The Mortdecai Trilogy Read online

  ‘Yes, he would, I suppose.’

  ‘Yeah.’

  I embarked on the quotidian schrecklichkeit of getting up. With occasional help from Jock I weaned myself gingerly from shower to razor, from dexedrine to intolerable decision about necktie; arriving safely, forty minutes later, at the bourne of breakfast, the only breakfast worth the name, the cheminot’s breakfast, the great bowl of coffee laced and gadrooned and filigreed with rum. I was up. I had not been sick. The snail was on the thorn, to name but one.

  ‘I don’t think we’ve got a green Homburg, Mr Charlie.’

  ‘It’s all right, Jock.’

  ‘I could send the porter’s little girl over to Lock’s if you like?’

  ‘No, it’s all right, Jock.’

  ‘She’d go for half a crown.’

  ‘No, it’s all right, Jock.’

  ‘O.K., Mr Charlie.’

  ‘You must be out of the flat in ten minutes, Jock. No guns or anything like that left here, of course. All alarms turned on and interlocked. Foto-Rekorda loaded with film and cocked – you know.’

  ‘Yeah, I know.’

  ‘Yeah,’ I said, draping an extra set of inverted commas around the word, like the verbal snob I am.

  Picture, then, this portly lecher swishing down Upper Brook Street, W.I, all sails set for St. James’s Park and high adventure. A tiny muscle twitching in the cheek – perhaps in the best tradition – but otherwise outwardly urbane, poised, ready to buy a bunch of violets from the first drab and toss her a golden sov.; Captain Hugh Drummond-Mortdecai MC, with a music-hall song on his whistling lips and a fold of silk underpants trapped between his well-powdered buttocks, bless him.

  They were after me from the moment I emerged, of course–well, not actually after me because it was a ‘front tail’ and very prettily done too: the SPG boys have a year’s training, for God’s sake – but they didn’t pick me up at noon as predicted. Back and forth I went past the pond (saying unforgivable things to my friend the pelican) but all they did was pretend to examine the insides of their absurd hats (bursting with two-way radios, no doubt) and make furtive signals to each other with their red, knobbly hands. I was really beginning to think that I had overrated Martland and was just about to beat up to the Reform Club and make someone give me luncheon – their cold table is the best in the world you know – when:

  There they were. One on each side of me. Enormous, righteous, capable, deadly, stupid, unscrupulous, grave, watchful, hating me gently.

  One of them laid a restraining hand on my wrist.

  ‘Be off with you,’ I quavered. ‘Where do you think you are – Hyde Park?’

  ‘Mr Mortdecai?’ he grumbled capably.

  ‘Stop grumbling capably at me,’ I protested, ‘this is, as you well know, I.’

  ‘Then I must ask you to come along with me, Sir.’

  I gazed at the man. I had no idea that people still said that. Is ‘dumbfounded’ the word I want?

  ‘Eh?’ I said, quoting freely from Jock.

  ‘You must come along o’me, Sir.’ He was working well now, really settling in to the part.

  ‘Where are you taking me?’

  ‘Where would you like to go, Sir?’

  ‘Well, er … home?’

  ‘I’m afraid that wouldn’t do, Sir. We wouldn’t have our equipment there, you see.’

  ‘Equipment? Oh, yes. I quite see. Goodness.’ I counted my pulse, my corpuscles and a few other necessary parts. Equipment. Dammit, Martland and I had been at school together. They were trying to frighten me, clearly.

  ‘You are trying to frighten me, clearly,’ I said.

  ‘No, Sir. Not yet we aren’t, Sir.’

  Can you think of a really smart answer to that one? Neither could I.

  ‘Oh well then. Off to Scotland Yard, I suppose?’ I said brightly, not really hoping much.

  ‘No, really, Sir, that wouldn’t do, you know that. They’re dead narrow-minded there. We thought perhaps our Cottage Hospital, out Esher way.’

  Martland had once, in an expansive moment, told me about the ‘Cottage Hospital’ – it had given me horrid dreams for days afterward.

  ‘No no no no, no no no,’ I cried jovially, ‘I couldn’t dream of taking you lads so far out of your way.’

  ‘Well then,’ said Plug Ugly II, giving tongue for the first time, ‘what about your little place in the country, down by Stoke Poges?’

