‘I might have wanted to smell these things,’ is what he snarled.
‘Sorry, sir.’
‘Anything that turns you on …’ murmured the Detective Constable by the door. The Inspector pretended not to have heard – help is hard to come by these days and, in any case, he had noticed the Detective Sergeant’s deadly glance at the DC: the glance which says that certain DC’s are going to find themselves lumbered with a nasty little bit of extra duty tomorrow.
The objects laid out on the trestle-table were not a suitable sight for the squeamish. In the matter of underclothes the deceased’s policy seemed to have been ‘live and let live’, not to mention ‘increase and multiply’. There were several layers of these intimate garments and its was apparent that the local police had not found a volunteer to separate them. The Inspector braced himself and went about the task himself: he was a man of iron. Then he checked, against the list, the pitiful, trumpery possessions from the corpse’s pockets and haversack. He checked them as minutely as a prosecuting attorney might scan President Nixon’s Christmas-present list.
There were ancient, nameless scraps of what might once have been food. There was a retired baked-beans tin with two holes in the edges to take a loop of wire; the inside was caked with tea, the outside with soot. There was a twist of plug-tobacco engraved with tooth-marks: whether by man or beast it would be hard to say. There was a cheap, blunt, celluloid-handled penknife of the sort which is made to sell. To schoolboys. Something stirred in my mind. There was a piece of soap, gnarled and grime-fissured. A tin box containing a dozen red-top matches and half an inch of candle. A coloured photograph from a ‘girlie’ magazine – a ‘beaver-shot’ as they call it, much creased and be-thumbed. An onion, the sweating heel of a piece of cheese and some cold fried potatoes, neatly packed in one of those foil-lined cartons they use in Chinese take-away restaurants. Grubby twists of paper containing sugar, tea, salt … ah, well, you know the sort of thing. Or perhaps you don’t; lucky you.
Oh yes, and there was a nice, clean £10 note.
The Inspector at last rose from his absurdly detailed inspection of the chattels, blew his nose and shook himself like a dog.
‘Not a tramp,’ he said. His voice was flat; he was not accusing anyone.
‘Not?’ I asked after a pause.
‘But …’ said the Sergeant after a longer pause.
‘Sir!’ huffed the DC.
‘Use your eyes, lad,’ said the Inspector. ‘The facts are as plain as the nose on your face.’ The DC, being well-gifted in the nose-department, fell silent. This was the point at which I began to take the Inspector seriously.
After he had signed receipts and things and had shrugged off his subordinates he carried me off to the cop-shop canteen, where he regaled me with delectable tea and the finest and crispest ham-rolls I have ever sunk tooth into.
‘Well,’ I said, when the crust-munching noises had died down, ‘are you going to tell me or not?’
‘Teeth and toenails,’ he answered cryptically.
‘Eh?’
‘Aye. No blame to you for not noticing, but those twits out there are supposed to have been taught to use their eyes.’
I kept my mouth shut. I, too, had been taught things of that kind long ago, but there was no profit in telling him the story of my life and I hoped, in any case, to hear him spell out his thoughts as to an innocent bystander, for there is no more rewarding experience than to listen to a man who is really good at his job. This man was very good.
‘First,’ he said, licking a trace of mustard from a capable thumb, ‘when did you last see a genuine old-fashioned foot-tramp in England?’
‘Why, now I come to think of it, not for a hell of a long time. Used to be part of the landscape, didn’t they, but I can’t say that I –’
‘Right. I said foot-tramp to rule out Romanies and didicoys and such. I don’t reckon there’s six real tramps walking the roads of England today and there haven’t been since, oh, about 1960. The casual-wards are all closed down, so are the pay-flops; and the Rowton Houses are all turning into Commercial Hotels. They say there’s a few old stagers still trudging Wild Wales, but that’s it.
‘Moreover, your real old tramp used to have a regular beat of about two hundred miles, so he’d pass through any given “manor” maybe once in a good summer and three times in winter. Even those morons out there who call themselves detectives would certainly know any walking-gent who went through the manor regular.’
‘Meths-drinker?’ I asked.
