His chuckle wasn’t very promising, either. “Michael, you know me, don’t you? Don’t say you don’t.”
“I do, possibly as well as anyone can, Lord Moggerhanger. Outside your immediate family, of course.”
“You may have a point there. But I know you, as well, because twice in my long life I have been your employer. Don’t deny that, or you will soon be in that place best described by those words which precede a stroll through the gates of Hell. When you came to London as a brash young lad of twenty you showed a bit of road rage and tried to cut me up in Hendon. Or was it at Henleys Corner? A month or two later I set you on as a bouncer at one of my clubs, and from that privileged position I made you my chauffeur. You went from good to better, and earned a lot, so that our acquaintance turned into one of long standing.”
“I’d like to know where all this is leading, Lord Moggerhanger.”
“Of course you would.” Again the chuckle. “And so would I, but the fact is I’m in a spot of bother. Now you will own, if you are straight and honest — and I think you are, though you weren’t always entirely so with me, but I’ll forget that, because if I didn’t I would have been hard shouldered off the highway of life many a time, possibly halfway through one of my nought to sixty take offs in five seconds. But when I say I need your help the chances are I more than do. To put you in the picture, well, it’s a real damned Goya.” He’d picked up a few shreds of culture in his life, probably in prison. “The fact is, I’m pursued vigorously, relentlessly and, it could be, justifiably in the mind of the pursuer. I’ll tell you who he is in my own good time, but if he isn’t soon sidetracked into some shit pit of his own making (or yours) I’ll have a big hole dug into my financial resources, and that is something which I, Moggerhanger of all the Moggerhangers, can’t afford to let happen.
“You may wonder why I’m falling back on you rather than the lads normally at my beck and call, why someone like you can be of assistance to yours truly. I certainly would expect you to wonder. I’m nothing if not imaginative. After thinking about my request you might even tell me in plain unvarnished fashion, using the diplomatic style of the United Nations, which the polish of generations since the Congress of Vienna has honed to perfection, to fuck off. No less a response might in some way surprise and even disappoint me, but in you it would, I know, be but the prelude to profound and sincere reflection — before the heartfelt acceptance of all I want you to do for me.
“But for the fun of it,” the garrulous bastard went on, “let me say that though you could refuse my earnest request, to do so would be unwise in your present circumstances. I suppose, therefore, it would at this moment, while I have your ear — I still have it, I assume?”
I not only knew that he did, but my hearing box ached worse by the minute at his callous fingers gripping so tightly. “You have it.”
“I don’t intend to interpose a résumé as to how you got into your last period of employment with me, but considering your mischievous tergiversations, it didn’t end too badly for either of us and, I have to admit, it paid me in the end. You were very good at what you did. I only forgave your minor sins as a guarantee that you would from then on be loyal and one day come back to me. It behoves me to ask some return for having let you off my very sharp hook three years ago, in any case, and I don’t see how you can argue with that. I’m nothing if not reasonable. Whatever you do do for me will be amply remunerated, and for someone like you such opportunities don’t come twice. So turn up at my house in Ealing for instructions at three o’clock tomorrow afternoon. Make sure you’re on the dot, and on your own.”
Either he’d enjoyed thinking up such a long spiel in the bath, or there were notes on his cuff telling what order to put his thoughts in. Perhaps he’d dictated them to Alice Whipplegate his secretary, who had then produced a treble spaced typescript. However it was, he had me sweating with rage and anxiety as I went into the kitchen to see how Clegg was getting on with supper. “Moggerhanger wants me to do some work for him.”
Potatoes dropped into the pan. “It couldn’t have come at a more convenient time, could it?” He adjusted his striped cook’s apron. “I wouldn’t let it worry you if I was you. Just take things as they come.”
I poured more whisky for us both. “I’ve been doing that all my life, and look where it’s got me.”
“You’re sound in wind and limb, aren’t you?”
“But for how much longer, working for Moggerhanger?”
“Find out what he wants, but don’t do anything that smells of illegality.”
I poured another. “Illegal? For him?” Clegg knew of my past entanglements. “He’s illegal from the top of his bonce to his highly polished Hush Puppies.”
“I expect he wants a driver, and you’re the best he knows about.”
“Oh, Cleggy, I love you very much, but you’re a teeny-weeny bit naive. I’m worried to death.”
“Then don’t have anything to do with it. Get a job hoeing weeds in Farmer Brown’s fields for thirty-five quid a week. You’ll love bending over the soil till your back gives way.”
He was right. In a month or two I’d need money. Bridgette, my ex-wife, would want maintenance for herself and the kids, and I had my railway station at Upper Mayhem to keep up, not to leave out Clegg as well as Dismal, who stood on back legs and snaffled a sheet of prime smoked bacon from my plate, and then came back for a sausage.
“I know what I’d do in your place,” Clegg said.
So I decided to do it.
Chapter Six
Clegg buffed up my shoes, laid out the topnotch navy-blue suit always reserved for a foray into my favourite metropolis, and sorted a tie to complete the aspect. Moggerhanger’s rules had it that every man around him must wear one, maybe for him to hang them with if they gave any lip. Moggerhanger, in his ennoblement, also insisted on smart clothes as a form of respect to him, though such wishes were wasted on me because neat dressing had always been my style. Clegg’s gold fob watch, willingly lent, decorated my waistcoat as the ultimate mark of respectability. I put on my ceremonial trilby and best gabardine mackintosh, leaving the house by taxi after a night of undisturbed sleep, my last for some time.
A positive spring in my heels on stepping out of the train at Liverpool Street got me to the ticket barrier before anyone else. I walked as if to go slow would mean death, like a powered bluebottle at the end of summer knowing what would happen if it stopped buzzing.
A shaky old chap at the ticket machine in the Underground was in tears, and I asked what was the matter. He was so distressed I wondered whether I should send for a social worker. “I’ve just put a pound coin in the slot,” he sobbed, “and no ticket came out. It’s my last quid. If I’m not home at Leytonstone in half an hour my old woman will gas herself.”
“Go to the office and tell them,” I said. “Then they’ll give you the money back, or let you through the turnstile. At least they should. London Transport makes millions out of people losing their money like that, and not protesting.” Even so, I gave him a pound coin, to stop his whining.
He straightened up a bit. “In fact, sir, I was in such a hurry I put two pounds in before I realised what was happening. I don’t know what my old woman will do.”
In such an upbeat mood at getting back to London I considered giving him another quid, till I looked more carefully at his face. “I’ve seen your mug before.”
When the curve went out of his back he was about six feet tall. “Of course you have, Michael. Not very observant these days, are you, my old duck?”