The Mortdecai Trilogy

by Bonfiglioli, Kyril

  So far as I could see there was not a single Chinese person on the aircraft. It was not until just before take-off that Mr Lee and a young compatriot boarded. Neither of them looked at me. If it comes to that, I didn’t look at them after the first time, I glared straight ahead like a driver who has been stopped for speeding and doesn’t much want the policeman to get a sniff of his breath.

  I offered myself all sorts of explanations. They can’t have known that I’d be on that particular flight, could they? Could they? Or perhaps Johanna had asked them to be my bodyguard, how about that? Perhaps Mr Lee took that flight every day or perhaps he was hastening back to Soho for the Chinese New Year, his bag stuffed with goodies for his grandchildren. He was clearly the kind of chap who would have any number of grandchildren, all of whom he would dote on. Perhaps it wasn’t Mr Lee at all: it is well known that all these chaps look alike. My fevered imagination fantasized away until we were thoroughly airborne and the Captain’s voice came crackling out of the public address system with the usual wonderfully sincere wishes for an enjoyable flight. ‘Ha ha,’ I said bitterly, drawing a nasty look from the obviously teetotal lady sitting next to me. The loudspeaker went on to tell us that we would be cruising at large numbers of thousands of feet (aircraft drivers are the last bastion against metrication) and that our air-speed would be an immense number of mph. I felt like complaining at this excessive speed for I was in no great hurry to reach the end of the journey – it is better to travel hopelessly than to arrive.

  When the stewardess arrived to take our orders for drinks my neighbour asked for a glass of iced water; I confirmed her worst suspicions by ordering two large brandies, one bottle of dry ginger ale and no ice. I was proud to note that there was scarcely a quaver in my voice. When the wench brought the life-giving potations I heard myself asking her whether she happened to know the date of Chinese New Year’s Day.

  ‘Why, no sir, I guess I don’t, I’m sorry. But hey, there’s two Chinese gentlemen sitting right there in front; just let me finish with the drinks and I’ll go ask them.’

  ‘No no no no,’ I squeaked, ‘I wouldn’t dream of –’

  ‘It’s no trouble, sir. You’re very welcome.’

  Soon I saw her leaning over the seats of the two Chinese gentlemen, brightly pointing back to where I sat quaking. They did not look around. She tripped back and said, ‘You’re out of luck, sir, they say it was three weeks ago. Oh, and they said they were real sorry you missed out.’

  ‘Thank you. How kind.’

  ‘You’re welcome.’ Officious bitch. I unfolded my Times with studied nonchalance, laid it on my briefcase and applied myself to the crossword. I am not one who completes this crossword while his breakfast egg boils to medium-soft but on a good day a medium-hard puzzle lies stricken at my feet in half an hour or so. This was one of the other days. I readily solved ‘One who uses public transport – a target, exterminated (9,6)’ and wrote in ‘passenger pigeon’ with a hollow laugh, but after that I seemed unable to concentrate. I blamed this on my briefcase, which did not seem to be affording the usual flat surface. Indeed, it did not seem to be flat at all. I gave it a petulant palpation: sure enough, there seemed to be a fat, cylindrical bulge lying diagonally inside it. Distraught as I was, I was nevertheless certain that I owned no object of that shape and dimensions, or, if I did, it certainly could not be in my briefcase. I undid the catch of the flap and had a cautious grope inside; sure enough, my questing fingers found a stiff cardboard cylinder, measuring some eighteen inches in length and four niches in diameter. I closed the flap and – quaking now as I had never quaked before – reached for the unexpended portion of the brandy. It dashed past my uvula, tonsils, larynx and pharynx without touching the sides. Then I lay back in my reclining seat, regulated my breathing and applied myself to frenzied thought. A bomb or similar anti-Mortdecai device? Surely not: Mr Lee was on that very aircraft. Moreover, the metal-detectors of the security men at the airport would have detected anything of the kind. A monstrous tube of Smarties’ chocolate beans from a well-wisher? But I could think of no well-wisher.

  Consumed now with vulgar curiosity and death-wish, I opened the bag again and drew out the cylinder. It was light. It was made of cardboard and looked exactly like the cylinders in which people store and dispatch prints and drawings, things like that. I raised one end to my eye and, pointing it at the window or porthole, peered through it. I found myself gazing at the left-hand unit of the bust of my teetotal neighbour. She cuffed it aside and made a noise like an expiring soda-water syphon. I think I said ‘Whoops!’ but I cannot be sure.

