My headlights brought the road continually towards the wheels. I suppose the driver of the Ford was familiar with the area and knew what he was doing. He overtook at speed, shot directly in front of us and went along at about thirty miles an hour. This was a difficult situation. He was determined to hold us up. Maybe he’d had a bad day and couldn’t bear to have a Rolls-Royce – plus a horsebox, which hurt him even more – overtake him and stay close on the same road.
‘Flash the swine with all beams,’ Moggerhanger said, a youth again, who wanted a burn-up and a set-to. I shook my head, edged out and overtook as gently as I could. He tailgated me, two feet behind at fifty miles an hour, all lamps burning, so lighting us up that I felt we were in an operating theatre. ‘And that’s where he’ll be soon,’ Moggerhanger growled, ‘if he doesn’t pack it in.’
I increased speed to sixty, and when I thought he had given up and dropped behind, he roared by at eighty, cut in just in front, and tried to stop dead so that I would go smack into the back of him.
He misjudged the mobility of his car. I jammed on my brakes and swerved into the fortunately clear right lane, while he shot up the bank, turned over three times with bits coming away from all points of his car, and settled into a steaming wreck on the hard shoulder. I slid by and gathered speed. Let him get out of that one. He was insane. He’d tried to kill us.
‘There’s your riff-raff,’ I said.
Moggerhanger went purple with laughter. ‘Did you touch him?’
‘No.’ My guts were like jelly.
He banged both hands on his thighs. ‘If only I’d had a movie camera. I’d play it over and over to my dying day.’
I felt guilty, though not at fault. ‘It was too close for me.’
‘You’re a cool customer, Michael. By God, you were quick.’
I didn’t like his tone of voice. If he thought I was getting too good he would send me on the job to end jobs. ‘Lucky,’ I said, ‘not quick. We’d have been battered if I’d hit him. So would he. I don’t know where they come from.’
I didn’t feel easy that I’d made his day. ‘You did right not to stop,’ he said. ‘Let somebody else pull him out. It’s like being on the bloody battlefield. If he’d damaged my Roller I’d have blown his head off. I hope you got the number, Alice. Inspector Lanthorn can get me his particulars then.’
Hearing her first name made my fright with the maniac worthwhile, and I said it over and over to myself as we went through the night – with a wave at Ettie’s diner to the right. She went back to her book, while Moggerhanger, after brushing the crumbs from his clothes, thumbed through a sheaf of estate agent’s handouts.
The cloud had moved, and I saw star patterns high in front. Alice laid the book in her lap, and Moggerhanger put his papers away. He slotted in a tape, treating us for the next half hour to a concert by Jack Emrod and his Old Time Orchestra playing the honeysuckle favourites of yesteryear. By half past seven we were well on our way, with Retford to starboard and Worksop to port. Even Nottinghamshire was falling behind as we headed for the motorway by Doncaster.
He yawned, but didn’t go to sleep. ‘Yes, Michael, business is booming. At least my business is. My clubs can’t do enough trade. I drive around Soho and look out on the world from behind smoked glass windows, and can’t but reflect on how well I’m doing. When I see two specimens from the north wearing woolly hats and football scarves, I know they’re going to spend a quid or two in one of my places before they go back to their train with bloodshot eyes and empty pockets. It used to be said that there was one born every minute, but nowadays, with the population explosion, there are two, if not three or four. I think it was an American president – and correct me if I’m wrong – who once said that in order to fool some of the people some of the time you’ve got to fool all of the people all of the time!
