The Mortdecai Trilogy (Charlie Mortdecai #1-3)(124)

‘I’m not going in there,’ I said.

‘Neither am I. My desk will be chin-high with paper-work, all marked “Urgent”. I’m just stopping here because the cops won’t give me a bad time; the number of this car is on the privilege list.’

‘How the other half lives, to be sure,’ I murmured.

‘Now, Mr Mortdecai; your questions. First, you have been working for the United Nations. OK, laugh, enjoy, enjoy. But you have. My own Agency co-operates closely with that particular branch of UNO and I can say most sincerely that in the last few weeks we have achieved some very, very spectacular results.’ I probably said something feeble like ‘Well done’ but he ignored whatever it was and continued.

‘Your second question – “has it finished now?” – I can only answer with a kind of qualified “yes”. Your third question – the one about whether you get to stay alive – is a little tough. So far as my bosses are concerned I think I can say that there is now no problem.’ He turned and looked at me as though trying to puzzle out why anyone like me should want to stay alive. I squared my shoulders and looked as haughty as one can in the passenger-seat of a little Fiat. ‘But, Mr Mortdecai, I’m sure you understand that in an operation as complex as this there are many, many loose ends which take a while to sort of mop up and winkle out and we could not of course justify in our budget an expense like protecting, say, you, around the clock for the next few months. I’m sure you see that.’

‘I quite see that,’ I said, ignoring his garish mixture of metaphors.

‘Have you ever thought of the Seychelles?’ he asked. ‘The Antilles? Samoa? The Virgin Islands?’ I turned upon him a stony glare which should have made him think of Easter Island.

‘Well, how about the Channel Islands? Your wife has a half-share in a really beautiful mansion there.’ I hadn’t known that, but there were many things I didn’t know about Johanna in those days.

‘How do you know that?’ I demanded.

He fixed me with that pitying look with which people often fix me when they have decided that I am simple-minded. Often, if the circumstances are propitious, I wipe off the pitying look with what Jock calls a ‘bunch of fives’, but the passenger-seat of a right-hand drive Topolino is not what I would call a propitious circumstance: the only possible blow would be a round-house left – and the driving-mirror was in the way. Moreover, I was giving away fifteen years, not to mention thirty pounds of self-indulgence.

‘I have always longed to visit the Isle of Jersey,’ is what I said.

You must guard against hating people or even things: it is easy to become like what you hate. Victory at Entebbe destroys us more surely than defeat at Kursk. I did not hate Blucher at all as he drove me home, although I had to work hard at it.

Johanna was not at home but Jock was, of course. His good eye seemed to look at Blucher almost benignly; had I not been preoccupied with other matters – like life and death – I might have thought this strange, for Jock has never been one to betray a liking for the fuzz. I offered Blucher an assortment of chairs, bade Jock supply him with anything he might long for in the way of drinks or eatables, then melted away apologetically as a host melts when he wishes to put the cat out. What I urgently wanted was to get under the shower and refresh the frame with newly-laundred gents’ underwear, half-hose and shirtings as now worn.

I indulged myself, as ever; it must have been quite half an hour before I reappeared, sweet-smelling and freshly clad, in the drawing-room, secure in the expectation that Blucher would have taken his leave. I was wrong, of course. What he had taken was the infernal liberty of sitting next to my wife, Johanna, on the little Louis Quinze sofa which is not designed to support two people unless the two people do not happen to mind a certain intimacy, a certain warm proximity of hip and thigh. They were chuckling, I heard them distinctly. I do not often stand aghast but aghast was what I stood then.

‘Charlie dear,’ cried Johanna, ‘we thought you were never coming. Do sit, darling; have something to drink, you must be tired.’ I sat in the least comfortable chair in the room and forced a drink between my unwilling lips. (This was, you understand, only to mask or muffle the grinding of my teeth.)

‘Ah, well, Blucher,’ I said, ‘I see that you have made the acquaintance of my wife. Good, splendid, yes.’

‘Darling, we’ve known each other for ages and ages … ’ Blucher looked at her and nodded knowingly, lovingly. I took another gulp of whisky to disguise the gnashing. No conversational gambit offered itself to me; I merely glowered at the few square inches of carpet between my feet.

‘Charlie, dear, you’re not being the perfect host tonight–couldn’t you sort of tell your guest a funny story or something? I mean, he did save your life, huh?’ I lost patience at that point. All bets were off.

‘Look,’ rasped, ‘this guest of mine – perhaps I should say ours – sold me my life. The price was that I married you. I liked being married to you until about five minutes ago, I really did, although the, er, extramarital tasks have been a little trying. But he didn’t save my life, he bought and sold it.’

Johanna put onto her face that sweet, tolerant look of a Spock-trained mother whose child has just wet the bed for the third time that night.

‘You don’t have it quite right, Charlie dear. As a matter of fact, our guest figured that it would be tidiest to sort of terminate you long ago. It was I who bought your life.’ My brain started to feel like one of those cages where white mice run happily, mindlessly in a wire treadmill.