Mrs Pargeter 05; Mrs Pargeter’s Plot

“And what about the monkey? Don’t you find that funny either?”

Mrs Pargeter shook her head. Fossilface O’Donahue looked downcast. “Well, that’s a pity, isn’t it? Pity I’m not giving you a jolly laugh, isn’t it?”

“Yes,” she concurred, trying out of the corner of her eye to judge how far she was from the door and what her chances of escape were. They didn’t appear to be good. The man was huge. His arms looked long enough to reach out and snatch her from the other side of the room.

Another of the Greene’s Hotel Regency telephones stood on a small table, tantalizingly close. But even if she could reach it, there was no chance the thug would give her time to dial for help.

He moved one ponderous, threatening step towards her. “We’ve never met before, have we, Mrs Pargeter?”

“No.” Her confidence and resilience were beginning to trickle back. “Never had that pleasure.”

“No.” He nodded slowly. “I tend to keep myself to myself, as a rule. Though of course I did have quite a lot of dealings with your late husband…”

“So I gather.”

“It has to be said…” he continued slowly, “that Mr Pargeter and me did not always see eye to eye about everything…”

“Yes, I’d gathered that too.”

He advanced another step. Mrs Pargeter wilted in the face of his overpowering presence, but managed to hold her ground.

“No, Mr Pargeter and I did have our disagreements. He didn’t always like the way I conducted business.”

Mrs Pargeter couldn’t stop a defiant response coming out. “My husband always did have very high standards.”

Fossilface O’Donahue gave another ruminative nod. Somehow the slowness of his approach, the evenness of his tone, made him seem more rather than less menacing. When the violence came, Mrs Pargeter feared, it would be sudden and entirely devastating.

“Yes, I suppose that would be the way he saw it.” The man sighed. “I’ve just come out after a twelve-year stretch, you know, Mrs Pargeter.”

“Really? And where was that?” she asked affably.

“Parkhurst the bulk of it. Then they give me the last year in a Cat. C nick. Erlestoke. You know it?”

“I’ve heard of it. Never actually been there.” There was something incongruous about this cocktail party chit-chat.

“Been to Parkhurst?”

“Never been there either, as it happens.”

“No. Rough nick, Parkhurst. No place for a lady…”

“Right.”

“Or indeed for a very sensitive sort of man. I’m not a very sensitive sort of man. Never have been.”

“No, I rather got that impression.”

“Though,” he said, with a sudden surge of volume, “there are some things that I’m very sensitive about.”

“I’m sure there are. I think that’s true of most of us,” Mrs Pargeter babbled.

“For instance, I’m very sensitive about criticism…”

“None of us like being criticized.”

“And I’m also very sensitive about justice.”

“Oh, well, that’s good news. We’re very fortunate that the British legal system is one of the best in –”

“I’m not talking about the British legal system, I’m talking about justice! Tit for tat, eye for an eye, tooth for a tooth, know what I mean?”

“Oh yes, I certainly do.” Mrs Pargeter’s mind was racing. What were the chances of Hedgeclipper Clinton suddenly coming upstairs to check that she was all right? Pretty minimal, she reckoned. The last thought that would occur to him was that his assailant was still inside Greene’s Hotel. No, he’d still be ringing round his other associates, trying to see if any of them had got a lead on the whereabouts of the newly released Fossilface O’Donahue.

She wondered if it was worth trying another scream. Didn’t seem much point, really. The first two had prompted no reaction from the other guests. And there was always the danger that a scream for help might further enrage her adversary, and make him speed up his schedule of violence. No, all she could do was wait – without much optimism – to see what happened.

“There was some people, you know,” the thug went on, “who reckon it was down to your husband that I got caught last time out and had to go to the slammer.”

“Really? Well, people do get the wildest ideas, don’t they?”

“Yes. You see, generally speaking, your husband was very good about seeing to it the blokes what worked for him was well protected…”

“Oh?”

“You know, so’s they wouldn’t get nicked.”

“Right.”

“System fell down with me, though.”

“Oh dear.”

“I just done this bank job, reckoned there’d be a getaway car to whisk me off, but there wasn’t one. Two Pandas full of the filth instead.”

“That was unfortunate.”

“Good choice of word. Yes, it was unfortunate, Mrs Pargeter, very unfortunate.” He rolled the word round on his tongue, as if he was hearing it for the first time.

“And was there any reason why my husband let you down, Foss…” She decided that perhaps he wasn’t as familiar with – or keen on – his nickname as others of his acquaintances might be. “… Mr O’Donahue?”

“There was a reason – or at least something he’d see as a reason. He’d been very particular before this job that there wasn’t to be no violence. None at all, he said, it wasn’t necessary. But I know my own business, and I know you can make some things happen a lot quicker when you’re carrying a baseball bat than when you aren’t.”

“So you did use violence?”

“Yes.” He looked aggrieved. “Not much. I mean, nobody got killed or nothing like that. I should think all three of them was out of hospital within six weeks… well, three months, anyway.”

“And you reckon that’s why my husband cancelled your getaway car?”

He nodded.

“But you don’t think he actually tipped off the police, though, do you? I mean, I’m sure he’d never do anything like that.”

Fossilface O’Donahue was shocked. There were limits to the bad he could believe, even of his enemies. “Oh no, he never done that. No, I think the appearance of the Pandas at that moment was just bad luck. Some twerp living round there must’ve heard the alarm go, and called the old Bill.”

“I should think that’s what happened, yes.”

He nodded yet again and moved another step towards her. Mrs Pargeter felt the force of his closeness like the repellent pole of a magnet, but just managed not to back away.

“Thing is, you get a lot of time to think when you’re in the nick…”

“I bet you do, yes. Not a lot else to do, is there?”

“Think about justice… think about scores being settled… think about who’s responsible for things what’ve happened… think about ways of evening up the odds a bit… think about making them what’s guilty pay for what they done wrong…”

“Yes,” Mrs Pargeter gulped.

“And while I was in the nick, I thought a lot about me and your husband.”

“Oh, did you?”

“… and the rights and wrongs of what happened between us…”