I set off.
‘I’ll get you to wherever you want to go, as long as you know where you want to get to,’ he said. ‘I can’t say fairer than that, can I?’
For a start he could shut up, but I maintained a stiff upper lip, as befitted the captain of the Flying Dutchman. ‘When we hit the main road I’ll want a layby to stop at, so that we can eat. There’s a jumbo flask of tea and fifty more sandwiches in the snapbag.’
By the lights of a village junction, not far from the main road, a car came towards us with all beams on. They showed him the way, whoever he was, but they burned the macadam, and sizzled the eyeballs of oncoming vehicles. It was like God on wheels. You didn’t stand a chance. The big light was coming, and you had to get out. I held the steering column gently and bumped the verge, but stayed on the road.
‘He was in a hurry,’ Clegg said calmly.
‘What sort was it?’
‘One of these, I think.’
‘Then so are we.’ If it wasn’t Moggerhanger himself it was part of the gang, going to Peppercorn Cottage to make sure I had turned up with the swag. On the other hand it might have been Chief Inspector Lanthorn, who had borrowed a Roller from the local car pound and was going to Peppercorn before any of Moggerhanger’s lot so as to take the loot for himself. It wouldn’t be above his line of thinking. He’d anticipate no aggravation, getting the swag off me. But he would discover that I had been and gone. ‘Calling all cars …’ Let him find me. If that was the case, and I made it back to Gog-Magogdom, I’d be Claud’s golden boy forever.
It was a fantasy to get me through the worst of the shakes. Whoever was in that car, they had seen me for sure, especially in such light as they had generated. My guts were turning to Mazawattee, as my mother used to say, but my fatigue was forgotten for a while.
On the main road, I was flat out for Shrewsbury, with no thought of stopping. They could turn round and come after me, though I guessed it was more likely they would go first to the cottage to check on what I had deposited there. It didn’t leave much time in which to lose myself. I explained the situation to Clegg, though he had guessed quite a bit already. ‘What would you do if you were in my shoes?’
‘We all are,’ he replied, ‘including Dismal. But give me a minute or two.’
‘Be my guest.’
He let that pass. ‘From the point he saw you at, you could have been heading for London.’ He spread the maps out like a general, or an examining engineer. ‘On the other hand, you could have been going north. They’ve only got one car, so they’ll have to make a choice. They could make the wrong one. On the other hand, they could make the right one.’
‘Thanks.’
‘I’m doing my best. I said I needed a minute or two. On the other hand, we could turn back and go into Wales. But there’s less road density, and you’d be spotted from afar, and then trapped. Steady as you go, and veer left at the next lane. After two miles you’ll be on the main route to Shrewsbury. Then you can let rip. At Shrewsbury, or on the outskirts’ — he lowered his voice — ‘put your passenger off, then head for the Manchester-Leeds-Sheffield triangle. Nobody will find you there. I’ll navigate you via Stafford, Uttoxeter, Ashbourne and Matlock.’
The road climbed, higher hills to our left. ‘I’ll never forget you.’
‘I haven’t enjoyed myself so much for a long time,’ he said. ‘Not for more than ten years, and that’s a fact.’
‘What’s happening to Wayland?’
‘The lucky chap’s asleep. Turn left at this major road, and set your compass north.’
I felt better. ‘There’s a box near your right foot. Open it and pass us a sandwich. And dish out the tea. We can feed on the trot. Take Wayland’s blindfold off when he wakes up.’ I wanted daylight to come, because though night conceals I felt that, at the moment, we would be less conspicuous in daytime. Headlights could betray you for miles, whereas in the confusion of extra traffic we’d be comparatively hidden. I explained this to Clegg.
‘You’re learning.’
‘I’d have known it at five years of age, if I’d had a car.’
‘I mean you’re sharing your thoughts.’
I decided to shut up. Yet it wasn’t in me to stick to such a whim. I had always spoken what was on my mind. In any case, it was too often on my face. ‘We’ve come a long way in a few hours.’
He got out the map, and was even sarkier. ‘As the crow flies, it’s forty miles.’ He passed a bundle of sandwiches like a postman handing letters. The one I held for Dismal went in a single snap. I threw him another before managing to wolf one myself. Wayland woke up: ‘Do I sense food?’
Clegg undid the blindfold and gave him something.
‘I’m dropping you off in half an hour,’ I said.
‘Thank you very much for the favour.’
I wasn’t very good at taking sarcasm from someone I didn’t like. Dismal nudged me for another bite. ‘No favour.’
‘And where will that dropping-off point be, in this benighted country, if you please, chauffeur?’
‘In the nearest fucking ditch if you don’t shut up,’ I said.
Glegg passed a plastic cup of scalding tea, otherwise I’d have carried out my intention, especially as it had just started to thrash down with rain. A post office van nearly hit us as it came round a bend. Then a Telecom wagon overtook me and almost skidded into a tree. They didn’t dip lights in this part of the country. ‘You’ll be set down in Cheltenham,’ I said. Unfortunately the signposts would tell him where he was.
He made an attempt to laugh, and almost succeeded, then took another sandwich from the box. ‘I know exactly where Peppercorn Cottage is. Blemish is such a fool. His heart’s full of steel wool. I’d have worked it out, anyway.’
‘Go back,’ I said. ‘It’ll be your funeral.’
‘I’ll stay with you, after all.’
‘Think you’ll get a new lead?’ My laugh wasn’t exactly hollow, but it was certainly concave. ‘It’ll still be your funeral.’
‘Don’t I have any choice?’
I avoided a hedgehog crossing the road. ‘How long is it since you walked five miles?’
‘I’ve forgotten.’
‘Well, watch those Shrewsbury signposts, because when it says five, you’re out. If your legs give way you can walk on your arse.’
Clegg asked if he had any money for the train.
‘Some.’
‘Drop him at the station, Michael.’
Since I’d had the foresight to load up with grub and feed everyone so well, I supposed I was captain of the ship. I also happened to be driving. Even Dismal had no cause to get broody, though the only disadvantage of topping him up as much as it pleased me to was that the car became filled with odours suggesting that we were passing an endless gasworks on one side of the road, and an extensive rotten egg plant on the other. No air-conditioning system could deal with the clouds of his guileless effusions. To open a window would set the rain against us. The only solution was to stop and let him out, otherwise we’d choke. ‘Three men in a car found dead in mysterious circumstances,’ people would read in Offa’s Mirror.
I pulled in at the first possible place. A pause in our flight was necessary so that we could rest. While the others drank more tea I stayed in the front seat and wondered what to do. At half past three we were near a place called Pox Green. Nobody was following us at the moment, but the thought of daylight showing us plainly from every hill seemed like a promise of death — an adventure all the same, but how long could it go on?
Clegg was happy, Dismal carefree, Wayland Smith apparently content, while no word would tell me what I was. What was I? Don’t ask. I knew who I was, and that was a fact, but as to what I was, no answer suggested itself until I was behind the car taking what seemed an endless piss. I was as rotten as ever. Would I piss myself to death and end up clean, but dead? I was as much of a bastard as ever, in spite of (or even because of) the fact that my father had eventually married my mother. Once a bastard, always a bastard. Moggerhanger was as straight as a thief could be, and generous after his fashion, but I was out to cause him trouble from which he would be lucky to recover. There was no one left except this bacillus-colony of a car moving at random over the dripping bosom of green England.