by Simon Brett
“Really? Congratulations. When’s it due?”
“Oh, early days. Another five months to go.”
“That’s great news. Do congratulate your wife too, won’t you?”
“Course I will.”
“And how long have you got to go now?” Mrs Pargeter posed the question with delicate tact.
“Done seven years. Five more outstanding. Reckon I could be out in eighteen months, though – with good behaviour.”
“And that… won’t be a problem?” This question was floated even more sensitively than the previous one.
Keyhole Crabbe looked at her with reproach. “Mrs Pargeter, surprised you have to ask. Model prisoner, I am.”
“Yes. Yes, of course,” said Mrs Pargeter. “Sorry.” Hastily, she moved the conversation on. “By the way, did you hear that Fossilface O’Donahue was out?”
“Yeah, I heard.” Keyhole Crabbe shook his head ruefully. “Also heard something about he was a reformed character.”
“Given up his evil ways, yes.”
“Heaven preserve us. If he’s as unsuccessful at being a goodie as he was at being a villain, we’ve all got problems.”
“He is actually planning to repay his debt to all the people he reckons he’s done wrong to. ‘Make restitooshun’ is how he puts it.”
“Oh, blimey,” Keyhole groaned.
“And he’s intending on each occasion to do it in some way that demonstrates his sense of humour.”
“His what? Fossilface O’Donahue’s sense of humour? That’s a contradiction in terms.”
“Well, he’s apparently undergone a major transformation while he was inside. Now he claims he’s got a real sense of humour.”
“I don’t know whether I dare ask how it manifests itself…”
“I think he’s actually got a bit of work to do on the fine tuning.” And Mrs Pargeter outlined to Keyhole Crabbe Fossilface’s amusing attempt to repay the ‘monkey’ that he owed her late husband.
At the end of her narration, Keyhole groaned again. “Oh God. And you say he actually mentioned me by name?”
“Fraid so. What does he need to make ‘restitooshun’ to you for?”
The prisoner grimaced. “He done the dirty on me few years back when we was doing a bank job. Locked me in one of the vaults when the rest of the gang scarpered. So I was waiting there when the police arrived. Dead embarrassing for me of all people, as you can imagine.”
“Why particularly for you?”
“Well, I’m supposed to be this ace escape merchant, aren’t I? But Fossilface had nicked all my picklocks and other gear, so I couldn’t do nothing.”
“But could you have got out of a bank vault even if you had got your equipment with you?”
Keyhole Crabbe shrugged lightly.
“Course I could.”
“So he certainly owes you something.”
“Oh yes. ‘Restitooshun’. Dear God, I hate to think what form it’ll take.”
“Maybe he’ll just pay you some compensation money…” Mrs Pargeter suggested. “Maybe he’ll give up these elaborate ways of paying people back.”
“I’d like to believe you,” said Keyhole Crabbe gloomily, “but once an idea gets lodged in old Fossilface O’Donahue’s head, it takes a bloody road-drill to dislodge it.”
“Oh dear.”
He sighed. “Well, I’ll just have to wait and see what happens. I’ll be on my guard, though. Who else is on Robin-bloody-Hood’s hit-list?”
“Truffler, Hedgeclipper, Concrete and Gary certainly.”
“You and all?” said Keyhole to the chauffeur.
“Yes,” Gary confirmed with foreboding.
“What wrong did he do you then?”
“Sabotaged a getaway car I was driving. Could’ve been bloody nasty. I was lucky to escape in one piece.”
“So what kind of humorous ‘restitooshun’ do you reckon he’s going to make you for that?”
Gary shook his shoulders, as if suddenly cold. “I shudder to think.”
“Come on,” Mrs Pargeter urged comfortingly. “No point in worrying about things till they happen, is there?”
“Where Fossilface O’Donahue’s concerned,” said a doom-laden Keyhole Crabbe, “I’m rather afraid there is.”
“It’ll be fine,” Mrs Pargeter said blithely. She looked at her watch. “Should be in London in a couple of hours. Don’t envisage any problems that end, do you, Keyhole?”
“Nah,” he replied. “Done Wandsworth lots of times, haven’t I? This time of night screws’ll be asleep, anyway. Think everyone’s banged up, don’t they?” And, his worries about Fossilface O’Donahue temporarily allayed, Keyhole Crabbe chuckled fruitily.
