The Mortdecai Trilogy (Charlie Mortdecai #1-3)(121)
I durst not give him time to change his magazine so I shed my jacket and slung it over the bins. ‘Rooty-toot-toot’ went the Browning. That made seven rounds expended, seven to go; even I could tell that. The floor sloped down in a gentle ramp towards him. I kicked over a couple of bins which rolled down the slope, dripping pig’s blood and goodness knows what else. He shot at them, for the Dutch are cleanly folk. Ten rounds gone, four to go. I raised an unoccupied bin-lid and slammed it onto the floor; he fired two more rounds, quite wildly.
Where I had kicked the bins away I saw that there was a monstrous iron door with a lever instead of a handle. It looked like an excellent door to be behind.
‘Jackson!’ I bellowed – it seemed a plausible sort of name – ‘JACKSON! Don’t use the bombs: I’m coming out to take him myself.’ Hommel can scarcely have believed that, but he must have dithered a bit because I got that great iron door open and scrambled through it without a shot being fired at me. The room inside the door was cold as the tip of an Eskimo’s tool: it was, indeed, what the meat-trade calls a Cold Room. The lever on my side of the door had a position marked SECURE in red paint. I made it so. High up on two walls were those rubber-flap kind of entrances you see in hospitals; between them and through them ran an endless belt with large hooks. (Yes, just like a dirty weekend with a shark-fisher.) A pistol roared outside and a bullet spanged against the splendidly solid iron door. I sat with my back to the door and quaked, partly with cold, for I had discarded my jacket in that little ruse de guerre, you remember. The secure lever beside my head wagged and clicked but did not allow admission. Then I heard voices, urgent voices: the Dutchman was no longer alone. An unpleasing sort of whirring, grating noise made itself heard: evidently they had got hold of some kind of electrical tool and were working on the door-handle. Had I been a religious man I should probably have offered up a brisk prayer or two, but I am proud, you see: I mean, I never praised Him when I was knee-deep in gravy so it would have seemed shabby to apply for help from a bacon-factory.
The grating noises on the other side of the door increased: I looked about me desperately. On the wall was one of these huge electrical switches such as American Presidents use for starting World War Last. It might well set off an alarum, I thought; it might turn off all the electrical power in Mr Mycock’s bacon-factory – certainly, it couldn’t make things worse. I heaved with all my might and closed the contacts.
What happened was that pigs started trundling through the room. They were not exactly navigating under their own power, you understand, for they had all crossed The Great Divide or made the Great Change; they were hanging from the hooks on the endless belt, their contents had been neatly scooped out and were doubtless inhabiting the PET-FOOD ONLY: WASH HANDS AFTER HANDLING bin. They were the first truly happy pigs I had ever seen.
The eighth – or it may have been the ninth – pig wasn’t really a pig in the strictest sense of the word; it was a large Dutchman, fully-clothed in what would be called a suit in Amsterdam. He was hanging onto a hook with one hand and seemed to have all his entrails. His other hand brandished the Browning HPM 1935, which he fired at me as he dropped to the floor, making his fourth mistake that day. The shot took a little flesh off the side of my belly – a place where I can well afford to lose a little flesh – then he aimed carefully at the pit of my belly and squeezed the trigger again. Nothing happened. As he looked stupidly down at the empty pistol I kicked it out of his hand.
‘That was fourteen,’ I said kindly. ‘Can’t you count? Haven’t you a spare magazine?’ Dazedly, he patted the pocket where the spare magazine nested. Meanwhile, I had picked up the Browning; I clouted him on the side of the head with it. He passed no remarks, he simply subsided like a chap who has earned a night’s repose. I took the spare magazine out of his pocket, removed the empty one from the pistol (using my handkerchief to avoid leaving misleading fingerprints) and popped it into his pocket. I cannot perfectly recall what happened then, nor would you care to know. Suffice it to say that the endless belt was still churning along with its dangling hooks and, well, it seemed a good idea at the time.
It was now becoming colder every moment and I was shaking like any aspen, but even cowards derive a little warmth from a handful of Browning HPM with a full magazine. I awaited what might befall, regretting nothing but having wasted a perfectly good jacket. An indistinct voice shouted through the door.
‘Eh?’ I shouted valiantly.
‘Open up, Mr Charlie,’ shouted Jock. I opened up. Had I been one of these emotional Continental chaps, I believe I would have clasped him to my bosom.
‘We got to get out, Mr Charlie, the place’ll be crawling with Old Bill in about ten seconds flat.’ We took off at a dog-trot. To my horror, at the turn of the corridor stood Johanna, holding my Banker’s Special like a girl who knows how to use Banker’s Specials. She gave me one of those smiles which jellify the knees, but the brain remained in gear. From the direction of the entrance there came a sort of crowd-scene noise and, rising above it, the sound of patient exasperation which only policemen can make. Someone came clumping nigh and we ducked into the nearest room. There were no pigs in it. What was in it was bales and bales of newly-laundered white coats and overalls such as those who work in bacon-factories love to wear.
When the legions had thundered past we emerged, white-clad, and I was snapping orders about stretchers at Jock, calling him ‘Orderly’ and asking ‘Nurse’ if she knew how to use portable cyclometric infusion apparatus. She said she did, which was not the first time she had lied to me. The policemen at the entrance paid us no heed, they were busy keeping people out. ‘Bart’s Hospital,’ I snapped at the taxi-driver, ‘casualty entrance. Emergency: use your horn.’ At Bart’s we dispersed, shedding white clothing, found the main entrance and took three separate taxis home. I arrived first – I needed that healing drink.