  I must admit that here I may have blenched a trifle. My private life is an open book for all to read but I did think that ‘Possets’ was a retreat known only to a few intimate friends. There was nothing that you could call illegal there but I do have a few bits of equipment myself which other folk might think a bit frivolous. A bit Mr Norris – you know.

  ‘Country cottage?’ I riposted, quick as a flash. ‘Countrycottage countrycottage countrycottage?’

  ‘Yes, Sir,’ said Plug Ugly II.

  ‘Nice and private,’ quipped his straight man.

  After a few false starts I suggested (unruffled now, suave, cool) that what would be nicest of all would be to go and call on old Martland; delightful chap, was at school with me. They seemed happy to fall in with any suggestion I made so long as it was that one, and next thing all three of us were bundling into a chance cruising taxi and P.U.II was mumbling an address into the cabby’s ear, as though I didn’t know Martland’s address as well as my own tax code.

  ‘Northampton Park, Canonbury?’ I tittered, ‘since when has old Martland been calling it Canonbury?’

  They both smiled at me, kindly. It was almost as bad as Jock’s civil smile. My body temperature dropped quite two degrees, I could feel it. Fahrenheit of course: I have no wish to exaggerate.

  ‘I mean, it’s hardly even Islington,’ I babbled on, diminuendo, ‘more Newington Green if you ask me; I mean, what a ridiculous …’

  I had just noticed that the interior of the chance cruising taxi was short of a few of the usual fitments, like notices about fares, advertisements, door handles. What it did have was a radio-telephone and a single handcuff attached to a ring-bolt in the floor. I sort of fell silent.

  They didn’t seem to think they needed the handcuff; they sat and looked at me thoughtfully, almost kindly, as though they were aunts wondering what I would like for tea.

  We drew up in front of Martland’s house just as his basket-work Mini trundled in from the Balls Pond Road end. It parked itself rather badly and disgorged Martland, cross and drenched.

  This was both good and bad.

  Good, because it meant that Martland couldn’t have stayed very long at the siege of my flat: Jock had evidently interlocked all the alarms as instructed and Martland, as he masterfully celluloided his way through my front door, would have been met by a Bull-O-Bashan Mk IV siren and a mightly deluge from the automatic fire sprinklers. Moreover, a piercingly strident bell, inaccessibly high on the street-front wall, would have joined in the fun and lights would have flashed in Half Moon Street Police Station and in the Bruton Street depot of an internationally known security organization which I always call Set-a-Thief. A dinky little Japanese frame-a-second robot camera would have been snapping away from its eyrie in the chandelier and, worst of all, the termagant concierge would have come raging up the stairs, her malignant tongue cracking like a Boer’s stock whip.

  Long before I made friends with Mr Spinoza he had asked some of his friends to ‘do my pad’ as they say, so I knew the general form. The noise of bells and sirens indescribable, the water ineluctable, the conflict of burly Z-car chaps, hairy-assed Security chaps and ordinary villains quite dreadful and, riding clear and hideous over all, the intolerable scourging of the concierge’s tongue, not to be borne. Poor Martland, I thought happily.

  Perhaps I should explain that –

  (a) The SPG people obviously carry no identification and take care not to be known to the ordinary police, for some of their work consists in sorting out naughty coppers

  (b) Certain rats of the underworld
have recently, with singular providence, done some deliberately clumsy and nasty ‘jobs’ while posing as SPG

  (c) The ordinary police are not particularly keen even on real SPG men and

  (d) The mindless bullies in my Security firm always release their pepper guns, two-way radios, aniline dye sprays, Dobermann Pinscher dogs and rubber coshes long before they ask any questions.

  Goodness, what a mess it must have been. And thanks to the little camera I would certainly get the whole flat handsomely redecorated by Mrs. Spon – long overdue, I must say – at someone else’s expense.

  Goodness, too, how cross Martland must be.

  Yes, that was the bad bit, of course. He snapped me one pale glare as he bounded noiselessly (fat men move with surprising grace etc.) up the steps, dropped his keys, dropped his hat, stood on it, and finally preceded us into the house. No good for C. Mortdecai was what I reckoned all that boded. Plug Ugly II, as he stood aside to let me pass, looked at me so kindly that I felt my breakfast frothing in the small intestine. Clenching my buttocks bravely I sauntered in and with a tolerant snigger surveyed what he probably called The Lounge. I had not seen curtains of that pattern since I seduced the House Mother in my Approved School; the carpet was a refugee from a provincial cinema foyer and the wallpaper had little silver-grey flock fleurs-de-lis. Yes, truly. All spotlessly clean, of course. You could have eaten your dinner off them, if you kept your eyes closed.

