The Mortdecai Trilogy Read Online Free PDF Page B

multiplicity of ideas about it had been running through my head all afternoon. Wrong ones.
    ‘It was meant for you, Charlie.’
    My heart started rattling about irresponsibly in my rib cage. My armpits became cold and wet. I wanted to go to the lavatory.
    I mean, electric batteries and so forth are one thing, within reason of course, but that someone actually means to kill you, forever, is a thought that the mind cannot accept, it wants to vomit it out; ordinary people just don’t have the mental or emotional clichés to deal with news like that.
    ‘How can you possibly be sure of that?’ I asked after a moment.
    ‘Well, to be perfectly frank, Maurice thought it
was
you he shot. It was certainly you he meant to shoot.’
    ‘Maurice?’ I said. ‘
Maurice?
You mean
your
Maurice? Whatever would he want to do that for?’
    ‘Well, I sort of told him to, really.’
    I sat down after all.
    Jock’s craggy form disengaged itself smoothly from the shadows just outside the door and came to rest behind my chair. He was breathing through his nose for once, making a plaintive, whistling noise on the exhaust stroke.
    ‘Did you ring, Sir?’
    Jock really is marvellous. I mean, imagine saying that. What tact, what
savoir faire
, what a boost for the young master in time of stress. I felt so much better.
    ‘Jock,’ I said, ‘have you a pair of brass knuckles about you? I may ask you to hit Mr Martland in a moment or two.’
    Jock didn’t actually answer, he knows a rhetorical question when he hears one. But I sensed him pat his hip pocket – ‘me bin’ he calls it – where six ounces of cunningly fashioned brass have lived a snug and smelly life since he was the youngest juvenile delinquent in Hoxton.
    Martland was shaking his head vigorously, impatiently. ‘No need for that at all, none at all. Try and understand, Charlie.’
    ‘Try and make me understand,’ I said. Grim, sore-arsed.
    He heaved what I took to be a sigh. ‘
Tout comprendre, c’est tout pardonner
,’ he said.
    ‘I say, that’s neat!’
    ‘Look, Charlie, I was up half the night with that bloodthirsty little old maniac at the Home Office, telling him about our chat yesterday.’
    ‘Chat’ was good.
    ‘When I told him how much you knew about this file,’ Martland went on, ‘nothing would do but he must have you done permanently. “Terminated with extreme prejudice” was how he put it, silly little sod. Been reading too many thrillers in between the cups of tea.’
    ‘No,’ I said kindly, ‘that one hasn’t got into the thrillers yet, except the
Sunday Times
. That’s CIA jargon. He’s probably been reading the Green Berets file.’
    ‘Be that as it may,’ he went on, ‘be that as it may’ – he obviously fancied that snappy little phrase – ‘be that as it may, I tried to make him see that as yet we really didn’t know what you knew nor where you got it, which was more important; and that it would be madness to liquidate you at this stage. Er, or at any stage of course, but I couldn’t say that, could I? Well, I tried to get him to refer it to the Minister but he said the Minister would be drunk by then and he himself wasn’t permanent enough to disturb him with impunity at that time of night and anyway … anyway I had to come into line and so this morning I thought the best thing was to put Maurice on the assignment, being an impulsive boy, and so give you a fair chance of survival, you see. And Charlie, I’m really so glad that he got the wrong chap.’
    ‘Yes,’ I said. But I wondered how he had known that I would be at Mr Spinoza’s that morning.
    ‘How did you know that I would be at Mr Spinoza’s this morning?’ I asked, casually.
    ‘Maurice followed you, Charlie.’ Wide-eyed, offhand.
    ‘Bloody liar,’ I thought.
    ‘I see,’ I said.
    I excused myself on the pretext of slipping into something more comfortable, as the tarts say. Something more comfortable was a wonderfully vulgar blue velvet smoking jacket into