The Mortdecai Trilogy (Charlie Mortdecai #1-3)(4)

‘Yeah, he said a dirty word.’

‘Yes, he would, I suppose.’

‘Yeah.’

I embarked on the quotidian schrecklichkeit of getting up. With occasional help from Jock I weaned myself gingerly from shower to razor, from dexedrine to intolerable decision about necktie; arriving safely, forty minutes later, at the bourne of breakfast, the only breakfast worth the name, the cheminot’s breakfast, the great bowl of coffee laced and gadrooned and filigreed with rum. I was up. I had not been sick. The snail was on the thorn, to name but one.

‘I don’t think we’ve got a green Homburg, Mr Charlie.’

‘It’s all right, Jock.’

‘I could send the porter’s little girl over to Lock’s if you like?’

‘No, it’s all right, Jock.’

‘She’d go for half a crown.’

‘No, it’s all right, Jock.’

‘O.K., Mr Charlie.’

‘You must be out of the flat in ten minutes, Jock. No guns or anything like that left here, of course. All alarms turned on and interlocked. Foto-Rekorda loaded with film and cocked – you know.’

‘Yeah, I know.’

‘Yeah,’ I said, draping an extra set of inverted commas around the word, like the verbal snob I am.

Picture, then, this portly lecher swishing down Upper Brook Street, W.I, all sails set for St. James’s Park and high adventure. A tiny muscle twitching in the cheek – perhaps in the best tradition – but otherwise outwardly urbane, poised, ready to buy a bunch of violets from the first drab and toss her a golden sov.; Captain Hugh Drummond-Mortdecai MC, with a music-hall song on his whistling lips and a fold of silk underpants trapped between his well-powdered buttocks, bless him.

They were after me from the moment I emerged, of course–well, not actually after me because it was a ‘front tail’ and very prettily done too: the SPG boys have a year’s training, for God’s sake – but they didn’t pick me up at noon as predicted. Back and forth I went past the pond (saying unforgivable things to my friend the pelican) but all they did was pretend to examine the insides of their absurd hats (bursting with two-way radios, no doubt) and make furtive signals to each other with their red, knobbly hands. I was really beginning to think that I had overrated Martland and was just about to beat up to the Reform Club and make someone give me luncheon – their cold table is the best in the world you know – when:

There they were. One on each side of me. Enormous, righteous, capable, deadly, stupid, unscrupulous, grave, watchful, hating me gently.

One of them laid a restraining hand on my wrist.

‘Be off with you,’ I quavered. ‘Where do you think you are – Hyde Park?’

‘Mr Mortdecai?’ he grumbled capably.

‘Stop grumbling capably at me,’ I protested, ‘this is, as you well know, I.’

‘Then I must ask you to come along with me, Sir.’

I gazed at the man. I had no idea that people still said that. Is ‘dumbfounded’ the word I want?

‘Eh?’ I said, quoting freely from Jock.

‘You must come along o’me, Sir.’ He was working well now, really settling in to the part.

‘Where are you taking me?’

‘Where would you like to go, Sir?’

‘Well, er … home?’

‘I’m afraid that wouldn’t do, Sir. We wouldn’t have our equipment there, you see.’

‘Equipment? Oh, yes. I quite see. Goodness.’ I counted my pulse, my corpuscles and a few other necessary parts. Equipment. Dammit, Martland and I had been at school together. They were trying to frighten me, clearly.

‘You are trying to frighten me, clearly,’ I said.

‘No, Sir. Not yet we aren’t, Sir.’

Can you think of a really smart answer to that one? Neither could I.

‘Oh well then. Off to Scotland Yard, I suppose?’ I said brightly, not really hoping much.

‘No, really, Sir, that wouldn’t do, you know that. They’re dead narrow-minded there. We thought perhaps our Cottage Hospital, out Esher way.’

Martland had once, in an expansive moment, told me about the ‘Cottage Hospital’ – it had given me horrid dreams for days afterward.

‘No no no no, no no no,’ I cried jovially, ‘I couldn’t dream of taking you lads so far out of your way.’

‘Well then,’ said Plug Ugly II, giving tongue for the first time, ‘what about your little place in the country, down by Stoke Poges?’

I must admit that here I may have blenched a trifle. My private life is an open book for all to read but I did think that ‘Possets’ was a retreat known only to a few intimate friends. There was nothing that you could call illegal there but I do have a few bits of equipment myself which other folk might think a bit frivolous. A bit Mr Norris – you know.

‘Country cottage?’ I riposted, quick as a flash. ‘Countrycottage countrycottage countrycottage?’

‘Yes, Sir,’ said Plug Ugly II.

‘Nice and private,’ quipped his straight man.

After a few false starts I suggested (unruffled now, suave, cool) that what would be nicest of all would be to go and call on old Martland; delightful chap, was at school with me. They seemed happy to fall in with any suggestion I made so long as it was that one, and next thing all three of us were bundling into a chance cruising taxi and P.U.II was mumbling an address into the cabby’s ear, as though I didn’t know Martland’s address as well as my own tax code.