“You can’t kid me, sir. I can tell blood when I see it. Nobody better. It’s what I expected from Sidney Blood the great writer.”
It was like having a giant in the flat, and if he’d had one eye I’d have called him Polyphemus. “What would you like to know, then, Mr Dukes?”
“Not Mr Dukes.” His tone was close to that of a pansy simper. “You can call me Kenny, Mr Blood.”
“What about Kenneth?”
A big hand spread across each kneecap. “That wouldn’t be right, would it? My full name’s Kenilworth, and if the old man hadn’t been murdered already I’d have done him in myself for giving me a monicker like that.”
“All right, Kenny.” But Kenilworth as a name would meld well into my next Sidney Blood saga. I was invariably inspired on meeting one of the genuine lower orders. “And I’ll allow you to call me Sidney.” Wanting to keep the oaf tame, I contemplated turning him onto Mabel, to make up for the pain still banging around in my head.
“Thanks very much, sir — Sidney.”
I asked how he had found where I lived.
“Michael Cullen works for Lord Moggerhanger, don’t he, and he told me, or as good as did. He thinks I’m an ape who knows nothing, but he said you used the name Blaskin, so I looked it up in the phone book.”
“A brilliant bit of detective work.”
“Nar, it was fucking easy.”
Mabel busied herself setting the table, still too terrified to look at me. “Shall I change your towels. Gilbert dear?”
“Don’t use my middle name, you crazy moll. You know it’s Sidney.” For Kenilworth’s delectation I made as if to give her a bang across the head, which she easily avoided, as for once I hoped she would, while Kenny, at the prospect of violence, and especially to a woman, looked as happy as a baby with two rattles. “And don’t burn the scrambled eggs,” I told her. “As for changing my towels, you can do that a little later. The fact that my period hasn’t finished yet should be obvious to the meanest intelligence.”
He was unable to look at me too closely, understandable I suppose in someone who had never seen a genius before, his fried-egg eyes observing Mabel’s back as she went into the kitchen. I popped three aspirin with my brandy to quell the headache and, as is usual with extreme measures, the effect was beneficial. Or perhaps it was Kenilworth’s admiration that lifted my morale high enough for pain to float into insignificance — not to mention wafts of bacon and coffee from the kitchen.
Mabel put a salver of breakfast between us. “Come on, Kenny,” I said, “set to.”
He needed no second telling. “Who’s the broad?”
“Well, she is, rather. How observant of you. But show some respect. She’s the person who keeps me alive. Her name is Mrs Drudge-Perkins.”
She spread a napkin over my knees.
“Darling,” I said to her, “the delicious odour of bacon is becoming overwhelmed by the stench of burning bread. Only don’t throw a bucket of water over it as you did the last burnt offering. I know carbon is supposed to be good for the stomach, but it’s a sin to waste good bread.”
She’d already gone. “How’s my friend Michael Cullen faring under the flatulent influence of Moggerhanger?”
“You talk just like somebody in a Sidney Blood book,” he said through his mouthful. “I’ll never forget today. I’m having breakfast with the great Sidney Blood! Well, Michael’s gone to Greece, in one of Lord Moggerhanger’s Rolls Royces. But it’s like this, Sidney, if I was to tell you more than that and the boss got to know about it I’d lose three of my fingers.”
“My dear fellow, if you don’t tell me”—I poured more coffee, and went on in the manner of a Sidney Blood to emphasize my point — “the razor that cut me up this morning is itching to have a go at someone else. Sidney Blood’s razor is no idle instrument. It likes to be gainfully employed all the time. My head hardly blunted it, if you catch my meaning. Michael is a family relation, so I’m naturally interested in his whereabouts.”
“Just like Sidney Blood again. I can’t believe it.”
“Straight out of my latest effort.”
He rolled a sheet of Harrod’s best smoked streaky onto the fork, and put it into his mouth. “You’re writing one now?”
“It’s on my desk at this very moment. But any information you care to impart about Michael will go no further than this apartment.”
He looked at me with barely controlled pig-eye cunning: “You won’t put it in a book?”
My laugh cracked a patch of dried blood on my skull. “Sidney is very particular where he gets his copy. It had to come out of his head, red hot, as it’s doing now.” A rub at the skull, which made little difference to the ache, decided me to give Mrs Drudge an extra kick up the posterior so that she would never forget her senseless prank. “Sidney Blood insists on making his imagination work. Anyway, he most often sets his stories in the Big Apple or LA. Quite a bit of material has already poured out this morning. Mrs Drudge-Perkins stands over me with a bull whip to keep my Sidney Bloods going. Now you know how I do so many.”
He winked. “A bit of a terror, is she?”
“You’ve no idea.”
“Keeps you at it. That’s good. I’ve read every Sidney Blood you’ve ever wrote, some of ’em five times.”
“Now you know the process.” I pointed to my forehead, the finger coming back bloodstained. “It’s all in here. So you can tell me about this geezer Cullen. He’s always telling me to stop writing Sidney Blood books, and I sometimes think he’s right. He’s very persuasive.”
“The cunt! Oh, I’m sorry, Mrs Drudge”—she had come in with marmalade and fresh toast. “Forget me language, didn’t I? My mum threatened to wash me mouth out with soap only last week.”
Mabel smiled at her most Chelsea. “You’re forgiven, Mr Dukes.”
He took a thumb-scoop of marmalade to smear his toast. “Ain’t she lovely?”
Mabel blushed, and I could see that she was taken with him, so I snapped more harshly: “Bring the hackleberry jam. You know I abominate marmalade.” What a revenge it would be to throw her into the arms of Kenny Dukes. It would serve her so right the notion made me feel faint. “She fancies you,” I said to him.
He blushed as much as his freckled visage could show. “You think so?”
“I’ve never seen her so impressed. She can be a handful, mind you.” She came back with my favourite preserve. “Can’t you, darling?”
“Can’t what, my love?”
“Be a handful. You see these towels around my head, Kenny? She hit me with a rusty spare tap when I got out of bed this morning — and for no reason at all.”
“I’ll never forgive myself.” She went weeping back to the kitchen. “I thought I was being affectionate.”
“She did that?” Kenny said. “She hit you? Would she do that to me? My mum would be ever so glad if she did. She always says I deserve to have my head kicked in.”
I thought the moment had come to go back to the only matter which interested me. “And what happened to Michael Cullen?”
“That berk? I’ll tell you one thing, he won’t be coming back in a hurry to tell you to stop writing Sidney Bloods. Lord Moggerhanger’s set him up proper. As soon as the Roller was out of the yard me and the lads fell about laughing. Parkhurst — that’s Lord Moggerhanger’s bone idle son, who’s called Parkhurst because he’s done bird in that place — well, he told us what Michael was in for. He shouldn’t have, but he hates his old man because he won’t pay his gambling debts. Michael’s gone to Greece to do the hardest pick up job of all. Moggerhanger thinks the Green Toe Gang will get onto him, and it’ll stop them chasing Jericho Jim and Fred Pincher, who’ve gone to Cadiz to pick up a load of snuff from the Canary Islands. I’d be surprised if you see anymore of Michael Cullen. You can have a terrible accident, the way he’s gone. He gets too big for his effing boots, though. And to think he wants you to stop writing Sidney Bloods.”