose they will, since there are so many such things in these parts, they can make of it what they will.”

“It’s diabolical,” I said.

He held himself like the proudest man in the forecourt. “Ain’t it? We’ll make better speed, and be less noticeable. Moggerhanger can have it picked up tomorrow. It’ll be no skin off our teeth. He might even make Kenny pull it to London.”

Backing out of the space, we slid feeling like royalty onto the road. “Turn off at the second left,” he said, “in case they rumble what we’ve done.”

“Why not the first turning, to be on the safe side?”

“Grow up, Michael. If they come in pursuit that’s the one they’ll think we chose.”

I looked at the map. “If they do catch up with us we’ll be dead. You know that, don’t you?”

“Catch us? Us? O ye of little faith! Forgive me while I laugh. When they get to Ealing with only a bush under the blanket Moggerhanger will have something closely resembling an epileptic seizure, which he’ll survive, of course, but they won’t. I say, don’t the car handle a lot better without that horsebox?”

“And when we turn up,” I said, “all will be forgiven, because everything will have gone according to plan. We’ll be in Moggerhanger’s good books forever. Here’s the second fork, so off you go.”

“The compass points southeast, don’t it?”

“Of course.”

He took the turning. “And what does that tell us?”

“I thought we’d decided against all that, so belt up.”

“Michael, our recent spell of exceptional luck has to be accepted as an indication from on high, and Him on high would be justifiably angry if we didn’t take Him up on it. The Good Lord never liked ingratitude. So our next stop is Harwich, then through all the hoops to Runna-Runna. King Billy here I come. I’ve always had a soft spot for Buddhism.”

“What are you talking about? Delphick tried to convert me, and now you.”

“Reincarnation, old son, is what’s in my mind. In my distant past I must at some time have been monarch of all I surveyed, so to get back into that condition and have my own little kingdom seems perfectly right. I already feel the tropical breeze on my cheeks, not to mention the comfort of a throne that won’t give me a backache in my old age.”

“All I would expect in that case would be a bullet in the head.”

“Just listen to me, and you won’t go far wrong. As I see it, if we deliver the stuff to Moggerhanger we might get a couple of thousand each for having risked our lives, and what’s that to a growing man? A few nights on the tiles in Soho, with a dose of the clap thrown in? It’s only right that we get more out of it than that. Justice calls for no less.”

“You’d better let me take the wheel. I don’t trust your inertial navigation system. Put your thinking cap on and come up with something a bit more sensible. And take the next lane on the right. We’ll unload Dismal at Upper Mayhem.”

“It’s in the Harwich direction at least.”

“No,” I said. “If you like, when we get there you can piss off and leave me. I’ll put the house in a state of defence, in preparation for a long siege when they come to get me. I’ll face the music alone, and hope you get clean away. If you eventually land on Runna-Runna send me a postcard in a few years with your head on the stamp. Unless I get a parcel with it in a box. On the other hand, to come out of this with fifty thousand pounds each would in my view be neither too little nor too much, and be something freely given by our employer Lord Moggerhanger. It’s not a lot of money to him, if you think of the couple of million he’s going to make out of the haul. Do you agree that we should go for such an arrangement?”

I hadn’t even thought of this plan before speaking, yet was glad it cropped up, because big advantages often came to me by that method, if method it was. It was only when I thought hard that things went wrong.

Bill didn’t say anything for the next few miles, as if too busy following my directional instructions. At last he opened his mouth. “Is that what you think?”

“We’ll threaten to burn all that’s in the car if he doesn’t send two packets of thousand unforged fifty-pound notes within twenty-four hours.”

“Your plan sounds feasible, Michael, but it also seems fraught with numerous improbabilities. Why not just keep back one of the packets, and say the rest was all that came out of the Range Rovers? Let those fake cops take the blame. We could sell our packet in Manchester, and maybe get a bit more than the hundred thousand.”

I was happy at seeing the chimney of Upper Mayhem. “No, it would be safer and more realistic to be open and above board in our demands with Moggerhanger. He would think better of it than mere thievery, which he’d never forgive, and might kill us for. I know him by now, so it’s a matter of choosing between your hairbrained flight of fancy, which will cost you a long stretch in prison, if not your life. My perfect plan will net us fifty grand each, and your half share will tide you over for a carefree year or two in Runna-Runna. You wouldn’t have to spend all your time with a telescope on a hilltop looking for blokes in a speedboat coming to kill you then, either.”