“We’ll threaten to burn all that’s in the car if he doesn’t send two packets of thousand unforged fifty-pound notes within twenty-four hours.”
“Your plan sounds feasible, Michael, but it also seems fraught with numerous improbabilities. Why not just keep back one of the packets, and say the rest was all that came out of the Range Rovers? Let those fake cops take the blame. We could sell our packet in Manchester, and maybe get a bit more than the hundred thousand.”
I was happy at seeing the chimney of Upper Mayhem. “No, it would be safer and more realistic to be open and above board in our demands with Moggerhanger. He would think better of it than mere thievery, which he’d never forgive, and might kill us for. I know him by now, so it’s a matter of choosing between your hairbrained flight of fancy, which will cost you a long stretch in prison, if not your life. My perfect plan will net us fifty grand each, and your half share will tide you over for a carefree year or two in Runna-Runna. You wouldn’t have to spend all your time with a telescope on a hilltop looking for blokes in a speedboat coming to kill you then, either.”
Chapter Twenty-Eight.
I opened two tins of Bogie as Dismal’s bonus for his help on the trip. Bill robbed the kitchen cupboard of Bakewell tarts, Swiss puddings and a tin of fancy biscuits. “As soon as you’ve eaten your little snack,” I said, putting the kettle on at his request, “you can stack those bundles of heroin by the levers in the signal box. Clegg’s up there, so he’ll help you. And stop thinking of Runna-Runna. If you take that option, it’ll be your funeral.”
“That’s not very encouraging, as a remark. Anyway, why do you suppose that subject is still on my mind?”
“Because you’re eating enough to get all that way without the necessity of inflight refuelling. But if you are still hankering for Runna-Runna, forget it. You might make it to the Hook, but you’d be taken prisoner at the first stop in Germany. Imagine being sent to a POW camp, when you’d avoided it all through the War. You’d never live it down. Nothing to eat except stuff from Red Cross parcels. You’d be so hungry you’d even swallow the plumb stone in the jam with the escape compass inside. So pass me one of those custard creams before they’re all gone. I didn’t even know we’d got any.”
Clegg came in at the kettle whistling. “Have you seen her?”
“Seen who? My mother and her girlfriend seem to have left.”
“They did—for London, an hour ago.”
I pitied Mabel and Blaskin, until wondering what he might get up to with Doris. “What are you on about, then?”
“Your current girlfriend arrived just after lunch, and woke me from my nap. She’s a lovely looking woman. Said you’d given her the address. She was so distressed though that I put her in your bed upstairs. Men are so bloody to their ladies these days. She told me her name was Sophie.”
I staggered, but only inwardly, and walked quietly upstairs, in case I disturbed her sleep, only wanting to gaze on her bewitching features. But she heard the door click. “Is that you, Michael?”
I knelt by the bed for a kiss. She turned towards me, to show a swollen eye, and a bruise on her cheek. “This is the most wonderful surprise, sweet sister, only tell me who knocked you about, so that I can slaughter him.”
“My husband and I quarrelled. He got angry when I said I didn’t care about him having a mistress. He went absolutely bananas, and threw me out of the house. So I came here, hoping you’ll let me stay until tomorrow, by which time he’ll have calmed down. Either that, or he’ll be away with his girlfriend. If he takes her to the house in Italy I’ll be all right.”
“I’ll look after you for as long as you like, dear sister.” Our kisses were so passionate we could have made love there and then, but I resisted, saying tea was on the go downstairs, and if she wanted me to bring a cup for her I would.
Was her arrival good luck, or Fate? Too happy to care, I took her tea and biscuits, then went back to the kitchen. “Cleggie,” I said, the three of us munching away. “I have a problem.”
He straightened his glasses. “You always have.”
“But this one’s special.” I told him of all we’d done that day, then reeled out our options with regard to what was in the Roller.
It took some time for him to pull his thoughts together under one roof. “I wouldn’t do either of those things. Get rid of the stuff as soon as you can. Take it all to Lord Moggerhanger, where it belongs. Honesty is the best policy, but since I realise you’re hell-bent on resolving matters in your own way, because you never were one to take good advice, I’ll say no more. If you try to blackmail your employer I wouldn’t like to think how it will turn out.”