  Nothing seemed to be in the cylinder except a roll of heavy paper so I inserted a couple of fingers, gave a skilful twirl and extracted it like a well-buttered escargot. Unrolled, it seemed to be a good colour-reproduction of a Rouault gouache painting; closer inspection proved it be a clever copy in gouache, all done by hand. I say ‘copy’ because the original happens to be a rather famous Rouault called Après-midi d’un Clown and it is in the Peggy Guggenheim collection or one of those places. It really was beautifully executed, more like a forgery than a copy, for the copyist had laid it down on a jaconet backing and had even added a cachet de vente, a couple of collectors’ marks and a museum reference number. I tut-tutted or tsk-tsked a bit, because it had been rolled the wrong way, with the paint side inside, a practice which any art-dealer knows better than. My portly she-neighbour was making her soda-syphon noises again and I realized that the painting was perhaps a little explicit: in Rouault’s day, you see, clowns seemed to spend their après-midis in the most bizarre fashion. (For my part, I have never taken much interest in modern art; I feel that it is a subject which calls for a good deal less research.) As I rolled up the gouache and twiddled it back into the cylinder a scrap of paper fell out of the opposite end. It was typewritten and said YOU MAY WELL FIND THIS USEFUL AT HEATHROW. I tore the scrap of paper into as many pieces as it had room for, musing anguishedly the while. I mean, it is not often that copies of famous Rouault gouaches creep unobserved into your briefcase and it is still rarer to be told that they will prove useful at airports. I would have liked to go to the lavatory but that would have meant passing Mr Lee and his friend and, on the way back, they might have looked at me. I was in no shape to cope with that sort of thing. I took the coward’s way out, I stabbed the appropriate bell-push and asked the stewardess for ‘some more of that ginger ale and, yes, perhaps a spot more of that brandy’. My neighbour – I shall always think of her as Carrie Nation – whispered to the stewardess urgently. The stewardess looked at me puzzledly. I looked at the stewardess smilingly but I fancy the smile came out as more of a lopsided leer, really. In a few moments Carrie Nation had been moved to another seat and, more to the point, my brandy had been delivered at the pit-head.

  I supped, mused, supped again. Nothing made sense. I made another attack on the virtue of the crossword; it was by the compiler who always tries to work in the word ‘tedding’ – I suspect Adrian Bell – so I had no difficulty with ‘Currying favour with Tory bandleader; making hay while the sun never sets’, but the rest defeated me. I gave myself up to thoughts about survival, staying alive, things like that. One good result of this thought or thinking was engendered by the fact that the airport security people with their metal-detectors had not detected the Rouault copy in my briefcase but had pin-pointed my silver pocket-flask in a trice. This had to mean that the two Chinese gentlemen could scarcely be carrying anything more lethal than a cardboard dagger. Their gats, shivs and other bits of mayhem equipment must be in their suitcases, in the hold of the aircraft. Clearly, then, when I arrived at Heathrow, London, all I had to do was not to wait for my own suitcase to creak out of the constipated luggage-delivery system but to abandon it, flee through Customs with nothing but my briefcase and take a speedy taxi to Walthamstow or some other improbable place where I might have a friend. Meanwhile, the Chinese gentlemen would be fretting and fuming at the luggage-carousel, impatient for their murder-tack
le to appear.

  How lucidly one thinks, to be sure, when one has taken just a suspicion of brandy more than one should. I folded my hands smugly across that part of the torso which lies a little south of the liver and had a little zizz. When I awoke, the smugness was still there; I seized the Times crossword, gave it a masterful glare and had it whining for mercy in twenty minutes.

  I have always sneered in a well-bred way at those idiots who, as soon as the aircraft’s engines have been switched off, stand up, clutching their brats and other hand-luggage for quite ten minutes until the surly cabin-crew deign to open the doors, but on this occasion I was well to the fore and sped down the ramp far ahead of the field. Had this been Newmarket, a casual observer equipped with field-glasses and a stop-watch would have hastened to the nearest telephone and had a chat with his bookie.

  Ignoring all signs telling people where they might wait for their luggage I galloped straight to the Customs Area and towards the blessed sign which said TAXIS, waving my innocent briefcase at the customs chap. He crooked an authoritative finger at me; I skidded to a halt. ‘Nothing to declare, officer,’ I cried merrily, ‘just the old briefcase full of the old paper-work, eh? Mustn’t detain you, sure you’re a busy man yourself –-’

  ‘Open it,’ he said. ‘Sir.’

  ‘Certainly, certainly, certainly,’ I quipped, ‘but do be quick, there’s a good chap, or all the taxis will be taken. Nothing in there, I assure you.’