♦
In a cell in Wandsworth Prison, Concrete Jacket lay wakeful and troubled on his bunk. Beneath him his cell-mate snored deeply.
There was a scraping noise at the cell door. Concrete tensed. As the sound continued, he eased himself off down to the floor, and picked up an enamel jug from the table. He raised it to defend himself as the door opened.
The outline of a man appeared in the doorway. Concrete Jacket moved forward aggressively and hissed, “Ere, what the hell do you think you’re –”
“Concrete, it’s me – Keyhole.”
The jug was halted in mid-descent towards the intruder’s head. “Keyhole Crabbe?”
“Right.”
Concrete Jacket looked bewildered in the half-light as Keyhole gently closed the door behind him. “What you doing here then? Got transferred down from Bedford, have you?”
“Nah,” Keyhole replied easily. “Just needed to see you.”
A suspicious light came into Concrete’s eye. “Ere, this isn’t an escape, is it?”
His visitor was appalled by the suggestion. “Good heavens, no. Very risky business, escape.”
“Too right,” the builder agreed. “Makes you a marked man, that does.”
Keyhole nodded. “Oh yeah. Wouldn’t catch me doing it. Serve your time like a good boy, no fuss, get your remission for good behaviour – that’s my philosophy.”
“Yeah.”
“It’s all right to nip out for kids’ birthdays, wedding anniversaries, that kind of number – otherwise, you just got to knuckle down and do your bird.”
“Right.” Concrete Jacket nodded his endorsement of these Victorian values. He gestured to a chair and the two prisoners sat down. “So what is it then, Keyhole? Great to see you, by the way.”
“You too, my son.” Keyhole gestured to the sleeping cell-mate, the rhythm of whose snores had not changed at all. “All right to talk with, er…?”
“Oh yeah,” Concrete replied. “That one’d sleep through the Third World War.”
Keyhole Crabbe nodded with satisfaction and drew a half-bottle of whisky out of his coat pocket. His friend’s eyes lit up. Two enamel mugs were quickly found and charged. They were clinked and gratefully sampled.
“Now,” said Keyhole Crabbe, “it’s about this Willie Cass business, Concrete…”
∨ Mrs Pargeter’s Plot ∧
Thirteen
The first streaks of dawn were lightening the sky as Gary’s limousine drew up outside the main gates of Bedford Prison. The back door opened and Keyhole Crabbe emerged.
“Sure you’ll be OK?” asked Mrs Pargeter.
“No problem,” the prisoner replied with a grin. “Dozy lot in here.”
“I can’t thank you enough for what you’ve done.”
Keyhole grimaced wryly. “Just sorry I couldn’t get you more. Afraid Concrete really clammed up on me.”
“Well, I’m very grateful for what you did get.”
He dismissed this with a flip of the hand. “Quite honestly, Mrs P., when I think of all the things your husband sorted for me, it’s the least I can do.”
Mrs Pargeter smiled. “He’d be very grateful to you, and all.”
“Good. Always valued Mr Pargeter’s good opinion.” He gave a little wave. “Cheers. See you around.”
>
“Bye-bye, Keyhole.”
He closed the door of the limousine and moved towards the main gate of the prison, reaching into a pocket for his picklock as nonchalantly as a commuter returning home after a day at the office.
“Good old Keyhole,” said Mrs Pargeter.
“One of the best,” Gary agreed. “Honest as the day is long.”
They both watched fondly as he turned the picklock, opened the prison gates and slipped inside. Gary switched on the ignition and the limousine sped off towards Greene’s Hotel.
“Wonder what’s eating Concrete…” the chauffeur mused. “Unlike him not to confide in his old mate Keyhole.”
“Yes, I’d hoped we’d get more. Still, at least we’ve got those two names.”
“The blokes Concrete thought might be involved?”
“Right. Did either of them mean anything to you?”
Gary shook his head.
“Never mind,” said Mrs Pargeter comfortably. “I bet Truffler’ll know who they are.”