I looked at Bill, who said: “I give in. No Runna-Runna. We’ll con Moggerhanger for fifty thousand each, though I’ll regret such a soft option till my dying day.”
“Things never did come cheap,” I said, “so I’ll give Moggerhanger a bell tomorrow, to explain the situation. If there’s no other objection to the proposal I’ll consider it settled, and after such a heavy day go upstairs to rest. You keep things going, Cleggie. Provide all the biscuits Bill can eat, and dish out unlimited Bogie for Dismal.”
Who could resist? I’d be the first one as ever did. After the first few kisses she said: “Strip off, Michael, darling. My breasts are aching for you. I need hardly mention about the other place.”
For those who have been gently brought up, if such there are anymore, let me say that going to bed with your half sister is the ultimate aphrodisiac. It was like being in love at thirteen but, not having anybody to make love to, and when you were about to burst, having a dark-haired princess who knew more about you than you know yourself come naked into your arms. Such joyful music I wanted to go on forever, freedom, guilt and the absolute pleasure of doing what we wanted with each other in the hope of finding a part of ourselves never come across before. Neither of us, we said, had experienced such a meltdown into mutually consuming love.
After a couple of hours I felt an irritating itch for a tasteful after-sex cigarette, but she wanted to stay under the sheet. “Don’t break the dream.”
I eased her away. “I won’t. But there’s the rest of our lives to get all we want.”
“I’ve never been so happy.”
“Nor me,” I had to say, but it was time to get up.
After another delaying kiss I pulled on my shirt, and told her I was going downstairs to arrange our wedding dinner. A bad mood was filtering in, proving me to be a member of the middle class at last, being afflicted with post coitum triste, or whatever it was. “There’s a bottle of champagne in the fridge, so we can start the meal with a toast.”
“Maybe I should go home,” she said, “and make sure Gerald hasn’t done a Cicero in the bath. He threatens to, at times.”
“Wouldn’t it be dashed convenient if he did? But he doesn’t sound the sort to top himself. Since he can’t feel he’s betraying you anymore he’ll pick up with another tart so that he can betray his present dolly bird. Some men are like that. Don’t ask me how I know. As long as they have somebody to do it on, they’re never too unhappy. No wonder he clocked you a couple for telling him he wasn’t betraying you. You were lucky to get away with your life.”
The sheet almost fell from her breasts when she laughed, at which I nuzzled her, to stop them getting chilly. “It’s like when we were on the train,” she said, “the things you’re saying. I can’t get over me being your half sister. I’m only disappointed we didn’t have the same mother. That would have been even more wonderful. We’ll have to manage it better in the next life.”
I finished dressing. “I’ll take you to London tomorrow in the Rolls Royce. We’ll get there in style.”
“She’s an absolute queen,” Bill said, all of us at table lifting our glasses to her. I couldn’t stop him telling about the day’s adventures, and relating in detail his (failed) scheme for taking over Runna-Ru
nna. She relished his enthusiasm, which riled me somewhat at her perhaps thinking he was a better storyteller than I was. We sipped champers and picked at the hors d’oeuvres. “You might have become a real queen,” he went on. “Just think of it: the pair of you on a coconut throne. I’d have crowned you with palm oil myself.”
Sophie was coy, cutting her lamb from the leg taken out of the deep freeze by Clegg on our arrival. At midnight we brushed past Bill on our way to bed, ignoring his sly wink. At the moment anyway I wanted to sleep with Sophie every night for the rest of my life. But we only made love once, then fell asleep.
Moggerhanger had at least let me finish breakfast before lifting his phone, though he hadn’t waited till close to lunch in case I’d already gone where he couldn’t find me. “Upper Mayhem,” I said.
“I know it is. And you, if I’m not mistaken, are my bugbear of the moment, Michael Cullen. Correct me if I’m wrong.”