‘I’ve got the top end of the market buttoned up as well. The fact is, there’s a job to do in this country in the seventies and eighties – if not till the end of the century. It’s a job of national importance, and I’ll tell you why. There’s a lot of oil money floating around, millions in cash accruing to those robed potentates of the Middle East, bless ’em, and it’s my job to cream off as much as possible. By hook or by crook – it don’t much matter which, as long as you don’t make it too obvious – the sterling must stay in London. It’s vital for our national survival. I’ve had word about it from on high, and I’m all set to do my bit. It’s 1940 all over again, only money’s involved this time, not blood, though in the long run it’s just as important to a country like this. The sterling balance will ever have us by the short hairs, so we have to get the money out of them by women, the roulette wheel, select entertainment which they can’t get anywhere else in the world (nudge-nudge, wink-wink); surgical operations that won’t do them too much harm, but which won’t do them much good either; flats and houses at exorbitant prices that are going to cost so much in maintenance that by calling on the services of an army of bodgers (a trade at which we British excel) it’ll help the unemployment problem; and by palming off onto them all kinds of goods whether they need them or not, but goods that they think they’ll die if they don’t have. That’s real business, Michael. And nobody can say it ain’t honest. As for armaments, though, the built-in obsolescence factor is such that even I think it’s a disgrace.’
There was a pause while he lit a cigar. ‘The trouble is, I’m not the only one in the trade. If I was, everything would be all right, but some new organisations commit such daylight robbery it makes my blood run cold – and that’s not an easy thing to do. Fly-by-night firms are popping up all over the place, as if the oil wells are going to run dry tomorrow. They can’t get their hands in the till fast enough, and so far I’ve never seen any of them with bandages on their wrists. It makes the Great Train Robbery look like absconding with a blind man’s penny-box. Investment banks go bust overnight. Ships full of goods disappear at sea. A man pays millions for a block of flats that belongs to somebody else. You name it, they get up to it. And it goes on even at the bottom end of the market. Some people are so unscrupulous that they add insult to injury by taking most of the money out of the country, to such places as Zürich and Lichtenstein. But me, though I make a lot, I plough it back. I buy houses and land, and invest on the stock exchange.’ He held a finger across his throat. ‘I’m up to here in National Savings. A pittance. But it looks good. I also employ people, such as yourselves. In other words, I keep as much money as I can in the country, and I spread it around, not only as security for my family, but as a patriotic duty. Yes, I’ve got a lot invested in good old England, Michael. If ever the ship goes down you won’t see me in the lifeboat with a lot of rats.’
The thought of Moggerhanger in a lifeboat horrified me. How far would you get with such a shark on board? ‘Well,’ he went on, ‘I shan’t go on, except to say that there are more gangs than there used to be, and the worst is the Green Toe Gang. How they got that damned name, I’ll never know. But what’s in a name? Suffice it to say, they’ve given me more trouble these last two or three years than I think I deserve. They seem to know more about what goes on in my business than they should by any intelligent assumption, as if they’ve got somebody planted in my office. If I could find out who it was, well, I don’t think I need tell you, Michael, what I’d do. A loyal man like you knows very well what I’d do. If there’s anyone I can’t stand it’s a traitor. I’ve learned in my life, though, that a good man rarely sells himself for money. That’s why I’ve taken you on. I sorely need someone like you within arm’s reach because you know, and I know you know, that being a traitor’s not for the likes of you or me, because we had similar upbringings, give or take a bob or two. I worship steel, not gold. Never turn your face on a friend, or your back on an enemy.’
‘No, sir.’ I spoke only to find out whether I still had a voice. The more he went on with such blarney the more I distrusted him. Bill Straw once said that Moggerhanger never told you anything without reason, and
if he did it was always bad – for you.
‘You can stop at the next layby,’ he yawned. ‘I want to change places with Alice and get my forty winks.’
The miles went quickly. I was near Tadcaster by the time I made the switchover and he bedded down under a thick patchwork blanket.
‘Do you mind if I call you Alice?’ I asked when I set off again.
‘Why not?’
I caught a smile in the profile that peeped out of a flimsy headscarf.
‘I still hope you’ll do me the honour of having dinner with me after we get back to Town.’
She took the book from her bag. ‘I’d like to read, if you don’t mind.’
‘Make free. What is it?’
‘Something by Gilbert Blaskin called The Warp and the Weft.’
‘Is it good?’
‘I can’t tell. I’m only halfway through.’
