The serious expression only emphasized his devious and built-in villainy. “Michael, I’ve never had any peace and quiet in the whole of my life, so I don’t think anybody else has any right to it. Peace and quiet is a snare and a delusion, a most dangerous and unprofitable state. For one thing, no wise man who’d stumbled into peace and quiet ought to hope for it to last forever. Another thing is, he hasn’t even got any right to expect it at all. And if he even imagines he’s living in peace and quiet he’s a menace to his fellow men who would rightly want to deprive him of it, and commit mischief they shouldn’t have been tempted by his peace and quiet to indulge in. Not only that, but the man who’s found peace and quiet is a menace, and to his family as well if he’s got one. And not only that, again, whenever I think I deserve a spell of peace and quiet I pull myself together and make for the hills. Is there anymore tea in that pot? Talking makes me dry.”
“I’ll mash another, after you’ve told me why you’re here.”
“That’s what I’m doing. I got a bit tired of London, so jumped on the train to Upper Mayhem, thinking I’d find you there. Oh, I know all about London being a continent you never need to leave, and that if you’re tired of London you’re tired of life. Doctor Johnson said that, didn’t he? He said so much he must have been a real motormouth. But there are times when even I want a break from the Smoke, so I thought I’d call on you, and I was very disappointed to find you weren’t there. All I could do was put two and two together and decide you were keeping out of the way of the Green Toe Gang, which led me here.”
I stood up to boil more water. “The quality of your intuition is so good it worries me.”
“And well it may because, Michael, I’ve got news for you. You can’t escape the Green Toe Gang so easily. You must clear out of here, because they’re on to you. When I got to Upper Mayhem I didn’t breeze in there like any old tyro, because there was a car outside I knew wasn’t yours. I went through the gate and up to the house as silent as a cloth-footed fly, and when I looked through the window I saw Clegg tied to a chair, with two of the worst villains about to bludgeon him over the head. Poor Clegg was as white as whitewash. I don’t know what he’d told them already, but he didn’t need to say anymore, because the Campbells had come.
“You remember that gun from Greece you wanted me to throw away? I don’t like throwing things away when I think they might come in handy. I had it with me, and kicked the door in before they could reach for their shooters. I hadn’t had such a time since that little set-to in Greece. What a good day for the infantry! I had them so well covered it looked as if they were about to mess themselves, because by the state of my face they could see I wouldn’t stand any nonsense. I made them put their guns on the table, and after I’d booted them out I left a pistol for Clegg in case they were daft enough to come back. Not that I think they will in a hurry, because Clegg was in the Home Guard as a lad during the War and knows how to use firearms. The other gun I brought for you is at the bottom of my pack. I’ll pull it out in a bit.
“Anyway, I let them go off in their car. I could have demobilised it, but it don’t pay to be too vindictive, though I had to resist the impulse to kneecap them.” He lit one of my cigars. “The fact is, I knew then that I had to get here and put you in the picture, so I loaded the rucksack with as much as it would hold from the stores in your freezer and larder — and, well, the rest is history, as they say. Or it might be soon, so you’d better forget all about peace and quiet, because as sure as my name’s Bill Straw the Green Toe Gang will track you down sooner or later, and I can’t look after you forever. So far you’ve been like a cat with nine lives, but you must be getting near the end, so it behoves you to take care and look sharp.”
Even Dismal seemed halfway alarmed at such talk, while I’d never seen Bill so relaxed and happy. “What, do you suggest we do?”
He grinned. “Search me.”
“We can’t stay here like sitting ducks.”
“Ducks don’t sit, old cock. They float.” An arm went deep into the rucksack, and came out with a revolver, which he handed to me. “From now on this is your best friend. In the meantime let’s call it a training exercise, and walk to the top of the lane to see what we can see. You stay by the left hedge, and I’ll keep to the right. That way we’ll have each other covered. Dismal can walk in the middle, and finish off the wounded.”
I handled the weighty piece. “I’ve never fired one. I’ve only ever used a shotgun.”
He pointed out the various parts: “Backsight, foresight, magazine, safety catch, trigger for the squeezing of. But never shoot to kill. Aim low, if you have to. Now you’re fully trained. Forget the bullshit and squarebashing. Let’s go.”
I felt a bloody fool as we Three Musketeers — one of them a dog — walked slowly and well concealed up the track, low grey cloud spitting bits of rain. Beyond a slight rise at the top the horizon was clear, no traffic along the paved road, not even the noise of aircraft. There couldn’t be a quieter place. At a touch of damp breeze on our faces Bill motioned us back. Every dozen or so paces he circled quickly left and right to make sure no one was following. Such behaviour, he said, was common sense, though I saw it as inviting the sort of trouble he thrived on. He should have been working — if that was the word — as a mercenary in Africa, getting paid in dollars and diamonds. I asked him about this when we were back at the house and the kettle was on the go.
“Michael, I admit that not everything I’ve done in my life has been blameless. You’ve got to live, after all. I also know that if I had been a freebooting soldier in Africa, training one set of blacks to go about murdering another set of blacks, I’d have made enough money to retire by now.”
I jumped into his pause for breath. “But what if another mercenary soldier, with the same experience as yourself, had been training his blacks to murder your blacks? Might you not have got killed before the chance came to take early retirement?”
“There you’ve put your finger on it,” he smiled. “But look at it this way. If there had been another bloke like me training his lot to murder my lot we’d have known about each other, and when the balloon went up, as balloons always will by which I mean that when the two gangs had got together and tried to turn on one or the other of us, or both, we’d have sped out of it in the same jeep with all guns blazing. You know me. I’d already have thought of a thing like that. But that sort of caper’s not up my street, though I’ve been headhunted a time or two by a firm called Coup d’État Guaranteed. I just didn’t like the killing of women and children that went with the job. It’s no work for a real Englishman.”
He swallowed half a cake. “I’ve still got some moral feeling, though I can’t say how long it would last if I was really on my uppers. All I like is to keep myself ready for any eventuality, like when I rescued you from that bit of bother in Greece.”
“You don’t have to keep reminding me. I might have got out of it on my own, anyway.”
“Michael, we all tend to forget favours after they’ve happened.”
A denial of his statement was stopped by the ringing telephone. “You pick it up,” I told him.
He listened. “It’s William Straw here.” Indecipherable words muffled through. “I’ve just got here, sir. I called to say hello to Michael Cullen, and make sure he was all right.” He paused. “I’ll put him on, sir.”
A right bollocking was on the clock. “I’m just back from a run up the lane with Bill.”