Moggerhanger

Chapter Six

Clegg buffed up my shoes, laid out the topnotch navy-blue suit always reserved for a foray into my favourite metropolis, and sorted a tie to complete the aspect. Moggerhanger’s rules had it that every man around him must wear one, maybe for him to hang them with if they gave any lip. Moggerhanger, in his ennoblement, also insisted on smart clothes as a form of respect to him, though such wishes were wasted on me because neat dressing had always been my style. Clegg’s gold fob watch, willingly lent, decorated my waistcoat as the ultimate mark of respectability. I put on my ceremonial trilby and best gabardine mackintosh, leaving the house by taxi after a night of undisturbed sleep, my last for some time.

A positive spring in my heels on stepping out of the train at Liverpool Street got me to the ticket barrier before anyone else. I walked as if to go slow would mean death, like a powered bluebottle at the end of summer knowing what would happen if it stopped buzzing.

A shaky old chap at the ticket machine in the Underground was in tears, and I asked what was the matter. He was so distressed I wondered whether I should send for a social worker. “I’ve just put a pound coin in the slot,” he sobbed, “and no ticket came out. It’s my last quid. If I’m not home at Leytonstone in half an hour my old woman will gas herself.”

“Go to the office and tell them,” I said. “Then they’ll give you the money back, or let you through the turnstile. At least they should. London Transport makes millions out of people losing their money like that, and not protesting.” Even so, I gave him a pound coin, to stop his whining.

He straightened up a bit. “In fact, sir, I was in such a hurry I put two pounds in before I realised what was happening. I don’t know what my old woman will do.”

In such an upbeat mood at getting back to London I considered giving him another quid, till I looked more carefully at his face. “I’ve seen your mug before.”

When the curve went out of his back he was about six feet tall. “Of course you have, Michael. Not very observant these days, are you, my old duck?”

Such an encounter was more worrying than fortuitous, the world getting too small even for me. Fate was weaving a circle around me, and no mistake. There were times when I was glad to see someone from the old days, and others when I didn’t know whether to like it or not, but I was talking to my old pal Bill Straw. “I thought you were in Portugal, cosily married to Maria? At least you were three years ago, because I remember waving you off. I was happy, if you don’t mind me saying so, to see the last of you.”

We talked among the moiling crowds. “It seems like thirty years to me,” he said, “though I sometimes think you live a lot longer if things turn out badly now and again. They don’t often go right with me, so I expect to live forever.”

“What happened, then?”

“I’d be happier to tell you if we were sitting in a nice café with a pot of coffee and a plate of cream cakes in front of us. I haven’t had a bite since breakfast.”

We went into the main station and found a place. A waiter looked at Bill as if he was a tramp — which he was — and the scum of the earth — which he certainly wasn’t, his clothes being wrecks from good quality shops. He ate two cakes before starting his rigmarole, and I was glad to feed him because, unlike most people, he could be more dangerous in adversity than affluence.

“You see, Michael, I had it made in Portugal, at first, anyway. We lived like a king and queen on our little country estate, but after a couple of years she started going a bit funny. I found out she was having a bit on the side with my manager, and that they were cheating me so much I was like one of the blind mice. Well, I have to confess I was drunk most of the time on that delicious wine they have out there, so it was easy for them to sell my produce without me knowing, and spin some tale as to where it had gone. In that couple of years we must have had more blight and phyloxera than in the whole history of viticulture. Or so they led me to believe. It was my fault, but you know how trusting I am.”

I spluttered into my cup, for he was the most wary person alive, and whoever trusted him more than an eel in King John’s stomach would have to be blind dead dumb and completely daft. On the other hand, ever since we’d come to London thirteen years ago, he had been my friend, and if the first job I got through him set me on the road to prison it was no fault of his. “And then what?”

“The cakes are all gone. Let’s have some more.” A belch sounded as if a pig had been trapped in his guts since birth. Two French girl students at the next table laughed, especially when Bill, on seeing them, induced the first bars of ‘Colonel Bogey’ out of another ripe effort.

“You’re disgusting.” I stood up to go for the cakes. “Anybody can tell you were born and bred in Worksop, letting it rip like that.”

“Oh, and don’t forget another pot of coffee,” he called. “This one’s about cold.”

