The Mortdecai Trilogy (14 page)

Moreover, I had decided only that morning not to carry out my part of the contract I had made with Martland for the terminating of Krampf. I have no patience with the absurd respect in which human life is held these days – indeed, our chief trouble is that there is far too
much
human life around – but as I grow older I find myself less and less keen on actually topping people myself. Particularly
when they happen to be my best customers. Nevertheless, I should probably have kept faith with Martland as per contract had it not occurred to me that morning that I was already on the butcher’s bill myself and that once I had killed Krampf I would be there redoubled, in spades, for a variety of reasons which you can surely work out for yourself.

‘When did he go mad, child?’ I asked gently.

‘In the womb, I think. Badly, when he started to make plots with a man called Gloag.’

I winced.

‘Yes,’ I said, ‘that figures.’

Despite appearances I was now certain that Krampf had been murdered: there were far too many motives. There are also far too many ways of simulating death by heart disease – and even more of inducing it in someone already prone to it.

I was piggy-in-the-middle and it felt horrid. Only Martland’s word as a prefect stood between me and the ultimate in whackings from that fell school sergeant Death. Martland’s word was as good as his bond, but his bond was mere Monopoly money. I pulled myself together.

‘Well, Johanna,’ I said brightly, ‘I must be off to bed.’

‘Yes,’ she said, taking me firmly by the hand, ‘we must.’

‘Look, my dear, I’m really awfully tired, you know. And I’m not a young man any more …’

‘Ah, but I have a way of curing both those things – come and see.’

I’m not really weak, you know, just bad and easily led. I shambled after her, my manhood cringing. The night was intolerably hot.

Her room greeted us with steamy heat like a buffet in the face – I panicked as she drew me in and bolted the door.

‘The windows are sealed,’ she explained, ‘the drapes are closed, the central heating turned up high. Look, I am sweating already!’

I looked. She was.

‘This is the best way of all to do it,’ she went on, peeling off my drenched shirt, ‘and you will find yourself young and vigorous, I promise you, it never fails, we shall be like animals in a tropical swamp.’

I tried a tentative bellow of lust but without much conviction. She was anointing me copiously from a bottle of baby oil, handing me the bottle, stepping out of the last of her clothes and offering the
astonishing landscape of her steaming body to the oil. I oiled. From some undreamed-of reservoir my body summoned up a gravity tank of incalescent libido.

‘There, you see?’ she said, gaily, pointing at me, and led me to one of those terrifying water-filled plastic beds – eclipsing me with her deliquescent body, coaxing succulent sounds from the contiguity of our bellies, shaming forth a long dead, steel hard, adolescent Mortdecai demented with furtive lust: Mortdecai Minor, the likeliest candidate for wanker’s doom.

‘Tonight, because you are tired, I am no longer the mare. You are the lazy circus horse and I shall school you in the
haute école
. Lie back, you will like this very much, I promise.’

I liked it.

Ottima: Then, Venus’ body, had we come upon
   My husband Luca Gaddi’s murdered corpse
   Within there, at his couch-foot, covered close –
   Would you have pored upon it? Why persist
   In poring now upon it? …
Sebald: Off, off; take your hands off mine!
   ’Tis the hot evening – off! Oh, morning, is it?

 

Pippa Passes

 

Slowly, painfully, I ungummed my eyes. The room was still in utter blackness and smelled of goat. A clock had been chiming somewhere but what hour, of what day even, I knew not. I suppose you could say that I had slept fitfully but I cannot pretend that I awoke refreshed. More knackered, really. I squirmed out of the steaming bed and dragged myself wetly to where the window had to be. I was one hundred years old and knew that my prostate gland could never be the same again. What I panted for, as the hart for cooling springs, was fresh air – not a commodity I often pant for. I found the heavy drapes, drew them apart with an effort and reeled back aghast. Outside, a carnival was in full swing – I thought I had taken leave of my senses, despite prep school assurances that you go
blind
first.

The windows on this side of the house gave on to the desert and there, a couple of furlongs from the house, the darkness was
splashed with crisscross rows of coloured lights, blazing for half a mile in each direction. As I gaped uncomprehendingly Johanna slithered up behind me and pasted her viscous form lovingly against my back.

‘They have lit up the airstrip, little stallion,’ she murmured soothingly between my shoulder blades, ‘a plane must be arriving. I wonder who?’ What she was really wondering, evidently, was whether spavined old Mortdecai had one more gallop left in his thoroughbred loins but the sheepish answer was plain to see. Her loving moo became a
moue
but she did not reproach me. She was a
lady
– I know it sounds silly – still is for all I know.

Effete or not, I have strong feelings about aircraft landing unexpectedly in the early hours of the morning at country houses where I am staying in equivocal circumstances. It is my invariable practice in such cases to greet the occupants of these machines fully dressed, showered and with a pistol or similar device in my waistband, lest they (the aviators) should prove to be inimical to my best interests.

Accordingly, I showered, dressed, tucked the Banker’s Special into its cosy nest and made for the great downstairs, where I found something astonishingly nasty to drink called
tequila
. It tasted of fine old vintage battery acid but I drank quite a lot of it, thirstily, before Johanna came down. She looked courteous, friendly but aloof; no hint of our late chumminess apparent on her lovely face.

