The Mortdecai Trilogy (Charlie Mortdecai #1-3)(115)

In a cosy room on the ground floor they formally charged me with illegal entry or something vague like that so that they could get me remanded in the morning, then we ascended three floors in a large lift, passed through a heavy iron door watched over by closed-circuit television, crowded into a much smaller lift and went down eight floors. I am no great lover of the bowels of the earth but the said bowels were just what I craved at the time. They were peopled by large, English male policemen: not an American, a Chinese waiter nor a militant woman was to be seen. They ushered me into a simply-furnished, well-lit room, stuck a telephone into a jack-plug, attached a tape-recorder to it and invited me to make my ‘privilege phone-call’. I was in no two minds about whom I should call: I dialled Mrs Spon, the best interior decorator in London and the only thoroughly capable person I know. I sketched in the outlines of my plight, asked her to get in touch with my ‘brief’ (as we rats of the underworld call our lawyers) and with Johanna, and to tell Jock to stand by the telephone around the clock. ‘Tell him,’ I urged, ‘that he is not to go out except on spoken instructions by you or me. If he must play dominoes he may have his friends in and they may drink my beer within reason. Oh, and Mrs Spon, you might make it clear to the brief that I am in no pressing hurry to be sprung – no writs of habeas corpus – I wish to clear my name of this foul imputation before breathing free air again.’

‘I twig,’ she said. I replaced the receiver with a certain smugness: when Mrs Spon says that she has twigged then twig is what she has done. I’d back her to take the Grand Fleet into action after ten minutes of instruction from a Petty Officer, she’s like that. She wears wonderfully expensive clothes and has a face like a disused quarry.

‘Well now,’ I said to my two captors, ‘I daresay you’ll be wanting to, ah, grill me a bit, eh?’ They looked at each other, then back at me, then shook their heads in unison.

‘I think you’d better wait for your lawyer, sir,’ said Inspector Jaggard.

‘For your own sake, sir,’ said Sergeant Blackwell. They didn’t frighten me. On the floor stood my suitcase, briefcase and the plastic bag containing my duty-free allowance of brandy and cigarettes. I reached for the plastic bag. They didn’t hit me. I toddled into the adjoining lavatory and found two plastic tooth-glasses. I gave myself a jolt of the brandy, then poured two drinks for them.

‘I think we’re on duty, aren’t we, Sergeant?’ Blackwell consulted his watch. ‘Hard to say, sir.’ I put three packets of duty-free cigarettes beside Jaggard’s glass and two beside Blackwell’s, then tactfully visited the lavatory again. When I returned the glasses were empty, the cigarettes pocketed, but I was under no illusions. Policemen like them are not hungry for a free swig of brandy and a packet of king-size gaspers; they had only taken them to lull me into the belief that they were easy-going chaps. But I had observed their eyes, you see; they were the eyes of career-policemen, quite different from the fierce eye of a copper who can be bought. I offered them the key to my suitcase, saying that if they cared to rummage it now I could enjoy the creature comforts it contained, such as soap, clean underwear and so forth. Blackwell gave it a perfunctory rummage; Jaggard didn’t even bother to watch, we all knew that there would be nothing illegal in it. Then I indicated that I would quite like a little lie-down and they said that they were, in fact, going off duty themselves and that their guvnor, the Detective Chief Inspector, might be down for a chat when my lawyer arrived. Then they locked me in. I didn’t mind a bit – there are times when being locked in is comforting. After a quick scrub at the depleted ivory castles with Mr Eucryl’s justly-celebrated Smoker’s Dentifrice, I threw myself on the cot and sank into the arms of Morpheus. My last waking thought was one of pleasure that they had not ripped open the lining of my suitcase; it is a very expensive suitcase. Moreover, I tend to keep a few large, vulgar currency notes under the lining in case I ever need to buy a steam-yacht in a hurry.

I cannot have slept for more than an hour or so when the door made unlocking noises and I sprang to my feet – trouserless as I was – prepared to sell my life dearly. It was only a uniformed, fatherly ‘Old Bill’ who wanted to know what I would like for supper.

‘There’s a very good Chinese take-away just down the road – hoy, are you all right, sir?’

‘Fine, thank you, fine, fine. It’s just that I have an allergy to Chinese food. I’ll just have whatever’s going in the canteen.’

‘It’s rissoles tonight,’ he warned me.

‘Capital, capital. Nothing nicer. Wheel them on, do. And, ah, I daresay there’ll be a touch of HP sauce or something of that sort, eh?’

‘That and tomato sauce, sir.’

‘Oh, Sergeant,’ I said as he began to exit. ‘Yessir?’ replied the constable.

‘Do you have many Chinese chaps working in the canteen?’

‘Lord love you, no, sir. All the staff is widows of officers of the Force. Their attitude is a bit Bolshie sometimes but when they set their minds to it they make the finest fishcakes South of the Thames. It’s fishcakes tomorrow night, sir, will you be here?’

‘I hope so,’ I said sincerely. ‘Wild horses have often tried to drag me away from a well-made fishcake, with little or no success.’

The rissoles were all that a rissole-lover could wish for; they were accompanied by frozen french beans and faultless mashed potatoes, not to mention a full bottle each of HP sauce and tomato ditto, also bread and butter in abundance and a huge tin mug of strong orange-coloured tea such as I had thought only Jock could make. Tears sprang to my eyes as I slipped a packet of duty-free king-sized into ‘Old Bill’s’ kindly pocket.