The Mortdecai Trilogy (32 page)

‘No scissors,’ I repeated in an intelligent sort of voice.

‘No scissors. In me early days I’ve looked over the belongings of many a tramp found dead in a ditch. Some of them had pictures of the lass that drove them onto the road, some of them had rosaries, some had a little bag of golden sovereigns and I remember one that had a New Testament in Greek. But the one thing that they all had was a good, strong pair of scissors. You wouldn’t last long walking the road if you couldn’t cut your toenails. A tramp’s toenails are his bread and butter, you might say. Our man here didn’t even have a strong sharp knife, did he? No; not a tramp, definitely.’

I made the sort of admiring noises you used to make when your geometry-master triumphantly said ‘QED’.

‘I don’t mind telling you,’ he went on, ‘that I regret saying that bit about him not being a tramp in front of the Sergeant and the DC. But I know that you can be relied on to keep your mouth shut, sir’ – I jumped a little at the ‘sir’ – ‘because obviously neither of us wants idiots like them wondering why someone would be wanting to pass himself off as a tramp in
this particular
part of the country.’ He looked narrowly at me as he said that last bit: I did my best to look inscrutable, hoping to give the impression that I well knew the special fact about ‘this particular part of the country’ and that I might well have, tucked into my left boot, a very special kind of identity-credential too grand to be shown to common coppers.

‘Funny about that nice new tenner he had on him,’ mused the Inspector. ‘Looked to be fresh from the mint, didn’t it?’

‘Yes.’

Not even folded, was it?’

‘No.’

‘What was the number on it again, did you happen to notice?’

‘Yes,’ I said absently –
stupidly
– ‘JZ9833672, wasn’t it?’

‘Ah, yes, that was it. Funny, that.’

‘How d’you mean, “funny”?’ I asked. ‘Funny that I should remember it? I have an eidetic memory for numbers, can’t help it. Born with it.’ He did not take the trouble to check my statement – he was good at his job, he knew I was lying.

‘No,’ he said, ‘I meant funny that it’s from the same series as a large number of perfectly genuine tenners that the London lads reckon have come into the country not a month ago. From Singapore or one of those places. You must admit that’s funny.’

‘Hilarious,’ I said.

‘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.

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.’

‘No,’ I said firmly.

‘Flying First Class in a Jumbo. With a bar.’

‘No,’ I said, but she could see that I was weakening.

‘A suite in the best hotel and a bankroll to gamble with. Say a thousand.’

‘Dollars or pounds?’

‘Pounds.’

‘Oh, very well. But I must go to bed first.’

‘OK. In fact, goody.’

‘I’m sorry I cannot invite you to share a nuptial couch,’ I added stiffly, ‘my bed is some two feet six inches wide and there are enough electronic bugs in the room to start an epidemic.’

‘Yes,’ she said obscurely.

When I emerged from the shower, briskly towelling the Mortdecai tum, Johanna was in the said 2′ 6″ bed.

‘I’ve had the bugs turned off, Charlie.’

‘Oh yeah?’ I said in American.

‘Yeah. I kinda own this joint, you know?’ I winced.

‘I didn’t know,’ I said stuffily, ‘and there still isn’t enough room in that bed for two.’

‘You wanna bet, buster?’

There was enough room. And I mean that most sincerely.

‘I think that, on the whole, I’d better take Jock with me,’ I said later, during the interval for refreshments. ‘After all, three eyes are better than two, eh?’

‘No, Charlie. He is too conspicuous, people would remember him, whereas you’re kind of unremarkable, you sort of melt into the background, you know?’

‘No, I didn’t know that,’ I said stiffly, for that is the kind of remark which stings.

‘Anyway, dear, he’s a xenophobe, isn’t he – he’d probably hit all sorts of people and attract attention.’

‘Oh, very well,’ I said. ‘Back to the grind,’ I added, but not out loud of course.

Johanna drove me to London the next morning. She is a wonderful driver but I used the passenger’s brake a goodish number of times; the journey was, in fact, one long cringe for me. We finally pitched up unscathed at Upper Brook Street, W1, having stopped briefly at one of those places where they make passport photographs of you while you wait.