It was the one I had typed for him, and added a few bits in my own right, when I first met him in London. ‘I know Blaskin.’
‘You do?’
‘He had an affair with my mother.’
She didn’t believe somebody like me could possibly be acquainted with a novelist. Her laugh, however, encouraged me to hope I was more than halfway there. ‘That was thirty-five years ago. He was a lieutenant in the army, stationed near Nottingham. Then he went overseas and left her pregnant. Out popped me.’
The book, at any rate, was back on her knee. ‘What an imagination.’
‘When we go to dinner, I’ll tell you more. But I’m afraid I’ll never be able to introduce you.’
‘That’s because you don’t know him.’
‘No. If I did, I’d lose you. He’s the biggest lecher in the kingdom. And I’m passionately in love with you. It’s as much as I can do to drive this car.’ My hand was sliding up her thigh. ‘Does being in a car make you feel randy?’
‘Sometimes it does.’
‘We’ll have to contain ourselves. But I’d love to suck your delicious cunt till I made you come.’
‘Stop it,’ she said sharply.
‘Did you see Gilbert Blaskin’s last television interview?’
‘I’m afraid not.’
‘It was one of that series called “Writers and Their Habits” on Channel Five. He was interviewed by that lovely young person called Marylin Blandish. Do you know her?’
‘I’ve seen her. She’s pretty.’
‘They were in his flat, and she started asking him pertinent intellectual questions about his work, and he gradually got his chair close enough to give her a kiss. It was so quick and light that she almost didn’t know it had happened. Then he gave her one that she did know about. And then, Women’s Lib being all the rage, she thought she’d equalise by kissing him.’
‘I don’t believe a word of what you’re saying.’
‘I’m not asking you to. The intellectual question and answer game was kept up through long looks and subtly moving lips. Old Blaskin’s patter was so good – or something was – and it was a full moon that evening, so she kissed him back, and the television crew, instead of closing the show as they should have done, were so mesmerised at what was happening, and at what seemed likely to transpire, that they just watched and carried on working.’
‘I’ve never heard of such a thing.’
‘Neither had I. But Blaskin – so he told me later – regretted not being able to control his actions, and he slipped his waistcoat off with the excuse that it was hot under the lights, and after a few more minutes he got her blouse off, both of them mumbling away about where a writer finds his ideas and discussing in an otherwise perfectly normal way how he lets politics in the twentieth century influence his work. The TV crews were fascinated by that – as Blaskin and Marylin slithered onto the medium piled carpet. Blaskin’s hand went up her clothes and fumbled at her tights with a look of beatific malevolence as he told her about his horrible childhood at boarding school and the poems he wrote when he was seventeen on the Spanish Civil War.’
‘You’re joking.’
‘I’m certainly not. It’s as true as I’m sitting here. She unzipped his flies with salacious speed, while questioning him in deadly earnest about his first book called Walking Wounded in Eritrea. They kissed passionately, and went on about society and the writer, till his trousers came off at the mention of Suez. He said that for a writer reality is a prison and that you should live only in order to rub your nose in the delectable cunt of reality. He threw her tights in the air, saying he couldn’t be a communist, but left that sort of thing to the Russians and those leftwingers who ought to know better. Her tights landed across a camera lens, and one of the quick-witted crew snatched them off and stuffed them in his mouth for a souvenir, so that they hung out of his mouth as if he’d swallowed an overdose of textile spaghetti.’
‘It’s disgusting,’ Alice said.
‘Maybe it is, but Marylin’s legs opened as she mentioned the Two Cultures, and Blaskin said there was nothing like a bad novel to set you questioning the purpose of the novel, and then he got it in as he mentioned Flaubert’s syphilis and hoped Marylin’s husband Charles wasn’t looking at the telly that night. “No,” she said, “no, he’s shooting grouse, and do you write with pen and ink or on the typewriter?” and he said, “Yes, of course, because all art is the product of an obsessively robust selfishness.” Marylin unhooked her bra so that he could get at her delicious girlish tits, and told him that he should stick to the point and only answer questions that were put in good faith, at which some of the crew cheered while others nodded in agreement. With a hand under her arse and her hands around his, which were pitted with old shrapnel scars from an Italian fieldgun, she asked about the reviewers and at his devastating response she came, and moaned so that somebody put the mike closer as if she was about to phrase her final question. It was a useless gesture because Gilbert shouted that if God existed the novelist should be shot and, being as far into her as he could get, praised the Lord and passed the ammunition.
