I was doing sixty on the inside lane when an armoured juggernaut overtook me at ninety, Mad Jack from Doncaster blasting ten horns as he did so. I watched him for miles weaving in and out of the traffic with a degree of manoeuvrability that could only be done by an artist at the game. He was laughing his head off, I supposed, open shirt showing a tea-stained vest, glorying in his fancy footwork as he told his younger mate to watch how it was done. ‘All you’ve got to do is keep your eyes glued to the rear mirror for a jam sandwich.’
That, I explained to Dismal (in case he didn’t know), is the name we road-busters give to a cop car with yellow and red streaks on its side. In the mirror I saw him yawn, bored out of his canine mind, but contented at the same time, while I got us mile by mile along the wonderful flarepath, also keeping a lookout for any jam sandwich drifting up on the starboard bow. If it never got light we would steam happily and forever along this lit-up dual carriageway through the enchanted Land of the Midlands at night.
No such luck. ‘Down, Dismal!’
A blue flash worked overtime behind, as if to push me forward because I had strayed onto a runway at London Airport and a 747 was coming in to land. I looked at my speed, but the needle was pegged at sixty. Mad Jack had gone into the distance, so they weren’t chasing him. The game was up. ‘Get down, you melancholy bastard, or you’ll give me away, and you’ll be confined to barracks for fourteen days.’
He flopped off the seat, then began to howl at the flashing light, his perfect silhouette unmistakable even from a satellite wheeling in space. There was nothing I could do except stay calm, get ahead, whistle a tune, and wait for the four cops inside their Rover to overtake and slow down till I had to stop as well.
Dismal looked into their car. What other evidence did they need? They swung side-on, and I glimpsed their faces: fresh young lads out on patrol, the cream of the Staffordshire force, who seemed amused when Dismal flattened himself at the window as if pleading to be taken back to his air-conditioned kennel and ten pounds of gristle a day. I had looked after the ungrateful hound like my only begotten son, when I should have left him to live on raw rat and cold water at Peppercorn Cottage.
The jam sandwich slid ahead and was lost in other traffic. It seemed obvious, as Dismal lay on the seat and sobbed himself to sleep (or maybe it was indigestion after scoffing fish and chips, lemonade, chocky bars, several dishes of tea and three Eccles cakes), that they had got my number, if not my name and, radio communications being what they were, could afford to wait in a darker spot a few miles ahead, or pass me on to some of their more boisterous mates in Northamptonshire when I turned south for London.
But at this late stage I began to consider whether they really were after me. One of the coppers who had raided Peppercorn Cottage, on going in to search the dresser, had called out that there were only four boxes. At the time I thought maybe the rats had eaten one, but then the inspector answered that there should be five, and I was so numbed by their presence that it never occurred to me to wonder how he could have known what number there were. My brain, if it could be called one, spun like a millwheel. Questions came along on a conveyer belt like cars with one door missing. Who told them there were five boxes? There had been ten, until Peter and John — Peter and John, my arse! — paddled away with their half share in the canoe. The police had parked at the top of the slope and no doubt trained their binoculars to watch them paddling away, and only then came down to frighten the guts out of me and make off with the other five handipacks.
The only explanation was that the lads who had pinned me against the wall at Peppercorn Cottage hadn’t been policemen at all. If they had, they would have left no roadblock unmanned to get their purloined dog back to base. To lie, perjure, resist arrest, even steal and murder, or hijack one of their cars and drive it the wrong way up and down the M1 shouting obscene defiance through their radio so that even the policewomen operators back at base shivered with rage and horror, was all part of the game, but to drive off with a superbly trained and well-nurtured poodle was asking for trouble. The fact was that the Peppercorn Cottage task force had been as much hoaxers as those two canoeists who had made off with their share of the loot half an hour before.
I turned left at the Cross-in-Hand roundabout for Lutterworth, and went over the M1 knowing that soon I would have to find a suitable parking place and bed down for a few hours, unless I wasn’t to nod off at the wheel and wake up to find a policeman at my hospital traction-cot threatening to turn off my life-support machine if I didn’t talk.
There was never anywhere to stop on the twisting arterial lane without fear of being hit from behind, so I drove on, always expecting to see something interesting around the next corner, such as trestle tables under colourful medieval awnings, laden with real food served by nubile wenches. Instead, I barged into a grim pub, and was stared at by drinkers who went silent at my advent. Even the one-armed bandit, a coin already in and the handle pulled, stopped working while the surly and ulcerous landlord asked what I wanted. I debated taking Dismal a tin of beer, but settled on lemonade, a bag of onion crisps and some peanuts. He certainly appreciated the attention I paid him, but it wasn’t every day that I had a fully paid up member of the police force in my car.
Rain slowed me down, and the hypnotic rhythm of the wipers lulled me perilously. I rubbed my eyes so hard I almost mashed them back into my head and lost the sight of them altogether. When I switched off the engine and headlights beyond Corby, the sound of rain pounding on the roof was comforting. ‘Dismal,’ I said, ‘we’re on the loose. You’ve been abandoned by the world, but I’ll look after you. As for me, if I survive explaining to Lord Moggerhanger how I let his precious packages slip through my fingers to the wrong people, I’ll live forever, or for as long as makes no difference.’
A passing car lit up our habitation. Dismal yawned, and I let us both out, hoping dog piss wouldn’t burn the rubber off the tyres. We farted, and got back inside. Dismal slept on the spare seat in front, while I stretched my legs in the back.
Twelve
Dismal’s tongue felt like wet pumice on the back of my neck, and I came out of sleep as from a near fatal wound that needed a decent period of convalescence before I could consider myself halfway ready for the front line. I pushed him away. ‘It’s too early. Leave me alone.’
Crimson rags of cloud did not inspire me to be on the move, and for springtime it was as cold as winter. I lit a cigarette, glad I didn’t have to share it with anyone, though Dismal looked as if expecting a puff. We weren’t in the trenches yet, so I refused. To get him out of his sulk I threw a few scraps onto a sheet of newspaper and while he gobbled I looked at the map and listened to the weather forecast, which again was rattled off so quickly that I understood nothing, though perhaps I didn’t want to, because today would be the day of reckoning, and the future state of the heavens seemed irrelevant. No matter how much I dawdled down the A1, I would be face to face with Moggerhanger by the end of it.
I was happy in a manic and probably dangerous kind of way, as I walked along the road breathing deeply. To the wonder of passing motorists I trotted back to the car and jumped up and down a hundred times to get my sluggish blood flowing. Rummaging in the boot, I found a length of rope. Did Moggerhanger keep it so as to hang himself when news of his financial collapse came over on Radio Two? Or was it to strangle somebody else who had displeased him by losing a valuable consignment of drugs? I looped it through Dismal’s collar and took him for a walk, but it was too muddy underfoot to go far. He saw a rabbit, and almost pulled me face-down among the primroses and wood sorrel. A pigeon broke cover and climbed over the sheen of a bank of bluebells.