  Every once in a while I encounter people who don’t like me. This customs chap was one of those. He dwelt upon every least object in the briefcase as though he were an aged courreur pawing over his collection of pubic hairs. He left the cardboard cylinder to the last. ‘What’s this then, sir?’ he asked.

  ‘A picture or painting,’ I said impatiently, glancing ever and again at the baggage-hall where my fellow-travellers (if I may coin a phrase) awaited their luggage. ‘A mere copy. No Commercial Value and Not For Re-sale.’

  ‘Reelly,’ he said. ‘Let’s just have a look, please.’ Fretfully, I extracted and unrolled the said art-work. ‘There,’ I said, ‘it’s the Après-midi d’un Clown by Rouault. It’s in the Guggenheim or one of those places.’

  ‘The Weltschmerzer Foundation?’ he prompted.

  ‘That’s it, that’s it; jolly good. It’s in the Weltschmerzer, of course. Chicago.’

  ‘Oh no it’s not, sir.’

  ‘?’

  ‘It was there until last Wensdee; then some villains bust into the place, got away with a million quidsworth of this old rubbish.’

  My mouth opened and shut, opened and shut, miming those soundless ‘oh’s’ that goldfish make when they want their water changed. I was spared the effort of saying something useful by a civil cough which seemed to come from behind my left shoulder. A glance in that direction showed me a large, civil chap wearing a mackintosh or raincoat. A rapid swivel of some 270 degrees showed a similar chap, wearing a benign look, behind my right shoulder.

  Permit me to digress for a moment. Every sound, professional team of thieves has a ‘brain’ who plans the villainy; a ‘manager’ who puts up the working capital; a ‘fence’ who will buy and sell the loot before it is even separated from its owners; a ‘toolman’ who knows how to neutralize burglar-alarm systems and to open locks, be they ever so sophisticated; a ‘peterman’ who can use a thermic lance on a safe or perhaps inject a fluid ounce of liquid explosive and detonate it with no more noise than a sparrow farting in its sleep; a ‘hooligan’ – regrettably – who will, at need, hit inquisitive passers-by with an iron bar; a ‘bent’ night-watchman or security-firm employee who is prepared to be concussed for £500 and a small percentage of the take; and – this is the chap you didn’t know about – a ‘lighthouse’. Your ‘lighthouse’ takes no active part in the actual breaking-and-entering; he simply strolls about with his hands in his pockets. He has but one simple, God-given skill: he can recognize ‘fuzz’, ‘filth’, ‘Old Bill’ or any other form of copper, however plainly-clothed, at two hundred metres on a dark night. No one – least of all the ‘lighthouse’ himself – knows how he does it, but there it is. There are only three reliable ones in the whole of London and they are paid the same as the hooligan.

  What I am trying to say is that, had I been born into a different social stratum, I would have made a handsome living as a ‘lighthouse’. The two chaps looming behind my shoulders were unmistakably ‘fuzz’.

  ‘Hello,’ I said.

  ‘I am Detective Inspector Jaggard,’ said the chap on my left, ‘and this is Detective Sergeant Blackwell. We are from the Fine Art Squad.’ I shot another glance into the baggage hall; the carousel was beginning to rotate and my fellow-passengers were thronging around it. Suddenly I realized why my anonymous benefactor had assured me cryptically that the Rouault might well be of use to me at Heathrow.

  ‘Flash the tin,’ I said in my Bogart voice.

  ‘I beg your pardon?’ said the DI.

  ‘Let’s see the potsy.’ They looked at each other, smiling thin smiles.

  ‘Detectives here do not carry gilt shield-badges,’ explained the DI, ‘but here is my warrant-card, which is almost as impressive and, unlike the “potsy” you speak of, cannot be bought in toy-shops.’ It seemed to be a very valid sort of warrant-card. ‘It’s a fair cop,’ I said happily. ‘Lead me to the nearest dungeon. Oh yes, and perhaps Sergeant Blackwell might be kind enough to collect my suitcase while you and I go to the Black Maria. It’s a sort of pigskin job by Gucci, has my initials on it, can’t mistake it.’

  ‘That’ll be “C.M.” for Charlie Mortdecai, right, sir?’ said the sergeant.

  ‘Right,’ I said, giving him a nod of approval.

  ‘Then why,’ asked the DI, ‘does your passport say that you are Fr T. Rosenthal, SJ?’

