Mrs. Pargeter's Point of Honour

by Simon Brett

  Halfway along the loop road was a service station. The blue van hurtled across its forecourt, straight towards the car wash at the back. It stopped by the control slot.

  ‘You got a token?’ asked Gary, as he wound his window down.

  ‘Course I have,’ replied Mrs Pargeter, almost offended that he thought the question necessary. ‘Full Wash with Wheel Scrub.’

  She handed it across. Gary pushed the token into the slot and, winding his window up, edged forward, guided by rails, into the car wash. The overhead sprays of water started, and moved slowly back over the blue van’s body.

  As they did so, something remarkable happened. The blue paint stippled, paled and trickled away down the van’s sides into the car-wash gutters, revealing gleaming white gloss beneath.

  By the time the wheel scrub, the final feature of the cleaning cycle, was finished, not a trace of blue remained anywhere on the gleaming body. Had there been anyone present to witness the colour transformation, as Gary inched the van primly out of the car wash, they would also have noticed that he and Mrs Pargeter were now wearing navy-blue jackets and caps.

  And at the moment the conjectural observer noticed the word ‘Ambulance’ printed on the front of the cab, they would have seen a slot in the roof open, and an array of blue flashing lights rise up to fill it. Simultaneously, as the vehicle sped forward on to the road, they would have heard an emergency siren start.

  The heavy called Ray had his car parked directly across the outlet of the loop road to the main thoroughfare. And he wasn’t going to let anything out.

  Except of course for an ambulance. You never knew with an ambulance. The geezer in the back whose life was at risk could be a cop, true. But, on the other hand, it could be one of your own. Better to be safe than sorry.

  So, at the sound of the siren and the sight of the flashing blue lights, the heavy called Ray edged his car out of the way. Once the ambulance had passed, he moved back to block the roadway once again.

  Then he sat and waited.

  He waited a long time. All the time until a familiar car came slowly out of the loop road. Behind its windscreen the heavy called Ray could see a familiar face. It belonged to Rod D’Acosta, and it was suffused with a familiar expression of fury.

  Chapter Thirty-Seven

  ‘It’s gone!’ Sergeant Hughes announced dramatically, as their car drew up outside the open metal gates.

  ‘Now just a minute, just a minute. Don’t let’s jump to conclusions. We don’t know what we’re looking for yet.’ Inspector Wilkinson didn’t like being rushed in this manner. The raid on Rod D’Acosta’s yard was his assignment and he had planned to start on it at four o’clock in the afternoon. He had not responded well to Hughes’s melodramatic intervention and insistence on moving the whole schedule forward.

  ‘We do know what we’re looking for. It’s a red Transit van, and it’s not here.’ Then, as an almost condescending afterthought, the Sergeant added, ‘Sir.’

  ‘Where did you say you got this information from?’

  ‘The source called Posey Narker who put me on to the Dover thing.’ Hughes reached forward to the car phone. ‘I’ve got the van’s registration. I’ll put out a general alert. We’ll track it down.’

  Wilkinson snatched the receiver from his hand and started punching in a number. ‘I’ll put out a general alert, thank you very much. And I’ll track it down.’ He got through. ‘General alert for a red Transit in the South London area.’ He turned testily to the Sergeant. ‘What’s the registration, Hughes?’

  While the Inspector gave details into the phone, Sergeant Hughes became aware of a large man behaving strangely on the other side of the road. He was weaving around, as if in a daze, with an expression of deep puzzlement on his bruised face.

  Hughes got out of the car, and went across to the man. ‘Are you all right?’

  The eyes of the heavy called Sid took a moment or two to focus on the young man in front of him. ‘’Ere. Have you got my fifty quid?’ he asked in a slurred voice.

  ‘No, I haven’t. What happened to you?’

  ‘Well, I ran into this wall, didn’t I?’

  ‘Ah. Why?’

  ‘To get the fifty quid.’

  ‘Oh.’

  ‘Are you sure you haven’t got it?’

  ‘Absolutely certain.’

  ‘Oh.’

  The big man looked almost pitifully disappointed. Sergeant Hughes got out his notebook. ‘Can I just take a few details about you? What’s your name?’

