The New Collected Short Stories

by Jeffrey Archer

  ‘I want to be tied up to a four-poster bed, with you standing over me in a police sergeant’s uniform: truncheon, whistle, handcuffs, wearing a tight black outfit with silver buttons down the front, which you will undo slowly to reveal a black bra. And, my darling, you’re not to release me until I have made you scream at the top of your voice, the way you did in that underground carpark in Mayfair.

  ‘Until then,

  ‘Your loving Oberon.’

  Anna raised her head and smiled, wondering where she could get her hands on a police sergeant’s uniform. She was about to turn back to the front page and read the letter again when she noticed the P.S.

  ‘P.S. I wonder what the prune is up to right now.’

  Anna looked up to see that Robert’s glasses were no longer on the table.

  ‘What scoundrel could write such an outrageous letter to a married woman?’ demanded Robert as he adjusted his glasses.

  Anna turned, horrified to see her husband standing behind her and staring down at the letter, beads of sweat appearing on his forehead.

  ‘Don’t ask me,’ said Anna coolly, as Muriel appeared by her side, tennis racket in hand. Anna folded her letter, passed it over to her oldest friend, winked and said, ‘Fascinating, my dear, but for your sake I do hope Reggie never finds out.’

  CRIME PAYS*

  KENNY MERCHANT – that wasn’t his real name, but then, little was real about Kenny – had selected Harrods on a quiet Monday morning as the venue for the first part of the operation.

  Kenny was dressed in a pinstriped suit, white shirt and Guards tie. Few of the shop’s customers would have realised it was a Guards tie, but he was confident that the assistant he had selected to serve him would recognise the crimson and dark-blue stripes immediately.

  The door was held open for him by a commissionaire who had served in the Coldstream Guards, and who on spotting the tie immediately saluted him. The same commissionaire had not saluted him on any of his several visits during the previous week, but to be fair, Kenny had been dressed then in a shiny, well-worn suit, open-necked shirt and dark glasses. But last week had only been for reconnaissance; today he planned to be arrested.

  Although Harrods has over a hundred thousand customers a week, the quietest period is always between ten and eleven on a Monday morning. Kenny knew every detail about the great store, in the way a football fan knows all the statistics of his favourite team.

  He knew where all the CCTV cameras were placed, and could recognise any of the security guards at thirty paces. He even knew the name of the assistant who would be serving him that morning, although Mr Parker had no idea that he had been selected as a tiny cog in Kenny’s well-oiled machine.

  When Kenny appeared at the jewellery department that morning, Mr Parker was briefing a young assistant on the changes he required to the shelf display.

  ‘Good morning, sir,’ he said, turning to face his first customer of the day. ‘How can I help you?’

  ‘I was looking for a pair of cufflinks,’ Kenny said, in the clipped tones he hoped made him sound like a Guards officer.

  ‘Yes, of course sir,’ said Mr Parker.

  It amused Kenny to see the deferential treatment he received as a result of the Guards tie, which he had been able to purchase in the men’s department the previous day for an outlay of £23.

  ‘Any particular style?’ asked the sales assistant.

  ‘I’d prefer silver.’

  ‘Of course, sir,’ said Mr Parker, who proceeded to place on the counter several boxes of silver cufflinks.

  Kenny already knew the pair he wanted, as he had picked them out the previous Saturday afternoon. ‘What about those?’ he asked, pointing to the top shelf. As the sales assistant turned away, Kenny checked the TV surveillance camera and took a pace to his right, to be sure that they could see him more clearly. While Mr Parker reached up to remove the cufflinks, Kenny slid the chosen pair off the counter and slipped them into his jacket pocket before the assistant turned back round.

  Out of the corner of his eye, Kenny saw a security guard moving swiftly towards him, while at the same time speaking into his walkie-talkie.

  ‘Excuse me, sir,’ said the guard, touching his elbow. ‘I wonder if you would be kind enough to accompany me.’

  ‘What’s this all about?’ demanded Kenny, trying to sound annoyed, as a second security guard appeared on his other side.