A peon fluttered in and harangued her in the vile
argot
which passes for Spanish in those parts. She turned to me, well-bred surprise civilly concealed.

‘A Señor Strapp has arrived,’ she said wonderingly, ‘and says that he must see you at once. He says that you expect him …?’

I boggled a moment, about to deny all knowledge of any Strapps, before the penny dropped and the mental W.C. door flew open.

‘Ah, yes, of course,’ I cried, ‘that’s old Jock! Quite forgotten. Silly of me. My servant, sort of. Should have told you he was meeting me here. He’ll really be no trouble, just a heap of bedding and a bone to gnaw. Should have warned you. Sorry.’

Even as I babbled, Jock’s massy frame filled the doorway, his ill-hewn ashlar head weaving from side to side, eyes blinking at the light. I gave a glad cry and he returned a one-fang grin.

‘Jock!’ I cried, ‘I am so glad you could come.’ (Johanna,
inexplicably, giggled.) ‘I trust you are well, Jock and, er,
fit?
’ He caught my drift and blinked affirmatively. ‘Go and get washed and fed, Jock, then meet me here, please, in half an hour. We are leaving.’

He shambled off, led by a she-peon, and Johanna rounded on me.

‘How can you be leaving? Do you not love me? What have I done? Are we not to be married?’ This was my day for gaping – I did it again. While I gaped she continued her amazing tirade.

‘Do you think I give myself like an animal to every man I meet? Did you not realize last night that you are my first and only passion, that I belong to you, that I am your woman?’

Huckleberry Finn’s words sprang to my mind: ‘The statements was interesting but tough,’ but this was no time for breezy quoting – she looked as though one wrong answer would send her galloping up to the boudoir for her Dragoon Colts. My jaws unlocked themselves and I began to drivel fast, as though drivelling for my life.

‘Never dreamed … didn’t dare hope … plaything of an idle hour … too old … too fat … burned out … bemused … haven’t had my tea … in terrible danger here … ’ That last bit seemed to interest her: I had to give a clumsily edited version of my grounds for fear; such as Martlands, Buicks, Bluchers and Brauns, to name but a few.

‘I see,’ she said at last. ‘Yes, in the circumstances perhaps you had better leave for the moment. When you are safe, get in touch with me and I will come to you and we shall be happy ever after. Take the Rolls Royce – and anything in it – it is my engagement present to you.’

‘Good God,’ I quavered, aghast, ‘you can’t give me that, I mean, worth a fortune, quite ridiculous.’

‘I already have a fortune,’ she said, simply. ‘Also, I love you. Please not to insult me by refusing. Try to understand that I am yours and so, naturally, everything I have is yours too.’

‘Gaw Blimey,’ I thought. Clearly, I was being ridiculed in some complicated way – and for unguessed-at reasons – or was I? The glint in her eye was dangerous, genuinely.

‘Ah, well, in that case,’ I said, ‘there is one thing I really have to have for my own safety – it’s a sort of photographic negative, I fancy, and perhaps some prints of – well –’

‘Of two deviates playing at bulldozers? I know it. The faces have
been cut out of the print but my husband says that one of them is the nasty Mr Gloag and the other the brother-in-law of your –’

‘Yes, yes,’ I broke in. ‘That’s it. The very thing. No use to you, you know. Your husband was only going to use it to get diplomatic bag facilities for stolen pictures and even that was too dangerous. Even for him. I mean, look at him.’

She looked at
me
curiously for a while then led the way to Krampf’s study, which was a riot of undigested wealth, a cinema usherette’s nightmare of Tsarskoe Selo. When I tell you that the central attraction – the Main Feature, so to speak – was an enormous, nude, hairy trollop by Henner which hung against Louis XIV
boiseries
and was lit by two of the most awful Tiffany lamps I have ever seen, then I think I have said all. Mrs Spon would have
catted
right there, on the Aubusson.

‘
Merde
,’ I said, awestruck.

She nodded gravely. ‘It is beautiful, is it not. I designed it for him when we were first married, when I still thought I loved him.’

She led the way through to Krampf’s private bog, where a fine Bouguereau – if you like Bouguereau – twinkled saucy titties and bums down into the still waters of a porcelain
bidet
which might have been designed for Catherine the Great in one of her more salty moods. The picture, cunningly, did not conceal a safe, but a carved panel just beside it did. Johanna had to diddle it in all sorts of complicated ways before it swung open to reveal groaning shelves of great coarse currency notes – I’ve never seen such a vulgar sight – as well as passbooks from the banks of all the world and a number of leather-covered suitcase handles. (I did not have to heft these to know that they were made of platinum, for I had given Krampf the notion myself. It’s a good wheeze, the customs haven’t got on to it yet. You’re welcome, I shan’t need it again.) She opened a drawer concealed in the side wall of the safe and tossed a parcel of envelopes to me.

