by Simon Brett
The limousine was parked outside Greene’s Hotel under the approving eye of a doorman who would instantly have moved on a vehicle containing anyone other than Mrs Pargeter. Gary, loaded down with Harrods carrier bags, followed his employer into the foyer.
‘Hedgeclipper’s really had this place done lovely, hasn’t he?’ the chauffeur observed, as they crossed the black and white marble floor. ‘Strikes me every time I come in here.’
‘Oh yes, he always did have a good eye,’ Mrs Pargeter agreed.
The object of their compliments, immaculately dressed in black jacket and pinstriped trousers, was standing behind the elegant antique desk which served as the Greene’s Hotel Reception. The only out-of-place element in his soigné image was once again the marmoset perched affectionately on his shoulder. Gary opened his mouth to make some comment on this, but was stopped by a slight shake of his employer’s head.
Hedgeclipper Clinton beamed at his most favoured guest. ‘What a lovely afternoon, Mrs Pargeter.’
‘Indeed. And how’s Erasmus behaving himself?’
The hotel manager shook his head and tutted. ‘He’s been a little tinker this morning, I’m afraid. Smeared an orange all over my William and Mary walnut chair. Still . . .’ he went on with an indulgent shrug, ‘not a lot one can do about it, is there?’
Gary’s instinctive answer to this too was prevented by a look from Mrs Pargeter. Instead, the chauffeur nodded amiably to his former colleague. ‘Just saying you done a lovely job here, Hedge—’ A look from the hotelier froze off the second half of the word. ‘Mr Clinton,’ Gary corrected himself.
Mr Clinton was once again wreathed in smiles. ‘Thank you so much. I’m delighted you like it. And all well with you, Mrs Pargeter?’ he asked solicitously.
‘Fine, thank you.’
‘No more trouble, I trust, from Fossilface O’Donahue?’
‘Not a squeak out of him. Seems to have once again vanished off the face of the earth.’
‘Good, I’m so pleased to hear that. Let’s hope things stay that way,’ Hedgeclipper Clinton said as he pressed an unseen button for the lift doors to open. ‘And, though it’s perhaps selfish of me, may I say that I do hope that dream house of yours isn’t coming along too quickly. Greene’s Hotel doesn’t like to lose a guest of your calibre, Mrs Pargeter.’
She grimaced wryly. ‘Have no worries on that score. Whatever the house is doing, it certainly isn’t coming along too quickly.’
As the lift rose, Gary continued his musing about the success of Greene’s Hotel. ‘No, Hedgeclipper really knows what’s what. Got taste, that’s what it is, taste. Anyone who was taught by your husband really learnt the lot. I mean, there’s no way Hedgeclipper could be running a place like this without what Mr Pargeter done for him. No way I could be doing the car-hire business.’
‘Any more bookings, by the way?’ asked Mrs Pargeter, always concerned about the health of Gary’s business.
‘Just rung Denise,’ he replied with satisfaction. ‘Got a wedding this weekend.’
‘Great.’
‘Someone she knows. Local too, so that’s good. No, excellent thing to get into, weddings. Want a bit more of that kind of business.’ He was silent for a moment. ‘I’m thinking of buying something old for the weddings.’
‘How do you mean – something old?’ asked Mrs Pargeter as Gary drew back the lift doors and let her out on to the landing.
‘Old car. Roller, Bentley, something like that. Vintage touch. Lot of girls these days want to arrive in the church in something a bit classy.’
‘Well, if you want a loan to buy the thing, you have only to say the word.’
‘No, Mrs Pargeter, wouldn’t seem right borrowing from you.’
‘Wouldn’t be borrowing. I’d regard it as an investment in your business.’
Gary shook his head. ‘Kind of you, but no thanks. I’ll save up what I need out of my profits. That’s the best way.’
‘If you’re sure . . .’
“Course I am. Something your husband used to say to me quite often: “Neither a lender nor a borrower be.”’
‘Ah yes.’
‘Always had a way with words, Mr Pargeter. Kept making up clever little sayings like that, you know.’
‘Mm,’ Mrs Pargeter agreed, a little wistfully.