  ‘Perhaps it might be wise if you were to accompany us, so that we can discuss the matter privately,’ suggested the second guard, holding onto his arm a little more firmly.

  ‘I’ve never been so insulted in my life,’ said Kenny, now speaking at the top of his voice. He took the cufflinks out of his pocket, replaced them on the counter and added, ‘I had every intention of paying for them.’

  The guard picked up the box. To his surprise the irate customer then accompanied him to the interview room without uttering another word.

  On entering the little green-walled room, Kenny was asked to take a seat on the far side of a desk. One guard returned to his duties on the ground floor while the other remained by the door. Kenny knew that on an average day, forty-two people were arrested for shoplifting at Harrods, and over 90 per cent of them were prosecuted.

  A few moments later, the door opened and a tall, thin man with a weary look on his face entered the room. He took a seat on the other side of the desk and glanced across at Kenny before pulling open a drawer and removing a green form.

  ‘Name?’ he said.

  ‘Kenny Merchant,’ Kenny replied without hesitation.

  ‘Address?’

  ‘42 St Luke’s Road, Putney.’

  ‘Occupation?’

  ‘Unemployed.’

  Kenny spent several more minutes accurately answering the tall man’s enquiries. When the inquisitor reached his final question, he spent a moment studying the silver cufflinks before filling in the bottom line. Value: £90. Kenny knew all too well the significance of that particular sum.

  The form was then swivelled round for Kenny to sign, which to the inquisitor’s surprise he did with a flourish.

  The guard then accompanied Kenny to an adjoining room, where he was kept waiting for almost an hour. The guard was surprised that Kenny didn’t ask what would happen next. All the others did. But then, Kenny knew exactly what was going to happen next, despite the fact that he had never been charged with shoplifting before.

  About an hour later the police arrived and he was driven, along with five others, to Horseferry Road Magistrates’ Court. There followed another long wait before he came up in front of the magistrate. The charge was read out to him and he pleaded guilty. As the value of the cufflinks was under £100, Kenny knew he would receive a fine rather than a custodial sentence, and he waited patiently for the magistrate to ask the same question he had when Kenny had sat at the back of the court and listened to several cases the previous week.

  ‘Is there anything else you would like me to take into consideration before I pass sentence?’

  ‘Yes, sir,’ said Kenny. ‘I stole a watch from Selfridges last week. It’s been on my conscience ever since, and I would like to return it.’ He beamed up at the magistrate.

  The magistrate nodded and, looking down at the defendant’s address on the form in front of him, ordered that a constable should accompany Mr Merchant to his home and retrieve the stolen merchandise. For a moment the magistrate almost looked as if he was going to praise the convicted criminal for his act of good citizenship, but like Mr Parker, the guard and the inquisitor, he didn’t realise he was simply another cog in a bigger wheel.

  Kenny was driven to his home in Putney by a young constable, who told him that he’d only been on the job for a few weeks. Then you’re in for a bit of a shock, thought Kenny as he unlocked the front door of his home and invited the officer in.

  ‘Oh my God,’ said the young man the moment he stepped into the sitting room. He turned, ran back out of the flat and immediately called his station sergean
t on the car radio. Within minutes, two patrol cars were parked outside Kenny’s home in St Luke’s Road. Chief Inspector Travis marched through the open door to find Kenny sitting in the hall, holding up the stolen watch.

  ‘To hell with the watch,’ said the Chief Inspector. ‘What about this lot?’ he said, his arms sweeping around the sitting room.

  ‘It’s all mine,’ said Kenny. ‘The only thing I admit to stealing, and am now returning, is one watch. Timex Masterpiece, value £44, taken from Selfridges.’

  ‘What’s your game, laddie?’ asked Travis.

  ‘I have no idea what you mean,’ said Kenny innocently.

  ‘You know exactly what I mean,’ said the Chief Inspector. ‘This place is full of expensive jewellery, paintings, objets d’art and antique furniture’ – around £300,000-worth, Kenny would have liked to have told him – ‘and I don’t believe any of it belongs to you.’

