Mrs. Pargeter's Point of Honour (12 page)

‘Who was that?' The Inspector's voice shrivelled under its own sarcasm. ‘Professor Moriarty?'

‘No, sir, it was a man who's now dead, but who in his time was behind some of the biggest criminal operations in London. His name was Mr Pargeter.'

‘Really?' Wilkinson tried to keep his voice as casual and uninterested as possible, but the name still brought him an unwelcome
frisson
.

‘Yes, sir. I'm building up a dossier on his activities. The late Mr Pargeter, so far as I can tell, was a great coordinator. He knew all kinds of specialists in the underworld and his skill was in getting them together. He was the brains behind everything, but his influence reached out to a whole army of minor villains.'

‘Why're you telling me all this, Hughes?'

‘Because if you entrap someone like Mr Pargeter, sir, you don't just get one villain, you get a whole pack of them. Apparently, I read in the files, at one stage there was a police initiative to get him, but it was conducted so incompetently that—'

‘Yes, yes,' Inspector Wilkinson interrupted testily. ‘There's one thing you seem to be ignoring in all this extremely fascinating conversation, and that is that you're talking about someone who is dead. I'm sure it would be entirely possible to set up a very clever operation to entrap Mr Pargeter, but you'd be ten years too late.'

‘Mr Pargeter may be dead, sir,' the Sergeant said slowly, ‘but his influence didn't die with him.'

‘What're you saying, Hughes?'

‘I'm saying that Mr Pargeter's network still exists.'

‘I see.' The Inspector smiled sceptically. ‘And who, may I ask, runs this mythical organization?'

‘His widow.'

‘Who?'

‘His widow. Mrs Pargeter.' Wilkinson gaped, and Hughes pressed home his advantage. ‘What is more, I have now established that, on the third day we worked together doing surveillance at Chastaigne Varleigh, she was the woman who arrived at the house by limousine.'

‘What!'

‘I've checked it out.' The Sergeant was now having difficulty keeping a note of smugness out of his voice. He'd really got the old dinosaur on the run now. ‘That woman's name was Mrs Pargeter.'

There was a silence, then Inspector Wilkinson broke it with a patronizing chuckle. ‘Hughes, Hughes, Hughes,' he said pityingly, ‘what it must be still to have the boundless enthusiasm of youth.'

‘What do you mean, sir?'

‘I mean that you have no basis for assuming that the woman who entered Chastaigne Varleigh has anything to do with the late Mr Pargeter.'

‘But of course I have. For heaven's sake, she's got the same surname!'

‘Yes, and so the obvious thing to do would be to assume that they're related.'

‘Seems reasonable to me, sir.'

‘Yes, it probably does to
you,
Hughes, but what distinguishes an exceptional copper from a run-of-the-mill copper is the ability to see beyond the obvious. Sometimes, you know, we can learn from the world of crime fiction. Have you read any of Conan Doyle's Sherlock Holmes stories, Hughes?'

‘No. I'm more interested in real-life crime than that kind of hokum.'

‘Oh, don't be hasty, Hughes. You'd be very unwise to dismiss Sherlock Holmes as hokum. The important lesson he offers to every real-life copper is that one shouldn't look for the obvious. Are you familiar with
The curious incident of the dog in the night-time
?'

‘No,' the Sergeant replied sullenly.

‘Well, you should be. I mean, what would you expect a dog to do in the night-time?'

‘Sleep?'

‘Yes. Or bark.'

‘It'd only bark if something disturbed it.'

‘Exactly, Hughes, exactly! You know, you might have the makings of a half-decent cop yet,' Wilkinson conceded generously. ‘In the relevant Sherlock Holmes story, it's what the dog
doesn't
do that's important. The reader's expectations are reversed – therein lies Conan Doyle's cunning. And it's just the same in this case. Mrs Pargeter has the same surname as the late Mr Pargeter – and that is the very reason why they're
not
related.'

‘So are you going to leave it like that, sir? Assume they're not related without even checking?'

‘No, no, Hughes,' the Inspector replied patiently as if to an overexcited five-year-old. ‘Of course I'll check it out. A good copper always checks things out. But I'll be very surprised if my instinct isn't proved right once again. You'll see, Hughes – and hopefully you'll learn too, eh?'

