I was about to say I hadn’t seen him in years, when I remembered it was a place. ‘On the Lincolnshire coast?’
‘It’s a river port in Yorkshire,’ said Pindarry.
I suppose I had to notice him. He didn’t have a pot belly, but he was beefy at the midriff, and that’s something you can’t hide. I liked him less than Cottapilly. Even in the presence of the chief he always wore a little Austrian-type hat with a feather up the side. One of his teeth was missing, which you wouldn’t notice unless he laughed — though he never laughed. He only smiled and then, so it was said, you were in trouble. But he had to eat, and Bill Straw told me he’d once shared a trough of rice and mutton with him on the pipeline road between Baghdad and Beirut in their smuggling days, adding that you no longer joined the Navy to see the world, but just signed on with Jack Leningrad Limited.
‘I want you to collect some packages,’ Moggerhanger said. ‘Leave at five and you should be there by ten. We’re sending you up in the Rolls-Royce, so take care of it. One scratch on the Roller means two on your face, only they’ll be deeper. You’ll be driving one of my prime motors, not a two-tone trapdoor estate with a battered right headlight and a crumpled wing, which has to be off the road before dark. If by any chance you should find yourself confronted by a police roadblock, don’t try a Turpin and jump over it. Just say what your business is, and they’ll let you through.’
He ran his organisation like the head of a country in wartime, and maybe not even he knew whether he made more money out of lawful business than rackets. He owned gambling houses, cafés and restaurants, hotels and roadhouses, caravan parks and amusement arcades, sex shops and strip clubs, escort agencies, garages and car hire firms, bucket shops for cheap travel called Pole-axe Tours, as well as loan and finance firms: ‘Twelve thousand mortgages a day: just pay your money and you’re safe for life.’ Shadier operations involved smuggling and putting up money for criminal enterprises. If his connection with the Inland Revenue was frosty but correct, his association with some members of the police force was cordial, as I knew from the hand-in-glove manner in which he and Chief Inspector Lanthorn had got me put away for eighteen months. Lanthorn had to have someone to charge when the customs broke the smuggling gang, and Moggerhanger opted for me rather than Kenny Dukes — or himself. I had made plenty of money, so took the sentence as it was deserved and because I’d had no option. But I had grown less philosophical about it over the years, though I don’t suppose I would have been bitten so hard by the cobra of revenge if Bill Straw hadn’t dragged me back into the mainstream of a job with Moggerhanger.
‘I can’t guarantee a rotten little A40 won’t drive into me,’ I said. ‘The roads are full of anarchists these days.’
He put an arm around my shoulder. ‘It’s only a manner of speaking, Michael. I want you to stay in one piece: drive carefully, collect the goods, and take them to a place in Shropshire, where you’ll wait till somebody collects them. Then come back here to me. If you want to know anything else, ask Mrs Whipplegate. She’s my private secretary, and knows everything.’
She stood by a filing cabinet on the other side of the room, a tall thin woman who didn’t have what I reckoned to be a good figure. But because she seemed inaccessible — with her grey svelte dress, a natty coloured flimsy scarf at the neck, and high-heeled shoes — I wanted to get to know her in the one way that mattered. Maybe because of her short darkish hair, slightly grey at the temples, and small black hornrimmed glasses, I assumed she was a widow (and if not hoped she soon would be) and reckoned she was in early middle age, though I learned later she was thirty-eight. The best part was her legs which, being shapely and plump, were out of character with her thin figure. I thought she might be one of Moggerhanger’s girlfriends, but told myself she wasn’t the sort he liked. She carried a handful of envelopes. ‘If you’ll come next door, Mr Cullen, I’ll give you your instructions.’
‘Before you go, Michael, I want to wish you luck,’ Moggerhanger said. ‘It’s an important job, and if you do it well there’ll be a bonus for you. I look after my lads, though I don’t buy ’em. You won’t see that sort of money. But I’ll make it right with you.’
‘Yes, sir.’
‘It’s loyalty all the way. No fucking around.’
‘I haven’t been to Oxford, so you can trust me.’ But can I trust you, I wondered, you bombastic double-dealing bastard. He must have got my drift, so ambled over: ‘Get going, then, before you get a knife in your back!’
A sense of humour was all very well, but not when it was a camouflage for absolute villainy. He also used it as a trick to inspire confidence, and as a gambit to keep you energetic and alert.
I followed Mrs Whipplegate into her tiny office of desk, chair and filing cabinet, the advantage to me being that her unsubtle perfume filled the room and I was closer to her than when in the boss’s big sanctum. She handed me the first large envelope. ‘There’s one map for the road to Goole, two to get you to Shropshire, and a large-scale one to find the cottage.’
‘I love you.’
She blushed. ‘Here’s envelope number two, with your expenses of twenty five-pound notes.’
‘I’ll always love you.’
‘Keep an account of what you spend, and let me have the list, as well as any monies still unspent when you get back. There are no written instructions except for the two addresses clipped to the maps. The cottage has a six-figure map reference because it’s hard to find, and you’re not under any circumstances to ask anyone the way to it.’
‘I’d do anything for you.’
‘After you get to each place, destroy the instructions. Lord Moggerhanger has many business rivals and doesn’t like information to leak out. And please don’t mark the maps. They can be used again.’
‘When can we meet?’
‘I don’t see how we can.’ She looked at me with grey eyes, and I saw there was no hope, until I also noticed that the little finger of her left hand was trembling. ‘It’s now half past four, and you’re to start at five o’clock precisely. There’s a dual carriageway almost to Doncaster, but after that you’ll find the road somewhat twisted and cluttered …’
‘Not as much as I am, until I’ve been to bed with you.’ I regretted each stupid sally against her obvious impregnability, respectable demeanour, or plain distaste for the likes of me, but as usual in such situations I couldn’t control myself. ‘There’s something inordinately attractive about you.’
‘… as far as Goole. However, you should be in position by ten o’clock, and that will give you plenty of time.’
‘I’m not being flippant,’ I went on. ‘There’s something about you that I find profoundly interesting, and what I want is to get to know you a little better. I don’t really mean much else. Or I might — if I did get to know you better. But until then all I’m asking is whether or not you’ll have dinner with me when I get back.’
I was tired from my short night, but the effect was to sharpen the tongue and give me a hard-on for no particular reason. She passed a slip of paper, a form which I was expected to sign for receipt of the money. I picked up the envelopes, and brushed against her as I went to the door. ‘Or even a cup of coffee.’
She twitched, then put on a thoughtful expression. ‘I’m not sure whether Lord Moggerhanger likes fraternisation among his employees.’
Her naïvety frightened me, for she seemed to think he ran a lawful business and that this conspiratorial atmosphere was only a precaution against trade rivals. I wondered what the Green Toe Gang would think of that. A real clean-up, with a proper police force, would rope her in for ten years as well. I wanted to cry for her innocence, though mostly I craved to see her strip off that chic dress and clamber into bed with me. ‘On the other hand,’ I said, ‘perhaps he would like it to be kept in the family. Lord Moggerhanger is a very paternal sort of employer.’