“Nowadays, though, it’s getting to be that there aren’t any rules except those of greed and the gun. Human life isn’t respected. Any bother, and out comes the gun, as if that will help you, and before you know where you are there’s another policeman shot dead, someone who’s got a wife and kiddies just like the next man. A corpse on the street. And what’s it going to do to children coming out of school who see a thing like that? What kind of example will it give them for the future? Any man I caught with a gun would have it turned on him before ever he got to court. The message would soon get around. So you see, I shall still be able to talk about matters in the House of Lords that the other sleepy heads know nothing about. For one thing I’ll try to persuade them to make this country safe for free born Englishmen — and women, bless them! Where was I, though? Oh yes. You know that the Green Toe Gang has been giving me aggravation for a long time? Don’t say you don’t. When I want your opinion I’ll ask for it. But they have, and I see the perfect way of taking them out before I retire. But before I tell you how it’s going to be done I’ll have that gun from your pocket.”
I put it on the desk. “It isn’t loaded. I’ve double checked it.”
He opened the magazine. “It’s a good job you’re right.”
“Keep it, if you like. I’ll never use it.”
I didn’t like the way he said: “Not even for me, to save my life?”
“If you put it like that, the answer’s yes.” But it wasn’t. “Of course I would.”
“That’s what I like to hear.” He took a box of cartridges from a drawer, filled the magazine, and gave the gun back to me. “That’s in case you ever need it. But never use it unnecessarily. And keep the safety catch on while you’re in here. I don’t mind you putting a hole in your foot, but not in my carpet. It was only cleaned last week.”
First chance, and I’d throw it away, not caring to have the weight in my pocket, not even for his sake, especially not for him. Bill carried one because he was like a baby with its favourite rattle, but not me. “What do I have to do with it?”
“If I let myself go, Michael, I’d say I wanted you to kill Oscar Cross, but as I always insist that violence ought only to be administered in homeopathic doses, I’ll be more than satisfied to bring about his downfall, so that after he’s good and truly ruined I can throw him a quid whenever I pass through Cardboard City. At the moment I happen to know he’s just amassed the biggest consignment of drugs that ever came into the country. It’s at Doggerel Bank. I know you know where that is.”
“And Ronald Delphick’s babysitting on it?” I was starting to sound like Sidney Blood.
“When he’s not pushing his panda pram up and down the Great North Road he is. He and Oscar Cross were at school together.”
“Lord Moggerhanger, I’ve never asked you directly for anything in my life, but may I have another whisky, so that my reeling mind can process the information you’ve just given me? I never for a minute supposed that Delphick’s panda wagon was full of straw, but I didn’t realise he had been educated with Oscar Cross, or that he was using Doggerel Bank as a warehouse.”
The level of booze in the bottle seemed never to go down. “It’s the perfect cover,” he said. “Who would suspect a barmy poet?”
“As I understand it, you want me and Bill to go up and do a house clearing act?”
“The speed of your mind never fails to please me.”
“Am I to kill Oscar Cross, should we find him on the premises?”
“I heartily wish I could say so, but I’m not vindictive. I’ll be satisfied with the haul. Oscar Cross is in Amsterdam, in any case, so you’ll only have Delphick to deal with, and what bevy of dollies happen to be sucking him off. Put a stocking over your head and terrify them if you like, but don’t let them suck you off as well. Business first. And tell that to Straw.”
“When do we go?”
“In the morning.”
“What about transport?”
“Take anything you fancy.”
A plan was forming. “I’d like the Rolls Royce, and the horsebox. We’ll need the space to bring everything back.”
“You follow my thoughts so exactly I like you more and more.”
“A narrow lane goes to the house, which I’ll block one way with the horsebox and the other with the Roller, so that we won’t be interfered with, and will have the house to ourselves.”
“I leave the tactics to you and Straw. All I want are the powders, every grain. On retirement the number of golden handshakes are going to cost me, so I’ll need what collateral I can get. Now you can go, but be ready for take off in the morning.”
When I outlined the scheme to Bill in the flat he was like a pig in clover. “We’ll want three hours to get there, so leave at ten, and hit ’em at lunch time. Bone idle Delphick will be having breakfast, and just as the smell of bacon and fried bread’s wafting above the dugout, we’ll go in. If there’s any high trees near the house I’ll abseil to the roof and get in through the slates. Maybe Lord Moggerhanger will lend me a rifle and sixty rounds so’s I can pick ’em off from half a mile if they try to escape with the stuff in rucksacks.” He rubbed his hands. “They won’t forget us in a hurry.”
“We aren’t going to storm the Atlantic Wall,” I said, “so curb your lunatic enthusiasm.”
He unfolded papers from his wallet, a leaflet given out on the street showing the words in big block capitals: ALL YOU CAN EAT FOR FIVE POUNDS, and the name of a foolhardy restaurant at Notting Hill Gate. “I called there,” he said, “and had the feed of my life, but the next time I went it was closed. Now let’s go over the details again. You can draw me a sketch plan on the back of this paper. Then I’ll ask Mrs Blemish to fill every flask she’s got in the morning and make us three days supply of sandwiches.”
“For a start,” I said, “we’ll leave at nine o’clock so that I can call at Upper Mayhem, and not to write my will there either. Nor will there be any call for firearms. Another thing is we’ll need two days at the most to do the job, not three.”
“Michael,” he got me by the lapels, “you never know when a day’s reserve of sandwiches won’t save your life,” so I had to agree on that one.
Back in the office, when my hand rested on Alice Whipplegate’s shoulder as she sat at her computer, she knew what I wanted, because so did she. “I always keep my promises,” I said, “with the woman I’m going to live with till my dying day.”
She turned with a wry smile, which was no less welcome for that: “As long as it’s till tomorrow morning then. Lord Moggerhanger is around, so I don’t want any hanky panky at the moment, though I wouldn’t mind a bit of argy-bargy in my big bed at home. As soon as I’m finished I’ll drive you off in my faithful little Astra.”
I kissed the back of her warm neck, applauding her plan. The trouble was, if trouble it turned out to be, that I always felt like cohabiting for life with whoever I was going to bed with at that moment. Of course, it had advantages for yours truly, in stoking us both into uxorious couplings that could not be bettered for mutual satisfaction.
She parked by a modern bijou gem at Ham Common, and carried a shopping bag of pizzas up the narrow path, me behind with a bottle in each hand. We’d talked of eating right away, but a more deliciously insistent hunger struck us as we got inside, and no sooner had the door clicked than we went up two steps at a time into her chintzy sweet smelling bedroom.
We stripped off, and she spun into my arms. “Now what do we do?” a sly little smile at the feel of my appurtenance against her thigh, as if that was its permanent home, though I soon let the wanton predator into a more comfortable place.