  ‘Sid,’ the man replied uncertainly. ‘I think.’

  ‘And what do you do?’

  His fuddled state removed the normal caution with which he would have replied to such a question. ‘I work for Rod D’Acosta. Threatening and GBH, mostly. Occasionally a bit of petty theft.’

  ‘Right,’ said Sergeant Hughes, wishing that all arrests were as easy as this one promised to be. ‘I think you’d better come along with me.’

  The two cars were parked on the service station forecourt. The knot of three men stood with heads bowed. They could have been attending a funeral, but it wasn’t a grave they were looking down at, just the traces of blue pigment in the gutters of a car wash.

  Rod D’Acosta shook his head ruefully.

  ‘It was the ambulance . . .?’ asked the heavy called Ray.

  But the question was a formality. He knew the answer.

  ‘Yes, you bloody fool, it was the ambulance!’ said the heavy called Phil. ‘The ambulance that you so public-spiritedly allowed to drive straight past you!’

  ‘It wasn’t my bleedin’ fault. I wasn’t to know that—’

  ‘Ssh . . .’ Rod D’Acosta was too distracted to join in their bickering, too distracted even to give a personal carpeting to the heavy called Ray. He looked down at the blue-stained gutter and shook his head once again. ‘You know, I haven’t heard of this stroke being pulled since . . .’

  The heavy called Phil breathed the word, ‘Chelmsford . . .?’

  ‘Yes,’ Rod D’Acosta confirmed.

  ‘Oh, my good Gawd!’ said the heavy called Ray on a note of panic. ‘Mr Pargeter hasn’t come back to life, has he?’

  It didn’t take Inspector Wilkinson and Sergeant Hughes long to find the abandoned red Transit. And it didn’t take them long to establish that the van was empty.

  ‘What do you reckon they’ve done?’ Hughes asked the befuddled man in the back of their car.

  ‘Dunno,’ said the heavy called Sid. ‘Probably transferred the loot to another van. Or one of their cars, possibly.’

  ‘Could you give us the registration numbers?’

  The heavy called Sid did as requested. Sergeant Hughes profferred the car phone politely to his boss. ‘Would you like to put out a general alert, sir?’

  With bad grace, Wilkinson took the phone and keyed in the number.

  While his boss gave instructions to base, Hughes turned again to the man in the back. ‘What was the loot in the Transit, as a matter of interest?’

  ‘Paintings. Old paintings, you know. Stuff we nicked from an old house called Chastaigne Varleigh.’

  This was terrific. It seemed there were no beans the bewildered man was not prepared to spill. Hughes gleefully envisaged another crime dossier, to match the one he was building up on the late Mr Pargeter. Confident that imminent promotion was a certainty, he pressed home his advantage. ‘Who actually nicked the stuff?’

  ‘Me and Rod D’Acosta.’

  ‘Can you give me details of any other jobs you’ve done with him?’

  ‘Oh yes,’ the heavy called Sid replied, and proceeded to rattle off a long catalogue, all of which Sergeant Hughes transcribed into his notebook.

  Chapter Thirty-Eight

  The ambulance was now bowling cheerfully through the open Surrey countryside. Its siren and lights had been switched off, and Mrs Pargeter was leading her male voice choir in singing ‘All Things Bright and Beautiful’.

  They’d just got to

  T
he rich man in his castle,

  The poor man at his gate,

  when she noticed a crudely painted roadside sign: ‘CAR BOOT SALE – ONE MILE’.

  ‘Nearly there,’ cried Mrs Pargeter. ‘Ooh, I must just make a phone call.’ She reached for the phone and dialled the number that Inspector Wilkinson had given her. She didn’t identify herself, but gave him a few terse words of information.

  She ended the call, beamed cheerily and picked up again with the hymn.

  God made them, high or lowly,

  And ordered their estate.

  In his car as it sped through the lanes of Surrey the heavy called Phil seemed to have caught the anxiety of the heavy called Ray from the car behind. ‘You don’t think Mr Pargeter really is back alive again, do you, Rod?’

  ‘Of course he bloody isn’t! He died years back. I sent a couple of my men to his funeral to make sure he was good and buried.’

  ‘But you don’t know what was in the coffin, do you?’

