I asked for a cup of coffee, when a hand rested on my shoulder. The long pale face of a customs man said: ‘Will you come with me, sir?’
No one was to call me that again for a long time. We went back to the passport counter. He asked, now with two more customs men looking on, how much money I was taking out of the country. I told him, and was asked to open my wallet. With the legal amount of currency I had nothing to fear. I stepped out of my existence so as to watch myself being calm, smile, open my briefcase. I expected to be released, as William had been on one of his former forays, and was already congratulating myself on the fact that this little interview did not matter because I wouldn’t be coming through here again.
‘Would you follow me, please?’
I walked into another room, out of the gaze of honest or lucky people who were asked no questions at all. Two policemen were waiting, as well as a lamp-post of a plain-clothes detective whom I recognized as none other than Chief Inspector Lantorn. ‘Take off your overcoat.’
I knew that it was all finished. Lantorn himself lifted out the five bars of gold, and I was cautioned that anything I said might be used as evidence against me, while the customs men outlined the laws under which I was charged.
On my way to the police station I knew that Moggerhanger had arranged for me to be picked up at the same time as he’d mentioned Cottapilly and Pindarry. When he threw out his net, he cast it wide.
My legs trembled, but I had no wish to sit down. They offered it, but I still stood up, as if I didn’t want to be obliged to them for anything. Lantorn pushed me on to a bench. My iron lung was also smashed, and the light that flooded in frightened me so that I could hardly breathe. I wondered when Moggerhanger’s lung would smash, and smiled at the possibility of helping to bring it about. But in spite of everything I couldn’t think of what he’d done to deserve it, because with Inspector Lantorn gripping my arm as we went to another part of the police station, how could I prove Moggerhanger to have done anything wrong at all? If he’d thought there was any good chance of my doing so, he wouldn’t have had me picked up with such alacrity.
Epilogue
Moggerhanger had used me to bust Jack Leningrad, knowing that when I was in the hands of the police there’d be nothing else I could do but talk, in the hope of getting as little prison as possible. I didn’t accede to Moggerhanger’s wishes out of weakness, but from a position of strength, because having decided what my policy was to be, I stuck to it so that Moggerhanger got the best results as far as he was concerned. So did Lantorn, for this became one of his celebrated cases Moggerhanger had confidently fed me into the police machine like a spanner, and I didn’t disappoint anyone, so that any other case against him simply came to pieces in Lantorn’s hands.
I was so busy saving my neck that I hadn’t the time or emotional energy to brood about the way Moggerhanger had used me, but in the months before my downfall he must have had a huge diagram on his wall, with a series of pins labelled Cullen that he moved from place to place until I was sucked into the final trap he had laid for me. It had been so well plotted that if I didn’t hate him so much I would have admired him. There were a hundred places where his assumptions could have gone wrong, but such was his knowledge of human nature in general, and of mine in particular, that I had chosen exactly the right turning at every fork of the way, simply because he took care to make sure that I’d see each decision to my own advantage. He’d laid such a string of traps that after the first few I ceased to think or take any precautions.
I admitted carrying gold for Jack Leningrad Limited, but pleaded ignorance regarding the seriousness of what I was doing. Smut and Bunt the solicitors helped me, and it wasn’t till afterwards that I found out who paid them. They got an expert barrister of the old school to stand up and say I was a ‘man of good character though in many respects naïve, who has never been in any sort of trouble before’. They could say that again, and again, and I smiled inwardly to hear it, though it didn’t stop the judge from yapping out that he would have given me more than eighteen months but for the fact that I’d been such a fool.
At the moment of being caught I’d expected ten years, but between then and the trial I became more optimistic and saw myself getting less and less, being so puffed with hope and the barrister’s claptrap that I thought I’d get off with no more than a fat fine.
But no man is a real man, or a hero, unless he’s been in prison, and I was about to qualify for that honour. I had lots to think about, including the surprise of seeing my mother appear in court to testify what a loyal and loving son I’d always been. An even greater shock was to hear Gilbert Blaskin, described as a well-known author from the best of families, say what a good character I was, in such a way that I began to believe it myself. I seemed to have lived in a different world till then, been in fact one of the few saints in it to hear some people talk, though I was dropped abruptly back on to the scruffy earth when the verdict of eighteen months was announced from the mealy-mouthed old bastard stuck up on high. I was in such a state of rage and despair for the next few weeks that when I came out of it I was quite used to the conditions of prison. It was like a new country that I had learned to live in during a dream.
One day I had visitors, so stopped my sweeping-up to get marched off and see who they were. Beyond the double thickness of wire-meshed glass I saw my mother and Gilbert Blaskin. I leaned forward, but said nothing. They peered through the glass, and I wondered why they looked at me. For some minutes I couldn’t understand why they were there together. People were shouting and making signs all along the line on either side of me, and when my mother opened her mouth I realized that though she was talking I couldn’t hear a word. Gilbert smiled and lifted a hand, not even bothering to try. I smiled, put my head closer, and sneezed.
They wanted to tell me something, but I didn’t see what could be of sufficient importance to break through the overwhelming fact of me being locked away from them like a monkey on a wet day. Blaskin wore a trilby hat, looked healthier than I’d ever seen him. My mother also had a hat on, and seemed by her looks and figure to match well by the side of Blaskin. She had gained a little stoutness.
Her voice broke faintly through, but I couldn’t make out what she was saying. The visit was going on too long. I could understand why she had come, but not Blaskin. He leaned as far forward as possible, put both hands to his mouth and bellowed. From the look on his face, and the anxiety on my mother’s, I tried to hear the words because it seemed particularly important to them both. I didn’t get it, so he made one more attempt. I conquered my stupidity by a force of will that in the outside world wouldn’t have needed any will at all. The words came as if from the bottom of the sea: ‘We got married last week!’
It was a blow under the heart, but maybe I needed it, because it knew where to go and went straight there. I said it aloud, repeating it, and though they couldn’t hear they read my lips, and both laughed and waved and kissed and held hands against the glass so that there could be no mistake. They even showed me the ring. I heard later how Gilbert had gone to Nottingham, after my last call at his flat near Sloane Square, and found my mother, wooing her till she’d agreed to marry him. After their visit I began to notice my surroundings, and to accustom myself to the new world, so maybe it did me some good after all.