“I was when I went to bed last night, but who I am at the moment only time will tell. What can I do for you, Lord Moggerhanger, that I haven’t done already?”
“Michael, did you get the materials from Doggerel Bank, or did you not?”
“I did. The operation went like a dream. The Three Musketeers did their work superbly.”
“Three?” I caught amazement in his tone. “You’re counting Kenny?”
“Oh no. There was Bill Straw, Dismal, and me. A perfect team. The trouble was, no sooner were the goods in the boot than those counterfeit coppers topped and tailed us, and took everything into their so-called safe keeping. I’m mortified you thought we’d do a runner with two million quid’s worth of the hardest drugs in the Kingdom. How could you? Don’t you know by now that you can trust me? All I hope is that those hired thugs delivered the goods safely back to you, unless they did a runner and are already living it up on the Costa del Sol. Nothing would surprise me. I’d never seen such villains.”
The pause was of the sort that Blaskin would have marked down as significant, or even pregnant. “Michael, I’ve had a sleepless night, and when that happens I can be very fractious. I won’t be blunt with you. I will be straight, instead. When those actors—though one had once been a real policeman, before his fingers got too sticky by fining motorists on the spot with a fake book of tickets—when, I say, they rolled into my compound last night I was waiting. They had already phoned to say mission accomplished, and given me an ETA, so I was delighted when I heard the sound of their horns as a signal of success. They jumped out of the cars and fell about laughing, and banging themselves on the back, though I realised they might be half drunk. What are you finding so funny?”
“My sister’s tickling me in the privates. She’s a real devil. Get away, Sophie,” I called, though she was out for a walk along the platform. “It’s all right now, sir. She’s very playful, since our romp in bed last night.”
“Stop arsing around. Any man who would go to bed with his sister is depraved beyond all imagining, as is he who even thinks about it. But let me go on. I didn’t even bother to look for the stuff till after they’d swilled down a pot of Mrs Blemish’s tea. Then we searched both cars from stem to stern, and what should have been there wasn’t.”
“That’s impossible,” I said. “Though I wish I’d seen their faces.”
Another hiatus.
“I’ve grown to believe there’s no such thing as impossible in whatever you’re concerned with,” he said, “so let me tell you there’s nowhere in the world beyond the reach of my long arm. Now tell me where the stuff is. You left poor Kenny in the horsebox near Stamford, or so I was informed on phoning the restaurant. He was giving everybody hell and they were about to call the police.”
“You mean the real ones?” I sounded scandalised.
“Shut up! You couldn’t resist a cheap laugh at those careless but well meaning lads. But the fun’s over. So where is the stuff?”
“In a location you’ll never find.”
His chuckle neither deceived nor frightened me. “What do you hope to gain by these childish manoeuvres, Michael?”
“A hundred thousand pounds. Fifty for me, and fifty for Bill. Dismal just barked that he’d be satisfied with a carton of twenty-four tins of Bogie dog food.”
He spoke so quietly I could hardly make out the words. “Listen, you scumbag, you slum brat, you bastard from the boondocks, if that stuff, plus the Roller, isn’t back in my compound within twenty-four hours I’ll have your miserable life snuffed out. One shot will do, with nobody the wiser who did the job.”
Now it was my turn. “You just listen to me, you drug dealing scourge of the world, you fuckface of a syphilitic racketeer”—I prayed for Blaskin’s expertise with words to help me out, but no more would come—“let me tell you that the dope is packed in the Roller, and if we don’t receive two packets of a thousand fifty-pound notes, and not counterfeit either, within the aforesaid twenty-four hours, we’ll spray gasoline over the car and set fire to it with whatever’s inside. I’m serious, though why you should quibble about a mere hundred thousand from at least two million to me shows a lack of worldliness, sophistication and plain good sense, which I always thought you had in good measure.”
“You’re diatribe was totally unnecessary, Michael, not to say unwarranted.”
“So was yours. I lost my temper. I beg forgiveness.”
“Granted. It’s understandable, but don’t forget I have the power.”
