“You’re a great comfort to me, Michael. I’ll never forget how you gave me a lift on the road near Goole. I don’t think you knew just how deep my despair was, on that awful day.
To say that I had indeed felt it would have been unfair. “Perhaps I didn’t, but I thought how good of you it was, allowing me to give a lift to such an unusual person.”
The shadow of Toffee Bottle blighted my shoulder: “His Lordship will see you now.”
I took time to finish the third cup Mrs Blemish had poured for me. “Wish me luck,” I said to her.
“You’re the last person in the world to need it, Michael.”
Was it my imagination, or wishful thinking, seeing Moggerhanger behind his desk, to assume he had become older than he should since I set out for Greece? Perhaps it was the scowl, which covered his normal expression of superior neutrality. “Michael, there can’t be anybody in the world more pleased to see you than I am. Sit down.”
I felt no reason not to.
“Now”—the scowl was back — “tell me everything.”
I did, even reciting the logbook of my amorous encounters, on the grounds that if I hadn’t he wouldn’t believe anything else. I told him how Bill Straw had been magically on hand to help me when attacked. Too Irish-proud to show I was in anyway afraid of him, I left nothing out.
When Moggerhanger offered a splash from the bottle tank of whisky it had to be taken on trust that you wouldn’t wake up a few hours later on a Pol Pot torture bed in his equivalent of Cambodia. The bottle was so big one could never tell that the level had gone down — in spite of my drink being a hefty one.
“You realise, Michael, that after what happened in Jugoslavia and Greece the Green Toe Gang will be after you till your dying day? Here’s to your good health!”
“Thanks for telling me. Forewarned is forearmed is all I can say. Cheers!”
“Cheers! But, and here’s the rub, they’ll only make a serious attempt on your life if they think you’re no longer working for me, and under the umbrella of my protection.” He drank. “As such, however, I’m afraid I’ll find you a constant liability, because my resources, though considerable, just won’t stretch that far.”
The drink scalded my lips. “I hardly know what to say, or what I ought to do. I could hide myself, and get plastic surgery. I might even find a steady job, with a pension at the end of it, get a mortgage and buy a house in some leafy suburb, turn into a law abiding citizen, vote Conservative at elections, maybe even perform jury service, which is something I’ve always fancied, by the way,” though that was as far as I cared to go after noticing him turn a certain shade of pale.
“You, Michael, on jury service?”
“It would be an experience. I might do well at it. I know the difference between right and wrong, nobody better, but if I don’t I could always learn.” One of twelve good men and true, with Moggerhanger up before the beak, it didn’t bear thinking about how quickly and with what pleasure I’d learn. I took up the offer of another whisky. “Whatever happens I’ll find some outlet for my talents, and cast my bread upon the waters.”
How well he was following my drift. No Arnold-fucking-Killisick would pressure me if ever I found him in the dock, or nobble the other eleven. “Don’t you know,” he said, “that if you cast your bread upon the waters it more often than not has a tendency to sink instead of floating back to you? The majority of our naive citizens might think otherwise, but how foolish they are.”
He was right but, while not trying to convince him of anything, I put steel into my voice. “What was I expected to do in Greece, get killed? Turn the other cheek when those two thugs came for me out of their hatchback?”
He laughed. “You and I never lived by the Christian ethic. You did just what I would have done, waited for your opponent to turn the other cheek and then gave him a bigger one on that as well.”
To be getting nowhere was hardly the confrontation I had imagined. It rarely was. “You put me at risk.”
“I can’t say that I did, Michael. The fact was, you were the least important chainlink of several, but important all the same. Nothing wrong with that. Somebody had to be. I merely thought you were beyond the stage of competence when you would care to be idling in a café on the seafront at Cadiz. Your qualities called for a sterner and more difficult experience.”
“But why didn’t you tell me that beforehand? I could have made plans to avoid any danger.”
“You wouldn’t have done as well then. Plans go awry. They tie us down. I’ve never known anyone as good as you when it came to dealing with the unexpected. If all you’ve told me is correct, and I’m not saying it wasn’t, you passed my test with flying colours. I couldn’t have chosen anyone better.”
“Thank you very much again. I thought you gave me the most dangerous route because you wanted your bit of fun.”
“Michael, I’m a good judge of character, that’s all. When Alice phoned this morning to say you were back I had to be called out of my pew at the funeral of poor Eric Alport. It was such a great pity he had to go. Back in the church I got out my cheque book and, in the middle of ‘All Things Bright and Beautiful,’ wrote you this, while Eric’s choirboy acquaintances were crying their eyes out. It’ll tell you how highly I thought of you.”
I put the slip of paper in my pocket, without a glance to see how much. “I hope it’ll cover my funeral expenses, after the Green Toe Gang have done with me.”
“With a sense of humour like yours you’ll survive anything. Having said that, you’re not afraid of dying, are you, a chap like you with everything to live for? You’ve only got one life, but if you had two I could understand it. You’d be a miserable happy saver taking care every minute to keep both. However, let me get back to the point and tell you there’s no one in the world I’d less like to see on jury service than your good self. It wouldn’t be you. You don’t fit the part.” His lightened mood turned serious. “You’ve been behind bars, in any case. You’re disqualified for life.”
Maybe that was why he only employed those who’d done bird — though not too much — and partly why he had arranged for me to get caught over the gold smuggling, though I’d never been certain about that, because in clink you blame everybody but yourself for being there.
He was talking. I listened. Why else was I there? “You’ll find your remuneration even more than generous — when you deign to look at it — but your trip was worthwhile to me. What you brought back was more important than any other load I sent chaps out for. In any case — no, I’m not long winded without a cause — a time will come, and perhaps soon, such is your value to me, when I’ll be needing your efficient services again. Meanwhile I’ll spread the message abroad that will not go unheeded by any organisation thinking to do you an injury, telling them to keep their hands off you.”
“I’ll thank you for that.”
“You don’t need to, but I do think you’re looking a bit dyspeptic. Of course, you would be, wouldn’t you, after living at my expense for the last fortnight? You should wash yourself in the hoi polloi, Michael, take a walk up the Portobello Road on Saturday morning. I haven’t been there since I was a youth some forty years ago, and when I did,” he laughed jovially, “not a few people had less money than they set out with.”
“You mean you were a common pickpocket?”
“Not so common, either. I had twenty wallets under my poacher’s coat inside the hour, and there’s nothing common about that.”