Three full packets of good quality cigarettes lay on the table when I got back, which I thought at first were a gift of the French girls, to encourage another sickening tune from his resident pig. “Where did you get those?”

“Michael, you are looking at the most resourceful down and out in London, which means the world. Have one. You look as if you could do with a puff.”

Perhaps in those deep pockets of his superannuated poacher’s coat he had more money than I suspected, and only sponged to gratify his second nature, and as a way of making life more interesting than if he had to work. Such cigarettes weren’t cheap, so maybe he was in Moggerhanger’s pay, I told him, set to spy me out as soon as I got to Liverpool Street, and make sure I went in the direction of Ealing.

“Your theory is all to cock, Michael,” he said. “You never could think straight, could you? The reason I’m never short of a smoke is this. I hang around Hampstead, or Dulwich, or Wimbledon — all good liberal middle-class areas — because at such places you’ll find not a few blokes about to give up smoking. When they see me grubbing around dustbins with a plastic bag, or swigging back a bottle of water which they think is pure spirits, they see it as only charitable to give me their fags because the wife’s nagged them at home to make them give up smoking. They consider it a sin to throw them away. Luckily they generally decide to give it up in the middle of a carton, or half a tin of roll up tobacco, which shows more determination to pack it in than if they’d waited till they’d got none left in the house. It usually means they’ll soon give in and start puffing away again, which is all the better for me, because then they’ll be throwing another carton away when they can’t put up with the wife’s jeering at their will power anymore. You could say they’re the moral scum of the earth, because they don’t care if I get cancer, and that in their heart of hearts they see it as a way of getting rid of scavengers like me.”

“You can’t have it both ways,” I said.

“I’ve never wanted it both ways. A single track for me. One way’s always been enough — hasn’t it, duck?” he bawled across to the French girls, who laughed delightedly at his attention.

“Leave them alone,” I said, “and tell me more about you and Maria in Portugal.”

“Michael, I will. As you well know, or should by now, the trappings and the goods of the world have never meant all that much to me. Easy come, and more than easy go. So you know what I did when I found Maria and my manager in bed together? You’ll never believe it, but I walked out, because I didn’t want to murder them. It would have been nothing to me, to get my maulers around their necks and put their lights out, but I knew that if I hung about one more minute I’d have rotted the rest of my life in a Portuguese prison.”

He was the most violent man I knew, when necessary, so he was being truthful. After pouring coffee he got stuck into the eccles cakes and custard tarts. “I enjoyed myself with a couple of women in Lisbon, and when I’d spent half my money got the plane to London. Maria could have the house. It’s still mine, so I might go back one day and boot her out. She was a sly little piece, though at times looked as if a tuppenny icecream wouldn’t melt on her belly button. I should have twigged when I met her that she was as deep as the Trent at Colwick. With her, every sleep was a different fever. She gave me hell.”

“And you’ve been living in London since?”

“Off the fat of the land, even though I do say so myself. That trick I tried on you in the Tube rarely fails, but if I’m really on my uppers I put my cap on the pavement, pull out this little tin mouthorgan,” he showed it to me, “usually outside a Tube station, and in ten minutes I’ve got the fare to wherever I feel like going.”

“And what do you do when you get there?”

“Play the mouthorgan again till I’ve got enough to go back to where I came from, and have a good feed on the way. I know a lot of places where a pot of hot soup is on the go, and a doss made ready for my head to plonk down. Another thing is that whenever I see a crowded supermarket I go inside with a newspaper under my arm, and there’s nobody quicker than me at drinking off a bottle of sherry, and walking out with half a pint of whitewash milk, with a smile for the girl at the till, of course, as I pay up.”

“You’ve got it made,” I said, accepting one of his cigarettes.

“Well, I think, don’t I? Just listen to this for a ruse. I go out to Gunnersbury and set off east along the main road. Then I stop a passerby and ask him how can I get to Peckam. The bloke scratches his head: ‘Peckham? From here? Well, you can walk on west for about four miles, then turn south for another few. But it’s a long way. Why do you want to walk? It would be far better to take a bus.’ ‘Maybe it would,’ I tell him, ‘but when I got up this morning the landlord threw me out of my bedsit, and now I’m going to my brother’s in Peckham, and don’t have enough for the bus fare. On the other hand I don’t mind a bit, because I like walking. As long as I get there by tonight.’ Nearly always I get a quid or two for my fare, though I can’t play the trick too often in case the same chap comes by.”

