I took a short walk to the nearby stream, water scummy and still because the tide was out. Back inside I found Bill in the dining room being served the equivalent of two dinners, one of which I knew couldn’t be mine. “You might have waited,” I said.
He had changed his suit, and with a tie looked like a smart but unscrupulous British businessman, who everyone in the world would recognise as such and see through. “Wait isn’t a word in my vocabulary, and I’d be ashamed if I knew it to be in yours. The only time I ever waited was when our platoon got to a farmhouse in Normandy, and the farmer was so happy to see British soldiers he told us to queue up for a glass of Calvados each. He took it from a barrel because, such a generous bloke, it was worth waiting for. Funnily enough, I even remember his name — Yvard, it was, Monsieur Yvard — and he had a great big smile on seeing us knock it back. But why wait in this splendid hotel, Michael, when the kitchen is so full of provisions that by not having waited I’m in no way robbing you. So sit down and tell me whether that cross-chopping swine Moggerhanger threatened to kill you, or otherwise do you an injury, or even have you on the carpet, because if there’s to be any of that, I’m your man in a tight corner. I’m beginning to think you’re right, and that we should kill him first.”
“Which reminds me,” I said, “get rid of that pistol you filched from the hatchback. I’m not having it in the car. If they find it at the French border it’ll be Devil’s Island for both of us.”
His platter of hors d’oeuvres had been as big as the Battersea helipad, and now he shovelled so much spaghetti into his maw he could barely talk. “You can stop worrying, because before the hunger pangs struck at my vitals I chucked it into the river outside the hotel. Now let me chop up this delicious escalope from Milan.”
We had a long way to travel before getting home, and though I recalled Frances telling me of the famous mosaics in Ravenna, there wasn’t time to stop and see them. We steamed by Bologna, Parma and Turin, and got over the Alps into France without a look at the car’s insides. At six we were close to Lyons, where the food in our hotel was superb but the beds lumpy. I informed Moggerhanger of my position, and after another night on the Channel coast we had a smooth passage across, nearly a fortnight after I had set out. It seemed like fourteen years by the time we rattled off the boat and showed our passports in Blighty.
At the customs shed Lanthorn came towards us with his clipboard. “Back, then, are you, Mr Cullen? I’ve been anticipating the pleasure very much.”
Would he search the car, tip out the powders, call his mates over for a laugh, then nick me? I’d get at least ten years. “I see you have a passenger. You went out alone, as I recall.”
“A hitchhiker,” I said. “I couldn’t leave a fellow Englishman to die in foreign parts, could I? It’s not in my nature.”
“Fine sentiments, Mr Cullen. But he’s very smartly togged up for a hitchhiker. He must earn at least a hundred thousand a year, and I wonder where he gets it from?”
When his father had arrested me at Heathrow I’d been loaded with gold about to be smuggled out, and he had the same sneering and self-satisfied expression as now shifted across his son’s pallid mug, the same tone as well, as if the father had come out of his grave to encourage the son who had in any case been practicing the role since he was four.
“Oh, I see, Mr Straw, is it? Part of the old firm again, are we?”
He put his long thin head close, hair in his nostrils — unforgivable in any man. “I’ve heard about you, on the grapevine.”
Bill, fingers drumming against the glove box, didn’t look anywhere near as downcast as Lanthorn wanted both of us to be. I hoped it was true that the handgun was no longer in the car. “Can I ask both of you, then, if you have anything to declare?”
Being in Moggerhanger’s pay meant little to him when it came to a spot of cruel badinage. If he took the two of us in he could still ask a price for the next consignment going through. “All I have,” I said, “is a one-armed statue of a woman with no left tit, and a few more of the Elgin Marbles.”
“Don’t be cheeky. What’s in the boot?”
I switched off the engine at this serious question, and got out of the car. “Our luggage. Do you want a look?”
“No illegal immigrants? You could get half a dozen darkies in there. Small ones, of course.”
No future in talking. Let him have his fun, then we would be all right.
“No little dogs, or kittens? Not thinking of saving quarantine expenses, are we?”
I prayed for the day when Europe from the Atlantic to the Urals was one place, and the Channel was filled in so solidly with all the bullshit that had smothered the British Isles for hundreds of years that you’d be able to drive across without paying tolls. Passports and customs would be abolished, and bastards like him on the dole. “I don’t keep animals. I don’t even like them. They shit all over the place.”
“Not even a dog, though? Man’s best friend? And you call yourself an Englishman.”
“Actually,” I said, “I’ve got Irish blood in me, and I’m proud of it.”
“Oh, one of them, are you? Any jelly, in that case, from Czecho? I have to ask you this, you realise. And what about detonators?”
“Sorry to say, I haven’t.” If I did I’d be glad to blow such a fuckface to smithereens, even if the explosion took me as well.
“I don’t suppose even the Irish would be so daft as to let someone like you try bringing it in.” He stepped back. “All I have to say to you, then, Mr Cullen, is this: make sure you don’t come this way too often.”
Bill, understandably, loathed the bastard’s repartee even more than I did. I hadn’t heard him swear before, but did now: “Fuck off, Lanthorn, and leave us alone, you big long link of prime crap. I’m a bona fide hitchhiker, and if you want to search my kit you’re welcome. But I warn you, as soon as you open the case there’s a six-foot pit viper waiting to shoot up your arse and have a four-minute feed on your guts.”
That’s done it. He’ll have us banged up for sure. A pink spot flickered across his face, then faded at someone giving even better than he had got. “Keep your hair on, Mr Straw. But I’ll remember that.” He waved us forward. “Off you go. Give my compliments to Lord Moggerhanger.”
I felt so fond of Bill as we belted out of town that even before he got to the counter of the first truckstop I’d ordered him a vast plate of bacon, sausages, chips, three eggs, baked beans, tomatoes, fried bread, black pudding, mushrooms, toast, coffee and, for good measure, butter, marmalade, two pots of tea and a Danish pastry.
To save slogging my guts out through hold ups along the Old Kent Road and the Elephant I forked onto the M25, and tackled the soft underbelly of the drab metropolis by Ewell, Tolworth Towers, Kingston, Kew and New Brentford, then on to Ealing.
“If ever you get hard up you’d make a good taxi driver,” he said.
“Too much like hard work,” I reminded him. “I’ll drop you off at Ealing Broadway.”
I dragged his trankelments out of the car when we got there, and it didn’t surprise me when he took his shooter from the glove box: “Don’t have kittens, Michael. I didn’t have the heart to throw it away. You never know when it might come in handy.”
“Sling it off Hungerford Bridge.”
“I will. I promise.”
He wouldn’t. Loot was forever precious to him. “Take this twenty quid. It’s all the cash I’ve got left.”
“You’re a gentleman, Michael. I might be able to do the same for you one day.”
“I hope not. Where do you go now?”
Traffic was honking for us to vacate the double yellow line. “I’ll report back to Major Blaskin, then I might do a spot of begging, to keep my hand in. It’s a very exhilarating occupation. Interesting, as well.”
A few minutes later I blasted the horn outside Festung Moggerhanger, knowing that overspending his coin of the realm (any realm) would have to be accounted for and wondering, as the gate opened, not when I would depart again, but whether. I decided to take a leaf out of Bill’s book, and give as good as I got, feeling foolish now at letting him walk away with the handgun. I should have had it with me till I was in the clear, not to use, of course, but to feel more secure with its weight in my pocket.