down to the floor, and picked up an enamel jug from the table. He raised it to defend himself as the door opened.
The outline of a man appeared in the doorway. Concrete Jacket moved forward aggressively and hissed, “Ere, what the hell do you think you’re –”
“Concrete, it’s me – Keyhole.”
The jug was halted in mid-descent towards the intruder’s head. “Keyhole Crabbe?”
“Right.”
Concrete Jacket looked bewildered in the half-light as Keyhole gently closed the door behind him. “What you doing here then? Got transferred down from Bedford, have you?”
“Nah,” Keyhole replied easily. “Just needed to see you.”
A suspicious light came into Concrete’s eye. “Ere, this isn’t an escape, is it?”
His visitor was appalled by the suggestion. “Good heavens, no. Very risky business, escape.”
“Too right,” the builder agreed. “Makes you a marked man, that does.”
Keyhole nodded. “Oh yeah. Wouldn’t catch me doing it. Serve your time like a good boy, no fuss, get your remission for good behaviour – that’s my philosophy.”
“Yeah.”
“It’s all right to nip out for kids’ birthdays, wedding anniversaries, that kind of number – otherwise, you just got to knuckle down and do your bird.”
“Right.” Concrete Jacket nodded his endorsement of these Victorian values. He gestured to a chair and the two prisoners sat down. “So what is it then, Keyhole? Great to see you, by the way.”
“You too, my son.” Keyhole gestured to the sleeping cell-mate, the rhythm of whose snores had not changed at all. “All right to talk with, er…?”
“Oh yeah,” Concrete replied. “That one’d sleep through the Third World War.”
Keyhole Crabbe nodded with satisfaction and drew a half-bottle of whisky out of his coat pocket. His friend’s eyes lit up. Two enamel mugs were quickly found and charged. They were clinked and gratefully sampled.
“Now,” said Keyhole Crabbe, “it’s about this Willie Cass business, Concrete…”
? Mrs Pargeter’s Plot ?
Thirteen
The first streaks of dawn were lightening the sky as Gary’s limousine drew up outside the main gates of Bedford Prison. The back door opened and Keyhole Crabbe emerged.
“Sure you’ll be OK?” asked Mrs Pargeter.
“No problem,” the prisoner replied with a grin. “Dozy lot in here.”
“I can’t thank you enough for what you’ve done.”
Keyhole grimaced wryly. “Just sorry I couldn’t get you more. Afraid Concrete really clammed up on me.”
“Well, I’m very grateful for what you did get.”
He dismissed this with a flip of the hand. “Quite honestly, Mrs P., when I think of all the things your husband sorted for me, it’s the least I can do.”
Mrs Pargeter smiled. “He’d be very grateful to you, and all.”
“Good. Always valued Mr Pargeter’s good opinion.” He gave a little wave. “Cheers. See you around.”
“Bye-bye, Keyhole.”
He closed the door of the limousine and moved towards the main gate of the prison, reaching into a pocket for his picklock as nonchalantly as a commuter returning home after a day at the office.
“Good old Keyhole,” said Mrs Pargeter.
“One of the best,” Gary agreed. “Honest as the day is long.”
They both watched fondly as he turned the picklock, opened the prison gates and slipped inside. Gary switched on the ignition and the limousine sped off towards Greene’s Hotel.
“Wonder what’s eating Concrete…” the chauffeur mused. “Unlike him not to confide in his old mate Keyhole.”
“Yes, I’d hoped we’d get more. Still, at least we’ve got those two names.”
“The blokes Concrete thought might be involved?”
“Right. Did either of them mean anything to you?”
Gary shook his head.
“Never mind,” said Mrs Pargeter comfortably. “I bet Truffler’ll know who they are.”
¦
Keyhole Crabbe’s cell-mate still breathed evenly, enjoying the sleep of the innocent (well, the damned- nearly-innocent-if-he-hadn’t-been-stitched-up, in his case). Keyhole undressed quietly, and reached down to pull back the covers on his lower bunk.
There was a large paper-wrapped box on the bed.
He pulled the box out and looked at it in the pale light of the bluish overhead bulb that stayed on all night. The paper was blue- and silver-striped gift-wrapping. A card with a picture of a pink hippopotamus was attached.
Keyhole opened the card, and, his eyes straining in the half-light, saw stamped at the top a round smiley-face logo. Beneath it was printed:
WHAT DO YOU SAY WHEN YOU ARE STOPPED BY A POLICEMAN?
I DON’T KNOW. WHAT DO YOU SAY WHEN YOU ARE STOPPED BY A POLICEMAN?
POLICE TO MEET YOU.
“Oh no…” Keyhole murmured.
With a sense of doom, he tore the paper off the box, and opened it.
Inside, neatly laid out, were a set of files in graded sizes, a selection of hacksaws, a hammer and a variety of cold-chisels, a crowbar, a packet of plastic explosive and an oxyacetylene lamp. Wrapped round the handle of the hammer was a note. Unhappily, Keyhole flattened it out, and read:
NOW YOU’LL NEVER HAVE THAT LOCKED-IN FEELING AGAIN. APOLOGIES – IT WAS ALL MY VAULT!
Keyhole groaned. Fossilface O’Donahue’s ‘restitooshun’ couldn’t have been less appropriate. And after all the care he’d taken to keep his own probes and picklocks hidden… If the warders found a single item of that lot, he could wave goodbye to any thoughts of his sentence being reduced for good behaviour Particularly if they found the plastic explosive. He’d be lucky to get away with only seven years added.
Wearily, he packed everything back into the box, and once again got out his metal probe to open the cell door.
The next morning, when the manager of the Bedford branch of the National Westminster Bank opened one of the vaults, he had no explanation for the gift-wrapped box of escaper’s tools he found there.
¦
Truffler Mason’s filing system was of a piece with the rest of his office – antiquated and furry with dust. Shoeboxes, their corners reinforced with brittle, orangey sellotape, weren’t up to the task of containing the profusion of photocopied sheets and fading photographs clinched together by rusty paper clips.
This archive was not catalogued on anything so mundane as an alphabetical system, but by an arcane method comprehensible only to its creator. No one but Truffler himself could have flipped through the desiccated pages with such speed and certainty to home in on the relevant dossier and hand it across the desk to Mrs Pargeter.
She stared down at the mugshot. The mug in question looked like a primary-school child’s first incompetent effort with modelling clay.
“Blunt,” said Truffler. “Called Blunt he is.”
Mrs Pargeter scanned the accompanying sheet. “There’s no first name down here.”
“Never had one. Only got the one name. Always just called ‘Blunt’.”
“Any reason why?”
“As in ‘instrument’.”
“Ah.” Mrs Pargeter looked more narrowly at a face which appeared to have been left too close to a fire and
