“Even you ought to be inspired hearing about my experiences.” He started the engine. “I suppose you’re right. Let’s push south.”
No one was more pleased than me to hit the Great North Road and set the compass in the only possible direction. I wanted to get back to civilisation and see my steaming incestuous sister Sophie. As for Moggerhanger, I didn’t give a toss about his machinations, nor the load of drugs to finance his old age, a period of his life I hoped in any case to make very uncomfortable indeed.
Meanwhile, only interested in myself, I decided that my crazy ziggurat existence must give way to a calmer, more legitimate life. Since working at the advertising agency I had been pitched into my former love of freebooting, and now no future in it seemed in the offing. Something definite had to be possible, and though my temperament had weathered all previous perils, to get Fate by the throat and say ‘Make something happen’ hadn’t been my line. Fate had always chivvied me along, and I’d never questioned it, but from now I would resist its influence, change without its help, if only I knew how to do it — though who could? I needed some kind of plan, and thought that Bill’s notion of fleeing to the Pacific hadn’t been so crazy after all. At least he’d thought about it, instead of waiting for Fate to drive him. Not that I could have gone along with his idea, because Fate had to be backed up by a dose of common sense, a quality he spectacularly lacked.
However it was, my rake’s progress had to stop, though why I should think so at this moment was becoming harder to say. Perhaps I was afraid of landing in prison, and couldn’t bear the picture of Frances, or Sophie, or even Claudine Forks opening the paper one day and reading that I’d been sent down.
The further south we got, the better I felt, and the less inclined was I to worry. The weather improved as well, while Bill nipped gleefully in and out between juggernauts, and took us speedily along.
My despair at having been robbed so blindly of Moggerhanger’s impedimenta no longer gnawed, as Bill steered us into the enclave of a steakhouse south of Stamford. “My guts are rumbling,” he said, “like Mount Etna before an eruption,” and parked neatly between two 4WDs.
Such cars might have been common in that kind of country, but I remembered the markings, and one of the number plates. “Bill,” I said softly, as if not wanting even God to overhear, “these vehicles belong to the bastards who high-jacked our load. They must be celebrating in the restaurant, before going back to London.”
His expletive was uncharacteristic. “Do a recce at the window then, and if they’re still at their scoffing give me a signal. Looks like the powders are still in there as well. I’ll do a break-in.” He took a snazzy little leatherbound case from his inside pocket. “I’ve got just the toolkit.”
Not caring to wonder whether this was Fate or my own free will I approached the windows side on, leaned against the wall as if to clean shit off one of my shoes, and got a glimpse of a table inside at which the four of them sat. They’d changed into jeans and sweatshirts, but I’d know them anywhere. Plates were burdened with meat and all the trimmings, bottles of wine half gone, a waitress laughing at their rowdy quips, clouds of battleship grey smoke from fags and cigars flowing above the food. A positive sign to Bill, I hoped none of the revellers would come to the doorway and check that their motors weren’t being tampered with, doubting any would, for they were having such a riotous time, confident that they’d left the Range Rovers fully locked and secure.
Dismal sniffed out the appropriate car, and Bill had the door open in seconds. “How did you learn that?” I asked.
He pulled a large tartan blanket off the packets, and carried a couple to the Roller. “Did a course somewhere, didn’t I?”
I didn’t quiz as to where, while humping my share. “They won’t even know the stuff’s gone,” he said, “after I yank that ornamental bush up and stow it inside.” He returned from another shuttle, both of us working quietly, as if afraid our flitting shadows might reflect on the restaurant windows. My heart drummed as if sending a message across Africa, but we soon had the goods stashed where they belonged, Dismal looking on and thinking how clever we were.
It was a stopwatch operation, the transfer done in no time. We weighted the bush inside the car with stones from the pathway, plus odds and ends out of the Roller, and spread the tartan back over all, assuming that, too drunk and overconfident, they wouldn’t even notice the load had been tampered with.
I thought Bill was cutting things a bit fine when he said: “Before we go we’ll unhitch the horsebox and leave it over there. If they notice, though I don’t suppose they will, since there are so many such things in these parts, they can make of it what they will.”
“It’s diabolical,” I said.
He held himself like the proudest man in the forecourt. “Ain’t it? We’ll make better speed, and be less noticeable. Moggerhanger can have it picked up tomorrow. It’ll be no skin off our teeth. He might even make Kenny pull it to London.”
Backing out of the space, we slid feeling like royalty onto the road. “Turn off at the second left,” he said, “in case they rumble what we’ve done.”
“Why not the first turning, to be on the safe side?”
“Grow up, Michael. If they come in pursuit that’s the one they’ll think we chose.”
I looked at the map. “If they do catch up with us we’ll be dead. You know that, don’t you?”
“Catch us? Us? O ye of little faith! Forgive me while I laugh. When they get to Ealing with only a bush under the blanket Moggerhanger will have something closely resembling an epileptic seizure, which he’ll survive, of course, but they won’t. I say, don’t the car handle a lot better without that horsebox?”
“And when we turn up,” I said, “all will be forgiven, because everything will have gone according to plan. We’ll be in Moggerhanger’s good books forever. Here’s the second fork, so off you go.”
“The compass points southeast, don’t it?”
“Of course.”
He took the turning. “And what does that tell us?”
“I thought we’d decided against all that, so belt up.”
“Michael, our recent spell of exceptional luck has to be accepted as an indication from on high, and Him on high would be justifiably angry if we didn’t take Him up on it. The Good Lord never liked ingratitude. So our next stop is Harwich, then through all the hoops to Runna-Runna. King Billy here I come. I’ve always had a soft spot for Buddhism.”
“What are you talking about? Delphick tried to convert me, and now you.”
“Reincarnation, old son, is what’s in my mind. In my distant past I must at some time have been monarch of all I surveyed, so to get back into that condition and have my own little kingdom seems perfectly right. I already feel the tropical breeze on my cheeks, not to mention the comfort of a throne that won’t give me a backache in my old age.”
“All I would expect in that case would be a bullet in the head.”
“Just listen to me, and you won’t go far wrong. As I see it, if we deliver the stuff to Moggerhanger we might get a couple of thousand each for having risked our lives, and what’s that to a growing man? A few nights on the tiles in Soho, with a dose of the clap thrown in? It’s only right that we get more out of it than that. Justice calls for no less.”
“You’d better let me take the wheel. I don’t trust your inertial navigation system. Put your thinking cap on and come up with something a bit more sensible. And take the next lane on the right. We’ll unload Dismal at Upper Mayhem.”
“It’s in the Harwich direction at least.”
“No,” I said. “If you like, when we get there you can piss off and leave me. I’ll put the house in a state of defence, in preparation for a long siege when they come to get me. I’ll face the music alone, and hope you get clean away. If you eventually land on Runna-Runna send me a postcard in a few years with your head on the stamp. Unless I get a parcel with it in a box. On the other hand, to come out of this with fifty thousand pounds each would in my view be neither too little nor too much, and be something freely given by our employer Lord Moggerhanger. It’s not a lot of money to him, if you think of the couple of million he’s going to make out of the haul. Do you agree that we should go for such an arrangement?”