It’s quite unnecessary to describe Moggerhanger’s look, because who can’t imagine it? In the refreshment room he pushed aside a plastic cup of what looked like Dismal’s piss on a bad day. “I’m not making any more conditions with regard to the transaction, Michael. After all, you’re only doing what I would have done in your place forty years ago. I’ve handed the money over with good grace, and with no trickery or malice aforethought. But I do have one favour to ask of you.”
“I might be amenable.”
“I’d like you to drive the Roller back to Ealing for me tomorrow. You have the money, so I can trust you to make the delivery of all that’s inside.”
“Why don’t you take it back yourself this afternoon?”
“I’ve got this terrible lumbar pain, that’s why, and a couple of hours at the wheel would be agony, especially in the rush hour traffic. Another thing is, I want you to take your kit from the garage flat. I’m sure you’ll understand I’ll never want to see you again.”
His seemingly reasonable request went through my brain like a cloud of dolly mixtures. Why not? There couldn’t be anything amiss with a more formal ending to our association, apart from which I very much fancied having Sophie beside me in the Rolls Royce when I gave her a lift to town in the morning.
“I only ask you,” he went on, “not to bring that damned dog with you. Whenever I had him on the premises he invariably took a malicious delight pissing over my carpets. He’d make a point of coming into my study — and you know how silently he can move — from the more than adequate latrine of outside, I might say, to do the business on my prime Bokhara. I can’t think what he had against me.”
“He never does it at my place.” I must have been the only person to like and understand such a dog. “Maybe it’s because we only have rush mats on the floor. He’s the best behaved canine friend a man could ever wish for.”
He turned a bottle of HP sauce so that the cradle of democracy faced him. “Your companion in villainy seems to be taking his time. It wouldn’t surprise me if such a daft berk like that hasn’t run away with the money, not to mention all the parcels in the boot. Nothing surprises a man of my age.”
Once a notion entered Bill’s addled head you could never tell if it would ever dislodge. I saw the picture of him at the wheel of the Roller, all windows open, and him singing aloud what would become the National Anthem of Runna-Runna as he headed at top speed towards Harwich.
Moggerhanger had a good laugh, his only one that day I supposed, when I jumped up and ran to see, I said to him, how matters were progressing. At the station entrance I was ready to kill myself, because the car wasn’t where it should have been. Would I have to stay in Moggerhanger’s employment for the next five years while I tracked Bill down and killed him? Kenny Dukes and all the rest would be on expenses as well, as we searched one South Sea island after another, and even then Bill would knock us off one by one as we waded ashore on hitting the right one.
The car slid into the concourse and stopped by the kerb, Bill’s shaven head coming out to say: “Thought I’d scarpered to Runna-Runna, did you Michael? Can’t say I wasn’t tempted, but I never leave a mate in the lurch. Everything’s all right in the suitcase. All the notes add up. We’re in the clear.”
Moggerhanger was on his feet when I got back. “I’ll take the next train, now that you’re satisfied.”
“And you can expect me tomorrow, about midday,” I said, looking forward to a night in a London hotel with Sophie. “That’ll give us time to get our cash into the bank.”
He was irritated, as opposed to angry. “Stop distrusting me. It’s not valid, so late in the day.” He put out a hand. “No hard feelings, Michael. The time for that has passed, so we might as well shake on it.”
The gesture made me wary, and he noticed it. “Michael, you’ve nothing to worry about. If there was no honour among thieves how would the world keep turning?”
Nobody knew that more than he, so I took his hand, and assumed that everything would be all right. He looked somewhat older getting onto the train. “Serve him right,” Bill said. “I hope superannuation isn’t the worst thing that’s going to happen to him. We can go home now, and have a slap-up tea. Counting so much money’s made me hungrier than I’ve ever been, except for one time in Normandy when …”
“I don’t want to hear it,” I shouted, but joyful at our success.
“All right, so we pulled it off, the coup of our lives. But I shan’t go on. What a genius you are! Fifty thousand each. I can’t wait to begin spending it.”
I drove, because I found it relaxing. “Why not use a bit at a time, live off the proceeds?”
“Not my style, old cock. What if after six months I’d only got through ten thousand, and then one night I went to sleep and never woke up? Or suppose I got in a fight and was killed? Or say I went for a swim at Skeggy after a night with two tarts in a boarding house, went out too far, got cramp, and sank like a millstone? You know what the North Sea’s like at Skeggy. What then, with forty thousand still unspent in the bank? If there was such a thing as hell, and I went to it, as I surely would, my tears of regret would put all the fires out. There’d be the Devil to pay to get them going again, and I wouldn’t have the forty thousand to give him for the water bill, would I? No, Michael, what I want is a good time, and when I’ve spent every last tanner I’d rely on the Good Lord to look after his own.”
Who would want to argue against such recklessness? I’d turn Upper Mayhem into the Old Railway Hotel, I informed him, and earn more than enough to live on. Any profit would go into extensions. The signal box, for instance, I would kit out as a four-poster luxury suite, videos of steam trains available so that couples could plug them into the speaker system and fuck to the rhythm of the Flying Scotsman clawing the miles up to Edinburgh.
Then again, Sophie might pay her way into the business from her divorce settlement or, failing that, we could live on our pooled money for ten years in a Turkish village. But if she got the house in Italy with the divorce, we’d hole up in bliss till the cash ran out. And yet, best of all, surely, would be for me to exist in idle modesty at Upper Mayhem, the hotel business being too risky, and too much like hard work. I’d stay in Upper Mayhem for as long as the money allowed, and do any strong arm work that turned up to make it last longer. I explained these options to Bill, who kept his nose in the air and didn’t comment.
Clegg was watering geraniums by the waiting room, and on our telling him about the success of the venture he shook his head as if not believing we could have pulled off something so perilously clever. I felt the same, but spreading the money over the kitchen table we were all convinced the day had gone well. “Open two cans of Bogie for Dismal,” I said. “And how is Sophie? Is she up yet?”
“Up? She certainly is. She left an hour ago with her husband,” Clegg said. “He came here in a blood-red Mustang — a magnificent car, by the way — and after a rather loud argument she got in with him. He drove off with her like a rocket. I think she left a note in the bedroom.”
To call what boiled in my system bile would be just about right, though it was reinforced with an inner tantrum of murder, rage and grief. I could go on, except my mind wouldn’t click further into the thesaurus mode, before running two steps at a time up the stairs, almost cracking my kneecaps on trying to make it three so as to get a split second sooner at the paper.
“My darling Michael, I have to leave. Gerald insists. If he knew I was scribbling this he’d strangle me. Oh no he wouldn’t! But don’t despair, dear brother, I’ll see you as soon as I can, and we’ll be intimate again. Can’t wait. Love you, Sophie.”