“Knock it off,” I shouted. “You stopped me from putting Moggerhanger behind bars three years ago, and now you’re trying to do him down. I don’t understand.”
“Michael, the past is history. If you learn from history you make more history, and never get anywhere. But it’s your choice. Only think about it though, you and me and Dismal free of all worldly cares. We’d sit on the deck of a schooner, with the shape of Runna-Runna in the distance getting closer and closer, pleasure island just waiting for us to enjoy. We’ll have the natives build us a shipshape palm-thatched abode, and our bone-idleness wouldn’t be the half of it. Now and again a tourist ship would stop for twenty-four hours, and not only would we get all the fags and booze in exchange for what local produce our native wives could weave or dig up, but bevies of lovely young tourist girls would come ashore in white shorts and sun hats to see how the locals lived, meaning you and me. We’d have the time of our lives, forever and forever with no amen.”
“We’d be too dead to enjoy it,” I said. “And don’t keep slowing down.”
“You’re too pessimistic to live. What’s happened to my old Michael Cullen? I’d take my time on the island at first, to get the lie of the land, but in a year or two we’d mount a coup d’état, and the place would fall into our hands like a ripe plumb. I’d be crowned king by the inhabitants, and you’d be my prime minister. Think of it. William the Conqueror back from Normandy, and the Right Honourable Michael Cullen! We’d make a model country out of it, and get a seat at the United Nations. I’d have a palace built, and organise a small standing army, the best trained force in the region, and if any neighbouring island objected to our presence (I could soon arrange that) we’d land our battalion and take that place over as well. Can’t you see it all? Field Marshall Straw whistling his lads up the beach like shock troops! Before we knew it we’d have an archipelago. And you say we couldn’t do it? Where’s your vision? Where’s your optimism and confidence? Where’s your sense of purpose? You might want to stay a nonentity in Blighty forever, but I don’t. I want a bit of dolce fa niente in my life.”
On a straight bit before the A1—which road I was longing to see, because then maybe the mad bastard would smell enough of London to belt up, and realise there was nothing to do but get there, unload the stuff, and take our pay. We caught up with a police Range Rover, and the road wasn’t free enough of traffic to overtake with the horsebox, so Bill had to follow it for a while.
“As I see the situation, there’s a great opportunity,” he babbled, “which you’re thinking of passing up so blithely. It would be dead easy, no risk at all. I’ve worked out how to get there. In Marseilles we’d pocket a cool million, maybe two — or even three — then fly to New Zealand. Once there we’d buy a boat and cruise around the South Seas till we found a pleasant island. Maybe we would even stop a month in Fiji, and talk to people about the most suitable place, and how to get there. I say, what the hell’s that cop car doing? He’s down to twelve miles an hour, and probably inviting us to overtake so’s he can do us for speeding.”
He was too lit up by his insane Utopian scheme for colonising Straw Island to bother with his rear mirror, and when I leaned out to look, another police Range Rover came from a turning and placed itself right up against the horsebox bumpers. “We’re being topped and tailed.”
They nudged us into an oh-so-convenient lay-by and, as soon as Bill stopped, Dismal leapt out into a patch of oil and began a long piss. “I’m glad you pulled us up, officer,” Bill said. “Our dog’s been wanting to do that for at least ten miles.”
The tall brutal looking bastard of the silver pips in charge wore a cap with the Sillitoe tartan across the headband. His mate was a sergeant, as were a pair in the car which pulled up behind the horsebox. I don’t know why I wasn’t as frightened as I should have been, because they were now about to start the process whereby only Dismal wouldn’t get twenty years.
“Fucking amateurs,” the smallest sergeant said, and he was six feet tall. They don’t make them small in Yorkshire.
“Get out, you,” one said to Bill, who smiled and complied, though he showed no hurry, as if to put out his hand for a shake, because he had been in this situation many times before, and knew how to behave. “Good afternoon, officer.”
“We want a look in your vehicles.”
Bill put on his most inane smile. “Certainly, sir.” We crowded around, while he made a show of sorting the key.
“Fucking hell!” one of them cried when he pulled the door wide open. “We’ve got a murder on our hands.”
Kenny was stretched and unmoving on the floor. Bill wagged his head. “He’s not dead, sir, only asleep. He’s had a drop too much, that’s all. It’s a very sad case. He took in such a quantity of alcohol as would have stymied an elephant. In fact I was in Burma during the war, when one of the lads in my platoon gave a bull elephant a quart of arak. I soon wished that great thing had gone to sleep as well, because it caused such a swathe of destruction between Mandalay and Rangoon they must still be talking about it. But don’t worry about our pal Kenny, sir,” he said to the inspector. “We’re taking him home to his wife and five little kiddies. He’ll be able to sleep it off there. She’s used to it, poor woman.”
The four of them stared at Bill, as if not unappreciative of his narrative, till one who considered he had gone on too long said: “Shut the fuck up. We aren’t here to listen to arseholes like you. Just be careful of everything you say, because whatever you come out with will be used in court in any way we like, to get you the maximum possible sentence.”
“Open the boot,” said the inspector.
Such words I had dreaded, so knew that things were far from all right. Yet I had the itch at thinking I had seen him somewhere before, though couldn’t say where. As well as having no trace of the local accent their procedure showed few genuine characteristics of a police raid. Neither Bill nor I were up against the horsebox with hands in the air while they searched for guns, as they should have made us do. They were carrying on as if they had never bothered to look at the telly.
Bill wouldn’t reign in Runna-Runna, and that was a fact, though he seemed the king of insouciance now. “Certainly sir, anything you say sir.” All of us crowded around, Dismal as well, as he fumbled with the lock, unnaturally slow for a man of his appearance, till one of the coppers piped up: “Shall I get the crowbar, sir?” Bill and I were even more astonished than the coppers — who gloated at the packages of drugs when the boot shot open, one of the sergeants running a finger along the top of a box to lick it — when a defiant voice, though close to tears, shouted: “Don’t touch them. They aren’t yours. It belongs to Lord Moggerhanger.”
Kenny, who had somehow roused himself, stood by the horsebox, pointing his undoubtedly loaded revolver at our concerned and curious group. “I’ll kill the first berk who touches any of them packets.”
I thought this a right old time for him to pull a Sidney Blood stunt, and so did the inspector who said: “Put that down, lad.”
Such a development was no solution to the problem all of us now shared. Bill’s face screwed into rage: “Kenny, you want the George Medal? Drop that replica pistol and stop larking about. These gentlemen have every right to know what’s in the boot of Lord Moggerhanger’s Rolls Royce.”
“No they haven’t.” He was even conscious enough to smile. “It’s his personal property. And you shut up, Straw, or you’ll get it first. Making me shine my boots!”