‘But I already
have
a passport,’ I said.

‘Well, dear, I thought you’d like a nice new one.’

From the flat she made a number of guarded telephone calls to all sorts of people; the upshot was that by late afternoon I was the proud possessor of First Class tickets on a Boeing 747 and a Vatican City passport, complete with all necessary visas and made out in the name of Fr Thomas Rosenthal, SJ; occupation: Curial Secretary. I didn’t think that was very funny and said so, huffedly.

‘Darling,’ she said, ‘I do realize that at your age you wouldn’t be just a Fr still, but if we’d made you a Monsignore or Bp or something the airline people would make a
fuss
of you and that wouldn’t be secure, right? Tell you what, I’ll send the passport back and have them promote you Canon. Hunh? Would you settle for Canon?’

‘Oh, leave it alone, Johanna; I’m truly not sulking. The Church wouldn’t be the first career I’ve muffed. Anyway, I’m not at all sure they have Canons in Rome and Monsignores have to wear puce breeches, I think.’

‘Oh, good. I knew you wouldn’t mind being a simple Fr. You have a kind of wonderful modesty …’ I raised a deprecatory hand.

‘I shall of course need a few strings of rosary-beads and a Breviary or two – I’m sure you’ve thought of that.’

‘Charlie, darling, you’re supposed to be a
Jesuit
, remember? They’re not into all that stuff.’

‘Of course not; silly of me.’

I don’t mind admitting that I enjoyed the flight; I was the only First Class passenger and the stewardess was most attentive. Most attentive. I began to understand why Johanna had taken such pains over me the previous night, if you see what I mean. (If you don’t see what I mean, congratulations on a clean mind.)

My hotel was of a
luxe
which surprised me:
tout confort moderne
would be understating by a bushel and a peck. It was not quite like that one in Bangkok where you have to shake the sheets each night to rid your bed-clothes of little golden girls, though the management of this one was certainly doing its best. But you don’t want to hear about that sort of thing, do you?

In the morning I sprang out of bed with a glad cry and promptly sprang into it again with a whimper. I was never strong, even as a boy, and on that morning I felt so enfeebled both in body and mind that I doubt whether I could have hit the ground with my hat. Certainly, I was in no state to play at Secret Agents with Sinister Orientals. Jet-lag and other factors had me by the throat, to name only one organ; I built up my strength by having first one delicious breakfast and then, after a two-hour digestive nap, just such another, washing them down with nutritive glasses of brandy and soda which, in that sort of hotel, you can summon up without the aid of floor-waiters: you simply press the appropriate tit on a ‘Refreshments Console’ which looks for all the world like a miniature cinema-organ.

By lunch-time I felt able to totter down to the restaurant and recruit my strength properly; I had something green and crisp and tasty which was evidently the pubic hair of mermaidens but which the waiter assured me was fried seaweed. Then there were slivers of duck cooked in a sort of jam; a delicious goo made of the swim-bladders of some improbable fish; deep-fried dumpling-like things each containing a huge and succulent prawn, and so on and so forth: there was no limit to their inventiveness.

There was also something to drink which they said was distilled from rice. It had the deceptively innocent taste which made Pimm’s No. 1 such a handy drink for seducing girls when I was at University. I went gratefully back towards my room, smiling at one and all. I was in that delightful stage of not-quite-drunkenness when one overtips happily and there was no lack of minions to overtip. I even pressed a sheaf of currency into the hand of someone who proved to be an American guest; he said, ‘OK, Father, whaddya fancy?’ Realizing my mistake, and remembering my clerical kit or garb, I waved an airy hand and told him to play it for me on anything he fancied: it would all go to the poor. Then I found my room, crashed the Mortdecai turnip onto the pillow and completed the cure with a couple of hours of the dreamless.

By late afternoon the cure was completed and I felt strong enough to open the sealed envelope of instructions which Johanna had given me at Heathrow Airport.