  ‘For Christ’s sake! Mr Pargeter is dead! Dead, dead, dead! No one will ever see him in the flesh again – all right?’

  ‘All right,’ the heavy called Phil conceded grudgingly. Then, after a silence, he asked, ‘Rod . . . you don’t believe in ghosts, do you?’

  ‘Of course I don’t bloody believe in bloody ghosts! Now will you drive this bloody car a bit bloody faster!’

  The car boot sale was being held in a grassy field which abutted ploughed land beyond. Either side of a wide aisle a large number of cars was parked facing outward. A tatty mixture of goods were displayed on picnic tables in front of their open boots and hatchbacks. Large numbers of potential purchasers ambled up and down the aisle, convinced they were going to find bargains.

  As the ambulance turned off the road into the field, Mrs Pargeter suffered an uncharacteristic moment of self-doubt. ‘I hope Vanishing Vernon’s done his stuff,’ she murmured to Gary.

  ‘He will have, don’t you worry.’

  ‘Yes, yes, of course he will.’ Reassured, she looked into the back of the van. ‘How’re you getting on, Truffler?’

  With a mournful flourish, the private investigator stuck a printed label on to a neatly wrapped rectangular package. ‘Fine, Mrs Pargeter,’ he replied. ‘That’s the last one. All the paintings labelled up, marked with where they got to go back to.’

  ‘Terrific. Veronica Chastaigne will be pleased.’

  A mile behind, the car carrying Rod D’Acosta passed the sign to the car boot sale. ‘We’ll get them now!’ he hissed viciously.

  ‘Yes . . .’ The heavy called Phil didn’t sound as convinced as his boss. ‘Are you sure there aren’t such things as ghosts, Rod . . .?’

  ‘Do you recognize that car ahead?’ asked Sergeant Hughes.

  ‘Yes,’ the heavy called Sid replied. ‘That’s Rod’s all right. It’s the one he used for the getaway from the Peckham Rye bank job.’

  Hughes wished he wasn’t driving, so that he could make more notes on this valuable flood of information.

  ‘The car’s going exactly where my informant said it would,’ Inspector Wilkinson observed smugly. That call on his mobile couldn’t have been better timed. Of course it had been pure luck that the Inspector had received information about Rod D’Acosta’s movements at such a relevant moment, but he wasn’t going to let Hughes know that.

  Oh no. Wilkinson had made it appear that the call was part of some masterplan he’d been working on for weeks. Sergeant Hughes had been well impressed.

  That’ll show the cocky little oik, thought Wilkinson. Complacently, he stroked the line of his growing moustache.

  Ushered along by the stick-like figure of Vanishing Vernon, almost like the man with the red flag who had to precede early motor cars, the ambulance moved serenely down the long aisle of open car boots. Car boot shoppers turned to look curiously as, from the back doors, Truffler Mason handed out labelled rectangular packages to HRH, Hedgeclipper Clinton and Kevin the doorman. These were then passed on to the owners of the parked cars.

  As each owner received his or her picture, they checked its destination on the label and put it in their car boot, which was then firmly closed. No attempt was made to remove the picnic tables loaded with bric-à-brac, as, to the considerable confusion of the shoppers, the owners got into their cars and began to drive away out of the field.

  But, before the first of them reached the exit to the main road, Rod D’Acosta’s two cars came hurtling in at great speed. Car boot shoppers scattered in panic as the vehicles thundered side by side down the wide aisle in pursuit of the ambulance.

  Truffler Mason, who had just handed out the last package, saw the approaching cars, slammed the doors of the ambulance shut, and called out, ‘All done!’

  ‘Go for it, Gary!’ shouted Mrs Pargeter, with a note of sheer devilment in her voice.

  The chauffeur put his foot down, pointing the ambulance straight at the open gate which led to the ploughed fields beyond. The mud was thick and sticky from recent rain, but the supercharged engine’s power took over and the vehicle surged across the ridges, riding high and untrammelled on its special tyres.

  Rod D’Acosta’s two cars started the pursuit, but didn’t get far in the treacly mud of the ploughed field. Just inside the gate, the cars’ wheels started to spin and their bodies to slew dangerously sideways.