“You don’t have the goods, though. While they’re in my possession it’s me who has the power. I could drive the Roller to the nearest constabulary headquarters and hand in the present of the year, but I’d prefer us to have the fifty thousand each, and for you to have your two million. I don’t see that as an unjust solution to the problem. Anyone who did I would think of as unreasonable.”
His laugh was almost human. “Michael, you seem to have matured in the last few years. I’d be proud if I could believe I’d been in any way responsible. But I hope you’ll forgive me when I say that your maturity lacks that final polish of English common sense. You know the sort of man I am. In fact of all my entourage I don’t think there’s anyone who knows me as well as you. And that being the case, how can you imagine for an instant that I would knuckle under to what can only be called blackmail, and allow myself to be threatened by a guttersnipe like you?”
“Lord Moggerhanger, as one guttersnipe to another, how can you be so unrealistic as to imagine I’m capable of behaving in any other way? All this jockeying in the insult stakes is unnecessary. Knowing your time to be as valuable as mine, why can’t we come to a quick decision?”
“You’re putting me into a very invidious position.”
“There’s nowhere else I would like to put you, but it’s only invidious on your part to the tune of a hundred thousand pounds, and a crate of Bogie. It could be invidious to the tune of a lot more. My companion in arms and maybe villainy wanted to make away with every last grain, but I argued him out of it, and got him to agree to the hundred thousand because I didn’t want to be unfair to you. I’m not ungrateful for all you’ve done for me, especially when you had me framed and put inside thirteen years ago. I don’t easily forget a favour like that. Otherwise, our association has been mutually beneficial, since I’ve learned so much from you, but when you’ve handed over the cash I think we’ll call it quits, though I must say I’m enjoying our little talk. We haven’t had one on anything like equal terms before.”
“Equal terms!” he cried.
“Yes. You know, I have, you want. What could be more equal than that? I suggest you accept the situation and get that money—plus Bogie—up here as soon as possible, so that Bill and I can resume the even tenor of our zigzag ways, singing like a couple of Carusos as we count it. All you have to do is cough up, and put a good face on the matter.”
Another wait, but I was prepared for all of them. I’d got him where I wanted, and he knew it.
“You know what I’d like to do, don’t you, Michael? Ideally, I mean.”
“Of course. You want us to drive the car and its contents to Ealing like obedient boys, get a long talking to about my recalcitrance,”—thank you, Blaskin, for that word—“and then touch my cap with gratitude on getting your handout of a thousand or so. Then you would let me walk away feeling happy I’d still got all my fingers.”
“That’s a fair account of my feelings. I know from experience that your imagination knows no bounds, but it’s the kind of imagination which is no imagination at all. It’s rather a millstone around your neck that could lead you into such trouble you’d soon have no imagination left because you’d be dead. Neither of us would like to see that, after such a long and fruitful association, would we, Michael?”
“Lord Moggerhanger, forgive me if I’m feeling a little bullish. Although I don’t want this conversation to go on as long as the Congress of Vienna, however long that event did go on, I must remind you that I’m acquainted, as you know, with William Straw, ex-sergeant of the Sherwood Foresters. To say we’re blood brothers is no exaggeration, and if anything were to happen to me he would turn himself into a one-man assassination squad from which, believe you me, you would have no escape. Bill is what used to be known as a gentleman ranker, and he has all the martial talents of that breed. If a hair of my head was harmed he would go into action with such alacrity that even you, with all your so-called protection from the riff-raff of South London, wouldn’t be able to avoid a fate that didn’t bear thinking about. He would kill you quickly and efficiently, because time is money for him too. As well as that he would delight in picking off your progeny, devastating each of your scattered properties, and sowing the grounds of your ruined main residence with salt in a way that would make Carthage look like the vicar’s croquet lawn. In short, he would kill you, even if he lost his own life in doing so, though that would be an unlikely outcome. I would do the same for him. So your threats are idle, and can’t have any place in this discussion. Just face the fact that I have you over a barrel, because if we don’t come to an agreement soon I’ll jack up the pay-off to sixty thousand each, instead of fifty.”
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