  ‘Then you’ll have to prove it, Chief Inspector, because should you fail to do so, the law assumes that it belongs to me. And that being the case, I will be able to dispose of it as I wish.’ The Chief Inspector frowned, informed Kenny of his rights and arrested him for theft.

  When Kenny next appeared in court, it was at the Old Bailey, in front of a judge. Kenny was dressed appropriately for the occasion in a pinstriped suit, white shirt and Guards tie. He stood in the dock charged with the theft of goods to the value of £24,000.

  The police had made a complete inventory of everything they found in the flat, and spent the next six months trying to trace the owners of the treasure trove. But despite advertising in all the recognised journals, and even showing the stolen goods extensively on television’s Crimewatch, as well as putting them on display for the public to view, over 80 per cent of the items remained unclaimed.

  Chief Inspector Travis tried to bargain with Kenny, saying he would recommend a lenient sentence if he would cooperate and reveal who the property belonged to.

  ‘It all belongs to me,’ repeated Kenny.

  ‘If that’s going to be your game, don’t expect any help from us,’ said the Chief Inspector.

  Kenny hadn’t expected any help from Travis in the first place. It had never been part of his original plan.

  Kenny had always believed that if you penny-pinch when it comes to selecting a lawyer, you could well end up paying dearly for it. So when he stood in the dock he was represented by a leading firm of solicitors and a silky barrister called Arden Duveen, QC, who wanted £10,000 on his brief.

  Kenny pleaded guilty to the indictment, aware that when the police gave evidence they would be unable to mention any of the goods that had remained unclaimed, and which the law therefore assumed belonged to him. In fact, the police had already reluctantly returned the property that they were unable to prove had been stolen, and Kenny had quickly passed it on to a dealer for a third of its value, compared with the tenth he had been offered by a fence six months before.

  Mr Duveen, QC, defending, pointed out to the judge that not only was it his client’s first offence, but that he had invited the police to accompany him to his home, well aware that they would discover the stolen goods and that he would be arrested. Could there be better proof of a repentant and remorseful man, he asked.

  Mr Duveen went on to point out to the court that Mr Merchant had served nine years in the armed services, and had been honourably discharged following active service in the Gulf, but that since leaving the army he seemed unable to settle down to civilian life. Mr Duveen did not claim this as an excuse for his client’s behaviour, but he wished the court to know that Mr Merchant had vowed never to commit such a crime again, and therefore pleaded with the judge to impose a lenient sentence.

  Kenny stood in the dock, his head bowed.

  The judge lectured him for some time on how evil his crime had been, but added that he had taken into consideration all the mitigating circumstances surrounding this case, and had settled on a prison sentence of two years.

  Kenny thanked him, and assured him that he would not be bothering him again. He knew that the next crime he had planned could not end up with a prison sentence.

  Chief Inspector Travis watched as Kenny was taken down, then, turning to the prosecuting counsel, asked, ‘How much do you imagine that bloody man has made by keeping to the letter of the law?’

  ‘About a hundred thousand would be my bet,’ replied the Crown’s silk.

  ‘More than I’d be able to put by in a lifetime,’ the Chief Inspector commented, before uttering a string of words that no one present felt able to repeat to their wives over dinner that evening.

  Prosecuting counsel was not far out. Kenny had deposited a cheque at the Hongkong and Shanghai Bank earlier that week for £86,000.

  What the Chief Inspector couldn’t know was that Kenny had completed only half of his plan, and that now the seed money was in place, he was ready to prepare for an early retirement. Before he was taken away to prison, he made one further request of his solicitor.

  While Kenny was holed up in Ford Open Prison he used his time well. He spent every spare moment going over various Acts of Parliament that were currently being debated in the House of Commons. He quickly dismissed several Green Papers, White Papers and Bills on health, education and the social services, before he came across the Data Protection Bill, each clause of which he set about studying as assiduously as any Member of the House of Commons at the report stage of the Bill. He followed each new amendment that was placed before the House, and each new clause as it was passed. Once the Act had become law in 1992, he sought a further interview with his solicitor.