  They said I could sit down, in fact they urged me to. I could feel my liver, heavy and sullen, crowding my heart. I no longer wanted any luncheon.

  Martland, reappearing reclothed, dry, was quite himself again and full of fun.

  ‘Well well well,’ he cried, rubbing his hands, ‘well, well.’

  ‘I must be off now,’ I said firmly.

  ‘No no no,’ he cried, ‘why, you’ve only just come. What would you like to drink?’

  ‘Some whisky, please.’

  ‘Jolly good.’ He poured himself a big one but me none. ‘Har, har,’ I thought.

  ‘Har, har,’ I said, out loud, brave.

  ‘Ho, ho,’ he riposted archly.

  We sat in silence then for quite five minutes, they obviously waiting for me to start to babble protestingly, me determined to do nothing of the kind, but just worrying a little about making Martland any crosser. The minutes wagged on. I could hear a large, cheap watch ticking in the waistcoat of one of the Plug Uglies, that’s how old-fashioned they were. A little immigrant child ran past on the pavement outside shrieking ‘M’Gawa! M’Gawa!’ or words to that effect. Martland’s face had relaxed into the complacent smirk of the master of a lordly house, surrounded by friends and loved ones, sated with port and good talk. The hot, itchy, distant-traffic-buzzing silence fretted on. I wanted to go to the lavatory. They kept on looking at me, politely, attentively. Capably.

  Martland at last lumbered to his feet with surprising grace etc. and put a record on the turntable, fastidiously balancing the output to the big Quad stereo speakers. It was that lovely record of trains going by, the one we all bought when we could first afford stereo. I never tire of it.

  ‘Maurice,’ he said politely to one of his hooligans, ‘would you kindly fetch the twelve-volt high-tension motor-car battery from the charging bench in the basement?

  ‘And Alan,’ he went on, ‘would you please draw the curtains and take Mr Mortdecai’s trousers down?’

  Now just what can one do when this sort of thing happens? Struggle? What expression can one wear on the well-bred face? Contempt? Outrage? Dignified unconcern? While I was selecting an expression I was deftly divested of the small clothes and all I registered was funky panic. Martland tactfully turned his back and busied himself coaxing a few more decibels out of the stereo equipment. Maurice – I shall always think of him as Maurice – had tucked the first terminal cosily into place half a minute before Martland signalled lewdly for the second to be clipped on. Beautifully timed, the Flying Scotsman whooped stereophonically for a level crossing. I competed in mono.

  And so the long day wore on. Not for many minutes, I must admit. I can stand anything but pain; moreover, the thought that someone is deliberately hurting me, and not minding, upsets me badly. They seemed to know instinctively the point at which I had decided to cry capivi for when I came round after that time they had put my trousers back on and there was a great glass of whisky three inches from my nose, with beaded bubbles winking at the brim. I drank it while their faces swam swooningly into focus; they looked kind, pleased with me, proud of me. I was a credit to them, I felt.

  ‘Are you all right, Charlie?’ asked Martland, anxiously.

  ‘I must go to the lavatory now,’ I said.

  ‘So you shall, dear boy, so you shall. Maurice, help Mr M.’

  Maurice took me down to the children’s loo; they wouldn’t be back from school for another hour, he told me. I found the Margaret Tarrant squirrels and bunnies soothing. I needed soothing.

  When we got back to the Lounge the gramophone was dispensing Swan Lake, if you please. Martland has a very simple mind: he probably puts Ravel’s Bolero on the turntable when seducing shopgirls.

  ‘Tell me all about it,’ he said gently, almost caressingly, his impression of a Harley Street abortionist.

  ‘My bottom hurts,’ I whined.

  ‘Yes, yes,’ he said. ‘But the photograph.’