They had reached the door to her suite. She opened it with her key and ushered the chauffeur inside. The sitting room bore not a single trace of the devastation Erasmus had wreaked on it. Gary neatly lined up the Harrods carriers on a luggage bench.
‘Thank you so much for doing that.’
‘Pleasure, Mrs Pargeter. And you’ll call me when you next need the car?’
‘Of course.’ She looked at him with sudden beadiness. ‘By the way, Gary, you haven’t sent me an invoice yet.’
He coloured. ‘No, well, I—’
‘Do it.’
‘Yes, Mrs Pargeter,’ he said meekly.
‘Otherwise,’ she continued, ‘it’s going to be a very long time before you can afford to buy that Roller.’
‘Yes, yes, I know. It’s just that I feel I owe you such a lot for—’
‘I expect an invoice in tomorrow’s post, Gary. If you don’t collect what’s owing to you, you’ll never save any money.’
There was no arguing with that tone in Mrs Pargeter’s voice.
‘Of course not. ‘Nother thing I always remember your husband used to say: “Look after the pennies and the pounds’ll look after themselves.”’ Gary looked envious. ‘Wish I could come up with neat little things like that.’
‘Don’t worry,’ Mrs Pargeter said kindly. ‘We’ve all been blessed with different gifts. With my husband it was words . . .’
‘Amongst other things.’
‘Amongst other things, yes. With you, though, it’s driving. My husband never actually passed his driving test, you know, so you’ve got the advantage of him there.’
‘Yes. Yes, I have, haven’t I?’ The thought seemed to cheer him. He moved to the door. ‘OK, give me a bell if you need me. And I’ll see you get an invoice in the morning.’
“Bye, Gary. And if you change your mind about the loan for the Roller . . .’
The chauffeur shook his head, but with marginally less conviction than he had before. After he’d gone, Mrs Pargeter went through into the bedroom and looked benignly down at her late husband’s photograph. ‘You did a good job with that boy,’ she said. ‘Gary’s heart’s in the right place, no question.’
Suddenly she remembered something and hurried out into the sitting room. She came back, holding a bright silk blouse against her ample frontage, and again faced the photograph. ‘Nice one, this, isn’t it? Really me, as you always used to say. Don’t ask the price, though. Can’t run the risk of you having a posthumous heart attack, can we? You wouldn’t believe the way things’ve gone up since you popped your clogs, love.’
She hung the blouse in the mahogany wardrobe, and was thoughtful for a moment. Then, turning back to the photograph, she mused, ‘You know, I’m drifting on this Concrete Jacket case. No forward momentum. I think the time has come for me to make something happen.’ Mrs Pargeter made a decision. ‘Yes, this could be exactly the right moment to get things under way.’
She grinned. ‘As you always used to say, love: “There is a tide in the affairs of men, Which, taken at the flood, leads on to fortune.”
‘Hm,’ she chuckled as she reached for the Yellow Pages, ‘and no doubt Gary thinks you made up that one too.’
Chapter Seventeen
The two youths wore sleeveless T-shirts and the bulges of their biceps left no doubt that they worked out. Their blonded hair was as short as Velcro over their scalps, and though the only weapons they carried were wet rags and sponges, they looked menacing enough for the majority of motorists, whether they wanted their windscreens cleaned or not, to hand over the price of a quick getaway when the lights changed.
The younger youth swaggered across to the battered brown M
axi that drew up at the head of the queue just as the green light gave way to red.
‘Do your windscreen, guv?’ The voice was abrasive South London and what it said was a classic example of something Latin masters have spent many generations trying to din into their charges: a question expecting the answer Yes. Though in fact ‘demanding’ might be a more accurate description.
‘And what if I don’t want it done?’ asked the driver, a mournful, long-faced man in a brown suit.
The youth flexed his threatening biceps and loomed over the Maxi as if he could crush it like a cigarette packet. ‘Well,’ he replied softly. ‘I think you might regret that decision, guv. I’m sure you wouldn’t like—’
But suddenly, as he recognized the driver, his whole attitude and body language changed. The beefy frame seemed to shrink into a posture of conciliation – even supplication – as he mouthed the name, ‘Truffler’.
