“Trouble is, places like that, they tend to count the Goyas at the end of the day.”
“Yes, yes, I suppose they would.”
“Nothing they could pin on him, of course, but, er… well, mud does tend to stick, doesn’t it?”
“So I’ve heard.”
“Anyway, he never looked back, career-wise. I mean, he helped your husband in, like, an advisory capacity, but lots of other people used him too. He never worked exclusively for Mr P. Oh no, his services was very much in demand.”
Mrs Pargeter thought she probably shouldn’t enquire which particular services these were, and fortunately Truffler needed no prompting to spell it out. “Paling’s speciality used to be
“How do you mean?”
“There’s still a lot of millionaires out there desperate to own something unique.”
“Like a world-famous painting, say…?”
“You got it.”
“… that they can gloat over on their own in a gallery nobody else is allowed to enter…?”
Truffler nodded. “Palings used to procure the paintings and design the galleries where they was to be hung.”
“Do you reckon he still does that kind of stuff?”
“Shouldn’t think so.” The detective let out a mournful chuckle. “If he can get well-heeled boneheads to pay him for painting their rooms grey, taking all the furniture out and making them sit on cheese-graters, why bother?”
Mrs Pargeter grinned agreement. The limousine had come to a rest in front of the distinguished faeade of Greene’s Hotel.
“Thanks, Gary,” she said as the chauffeur ushered her out. “You’d better be off to fetch that MP from Heathrow.”
“Right. Give us a call if you need me.”
“Sure. Cheerio.” And as Gary got back into the car, she called after him, “And don’t forget to send me an invoice!”
He grinned. This was part of a running battle between them. Gary, out of gratitude for all that the late Mr Pargeter had done for his career, was keen to provide the man’s widow with free chauffeuring. Mrs Pargeter, who knew how difficult it could be to start up a new business, was adamant about paying at the proper rate.
As the limousine slipped away, she looked up with some satisfaction at her current home.
The elegance of Greene’s Hotel, ravishingly set in one of London’s most exclusive squares, was so understated it almost hurt. The hotel provided an environment in which every whim was anticipated. No sooner had the shadow of a desire for something crossed the brain of a guest than a member of staff had glided into place with the required object neatly presented on a silver salver. The atmosphere of Greene’s was so rarefied that its guests were never allowed to think about things as mundane as money (which is just as well, considering how much their stay there is costing them).
The irony that this temple to gracious living should be run by a gentleman known in a former existence as ‘Hedgeclipper’ Clinton was never lost on Mrs Pargeter. He was another name from the address book of the late Mr Pargeter, and had worked for her husband in rather less elegant surroundings than Greene’s Hotel. The precise nature of the services he had provided was unclear, though a clue to his methods of persuasion and enforcement could be found – by those who were interested in such matters – in his nickname. Mrs Pargeter herself was not interested. During her long and happy marriage to the late Mr Pargeter, she had quickly learnt that there were many subjects related to her husband’s business affairs in which there was no point in her taking any interest at all.
Mrs Pargeter was now a semi-permanent resident of Greene’s Hotel. She had tried other forms of accommodation, but found them wanting. She was in theory having a dream house built in which to pass her ‘declining years’, but the builder, who delighted in the nickname of ‘Concrete’ Jacket, had proved – through no fault of his own – frequently absent from the project. As a result, progress on the construction was slow, and in the interim Mrs Pargeter contented herself with the surroundings of a luxury hotel.
The shadow of desire cast across her brain that evening as she entered the hotel with Truffler Mason was for champagne. As ever, her whim was anticipated by the barman Leon (not, in this instance, a particularly difficult feat of mind-reading – Mrs Pargeter almost always felt like champagne in the early evening). Immediately the bottle was open and on ice. Two crystal glasses stood in readiness on her favourite table in the room which looked more like the library of a country house than anything so common as a bar.
Demonstrating the sense of priorities which she had maintained throughout her life, Mrs Pargeter saw the two glasses filled by Leon, Truffler toasted, and substantial swallows taken, before she moved back to business. “Palings seemed pretty certain that some of the paintings were from galleries abroad. Does that raise any problems, Truffler?”
“Shouldn’t do.”
“Oh. You mean you know how to smuggle fine art out of the country?”
He gave an arch grin. “No, I don’t know how to do it myself. But I know a man who does.”
Mrs Pargeter smiled and took another tingling swallow of champagne. It was wonderful, she reflected, how things interconnected. Her late husband’s network had been
“Actually,” Truffler’s voice broke into her reverie, “you know the man I’m talking about.”
“Do I? Who is it?”
The detective grinned. “HRH.”
“Oh, goodie,” said Mrs Pargeter. “Now he’s someone I’d really like to see again.”
? Mrs Pargeter’s Point of Honour ?
Seven
The flat in which Detective Inspector Craig Wilkinson spent as little time as possible was only one step up from a bedsitter, and demonstrated as many little personal touches as the average policeman’s office. Indeed, the flat’s sitting room was virtually identical to the office where the Inspector worked at the station. It had the same cream walls and 1950s metal window frames. The curtains were institutional green and, on the rare occasions they were pulled across, gave an uneven striped effect from years of bunched bleaching by the sun. Furniture was minimal and functional – chairs with scuffed light wood arms and prolapsed seats in green mock leather, a table whose Formica top was scarred and pitted with old cigarette burns. Though the kitchen was rarely used for cooking, just as a depository for the foil and polystyrene boxes of takeaways, it still contrived to be extremely grimy. When he walked in there the Inspector’s soles made a slight sucking sound against the sticky linoleum.
And the atmosphere of the flat was heavy with the smell of long-dead cigarettes.
Still, Craig Wilkinson had years before ceased to be aware of his surroundings, and it was a long time since anyone else had been there to notice them. Nowadays he had the same attitude to sex as he did to promotion. Since all attempts were doomed to failure, it was hardly worth filling in the metaphorical application forms. What was the point of going through the elaborate – and expensive – rigmarole of chatting up, buying drinks for, buying meals for, and luring back home, someone with whom it was never going to work out from the start? Wilkinson found that, as he progressed through his fifties, his libido had shrunk till it was like some residual nub of an organ left behind by the evolutionary process, a vermiform appendix whose function wasn’t quite clear. The Inspector did sometimes still have romantic thoughts, but he very rarely had erotic ones.
The predominant thoughts he had when he was in the flat tended to be gloomy ones, which was why he spent the minimum amount of time possible there. Sitting alone, puffing on another cigarette, he would become obsessed by old fiascos and frustrations, by the failures in both his private and professional lives. Because, in spite
