We went into the kitchen. There was a half-eaten sandwich on a plate, and a pot of cold tea. It must have broken his heart to leave that. I gave the sandwich to Dismal. In the middle of the table was a typed letter, and after circling three times, I read:
You’re giving us a lot of trouble, Michael, and I don’t like it. What’s got into you? I trusted you. I never thought you would be so stupid. I thought at first you were running around the country because you thought the Green Toe Gang was on your trail. I thought you thought you were doing me a favour by your evasion tactics. I stretched a point. You disappoint me. It seems as if you’re the victim of a nervous breakdown. It can’t be anything less. Whatever it is, I’m angry. Things are serious. So as to get the situation straightened out as soon as possible my lads are taking Bill Straw and his girlfriend. If you don’t get in touch, or deliver our possessions, or both, they will meet with a very prolonged accident. You know the sort I mean. If they do, you will have only yourself to blame. And when we get our hands on you, you will have an even worse accident. If you turn over the stuff, however, without undue delay, I still won’t forgive you, though I might be induced to forget you.
Believe me, yours very sincerely,
C. Moggerhanger
Clegg filled the kettle for tea. ‘Some news?’
‘Yes. From Moggerhanger. Special Delivery.’
‘Will they be back?’
‘If we’re lucky we’ve got twenty-four hours.’ There was even fresh milk in the fridge.
‘Will that be enough?’
‘It’ll have to be.’ There was little to be said, though much to be thought. We drank. I poured some for Dismal, who hadn’t even clamoured, as if he realised that our plight was grave.
‘All we can do is go to sleep till morning.’
‘I can’t enter into competition with a decision like that,’ he grinned.
‘I wish you wouldn’t take every possible advantage of my misfortunes to polish your style. It’s getting on my wick.’
I brought the car in from the side of the road, then stood looking at those clear and numberless East Anglian stars, and wondered when I would be able to do so again.
I lay in bed puzzling over what had happened to Matthew Coppice’s promised papers. I’d thought up to now that if all went wrong with the disposal of the goods in the boot of the car I would at least have his depositions to fall back on, and that even if I got the chop they would already be on their way to Interpol. From a sky of bright prospects I was in the non-visibility gloom of nothing. Yet it didn’t seem an unpromising condition in which to try getting some sleep.
Dismal lay across the bottom headboard, which meant I couldn’t stretch full length. I didn’t mind, because sleeping curled up as if I was back in the womb seemed to work, for the next thing I knew I waded through thick and perilous activities called dreams, trapped in clotted caverns like the murkiest insides of a whale, my feet invisible, and head drawn onwards by some gleam I never reached, the tip of a needle which, if I did get close enough, would jab forward and put out an eye. I heard the wafting slow swing of an enormous bird and turned my head in terror to watch it coming, waiting for it to get close and be seen. I never did see it, yet the two feet that gripped my shoulder made me shout and wake up.
Twenty-Eight
I thought they had come to get me. A sheet of Fen light was fastened at the window. I kicked Dismal off the bed, but it was Clegg who gripped my shoulder. ‘It’s seven o’clock.’
I felt worse than when I had gone to sleep, but then, I always did. If I had woken up feeling wonderful I’d have felt awful, especially on the Day of Days. I knew that if I was alive this time tomorrow my chances of living to the extent of my biblical stretch would be fair to middling. Dismal went down to reconnoitre for food, while I lay an extra few minutes and sipped Clegg’s tea.
Why was I so dead set on ruining Moggerhanger? If he vanished into the dungeons, there would be a hundred others in the fresh air above, jostling to take his place. They were the people who would benefit, not the clapped-out druggies perishing on wastelands and parking lots all over Britain. But Moggerhanger, the tin-pot god, had got me sent down for eighteen months to save his own skin, and now I was in a position to get my own back. I was feeling more optimistic by the minute that I would escape his wrath. Even without help from Coppice I could put enough information together, provided I was able to get the boat for Holland.
Clegg put eggs and bacon in the pan, while I gobbled a dish of cornflakes. The only hole in my scheme, and my heart fell through it like a lump of lead, was that by going to Holland I would be separated from Frances. There was no saying how long I’d be away, yet I had no option but to skedaddle. I hoped she’d remember me, and respond to my love letters homing in from different places.
I shaved, showered, put on clean underwear, changed my suit and polished my best zip-up boots, all in double-quick time. The gold cufflinks were awkward to get into the shirt-holes, and Dismal shook his head as I swore. I threatened that if he didn’t show a bit more sympathy I’d send him back to Peppercorn Cottage so that the rats would get him. At which he sloped off to look for leftovers in the kitchen.
‘There’s some post for you,’ Clegg shouted.
I found a large envelope, which nobody else could have sent but Matthew Coppice. I put it aside, though, to open a letter with an Oxford postmark, which I knew was from Frances Malham. I skimmed it to see whether she hated me and, when it seemed she did not, sat down to read:
Dear Michael,
I’m back in Oxford and can’t stop thinking about you. I’d like to thank you for spending your time with me, when I know how busy you are. The whole episode was a lovely surprise! I didn’t mean it when I said I didn’t need to get to know you because we had made love. I’d like to see you again, and hope you’ll be able to visit me in Oxford. I share a house with another girl. I hope you’re not toiling too hard.
She signed off with love. A short letter, but with its scented paper packing my wallet Moggerhanger’s threats would fall on stone ears, while I had any ears at all.
Clegg sat by the range with shirtsleeves rolled up, while I looked through the papers from Matthew. Spots of rain flopped at the window, a summer shower brewing. Coppice had done his job. The future programme of world drug transport was set out in detail. Albert Croy would be coming from Brussels with five hundred and nineteen grammes of cocaine and two kilos of cannabis. A gang, whose names were given, was coming from Bogota, each member carrying cocaine in bottles of Scotch whisky. Another group would leave Bogota, three going to Paris and two to Frankfurt, each coming separately into London with a large cargo of cannabis. Pindarry would bring a car from the Continent, half the petrol tank for petrol and the other for cocaine paste from Peru. Jack Mullion from Barbados would bring in (date given) four kilos of cocaine in the false bottom of a suitcase. Cocaine would also come in from Montreal concealed in a false-sided Samsonitebrand case. Luis Gonzales and his daughter Rosanna (daughter, for God’s sake!) would travel the Mexico City, Rio de Janeiro and Los Angeles route with cocaine. From the Hook (Amsterdam) a lorry would bring cannabis resin in thirty-five boxes of fruit juice, which load was to be met by Alport and conveyed to Breezeblock Villa at Back Enderby. Twelve kilos of cannabis would come from Beirut, and forty kilos of heroin from Damascus. And so it went on, page after page, the complete plan of Operation Hop Garden. Zero hour was in ten days.