“You’ll get too clever for your boots one day.”

“Michael, a man’s got to live, and I’ve had a lot of good times in my life. I often recall though what a comfortable time I had when I was allowed to stay in Major Blaskin’s flat. What a gentleman he was — though I found it a bit hard living with that farting dog called Dismal always trying to jump on my knees. I hope the Major’s well. The world don’t know how lucky it is having an author like him to write so many books. Thank God for all writers, which I have to say in my present circumstances, because if authors hadn’t turned out so many books no libraries would have been built, and then where would the likes of me go in winter to keep warm, and read the newspapers to find out how the other half of the world was living? Otherwise I’m just waiting for things to come my way. Life is all ups and downs, though nothing can be as bad as when I was in Normandy with the good old Sherwood Foresters. So where is it you’re going this morning?”

“I’d better bring you up to press on my life before telling you that.”

“Michael,” he said when I had finished my tale, “you’re lucky to have got rid of such encumbrances. Who needs a wife and a job?”

I explained the gist of my phone call from Moggerhanger, noticing that every word seemed to taste as sweet to him as the cakes he was still stuffing into his insatiable feedbox. “You lucky dog,” he said when the plates were empty. “You’ll soon be back in funds. Moggerhanger pays well. But don’t get anymore funny ideas about having him pulled in and sent to the Old Bailey. Just do whatever he says, and smile.”

“If it’s crooked I don’t want to end up in Dartmoor.”

“Crooked? Moggerhanger do anything crooked? There’s no straighter man in the House of Lords. He’s just got a lot of businesses to run, and like a sensible man he wants your cooperation. I must say, though, you’ll do very well working for him, because under my expert tuition in the past you’ve acquired a goodly syllabus of skill in taking care of yourself.”

I stood, unable to take anymore of his character assessments, or cock-eyed summing-up of my capabilities. “Let’s walk a bit.”

We headed through the City towards Holborn. “Just a minute, Michael. I feel untidy in a posh area and walking with a smartly turned out chap like you.”

He stopped by a shop window and worked a battery operated Braun shaver over his jaws, which gave as much of a grooming as could be got from the sharpest of cutthroat razors. A short comb from his lapel pocket smoothed his hair, and a shine came onto his toecaps by a few rubs up and down the back of his trousers. He came to me at the kerb, a fair improvement to the old crock at the ticket machine an hour ago. “How’s that, then?”

“I wouldn’t know.”

“So let’s go!” he bawled, like the sergeant he claimed to have been: “Chin up, chest out, back straight, and the best foot forward!”

“Shut up, you daft prick,” I said when a couple of City men turned to stare.

“Ah, Michael, you don’t realise what a smart soldier I was, though I often had a scab on my lip, as befitted one of the footloose and fancy free.” He walked along, head angled towards the skyline, sharply swinging this way and that, till I asked what he was looking out for.

“It’s my instinct for self-preservation clicking in,” he said. “All those high windows and rooftops might have a sniper with a telescopic rifle waiting to pick me off, and if I spot him first I’ll know which way to jump.”

“You’re mad,” I said.

“These days? I’m as sane as a plum pudding at Christmas. A man with my expertise wouldn’t like to get picked off.”

“Every second’s high noon with you,” I said, “but your gait gives you away.” It was all I could do to keep up.

“You’ve got to look out for number one,” he said, along London Wall, “so if I was you I’d take the Tube straight to Ealing Broadway. Not that I dislike a route march, but if we go on much longer like this it’ll be time for lunch.”

“There’s a place in Covent Garden.” I wanted to get rid of him. “It’s called Breadline, a vegetarian establishment that serves grit-cake, nut rissoles and nettle tea. You’ll love it.”

He took hold of my arm. “I know I’m strong, and going to live forever, but don’t say things like that. My heart won’t stand it. You can live off grass at your country place if you like, but I’m a meat man. If you’re still alive and present at my funeral just tell everybody I died with a chop in my mouth. What a Steven Meagrim you are, suggesting a vegetarian trough-house. I can only think that the reason we’ve stuck together all these years is your sense of humour.”

