The thoughts of Chairman Mog didn’t bear thinking about, but it wasn’t my place to say so as we floated north towards Spleen Manor. Percy Blemish stood by the roadside with his thumb in the air, on his way back to Tinderbox Cottage, I supposed, after an unsuccessful foray to look for his wife in London. ‘Run over his toes. I’ve seen him before. He’s another nuisance.’
I kept a straight course. Twilight was coming on, that long slow drift into nothingness that marks the end of an English day. Mrs Whipplegate was the queen of her compartment, as long as Moggerhanger cared to be in the cockpit with me. Via the rear-looking mirror I glimpsed her face as often as I dared, that subtle and concentrated line of beauty shaped by a mind engrossed in a novel. I hoped there was some sex in it, and longed for the gaffer to get tired and move back for a snooze. Then Mrs Whipplegate would sit up front with me.
‘There’s still too much revolution in the air these days,’ he said. Somebody seemed to have wound him up, and it wasn’t me. ‘It’s doing nobody any good. Revolution is either for single people or childless couples, and then only as a parlour game. They’d be the first to go to the wall if it did come, as we all know, and as they ought to know but don’t because they’re too stupid.’
What seemed dead certain to me was that blokes like him would always come out on top. He asked Mrs Whipplegate to pass the food box, and helped himself to a smoked salmon sandwich.
‘I know a nice café up the road.’ I thought how pleasant it might be to tank up at the place next to Ettie’s diner. She’d be pleased to see me back.
‘I’m sure you do,’ he said, ‘but I like to eat my own stuff. Even when I’m going round my clubs I take my dear wife’s sandwiches — especially then. London is the salmonella capital of the world. Never eat out in it.’
On drawing level to overtake some rep in his flash Ford he increased speed so as to keep up with me. Moggerhanger pressed the window button and bawled out: ‘You fucking anarchist! Jam your shoeleather down, Michael, and then cut in.’
That was the most dangerous thing you could do, and as I was the captain of the ship I didn’t do it. ‘I’d rather not, sir.’
‘I suppose you’re right,’ he grumbled. I pulled well out in front, then settled back into the inner lane at a steady sixty. ‘The roads are crowded with maniacs,’ he said. ‘I’d go everywhere by train if I could have my own carriage. First class rail is no longer any protection. There’s no way to travel on public transport anymore for a man like me. The riff-raff are everywhere.’
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.’