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“We’re on our way to London,” my mother said, “to mix randy old Blaskin up a bit. I sometimes get bored in Nottingham.

I told her I was passing through. “But make free with my resources. Everybody does. Clegg will look after you. I’ll see you after I’ve finished the job I’m on.”

“Watch out for that ratbag Moggerhanger,” she said, “or he’ll have you in jail again.”

I opened the car door for Dismal to get in, and he charged across the seat to sniff at Kenny who yelled: “What’s this fucking animal doing in here? Gerrit off. I hate dogs.”

“He’s the regimental mascot,” Bill laughed, “and he loves eating privates.”

“No way. Not me.” He leapt out, and clear. “I’m not sharing with him. He’s as big as a fucking pony.”

“Get back inside,” I said, “or you’ll insult him. Just give him a kiss on the nose, then he’ll settle down. If we don’t get going we’ll be late, and if we are, Moggerhanger will have us executed in the Tower of London.”

“I’m not travelling with that bloodhound, I tell you.”

Tact was necessary, such as topping Kenny and cutting him up, throwing his arms in Devil’s Ditch, his legs in the Old Bedford River, and his head in the Ouse, which solution to the problem I’d recall when writing the next Sidney Blood called Murder in the Fens. “All right, Kenny, travel in the horsebox. Have it all to yourself.”

Anyone but me would have felt rewarded by his smile, or at least flattered. The slightest kindness, and he became more or less human, in spite of Bill’s scorn for his lack of courage. “Suits me,” he said. “Moggerhanger won’t mind. I’ll travel in style as well, and won’t have that mangy brute shitting and pissing all over me.”

I locked him in, and off we went. Speed was high on the A1, but I had to take care once or twice when some class-conscious bastard of a lorry driver tried to nudge me off the road, the sight of a Rolls Royce towing a horsebox too much to stomach. We separated from the main drag at Knaresborough, and headed northwest, stopping only once at a comfort station for Dismal, and for Bill to get into the driving seat, leaving me free to read the map.

“I also asked blokes who wanted to join my platoon,” he said, “if they could read a map, and you’d be surprised how many couldn’t. One winter during training — I’ll never forget — the corporal took us out for a three-day exercise on Salisbury Plain, and got us so lost it felt we were in the middle of Siberia. He didn’t know where we were. We were supposed to meet the dinner wagon at a certain grid reference, but missed it. After two days we were starving, and still going round in circles. We were about to kick his head in when I spotted a bus, which I flagged down and got us back to camp. The corporal lost his rank, and served him right. After that I learned all I could about map reading, and soon had some stripes of my own.”

He barely got around a bend without capsizing the horsebox, while I imagined Kenny being sick over Moggerhanger’s mahogany furnishings. “Turn left beyond this bridge.”

“Next time, give me more notice,” he said.

“I would, if you’d stop reminiscing. Fork right in about three miles. I’m telling you now.”

A youth in front driving a tractor wore headphones as big as frying pans, so that he wouldn’t even hear the world blowing up. He turned into a field. A west wind peppered drops of rain, Bill putting on the wipers only when he couldn’t make out trees in front. The lanes narrowed to such a tunnel he had to switch on the lights as well. “Real Yorkshire weather,” he said. “Catterick’s at the top of the map, if I remember, and a right hole that was.”

At five hundred feet above sea level I indicated a cobbled track. A mile later we went down a fair way and came to a ford, Doggerel Bank hidden up the other side. “They can’t see us from there,” I said. “You drive over in the Roller, and pass Doggerel Bank to the top of the road, where there’s enough space for you to turn. Come down and stop a couple of hundred yards above, so that you block the track from that direction. Dismal and me will charge into the house. If you hear signs of trouble come and give us a hand. Meanwhile Kenny will stay by the stream and manhandle the horsebox to the side of the lane so that we only have to hook up on the way down, after we’ve finished loading the loot. Is that clear?”

“You’re a tactical genius. I’d have been proud to have you in my platoon, though we’ll see how it turns out, because no scheme goes according to plan when faced with reality on the ground.”

“This time it’s got to,” I said. “There’s no room for error.”

He laughed, and clapped me on the shoulder. “Michael, there never is. We all say that, but the little green god inside sometimes think’s otherwise.” He stopped the car. “Let’s get Kenny out.”

When I unlocked the horsebox door the unmistakable reek of Moggerhanger’s finest whisky mixed with cigar smoke wafted up at me. Kenny lay lengthwise on the floor, blotted out, we assumed, after having partied with himself every mile from Upper Mayhem. The little green god had got to us too early for my liking.

“Our first casualty.” Bill gave him a kick. “He’s out for the count,” dragged him by the ankles, head and arse banging down the steps, which treatment I hoped would revive him, but we only got a burbled curse and a groan for our trouble.

Bill filled a booze bottle at the stream. “We went through a French farm and found an abandoned wine vat, real plonk and as sour as hell it was, but we put back a lot more than this poor specimen, pushed on and took fifteen Russians prisoner who were fighting for the Germans. We treated them a bit rough, but they only laughed because they were out of the fighting. So we gave them a fag each, and marched them to the cage.”

He uptilted the bottle of suitably icy water and let it dribble onto Kenny’s nose, a somewhat brutal splashing that brought him round. If his language wasn’t audible at Doggerel Bank I don’t know what would have been. Thin fair hair was matted over a Neanderthal skull, eyes half red at the whites, his misshapen nose blue, and a crimson blotch distorting his cheek. “You’re not going to spoil our well-laid plans.” Bill cocked his pistol. “So get on your feet, or I’ll push you into the trees and shoot you for cowardice in face of the enemy.”

I consoled Kenny for his possible fate. “That’s what Sidney Blood would do.”

He stood by the track to piss himself empty, hot water coming out where cold had gone in. “You didn’t need to fucking drown me.”

“Next time I’ll hold your loaf under the stream for half an hour,” Bill said. “I don’t mind you jeopardising yourself, but you’re not going to land us in the dreck.”

“I only had a drink or two. It was cold in that horsebox. It sways all over the place.” He leaned over to be sick, and when he’d done, Bill opened a coffee flask and ordered him to drink it off.

I strolled to the water, followed by Dismal, who wetted a paw and turned away in disgust. Then he reminded me he hadn’t eaten since leaving home, so he swallowed a ham sandwich from the food pack, and bumped my leg for another. “We’ve work to do first,” I said, at which he belched, and sat as if never to move again.

Kenny’s condition was a setback, though Bill brought him round to as much normality as coffee, food, and bullying could. “Let’s turn the horsebox ourselves, Michael. This daft loony’ll never manage it by himself.” He took the car across the ford, to give space, then came back so that the two of us could get to work.

Kenny looked on, shivering and glaze-eyed. “Things never go right when I leave Bermondsey.”

“Shut your rattle,” Bill told him. When we had effectively blocked the lane he held Kenny by the jacket lapels: “I’ve only one thing to say to you: stand here and let nobody go by. If you have any trouble, shout. And if you hear us calling from the house, run and help.”