♦
Keyhole Crabbe’s cell-mate still breathed evenly, enjoying the sleep of the innocent (well, the damned-nearly-innocent-if-he-hadn’t-been-stitched-up, in his case). Keyhole undressed quietly, and reached down to pull back the covers on his lower bunk.
There was a large paper-wrapped box on the bed.
He pulled the box out and looked at it in the pale light of the bluish overhead bulb that stayed on all night. The paper was blue- and silver-striped gift-wrapping. A card with a picture of a pink hippopotamus was attached.
Keyhole opened the card, and, his eyes straining in the half-light, saw stamped at the top a round smiley-face logo. Beneath it was printed:
WHAT DO YOU SAY WHEN YOU ARE STOPPED BY A POLICEMAN?
I DON’T KNOW. WHAT DO YOU SAY WHEN YOU ARE STOPPED BY A POLICEMAN?
POLICE TO MEET YOU.
“Oh no…” Keyhole murmured.
With a sense of doom, he tore the paper off the box, and opened it.
Inside, neatly laid out, were a set of files in graded sizes, a selection of hacksaws, a hammer and a variety of cold-chisels, a crowbar, a packet of plastic explosive and an oxyacetylene lamp. Wrapped round the handle of the hammer was a note. Unhappily, Keyhole flattened it out, and read:
NOW YOU’LL NEVER HAVE THAT LOCKED-IN FEELING AGAIN. APOLOGIES – IT WAS ALL MY VAULT!
Keyhole groaned. Fossilface O’Donahue’s ‘restitooshun’ couldn’t have been less appropriate. And after all the care he’d taken to keep his own probes and picklocks hidden… If the warders found a single item of that lot, he could wave goodbye to any thoughts of his sentence being reduced for good behaviour Particularly if they found the plastic explosive. He’d be lucky to get away with only seven years added.
Wearily, he packed everything back into the box, and once again got out his metal probe to open the cell door.
The next morning, when the manager of the Bedford branch of the National Westminster Bank opened one of the vaults, he had no explanation for the gift-wrapped box of escaper’s tools he found there.
♦
Truffler Mason’s filing system was of a piece with the rest of his office – antiquated and furry with dust. Shoeboxes, their corners reinforced with brittle, orangey sellotape, weren’t up to the task of containing the profusion of photocopied sheets and fading photographs clinched together by rusty paper clips.
This archive was not catalogued on anything so mundane as an alphabetical system, but by an arcane method comprehensible only to its creator. No one but Truffler himself could have flipped through the desiccated pages with such speed and certainty to home in on the relevant dossier and hand it across the desk to Mrs Pargeter.
She stared down at the mugshot. The mug in question looked like a primary-school child’s first incompetent effort with modelling clay.
“Blunt,” said Truffler. “Called Blunt he is.”
Mrs Pargeter scanned the accompanying sheet. “There’s no first name down here.”
“Never had one. Only got the one name. Always just called ‘Blunt’.”
“Any reason why?”
“As in ‘instrument’.”
“Ah.” Mrs Pargeter looked more narrowly at a face which appeared to have been left too close to a fire and melted. “Certainly suits him,” she observed, before turning back to the notes. “Seems he’s used a good few blunt instruments in his time, and all.”
Truffler screwed up his face. “Oh yes. Nasty bit of work. Not of the subtlest either, when it comes to covering his tracks. Spends his whole life in and out the nick. You never met him, did you?”
Mrs Pargeter looked ingenuously at the detective. “Why on earth should I have done?”
“Well, in the early days he worked quite a bit for Mr Pargeter… you know, back round the Basildon era.”
“Really?” said Mrs Pargeter, glacially innocent. “My husband never talked to me about his work, and introduced me to very few of his colleagues.”
“No, of course not,” Truffler said hastily.
“It is only since his death,” she continued demurely, “that I have used the address book he left me to make some… very useful contacts.”
“I understand completely.”
Truffler relaxed a little at the sight of a smile on Mrs Pargeter’s lips, as she went on, “‘You don’t want to worry your head about my business, Melita,’ he used to say to me…”
“Too right.”
“‘Besides, what you don’t know…’” she smiled sweetly, “‘… you can’t tell anyone else about, can you?’”
“He was a very shrewd man, Mr Pargeter,” Truffler asserted, then continued with diffidence: “Incidentally, Mrs Pargeter, you remember… Streatham?”