‘No. None of the signs. And meths-drinkers haven’t the strength to walk any distance. And they usually have a flat half-bottle of the rubbish taped to the small of their back in case they get nicked. And they don’t eat. Our man liked his food – if you can call it food.’
‘So?’
‘So, second,’ he said, examining his forefinger for any lingering mustard, ‘you were dead right when you worried that he’d not got himself a set of dining-snappers off the National Health. In fact, as a glance at his gums and canines would have told any real policeman, he had once owned a costly set of bridgework – not your National Health sort – and had only parted with them a few months ago. Say, about the time he took his last bath.’
‘And third?’ I prompted.
‘Third,’ he said, holding up his middle finger in a gesture which would be considered vulgar in Italy, ‘third, no scissors.’
‘No scissors,’ I repeated in an intelligent sort of voice.
‘No scissors. In me early days I’ve looked over the belongings of many a tramp found dead in a ditch. Some of them had pictures of the lass that drove them onto the road, some of them had rosaries, some had a little bag of golden sovereigns and I remember one that had a New Testament in Greek. But the one thing that they all had was a good, strong pair of scissors. You wouldn’t last long walking the road if you couldn’t cut your toenails. A tramp’s toenails are his bread and butter, you might say. Our man here didn’t even have a strong sharp knife, did he? No; not a tramp, definitely.’
I made the sort of admiring noises you used to make when your geometry-master triumphantly said ‘QED’.
‘I don’t mind telling you,’ he went on, ‘that I regret saying that bit about him not being a tramp in front of the Sergeant and the DC. But I know that you can be relied on to keep your mouth shut, sir’ – I jumped a little at the ‘sir’ – ‘because obviously neither of us wants idiots like them wondering why someone would be wanting to pass himself off as a tramp in this particular part of the country.’ He looked narrowly at me as he said that last bit: I did my best to look inscrutable, hoping to give the impression that I well knew the special fact about ‘this particular part of the country’ and that I might well have, tucked into my left boot, a very special kind of identity-credential too grand to be shown to common coppers.
‘Funny about that nice new tenner he had on him,’ mused the Inspector. ‘Looked to be fresh from the mint, didn’t it?’
‘Yes.’
Not even folded, was it?’
‘No.’
‘What was the number on it again, did you happen to notice?’
‘Yes,’ I said absently – stupidly – ‘JZ9833672, wasn’t it?’
‘Ah, yes, that was it. Funny, that.’
‘How d’you mean, “funny”?’ I asked. ‘Funny that I should remember it? I have an eidetic memory for numbers, can’t help it. Born with it.’ He did not take the trouble to check my statement – he was good at his job, he knew I was lying.
‘No,’ he said, ‘I meant funny that it’s from the same series as a large number of perfectly genuine tenners that the London lads reckon have come into the country not a month ago. From Singapore or one of those places. You must admit that’s funny.’
‘Hilarious,’ I said.
‘Yes, well, goodbye now, sir, we really can’t detain you any longer.’
‘Oh, but if I can be of any further help …’
‘No, sir; what I mea
nt to say was that I’m sorry we can’t detain you. In custody, as they say. Like, for instance, dropping you in the Quiet Room for a couple of days and then having two or three of the lads beat the shit out of you until you told us what this caper is all about. Would have been nice,’ he added thoughtfully. ‘You know, interesting. We jacks are an inquisitive lot, see?’ I may have gulped a little at this point.
‘But you seem to have some very heavy friends, sir, so I will just bid you a friendly farewell. For now.’ He shook me warmly by the hand.
Outside, waiting for me, there was one of those lovely black cars which only police-forces can afford. The uniformed driver opened the door for me. ‘Where to, sir?’ he asked in a uniformed sort of voice.
‘Well,’ I said, ‘as a matter of fact I have a car of my own which I sort of left just off the road about, let’s see, about twenty miles away; it’s a …’
‘We know where your car is, sir,’ he said.
