The Mortdecai Trilogy (Charlie Mortdecai #1-3)(97)

‘Yes, well, goodbye now, sir, we really can’t detain you any longer.’

‘Oh, but if I can be of any further help …’

‘No, sir; what I meant to say was that I’m sorry we can’t detain you. In custody, as they say. Like, for instance, dropping you in the Quiet Room for a couple of days and then having two or three of the lads beat the shit out of you until you told us what this caper is all about. Would have been nice,’ he added thoughtfully. ‘You know, interesting. We jacks are an inquisitive lot, see?’ I may have gulped a little at this point.

‘But you seem to have some very heavy friends, sir, so I will just bid you a friendly farewell. For now.’ He shook me warmly by the hand.

Outside, waiting for me, there was one of those lovely black cars which only police-forces can afford. The uniformed driver opened the door for me. ‘Where to, sir?’ he asked in a uniformed sort of voice.

‘Well,’ I said, ‘as a matter of fact I have a car of my own which I sort of left just off the road about, let’s see, about twenty miles away; it’s a …’

‘We know where your car is, sir,’ he said.





15 Mortdecai loses faith in matrimony, takes holy orders pro tem and sees a dentist more frightened than a dentist’s client





But the jingling of the guinea helps the hurt that Honour feels





Locksley Hall





When your kitchen sink is blocked and you have to summon a plumber because both it and the maid are making threatening noises, he – the plumber – unscrews the thingummy at the bottom of the wonderfully aptly-named U-trap and shows you triumphantly the mass of detritus that he has liberated from it, with all the pride of a young mother exhibiting the malevolent squashed-tomato which she assures you is a baby. This great, greasy gobbet of nastiness (I refer, of course, to the sink-occlusion, not to the family-planning error) proves to be a closely-matted cupful of vegetable-peelings, pubic hair and nameless, grey, fatty matter.

What I am trying to describe is the condition of the enfeebled Mortdecai brain on its – my – return to the Training College or Command Post or whatever.

‘Ah, Mortdecai,’ growled the Commandant gruffly.

‘Charlie, dear!’ cried Johanna.

‘Drink?’ I muttered, subsiding into an armchair.

‘Drink!’ snapped Johanna absently. The Commandant leapt to the booze-cupboard and made me a drink with surprising alacrity and rather too much soda-water. I filed the surprising-alacrity bit away into that part of my mind where I file things which I must think about when I feel stronger. Then I filed the whisky and s. into the most confidential part of the Mortdecai system and called for another.

‘So you found him, Charlie dear?’

‘Yes.’ A thought squirmed in my brain. ‘How did you know?’ (I had, you see, telephoned no one but Colonel Blucher.)

‘Just guessed, darling. And you wouldn’t be back so soon if you were still looking for him, would you?’

‘Glib,’ I thought bitterly. ‘Glib, glib.’ I often bitterly think words like ‘glib, glib’ after listening to things which women have said; I’m sure I’m not alone in this.

‘And how are you, Charlie? I hope it wasn’t a horrid experience?’

‘Not at all,’ I replied bitterly. ‘Wonderful shake-up. As good as a week at the seaside. Stimulating. Refreshing.’ I gargled a little more.

‘Do tell us all about it,’ she murmured when the noises had died down. I told her almost all about it. From A to, let us say, W – omitting X, you see.

‘And of course you wrote down the number of the nice, new, fresh ten-pound note, Charlie?’

‘Naturally,’ I said. Two panic-stricken glares focused upon me.

‘But only,’ I added smugly, ‘upon the tablets of my memory.’ Two batches of panic-stricken female breath were exhaled. I raised an eyebrow of the kind my mother used to raise when parsons preached unsound doctrine at Mattins. They gazed at me expectantly while I pretended to ransack my memory; then the Commandant took the hint and refilled my glass. I delivered the serial-number of the note in a gift-wrapped sort of way. They wrote it down, then the Commandant went to her desk and fiddled with absurd secret drawers (look, there are only just so many places in a bureau where a secret drawer can lurk – ask any antique-dealer) and produced a slim little book. They compared the number I had given them with the nonsense in the slim little book, looking cross, grave and worried in that order until I lost patience and rose to my feet. Secret Service games are boring even when played by men.

‘Off to bed,’ I said. ‘Tired, you see. Must go to bed.’

‘No, Charlie dear.’

‘Eh?’

‘I mean, you must be off to China; not bed.’ I did not even try to absorb such nonsense. ‘Rubbish!’ I cried manfully, snaring the whisky-decanter as I swept out of the room. I did not sweep far, for Johanna called me back in masterful tones quite unbecoming in a bride.

‘You will like it in China, Charlie.’

‘Oh no I bloody won’t, they’ll take one look at me and send me off to be politically re-educated on some co-operative farm in Hunan. I know.’

‘Well, no dear, I didn’t mean Red China – not this time anyway – more Macao, really. It’s independent or Portuguese or something – I guess it amounts to the same thing. A great gambling centre, you’ll love it.’