Life Goes On (63 page)

‘Go on.'

‘There's nothing to go on about. We had a talk with Lord Moggerhanger before he let us go. He and Lady Moggerhanger had us in for tea. They're not a bad couple, Michael. And the cakes were delicious.'

‘I'll bet they were. On your grave they can write: “He sold his best pal for a Nelson Square”.'

‘Hey, steady on – a cream bun, at least!'

‘It'll be in the Guinness Book of Epitaphs. You fucked up my plan.'

‘Michael, be realistic. You would never have got on this boat with Claud's three million quids' worth of kay-li. It wasn't on, and you know it. Or you ought to.'

‘It's a bitter pill to swallow,' I said.

‘Most pills are, Michael.'

‘Fuck off,' I told him.

‘That's more like the old Mike Cullen.'

‘So how did you get here?'

‘I'll tell you. When Lord Moggerhanger let us go, we went to my room in Somers Town. I wasn't followed, and the Green Toe Gang – I say, have you seen them notices all over the place? In't it a bloody scream? Green Toe Gang everywhere! So that's where they got their name? Makes you wonder, don't it?'

‘Get on with your yarn.'

‘Let's have another brandy first. And a pot of camomile tea for Maria. She's getting worse, aren't you, darling?'

She only stopped kneading her hands together when they went over her bosom, or against her mouth, or were drawn across her glistening forehead. She nodded, but wouldn't say anything in case the effort made her sick. She was obviously on the verge.

‘Make 'em doubles, Michael: there'll be a queue soon.' His sponging was a tidal wave, a wall of water stretching from the horizon that you couldn't avoid. I got the drinks. ‘You see,' he went on, ‘I pulled the money out of the mattress, fifty thousand pounds of it, and this morning we took the boat train from Liverpool Street. The money's in this holdall at my feet, so go easy with your cigar ash.'

‘You mean to say you've cadged two rounds of drinks off me, and you got fifty thousand shekels in that bag?'

He was offended. ‘I didn't want to arouse your cupidity, or your suspicion. But now I've told you. I never had any secrets from you, did I, Michael?'

‘If you don't stop calling me Michael every few seconds I'll clock you one.'

‘That's the ticket, duck. But don't worry. I'll buy the next round.'

‘What else did you talk about with Claud?'

‘Oh, it was just a general, wide-ranging sort of conversation.'

‘What, though?'

‘Travel. Things like that. We jabbered about holidays abroad, and I said I preferred the Dover-Calais run because it was the shortest and because there was a lovely little cake and coffee shop I could stoke up at. It had to be admitted, though, that some people liked longer crossings, for all sorts of reasons. I knew what he was getting at, mind you, and he fell right into my trap. “Michael allus goes to Holland to see his everloving wife on the Harwich to Hook run,” I said, as if you'd told it me only a few days ago, and I'd believed it hook line and sinker. I told him because I knew that in the next few days you would take any other crossing but this.'

He was living proof, if proof was needed, that one Nottingham man can think for another, and more or less get it right. In that sense his treachery had little meaning. He understood my look.

‘I can see I was wrong, but Michael, what bloody crazy thought led you to take this crossing today?'

‘I'm safe on board, aren't I? Though I only just made it.'

‘I suppose that's all right, then. Eh, Maria?'

She tried to laugh, but looked awful, her eyes opening wider at each wilful flip of the boat. I felt as if I could drink fifty more brandies and not get drunk. My brain was iced up, and I had hardly any contact with it.

‘What I'm certain of is this: that when I get to Holland and disclose all I know to Interpol, Moggerhanger will never be the same again. They'll lock him up in the Tower of London till the end of his days.'

Maria fell half fainting across the table.

‘Michael, give us a hand.' I was surprised he was so concerned. He was stricken with anguish. ‘She's going to spew by the look of her. Let's get her on deck.' He held her between us. ‘She told me she got seasick, but I hoped it would be calm. You can't rely on anything, can you?'

‘Not even with fifty thousand pounds,' I said. ‘You left it by the table.'

