Ten
‘I say, you there!’
I thought the rats had invented a miniature battering ram, and were tapping it at the window, but I soon realised that the collectors had arrived. I yawned and sat up. The day of my deliverance was at hand.
‘Dammit, old man, why don’t you shake a leg?’
He had, at least on the face of it, the sort of public school hee-haw that to me marked him as definitely untrustworthy. I may have been wrong, and no doubt I was, and he was no more untrustworthy than I was, which was why I recognised it so instinctively. I was never against clearly spoken English, though I’d heard people in London say that a northern accent was homely and cute. I dropped my Nottingham twang as soon as I began working at the estate agents when I was seventeen, otherwise people might not have understood me as quickly as I wanted them to, which would have been bad for a conman’s chances of success. When crossing frontiers as a gold smuggler, a neutral twang was the first requirement, which even Bill Straw used on his travels.
The man outside the car looked, with his blue eyes and blond locks, as if he had just left the changing-room by the sports field, but I knew immediately that he had come for the drug boxes inside the cottage. He smoked a slender pipe and had a scarf around his neck, though whether university colours or football emblem I didn’t know. When he smiled there was something hard about the mouth. He was in his mid-twenties, but he could have been older. Whoever he was, he wasn’t himself.
I opened the door and got out. There were two of them, the other being dark-haired and wearing a scarf of a slightly different design. ‘Sorry we pulled you out of the land of shut-eye,’ the fair one said. ‘I’m Peter.’
‘I’m John,’ the other called from the bank of the stream, where he was tying a red-white-and-blue canoe to a sapling. ‘You may wonder what we’re doing here.’
‘So would I,’ said Peter. ‘We’re paddling the whole length of the River Drivel, from its source to the sea, for charity — a sort of sponsored paddle. We were dropped about four miles north by landrover, but on most of the route so far we’ve had to carry the damned kayak.’
‘It looks a shade better from here on,’ said John. ‘At least there aren’t any roadblocks.’
‘We need ballast, that’s all.’ Peter tapped his pipe a little too hard on the front fender of the Roller, and the bowl flew away from the stem. ‘Oh bollocks!’
I detected a slight change in his accent.
‘Fact is,’ John said, ‘we need five little counterweights to stow athwart the keel.’
‘There are ten,’ I informed him.
‘We’ve been told to pick up five. I expect somebody else’ll call for the others.’ I noticed a scar down the left side of his face, and he hadn’t got it from duelling with sabres. ‘You get my drift, Mr Cullen?’
‘It’s in the dresser cupboard.’ I nodded towards the door and gave him the key. Early morning wasn’t my favourite part of the day, especially before breakfast, and I knew that with such people the fewer words the better, one trait which criminals have in common with the police. Talking never got you anywhere, unless you wanted it to.
He took the key grudgingly and opened the cottage door.
Peter saw the blankets in the car. ‘I say, did you spend the night in there?’
‘Sure.’
‘Whatever for?’
‘It’s more comfortable, for one thing, and for another …’
There was a scuffle from the house and John, if that was his name, fell over the doorstep as he hurried out. ‘Fucking rats,’ he cried with a look of terror. ‘The place is full of ’em.’
‘I saw one or two.’ I’d known there would be nothing more certain to establish his accent — which seemed to be mostly West Country. ‘But they were quite tame. They won’t harm you.’
He wanted to kill me, but realised that one or both of us would end up in the river if he tried. ‘I’ll make you some tea,’ I said, ‘if you’ve time. I haven’t had mine yet.’
They sat on the stone bench while I got the stove going. The cups weren’t of the cleanest and Peter wiped the rim with a folded white handkerchief. ‘How long have you been here?’
‘A couple of nights.’
John glanced towards the door. ‘Better you than me.’
‘I can take it or leave it.’
‘Me,’ he said, ‘I’d leave it. I read a book once about the future. I forget what it was called. I always do. But some blokes put a cage over a chap’s face with rats in it. I had nightmares for a week.’ He stroked the scar on his cheek and downed the scalding tea at one swallow. He’d been in prison.
‘We should be leaving.’ Peter set his cup on the bench. ‘Or we’ll be late at the off-loading point. The tide waits for no man.’
I helped him out with five of the packages, and we wrapped each in a plastic container while John pulled the canoe onto the gravel. They slotted in neatly. ‘I hope the stuff doesn’t get wet.’
‘No chance,’ Peter said. ‘If it does, we’ll turn boy scouts and dry it out.’
We manhandled the boat across the lane, slid it over half a field and down through some bushes to where the river came out of a gully. They hoisted a pennant saying SAVE ST DAMIAN’S and, laughing and shouting, wielded the paddles to avoid the banks in the swirling current. They certainly knew their job, I reflected as I went back to the cottage to wait for the next collection.
I ate breakfast in the feeble sunshine outside. The rats were already sensing victory, for I could hear them playing hide and seek. I lit my first fag, happy at the notion — mistaken as it turned out — that my job was half over. The weather was good, above the two walls of land. It was always the case that as soon as I got to thinking that life was improving, something bad happened to tell me that I should have had more sense. Optimism was never anything but a warning.
A car came down the lane, and I saw the blue flashing light through the bushes. Four of the biggest coppers I’d ever seen came running in, picked me up and flattened me against the wall. Thank God they hadn’t used violence. I shouted all manner of threats about my lawyers and the Civil Liberties Association, but it had no effect. They threw me on the floor and the tracker dog sniffed me up and down. I think it was a mixture of Great Dane and Labrador, crossed by the Hound of the Baskervilles, though who was I to question its breed? It was certainly the biggest canine bastard I had ever seen.
‘It ain’t on him,’ one policeman said.
I could have told them that, but they hadn’t asked. In any case, it was hard to speak with my face in the mud.
‘Where is it, then?’ Number Two shouted, bending down to my ear. He yanked my face towards him.
‘Where’s what?’ How could they have got at me so easily? I didn’t know what hit me. They use blitzkrieg tactics these days: one at the back, one at the front and one down the chimney. Without standing up, he waddled over my body to get to the other ear. Number Three pressed a boot on my neck and the pain was so intense I thought he’d break it. ‘You fucking well know where it is. Now where the fuck is it?’
I certainly did, and wasn’t going to take any stick for Moggerhanger. ‘In the house. In the dresser cupboard.’