“I might as well jump on the train at St Paul’s and make westing,” I said. “Get my meeting with Moggerhanger over with. You can always contact me there. Or at Blaskin’s, if Mogg doesn’t put me up in the garage flat.”

He drew me close, chin jutting at my ear. “Michael, old lad, put in a good word for me with Lord Moggerhanger. He won’t like to know I’m on my uppers. Tell him I can do anything — driving, extortion, violence — you name it and it’s in my blood.”

“I thought you liked the down and out life? You seem to be thriving on it.”

He drew away. “All right, don’t ask him then. You’ll want me to do you a favour one day. Think of all the help I’ve given you in the past.”

I slipped him a tenner, and we shook hands. “There’s nothing else I’ll do for you except any favour I can think of.”

“Go to it, then,” he called after me. “Never accept a third match when the fags are passed around!”

I stood behind a young brunette on the escalator, a mass of hair bouncing almost to her bum. Unluckily she went in the eastern direction before I could get a look at her face, though it was my experience that such luxurious homegrown thatch too often meant mediocre features. As if to make up for my disappointment a girl walked up and down kissing a large white teddy bear. She was slim and neat, a short pony tail swaying as she went along the platform. “Excuse me, miss,” I said, “that’s a very handsome teddy. What do you call him?”

“Freddy,” she said with a smile, a sufficiently upper class accent for me to hear more from her. “Now fuck off, or I’ll call the police.”

Here I was, far off from forty, six feet odd and well dressed, and being treated like a dirty old man. “Call the cops then, if you like, but I grew up with a teddy bear like yours. His name was Jack, and he came from Russia, a real ruffian he was, but lovable. My sister used to push us up and down the street in a big pram, and Jack was a terror, always tipping his cushions over the pavement, while I was well behaved, calmly observing the outside world with disdain.”

I thought she was going to say I should be in the loony bin but: “What happened to Jack?” The train came, and I walked in. She followed, and sat by me. “I asked a question.”

“I don’t want to make you cry,” I said.

“I want to know, don’t I?”

“I feel awful, on thinking about it.” The lapel handkerchief went to my left eye. “Our father was Gilbert Blaskin the famous novelist. He had us down for Eton, but I was the only one to take advantage of it. Jack had a fatal accident. To cut a long story short, he ran after a young girl with a pony tail and lovely grey eyes — straight into the path of a fifty-ton lorry. Death was instantaneous. I called out to stop him, but it was too late. It nearly finished my father.” I blew my nose. “He only recovered because he wrote a story for children called The Death of Poor Jack. Did you ever read it?”

“I don’t think I’d want to.”

“Nor did I, but I found it moving when I did. He dedicated the book to Jack.” In the opposite window at Chancery Lane her mouth opened in wonder, or maybe disbelief. “The lorry driver sobbed his socks off in court. It wasn’t his fault, but he got sent down for two years. The beak said he had a teddy bear as well, that he loved it with all his heart, and that the slaughter of them on the roads was a disgrace. He hoped they’d be made a protected species one day, because the wellbeing of the country depended on them.”

She hugged Freddie to her nicely shaped bosom, in case the train jolted it to the floor and a passenger trod on him. “At least you know how to tell good lies.”

“That’s something I never do. I had a very pious upbringing. What’s your name?”

“Sybil, for all the good it’ll do you.”

“I’m Michael. Where do you work?” She named one of Moggerhanger’s strip clubs in Soho. “I’ll call there for a drink one day.” Should he give me a job as a bouncer again I’d have free entry to all his dives. “I’ll tell you about how Jack met your Freddie and they picked up a couple of girl teddy bears in Hampstead. You’d be surprised what they got up to.”

“I wouldn’t. But what a funny chap you are.” She got out at Tottenham Court Road. “I like your stories, though.”

Mabel had a finger to her lips as she opened the door. “Take care not to antagonise him, Mr Cullen. Your father is in a very friable state today.”

I pushed by. “He always is.”

