by Simon Brett
‘Wouldn’t say that.’ Truffler’s normally mournful tone took on a note of deeper pessimism. ‘Business still very shaky, I’m afraid. No, I got Bronwen back, because . . . well, she’d got problems – you know, divorce and . . .’
‘This must be the longest divorce in history. I mean, last time she was working for you, you said she was in the middle of a very sticky divorce.’
‘Yes. This is another divorce.’
‘Oh. You mean she went off and remarried?’
‘Mm. And now she’s redivorcing.’
For the second time that afternoon Mrs Pargeter was reminded of Dr Johnson’s words about the triumph of hope over experience. ‘She must be a glutton for punishment.’
‘If that’s what Bronwen is, what does it make the men who keep marrying her?’ asked Truffler gloomily. ‘Anyway, what can I do for you, Mrs Pargeter? Anything, anything at all.’
‘I’m not interrupting, am I? Should you be concentrating on your reading? Is it something important?’
‘No, it’s only the Lag Mag.’
Her violet-blue eyes peered at him curiously for an explanation.
‘“Lag Mag” – that’s what it gets nicknamed. Really called Inside Out.’
‘And it’s a kind of specialist magazine, is it?’
‘You could say that.’ He let out a mournful chuckle. ‘Yes, it’s for specialists who might be interested in . . . people’s movements.’
‘People’s movements?’ she echoed, perplexed. ‘You’re not talking about aerobics, are you?’
‘No, no. I’m talking about who’s going in, who’s coming out . . .’
From her expression, this was clearly insufficient information, so Truffler Mason elaborated. ‘. . . who’s being transferred . . . you know, from High Security to Category B . . . Cat. C to an Open Prison . . . who’s got time off for good behaviour . . . all that kind of stuff.’
Mrs Pargeter’s mouth hardened into a line of prim disapproval. ‘Prisoners, you mean? I didn’t think you had anything to do with that kind of person now, Truffler.’
‘I don’t, I don’t. Not professionally. I don’t work with them. But I still need this kind of information. I do a lot of Missing Persons work, you know.’
‘Are you telling me that you’re one of the so-called “specialists” for whom this magazine is intended?’ Her tone had not lost its tartness.
‘In a way, yes.’
‘So are most of these “specialists” private detectives?’
‘No, most of them are . . . I don’t know . . . girlfriends who want a bit of warning to get the new lover out before the old man comes back . . . villains who’ve got scores to settle . . . poor bastards who’ve got scores to be settled against them . . . geezers who know where the stash is buried . . . grasses who aren’t sure whether their change of identity has worked . . . that kind of stuff.’
‘I don’t see that you fit into any of those categories, Truffler.’
He looked aggrieved, as hangdog as a Labrador wrongly accused of eating the Sunday joint. ‘But I need to know that kind of info, Mrs P. Listen, someone hires me to work out who’s nicked their jewellery what the police’ve had no luck finding . . . OK, I check out the MO, and know that there’s only three villains in the country works that way . . . I check through here . . .’ He tapped the magazine on his desk for emphasis. Puffs of dust rose like a Red Indian signal telling that the US Cavalry was nearing the ravine where they’d be ripe for ambush. ‘. . . and I find out that two of the geezers who fit the frame were, on the night of the fifteenth, in Strangeways and Parkhurst respectively. So I know who my man is, don’t I?’
‘Yes, I see what you mean.’ Mrs Pargeter, who always owned up straight away when she found herself in the wrong, looked properly contrite. ‘Sorry. Shouldn’t have distrusted you, Truffler.’
He shrugged forgiveness. ‘Nah. Think nothing of it. I appreciate the fact you care enough for it to upset you. But don’t you have no worries on that score. I been on the right side of the law since the moment that your husband . . . er . . .’ He wove his long fingers together in embarrassment as he tried to shape the word.
‘Died?’ Mrs Pargeter supplied easily.
‘Yes.’ Relieved to move off the subject, he once again tapped his copy of Inside Out on the desk, beaming up another warlike message to the Shoshoni. ‘And this is an invaluable means of keeping tabs on former colleagues . . . you know, seeing where they are, when they’ll be back in circulation again. Dead useful when it comes to doing my Christmas card list.’
‘All right, all right.’ Mrs Pargeter grinned. ‘I think you’ve convinced me that the magazine’s an essential tool of your trade.’
