I got through to Moggerhanger on the blower, and told him where I was.
“Will you spell that again? I only know English.”
I took him through the two words letter by letter, and had him repeat them back.
“I’ve found it. I’m moving the pin at this very second. Do you have anything to tell me?”
“Yes. I’m being tailed. A little black hatchback keeps me in its sights.” I only now wondered why I had been sent in a Rolls Royce, the most conspicuous automobile on the road. Common sense would have been to drive a Ford Escort with a luggage rack and flapping plastic. Had I been set up, or what?”
“Michael, what do I pay you for? Lose him.”
“How do you expect me to do that in a country with only one road? Or three at the most?”
“That’s your department. You have your orders. I leave it to you.” He put the phone down.
Worry had never found a toe hold to help anyone wanting to climb up me. I went to bed and read Murder in the Bath by Sidney Blood, the Nether World Band in the dining room shaking every plywood partition in the place.
Rain splashed so tunefully in the morning I thought the plumbing had done a total eclipse, but I was up at eight, though it was nine because my watch hadn’t registered the change of longitude.
A bypass took me around Belgrade, to the outdoor market I’d been instructed to look out for, and I saw some sense at last in driving the Rolls Royce, because my contact had no trouble finding me. A tall heavy man, whose smile must have got lost in childhood, came out of a smart Mercedes Coupé and parked so close that the transfer of goods and money was finished in a few seconds. His mouth seemed full of graveclass="underline" “Give Lord Moggerhanger my fervent wishes, from Gavril.” Half a dozen younger men in shades and short haircuts went back into their cars after the transaction. Gavril gave me a wave as they went away in as much of a convoy as could be managed in the crowds of shoppers. I wandered the market stalls, bought a wedge of cheese and a loaf for something like seventy-five pence.
Back on the highway, the hatchback came from the opposite direction so fast there was hardly time to put up two fingers. Having missed me yesterday evening he had waited farther south and, losing patience if not heart, had spent the night in Belgrade. This morning he had set off and, after a hundred miles, realised I couldn’t have got that far, so was now on his way back for a recce.
With no more rain, and wondering who had given him my route all the way from Milan, I bowled along as if on holiday, green hills opening to far horizons, fields of maize, and sunflowers whose faces were still turned east. But I wasn’t there to take in the scenery, with so many lorries overturned or jackknifed (often both) by the roadside, wrecked bits of motor car scattered around as if a mastodon had eaten up an entire automobile factory and staggered out here to be sick. Maybe it was a policy of the Road Safety Department of Jugoslavia to arrange such a glum display as a warning for traffic to take care, though it didn’t look as if with much success. It must have been an insurance firm’s nightmare, and I didn’t want my almost-corpse filling out a claim before getting to Greece that night. So I wouldn’t go too fast, in spite of the hatchback still on the prowl.
Prosperous Serbia dropped behind, and I said hello to the precipitous landscape of Macedonia. The hatchback, aerial gleefully waving, stayed close behind. You scratch my hatchback, and I’ll scratch yours; but I’ll drive you off the fucking road first, mate, I said aloud in basic Nottingham-speak, always used at times of crisis.
I jacked up speed as much as I dared, but he stuck to me like shit to a blanket, no doubt blind with anger at having lost me last night. Such a rate of knots soon took me to an emptier stretch of road. Moggerhanger had ordered me to get rid of him which, I supposed, meant luring him into a lay-by and cutting his throat, but that I wouldn’t do, not intending to end my life in a Jugoslav jail, or getting shot for it. Moggerhanger could serve his own time, and I hoped one day he would, though if he did his suite of cells at the Scrubs would be a fitted carpet palace, and he’d have the governor pouring out his Ovaltine every night before bed time.
I drove as if not realising hatchback was there, or as if I didn’t think he could have anything to do with me. At places where he might easily overtake, he didn’t. Had he tried I would have gone parallel in the hope of him getting booted off the road by an incoming lorry. Yet I was glad he stayed behind, not wanting him to be seriously injured, even by accident.
But get rid of him I must, whether or not it meant the Roller being knocked about. Even Moggerhanger realised that everything had its price. My luck became the hatchback’s nightmare when, after a few bends, the road was straight enough for my purpose.
Perhaps hatchback’s gaffer had ordered him to keep track of me come what may, or his job would no longer be pensionable. All I knew was this: that since it was him or me I could only do my best to make it him. Maybe by now he was stricken with liver fluke, and the poor bastard was heading for hydrotherapy in Greece.
I stamped on my brakes and waited for the crunch, in the split second realising he was more Brand’s Hatch than I was, though it did him no good. From my rear mirror I saw him go. He missed my bumper by the width of a matchstick as he swung clear. Maybe he thought me a sentimental Englishman who’d spotted a pretty rabbit in mid-road rubbing a white tipped paw across its smile. Or a cockerel scratching for grit to make him virile, which he would have considered more understandable. Had he struck my bumper I would have gone back and smacked him around his already bleeding head for being such a stupid driver, as I’d once intended doing to someone on the Great North Road, till I saw it was a woman, when I merely wagged my finger and called her naughty.
I was too intent on self-preservation to glimpse the face as he went by, but I’d have given much to know who he, or maybe they, were, whether Italian, French or Jugoslav, or even English, never wanting to injure anyone with whom I was so little acquainted. I put him down as a man of the Continent, for he certainly knew how to drive on the right. So did I, after a few trips with Frances to the Med and back.
On overtaking he performed the classic manoeuvre of cutting in so sharply I’d have to stop to avoid smashing into him. I’d expected it. I’d have tried it myself. But as his luck would have it his car clipped the only pothole for miles, shot across the road, and came to rest with its tin nose pressed against the arse of a considerable rock. The bonnet flew up, and the last thing I saw before smoothing my way ahead was a hand waving wildly from the window.
Hatchback must then have surmised I would do all possible speed to broach the Greek frontier that evening. He could think what he liked. My plan was to wait till tomorrow, by when he would have heard from whoever was to check me at that point (if there was any such person, but I was taking no chances) that I must have slid over unseen. The map showed two possible crossing places, while a third option led through Albania; but I didn’t want a free haircut, and in any case I had no visa.
The hotel fifty miles before the border turned out to be the fleapit of all fleapits. Anyone driving a Rolls Royce (not now so clean on the outside as it had been) would never have put up at such a place, but for my purpose it was ideal, and I parked at the back so that it wouldn’t be visible from the road.
As I walked in to book a room a couple of families were struggling from their cars with heavy luggage, while a young factotum of the establishment sat on the veranda with a pencil in his mouth trying to do a crossword.
I needed a prolonged sluice of cold water to get clean, but no taps ran, though the man checking passports said they would do so later. I slept for an hour, but found no water on coming to, no toilet paper either, so I fetched some from the car. A plain supper of brochettes, chips, salad, wine and bread, was served under the trees, a menu I noted because Frances was always interested in what I ate when travelling.