He looked up from the coffee table, a tear in his left eye. “I had a demand from the income tax this morning for fifteen thousand pounds, and I thought you were them, coming for their cash. I don’t mind paying tax, but it’s as if I’ve lost a libel case.”

“You’ll find the money somehow,” Mabel warbled, always at her best when the great man was in trouble, though how she dodged the well aimed hand I’ll never know. He appealed to both of us: “What’s worse, to feel as sick as a dog or as sick as a parrot? All I know is that sick as a Blaskin is worse. Or it was till I pushed my head under the cold tap this morning. I must write a novel in ten days and get fifteen thousand pounds, or I’ll be sitting on the floor of an empty flat with the typewriter on my knees.”

“I’m sorry things are going badly,” was the least I could say.

“So am I, therefore join me in a vodka.” He poured half a glass, neat. “And tell me what it is you want this time.”

He could be quite considerate when at bay, so I told him about Kenny Dukes who had read every one of his Sidney Bloods, and wanted to meet the great author. Would it be all right if I brought him along some time?

“Michael, I’d say that if it was a delightful young girl you could bring her right now.”

“I know, and would have done, but Kenneth Dukes is one of Moggerhanger’s blokes, who worships the name of Sidney Blood. I’ve never known anything like it. He thinks you’re a genius.”

He lay back under such praise. “Ah, genius! What a clever chap he must be to see it. Genius is energy, if nothing else.” He reached for a pad, and vigorously scratched out a comma which had not, after all, done him any harm. After a particularly long winded fart he threw the pad aside. “I’m bored. Do you fancy a drink at Jollop’s? We could go to Molar’s later for a bite or two.”

“I must report to Moggerhanger.”

“That gangster? No good will come of it.”

How prescient he was. “He’s my only hope of employment.”

“Be idle, like me. I never work. I only write. Perhaps you could help by doing a Sidney Blood for me some time, like now.”

“As soon as I get a couple of days off I will. But when can I bring Kenneth Dukes to see you?”

“Can’t you introduce him to Ronald Delphick? He once did a couple of Sidney Bloods.”

“Kenny wants to meet the real thing. And if he saw somebody like Delphick he might end up kicking him to death. I don’t want blood on my hands.”

“We’ve had a bottle of vodka between us,” he said to Mabel dusting the glass-topped coffee table, “and we don’t feel any different. You’ve been watering it again.”

She smirked from the doorway. “I wondered when you’d tumble to it. I’ve been doing it for months.”

“So that’s why I’m still alive.”

“Unfortunately, I suppose it is. What worries me is that I’ll never know why I did it.”

“You mean you put poison in as well.”

“I’ve nothing against Mr Cullen, have I? As for you, I want you to live forever so that you’ll suffer more.”

“And it’s not working, is it, you wicked old bitch? A publisher has asked me to write A Short History of the Smile, and if you don’t behave I shan’t put you in it.” He turned to me. “Do you know, Michael, the smile came to this country from Italy in the sixteenth century. They invented it there. It hadn’t been known in England before, and even after several hundred years the English still haven’t got it off like the gay and friendly Italians. Our countrymen and women can laugh at other peoples’ misfortunes, but a plain good humoured sympathetic smile of humane amusement is still beyond them. I only hope that after I do the book they’ll start giving it a try. Certainly I’ll smile if its sales release me from the clutches of the tax gatherers. I’ll be going out soon,” he said to Mabel, “so you’ll have a few hours to practice the smile.” He stood, only to sit down again. “I don’t know whether to go back to bed with a good book, or get myself a rocket polishing in the upstairs room of the Black Crikey. Trouble is, it’s a very expensive club. You have to order three bottles of champagne at seventy pounds each before they let you sit down.”

“None of Moggerhanger’s places come cheap,” I said, as Mabel huffed herself off into the kitchen. “When would it be convenient for Kenny Dukes to come and see you?”

“Any time, dear boy, but phone first, say in a fortnight.”

Satisfied with that, and having had a bellyful of their company, I left him trying to teach Mabel how to smile.

Kenny Dukes opened the gate of Moggerhanger’s establishment a second after I’d pressed the buzzer, as if he’d looked through the spyhole and seen me coming up the avenue. “I thought you were in the furniture factory?” I said.

