The third possibility was Nottingham. I could talk Claudine and my spritely daughter Sam into letting me sleep on the settee in their little matchbox bungalow, and get a job pushing trollies of oldies up and down for X-rays at the local hospital. If I got blasted by a shotgun I’d at least be close to where I might survive. Hopeless to try. Claudine wouldn’t have me anywhere near for fear Sam my long lost daughter would sit on my knee.
Fourth, my mother and her razor-honed kitchen knife beckoned, but what grown man ran home for protection? I was too old to go back to wearing nappies.
Fifth. Nor was it any use bottling myself into Moggerhanger’s compound, who in any case would laugh himself to death, and tell me to get lost with his dying breath, unless he sent me on an even more forlorn quest which would get me killed anyway.
Six. I had helped Ronald Delphick in the past, who had a secluded house in a combe of the north Yorkshire woodland called Doggerel Bank. He gave poetry workshops to anyone mug enough to believe a word he said, getting them to slave in his garden, repaint the living room Tibetan blue, and entertain him in bed if they were young girls, which they nearly always were. Unless I paid him a hundred quid a day he wouldn’t consider the idea, and even then he would betray me the first half chance he got.
Seven. As a last resort Blaskin might install me in the roof space over his flat, but I would have to earn my keep by writing Sidney Bloods, which prospect I just couldn’t face.
As I talked the options through with Clegg he wrote their names on bits of paper and shook them around in a glass milk jug, then insisted I close my eyes and choose one of the seven. “The thing is,” he said, “problems are always exaggerated.”
I thanked him for such undeniable wisdom, picked out the winning scrap of paper and held it up. Before it could be read Dismal leapt, took it into his big mouth, and swallowed hard, at which I called him a naughty boy, and patted him affectionately.
The only course left, I said to Clegg, was to travel the country, stopping off when and where I considered it safe, on the premise that mobility was preferable to bottling myself into any fortress. Sleeping in the car would give me hundreds of hiding places. At least I would have a chance, and as a last resort I needed to confirm the use of Peppercorn Cottage which, harder to find than Doggerel Bank, and whether rat infested or not, would be useful to hole up in, though only for a day or two. No one would trace me there.
I dialled Moggerhanger.
“You know I’m a busy man. What is it?”
“You weren’t so sharp when you wanted me to risk my life in Greece.”
“I paid you for it.”
“Thanks for the cheque.”
“That, at any rate, is what I’ve been waiting to hear. You can’t live on mere thanks, as the railway porter said to the mean old man who only thanked him for humping his steamer trunk from one platform to another.”
“The Green Toe Gang are after me.”
He gave his graveyard laugh. “Didn’t I tell you that they would be?”
“It’s serious.”
“They’re never anything else. But there’s remarkably little I can do about it, except wish you luck.”
I had hoped for a more inspired suggestion. “There’s a little favour I’d like to ask.”
“I’m amenable. Only make it quick, so that I can say no.”
His heart was rarely as flinty as he made out. “Did you mean it when you said I could use Peppercorn Cottage?”
His tone of sincerity was only halfway there. “Michael, be my guest. You have a key already, as I recollect.”
“I’m thanking you in advance.”
“I like that. You know me, with regard to the formalities. I must warn you, though, not to eat too many rats while on the premises. You aren’t one of the starving Chinese, after all. But they do taste delicious, or so I’ve been told, if you roast them on a spit, or put them in a pie. On the other hand, if you get greedy and consume too many they could have a deleterious effect on your insides. Not that I suppose you’ll be there long enough for that — the place wasn’t built for a siege, after all — but stay as long as you like nevertheless. If I find something for you to do I’ll know where to get in touch.”
“One other thing. Can I have the Rolls Royce to travel around in?”
“I’ll consider that after you’ve paid me for the cigars you purloined. When I was being driven along Ealing Broadway yesterday, and wanted one, the box was empty. In any case, I wouldn’t like to hear of the Roller being shot up. Bullet marks are the devil to get out.”
I had only wanted him to know that my standards were as high as ever. “Points taken.”
“Not that I want to hear of you getting shot up. You’re a shade too valuable to lose.”
Many fucking thanks. I told him I would do my best to live up to such an encomium.
I trained it to London, to pick up my own Picaro car which, though I hadn’t used it for a while, started with no trouble.
My first call was to Brent Cross, to take on a stock of food for my peregrinations. The hundred quid receipt from the check out resembled a strip of bandage long enough to swab any gunshot wound. Such a quantity of provisions told me that however long I was on the road I wouldn’t starve. It was a song of sustenance to sing while threading a way to the A10 and on beyond Cambridge to my railway house.
I parked on the station forecourt and, after a lick or two from Dismal, left the car doors open for Clegg to rearrange the bags of food and cardboard boxes, to make space for all I had to bring out of the house: tent and sleeping bag, waterbottle, rucksack, full whisky flask, an axe and various tools, first aid kit (of course), a high powered flash lamp two feet long for signalling and heavy enough to be used as a cosh which I’d keep under the driving seat, cigars and cigarettes, tea making kit, a pillow and blanket, a pair of eight by thirty binoculars, a pocket compass, a battery radio with built in cassette player, a replica Luger pistol so perfect an imitation that nobody would know the difference if it was pointed at them, a very powerful two-two air rifle in its cloth bag with tins of heavy duty ammunition that would stop a man if he was close enough, and certainly kill a rabbit. Finally I snatched half a dozen books from the shelf without bothering to check their titles.
All this took less than might be supposed, packed into the boot and leaving the back seats free in case I picked up a young girl hitchhiker, or came across Doris the absconding wife who had lost her money to a bag snatcher at Stansted airport and was thumbing a lift to where any motorist would take her.
As I sat for what I hoped would not be my last cup of coffee in the house, Clegg said with a worried look: “I don’t like you going off into the blue like this.”
“Neither do I, but you saw that threatening note. I’ve got to take it seriously.”
“You could pass it on to the police.”
“I could, and I’ve nothing against them, but the only thing I wouldn’t be able to stand when we came face to face would be their laughter after I’d told them why the Green Toe Gang were after my guts. Oh, I appreciate your concern, Cleggie, but I’m on my own. If I give them the runaround for long enough maybe they’ll get fed up and leave me alone.”
“I hope that’ll be the case.”
“I’ve been in tighter spots.” I told him about the shoot-out in Jack Leningrad’s Knightsbridge flat before I was picked up at London Airport by Chief Inspector Lanthorn. “At least it was quick, mind you, or seemed so at the time.”
We shook hands by the door. “Where’s Dismal? I ought to say good bye to him, even though he’s only a dog. He’ll brood for days if I don’t.”
That he was high enough up on the evolutionary scale to be useful as well as clever was proved by the fact that whenever a passerby came to the beginning of the property he kept up a deep and threatening growl, till whoever it was had reached the other end, often stopping in mid-tone so as not to waste more breath than necessary, or none at all should the person be Clegg or myself.