The Mortdecai Trilogy (Charlie Mortdecai #1-3)(10)

He heaved what I took to be a sigh. ‘Tout comprendre, c’est tout pardonner,’ he said.

‘I say, that’s neat!’

‘Look, Charlie, I was up half the night with that bloodthirsty little old maniac at the Home Office, telling him about our chat yesterday.’

‘Chat’ was good.

‘When I told him how much you knew about this file,’ Martland went on, ‘nothing would do but he must have you done permanently. “Terminated with extreme prejudice” was how he put it, silly little sod. Been reading too many thrillers in between the cups of tea.’

‘No,’ I said kindly, ‘that one hasn’t got into the thrillers yet, except the Sunday Times. That’s CIA jargon. He’s probably been reading the Green Berets file.’

‘Be that as it may,’ he went on, ‘be that as it may’ – he obviously fancied that snappy little phrase – ‘be that as it may, I tried to make him see that as yet we really didn’t know what you knew nor where you got it, which was more important; and that it would be madness to liquidate you at this stage. Er, or at any stage of course, but I couldn’t say that, could I? Well, I tried to get him to refer it to the Minister but he said the Minister would be drunk by then and he himself wasn’t permanent enough to disturb him with impunity at that time of night and anyway … anyway I had to come into line and so this morning I thought the best thing was to put Maurice on the assignment, being an impulsive boy, and so give you a fair chance of survival, you see. And Charlie, I’m really so glad that he got the wrong chap.’

‘Yes,’ I said. But I wondered how he had known that I would be at Mr Spinoza’s that morning.

‘How did you know that I would be at Mr Spinoza’s this morning?’ I asked, casually.

‘Maurice followed you, Charlie.’ Wide-eyed, offhand.

‘Bloody liar,’ I thought.

‘I see,’ I said.

I excused myself on the pretext of slipping into something more comfortable, as the tarts say. Something more comfortable was a wonderfully vulgar blue velvet smoking jacket into which Mrs Spon had once sewn, with her own hands, a lot of cunningly designed webbing which supported a rather shaky old gold-plated riverboat gambler’s revolver, calibre something like .28. I had only eleven of the ancient pinfire cartridges for it and had grave doubts of their usefulness, not to speak of their safety. But this wasn’t for killing anyone, it was for making me feel young and tough and capable. People who have pistols for killing people keep them in boxes or drawers; wearing them is only for making you ride tall in the saddle. I used some mouthwash, renewed the Vaseline on my blisters and cantered back into the drawing room, tall as can be in my high-cantled saddle.

I paused behind Martland’s chair and reflected on how much I disliked the back of his head. It wasn’t that there were rolls of Teuton fat sprouting hog bristles or anything like that; just a neat and hateful smugness, an unjustified but invincible cockiness. Like a female journalist, really. I decided that I could afford the luxury of losing my temper: it would fit into the picture I wanted to create. I took out the little pistol and ground the muzzle into his right ear hole. He sat very still indeed – nothing really wrong with his nerves – and spoke plaintively.

‘For Christ’s sake be careful with that thing, Charlie, those pinfire cartridges are highly unstable.’

I ground some more; it was making my blisters feel better. It was just like him to have been looking at my firearm permit.

‘Jock,’ I said crisply, ‘we are going to defenestrate Mr Martland.’

Jock’s eyes lit up.

‘I’ll get a razor blade, Mr Charlie.’

‘No no, Jock, wrong word. I mean we’re going to push him out of a window. Your bedroom window, I think. Yes, and we’ll undress him first and say that he was making advances to you and jumped out of the window in a frenzy of thwarted love.’

‘I say, Charlie, really, what a filthy rotten idea; I mean, think of my wife.’

‘I never think of policeman’s wives, their beauty maddens me like wine. Anyway, the sodomy bit will make your Minister slap a D-Notice on the whole thing, which is good for both of us.’

Jock was already leading him from the room by means of the ‘Quiet Come-Along’ which painfully involves the victim’s little finger. Jock had learned that one from a mental nurse. Capable lads, those.

Jock’s bedroom, as ever, was bursting with what passes for fresh air in W.I, the stuff was streaming in from the wide-open window. (Why do people build houses to keep the climate out, then cut holes in the walls to let it in again? I shall never understand.)

‘Show Mr Martland the spiky railings in the area, Jock,’ I said nastily. (You’ve no idea how nasty my voice can be when I try. I was an adjutant once, in your actual Guards.) Jock held him out so that he could see the railings then started to undress him. He just stood there, unresisting, a shaky smile trembling at one corner of his mouth, until Jock began to unbuckle his belt. Then he started to talk, rapidly.

The burden of his song was that if I could only be dissuaded from my course he would arrange for me to receive

(i) the untold riches of the Orient

(ii) his undying respect and esteem and

(iii) legal immunity for me and mine, yea, even unto the third and fourth generations. At this point I cocked an ear. (How I wish I could really move my ears, don’t you? The Bursar of my College could.)