“Was.” He clicked the gate into place with his shoe, too dim after twenty years to know it shut by itself. “I had a message to get back to headquarters, didn’t I?” He gripped my arm, beamed his bloodshot grey eyes onto my face. “Have you seen him?”

“Who do you mean?”

“Mr Blood, you daft fucker.”

I pushed him away. “Look, dunghead, don’t fucker me. If you use such language in front of Sidney Blood he’ll chiv your face so much that when it goes back to normal nobody will know you anymore.”

“I know how to behave. I was in St. Onan’s choir as a lad. Sang like an angel, to please my mum.”

“Give her my best regards when you see her,” I said, to calm him. “She must be proud of you.”

“Oh, she is. I take her flowers and chocs every week, so I’ll tell her what you said. But did you see him?”

“On my way here. I told him you were his greatest fan. I’ve never seen him so pleased. He said I was to phone him in two weeks, and he would be delighted to see you. The thing is, though, his name’s Gilbert Blaskin. So many people want to cut his throat for what he’s said about them in his books, that he uses that name instead of Sidney Blood. He’s already got a long scar down the middle of his head where somebody went for him with a chopper.”

Kenny frothed with rage. “I’ll kill the cunts who hurt him. Don’t he have minders?”

“He doesn’t need them. Won’t have any. He’s as hard as nails, tough as his left boot, which he uses to kick the arses of whoever he doesn’t like. He can take care of himself, so don’t go rubbing him up the wrong way.”

“Oh, I won’t,” he grinned. “I only want to meet him and shake his hand. But I’d better let Lord Moggerhanger know you’ve come.”

He passed me on to Toffee Bottle, who led me through the kitchen and along the corridor. Moggerhanger stood up from a writing desk covered in papers, looking healthier than when I’d last seen him, tall, well built, eyes hard to meet — though I did — a meaty hand extended, my pressure not quite as firm as his.

He wore a suit, white shirt with heavy gold cufflinks, a waistcoat with watch chain and Masonic trinkets dangling. His tie of black and red stripes could have been from an old school, though as far as I knew he’d never been to any, or only for long enough to get reading and writing into his big head of thinning hair. His nose looked as if it had been knocked about in boxing. “Michael, I’m glad to see you. Three years, isn’t it? I’ve often wondered when we were going to meet again.”

“I sometimes thought of coming to see you for a friendly chat,” I said, “but I didn’t know whether you hadn’t changed your address.”

“Not me. It’s a life sentence, having this place. In any case my address is my name. And I’m in the book. Those whom the gods wish to drive mad they first make ex-directory.”

“I hoped you were well, and thriving.”

“I’m glad you did. And I am as well. As long as your shit mill’s in order, that’s all that matters. But sit down, then we can talk at our ease.” He passed a box of the best. “Have a cigar.”

I didn’t like the way things were going. He was far too affable. But I took the smoke, and sat. A forty-litre bottle of whisky with a spigot near the bottom rested on its trolley behind me. It was a magnificent monument of prime booze glistening in the light, a symbol of Moggerhanger’s status as the richest and most powerful racketeer in London. I had always thought that his grip on the world wouldn’t be broken till such a fancy container was smashed and the last trickle drained. I didn’t suppose I would ever live to see it but, if I did, it would be the day of my life.

I hoped he’d offer me a swig, and if not prayed that one of the wheels would get a puncture. I had no idea what he wanted to see me for, already realising it would take him a long time to make his meaning clear. He was the trickiest person I knew, and I had been acquainted with more than a few in my time. I took out Clegg’s watch, for a wind up it didn’t need.

“Be careful,” he said, “or you’ll break the mainspring. They’re not easy to get mended these days. All the old trades are fading away. People buy a watch for a fiver that loses a second in a hundred years, and when they go wrong they throw them away and buy another. I must say, though, you’re looking smart, but then, you always did. You know I set great store by a man’s turnout.”

He was big headed enough to think I’d togged up specially for him. I put the watch back, and puffed on the cigar, which I suppose he thought completed my appearance of confidence and prosperity.

“The thing is,” he went on, “I know you to be a very good driver. Oh yes, there are plenty of them, to hear them talk, but you’re different. You’re intelligent, resourceful, persistent and quick thinking.”