  The solicitor listened carefully to Kenny’s questions and, finding himself out of his depth, admitted he would have to seek counsel’s opinion. ‘I will get in touch with Mr Duveen immediately,’ he said.

  While Kenny waited for his QC’s judgement, he asked to be supplied with copies of every business magazine published in the United Kingdom.

  The solicitor tried not to look puzzled by this request, as he had done when he had been asked to supply every Act of Parliament currently being debated in the House of Commons. During the next few weeks, bundles and bundles of magazines arrived at the prison, and Kenny spent all his spare time cutting out any advertisements that appeared in three magazines or more.

  A year to the day after Kenny had been sentenced, he was released on parole following his exemplary behaviour. When he walked out of Ford Open Prison, having served only half his term, the one thing he took with him was a large brown envelope containing three thousand advertisements and the written opinion of leading counsel on clause 9, paragraph 6, subsection (a) of the Data Protection Act 1992.

  A week later, Kenny took a flight to Hong Kong.

  The Hong Kong police reported back to Chief Inspector Travis that Mr Merchant had booked into a small hotel, and spent his days visiting local printers, seeking quotes for the publication of a magazine entitled Business Enterprise UK, and the retail price of headed notepaper and envelopes. The magazine, they quickly discovered, would contain a few articles on finance and shares, but the bulk of its pages would be taken up with small advertisements.

  The Hong Kong police confessed themselves puzzled when they discovered how many copies of the magazine Kenny had ordered to be printed.

  ‘How many?’ asked Chief Inspector Travis.

  ‘Ninety-nine.’

  ‘Ninety-nine? There has to be a reason,’ was Travis’s immediate response.

  He was even more puzzled when he discovered that there was already a magazine called Business Enterprise, and that it published 10,000 copies a month.

  The Hong Kong police later reported that Kenny had ordered 2,500 sheets of headed paper, and 2,500 brown envelopes.

  ‘So what’s he up to?’ demanded Travis.

  No one in Hong Kong or London could come up with a convincing suggestion.

  Three weeks later, the Hong Kong police reported that Mr Merchant had been seen at a local post office, despatching 2,400 l
etters to addresses all over the United Kingdom.

  The following week, Kenny flew back to Heathrow.

  Although Travis kept Kenny under surveillance, the young constable was unable to report anything untoward, other than that the local postman had told him Mr Merchant was receiving around twenty-five letters a day, and that like clockwork he would drop into Lloyd’s Bank in the King’s Road around noon and deposit several cheques for amounts ranging from two hundred to two thousand pounds. The constable didn’t report that Kenny gave him a wave every morning just before entering the bank.

  After six months the letters slowed to a trickle, and Kenny’s visits to the bank almost came to a halt.

  The only new piece of information the Constable was able to pass on to Chief Inspector Travis was that Mr Merchant had moved from his small flat in St Luke’s Road, Putney, to an imposing four-storey mansion in Chester Square, SW1.

  Just as Travis turned his attention to more pressing cases, Kenny flew off to Hong Kong again. ‘Almost a year to the day,’ was the Chief Inspector’s only comment.

  The Hong Kong police reported back to the Chief Inspector that Kenny was following roughly the same routine as he had the previous year, the only difference being that this time he had booked himself into a suite at the Mandarin. He had selected the same printer, who confirmed that his client had made another order for Business Enterprise UK. The second issue had some new articles, but would contain only 1,971 advertisements.

  ‘How many copies is he having published this time?’ asked the Chief Inspector.

  ‘The same as before,’ came back the reply. ‘Ninety-nine. But he’s only ordered two thousand sheets of headed paper and two thousand envelopes.’

  ‘What is he up to?’ repeated the Chief Inspector. He received no reply.

  Once the magazine had rolled off the presses, Kenny returned to the post office and sent out 1,971 letters, before taking a flight back to London, care of British Airways, first class.