Dunster (28 page)

‘What complaint?'

‘One of your cars broke down at my wedding. I've written four times and got absolutely no satisfaction.' My powers of invention amazed me.

‘Mr Loughborough's our boss,' a fat driver said. It wasn't a warm evening but he was sweating and had a bunch of Kleenex on the table beside him. ‘You must have wrote to the wrong bloke, Mister.'

There was a door with a frosted-glass pane at the end of the room. Behind it there was a light and the sound of a telephone ringing. A deep, indistinct voice could be heard answering it.

‘Could I speak to Mr Loughborough, then?' An outraged and inconvenienced bridegroom wouldn't have left without seeing the top man.

‘You can't speak to him, no,' the fat driver said, and the third man, of whom I have no clear recollection except that he had a dodgy eye which might have made his left turns erratic, added, ‘On duty.' At which moment the door opened and the big, bald man with the broken nose came in. He was wearing a white shirt and the trousers of a suit held up by braces, which was Cris's working outfit.

‘There's a job for you, Jack,' the man whose name might just as well have been Loughborough said to the sad Middle-Eastemer. ‘Pick up 9.30 Launceston Place, W8, over to the Savoy Grill and wait as long as you're needed. Who's this?'

‘Bloke that's come to complain about one of our bridals.' The fat driver spoke before I could introduce myself.

‘Was it the white Roller or the Bentley?' the boss asked.

‘It was the white one.'

‘All right, then. You'd better come in here.' He stood aside and let me go past him into the room, then he shut the door.

‘I'll just take a few details. Do have a seat, Mr -?'

‘Progmire. Philip Progmire. I work for Sir Crispin Bellhanger.'

He sat at a desk in front of a row of telephones which didn't ring very often. On it was a framed photograph of a couple with three children, standing under a blue sky in some sunny spot. The man in the photograph also had the features of a younger, less battered Roman emperor, but his nose was unbroken.

‘Am I right in thinking,' I said, ‘that you're Lester Maddocks? An old soldier from the SAS?'

‘The name's Loughborough,' he said and sat back in his chair looking at me. His voice was very soft, with only a trace of the Cockney accent he must have taken to the war with him. His statuesque looks gave him a noble appearance and his broken nose might have been caused by the weather on the stone over the centuries since the birth of Christ. ‘I hire out Rollers and quality cars.'

‘And during the war, you fought in Italy?'

‘What's it matter where I fought? It's a long time ago. Now, what's this about a breakdown in one of our wedding vehicles?'

‘You were with Cris, weren't you? Sir Crispin Bellhanger?'

In the silence that followed, the man I had called Lester Maddocks opened a drawer and got out a tube of mints. His hands were enormous, but he used them delicately, first to peel off the silver paper and then to put one in his mouth. Then he said, ‘Who are you? And don't give me a lot of shit about a wedding that never happened!'

‘I'm someone who works for Cris.'

‘How do I know that?'

‘You do know who Cris is, then?'

‘Don't try to be clever. You'll find you've made a mistake if you came here trying to be bloody clever.' He spoke quietly, but his hand on the table closed into a fist.

I wanted to convince him that we were on the same side, so I offered him a lie. ‘Cris asked me to speak to you,' I said.

‘Oh, yes?'

‘He's told me about it.'

‘About what?'

‘Your team in the Italian mountains. You and Captain Bellhanger and Sergeant Blaker, now dead. Oh, and Lance Corporal Sweeting.'

‘What you know about Sweeting?' The big man behind the desk looked unconvinced.

‘Everyone called him Natty Suiting. Because he was always in a mess. Didn't he stay in Italy?'

There was a small, muffled report. Tired of sucking, he had cracked the mint between his teeth. ‘Someone's putting about a lot of lies.'

‘Cris asked me to have a word with you about that.'

One big hand came towards me, with a mint squeezed in the offering position. ‘Do you care for a curiously strong?' he said, an offer which I didn't like to refuse.

‘And Blaker?' he asked me.

‘Killed later, so Cris told me.'