  ‘Ah,’ I said sagely, wagging my head, ‘the phokodarts. You have given me too much whisky on an umpty stemach. You know I haven’t had any lunch.’ And with that I gave them some of the whisky back rather dramatically. Martland looked vexed but I thought the effect on his sofa cover was something of an improvement. We got through the next two or three minutes without too much damaging the new-found amenities. Martland explained that they had indeed found a photograph behind a Turner in the National Gallery at 5.15 that morning. It was tucked behind Ulysses Deriding Polyphemus (No. 508). He went on in his court-room voice –

  ‘The photograph depicts, ah, two consenting adult males, ah, consenting.’

  ‘Having congress, you mean?’

  ‘Just so.’

  ‘And one of the faces had been cut out?’

  ‘Both of the faces.’

  I got up and went over to where my hat was. The two louts did not move but looked sort of alert. I was not really in any shape to dive out of windows. I pulled down the sweatband of the hat, tore back some of the buckram and offered Martland the tiny oval of photograph. He looked at it blankly.

  ‘Well, dear boy,’ he said softly, ‘you mustn’t keep us in suspense. Who is the gentleman?’

  It was my turn to look blank.

  ‘Don’t you really know?’

  He looked at it again.

  ‘Much hairier in the face nowadays,’ I prompted.

  He shook his head.

  ‘Chap called Gloag,’ I told him. ‘Known to his friends as “Hockbottle” for some obscene reason. He took the photograph himself. At Cambridge.’

  Martland, suddenly, inexplicably, looked very worried indeed. So did his mates, who clustered around, passing the tiny picture from hand to grubby hand. Then they all started nodding, tentatively at first and then positively. They looked rather funny but I was feeling too tired to enjoy it really.

  Martland wheeled on me, his face evil now.

  ‘Come on, Mortdecai,’ he said, all urbanity gone, ‘tell me it all this time. Fast, before I lose my temper.’

  ‘Sandwich?’ I asked diffidently. ‘Bottle of beer?’

  ‘Later.’

  ‘Oh. All right. Hockbottle Gloag came to see me three weeks ago. He gave me the cut-out of his face and said to keep it very safe, it was a free pardon for him and money in the bank for me. He wouldn’t explain but I knew he wouldn’t be trying to con me, he’s terrified of Jock. He said he’d ring me up every day from then on and if he missed a day it would mean he was in trouble and I was to tell you to ask Turner in the National Gallery. That’s all. It has nothing to do with the Goya so far as I
know – I just seized that opportunity to slip you the word. Is Hockbottle in trouble? Have you got him in that bloody Cottage Hospital of yours?’

  Martland didn’t answer. He just stood looking at me, rubbing the side of his face, making a nasty soft rasping sound. I could almost hear him wondering whether the battery would coax a little more truth out of me. I hoped not: the truth had to be delivered in carefully spaced rations, so as to give him a healthy appetite for later lies.

  Perhaps he decided that I was telling the truth, as far as it went; perhaps he simply decided that he already had enough to worry about.

  He had, in fact, no idea how much he had to worry about.

  ‘Go away,’ he said, finally.

  I collected my hat, tidied it, made for the door.

  ‘Don’t leave town?’ I prompted in the doorway.

  ‘Don’t leave town,’ he agreed, absently. I didn’t like to remind him about the sandwich.

  I had to walk miles before I found a taxi. It had all its door handles. I fell soundly asleep, the sleep of a good, successful liar. Goodness, the flat was in a mess. I telephoned Mrs. Spon and told her that I was at last ready to redecorate. She came round before dinner and helped us tidy the place up – success has not spoiled her – and afterward we spent a happy hour in front of the fire choosing chintzes and wallpapers and things and then we all three sat round the kitchen table and tore into an enormous fry-up such as very few people can make today.

  After Mrs. Spon had left I said to Jock, ‘Do you know what, Jock?’ and he said, ‘No, what?’

  ‘I think Mr Gloag is dead.’

  ‘Greedy, I expect,’ said Jock, elliptically. ‘Who d’you reckon killed him, then?’

  ‘Mr Martland, I fancy. But I think that for once he rather wishes he hadn’t.’

  ‘Eh?’

  ‘Yes. Well, good night, Jock.’

  ‘Good night, Mr Charlie.’

  I undressed and put a little more Pomade Divine on my wounds. Suddenly I felt shatteringly tired – I always do after torture. Jock had put a hotty in my bed, bless him. He knows.

  3

  Yet half I seemed to recognize some trick