The Mortdecai Trilogy (Charlie Mortdecai #1-3)(62)

I emerged.

An enormous light burst out but, unaccountably, it was pointed not at me but in the opposite direction. It illumined not me but a pallid, startled Martland. Well, at least I could fulfil that part of my programme. He peered down the beam at me, making urgent little movements with his hands.

‘Martland,’ I said. I had never heard myself use that voice before but I knew that there was no need for more than the one word.

He opened his mouth. It seemed difficult for him. Perhaps he was going to remind me that we had been at school together. I couldn’t find it in my heart to shoot anyone looking as soppy as he did, but my trigger-finger had a life of its own. The pistol jumped hard in my hand and a puff of dust bounced out of his trousers just below the belt-buckle.

I gazed at the spot, entranced. There wasn’t any blood; you couldn’t even see a hole. Martland looked puzzled, vexed even. He sat down hard on his bottom and looked at me, cross and disappointed. Then he started dying and it was rather dreadful and went on and on and made me feel even more ill than I was and I couldn’t bear it and I shot him again and again but I couldn’t seem to make him stop dying.

Whoever was working the searchlight finally tore himself away from the spectacle and nailed me with the beam. I clicked the revolver three or four times – empty as Mortdecai now – three or four times up into the glaring eye of the light, threw it as hard as I could, missed again.

‘Mr Mortdecai,’ said a polite American voice.

I whipped around, eyes tearing at the darkness, my gut hungry for the coming of the bullets.

‘No, Mr Mortdecai,’ the voice went on, ‘please compose yourself. Nobody’s killing anyone else tonight. Everything’s going to be all right. I mean, really all right.’

You cannot imagine how disappointing it is to be all braced for death and then to find, at the very moment of truth, that they’re not frying tonight. I sort of suddenly found myself sitting down and weeping noisily; the sobs tore through my breast like the bullets that hadn’t.

They gave me a flask of whisky and I was sick again and again but at last I kept some down and then there was a dull, silencer plop from Martland’s direction and the noises of his dying stopped and then the woman got me to my feet and helped me down the slope and across the road and up into Fleagarth Wood and to their tent. She was very strong and smelled of old fur coats. I was asleep as I hit the groundsheet.





2 Mortdecai finds that his Maker does not want to meet him





… when the steam

Floats up from those dim fields about the homes

Of happy men that have the power to die …





Tithonus





The woman woke me up a few moments later. The moments must have been hours, actually, for a dank and dirty dawn was oozing into the tent. I squealed angrily and burrowed back down into the sleeping-bag: it smelled of nasty policewomen but I loved it – there were no people there. She coaxed me awake with a finger-and-thumb-nail in the ear-lobe: she must have found that in the works of Lord Baden-Powell. (Don’t you often wonder what B.P. would have done for a living if he had lived in these times? Oxfam? Peace Corps?)

She had won her Camp Cookery Badge, that was clear, for the mug of tea wheedled into my quaking fingers was of no tenderfoot quality. I, personally, have no quarrel with Evaporated Milk: it lends a heartening, lusty thickness to cheap tea which, once in a while, I find most gratifying.

Then she made me wash and shave (she lent me a tiny razor with a pink plastic handle: it was called ‘Miaouw’ – why?) and then she showed me where the Elsan was and then we went, hand in hand, down through the wood to where a huge American camper-van was parked just off the road. We climbed in. Two other people were there already. One was on a stretcher, covered all over with a blanket. Well, Martland, obviously. I didn’t have any feelings about that. Not then. Later, perhaps. The other was the American, gabbling gibberish into a wireless set which was quacking back at him. He was, it fuzzily seemed to me, patiently telling someone to get into touch with someone else who would authorize yet another someone to blah-blah. He was very polite to the quacker. At last he went through the ‘Roger and out’ nonsense, switched off all the little knobs and turned around, giving me a smile which was quite unwarranted, considering how early in the day it was. He proved to be a man called Colonel Blucher, whom I had met before. We had never actually hit each other.

‘Good morning, Mr Mortdecai,’ he said, still smiling in that unwarranted way.

‘Oink,’ I said. There was, clearly, something pretty wrong with me still, for I had meant to be a trifle civiller than that, but ‘Oink’ was what came out.

He blinked a little but took no offence.

‘I’m very, very sorry to have to rouse you so early, Mr Mortdecai, for I recall that you are not an early riser. You must be very tired still?’

I was more articulate this time.

‘Oinkle oink,’ I said courteously. It was the strangest feeling: the words were perfectly clear in my head but all I could produce were these farmyard imitations. Distraught, I sat down heavily and put my head in my hands. A sort of juicy noise underneath me and a sort of knobbly softness made me realize that I was sitting on Martland. I jumped up again, squeaking. Blucher was looking worried so, naturally, I tried to hit him, didn’t I? I mean, it seemed a sensible thing to do at the time. But my wild swing only threw me flat on my face and I started to cry again. I wanted my mummy badly, but I knew she wouldn’t be coming: she never did, you know, even when she was alive. She was one of those Mums who believe that Christopher Robin kills all known germs. A kind of literary Harpic.