‘He wasn't a brave man, Blaker.' Maddocks leant back in his chair. For the moment he seemed at ease, no longer threatening. ‘Always scared of it. Perhaps that's why he got it. And as for old Natty ... Took up with a nice bit of local crumpet, old Natty. Gone to live in sunnier climes. Like my son and my grandchildren.' He looked at the photograph on his desk with pride and then at me. ‘We'd all've done anything for Captain Cris. If you work for him, I expect you know the feeling.'

‘Yes. I know the feeling. And you're still working for him?' I asked the question and sat, dreading his answers.

‘Freelance,' was what he said, after a long silence.

‘What's that mean?'

‘It means ... I want you to tell Cris I'm doing my very best for him. I'm doing what I can, in his interests. You tell him that.'

Did that mean Cris hadn't given any instructions, issued any orders and knew nothing whatever about the movements of the red Cortina? I was more than ready to believe it.

I asked, ‘What exactly should I tell Cris you've done for him?'

‘There was Jaunty.' He had put the silver paper back neatly and was rolling the tube of mints backwards and forwards along the desk, making the only small sound in the room.

‘Jaunty?' I prompted him.

‘He was putting about some funny things. I think I got him to straighten out his story. We all know as it was the Germans done it. We know that, don't we?'

‘That's what Jaunty told me.'

‘Will he stand up in court?'

‘I'm afraid not. He's had a stroke since then. He can't speak.'

‘I'm sorry for Captain Cris. Personally I never could stand the Major. Cocky little bastard. That's all you could say about the man. Well, then, if Jaunty won't stand up in court...'

‘He won't.'

‘Best thing is, make sure that mad Dunster bloke can't stand up either.' He gave me a small, friendly smile and before I could answer the telephone rang again. He picked it up, cradled it like a violin and went on rolling the mint packet as he spoke reassuringly to the phone. ‘Yes, sir. Yes, Mr Godstowe. Pick up at Launceston Place. And after the Savoy Grill, down to the country. The Bellavista Hotel in Haywards Heath. I'll tell the driver, Mr Godstowe. Of course he'll be glad to do it, sir.' He scribbled a note in pencil. ‘Any time, Mr Godstowe. Cupid Cars is here to serve the customer.' He put down the phone carefully and looked at me. ‘Is that what Captain Cris wants, that bloody madman not able to stand up in court? Is that what he sent you down to tell me?' He was as willing to do a violent crime for Cris as he was to see that Mr Godstowe was able to impress his bird by taking her to Haywards Heath in a Roller.'

‘No,' I told him. ‘That's not what Cris wants at all.'

‘It's not?' The big man's face clouded over. He looked puzzled and, once again, dangerous. ‘What's he want then? His Lordship?'

‘Not for you to mess things up.' My moment of courage seemed entirely out of character. ‘Thanks to what you did to him, Jaunty can't give evidence.'

‘What I did? I meant to help out Cris.'

‘All the same, you haven't, you haven't helped him at all. And he doesn't want anything to happen to Dunster.'

‘Not to that madman?'

‘Of course not. If it did, by any terrible chance, who do you think'd get blamed? It'd be Cris, wouldn't it?' For some reason I wasn't afraid then. There seemed no risk in it. ‘Who else do you think they'd blame?'

He thought it over and gave himself another curiously strong peppermint, but this time he didn't offer me one.

‘What's the Captain want me to do then?'

‘He wants you to come to court and tell them that you were all away doing that other job when the church was blown up. Just tell the truth. That's all the Captain wants done.'

Loughborough, or Lester Maddocks, or whatever his name might be, or was going to be, made a small, thoughtful sound sucking his peppermint. At last he spoke. ‘Can't be done.'

‘Why not?'

‘Me? Come to court?'

‘Yes. It won't be particularly difficult.' Much easier, I felt like saying, than trying to knock one of the parties off with a red Cortina.

‘Be questioned, like. About all I've ever done?'

‘I don't know. I suppose they might ask you about your record. That is, if you have one.'

‘Not that. I'm not talking about that. There's things that happened so long ago. When we was all young lads. That's all over now. Well, no one ought to hold you responsible for that.' What Jaunty had said in Dandini's his assailant was repeating in the office of Cupid Cars.

‘What do you want me to tell Cris?'