‘Yes, sir,' Hughes replied sullenly.

‘Remember what I said. It rarely pays to go for the obvious. Lateral thinking is what you need in our line of work.'

Inspector Wilkinson grinned complacently. Sergeant Hughes seethed.

Gary's limousine sighed to a halt outside an ordinary-looking terrace in a North London suburb. Even though this was not a commercial booking and his passenger was only Truffler Mason, force of habit made the chauffeur get out and open the back door. Everyone who travelled in one of Gary's cars got the same first-class treatment.

‘Thanks, mate,' said Truffler, and looked up at the house. ‘He'll be goo4 on this stuff, Gary. He's great on computers, but anything to do with motors, I always go to Jukebox Jarvis too. You know him?'

Gary opened the gate and they walked up the short path to the front door. It only took one and a quarter of Truffler's huge strides. ‘I've heard of him, obviously,' said the chauffeur, ‘not met him. One thing I've always wanted to know, though, was why he was called “Jukebox”.'

Truffler Mason lifted the Lincoln Imp doorknocker and let it fall. ‘Because he was Mr Pargeter's archivist.'

‘Archivist? But I still don't get—'

Patiently, Truffler spelled it out. ‘Because he kept the records.'

‘Oh,' said Gary. ‘Right.'

The door opened to reveal a small, balding, inoffensive man in a homely cardigan. Behind thick glasses, his eyes sparkled as he recognized one of his visitors.

‘Truffler!' he cried, seizing the tall man's hand. ‘How you doing, me old kipper?'

Jukebox Jarvis's office was in his front room, a tangled maze of computers, monitors, printers, modems and scanners, all interconnected in a lunatic cat's cradle of cables. So extensive was the array of hardware that it was impossible to see the tables and filing cabinets on which the equipment rested.

The only objects in the room which weren't computer-related hung on the walls. They were sentimental animal pictures of quite mesmerizing awfulness. The level of winsomeness among their fluffy chicks and simpering Scotties made VVO's daubs look like models of classical restraint.

Jukebox Jarvis clearly knew all the short cuts of his computer system. A few clicks of the mouse and he had found the relevant information bank.

‘You're sure it's a red Ford Transit we're looking for?' he asked.

‘Certain,' said Gary. ‘Because we was driving the same model. Remember thinking when I saw it – well, there's a coincidence.'

‘No coincidence really,' Truffler pointed out, ‘when you come to think of it, because we was both intending to load up with the same goods. And Mrs Chastaigne had been told to expect a red Transit.'

‘Yeah, but we didn't know that at the time.'

Truffler Mason let out a hollow laugh. ‘No. Otherwise we'd have stopped them then and there, got the loot and saved Jukebox all this hassle.'

The computer buff airily waved away the suggestion of inconvenience. ‘It's no bother, really, Truffler, me old kipper. Never have any problem hacking into the police's vehicle records.' He chuckled. ‘Sometimes a bit trickier to get into their system on a murder enquiry, mind you . . .'

‘I'm not surprised.'

‘. . . but I usually manage it,' said Jukebox Jarvis with a complacent smile. ‘Always nice to know how far the Plod are behind amateur investigations, isn't it?'

‘Very useful,' Truffler agreed. ‘And in the old days used to be handy knowing how up to speed they were on the next little job Mr Pargeter had in mind. And how much info Posey Narker had given them.'

‘Yeah. Happy days, they was, eh? Happy days.' Jukebox Jarvis sighed, but then giggled. ‘Incidentally, I heard about that case you done for Mrs Pargeter. You know, when you nailed the blokes who'd killed Willie Cass. I gather you gave the police a full report on that and just told them who needed arresting.'

‘Well . . .' Truffler smiled modestly. ‘I suppose they might have got there in their own time, but, quite honestly, did anyone want to wait that long?'

Jukebox Jarvis looked back at his screen, where the cursor blinked, demanding information. ‘Now, Gary, the number of the van . . .?'

The chauffeur placed his fingertips on his temples, screwed up his eyes and concentrated fiercely. ‘Yeah,' he said after a moment. ‘I've nearly got it.'

The other two watched as he went into a state that was almost trance-like. ‘Must be great having a photographic memory,' Jukebox whispered to Truffler.

