At the very second they looked into the cab of the Transit and realized it was empty, the engine of the other van was detonated into action. The chief villain and his two henchmen turned in dismay to watch its blue back doors diminishing away down the street.
“Get back in,” Rod D’Acosta bawled in fury, “and turn the bloody cars round!”
¦
The blue van and its two pursuing cars hurtled through the streets of South London, dropping the jaws of passers-by and threatening the heart conditions of other road-users. In spite of the van’s souped-up engine, the superior power of the cars was beginning to tell. They were gaining on their quarry.
In the van’s passenger seat Mrs Pargeter, who had been tracing their route across the map on her lap, shouted suddenly, “This is it. Swing a left, Gary.”
The blue van did as instructed, the suddenness of the swing forcing its whole weight momentarily on to two wheels. But it righted itself and roared off down the side road.
The pursuing cars slowed, and the one behind eased up alongside its leader. Windows were wound down. Rod D’Acosta grinned wolfishly across the intervening space to the heavy called Ray. “Got them now,” he announced. “This road’s just a loop. You head them off the other end.”
“Right,” said the heavy called Ray, and fired his car forward to block off the junction ahead. Rod D’Acosta nodded to the heavy called Phil, who turned his car down the side road and moved sedately ahead. There was no hurry now. The blue van was trapped as securely as the red one had been. They could move slowly, relishing the thought of the inevitable violence which lay ahead.
¦
Halfway along the loop road was a service station. The blue van hurtled across its forecourt, straight towards the car wash at the back. It stopped by the control slot.
“You got a token?” asked Gary, as he wound his window down.
“Course I have,” replied Mrs Pargeter, almost offended that he thought the question necessary. “Full Wash with Wheel Scrub.”
She handed it across. Gary pushed the token into the slot and, winding his window up, edged forward, guided by rails, into the car wash. The overhead sprays of water started, and moved slowly back over the blue van’s body.
As they did so, something remarkable happened. The blue paint stippled, paled and trickled away down the van’s sides into the car-wash gutters, revealing gleaming white gloss beneath.
By the time the wheel scrub, the final feature of the cleaning cycle, was finished, not a trace of blue remained anywhere on the gleaming body. Had there been anyone present to witness the colour transformation, as Gary inched the van primly out of the car wash, they would also have noticed that he and Mrs Pargeter were now wearing navy-blue jackets and caps.
And at the moment the conjectural observer noticed the word ‘Ambulance’ printed on the front of the cab, they would have seen a slot in the roof open, and an array of blue flashing lights rise up to fill it. Simultaneously, as the vehicle sped forward on to the road, they would have heard an emergency siren start.
¦
The heavy called Ray had his car parked directly across the outlet of the loop road to the main thoroughfare. And he wasn’t going to let anything out.
Except of course for an ambulance. You never knew with an ambulance. The geezer in the back whose life was at risk could be a cop, true. But, on the other hand, it could be one of your own. Better to be safe than sorry.
So, at the sound of the siren and the sight of the flashing blue lights, the heavy called Ray edged his car out of the way. Once the ambulance had passed, he moved back to block the roadway once again.
Then he sat and waited.
He waited a long time. All the time until a familiar car came slowly out of the loop road. Behind its windscreen the heavy called Ray could see a familiar face. It belonged to Rod D’Acosta, and it was suffused with a familiar expression of fury.
? Mrs Pargeter’s Point of Honour ?
Thirty-Seven
“It’s gone!” Sergeant Hughes announced dramatically, as their car drew up outside the open metal gates.
“Now just a minute, just a minute. Don’t let’s jump to conclusions. We don’t know what we’re looking for yet.” Inspector Wilkinson didn’t like being rushed in this manner. The raid on Rod D’Acosta’s yard was his assignment and he had planned to start on it at four o’clock in the afternoon. He had not responded well to Hughes’s melodramatic intervention and insistence on moving the whole schedule forward.
“We do know what we’re looking for. It’s a red Transit van, and it’s not here.” Then, as an almost condescending afterthought, the Sergeant added, “Sir.”
“Where did you say you got this information from?”
“The source called Posey Narker who put me on to the Dover thing.” Hughes reached forward to the car phone. “I’ve got the van’s registration. I’ll put out a general alert. We’ll track it down.”
Wilkinson snatched the receiver from his hand and started punching in a number. “
While the Inspector gave details into the phone, Sergeant Hughes became aware of a large man behaving strangely on the other side of the road. He was weaving around, as if in a daze, with an expression of deep puzzlement on his bruised face.
Hughes got out of the car, and went across to the man. “Are you all right?”
The eyes of the heavy called Sid took a moment or two to focus on the young man in front of him. “Ere. Have you got my fifty quid?” he asked in a slurred voice.
“No, I haven’t. What happened to you?”
“Well, I ran into this wall, didn’t I?”
“Ah. Why?”
“To get the fifty quid.”
“Oh.”
“Are you sure you haven’t got it?”
“Absolutely certain.”
“Oh.”
The big man looked almost pitifully disappointed. Sergeant Hughes got out his notebook. “Can I just take a few details about you? What’s your name?”
“Sid,” the man replied uncertainly. “I think.”
“And what do you do?”
His fuddled state removed the normal caution with which he would have replied to such a question. “I work for Rod D’Acosta. Threatening and GBH, mostly. Occasionally a bit of petty theft.”
“Right,” said Sergeant Hughes, wishing that all arrests were as easy as this one promised to be. “I think you’d better come along with me.”
¦
The two cars were parked on the service station forecourt. The knot of three men stood with heads bowed. They could have been attending a funeral, but it wasn’t a grave they were looking down at, just the traces of blue pigment in the gutters of a car wash.
Rod D’Acosta shook his head ruefully.
“It was the ambulance…?” asked the heavy called Ray.
But the question was a formality. He knew the answer.
“Yes, you bloody fool, it was the ambulance!” said the heavy called Phil. “The ambulance that you so public-
