The Mortdecai Trilogy (Charlie Mortdecai #1-3)(116)

Stomach assuaged for the nonce, I was about to fling myself once more onto the cot when my eye fell upon the telephone, which Jaggard and Blackwell had carelessly left in my room or cell. I lifted the receiver and applied it to my ear. It was giving off a dialling-tone which meant that they had left it through to an open line.

‘Oh, really,’ I thought. I mean, people don’t achieve the rank of DI, or even DS, if they inadvertently leave live telephones about in the cells of International Art Thieves. I applied myself to the problem of how best to squeeze a little gravy out of the situation. At last I decided to muddy the wells of investigatory technique by telephoning Pete the Welshman – a person who often works for me. I should explain that all those people who work for art-dealers – re-liners, restorers, mount-cutters, frame-makers, etc. – are congenital liars and thieves: they observe that their masters sometimes depart from the truth and soon come to believe that mendacity and peculation are all that is required to make a fortune in the fine art trade. How wrong they are, to be sure. Pete is also a Welshman and a fervent chapel-goer, which puts him well ahead of the game. I dialled his number.

‘Hello, Pete,’ I said. ‘You know who this is, don’t you?’

‘Do you know what f*cking time of night it is?’ he snarled.

‘Look, Pete, let’s save the social amenities; this is business. You know that big job …?’

‘Ah,’ he lied unhesitatingly.

‘Dump it,’ I said. ‘Forget it. You never saw it. Right?’

‘Right,’ he said. A casual listener – and I knew that there would be several – would believe that Pete knew what I was talking about. They would have been wrong. I hung up.

I reckoned that that little chat should guarantee me at least another twenty-four hours in the security of that stoutly-constructed nick. I decided on a digestive nap; fell asleep to dream of fishcakes on the morrow.





20 Mortdecai, crazed by the thought of fishcakes and terrified by the thought of liberty, is held in contempt of court, to name but one.





This madness has come on us for our sins





The Holy Grail





My lawyer woke me up to tell me that no one, after all, wanted to interrogate me that night and was there anything else I wanted. Half-awake, I imprudently told him that what I wanted more than anything was to spend a lengthy sojourn in this very room or cell, for fate’s fickle finger was feeling for my fundament and I had to find out, somehow, before I was released, who was on whose side, the only certainty being that no one was on mine. When I say that I said this imprudently, I mean that, had I been fully in my senses, I’d have realized that the place probably boasted more bugs than a Sailors’ Mission Refuge. He semaphored meaningfully with his eyebrows – only lawyers nowadays seem to be able to grow eyebrows, even bank managers seem to have lost the art – and I shut up. He said that he would be in court in the morning and warned me sadly, but with a huge wink, that I must prepare myself to be remanded in custody for weeks and weeks. Then he goodnighted me, I changed into pyjamas and in a trice was sleeping the sleep of the unjust, which is quite as dreamless as the sleep of the just if the unjust sleeper has a litre of Red Hackle on his bedside table.

I was awakened by the arrival of another great mug of orange-hued tea and a dish of eggs and bacon. Dawn’s left hand was in the sky. The e’s and b would not have brought a smile to the face of Egon Ronay but I plied a lusty knife and fork, knowing that I must keep my strength up. The journey to the magistrate’s court was on my mind, of course: the route thereto was doubtless thick with Chinese snipers faisant la haie.

As it turned out, those fears were groundless, for this de-luxe cop-shop had its own magistrate and mini-court on the premises. It was a cosy little gathering: one ill-shaven Mortdecai escorted by one kindly turnkey, one magistrate who exhibited all the signs of a magistrate who has not had enough sleep, one lawyer giving me the blank sort of look which means ‘keep your mouth shut and leave this to me’, one haggard Detective Inspector Jaggard glaring at his notebook as though it had said something rude to him; one world-weary clerk and – to my dismay – one Johanna looking quite ravishing in an oxlip-yellow suit and hat.

The clerk droned legally for a while; Jaggard put on a joke-policeman voice while he read bits from his notebook about how he had proceeded from here to there on information received … but I must not trouble you with such minutiae: I am sure that you have been in magistrates’ courts yourselves. Just as I was expecting the blessed words which would remand the prisoner, C. Mortdecai, in custody for weeks and weeks, revelling in fishcakes far from the madding Triads, the blow fell. My treacherous lawyer rose and submitted that the prisoner’s wife, Mrs C. Mortdecai, had received a visit, late the previous night, from a Fr T. Rosenthal, SJ, who had explained how – after some muddle at Immigration – he had found himself in possession of a passport in the name of Mortdecai. And could he have his own passport back, please. And, no, he couldn’t be produced in court because he had gone into Retreat at Heythrop and the Preliminary Confession alone would take some twelve hours, not to mention the penance after. ‘Just an absurd muddle,’ said my brief, avoiding my glance, ‘great credit to the vigilance of the police etc. etc.’

I opened my mouth to claim that I was clearly an International Art Thief and deserved more courtesy than this but then I remembered that I had only been charged with Illegal Entry into Her Majesty’s Domains. No word of Rouault or his gouaches had passed anyone’s lips.