‘Isn't really that,' the investigator whispered back. ‘It's training. Mr Pargeter taught him the techniques, so whenever Gary went out on a job he'd automatically make a mental note of any registrations that might be suspicious.'

‘Right.'

Gary's eyes suddenly flashed open and he announced the relevant registration.

‘Great.' Jukebox Jarvis keyed in the information. ‘You reckon we should be looking for hijack and theft of red Transits or just straight ownership, Truffler?'

‘Start with the owners. Depends who the thieves was. If they didn't think anyone was on the lookout for them, they wouldn't have needed to cover their tracks, would they? So they could have used a legit motor. Anyway, lot of villains work behind the cover of some kind of front business, don't they?'

‘True.' Jukebox's mouse clicked on another icon, and lines of data began to stream quickly up the screen. ‘Just take a minute and we'll be there.' He sat back, waiting for the computer to complete its search. ‘Want a cup of tea or anything, either of you?'

‘Not for me, thanks.'

‘Nor me,' said Gary. ‘You doing mostly this research stuff these days, are you, Jukebox?'

‘Yes. Seems to be quite a demand for it. In the old days police information was always a bit iffy, but now they've updated their operating systems, they're really quite efficient. So you can pick up some useful stuff.'

‘No problems hacking in?'

‘With the police?' Jukebox Jarvis snorted with laughter. ‘You gotta be joking. Well, they have a new six-letter password each day . . .'

‘Funny,' said Truffler. ‘We was only talking about that last night.'

‘Anway,' Jukebox went on, ‘I've devised a programme that can test out all the available options on that within thirty seconds.'

‘Handy.'

‘Right. Not that the police are very inventive at the best of times, anyway. Hardly believe what today's password was . . .'

‘Go on, amaze us. Not “police” or “secret” this time, was it?'

‘No. It was “copper”.' They all laughed. ‘You know, crime writers may invent policemen who appreciate opera and write poetry, but I'm afraid the real Plods are still pretty primitive in the old imagination stakes.' He moved forward as the fast-moving data on his screen stabilized. ‘Ah, we're getting something.' He pointed to the relevant entry. ‘There it is – a red Transit – and there's your registration. Owner's name mean anything, me old kipper?'

Truffler leant his long body forward to take a look at the screen. ‘“R. D. D'Acosta”,' he read. ‘Oh yes, that means something to me all right.'

‘Vehicle's registered to a car spares company. Looks like our friend D'Acosta owns a breaker's yard.'

‘That'd figure. Though I think most of what gets broken there'd be bones.' Truffler nodded at the recollection. ‘Oh yes, I know him of old. Rod D'Acosta. South London villain. Special subject – GBH.'

‘But someone like Rod D'Acosta's never going to be into art theft, is he?' Gary objected.

‘Ibo right. He couldn't tell a Picasso from a picnic basket. The D'Acosta boys are strictly Rent-A-Muscle.' Truffler Mason rubbed his long chin thoughtfully. ‘No, Rod D'Acosta's got to be working for someone else on this job. Now, I wonder who that someone else might be . . .?'

Detective Inspector Craig Wilkinson was no fool. He was aware that this was not everyone's opinion. But the fact that he was aware that this was not everyone's opinion, to his mind, proved that he was no fool.

The way he had dismissed Sergeant Hughes's theories about a connection between the late Mr Pargeter and the Mrs Pargeter he had met outside the betting shop had not been evidence of stupidity. It had been calculated. Wilkinson distrusted Hughes. He distrusted his cockiness and impetuous enthusiasm. Every detective at the start of his career assumed that he could change the world and defeat the entire criminal community in a matter of moments. It was important such people learnt that things moved rather more slowly in the Police Force. They had to develop the correct approach to the profession on which they were embarking, an approach which Inspector Wilkinson felt, without false modesty, that he exemplified perfectly.

So poo-pooing Sergeant Hughes's theories had been part of a long-term plan, a plan which would serve two purposes. First, it would put the cocky young man in his place. Second, it would put him off the scent, thus giving Inspector Wilkinson a breathing space in which to pursue his own enquiries. Oh no, the Inspector had an agenda all right. The fact that he maintained there to be no connection between the late Mr Pargeter and Mrs Pargeter did not necessarily mean that that was what he believed.