The Mortdecai Trilogy (Charlie Mortdecai #1-3)(5)
‘Northampton Park, Canonbury?’ I tittered, ‘since when has old Martland been calling it Canonbury?’
They both smiled at me, kindly. It was almost as bad as Jock’s civil smile. My body temperature dropped quite two degrees, I could feel it. Fahrenheit of course: I have no wish to exaggerate.
‘I mean, it’s hardly even Islington,’ I babbled on, diminuendo, ‘more Newington Green if you ask me; I mean, what a ridiculous …’
I had just noticed that the interior of the chance cruising taxi was short of a few of the usual fitments, like notices about fares, advertisements, door handles. What it did have was a radio-telephone and a single handcuff attached to a ring-bolt in the floor. I sort of fell silent.
They didn’t seem to think they needed the handcuff; they sat and looked at me thoughtfully, almost kindly, as though they were aunts wondering what I would like for tea.
We drew up in front of Martland’s house just as his basket-work Mini trundled in from the Balls Pond Road end. It parked itself rather badly and disgorged Martland, cross and drenched.
This was both good and bad.
Good, because it meant that Martland couldn’t have stayed very long at the siege of my flat: Jock had evidently interlocked all the alarms as instructed and Martland, as he masterfully celluloided his way through my front door, would have been met by a Bull-O-Bashan Mk IV siren and a mightly deluge from the automatic fire sprinklers. Moreover, a piercingly strident bell, inaccessibly high on the street-front wall, would have joined in the fun and lights would have flashed in Half Moon Street Police Station and in the Bruton Street depot of an internationally known security organization which I always call Set-a-Thief. A dinky little Japanese frame-a-second robot camera would have been snapping away from its eyrie in the chandelier and, worst of all, the termagant concierge would have come raging up the stairs, her malignant tongue cracking like a Boer’s stock whip.
Long before I made friends with Mr Spinoza he had asked some of his friends to ‘do my pad’ as they say, so I knew the general form. The noise of bells and sirens indescribable, the water ineluctable, the conflict of burly Z-car chaps, hairy-assed Security chaps and ordinary villains quite dreadful and, riding clear and hideous over all, the intolerable scourging of the concierge’s tongue, not to be borne. Poor Martland, I thought happily.
Perhaps I should explain that –
(a) The SPG people obviously carry no identification and take care not to be known to the ordinary police, for some of their work consists in sorting out naughty coppers
(b) Certain rats of the underworld have recently, with singular providence, done some deliberately clumsy and nasty ‘jobs’ while posing as SPG
(c) The ordinary police are not particularly keen even on real SPG men and
(d) The mindless bullies in my Security firm always release their pepper guns, two-way radios, aniline dye sprays, Dobermann Pinscher dogs and rubber coshes long before they ask any questions.
Goodness, what a mess it must have been. And thanks to the little camera I would certainly get the whole flat handsomely redecorated by Mrs. Spon – long overdue, I must say – at someone else’s expense.
Goodness, too, how cross Martland must be.
Yes, that was the bad bit, of course. He snapped me one pale glare as he bounded noiselessly (fat men move with surprising grace etc.) up the steps, dropped his keys, dropped his hat, stood on it, and finally preceded us into the house. No good for C. Mortdecai was what I reckoned all that boded. Plug Ugly II, as he stood aside to let me pass, looked at me so kindly that I felt my breakfast frothing in the small intestine. Clenching my buttocks bravely I sauntered in and with a tolerant snigger surveyed what he probably called The Lounge. I had not seen curtains of that pattern since I seduced the House Mother in my Approved School; the carpet was a refugee from a provincial cinema foyer and the wallpaper had little silver-grey flock fleurs-de-lis. Yes, truly. All spotlessly clean, of course. You could have eaten your dinner off them, if you kept your eyes closed.
They said I could sit down, in fact they urged me to. I could feel my liver, heavy and sullen, crowding my heart. I no longer wanted any luncheon.
Martland, reappearing reclothed, dry, was quite himself again and full of fun.
‘Well well well,’ he cried, rubbing his hands, ‘well, well.’
‘I must be off now,’ I said firmly.
‘No no no,’ he cried, ‘why, you’ve only just come. What would you like to drink?’
‘Some whisky, please.’
‘Jolly good.’ He poured himself a big one but me none. ‘Har, har,’ I thought.
‘Har, har,’ I said, out loud, brave.
‘Ho, ho,’ he riposted archly.
We sat in silence then for quite five minutes, they obviously waiting for me to start to babble protestingly, me determined to do nothing of the kind, but just worrying a little about making Martland any crosser. The minutes wagged on. I could hear a large, cheap watch ticking in the waistcoat of one of the Plug Uglies, that’s how old-fashioned they were. A little immigrant child ran past on the pavement outside shrieking ‘M’Gawa! M’Gawa!’ or words to that effect. Martland’s face had relaxed into the complacent smirk of the master of a lordly house, surrounded by friends and loved ones, sated with port and good talk. The hot, itchy, distant-traffic-buzzing silence fretted on. I wanted to go to the lavatory. They kept on looking at me, politely, attentively. Capably.