He could say what he liked, but I wasn’t a young fool anymore. No more purblind zig-zagging into criminality for his benefit. I’d done a few jobs for him once upon a time, but never again. I knew better than to heed his flattery and blandishments.

“Another thing is,” he said, “that when you’re behind a wheel you have a map in your head, while the rest of them don’t know what a map means. You’re useful to me for that reason, because whenever I need to get out of London in a hurry a petrol bowser has overturned and exploded at Henleys Corner, a water main’s burst in Croydon, a Second World War bomb has been found in the East End, there’s a multiple pile-up on the road to London Airport, and a line of roadworks at Kew with a tailback to Hammersmith Roundabout. Throw in a women’s sitdown to save a hospital or get a Belisha beacon set up somewhere, and I’ve no hope of getting away by any road. Even if I want to leave by chopper the Battersea Pad is buried in fog or snow. But I know I can rely on you to read a map and find parallel routes. It gets so bad I sometimes feel I’m under siege in London. I like to think there’s always a possibility of getting into the countryside or down to Dover when the need arises. It’s not the same as when I was a lad, when there was only one rule of the road for me.”

“What was that, Lord Moggerhanger?”

He gave his usual graveyard laugh. “No car in front, and no car behind! Now there’s so much riff-raff pottering around in their little tin motors that all one’s mottoes go for nothing. Age does terrible things to you. But I’m sure you’re still a good wheelworker, Michael.”

If he’d meant a potter’s wheel I’d have made more money than working for him. I couldn’t but wonder what he was getting at, something never easy to divine. There was a motive for every word he spoke, never the man to throw talk away. My opinion of him was too simple, and his words were sometimes so devious that if I didn’t regard them as simple I’d have no chance of getting close to what lay behind. All I could do was nod, and listen, and enjoy the cigar, and mull on the fact that with Moggerhanger my suspicions were always nine-tenths of certainty. He had a job for me, and a very dodgy one it would be.

“Do you remember Chief Inspector Lanthorn?”

I scented mischief, because how could I forget that six-foot blunt instrument who got me sent to jail, the biggest bastard of a bent copper in the business? “I certainly do.”

He put on a sinister chuckle, and knew it. “It was such a pity he had that massive heart attack crossing Horse Guards Parade a few years ago.”

“It made my day. I was happy for a whole year.”

“Not mine it didn’t, though every cloud has a silver lining, even a gold one at times, because like father like son, his eldest lad is now working for the customs at one of our seaports.”

Ash fell from my cigar. “I hope he’s doing well.”

“Let’s put it this way: it’s very convenient, and he’s loyal to me now and again. And don’t get that tone in your voice. We all have to make a living, you as much as anybody, otherwise why are you here? Am I right?”

I lost patience, but only enough to shift my feet. “I’m afraid you are.”

“So let’s get down to business.” He leaned towards me, cufflinks clinking on picking up his glass to take a swig. “Do you have an up-to-date passport?”

“I did some motoring with my wife in France and Spain last year. I don’t even go to the bog unless it’s in my back pocket.”

“Better and better. Would you like to travel a little further afield?”

Would I? He’d been looking at a photograph of me before my arrival, so knew the best way to tempt me. “Depends where.”

“Michael, there are times when I don’t think I can trust you, but at least I know how far I can trust you, and that’s worth a lot in my business. So don’t be evasive. All I want to know is, are you with me, or aren’t you?”

“I’m with you.” Apart from being in no position to argue, a bit of continental motoring was right up my street.

“The first mark of intelligence,” he said, “is curiosity. The second is a sense of humour and, as you know, there’s nothing I like more than a good laugh. It’s the men who can only smile I can’t stand. I want you to drive to Greece in the Rolls Royce. My wife loves Greek food, and she’s got a shopping list as long as Kenny Dukes’ left arm.”

He laughed, at my simulated look of relief. “That’s all right then,” I said. “But only as far as Greece?”

“No further. I don’t want you wandering to look for Noah’s Ark in Turkey, or vanishing into the poppy fields of Afghanistanley. Just Greece, you understand? I know what you can be like when you’ve got horse-power between your knees.”

“I’ll keep strictly to instructions, Lord Moggerhanger.”

