I pushed him down. “Stay where you are.”
Dismal’s light hearted barking sounded as if he’d come across a splendid lunch, a sound of eating a way through a wall to reach it. “If he wants to gobble up my secret store of condoms,” Delphick said, “good luck to him. I’ve got some pork-scratching specials, the fastest selling condoms in Yorkshire.” There was too much panic behind his smile for the claim to be genuine. “I got them from a machine in a pub last week.”
“There aren’t any condoms in the place,” I said. “You never cared about getting a woman in the club.” Not being in two places at once, because I hadn’t studied the gobbledegook of the Miller Raper, I was glad to hear the slam of the Rolls door as it stopped by the house.
Bill came in. “What’s the hold up? You know we must load up and be out by fourteen-hundred hours. If you want me to make the mastermind talk I’ll get the toolkit from the car.”
“No need,” I said, at Delphick turning pale. “Just climb the stairs, and see what Dismal’s up to.”
He set off, boots clattering. “Christ! He’ll eat it all.”
Delphick went into a well-rehearsed foetal position. “You’ll be sorry. Oh how you’ll be sorry. You can’t do this to me. An Englishman’s home is his castle. You’ll never get away with it.”
“All right, if you like I can call the police, and get a pat on the back for fulfilling a patriotic duty. Let them take it. Is that what you want? They’ll kick the shit out of you at the copshop, then give you some counselling, and bang you up in a cell, which will serve you right. There’s a phone box at the top of the lane, remember? It’s the one you used to shop me with Moggerhanger three years ago. It won’t take me a minute to go up there and use it. You’re lucky we’re snatching the parcels, instead of letting the law find them.” He mumbled something I didn’t understand, probably a few phrases in Tibetan. “Yes, I might do that,” I said, “leave a packet for the police to see.”
Bill came down with a bundle under each arm. “It’s the real thing. There’s so much it’ll fill the boot.”
“Get it in, then,” I said. “And make it snappy. I don’t know how long I’ll be able to keep this Himalayan Tiger from my throat.”
“You’re going too far,” Delphick cried. “We’ll all be dead for this.”
“You shouldn’t mind being reincarnated into a rat.” But I didn’t altogether like what I was doing, either, now that I was doing it, me the halfwit machine carrying out Moggerhanger’s end-of-career coup. Why I was putting my life at risk I didn’t know, because Delphick was right. We’d never get away with it. Better than racing back to Moggerhanger’s lair and basking in his smile of gratification would be to go to Hull and take the next boat for the mainland, but even a sauve qui peut like that would mean death, or living the rest of our lives without eyes or fingers.
After much clattering up and down the stairs Bill came in with Dismal. “We’re ready to go.”
“Now look here,” I said to Delphick, after Dismal had sniffed him into a state of sufficient fear to take in my warning, “keep away from the phone after we’ve gone. Nobody can help you. Think about it. Don’t cut off your nose to spite your face, as your mother often said, I’m sure, because if you do you’ll soon have no head left. Is that clear?”
I knew I was right, and so did he. If he belled Oscar Cross there’d be a suspicion that he’d shifted the goods himself, and he’d put him on the execution list. If he phoned Moggerhanger he’d only get a laugh. We were in the clear.
“You outright bastards,” he shouted as we left the house.
Bill pressed every last packet into the boot. “I spread some over the walls.” He laughed as he started the engine. “Sprayed a bit across his bed as well.”
Kenny was asleep, so we bundled him into the horsebox, locked the door, hitched it to the car, and trundled away.
Chapter Twenty-Seven
The tang of leafmould and wood damp blew through the open windows, refreshing yet sinister, telling us to get away quick, so we bumped our way to do so at top speed. Just before the tarmacked road Bill stopped the car. “I’ve been thinking.”
“No.” I passed a Henri Winterman. “I won’t hear of it. Have a smoke instead.”
“Didn’t you hear? I said I’d been thinking.”
“I know you did. But my answer is no.”
“What are you on about? I have a particularly foolproof plan.”
“No plan is foolproof. You said so yourself.”
He let smoke drift away. “You haven’t even heard what I’ve got to say yet.”
“I have. I’m tuned into your brainbox. I’ve heard it several times already in my mind. While we’re wasting time, imagination, and no doubt intelligence on your loony proposition, our survival gets more and more unlikely. We’re too near the scene of the crime to talk. I don’t like courting disaster. If Delphick’s daft enough he’s halfway up the lane to the telephone box. The longer we linger the more dangerous it gets.”
“Do you think I don’t know? Listen, it won’t take a minute, then we’ll be off like a rocket. What I propose is that we race down to the Channel and get across to France. There’s nothing more pleasant than spending money in that lovely country. After a few easy days at the fleshpots we’ll make a royal progress to Marseilles. I know how to dispose of the stuff there. We’ll be out of the territory of the Green Toe Gang. We’ll be beyond the range of Moggerhanger’s long arm. We’ll make ourselves into millionaires.” He gave his great berserker freebooting laugh. “We’ll be rich for life!”
“Listen to what would really happen,” I cautioned. “If Lanthorn’s son isn’t on duty to stop us getting across the Channel — though he probably will be, because Moggerhanger is no fool, and already has him on red alert in case we make such a move — the French police, under the eagle eye of Inspector Javert, will be laughing their tits off while waiting for us. Ten years later we’d get eaten by sharks, trying to escape from Devil’s Island.”
“I was only testing you, Michael.” He put the car in gear, and we were on the road. My only wish was to deliver the load to Moggerhanger, then clock out of his employment with the appropriate golden handshake. Handling and transporting drugs was finished for me. All I wanted was to live modestly — though in idleness. If and when the money to do so ran out I would apply for a job in Blaskin’s fiction factory, churning out Sidney Bloods, because writing, from all I had seen, was far from an unpleasant life, almost the same as pulling in a private income out of what, after all, was your hobby, since you halfway liked doing it.
And yet, as we threaded the lanes, if the shitwork Blaskin wanted done was beyond me, I could turn gigolo and live off women, which would be even more pleasant, since I loved them so much. Then again, even that might not bring in a tolerable income, because I wasn’t as young as was necessary for such an occupation, and in any case I’d so enjoy what I was doing I wouldn’t want to charge anything.
Moggerhanger’s thousand or two for the present job would soon melt, in this land of galloping inflation, and when it did I’d be on the pavement outside a London terminal begging pence for cups of tea, and slurping so much that my insides would rot, and I’d soon pop my clogs beside a cardboard fire under one of the bridges.
“Think of it,” Bill said, “leaning against a palm tree on the island of Runna-Runna in the South Pacific, a smiling bint in a grass skirt coming towards you with half a coconut shell brimming with the local brew, her lovely brown breasts moving up and down in the sunlight with every step. Canoes fishing for our dinner would dot the blue briny, and there’d be the mouth-watering smell of a whole pig roasting on the beach. Oh yes, and yams boiling in the pot. I can see it all.”