15 Mortdecai loses faith in matrimony, takes holy orders pro tem and sees a dentist more frightened than a dentist’s client
But the jingling of the guinea helps the hurt that Honour feels
Locksley Hall
When your kitchen sink is blocked and you have to summon a plumber because both it and the maid are making threatening noises, he – the plumber – unscrews the thingummy at the bottom of the wonderfully aptly-named U-trap and shows you triumphantly the mass of detritus that he has liberated from it, with all the pride of a young mother exhibiting the malevolent squashed-tomato which she assures you is a baby. This great, greasy gobbet of nastiness (I refer, of course, to the sink-occlusion, not to the family-planning error) proves to be a closely-matted cupful of vegetable-peelings, pubic hair and nameless, grey, fatty matter.
What I am trying to describe is the condition of the enfeebled Mortdecai brain on its – my – return to the Training College or Command Post or whatever.
‘Ah, Mortdecai,’ growled the Commandant gruffly.
‘Charlie, dear!’ cried Johanna.
‘Drink?’ I muttered, subsiding into an armchair.
‘Drink!’ snapped Johanna absently. The Commandant leapt to the booze-cupboard and made me a drink with surprising alacrity and rather too much soda-water. I filed the surprising-alacrity bit away into that part of my mind where I file things which I must think about when I feel stronger. Then I filed the whisky and s. into the most confidential part of the Mortdecai system and called for another.
‘So you found him, Charlie dear?’
‘Yes.’ A thought squirmed in my brain. ‘How did you know?’ (I had, you see, telephoned no one but Colonel Blucher.)
‘Just guessed, darling. And you wouldn’t be back so soon if you were still looking for him, would you?’
‘Glib,’ I thought bitterly. ‘Glib, glib.’ I often bitterly think words like ‘glib, glib’ after listening to things which women have said; I’m sure I’m not alone in this.
‘And how are you, Charlie? I hope it wasn’t a horrid experience?’
‘Not at all,’ I replied bitterly. ‘Wonderful shake-up. As good as a week at the seaside. Stimulating. Refreshing.’ I gargled a little more.
‘Do tell us all about it,’ she murmured when the noises had died down. I told her almost all about it. From A to, let us say, W – omitting X, you see.
‘And of course you wrote down the number of the nice, new, fresh ten-pound note, Charlie?’
‘Naturally,’ I said. Two panic-stricken glares focused upon me.
‘But only,’ I added smugly, ‘upon the tablets of my memory.’ Two batches of panic-stricken female breath were exhaled. I raised an eyebrow of the kind my mother used to raise when parsons preached unsound doctrine at Mattins. They gazed at me expectantly while I pretended to ransack my memory; then the Commandant took the hint and refilled my glass. I delivered the serial-number of the note in a gift-wrapped sort of way. They wrote it down, then the Commandant went to her desk and fiddled with absurd secret drawers (look, there are only just so many places in a bureau where a secret drawer can lurk – ask any antique-dealer) and produced a slim little book. They compared the number I had given them with the nonsense in the slim little book, looking cross, grave and worried in that order until I lost patience and rose to my feet. Secret Service games are boring even when played by men.
‘Off to bed,’ I said. ‘Tired, you see. Must go to bed.’
‘No, Charlie dear.’
‘Eh?’
‘I mean, you must be off to China; not bed.’ I did not even try to absorb such nonsense. ‘Rubbish!’ I cried manfully, snaring the whisky-decanter as I swept out of the room. I did not sweep far, for Johanna called me back in masterful tones quite unbecoming in a bride.
‘You will like it in China, Charlie.’
‘Oh no I bloody won’t, they’ll take one look at me and send me off to be politically re-educated on some co-operative farm in Hunan. I know.’
‘Well, no dear, I didn’t mean Red China – not this time anyway – more Macao, really. It’s independent or Portuguese or something – I guess it amounts to the same thing. A great gambling centre, you’ll love it.’
‘No,’ I said firmly.
‘Flying First Class in a Jumbo. With a bar.’
‘No,’ I said, but she could see that I was weakening.
‘A suite in the best hotel and a bankroll to gamble with. Say a thousand.’
‘Dollars or pounds?’
‘Pounds.’
‘Oh, very well. But I must go to bed first.’
‘OK. In fact, goody.’
