∨ Mrs Pargeter’s Point of Honour ∧
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 proffered 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.
∨ Mrs Pargeter’s Point of Honour ∧
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
The 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.