‘Not just that,’ Truffler persisted. ‘It’s also a very useful Early Warning System.’
‘Oh?’
He nodded grimly. ‘Oh yes. For instance, this very week, I discover, Fossilface O’Donahue will be out.’
‘Fossilface O’Donahue?’ she echoed.
Truffler Mason found the relevant page in his copy of Inside Out, and held it open across the desk to Mrs Pargeter. The photograph which confronted her showed the aptness of its subject’s nickname. The face did indeed look like a relic from an age before the invention of the wheel, or of human sensitivity, or of compassion. Though the picture was in black and white, she got the feeling it wouldn’t have looked very different in colour. The face was a slab of grey, with that pumicestone surface of the heavy smoker. The eyes, which can normally be relied on to lend animation to a face, were dull, dark pebbles, lurking resentfully deep in two parallel crevices. Mrs Pargeter looked up at Truffler. ‘Should I know him?’
‘No, I don’t think you should. Be a lot better all round if you never do know him. Mean, vengeful bastard, without a glimmer of a sense of humour. Slippery, too – always used to come out of hiding to do a job, then apparently disappear off the face of the earth. Bad news all round, I’d say.’ He paused, choosing his words with circumspection. ‘Mind you, your husband did know him, and he and Fossilface didn’t always see eye to eye on everything, so I’m going to be keeping a close watch on the geezer’s . . . what shall I call it . . . re-entry into society?’
‘You think there might be danger from this . . . Fossilface? Danger for me?’
‘No, there won’t be,’ Truffler reassured her. ‘Not now I know he’s coming out. You’ll be as safe as houses. See – I told you Inside Out was useful. He can settle any other scores he wants to – that I don’t care about – but Fossilface O’Donahue is not going to come near you, Mrs P.’
It was not the first time she had had cause to be grateful for the comprehensive network of care the late Mr Pargeter had organized for his survivor. She reached across the desk and placed her hand on Truffler Mason’s huge knuckles. ‘Bless you. I do appreciate the way you look after me, you know.’
‘Think nothing of it. Entirely my pleasure. And what else can I do for you now, eh? I’m sure you haven’t just turned up to admire the colour of my wallpaper.’ No, thought Mrs Pargeter, nobody could possibly have turned up to admire the colour of that wallpaper. ‘So what is it, Mrs P.? Come on, you tell Truffler.’
‘Well,’ she began. ‘Well, I don’t want to take up your time if you’ve got other things on your desk that you should be—’
With one gesture of his long sports-jacketed forearm, Truffler Mason swept everything off the dusty wooden surface. It clattered to the floor, with an effect that must have jammed the Red Indian signals’ switchboard.
‘Nothing else on my desk,’ he announced with what, on a less permanently despondent face, would have been a grin.
Chapter Three
‘I swear he didn’t know the body was there,’ Mrs Pargeter concluded, after describing the unpleasant discovery she’d made in what might one day become her wine cellar – assuming that she ever had a builder on site to complete it.
‘But didn’t Concrete say anything to let him off the hook?’ asked Truffler. ‘He must’ve at le
ast offered an alibi. It’s not as if he doesn’t know the score.’
‘No, that was strange. He hardly said a word when the police come. Went all quiet – almost like he was afraid of something.’
The private detective rubbed his long chin thoughtfully, as she went on, ‘Anyway, I’m sure that this killing’s not Concrete Jacket’s style. If he was going to do away with someone – and I somehow can’t imagine he ever would – but if he did, he’d go for a method a bit more subtle than a bullet in the back of the neck. And he’d get rid of the body somewhere way off his own patch. He knows all the rules about not fouling your own footpath.’
‘He wouldn’t do it, anyway, Mrs P. – not murder. Wouldn’t do anything seriously wonky these days. Concrete’s been pretty well straight ever since your husband, er . . .’ Truffler’s words petered out in another apologetic little cough.
Mrs Pargeter gracefully skirted round the potential embarrassment by ignoring it. ‘You’re right. He might rip off the odd sub-contractor, overcharge a client or play fast and loose with his VAT returns, but that’s normal business practice in the building trade. He’d never get involved in murder, though. No, somebody’s framed him good and proper. They knew he was going to be at the site at that time and tipped off the police. Rozzers’d got all the details – arrested him straight away, no arguments. And, of course, it doesn’t help that Concrete’s got form.’