‘The producer realised he had something priceless in the can, and cut at that point, having decided to tack the end credits over stormy waves beating on the seashore. It really made good television and letters from Birmingham pleading for more such programmes ran into thousands. The switchboards were blocked for days. It was submitted for the Italia prize and they even thought it’d get a Ramrod from Hollywood.’
She was breathing heavily. ‘I didn’t see it.’
‘Neither did I, but with Blaskin, anything’s possible. It is with me, as well, and I only say so because I sincerely believe that everything’s possible with you. But I’m sorry if I stopped you reading your book. I’m sure it’s much better than my idle chatter.’
She pushed my hand from the top of her thigh, but still held two fingers. I didn’t know whether that was because she thought I might continue my attempt to get them into her, or because she was prudishly affectionate. ‘Perhaps it’s safer if I get back to my book.’
‘I wish you two lovebirds would stop billing and cooing,’ Moggerhanger called out, ‘so that I can get some sleep. We’ll be there in an hour.’
Fifteen
Spleen Manor was a house, Moggerhanger said, in which you could fart without the windows rattling, or without somebody down the lane on his way to church turning away in horror at the unmistakable sound.
From a B road I went down a paved lane to a narrow bridge over a stream, and halfway up a hill turned left into the grounds. The first glimpse, through bushes and across the garden, was of a longish dwelling of two storeys, with lights glowing from the downstairs windows.
I carried in five suitcases for Moggerhanger’s overnight needs, then mine and Alice’s. Three of the chief’s were so heavy they must have contained a thousand sovereigns apiece, or their equivalent in bullion, suggesting that he was to pay someone off for a very expensive job. The ceiling in the hallway looked low enough to bump your head on if you didn’t duck because the beams, quite ordinary in their arrangement, had
a motif of grey arrowheads painted in between, which gave the impression that the beams were closer to your skull than they otherwise were. Even Moggerhanger ducked, and he was used to the place.
The rooms were fairly well proportioned, as Blaskin might have said, and the house was quite large. Moggerhanger sniffed at the smell of cooking from the hall and said he was ready for his dinner. He wasn’t the only one, but he told Matthew Coppice to show us to our rooms and said that we were to come down in half an hour.
A corridor along the second floor connected the five bedrooms. At one end, where the staircase came up from the ground floor, was Moggerhanger’s quarters, because I saw Coppice taking his luggage in. He was well placed to hear anyone who might be tempted (me, for instance) into going down in the middle of the night to look through the house and see what I could learn. No matter how light the footfall, the floorboards creaked so that even someone in bed across the valley would stir in his sleep. Moggerhanger might even hear my lecherous thoughts meandering into Alice Whipplegate’s room which, I was glad to see, was next to mine.
My own cell had no, lock to the door, and I hoped it was the same with hers. I should have known better than to have nothing in my mind but sex, because the reason I’d locked myself into the cogs of Moggerhanger’s big wheel was to find out as much as possible for Bill Straw so that he would be more able to protect himself when it was decided to round him up. An equally important reason was that such information might help me to get even with Moggerhanger for having put me behind bars ten years ago. My aim was a mixture of public duty and private revenge, which told me that I ought not to let lechery interfere with my actions. That kind of itch could well be left to Blaskin, who often only indulged in it to flesh out the characters in his books. Thinking rarely did me any good, especially the sort that put me off trying to go to bed with Alice Whipplegate, when to become intimate with her might be the only way of learning something about Moggerhanger which I couldn’t come across in any other way.