‘Oh my God!' He ran back, and hung it over his shoulder. ‘I thought these posh boats were supposed to have stabilisers,' he said, staggering a few feet.

I held the door open with the hook of my umbrella. ‘Don't make much difference in the storm.' We went to the leeward side, where only a few sprinkles reached us.

‘Let's make her walk up and down a bit,' he said. ‘Might bring her round. It's funny she gets so seasick, a member of a great seafaring nation and all that.'

‘England's oldest ally,' I said.

He cracked me so playfully in the ribs I had to tighten the grip on my briefcase. ‘Your general knowledge is nearly as good as mine.'

The wind blew in circles, first clockwise and then anticlockwise. Fortunately, when Maria let herself go, the contents of her stomach went clear away from us. ‘You'll never get Moggerhanger put inside,' he said. ‘There can't be any evidence to do it.'

‘Oh yes there is. And I've got it. The T's are crossed and the I's are dotted. I've got so much on Moggerhanger and his world import drug business they'll have to build new prisons for the crowds that get pulled in.'

‘Michael,' he said, ‘what's the use? You can't do it.'

He was spineless. He was inert. Or he was amoral and anti-social. He didn't care. The trouble was, he was easygoing, and that was the reason we had stayed pals for so many years. Finally, we trusted each other. We'd always done what was best for each other. He didn't want me to shop Moggerhanger because such an action would disturb the
status quo
. It would rob people like him of employment, and there were enough on the dole already. As for my own living, I was prepared to sacrifice that for the common good. ‘I'm turning him in. That's all I've wanted to do for the last ten years.'

‘Michael, I won't say it's not right.' He held my arm as if to prove his affection. ‘Why should I worry? I won't go to jail. And I hope you don't. We both could, though, but let's not consider that for the moment. All I say is that however much evidence you've got, there won't be enough.' He chuckled. ‘If there was, you'd bring the country down.'

The sea was heaving so much I wasn't feeling too good myself. ‘I have more than enough evidence.'

‘You haven't,' he said, beaming with simple good nature – or so I thought.

How dense and disbelieving could he get? However good a friend he was, the holes in his understanding were big enough to drive a lorry through. ‘Haven't I?' I raged. ‘Haven't I? Don't I?'

‘I bloody well know you haven't,' he shouted against a sudden change of the wind, veins standing out on his face and throat.

I fiddled with my briefcase and pulled out Matthew Coppice's envelope. ‘What's this, then? What is it? You want to know what it is? I'll tell you. It's everything. All I've got on Moggerhanger is in here, documentary evidence that's going to shake the criminal world to its foundations.'

‘Don't be so bleddy daft.' He thought his Nottingham accent would make me back down. My beloved, fatal, powerful packet of damning evidence against Moggerhanger and all his works flapped in the air only a foot from Bill Straw's nose. ‘This,' I shouted, ‘will hang the drug-peddling villain!'

His bottle-blue eyes, like a pair of kid's marbles about to hit each other in the game of the century, couldn't believe their luck – I realise now. He snatched the envelope. ‘What do you want that for?' – and threw it into the sea.

Maria vomited again and again, but Bill was too busy to console her. My gorge solidified. I was safe from seasickness, though not, for a while, safe from doing the bastard in.