‘I’m sorry I cannot invite you to share a nuptial couch,’ I added stiffly, ‘my bed is some two feet six inches wide and there are enough electronic bugs in the room to start an epidemic.’
‘Yes,’ she said obscurely.
When I emerged from the shower, briskly towelling the Mortdecai tum, Johanna was in the said 2′ 6″ bed.
‘I’ve had the bugs turned off, Charlie.’
‘Oh yeah?’ I said in American.
‘Yeah. I kinda own this joint, you know?’ I winced.
‘I didn’t know,’ I said stuffily, ‘and there still isn’t enough room in that bed for two.’
‘You wanna bet, buster?’
There was enough room. And I mean that most sincerely.
‘I think that, on the whole, I’d better take Jock with me,’ I said later, during the interval for refreshments. ‘After all, three eyes are better than two, eh?’
‘No, Charlie. He is too conspicuous, people would remember him, whereas you’re kind of unremarkable, you sort of melt into the background, you know?’
‘No, I didn’t know that,’ I said stiffly, for that is the kind of remark which stings.
‘Anyway, dear, he’s a xenophobe, isn’t he – he’d probably hit all sorts of people and attract attention.’
‘Oh, very well,’ I said. ‘Back to the grind,’ I added, but not out loud of course.
Johanna drove me to London the next morning. She is a wonderful driver but I used the passenger’s brake a goodish number of times; the journey was, in fact, one long cringe for me. We finally pitched up unscathed at Upper Brook Street, W1, having stopped briefly at one of those places where they make passport photographs of you while you wait.
‘But I already have a passport,’ I said.
‘Well, dear, I thought you’d like a nice new one.’
From the flat she made a number of guarded telephone calls to all sorts of people; the upshot was that by late afternoon I was the proud possessor of First Class tickets on a Boeing 747 and a Vatican City passport, complete with all necessary visas and made out in the name of Fr Thomas Rosenthal, SJ; occupation: Curial Secretary. I didn’t think that was very funny and said so, huffedly.
‘Darling,’ she said, ‘I do realize that at your age you wouldn’t be just a Fr still, but if we’d made you a Monsignore or Bp or something the airline people would make a fuss of you and that wouldn’t be secure, right?
Tell you what, I’ll send the passport back and have them promote you Canon. Hunh? Would you settle for Canon?’
‘Oh, leave it alone, Johanna; I’m truly not sulking. The Church wouldn’t be the first career I’ve muffed. Anyway, I’m not at all sure they have Canons in Rome and Monsignores have to wear puce breeches, I think.’
‘Oh, good. I knew you wouldn’t mind being a simple Fr. You have a kind of wonderful modesty …’ I raised a deprecatory hand.
‘I shall of course need a few strings of rosary-beads and a Breviary or two – I’m sure you’ve thought of that.’
‘Charlie, darling, you’re supposed to be a Jesuit, remember? They’re not into all that stuff.’
‘Of course not; silly of me.’
I don’t mind admitting that I enjoyed the flight; I was the only First Class passenger and the stewardess was most attentive. Most attentive. I began to understand why Johanna had taken such pains over me the previous night, if you see what I mean. (If you don’t see what I mean, congratulations on a clean mind.)
My hotel was of a luxe which surprised me: tout confort moderne would be understating by a bushel and a peck. It was not quite like that one in Bangkok where you have to shake the sheets each night to rid your bed-clothes of little golden girls, though the management of this one was certainly doing its best. But you don’t want to hear about that sort of thing, do you?
In the morning I sprang out of bed with a glad cry and promptly sprang into it again with a whimper. I was never strong, even as a boy, and on that morning I felt so enfeebled both in body and mind that I doubt whether I could have hit the ground with my hat. Certainly, I was in no state to play at Secret Agents with Sinister Orientals. Jet-lag and other factors had me by the throat, to name only one organ; I built up my strength by having first one delicious breakfast and then, after a two-hour digestive nap, just such another, washing them down with nutritive glasses of brandy and soda which, in that sort of hotel, you can summon up without the aid of floor-waiters: you simply press the appropriate tit on a ‘Refreshments Console’ which looks for all the world like a miniature cinema-organ.
The Mortdecai Trilogy Page 30