The Mortdecai Trilogy (Charlie Mortdecai #1-3)(22)

‘Never mind,’ I said, kindly, ‘I know how you feel. Mine hurts too. It seems to me that the villain poked his celly into the lock just to trigger the alarm, then lay in wait in the lift. When you popped out, he popped down, to draw you away. Then up again to the third, knowing you would wait for him downstairs like a sensible chap; out of the lift and up to the fifth on foot, knowing that he could handle me alone. Having done so, he hears you arrive, hides behind a door and exits quietly while you are succouring the young master. The whole idea was to get me alone with the door open and you safely out of the way for a few minutes. What we need to wonder is not how, or even who, but why.’

‘Taking something …’

‘If so, it must have been something portable, easily found – because he can’t have expected much time – and something very important to make the risk worthwhile. Something recently arrived, too, probably, because there is a sort of impromptu aroma about the whole thing.’

‘ … or leaving something,’ Jock continued with remorseless logic.

I jumped, making my headache rear up and smite me. It was a nasty thought, that one.

‘What on earth would anyone want to leave here?’ I squeaked, dreading the answer.

‘Well, like a bug,’ said Jock. ‘Or a couple of ounces of heroin, enough to put you inside for twelve munce. Or say arf a pound of plastic explosive …’

‘I am going back to bed,’ I said firmly. ‘I want no part of any of this. Nobody ordered bombs.’

‘No, Mr Charlie, you got to go to this assistant secretary geezer. I’ll nip round to the garage and fetch the big jam jar.’

‘What, and leave me alone in a flat sown with Teller mines?’ I wailed.

But he was gone. Grumbling bitterly I climbed into a random assortment of gents’ wear and crept through the flat and downstairs. Nothing exploded under my feet.

Jock was awaiting me at street level in the Rolls and as a special treat for me he was wearing his chauffeur’s cap. When we arrived at the Ministry he even jumped out and opened the door for me; he knew it would cheer me up, bless him.

Do you know, I honestly can’t remember which Ministry it was; this was soon after the Wilson administration, you see, and you remember how he muddled them all up and changed all the names. They say that there are still a few lorn civil servants haunting the pavements of Whitehall like ghosts, plucking at strangers’ sleeves and begging to be told the way to the Ministry of Technological Integration. Their salaries keep on coming, of course, because of Giro, but what really hurts them most is that their Ministries haven’t missed them yet.

Be that as it may, Jock left me at this Ministry and various super young men passed me through door after door – each young man more beautifully dressed, each door heavier and silenter than the last – until I was alone with L.J. Crouch. I had fortified myself against a sort of English Colonel Blucher but nothing could have been further from the facts. A great, jolly, big-boned, straw-haired chap lowered his boots from a well-chewed desk and lumbered to meet me, beaming merrily.

‘Ha!’ he roared, ‘Capital! Glad to see you on your feet, young feller! Best thing after a crunch – get up and charge about. Nil illegitimis carborundum, eh? Don’t let the bastards wear you down!’

I tittered feebly and sank into the fat leather armchair he indicated. Cigars, whisky and soda were conjured into my listless hands while I gazed around me. The furniture, unmistakably, came from a better class vicarage: all well made but sort of trodden on. In front of me, above his chair, sixty rat-faced boys squinted and goggled at me from a prep school group photograph; above them hung a piece of an Eights oar, splintered and charred and bearing the colours of St. Edmund Hall. In a corner sat an old brass naval shell-case, crammed with stout sticks and fencing foils of the old butterfly-hilted fleuret pattern. Two walls were hung with early English watercolours of the good, drab, bluish kind. Nothing is more tedious, as Sir Karl Parker used to say, than an early English watercolour – unless it be a faded early English watercolour. But I cut my business teeth on them and always hold them in respect.

‘Know about watercolours?’ asked Crouch, following my gaze.

‘A bit,’ I said, looking him straight in the eye. ‘You have a J. M. W. Turner of the Loire which can’t be right because the original is in the Ashmolean; a magnificent Callow of about 1840; a Farington which needs cleaning; a polychrome James Bourne – rare, those; a Peter de Wint hayfield with a repainted sky; an excellent John Sell Cotman; a pair of rather flashy Varleys from his last period; a Payne which was reproduced in Connoisseur before the war; a Rowlandson which Sabine had for sale in about 1940; a Francis Nicholson of Scarborough all faded pink – he would use indigo; a valuable Cozens and the finest Edridge I have ever seen.’

‘My word,’ he said. ‘Full marks, Mortdecai. I see you know about watercolours.’

‘Can’t resist showing off,’ I said sheepishly. ‘Just a knack, really.’

‘Mind you, the Edridge was sold me as a Girtin.’

‘They always are,’ I said simply.

‘Well, come on, what’ll you give me for the lot?’

A dealer has to get used to this sort of thing. I used to take offence once upon a time, before I learned the value of money.

‘Two thousand, two hundred and fifty,’ I said, still looking him straight in the eye. He was startled.