The Mortdecai Trilogy (Charlie Mortdecai #1-3)(48)

‘Rising fourteen,’ she simpered, with a coy pout.

My heart sank.

‘All right, you filthy deviates – out!’ said the deputy.

They didn’t hit us when they got us back to the office, they were going off duty and had no time to spare. They simply bunged us into the Tank.

‘See you in the morning,’ they told us, cosily.

‘I demand to make a phone call.’

‘In the morning, maybe, when you’re sober.’

They left us there without even saying goodnight.

The Tank was a cube composed entirely of bars, except for the tiled floor which was covered with a thin crust of old vomit. The only furniture was an open plastic bucket which had not been emptied lately. Several kilowatts of fluorescent lighting poured pitilessly down from the ceiling high above. I could find no adequate words, but Jock rose to the occasion.

‘Well, f*ck this for a game of darts,’ he said.

‘Just so.’

We went to the corner furthest from the slop pail and propped our weary bodies against the bars. Much later, the night duty deputy appeared – an enormous, elderly fatty with a huge face like a bishop’s bottom, rosy and round and hot. He stood by the Tank and sniffed with a pained expression on his nose.

‘Youse stink like a coupla pigs or sompn,’ he said, wagging his great head. ‘Never could figure out how growed-up men could get theirselves in sich a state. I get drunk myself, times, but I don’t get myself all shitten up like pigs or sompn.’

‘It isn’t us stinking,’ I said politely, ‘it’s mostly this bucket. Do you think you could take it away?’

‘Nope. We got a cleaning lady for them chores and she’s to home by now. Anyways, say I take the bucket away, what you gonna spew into?’

‘We don’t want to be sick. We’re not drunk. We’re British diplomats and we protest strongly at this treatment, there’s going to be a big scandal when we get out of here, why don’t you let us make a phone call and do yourself a bit of good?’

He stroked his great face carefully, all over; it took quite a while.

‘Nope,’ he said at last. ‘Have to ask the sheriff and he’s to home by now. He don’t admire to be disturbed at home, ’cept for homicide of white Caucasians.’

‘Well, at least give us something to sit on, couldn’t you: I mean, look at the floor – and this suit cost me, ah, four hundred dollars.’

That fetched him, it was something he could understand. He came closer and studied my apparel carefully. Desperate for his sympathy, I straightened up and pirouetted, arms outstretched.

‘Son,’ he said finally, ‘you was robbed. Why, you could buy that same suit in Albuquerque for a hunnerd-eighty-fi’.’

But he did pass a handful of newspapers through the bars to us before he left, shaking his head. He was one of Nature’s gentlemen, I daresay.

We spread the papers on the least squamous section of the floor and lay down; the smell was not so bad at ground level. Sleep coshed me mercifully before I could even begin to dread the morrow.





16





My first thought was, he lied in every word.





Childe Roland





The sun rose like a great, boozy, red face staring into mine. On closer inspection it proved to be a great, boozy, red face staring into mine. It was also smiling stickily.

‘Wake up, son,’ the night deputy was saying, ‘you got a visitor – and you got bail!’

I sprang to my feet and sat down again promptly, squealing at the pain in my kidneys. I let him help me up but Jock managed by himself – he wouldn’t take the time of day from a policeman. Behind the deputy there gangled a long, sad man trying hard to smile out of a mouth designed only for refusing credit. He paid out a few yards of arm with a knobbly hand on the end of it which shook mine unconvincingly. For a moment I thought I recognized him.

‘Krampf,’ he said.

I studied the word but could make nothing of it as a conversational opening. In the end I said, ‘Krampf?’

‘Dr Milton Krampf III,’ he agreed.

‘Oh, sorry. C. Mortdecai.’

We let go of each other’s hands but went on mumbling civilities. Meanwhile the night deputy lumbered round me, brushing off bits of nastiness from my suit.

‘Piss off,’ I hissed at him finally – a phrase well-adapted to hissing.

Jock and I needed to wash; Krampf said he would complete the formalities of bail and collect our belongings while we did so. In the washroom I asked Jock whether he had yet recovered the key to the suitcase.

‘Christ, Mr Charlie, I only swallowed it dinnertime, di’n’t I, and I haven’t been since then.’

‘No, that’s right. I say, you couldn’t sort of try now, could you?’

‘No, I couldn’t. I just been thinking about whether I could and I can’t. I expect it’s the change of water, always binds me.’

‘Rubbish, Jock, you know you don’t drink water. Did you have much chilli sauce with your hamburgers?’

‘What, that hot stuff? Yeah.’

‘Oh good.’

The night deputy was dancing about in agony of apology: it appeared that one of the deputies had taken my pistol with him, so as to drop it off at the forensic laboratory in the morning. This was bad news, for our only other weapon was Jock’s Luger in the suitcase, whose key was, as it were, in petto. He offered to telephone for it but I had no wish to tarry: there was a teleprinter in the outer office and at any moment the British Embassy would be replying to the inquiries which someone must have put in train. The Ambassador had made it clear, you will recall, that the protection of the grand old British flag was not for me and, once repudiated, my diplomatic passport was about as valid as a nine-shilling note.