‘Lo Fang Hi,’ it read, ‘Doctor of Dentistry and Orthodontics.’ Clearly a poor joke but nevertheless I looked him up in the telephone-book (even if you do know that the Chinese keep their surnames where we keep our Christian ones, a Chinese telephone directory is a skull-popper) and found him. I telephoned him. A shrill and agitated voice admitted to being Dr Lo. I resisted the temptation to say ‘Hi’ and said, instead, that I was a toothpaste-salesman – for that was what I had been told to say. What he said was that I might come around as soon as I liked, indeed, he suggested I came very soon. Yes, very soon
indeed
, prease. I hung up, musingly. The Roman collar had been tormenting my neck and I recalled that I had rarely seen a toothpaste-salesman in a cassock, so I changed into an inconspicuous little burnt-orange lightweight which that chap in the Rue de Rivoli ran up for me in the day when £300 would still buy a casual suit.

The address, to my surprise, was not ‘In the Street of the Thousand Baseballs, ’Neath the sign of the Swinging Tit’ as the old ballad has it, but in Nathan Street, Kowloon, which proved to be a dull, respectable sort of boulevard, reminiscent of Wigmore St, London W1. (I do not know who Mr Nathan was nor why he should have such a street named after him; indeed I know nothing of Mr Wimpole, no, nor even Wigmore, although I could tell you a thing or two about Harley.)

The cab-driver spoke American with a pronounced Chinese accent. He was also the proud owner of a sense of humour: he had evidently taken Buster Keaton’s correspondence-course. When I told him to take to No. 18, Lancaster Buildings, Nathan Road, Kowloon, he leaned over his seat and eyed me in a tiresome, inscrutable way.

‘Cannot take you there, buddy.’

‘Oh? And why not, pray?’

‘Can take you to Rancaster Birradings, Nathan Rod, but not Number 18.’

‘Why not?’ I asked, a tremor in my voice this time.

‘Number 18 on third floor; taxi does not fit into erevator.’

‘Ha ha,’ I said stiffly, ‘but I notice that your meter is running; laugh on your own time, or while driving me capably to Lancaster Buildings, Nathan Road.’

‘You a poreeseman?’

‘Certainly not. I happen to be a toothpaste-salesman, if you must know.’

He wagged his head respectfully, as though I had said something impressive, or perhaps funny. He took me to Lancaster Buildings in an expert and blessedly silent fashion. On arrival I under-tipped him by precisely 2½% – not enough to cause a scene but just enough to make it clear that taxi-drivers should not jest with sahibs.

Number 18 was indeed on the third floor of Lancaster Buildings and the door to Dr Lo’s consulting-room was clearly inscribed RING AND ENTER. I rang, but could not enter, for the door was locked. Hearing sounds within I rapped irritably on the frosted glass, then louder and still louder, crying words such as ‘Hoy!’ All of a sudden, the door opened, a large, tan-coloured hand reached out, grabbed the front of my lightweight Paris suit and whisked me inside, depositing me upon an uncomfortable armchair. The owner of the tan-coloured hand was grasping a large, crude Stechkin automatic pistol in his other tan-coloured hand and waving it in an admonitory sort of way. I understood his desires instantly, for the Stechkin is by no means a lady’s handbag-gun, and sat in my nice chair as quiet as any little mouse.

There was a patient in the dentist’s operating-chair, being attended to by a brace of dentists. At first it seemed odd to me that the dentists were wearing dark-blue mackintoshes, just like
the chap with the Stechkin, while the patient was wearing a white dentist’s smock. (Sorry, a dentist’s white smock.) I began to believe that the patient was, in fact, Dr Lo and that the dentists were quite unqualified in dentistry, especially when I noticed that they were using the drill on him although he refused to open his mouth. When Dr Lo – for it must have been he – passed out for the third or fourth time, his assailants were unable to bring him round. He had not uttered a word through his clenched teeth, although he had squealed through his nose a little, from time to time. I remember thinking that Mr Ho would have done much better, making much less mess.