He was the only person I knew who you couldn’t lie to, and get away with it. There was nothing to say. He looked at me for a while, with a gaze that seemed more pregnant than the Encyclopaedia Britannica. The last time I had worked for him I’d gone to prison because I was one of the expendables and now, facing him for the first time since, a thought flashed into my mind that promised danger and pleasure. The only emotion that can combine the two so neatly is revenge, yet how could someone like me dare to contemplate getting a Peer of the Realm put behind bars for a good long spell, even though he was the most crooked bastard in Great Britain — and that meant the Commonwealth, which probably meant the world? I let the suicidal, self-destroying notion go. ‘It was a bit remiss of me. I’ll know better next time.’
‘I’m sure you will, if there is a next time. Are you sure you want to be my driver? I’ve had a few more applicants, as you can understand. One of them was Kenny Dukes’s brother Paul, and I don’t think I’ve ever seen a more wicked villain than that. On the other hand, he’s the sort of driver who’s been practising on stolen cars since he was twelve. Now he’s twenty-five and in his prime.’
‘I crashed my first car when I was five,’ I said, which was true, ‘and now I’m thirty-five.’
He took a box from under the desk that was big enough to put his feet on, and lifted out a cigar. To smoke it he needed one of those forked supports an arquebusier used to have. ‘So you see, Michael, I’ve got a decision to make. However, I’m a born judge of men. I always was. I’ve got to be. I wouldn’t last five minutes if I wasn’t. I know that you and me had a little trouble ten years ago.’
I’d been waiting for that. ‘It was my fault.’
‘That’s for me to say,’ he snapped. ‘But I suppose it inclines me more towards you than otherwise. You might say it taught us a lot about each other. Almost makes you part of the family. I like to learn from the past, and don’t like starting with somebody from scratch unless I have to, or unless he’s an exceptional case, as you were in those days, and as Kenny Dukes’s brother isn’t. They’re ten a penny, that sort, in south and east London. They’re well built, cocksure and clever, but if you stop looking over their shoulder for a second they get too clever. And even the cleverest of them can’t think. Oh yes, they can move with cunning and alacrity in an emergency, but they can’t think.’
‘What do you expect?’
‘I know, but there comes a time when you hope that a subordinate might be able to think to the advantage of the man who’s paying him. I regard you as being in a different category. What’s more, you’re looking quite distinguished. Ten years in the wilderness seem to have made a man of you. In those days I didn’t so much mind a young roustabout for my wheel man. Now I like a steadier chap, but one who still knows the tricks. I’ll start you at five hundred a month, and you can have your old quarters back above the garage. You’ve got twenty-four hours to move in.’
The answer to everything was yes. His handshake was the grip of an earth remover, and my hands were neither small nor weak. He called me back from the door. ‘How did you hear about this job?’
‘I bumped into Bill Straw at Liverpool Street this morning.’
‘Where was he going?’
‘He wouldn’t tell me.’
‘What time was it?’
‘Just before half past nine.’
He reached for the telephone. ‘I wish you’d come earlier.’
‘I didn’t know it was important.’
‘Piss off.’ He didn’t even look up. ‘I want a call to Holland,’ he was saying into the mouthpiece as I closed the door.
If poor old Bill had got on that Harwich boat train, as Moggerhanger wrongly surmised due to my quick thinking, he would have been met at the Hook, made to tell where the money was and put to a particularly grisly death before being dumped into the ooze. Luckily, he was safe in Blaskin’s aerial foxhole, a fate which in no way would faze an old Sherwood Forester.
Not wanting to get back to Upper Mayhem too early, where I would only brood myself to death over Bridgitte’s callous desertion, I decided to go into Town and get something to eat. A few hundred yards from the tube station a little dark girl who looked about ten but must have been thirty, judging from her big tits and almond eyes, was trying to carry a suitcase full of stones along the pavement. People passing were in too much of a hurry to help. Then she pulled the suitcase, till she had to stop. Then she pushed it. At that rate she’ll get to the underground in the morning, I thought. It’ll take another day to reach the platform, and she’ll tumble into some railway station — the wrong one — in about three weeks. Luckily, it wasn’t raining.
I passed her, but a soft heart forced me to turn and pick up the case. She thought I was a footpad after her worldly belongings and looked at me, raising a little bun fist, though realising that she couldn’t win. I expected the weight to pull my arm off, but for my gold smuggling muscles it was no real burden, and I walked at a normal quick-march rate, with her half running by my side. ‘I’ll help you with it to the tube station. I’m not trying to steal it. It’s on my way.’
She also had a satchel and a shoulder bag, so I slowed down. Her accent was foreign, and so was her lovely smile. ‘Thank you very much.’
She was about four foot nothing, but full of promise. I asked her name, and she said it was Maria. ‘You going on holiday?’
I thought she hadn’t understood. ‘Holiday?’ I said. We got to the ticket office. ‘Where to?’
‘Victoria.’
I bought two fares, thinking to leave her after setting her luggage on the train. She’d clamped up since her first big smile and trotted by my side, while I was still wondering why Moggerhanger had given me the job so readily. It was as if he had been expecting me, though I couldn’t dredge up a reason to prove it. ‘Maria,’ I said when we were on the platform, ‘you going on holiday?’
A bearded wino in his twenties knocked her so hard as he pushed by that she almost fell onto the rails. I pulled her back, which was as well for him that I was so occupied, but then I elbowed him onto the bench. ‘No holiday,’ she said. ‘I want to die.’
I laughed. ‘You want to fly?’
‘No, die.’ She tried not to sob. Her accent was thick, but I could understand her. ‘No more job.’
I was about to run away and leave her when the train came in. The last thing I wanted was a waif on my hands. I pushed her inside, and we faced each other over the luggage. The red woollen scarf that went round her neck and over her shoulder was only half as long as the braids of black hair that descended her back. She wore a white blouse under her coat, a black skirt, black ribbed stockings and black lace-up boots. Her face was oval and pale, a clean parting down the middle of her skull. Her brown eyes were almost liquid with tears, and the effort she made not to let them flow almost brought tears to my own — and stopped me getting out at Acton Town. I leaned forward: ‘Where are you from?’
‘Portugal.’
I held her warm hands, and tried to cheer her up. ‘Nice place, Portugal.’
I wished I hadn’t said that, because she looked up full of hope. ‘You been there?’
‘Yes. Good country. Lisbon is a wonderful city. You go there now?’
She didn’t answer so I looked away, wondering where I’d go to eat before getting my train to Upper Mayhem. Something wet fell on my middle finger left hand, and I turned back to her. It was a tear. I don’t know why I lifted my hand and licked it off. It was automatic, thoughtless, but with the hand that still held hers I felt a shiver go through her. I looked into her eyes, and thought I’d done the wrong thing in licking up that tear because as sure as hell — and the stare she gave hinted as much — such a gesture was, in the part of Portugal she came from, a kind of pre-nuptial ceremony that was binding forever.