“You know what bugs me about Durham? Get it? Bugs me?!” he jokes. I get the feeling I should laugh. I manage some kind of chuckle, but my thoughts are back in the interrogation room.
“But seriously,” he continues. “I’ve sent some good tarts that man’s way and he always turns them down. It’s a small thing in the scheme of things, but it registers on a subconscious level. It’s suspicious. We know he likes women; you caught him with one. But I wonder if knows what to do with them? I mean, in a conventional sense? Has he ever had penetrative sex? Or does he just rub buttocks in a nest of wood shavings?
“An army may march on his stomach but it thinks with its balls. There’s only so much space in a testicle, Jupiter, and if it’s full of semen then there’s no room for ideas. Full bollocks, empty head. You can’t trust a man who doesn’t ejaculate regularly because his brains are being squashed. It makes him prone to all kinds of peculiar notions. Dressing up as an insect being one of them.”
“I understand,” I lie.
“He was a good soldier, you know; brutal, completely amoral, not much of a personality so to speak, but a brilliant organiser. Very efficient.”
We turn a corner into some rough-looking part of town I don’t recognise.
“This car’s armoured. The tyres are reinforced,” he tells me and sets about mowing down pedestrians to demonstrate. Some go over the top, some go underneath. Again, I suspect I’m becoming desensitised.
“Have you read Machiavelli?” he asks.
“I’ve read ‘The Prince’ and it was…”
“It’s pretty dull, isn’t it? Not half as juicy as you’re led to expect.”
“To be honest, Sir, it bored the tits off me.”
“But you remember the part about Borgia and Ramiro De Orco?”
“Not entirely, Sir.”
We turn another corner. More dull thuds, more flying bodies.
“See! Windscreen’s not even chipped! Anyway… Borgia makes De Orco governor of Romagna. 1501 A.D I believe. De Orco’s a vicious psychopath and Borgia tasks him to reduce crime by any means necessary. And he does it, but makes both Borgia and himself pretty unpopular in the process. So Borgia has the clever idea of hacking his governor in half and leaving the bits on the piazza at Cesena with a block of wood and a sticky knife. It’s an open secret who did it.
“Well, the masses think this is marvellous because cruel De Orco’s dead. And Borgia thinks this is marvellous because he has both law and order and immense popularity.”
“And was Durham to be your De Orco?”
“Once he’d cleaned up the streets, yes.”
“But you never got round to killing him?”
“No. He never got round to cleaning the streets. You’re looking at me blank. Perhaps I should explain: Durham and I parted friendship when the war ended.”
He backs the car up, squishing an old woman in a tinfoil hat, and continues: “Insects again. Where you and I might see an ants nest, he sees a socialist utopia and sets about trying to emulate it. So I’m setting up sham parliaments for the European Union’s benefit, hoping for some foreign aid. Meanwhile, he’s saying, ‘sod the rest of the world’, and starts demanding we run the country like a giant fucking beehive. At this point, I realise he’s a tiny tad unhinged and persuade him to try policing, where this might be to his professional advantage. It’ll keep him from under my feet and, being a brutal nut, he might just be good at it. That’s when I hatch the De Orco plan.
“Now, how shall I put this? Well, you expect your police to be a little corrupt. However, you also expect them to solve some crime along the way. It shows willing. It goes some way to justifying the salary.
“But Durham doesn’t care. He’s getting his pay direct from the criminals, letting them do what they want. Which leaves him more time to do what he wants. And what the drunken little dung-baller likes most of all is plotting my downfall and the confiscation of my army.
“But I didn’t work long and hard buttering up mad old Generals just to hand everything to the first nutcase in rubber trousers who comes along.”
“Would he know what to do with an army?” I ask.
“Probably kit them out in stripy jumpers and send them off on a ten mile pollen hunt. There’ll be weapons training, self-defence classes and lessons on how to build a bivouac out of little wax hexagons. So what do you think?…Yes or no?”
“I’m guessing it’s a no then, Sir.”
“Yes, Jupiter, it’s a no.”
We drive up to a checkpoint. It’s past curfew and a black-visored, heavily-armoured leopard handler asks for our documents. I can’t see his animal, but I notice his leash disappearing up a tree.
“Oh, it’s you, Sir,” he says upon sight of Malmot. “So sorry.” We drive on without delay.
Now I don’t know how to talk to Malmot. He despises independence and looks down on deference. Silent? You’re plotting against him. Shy? You’re hiding something. You’re damned if you do and damned if you don’t. So I figure I’ll just come out with it. Best to bite the bullet and accept the bollocking if it comes.
“Durham’s plot, Sir… His revolution… How much of it’s, er… accurate?”
Malmot makes direct eye contact. I wish he wouldn’t. He should be watching the road. There’s more thuds and crunches as he explains:
“You mean, how much of it’s bullshit?” And he laughs. “Remember Calamari’s speech in the Dental surgery? About delayed-truth? Well, this is similar. We’re reshaping the actuality to match the intent; making the crime fit the punishment, if you will.”
“All of it, from the butchering of the landed gentry, fomenting dissent in the capital, and the march to power on Downing Street, it’s all pure Durham, direct from his own secret papers. We’re just providing the people, the opportunities, the triggers, and putting everything into action a little earlier than he might have planned. And if we change the cast a little, make the division between the good guys and bad guys a little clearer cut, perhaps tack on a happy ending, well, if it was a film script, he’d still get his name on the credits.”
“But he can’t lead a revolution from a prison cell, Sir.”
“He can if he escapes. Or if we say he’s escaped. Then he’s twice as useful to us. ‘Reds under the beds’ and all that. Nothing like the threat of robbers to get the girls screaming and the boys running downstairs with baseball bats.”
Well, I’ve had enough of Malmot’s sage-like wisdom for the night so I’m relieved when we arrive at my house.
I hope he doesn’t try and kiss me, I think to myself, because there’s clearly an ulterior motive here. Fortunately, he doesn’t. Just bids me goodbye with a formal snort and tears off with his wheels squealing.
And I’m standing on my front step, just about to put my key in the door, when the damn thing creaks open in front of me. And there’s Calamine, smiling like he knows something I don’t. Which he always does. Smiling like he’s just screwed my wife. Which he might have.
“Do you want to know what the future holds?” he asks me obliquely.
“Only if it’s extremely, extremely uneventful,” I answer because, by this point, I’m exhausted.
“I’ve been talking to your wife,” he says.
“Oh, yes? With your penis?” Is this jealousy I’m expressing? Surely not. The woman despises me and the feeling’s more than mutual.