‘Right. I’ve been looking for you.’ The tall man leant across to open the passenger door. ‘Get in, Seb.’
‘But I—’
‘Get in,’ Truffler repeated in a voice that eliminated the option of refusal. The boy called Seb looked across at his fellow extortioner, shrugged helplessly and got into the Maxi’s passenger seat. At that moment the lights changed to green and the car lurched forward.
After a few minutes of silence, ‘Truffler asked, ‘How’s your dad?’
‘All right,’ the boy replied, his South London rasp giving way to the rounded vowels of a public school education.
‘He’s a good lad, Stan,’ said Truffler. ‘You keeping in touch with him, are you, Seb?’
‘Oh yes. Saw him at Visiting on Sunday.’
‘Last time I saw Stan,’ Truffler ruminated, ‘he said the one thing he cared about was that you didn’t get into trouble with the law.’
‘I’m not in trouble with the law,’ Seb protested, perhaps a little too vehemently.
The older man’s tired eyes flicked across at him. ‘So what’s with all this windscreen-cleaning business then?’
‘That’s not illegal . . . exactly.’ But the boy’s colour and hesitation showed he wasn’t even convincing himself.
Truffler pursed his lips and drove on towards his office.
When she brought the coffee in, Bronwen looked with undisguised admiration at Seb’s physique. ‘You know,’ she mused, to no one in particular, ‘I often think the answer to my problems might be a toyboy . . .’
Seb grinned, but Truffler came back at her in a tone which, by his normally gentle standards, was harsh. ‘Yeah? And I sometimes think the answer to your problems might be getting that filing finished.’
She pouted and looked round the office with mock despair. Certainly the prospect of filing the debris that covered every surface there was a daunting one.
‘You know I don’t mean in here,’ said Truffler. ‘This lot is filed.’
And it was, according to his system. The shoeboxes of papers he had gone through with Mrs Pargeter still lay piled over other layers on his desk, and the rest of the room looked as if a bomb had gone off in a paper factory. But to Truffler it all made sense. He could put his hand on any document he required within seconds.
‘I meant,’ he went on sourly, ‘get on with the filing out in your office.’
With another pout, and a little wiggle of her bottom for Seb’s benefit, Bronwen flounced out of the office, closing the door behind her with unnecessary force.
Seb followed her progress with a smirk, but Truffler quickly brought him back to the matter in hand. ‘You were saying about your dad having had this offer.’
The boy picked up his coffee and took a sip. ‘It wasn’t exactly an offer. More like . . . an investment opportunity.’
‘And it come to him in the nick?’
‘That’s right.’
‘’Cause he’s . . . what? . . . three years in now, is he?’
‘Two and a half. Into a seven-year stretch. Mind you, with good behaviour and—’
‘Yes, sure, sure.’ Truffler nodded impatiently. ‘So what was this “investment opportunity”?’
‘Well,’ said Seb in his best Captain of School accent, ‘my father like a lot of people in the nick, he suffers financially.’
‘Right.’
‘I mean, obviously he’s got a bit stashed away . . . stuff that wasn’t recovered from the last job. It’s a tidy sum, but, you know, with inflation and what-have-you . . .’ The boy shook his head gloomily, ‘. . . well, seven years on it’s not going to be worth that much.’
‘He hasn’t got it on deposit or . . .?’
Seb drew his lips tight across his teeth as he explained, ‘Only in a manner of speaking. And you don’t get much interest from a deposit that’s six foot under Epping Forest.’
‘Ah,’ said Truffler, understanding. ‘No. No, you don’t.’
‘Anyway,’ the boy continued, ‘the old man’ll be pretty close to retirement, really, when he comes out . . . and he’ll have lost a lot of his contacts, so even if he did want to get back into the business, he might find it tough . . . and, well, there’s no way he’s going to keep my mother in the style that she’s become accustomed to on a state pension . . . so it’s no surprise he was interested when he heard about this way of making his money work for him while he’s inside.’
‘Do you know the details of what it was, this investment plan?’ asked Truffler urgently.
But Seb shook his head. ‘No. I do know it involved Mum taking out a second mortgage on the house.’