Truffler’s reaction was instinctive. ‘Who hasn’t?’
The violet-blue surface of Mrs Pargeter’s eyes frosted over. ‘I wouldn’t know.’
Truffler hastened to cover up his faux pas. ‘No. No, of course you wouldn’t.’ A fond and misty expression spread down his long face. ‘Ah, when I think back to all those times working with your husband . . . He was a prince among men, Mrs Pargeter, a real prince.’
Mrs Pargeter, finding the emotion contagious, nodded.
‘Taught me the lot. I couldn’t be doing what I’m doing now without Mr Pargeter, you know. He taught me how to apply the talents I had to crime.’ He corrected himself. ‘The solution of crime, that is. No, he was a diamond.’ But this was no time for nostalgia. Truffler straightened up in his chair. ‘Police didn’t happen to let drop who the stiff was, did they?’
‘No. I tried to get it out of them, but they went all very strait-laced Mr Plod on me. “We are conducting our enquiries in our own way, thank you very much, Madam, and we’re not in the habit of giving members of the public privileged information.” No sense of humour, the police, never did have.’
‘Leave it with me,’ said Truffler. ‘I’ll get the full history on the dead geezer – right down to his collar size and his favourite flavour of crisps. And don’t you worry about a thing, Mrs P. We’ll get Concrete off the hook, no problem.’
‘I hope so,’ said Mrs Pargeter, rising to leave. ‘Otherwise I’m never going to get my house finished.’
‘You, er . . . wouldn’t think of using another builder?’
She looked affronted. ‘No, Truffler. I do have my standards of loyalty, you know.’
‘Yes, of course you do. Sorry.’ Truffler once again uncoiled himself from his chair to see her to the door. ‘Oh, one point. Where do I contact you? You renting a place at the moment or what?’
‘I’m at Greene’s Hotel for the foreseeable.’
‘Hedgeclipper Clinton’s place?’
‘That’s right.’
‘I hope he’s looking after you properly.’
‘I’m being spoilt rotten.’
‘Great. You deserve it.’
As soon as the door opened, they were aware of the continuing Welsh saga of masculine perfidy. ‘. . . and then, to cap it all, I get home yesterday and there’s a message on the answerphone from him, asking if I could take two of his suits to the dry cleaners. “Don’t worry, I’ll pick them up and pay for them when I get back from Mauritius,” he says. The bloody nerve! Well, I took them somewhere, you’d better believe it – but it wasn’t the dry cleaners. No, I put them in a couple of half-empty bags of organic fertilizer and took them down the municipal tip with all the rubbish I cleared from the back garden. Let him pick them up from there when he gets “back from Mauritius”. Honestly, you’d never believe that this was the man who . . .’
Bronwen was completely oblivious of their presence. Truffler gave an apologetic shrug as he saw his guest through the outer door.
‘Does she ever do any work?’ asked Mrs Pargeter curiously.
The detective looked uncomfortable. ‘Well, I’m sure she will get back to working properly soon. She’s a bit upset at the moment, what with the divorce and that, so, you know, I don’t want to press it.’
Mrs Pargeter shook her head. ‘You’re too soft. Remember, you’re running a business here, Truffler, and the recession’s still not completely bottomed out.’
He hung his head sheepishly. ‘Nah, you’re right.’ Although Bronwen was far too preoccupied with her own grievances to be listening, he lowered his voice. ‘Thing is with her, apart from anything else, we haven’t got any of the right work going, so there’s not that much she could be doing at the moment. When we get one of her speciality cases, she’ll be on to it like a terrier, work her little socks off, no one can touch her.’
‘What are her speciality cases?’
‘Matrimonial.’
‘Ah, that would figure.’
‘Worth her weight in gold, Bronwen is, when we’ve got some poor little wife suspects her husband’s doing naughties. Do you know, she once staked out a motel for a whole month, twenty-four hours a day, and produced this great dossier of all the times the man in question went in and out. Every single detail, lovely piece of work it was.’
‘So then she presented the wife with evidence of adultery, did she?’
Truffler coloured. ‘Well, no. Trouble is, the wife hadn’t told her the husband actually worked at the motel as a chef, but I merely mention it to show how hard-working Bronwen can be when she’s got the right sort of case.’