‘Your envelope may look like a lifeboat.' He held me from jumping after it. ‘But it's too small, Michael. It'll sink without trace, and so would you. I like you too much to let you kill yourself in such a cause. An old Sherwood Forester doesn't let that happen to a mate. And I like myself too much to let you kill me. So stop it. We didn't come all this way for it to end like that. There are better things in life than death, as your good father once said to me. It's no use struggling. I know what you want better than you do yourself, at the moment, and I'm only doing it knowing you would do it for me in similar circumstances. Life's all we've got, Michael, and it behoves us to keep it. God wouldn't like it to be otherwise. And when a Sherwood Forester brings God into the issue you know he's serious. He's on the firing step. So keep still, will you? We're both on the firing step. Stop struggling and spluttering, because you're not going over the top. I'm not going to let you. The only way you'll get over that rail is if you take me with you, and you may be strong but you're not strong enough for that. I'm staying where I am, and so are you. Those bits of paper aren't worth it. The only way to dispose of Moggerhanger is to kill him, but don't try that either, because you'll get killed first. And if you're not, you'll be killed afterwards. You can't fight him and Lanthorn as well, and the whole of the British nation, because Moggerhanger is so powerful that he's one of
them
, and if they insist on clutching him to their bosoms that's their affair, because believe me they clutch worse things to their bosoms than Moggerhanger, and for you to kill yourself to get rid of him, and to do them in the eye as well, which is what it would mean, is just not worth you losing your life. Nor is it worth me losing mine, which is what would happen if you lost yours. Moggerhanger is as rotten as the whole country, Michael. They're one and the same thing, and for you to think you can do anything about it not only astounds me but saddens me. Let them rot, because though the country deserves a better fate – and I love England just as much as you do, if not more – you're not the one to cure it. It'll have to do without you. One person can't alter the course of history without the whole country being on his side, and if the whole country is on his side anyone can alter the course of history. I suppose Blaskin said that as well. Or I don't know what I'm saying. You're upsetting me, I'll tell you that. I'll go out of my mind if you don't stop struggling. Look on the bright side. The three of us can take a holiday in Holland on my money, or part of it anyway, and drive down the Rhine to Switzerland in your jalopy. Then we'll come back to Blighty and go to Upper Mayhem, where Maria will have her baby.'

‘You fucking won't,' I said.

‘Oh, don't get like that. Let's go inside to that cosy bar, and you can buy me another drink. We'll take Maria with us. She'll be lighter going down than she was coming up, and that's a fact, won't you, my lovely little duck?'

I hated his guts, but no more intensely than I hated my own. I knew what he had talked about with Moggerhanger, and why Moggerhanger had let him and Maria go. I knew indeed that he had been working for Moggerhanger all along, that the despicable bastard was nothing less than his recruiting sergeant who from the beginning was set on to get me for a few hard jobs, and to keep an eye on me while I was doing them. Even Eric Alport being on the train when I came into London at Bill's summons had been no accident.

At that moment by the boat rail, my life cracked in two, and I saw the halves, visible at last with my own clean insight. People like Straw and Moggerhanger had known them all along and put each one to good use. While I had been philandering, the world had fucked me rotten. True, I had sensed treachery at odd moments, but lunatic vanity had prevented me following the hints and realising that, far from being a man of the world, I was the most gullible person in it.

The shock of this revelation, that only friends could betray you, flared my murderous rage up again. I remembered my umbrella, with which Bill had prodded the dog in Charing Cross Road and, recalling the results of that inadvertent jab, I lifted it to deliver a similar thrust at him, which I hoped would prove fatal.

I don't suppose my attack was serious, but I had to make the effort, otherwise I wouldn't have been able to get a proper night's sleep to the end of my days. Old Sherwood Forester that he was, he anticipated the move, easily took the umbrella from me, and slung it after the packet of papers into the water. ‘It's unethical to use a thing like that.'

I looked failure staunchly in the face.

‘You can't win 'em all, Michael.'

‘Tell me something new.'

He laughed. ‘There's no such thing, old son.'

I stood by the rail, hypnotised by the lift and fall of the ship, a repetitious movement which emphasised the scale of my downfall. What the connection was, I did not know, but for the first time in my life I realised that I was not going to live forever. I had never thought so, but for the first time I was afraid, and gripped the wood to steady myself. I felt death happening like a dress rehearsal that could turn at any time into the real thing, and I would have no say in the matter when it did. The certainty that life no longer went on was absent. I would exist from minute to minute, and I'd have to be grateful for every fresh second that ticked by.

I stood till I couldn't see the waves for darkness. Bill had no doubt put Maria to bed, then gone to phone or wireless Moggerhanger to inform him that Operation Get Cullen had been successfully concluded. By playing his cards right – which he had certainly done – he had saved me from worse trouble than I was already in. Because it would sooner or later have happened, he might have done me a favour by making it come sooner, but I could see no way of thanking him.