‘Tell him I've tried to help all I can, in my own way. Freelance. But I can't undertake to come to court and answer questions about it. Not at my age. I can't answer questions about all that we did so long ago.'

‘I'll tell Cris, and I'll see what he has to say about it.' I stood up. He was looking at the photographs on his desk.

‘You do that. And say at my time of life a bloke feels like joining his family for the chance of a bit of sunshine. The more so, tell the Captain, since my wife passed away and there's nothing to keep me in the old country.'

‘I'll tell him that,' I said. ‘And I'm sorry about Mrs Maddocks.'

He stood up then. I had suddenly gone too far and I remembered a picture I'd had in a childhood history book: a chained bear, baited past endurance, rearing on its hind legs and striking out with a huge, fatal paw. ‘Don't you use that name now' – he spoke in a scraping whisper, more dangerous than any shout – not here. Understand me, sonny? Not anywhere. Tell Cris I always got respect for him. Not for whoever does his errands.'

I felt him watching me as I turned and went out through the door. I knew he was still standing behind his desk as I closed it behind me. I crossed the room with the card-players in it, trying not to break into a run.

‘Governor sort you out all right, did he?' the fat one asked.

‘Yes, thank you.'

I walked as quickly as I could across the dark cobbles and up to find the glare and double-parking of Queensway and the welcoming light of an empty taxi. When I got home I half expected to find a red Cortina waiting outside my front door. It wasn't. I went into the kitchen and took off my jacket. My shirt was cold with sweat and my hand was unsteady. I made myself a cup of tea and poured in the brandy Megapolis had given me for Christmas. When I had taken off my clothes and put on pyjamas and a dressing-gown, I rang Lucy's number.

‘She's here, Philip. I'll just go and call her. I think she tried to ring you earlier. She was worried about you,' her mother said.

Not half as worried as I've been about me, Mrs Cattermole, was what I didn't say.

Lucy said, ‘You were going to ring me at eight or something,' and then, realizing that she sounded too much like a long-suffering wife, ‘not that it mattered at all. I'd've had to stay in working, anyway. Did you do anything exciting?'

‘I think I discovered how it must have felt to be in the war.'

‘He's probably got a string of convictions, and for some reason or other he's scared to death of coming anywhere near a law court,' I told Cris when we met in our solicitor's office.

Justin said, ‘It doesn't sound as though he'd make a particularly good witness. All the same, I do think I'll have to see Maddocks. Let's hope he hasn't gone the way of Major Blair.'

I don't suppose that the old Cockney ex-pugilist Roman emperor went Jaunty's way, but we never discovered exactly which way he went. When Justin Glover called Cupid Cars he was told that a Mr Jamir had already taken over the business. Mr Loughborough had gone abroad and no one had any idea of his destination. He might now be playing with his grandchildren on some golden beach, or setting up another little business anywhere from Cape Town to California.

So we were left with Lance Corporal Nathaniel Sweeting, known as Natty Suiting, known as Signor Andreini, who was waiting for us at the Bar della Luna in a small town in the Apennines.

‘It's absolutely terrific,' Justin Glover said, ‘to be going abroad without Jenny and the children. This really feels like a holiday.'

We were sitting side by side on a flight to Bologna, business class, and I thought of the bloody awful string of events which had combined to produce this rare feeling of happiness. The inhabitants of Pomeriggio had died, a person called Dunster had been born to bring about unmitigated disaster, Jaunty had lost the power of speech, a hit man had been compelled to off-load his Rollers and flee the country, and Lance Corporal Sweeting had deserted – all so that Justin Glover could fly to Italy, unencumbered by his nearest and dearest.

‘The moment we leave home,' he said, ‘they start asking how long it'll be before we get there. Mind you it was touch and go whether I could make it.'

‘Was it?'

‘Deirdre, that's our mother's help, didn't get back till two in the morning and she'd had a terrible row with her boyfriend, so she overslept. And the baby Augustus is in trouble with his gnashers and the twins were quarrelling over a broken Walkman and Theodora did mention her ear again – but she does that every morning when it's PE, which she hates. Understandable, really. It was touch and go, as you can imagine.'