‘Oh?’
‘Needed to raise fifty grand,’ the boy explained. ‘That’s the stake.’ Answering the alarm in Truffler’s eyes, he went on, ‘It’s no problem. All be paid off again when dad gets out and reclaims the Epping Forest stash. And in the meantime that fifty grand will’ve doubled? Trebled? Who can say?’
Truffler looked sceptical. In his line of business he had come across too many investment opportunities guaranteed to double or treble the stake of the poor sucker who put his money into them. ‘But you don’t know what the actual investment was?’ he asked. Seb shook his head. ‘Or how Stan got to hear about it?’
The boy brightened. ‘Oh yes. I do know that. It was through a bloke who was in the nick with the old man.’
‘What was the bloke’s name?’
‘Blunt. Does that mean anything to you?’
‘Oh yes,’ said Truffler, slowly nodding his head. ‘That certainly means something to me.’
Chapter Eighteen
Mrs Pargeter’s wardrobe was both extensive and expensive. It very firmly reflected her character. Not for her were the muted fondant colours patronized by senior members of the British Royal Family. Not for her the subtle beiges and fawns which some women of ample proportions favour as a means to anonymity, to draw attention away from their bulk.
Mrs Pargeter had never attempted to hide her dimensions. She knew that such a task was hopeless, anyway, and that apparent success at it could only be self-delusion; but, apart from that, she had never felt the need to disguise her outline. Rather she gloried in it. Mrs Pargeter had always felt herself to be the right size for the person she was – and certainly the late Mr Pargeter had never had any complaints.
He had always been a lavish provider – and even, in some cases, purchaser – of clothes for his wife. He knew her style exactly, and on his varied travels would always be on the lookout for the bold silks and cottons that so flattered her generous curves.
Since his death, Mrs Pargeter had had to do all her own shopping, but so distinct was her sartorial identity that she never had any problems making decisions about what to buy. A dress or a suit was either right for her or wrong. Trousers and hats were never right for her. Nor were tights; Mrs Pargeter always wore silk stockings. Her underwear, even though her husband was no longer around to appreciate it, remained frivolously exotic. And the right shoes for Mrs Pargeter always had surprisingly high heels, which gave a pleasing tension to her well-turned calves and ankles.
She dressed carefully for the appointment she had made following her consultation of the Yellow Pages. And she dressed excitedly, rather relishing the idea of taking on another identity. It wasn’t fancy dress, though; she wore her own clothes, but selected the brightest and most ostentatious to create a heightened version of her natural style. What she was after for the encounter to come was an ensemble which breathed too much money.
And she was happy that the effect had been achieved. She had asked Hedgeclipper Clinton – and Erasmus, it was impossible these days to have one without the other – to bring up her jewellery box from the hotel safe, and selected a matching set of ruby-and-diamond necklace, bracelet and cluster earrings. They were gems which had once belonged to a Cabinet minister’s mistress, but the late Mr Pargeter had thought his wife a much more suitable proprietor and had arranged the transfer of ownership in his own inimitable way. Mrs Pargeter would under normal circumstances only have worn them in the evening, but their daytime brightness gave just the right over-the-top quality to the character she was proposing to play.
When she was dressed to her satisfaction, she did a little twirl for the benefit of the late Mr Pargeter’s photograph on the bedside table. ‘What do you think, love? Teetering on the edge of vulgarity – hm? Yes. Just about right, I’d say.’
She grinned and sat down on the bed. ‘Now I’m going to be a good girl,’ she continued to the photograph, ‘and make sure that someone is aware of where I’m going, and what I’m going to do when I get there. I remember what you taught me, love – never take any unnecessary risks.’
She reached for the telephone.
In Truffler Mason’s outer office Bronwen looked on admiringly as her boss ushered Seb out. Truffler shook an admonitory finger at the boy, saying, ‘And remember, young man – in future you keep on the right side of the law.’
Seb grinned lazily. ‘All right, all right. You sound like a blooming community policeman.’ He beamed a roguish look at Bronwen and let a ripple run through his uncovered biceps. ‘See you again I hope, gorgeous.’