Her face clouded. “Streatham? I believe it’s a South London suburb between Brixton and Mitcham.”
“No, you know what I mean. Streatham. Julian Embridge Streatham.”
The mention of the name sent darkened clouds over Mrs Pargeter’s habitually sunny face. “I thought we had dealt with that problem. Julian Embridge is currently serving a very long jail sentence – which is an inadequate revenge for what he did in Streatham, but better than nothing.”
She referred to an unhappy incident in her husband’s generally successful career, when betrayal by a trusted lieutenant – the same Julian Embridge – had caused him a longer absence from the marital nest than either of them would have wished for. Though, as Mrs Pargeter mentioned, she had since exacted her revenge, the memory of Embridge’s perfidy could still cause her anguish.
Truffler elaborated. “Reason I mentioned Streatham is –”
He was interrupted by a sudden scream of Welsh anger from the outer office, and shrugged apologetically. “Sounds like Bronwen’s husband – ex-husband I should say – is back from Mauritius and has just phoned her up.”
Their ensuing dialogue was punctuated by further vituperation from the valleys. Through the wall they could not distinguish the words, but when a tone of voice is that expressive, who needs words?
“What were you saying about Streatham?” Mrs Pargeter prompted.
Truffler sighed ruefully. “Just that there’s little doubt that he…” a large finger prodded the photograph of Blunt, “… was in it right up to his neck.”
Mrs Pargeter looked grim. “Right. So I have the odd score to settle with Blunt, don’t I?” An even louder scream of Welsh fury thundered through the partition. Mrs Pargeter raised an eyebrow to Truffler, then asked, “What about the other name Concrete mentioned?”
“Yes. Clickety Clark…” His hands instinctively found the relevant dossier and passed it across the desk. As he did so, Truffler shook his head in puzzlement. “Odd. I mean, Clickety was in a totally different part of the business.”
“Still worked for my husband, though?”
“Oh yes, but he didn’t do no heavy stuff.” Mrs Pargeter gazed at the detective with charming incomprehension. What on earth could he mean by ‘heavy stuff’?
>
“He done photography,” Truffler explained. “Passport photographs, that kind of number, anything photographic where sort of… specialized work was needed. We used to call him ‘Wandering Hands’.” Mrs Pargeter looked at him for elucidation. “Because he was always touching everything up.”
“Ah.”
“What old Clickety’s doing now, though, I’ve no idea. I think we should – ” He was interrupted by the sound of a heavy object being hurled with some force at the dividing wall between the two offices. “Excuse me a moment, Mrs Pargeter.”
With the long-suffering weariness of someone who has gone through these motions many times before, Truffler Mason rose to his full length and crossed to a dusty cupboard. He unlocked it to reveal shelves piled high with brand-new plastic-wrapped telephones. He took one out and turned to face the door.
As he did so, a diffident tap was heard, and the door opened. Bronwen stood there, flushed and apologetic. In her hands were the tangled remains of a smashed telephone.
Wordlessly, Truffler took the debris and handed her the new one. Bronwen smiled embarrassed gratitude and went back to her desk, closing the door behind her. Truffler chucked the shattered telephone into the bin.
With no reference to the incident, he then said, “Right, Mrs Pargeter. I think we need to get some up-to-date info on Blunt and Clickety Clark.”
“And how are we going to do that?”
“We are going,” said Truffler with a foxy grin, “to visit the offices of Inside Out.”
∨ Mrs Pargeter’s Plot ∧
Fourteen
The offices of Inside Out were housed in Swordfish Wharf, a gleaming new tower block in Docklands. “Not a million miles from Wapping,” Truffler Mason observed, as Gary’s limousine deposited them outside the entrance. “They say that’s the new Fleet Street, don’t they?”
“The only people who say it are people who haven’t been here,” said Mrs Pargeter, looking up with distaste at the glass box that loomed above them. “The only journalists I’ve met recently say nothing will replace the old Fleet Street.”
“Ah, but where did you meet them, Mrs P.?” asked Truffler, as they crossed a foyer, whose copious vegetation was apparently trying to reproduce an air-conditioned rainforest. The steel sculpture of a swordfish rising out of the green looked confused by its alien environment.
