The Mortdecai Trilogy (Charlie Mortdecai #1-3)(47)

‘Of course I do, I’m not a complete bloody idiot. ‘Patsy’ is the word over here, I believe.’

‘You could just be mistaken there,’ the other agent said gently. ‘You have no cogent reason for supposing that Mrs Krampf is other than sincere in her feelings toward you; certainly none for supposing that she has set you up.’

I snarled.

‘Mr. Mortdecai, I don’t wish to be impertinent, but may I ask whether you have had a wide experience of women?’

‘Some of my best friends are women,’ I snapped, ‘though I certainly wouldn’t want my daughter to marry one of them.’

‘I see. Well, I think we need not keep you from your journey any longer, Sir. The sheriff will be told that you did not kill Mr Krampf and since you no longer seem to be a possible embarrassment to Washington we have no further interest in you just now. If we turn out to be wrong we shall, uh, be able to find you, of course.’

‘Of course,’ I agreed.

As they crossed the room I rummaged desperately in my poor jumbled brain and picked out the big, knobbly question that hadn’t been asked.

‘Who did kill Krampf?’ I asked.

They paused and looked back at me blankly.

‘We don’t have the faintest idea. We came down here to do it ourselves so it doesn’t matter too much.’

It was a lovely exit line, you must admit.

‘Could I have a drop more whisky, Mr Charlie?’

‘Yes, of course, Jock, do; it’ll bring the roses back into your cheeks.’

‘Ta. Glug, suck. Aarhh. Well, that’s all right then, isn’t it, Mr Charlie?’

I rounded on him savagely.

‘Of course it’s not all right, you sodding idiot, those two goons have every intention of stamping on both of us as soon as we’re well away from here. Look, you think those deputies out there are pigs? Well, they’re bloody suffragettes beside those two mealy-mouthed murderers – these are genuine Presidential trouble-shooters and the trouble is us.’

‘I don’t get it. Why di’n’t they shoot us then?’

‘Oh Christ Jock, look, would Mr Martland shoot us if he thought it was a good idea?’

‘Yeah, ’course.’

‘But would he do it in Half Moon Street Police Station in front of all the regular coppers?’

‘No, ’course not. Oh, I get it. Ooh.’

‘I’m sorry I called you a sodding idiot, Jock.’

‘That’s all right, Mr Charlie, you was a bit worked up, I expect.’

‘Yes, Jock.’

The sheriff came in and gave us back the contents of our pockets, including my Banker’s Special. The cartridges were in a separate envelope. He was no longer urbane, he hated us now very much.

‘I have been instructed,’ he said, like a man spitting out fishbones, ‘not to book you for the murder you committed yesterday. There is a cab outside and I would like for you to get into it and get out of this county and never come back.’ He shut his eyes very tightly and kept them shut as though hoping to wake up in a different time stream, one in which C. Mortdecai and J. Strapp had never been born.

We tiptoed out.

The deputies were in the outer office, standing tall, wearing the mindless sneers of their kind. I walked up close to the larger and nastier of the two.

‘Your mother and father only met once,’ I said carefully, ‘and money changed hands. Probably a dime.’

As we pushed the street door open Jock said, ‘What’s a dime in English money, Mr Charlie?’

A huge, dishevelled car was quaking and farting at the curb outside. The driver, an evident alcoholic, told us that it was a fine evening and I could not find it in my heart to contradict him. He explained, as we climbed in, that he had another passenger to pick up en route and there she was on the next corner, as sweet and saucy a little wench as you could wish for.

She sat between us, smoothing her minimal print skirt over her naughty dimpled thighs and smiling up at us like a fallen angel. There’s nothing like a pretty little girl to take a fellow’s mind off his troubles, is there, especially when she looks as though she can be had. She told us that her name was Cinderella Gottschalk and we believed her – I mean, she couldn’t have made it up, could she – and Jock gave her the last drink in the bottle. She said that she declared it was real crazy drinking liquor or words to that effect. She wore her cute little breasts high up under her chin, the way they used to in the ’fifties, you remember. In short, we had become firm friends and were ten miles out of town before a car behind us hit its siren and pulled out alongside. Our driver was giggling as he pulled over to the side and stopped. The official car shrieked to a rocking halt across our bows and out leaped the same two deputies, wearing the same sneers and pointing the same pistols.

‘Oh my Gawd,’ said Jock – a phrase I have repeatedly asked him not to use – ‘what now?’

‘They probably forgot to ask me where I get my hair done,’ I said bravely. But it wasn’t that. They yanked the door open and addressed our little Southern Belle.

‘Parm me, Miss, how old are you?’

‘Why, Jed Tuttle,’ she sniggered, ‘you know mah age jest as well as …’

‘The age, Cindy,’ he snapped.