The case against him was thrown out of court for lack of evidence. The headline that night said: MOGGERHANGER ACQUITTED — and I caught some of his satisfaction in the guts as I drove him from the lawyers’ on Chancery Lane. On the steps of the court he had shaken hands with Lantorn, an immortal picture for me if ever there was one. He sat with me in the front, saying nothing, looking far grimmer than he’d done while waiting for the trial, as if he had in mind some sort of cataclysmic revenge on those who’d tried to get him. The only thing was that he belched more frequently than he’d done lately, as if now that it was over his stomach could relax.
At home all was set for a quiet celebration dinner with his wife and beautiful dark-haired daughter, and his brother Charles Moggerhanger, who was the managing director of a department store in the North, and who looked after Claud’s property up that way. Charles Moggerhanger was quiet, sarcastic, and suspicious, a lightly built man of medium height with a quiet tread, a bald head, and finer features than his brother. All in all it was hard to say who would be the worse to get on the wrong side of.
While they were knocking back champagne and calling every two minutes for the Spaniard who looked after the table, I slipped away to visit Bridgitte. I hadn’t bothered to phone beforehand, and when I got there, going up in the lift and full of anticipation at getting her lips and body wrapped into mine, there was no answer to my ringing. That was bloody funny. I thought. Somebody at least had to be in, because they couldn’t all have gone out and left poor Smog alone. I rang again. I even knocked. Then I went down into the street, and phoned from the nearest callbox. My eyes were wide open, glued to the mirror, hypnotized by the continual buzzing that was never going to be answered. I unlatched myself, without getting my button-B money back.
It was raining, so I pulled my mac around me, heading for the club I used to work at. I was in time to see June at the end of her act. Paul Dent called to me like a firm old friend, and even Kenny Dukes tipped me a no-hard-feelings wink. I had heard from June that he’d smouldered with dangerous envy for a week or so after I’d got my rather special job with Moggerhanger, but at the moment he seemed convivial enough. He even offered me a drink.
A few minutes later June came to the bar: ‘Isn’t it wonderful about Claud?’
‘A foregone conclusion,’ I said. ‘Whisky?’
‘They were really out to get him, though. Tomato juice, love.’
‘He knows how to tie them up.’ We drank our doses and I sat in a stupor the rest of the evening, chatting her up between the times she was on.
In the early hours I offered to get her home in a taxi, and she accepted. ‘Sometimes my working day goes like a dream,’ she said, nestling close when we were in, ‘but today was a drag, waiting for Claud to get off.’
‘Are you in love with him?’ I asked her, my arm over her shoulder, the other in her lap.
‘He’s the only man I have anything to do with properly. But don’t talk about him. Kiss me.’
I did, and she clung to me as if I were the last man on Earth, opening me and feeling me so that I began to be a bit embarrassed in case the driver turned round, or saw us in his mirror. I tried to do the same to her, but she wouldn’t have it. We were gasping and half choking, and I suddenly let go of myself completely, at which she gave me a final kiss and drew away.
On the steps of the house she lived in I asked if I could come up to her flat. ‘No,’ she said. ‘I’ve got a girlfriend I’m rather sweet on at the moment. Thanks for the nice ride, though.’
‘I’ll come up and serve you both if you like.’
She smiled, giving the final rub-off: ‘I’ll serve her myself.’
‘As long as you enjoy it,’ I said, walking away.
Sodium lights flared and glowed down Camden Road, and I walked in the blackest of hugger-muggers back towards town. It would have been better, as things turned out, if I had gone to sleep it off in my room at Ealing, but my feet wouldn’t move that way. That bastion of all-devouring Moggerhangers had kept me in thrall for more than I should have let it these few months. As far as I was concerned he could rot on the dungheap of his self-invented rules, because tonight I wanted to shake it off for a few hours and roam at my own will.
Before I’d gone half a mile I dialled Bridgitte’s number again, but, like before, there was no answer. I went through multiple speculations as to what had happened, but every one of them was a tragedy, and so none sounded like the truth. There was nothing to do except wait some unspecified amount of time before getting to know what had happened, and it gnawed at my guts. I wanted to go to the flat and quietly break in, but when I got there the big front doors on the street were locked more firmly than those of a castle in the middle of a brigand-infested wilderness.
A few taxis circled Leicester Square, and a copper eyed me as I passed a closed-up picture house. I walked down Villiers Street, then up the steps on to Hungerford Bridge. The water below was circling slowly as if only a foot deep. A skyline of buildings stood under the halo of their own light that seemed to be generated by the faint traffic noise. London was beautiful at night, when most of the eight million people were asleep and I could have the feeling that all of it was for myself.
I lit a Dutch cigar and strolled on over the bridge, telling myself how good it was to be alive once all things that held me down had vanished from sight. In a corner at the top of the steps a body was hunched away from the breeze and drizzle, trying to sleep. At the noise of my footsteps his head lifted and said: ‘Got a smoke, mate?’
I stopped, and passed him one. ‘That’s all I have on me’ — wanting to tell him off for being out on a night like this, give him a lecture on not providing for himself, and maybe at the end of it recite Moggerhanger’s rules. But I sensed that this might not mean much at such a critical stage of his life.
‘Eh,’ he said, ‘a cigar! I’ll take a puff, though it won’t be any use on an empty stomach.’
I’d heard that voice before, that complained with such professional confidence. ‘I suppose you want a couple of bob for a sandwich?’
‘That’s cheap at the price,’ he said. ‘With five shillings I could get a bowl of soup as well.’
I looked close: ‘If I’m not mistaken I’m talking to the well-known and notorious Almanack Jack.’
‘Are you a copper?’ he said, a well-developed snarl. ‘If you ate, I’m an innocent man. I’ve driven a few people into the looney-bin in my time, but apart from that nobody can point a finger at me. Still, we’ve all done that sort of thing. If you’re too young for it you’ve got plenty of time yet.’
I told him who I was. ‘I don’t want to disturb your good night’s sleep, but I haven’t had a bite for fourteen hours, so I’m probably hungrier than you are. You can come to the market for a feed if you like.’
He jumped up, surprisingly agile for a man of beard and rags. ‘I got rolled,’ he told me as we walked along. ‘Some young toughs from Lambeth jumped on me and took my almanacks. They scattered them all up Northumberland Avenue, then drove off in a souped-up Zodiac. It’s happening too often these days. I’m going to fix myself up with a knife. That’ll keep the young bleeders at bay.’
I told him I was working for Moggerhanger, and he gave a whistle to show he was impressed. ‘I hope you hold your job. They say nobody works for him long.’