Keyhole Crabbe, the late Mr Pargeter’s most trusted security expert, had been alerted to a possible call-out, and was immediately summoned from his home in Bedford. Accompanied by Jukebox Jarvis, he went to Sergeant Hughes’s flat, where the double locks and burglar alarm proved only a momentary obstacle. Once inside, Jukebox quickly found the Sergeant’s laptop, located the file from which his dossier had been printed, and deleted the entire contents of that and its back-up. He resisted the temptation to leave a cheeky message.
All that remained to be done then was for Mrs Pargeter and Truffler Mason to concoct an alternative dossier on the alleged criminal activities of the late Mr Pargeter and his associates.
It was a work of great simplicity, but, in the view of its creators, considerable beauty.
Sergeant Hughes had done well in his researches. He was a gifted detective, who might well have lived up to his first name of Hercule, had not the jealousy of crusty old superiors like Inspector Wilkinson (and a little finessing by associates of Mrs Pargeter) held back his career.
Hughes had made the link between Chastaigne Varleigh and the series of international art thefts initiated by Bennie Logan. He had identified the role of Palings Price in these crimes and the interior designer’s current association with Toby Chastaigne.
More disturbingly, he had traced the links from Bennie Logan and Palings Price back to the late Mr Pargeter. Once that connection had been made, a whole set of new names became ripe for investigation. By going back into the old files from the period immediately before Mr Pargeter’s death, when Inspector Wilkinson had been getting close to arresting the whole gang, Hughes had named Truffler Mason, Hedgeclipper Clinton, Hamish Ramon Henriques, Keyhole Crabbe and Gary the chauffeur.
Truffler had not been guilty of hyperbole when he described the contents of the dossier as dynamite.
Still, the original had now been deleted from the Sergeant’s laptop. All that remained was to ensure that it was never reconstructed in the same form, and that Sergeant Hughes was discreetly removed from the scene.
It was to achieve this first aim that Mrs Pargeter and Truffler Mason compiled their revised dossier. The document did not attempt to excise all reference to the late Mr Pargeter. It was more subtle than that. As in Sergeant Hughes’s researches, links were traced between the dead man and a series of associates. It was in the names of these associates that the new dossier diverged from the original.
Rod D’Acosta was implicated in a series of the late Mr Pargeter’s operations. So were his acolytes, the heavies called Ray, Phil and Sid. Their involvement was at a strictly Rent-A-Muscle level, so their sentences would not be as long as those handed down to the ringleaders.
And these ringleaders were of course identified in the new dossier. The mastermind behind a great many vicious crimes turned out to be Denzil – known in the underworld as ‘Palings’ – Price. And, interestingly, he had for a long time been in cahoots with a gentleman called Toby Chastaigne.
The criminal network run by these two was extensive, but, sadly from the police point of view, all of the other major players in their gang had since died. (Compiling this list of names had been Truffler Mason’s task, which he had completed with his customary efficiency. In fact, it had been easy. In the dusty chaos of his office, he kept all the back numbers of a magazine called Inside Out. Known affectionately in the underworld as ‘The Lag Mag’, this publication noted the comings and goings, releases and transfers of the country’s prison population. All Truffler had to do was to consult the ‘Obituary’ sections, and he soon had an extensive list of safely dead villains.)
The men named in the new dossier formed the core of a gang responsible for some of the most audacious criminal operations of the previous two decades, and unanswerable evidence was provided against all of them. Bringing to justice the six who were still alive would neatly tie a bow on a long series of unsolved crimes. Once they were put away, the police file on the late Mr Pargeter could be closed for ever.
The dossier took a couple of days to get right, but, when finished, it was, though Mrs Pargeter said it herself, a beautiful piece of work. She did have a momentary pang of conscience contemplating the length of the jail sentences the named men were likely to get, but then she remembered Veronica Chastaigne’s important distinction between the concepts of ‘justice’ and of ‘what’s right’. Mrs Pargeter then felt absolved from any possible blame about what she was doing.
All that remained was for Jukebox Jarvis to access the police computer once again to add a couple of refinements. This he did with no problem (invention having run out, they were back to using ‘copper’ as that day’s six-letter password).
Once inside the system, Jukebox followed Mrs Pargeter’s instructions. The text of the new dossier was copied into a secret file in the computer which sat on the desk of Inspector Craig Wilkinson.
And then there was the small matter of Sergeant Hughes… Truffler Mason had suggested, very tentatively and obliquely, that this could be a job for Vanishing Vernon or even, remembering how he got his nickname, Hedgeclipper Clinton. But Mrs Pargeter was vehemently against the idea.
Her solution to the problem was much more ingenious. Obeying her instructions, Jukebox Jarvis accessed the files of the Met’s personnel department.
A few relevant keystrokes were made, and the following Monday Sergeant Hughes started his new posting at a dog-handling unit in South Wales.
♦
One piece of unfinished business remained. She wasn’t obliged to do it, but for Mrs Pargeter it was a point of honour that she should once again speak face to face with Craig Wilkinson.
She announced herself at the station reception, and he was clearly surprised when she entered his office.
Mrs Pargeter spoke first to ease the potential embarrassment. “The circumstances of our parting last time were so abrupt that I didn’t want there to be any ill feeling between us.”
“No, no, of course not. I’m sorry. It’s something that doesn’t very often happen to me, but I just got the wrong end of the stick.” This wasn’t a deliberate lie on the Inspector’s part; he did just genuinely lack self-knowledge.
“The other thing was –” – Mrs Pargeter placed Sergeant Hughes’s folder on the desk – “you left this behind in the restaurant. I’ve no idea what’s in it – ” (now that was a deliberate lie) “but I’m sure it’s important.”
“Well, yes, yes, it could be.” In spite of Sergeant Hughes’s furious questions about where the dossier was, Wilkinson had been too deeply sunk in his own gloom to think much about it.
“Mind you, these days losing a copy of a document’s not such a problem as it used to be. Presumably you have the text on your computer, don’t you?”
“Er, well…” The Inspector looked across at the alien keyboard and monitor on a small table on the other side of the room. Its layer of dust showed how often it got used. In Wilkinson’s oft-stated, Luddite view, “A good copper doesn’t need computers. A good copper works by instinct and intuition.”
“Actually, in this case,” he went on, “most of the research for that dossier was done by my junior, Sergeant Hughes.”
“But he’d probably have sent a copy to your computer, so that you could check it.”
“I’m not sure that he would. He’s a rather secretive type, Hughes. Likes to keep things to himself.”
“Surely, though, when working with someone of your eminence and track record, Craig, he’d know that it was his duty to share everything with you.”
“Well, maybe…”