  Like any jesting Pilate, he did not stay for an answer but steered me courteously to one of those large black motor-cars which the better class of policeman has the use of. In a minute or two we were joined by the DS, who had found my suitcase. He did not give it to me. Nor did he drive to what you call Scotland Yard and what coppers call ‘Headquarters’ – he drove us over Battersea Bridge to that new place on the South Bank which they set up for the Serious Crimes Squad after that train-robbery (remember?) and which now houses all sorts of esoteric arms of the law. Such as, for instance, CII, which thinks up crimes before the villains do and has people sitting on the steps waiting for them. Such as, too, CI, which polices naughty policemen and is known affectionately as Rubber Heels; the late Martland’s Special Power Group or SOGPU, and, of course, the Fine Art Squad which is so highly trained that its members can tell which way up a Picasso should hang. (Picasso, of course, is no longer in a position to contradict them.) The whole place is most secure and secret, except that any taxi-driver in London will take you there unerringly.

  In a cosy room on the ground floor they formally charged me with illegal entry or something vague like that so that they could get me remanded in the morning, then we ascended three floors in a large lift, passed through a heavy iron door watched over by closed-circuit television, crowded into a much smaller lift and went down eight floors. I am no great lover of the bowels of the earth but the said bowels were just what I craved at the time. They were peopled by large, English male policemen: not an American, a Chinese waiter nor a militant woman was to be seen. They ushered me into a simply-furnished, well-lit room, stuck a telephone into a jack-plug, attached a tape-recorder to it and invited me to make my ‘privilege phone-call’. I was in no two minds about whom I should call: I dialled Mrs Spon, the best interior decorator in London and the only thoroughly capable person I know. I sketched in the outlines of my plight, asked her to get in touch with my ‘brief’ (as we rats of the underworld call our lawyers) and with Johanna, and to tell Jock to stand by the telephone around the clock. ‘Tell him,’ I urged, ‘that he is not to go out except on spoken instructions by you or me. If he must play dominoes he may have his friends in and they may drink my b
eer within reason. Oh, and Mrs Spon, you might make it clear to the brief that I am in no pressing hurry to be sprung – no writs of habeas corpus – I wish to clear my name of this foul imputation before breathing free air again.’

  ‘I twig,’ she said. I replaced the receiver with a certain smugness: when Mrs Spon says that she has twigged then twig is what she has done. I’d back her to take the Grand Fleet into action after ten minutes of instruction from a Petty Officer, she’s like that. She wears wonderfully expensive clothes and has a face like a disused quarry.

  ‘Well now,’ I said to my two captors, ‘I daresay you’ll be wanting to, ah, grill me a bit, eh?’ They looked at each other, then back at me, then shook their heads in unison.

  ‘I think you’d better wait for your lawyer, sir,’ said Inspector Jaggard.

  ‘For your own sake, sir,’ said Sergeant Blackwell. They didn’t frighten me. On the floor stood my suitcase, briefcase and the plastic bag containing my duty-free allowance of brandy and cigarettes. I reached for the plastic bag. They didn’t hit me. I toddled into the adjoining lavatory and found two plastic tooth-glasses. I gave myself a jolt of the brandy, then poured two drinks for them.

  ‘I think we’re on duty, aren’t we, Sergeant?’ Blackwell consulted his watch. ‘Hard to say, sir.’ I put three packets of duty-free cigarettes beside Jaggard’s glass and two beside Blackwell’s, then tactfully visited the lavatory again. When I returned the glasses were empty, the cigarettes pocketed, but I was under no illusions. Policemen like them are not hungry for a free swig of brandy and a packet of king-size gaspers; they had only taken them to lull me into the belief that they were easy-going chaps. But I had observed their eyes, you see; they were the eyes of career-policemen, quite different from the fierce eye of a copper who can be bought. I offered them the key to my suitcase, saying that if they cared to rummage it now I could enjoy the creature comforts it contained, such as soap, clean underwear and so forth. Blackwell gave it a perfunctory rummage; Jaggard didn’t even bother to watch, we all knew that there would be nothing illegal in it. Then I indicated that I would quite like a little lie-down and they said that they were, in fact, going off duty themselves and that their guvnor, the Detective Chief Inspector, might be down for a chat when my lawyer arrived. Then they locked me in. I didn’t mind a bit – there are times when being locked in is comforting. After a quick scrub at the depleted ivory castles with Mr Eucryl’s justly-celebrated Smoker’s Dentifrice, I threw myself on the cot and sank into the arms of Morpheus. My last waking thought was one of pleasure that they had not ripped open the lining of my suitcase; it is a very expensive suitcase. Moreover, I tend to keep a few large, vulgar currency notes under the lining in case I ever need to buy a steam-yacht in a hurry.