  The two vehicles cannoned into each other with a sickening clang. There was a crunching of glass and the impact made both of their boots fly open.

  Urged on by Vanishing Vernon, the car boot shoppers surged forward to see what new treasures were on offer. As Rod D’Acosta and his dazed acolytes staggered out of their ruined cars, they found themselves faced by a crowd of bargain-hunters, keen to know how much they were asking for the knuckledusters, bowie knives and Armalite rifles in their boots.

  It was at that moment that the car containing Inspector Wilkinson, Sergeant Hughes and the heavy called Sid arrived.

  Chapter Thirty-Nine

  It was an ordinary morning for the security guard of the Kunsthistorisches Museum in Düsseldorf. As usual there was a dull ache inside the top of his skull. As usual he regretted having that extra beer the previous evening. And as usual the residue of the bratwurst, which had been so delicious the night before, didn’t taste so good on his morning tongue.

  Still, there was work to be done. Maybe he’d be able to slip out for another beer at lunchtime. That’d make him feel better.

  He keyed in the relevant code at the side door of the museum’s impressive frontage, and waited till the night security guard let him in. He checked through the night security guard’s log and went to open up the galleries. Every painting had to be checked, every alarm tested, in the hour before the day’s throng of culture lovers was admitted.

  He keyed in the seven-digit code which unlocked the tall doors leading to the Medieval and Old Master series of galleries. The doors swung open, he fixed them back on their hooks, then turned to face the familiar outlines of Madonnas and martyrdoms. He didn’t know much about art, but he knew whereabouts on the walls it all belonged.

  Everything was exactly where it have should been until he entered the High Renaissance Gallery. This was usually one of the quickest visits in his tour of inspection. Since the famous 1982 robbery, there was embarrassingly less to display than there should have been. The remaining paintings – all minor works by lesser artists (the thieves had known precisely what they were looking for) – had been rehung and there had been some buying at major auctions to fill the space, but there was still too much blank wall for comfort.

  The security guard flicked an eye over the few familiar works and was about to move on when he caught sight of something unexpected and looked down. Propped along the bottom of one of the gallery walls were five paintings. Even though he knew little about art, the museum robbery had received so much media coverage back in 1982 that anyone in the country would have recognized them. The Uccello was there, the Piero della Francesca, the two Titians. Abov
e all, there was the famous Leonardo.

  The security guard let out a little belch of surprise. The bratwurst taste in his mouth was more pungent than ever.

  Neatly attached to the top of the Leonardo was a little note. In perfect German it read: ‘THANKS FOR THE LOAN OF THESE.’

  Dealing with a client of Mr Takachi’s eminence was not something that could be delegated to a minor official; this was a job for the bank’s Vice-President. With elaborate courtesy the appointed Vice-President escorted the honoured customer to the lift which led down to the New York bank’s vaults.

  On the basement level he checked his ID with the uniformed guard, who keyed in the appropriate code to open the heavy metal doors guarding the galleries of neatly ranked security boxes.

  Another uniformed guard accompanied them inside. Attached by a chain to his metal waistband was the second key which had to be turned at the same moment as the key the Vice-President carried if the box was to be opened.

  ‘And it’s just the pearls you want to take out for the moment?’ asked the Vice-President.

  Mr Takachi nodded acknowledgement of this. ‘I am taking my wife to the Pearl Harbor Apology Ball at the White House. Very prestigious occasion. Fund-raising event for Democratic Party.’

  ‘Ah,’ said the Vice-President. ‘Right.’ He stopped in front of one particular security box and looked at the uniformed guard. ‘Ready with your key?’

  The man nodded. ‘Now we have to turn them absolutely together,’ the Vice-President continued. ‘If we’re out of synch, the alarm goes off straight away, the doors close automatically and we’re locked in. It’s just another of our security measures,’ he added to Mr Takachi, who bowed.

  With the keys in place, the two men, watching each other’s hands, turned together. The thick, nuclearblast-proof door swung outward.

  Inside the security box were visible neat piles of gold bars, stacks of document cases, terraces of jewel boxes. Looking sternly down on them from the back was a gold-framed picture of a white-ruffed burgomaster.