“Too right you will. You can take a week going and a week coming back. All expenses will be remunerated, though I shall want an itemised account in copperplate script when you get back.”

It didn’t sound either legal or even above board to me. I knew he knew my thoughts on this so I made an attempt to find out in case he sniffed trickery up my sleeve. “Can’t you get Greek foodstuffs in Soho, or Camden Town?”

“Not the sort she wants. Nor the kind I want, either. It’s the genuine groceries she’s after, not fakeries out of a garden shed in the Midlands. And you know I’d do anything to satisfy the cravings of my dear wife Agnes. I’m nothing if not a family man. I hope you’re the same. Always hold on for dear life to your wife, because she’s the only person who’s more precious than yourself. You are still married, aren’t you? I like all my lads to have good domestic relationships. Even Kenny Dukes is going steady, or so he tells me. We’re hoping to marry him off soon, and I’ve promised to pay for a lavish spread in his local church hall. The only thing is that when he has kids I hope they don’t have such long arms. He’s a bloody freak.”

His slimy philosophical crap was so piscatorial that it encouraged me to try finding whatever deep meaning it concealed. “What if I get caught?”

“Michael, you know what I think about illegal immigrants? Make it legal. My opinion is that everybody should be allowed to come into this sceptred isle who wants to. There should be no passport controls of any kind, but at the same time not a penny of public money must be spent on them. After all, it’s my money, and maybe yours as well. Let them come in freely and make their own way with honest work, but with no help at all from government organisations. All I’m saying is don’t you dare contemplate trying to make a few hundred pounds by smuggling immigrants in in the back of the Roller. Forget it. I wouldn’t like it. That’s the only way you could get caught, by doing something like that. As for anything else while you’re in my employ, you’re covered by Arnold Killisick, the best lawyer in London. We’re all safe with him. I may be a lord, but I’m a democrat at heart, meaning that if any of my lads are in trouble they get the same lawyer as I do.

“Your journey to Greece will be easy because Alice had booked you and the car on the train as far as Milan, which will give you a head start. When you get to Greece you’ll do the shopping, then collect a few packages from a chap called Ulysses Klepht-Polati, or some such name. It’s all written down. Oh yes, there’ll also be a packet to deliver on passing Belgrade, otherwise you’ll have a successful run, I’m sure. Alice will put everything in writing. And you’ll come back to England through the port I’ll tell you to.”

The ratbag had me, but the smell of adventure was stuck so far up my nostrils I thought I was getting the flu again, which put me in a state of delightful irresponsibility.

“Leave in two days time,” he said. “Meanwhile you’re confined to the compound, because I don’t want anybody to know where you’re going. Understand?”

“Yes, sir.”

“Or I’ll brain you.” My back stiffened, and on noting it he went on: “Though only as a mater of speaking. If anybody defames me I’ll sue them to within an inch of their life. You know my passion for secrecy.”

“None better. And I share it,” which was true. “Nobody ever got a thing out of me that I didn’t want to tell them,”

He stood by the mantelshelf, as if to warm his arse at a non-existent fire. “I can see a lot of me in you, which I suppose is why I’ve taken such a shine to you, and been more patient with you than with anyone else who works for me. What I like about you is that you know how to think. I can almost hear thoughts moving in your brainbox, whereas with the others all I can hear is a roar of the deep blue sea. Can you imagine the likes of Kenny Dukes, or Toffee Bottle, or Cottapilly, or Pindary driving my Rolls Royce around the Continent, on the sort of job I’m giving you? Every time they came to a signpost they’d have to get out and read it close.”

He flattered me, and the mistake was I enjoyed letting him. “Alice will give you maps and currency, tickets as far as Milan, and any general information she thinks will be useful. I want you to call my personal number every evening on your arrival at a suitable hostelry, to let me know you’re still among the living. Another thing is: don’t drive after dark or before dawn. I set great store by my Rolls Royce, as you know, and I don’t want any mishaps. I’m sure Alice hasn’t left any stone unturned to speed you on your way. So go to your room above the garage now, and play clock patience, or read a book. You’ll find whisky in the locker behind your bed, as well as a few packets of peanuts and crisps to soak it up with. Whenever you feel like a meal all you have to do is come into the kitchen, and Mrs Blemish will fix you up.”