To his surprise, the machine indicated there was a message for him. He played it back, casual interest quickly giving way to mounting excitement.
It was an educated voice, which spoke with little intonation. “Hello, Sergeant Hughes. This is another message from Posey Narker, who tipped you off about the Dover smuggling attempt. Congratulations on following up on that. I must say, after years of giving information to Inspector Wilkinson, it’s a relief to be dealing with someone who seems to have a bit of intelligence.
“I have more information for you about the Pargeter set-up. Mr Pargeter, as I’m sure you know, is dead, but some of his old accomplices are banding up again to perpetrate a major art theft. This morning they will be hijacking a lorry full of stolen paintings from a breaker’s yard owned by a villain called Rod D’Acosta. It is situated at…”
Sergeant Hughes continued listening to the address as he broke into a run towards the car park. Never mind about Boymeetzgirl. Their frenzied fans could tear the whole airport apart so far as he was concerned. Hercule Hughes had bigger fish to fry.
∨ Mrs Pargeter’s Point of Honour ∧
Thirty-Six
The van which Mrs Pargeter had last seen in the body shop painted grey was now painted blue. She sat in the passenger seat, with Hamish Ramon Henriques at the wheel beside her. They were parked in the network of streets that Mrs Pargeter and Truffler had selected as ideal for their operation. HRH’s fingers drummed lightly on the steering wheel; Mrs Pargeter hummed softly. Both were tense, but tense with excitement rather than anxiety.
At the sound of a fast-approaching vehicle, HRH came to life. “Here we go,” he murmured.
As he and Mrs Pargeter got out of their van, the red Transit screeched to a halt behind them, then reversed up, so that the backs of the two vehicles faced each other, some five metres apart. At the moment Mrs Pargeter and HRH opened the back doors of their van, the Transit’s swung wide to reveal Truffler, Hedgeclipper Clinton and Kevin the doorman. As Gary appeared from the driver’s door, Truffler and Kevin jumped down into the space between the two vans. Truffler turned to receive the first painting from Hedgeclipper, passed it to Kevin, who passed it to Gary who handed it up to HRH, who in turn stowed it in the back of the blue van.
Mrs Pargeter looked on with quiet pride, as the complete transfer of goods was achieved within ninety seconds. The last to be safely packed away was a rather soulful Raphael Madonna.
At the moment Hamish Ramon Henriques slotted the painting into place, Mrs Pargeter turned towards the sound of approaching cars. “Just in time. Close both sets of doors and into the blue van!”
She and Gary bundled into the front seats, the rest climbed into the back, pulling the doors shut behind them.
Seconds later, two cars full of heavies screamed up. The heavy called Ray drove one. The other, with Rod D’Acosta in the passenger seat, was driven by the heavy called Phil. (The heavy called Sid was still blissfully unconscious at the foot of the wall he’d run into.) The cars passed the blue van and homed in on the red Transit. One slid into the space across which the paintings had been passed, and came to rest with its bumper touching the van’s back doors; the other backed up till it was parked in contact with the van’s front grille. There was no way the Transit could get out of that pincer movement.
Nonchalantly, confident their quarry was trapped, Rod D’Acosta and his two heavies got out of their vehicles. Carrying an array of baseball bats and pickaxe handles, they moved menacingly forward.
At the very second they looked into the cab of the Transit and realized it was empty, the engine of the other van was detonated into action. The chief villain and his two henchmen turned in dismay to watch its blue back doors diminishing away down the street.
“Get back in,” Rod D’Acosta bawled in fury, “and turn the bloody cars round!”
♦
The blue van and its two pursuing cars hurtled through the streets of South London, dropping the jaws of passers-by and threatening the heart conditions of other road-users. In spite of the van’s souped-up engine, the superior power of the cars was beginning to tell. They were gaining on their quarry.
In the van’s passenger seat Mrs Pargeter, who had been tracing their route across the map on her lap, shouted suddenly, “This is it. Swing a left, Gary.”
The blue van did as instructed, the suddenness of the swing forcing its whole weight momentarily on to two wheels. But it righted itself and roared off down the side road.
The pursuing cars slowed, and the one behind eased up alongside its leader. Windows were wound down. Rod D’Acosta grinned wolfishly across the intervening space to the heavy called Ray. “Got them now,” he announced. “This road’s just a loop. You head them off the other end.”
“Right,” said the heavy called Ray, and fired his car forward to block off the junction ahead. Rod D’Acosta nodded to the heavy called Phil, who turned his car down the side road and moved sedately ahead. There was no hurry now. The blue van was trapped as securely as the red one had been. They could move slowly, relishing the thought of the inevitable violence which lay ahead.
♦
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.