‘What you want should be in there,’ she said indifferently and went to perch delicately on the edge of the bidet. I riffled through the package reverently. One envelope contained insurance policies beyond the dreams of avarice, another a mass of wills and codicils, another held simply a list of names with coded references against each. (Knowing Krampf’s predilections, there was probably a fortune in that list alone, if one spent a little time on it, but I am
not a brave man.) The next envelope was full of smaller envelopes, each one bearing a rare foreign stamp in the top right-hand corner: rich and devious readers will recognize the dodge – you simply stick an ordinary new postage stamp over the rarity and post it to yourself or your agent in some foreign capital. It is the easiest way of moving heavy spending money about the world without losing too much in commission.

The last envelope was the one I wanted – needed – and it seemed to be in order. There was the magnum print with the faces cut out and a strip of 35-mm negatives on British film stock. A length of amateurish contact prints mostly showed the Backs at Cambridge but the centre frame showed the fronts all right: Hockbottle seemed to have been in charge that day and it had been Chummy’s turn in the barrel. His familiar grin, straight into the camera, showed that he didn’t mind a bit. I burned it without compunction and threw the ashes into the naughty
bidet
. It represented a lot of money but, as I just said, I am not a brave man – even money can come too dear.

I was not troubled about the possible existence of other prints: Krampf may have been imprudent but he had not, I thought, been wholly potty and, in any case, prints are too easily faked these days; people want to see the negative – and the original negative at that, negatives prepared from a positive print are easily detectable.

She twisted round and stared at the smear of ashes in the
bidet
.

‘Are you happy now, Charlie? Is that really all you wanted?’

‘Yes. Thank you. It makes me a little safer, I think. Not much, but a little. Thank you very much.’

She rose and went to the safe, selected a couple of chunks of currency and closed the panel negligently.

‘Here is some journey money, please take it. You will perhaps need
des fonds sérieux
to help you get safely away.’

They were two fat bricks of bank notes, still in their wrappers, one English, one American. The total amount had to be something quite indecent.

‘Oh, but I couldn’t possibly take this,’ I squeaked, ‘it’s a terrible lot of money.’

‘But I keep telling you, I
have
a terrible lot of money now – this in the safe is nothing, a cash reserve he kept for small bribes to
Senators and for unexpected trips. You are please to take it; I shall not be happy unless I know that you have proper funds while you are avoiding these unpleasant men.’

My further protestations were cut short by frightful shrieks from downstairs, superimposed on a bass of snarling roars. We raced for the stairhead and looked down into the hall on a scene of gladiatorial horror: Jock had a peon in each hand and was methodically beating them together like a pair of cymbals, while others, of both sexes, milled around him, tore at his hair, hung on his arms and were hurled off spinning across the tiled floor.

‘
¡Bravo toro!
’ cried Johanna piercingly and the
mêlée
became a tableau.

‘Put those people down, Jock,’ I said severely, ‘you don’t know
where
they’ve been.’

‘I was only trying to find out what they’d done with you, Mr Charlie – you said half an hour, didn’t you?’

I apologized all round; the peons couldn’t understand my polished Castilian but they knew what it was all right; there was a good deal of bowing and scraping and forelock-tugging and polite murmurs of ‘
de nada
’ and they accepted a dollar apiece with every mark of pleasure. One went so far as to intimate courteously that, since his nose was squashed to a pulp, he merited a little extra honorarium but Johanna would not let me give him any more.

‘With one dollar he will get beautifully drunk,’ she explained, ‘but with two he would do something foolish, perhaps go off and get married.’

She explained this to the peon, too, who followed her reasoning carefully and gravely concurred at the end. They are a logical lot.

‘A logical lot, Jock, don’t you think?’ I asked later.

‘Nah,’ he said. ‘Lot of bloody Pakis if you ask me.’

We got away before the sun was very high. I had breakfasted lightly on a little more
tequila
– it’s beastly but it sort of grows on you – and had contrived to avoid a farewell exhibition-bout with my doting Johanna. She was most convincingly tearful and distrait, saying that she would live only for my message that she might join me and live happily ever after.

‘Where we going, then, Mr Charlie?’

‘I’ll think about that as we go, Jock. In the meantime, there’s only this road. Let’s move.’

But as we drove – as Jock drove, to be exact, for he had slept on the plane – I mused about Johanna. What earthly purpose could all that incredible codswallop of hers be serving? Did she really think that I was swallowing it? Did she think I could believe her bowled over by the faded allure of portly, past-it Mortdecai? ‘Garn’ was the word which kept springing to mind. And yet; and yet … Karl Popper urges us to be constantly on our guard against the fashionable disease of our time: the assumption that things cannot be taken at their face value, that an apparent syllogism must be the
rationale
of an irrational motive, that a human avowal must conceal some self-seeking baseness. (Freud assures us that Leonardo’s John the Baptist is a homosexual symbol, his upward-pointing index finger seeking to penetrate the fundament of the universe; art historians know that it is a centuries-old cliché of Christian iconography.)

Perhaps, then, all was as it seemed, all to the gravy; indeed, as we soared up winding roads into the high country stretching its strong limbs in the young sunshine, it was hard to credit my fears and suspicions.