‘Fine,’ said Mrs Pargeter. ‘You’ve convinced me. Cheerio, Truffler. Be in touch.’
‘. . . and if I could have threaded barbed wire into his boxer shorts, I would’ve!’ were the last Welsh words she heard as the door closed behind her.
Downstairs Gary was perched on a stool watching the horses getting into the stalls for 4.00 at Lingfield. Rising to his feet as Mrs Pargeter approached, he reached into his pocket and handed her a bundle of fifty-pound notes.
‘Had you heard something from the yard about that horse Prior Convictions?’
‘No,’ Mrs Pargeter replied with a little smile. ‘Just liked the name.’
Chapter Four
The mid-morning sun fell on the windows of Greene’s Hotel, but the curtains of Mrs Pargeter’s suite were far too opulent to allow any of it in. She lay in the bedroom, under the mound of her duvet, exhaling evenly with a sound that was just the gracious side of a snore.
The suite was decorated with gratuitous antiques to appeal to the American guests who formed the backbone of Hedgeclipper Clinton’s clientele. In heavy frames on the wall hung assemblages of fruit and dead poultry, interspersed with eighteenth-century portraits of unmemorable people’s even less memorable relatives. The carpet and curtains were deep, as was the shine on the dark oak furniture and the brass light fittings.
Mrs Pargeter had made no attempt to impose her own style on the rooms. All her furniture was in store. The stay at Greene’s Hotel had been originally intended as a short one, but comfort and convenience had kept her longer. She had then decided that she might as well stay until her house was completed, and had not yet reassessed the situation since recent events had moved that horizon yet nearer to infinity.
The only personal touch in the suite was a silver-framed photograph on Mrs Pargeter’s bedside table. It was a studio portrait of a highly respectable-looking gentleman in a pinstriped suit.
The telephone – in the tasteful antique style which would have been the automatic selec
tion of any Regency gentleman, had telephones been available in those times – rang, summoning Mrs Pargeter from a blissful dream of sunlight and strawberries. As she reached blearily towards the bedside table, her eye caught the photograph. ‘Morning, love,’ she said to the late Mr Pargeter.
She picked up the receiver. ‘Hello?’
‘Mrs Pargeter,’ said the French-polished tones of the hotel’s manager.
‘Morning, Hedgeclipper.’
This was greeted by a discreet admonitory cough. ‘I believe I did request you not to use that name within the purlieus of the hotel, Mrs Pargeter.’
‘Oh yes, forgive me. Half asleep.’
‘Well, I’m very sorry to have been the cause of the interruption of your slumbers, but there’s a gentleman down here in the foyer who wishes to see you as a matter of some urgency.’
‘That sounds exciting. Who is he?’
‘His name is Mr Nigel Merriman.’
‘Doesn’t ring a bell. Should I know him?’
The poshness of Hedgeclipper Clinton’s accent slipped instantly away, to reveal the original Bermondsey beneath. ‘He’s only Concrete Jacket’s bloomin’ solicitor, isn’t he?’
Once she was dressed, Mrs Pargeter would have gone straight downstairs to breakfast and Nigel Merriman had she not found something rather unusual in the sitting room of her suite.
It was a monkey.
She thought she’d heard some rather strange noises while she was dressing, but put them down to a quirk of the hotel’s air conditioning or some extravagance of one of the other guests. (It took only a short stay in Greene’s Hotel for the average person to become extremely broad-minded about the behaviour of other guests, and of course, when it came to broad-mindedness, Mrs Pargeter had a considerable head start over the average person.)
But when she went through to the sitting room, the noises – pitched somewhere between a chatter and a whimper – were immediately explained.
It was a nice enough little monkey, if you happen to like monkeys (which Mrs Pargeter decidedly didn’t). It was about the size of a rat (and to her mind the similarities didn’t stop there) with brownish fur and a doom-laden little old man’s face. Had Mrs Pargeter had any interest in the subject, she might have recognized from its size and colouring, or from the fact that its hind limbs were 25 per cent longer than its forelimbs, that she was looking at a South American marmoset, a member of the Callitrichidae family, from the suborder Anthropoidea of the Primate order. However, nothing could have interested her less, so she neither knew nor cared.