Mrs. Pargeter's Pound of Flesh (7 page)

CHAPTER 14

The boy's pale blue eyes suddenly darted sideways. Hope and yearning glowed in his face.

Mrs Pargeter followed his gaze through the cafe's steamed-up window to the street outside. Three girls passed by, tantalizingly slowly. Their strutting movements and the shortness of their skirts identified them as practitioners of the art for which King's Cross has become famous.

The hope had gone from Tom O'Brien's face as he looked back. Odd, was Mrs Pargeter's initial thought; why should a boy as good-looking as Tom waste his time gazing at prostitutes? Then light dawned.

'Going back to Jenny . . .' she began delicately. 'I want to know more about her.'

The interrogation was interrupted by the arrival of her steaming mound of All-Day Breakfast, swimming in enough fat to light the average Anglo-Saxon mead-hall for a decade. Mrs Pargeter looked at the plate with relish, sliced off a triangle of fried bread, which she loaded with tomato and beans and ate, before repeating, 'Yes, I want to know more about Jenny . . .'

Tom O'Brien looked truculent and suspicious. 'Why?'

'Because we're both trying to find her. If we pool our information, the chances of succeeding'll be that much better.'

He thought about this for a moment, before deciding in favour of co-operation. 'OK. What do you want to know?'

'You haven't seen her since the last week of term?'

'No.'

'But you didn't have a row about anything just before she left?'

'Certainly not. We were very close.'

'No arguments at all?'

'No. Not what you'd call arguments.'

'What would you call them then?' asked Truffler bluntly. Mrs Pargeter took the opportunity of his interposition to load up and despatch another triangle of fried bread.

'Well . . .' Tom considered Truffler's question. 'Well, I suppose you'd call them disagreements. Disagreements about priorities.'

Mrs Pargeter continued her softer approach. 'What kind of priorities?'

'Money, mostly. How we should spend any money we'd got. Not that we had any, of course.'

'In what way did you disagree about that?'

'Well, I thought we should devote anything we had to the cause . . .'

'The environment?'

He nodded, but Mrs Pargeter had to prompt him to continue. 'And what did Jenny want to spend the money on?'

'She was . . . sort of . . .' He swallowed before the shamefaced confession. 'Deep down Jenny's a very conventional person, and I suppose, because she's grown up with her parents always being hard-up and that, she's a great believer in . . .' He could hardly bring himself to shape the alien word. '
Saving
.'

'Ah. What did she want to save for?'

'Oh . . .' He looked embarrassed. 'Sort of . . . you know . . . traditional things . . .'

'Like . . . getting married?' Mrs Pargeter suggested lightly.

His blush told her that she had scored a direct hit. 'Nothing wrong with that,' she said.

'Maybe not, but . . .' His words petered out. Mrs Pargeter could sympathize with his problem. To have a girlfriend of such mundane ambitions must have been a serious threat to the street credibility of a self-appointed anarchist like Tom O'Brien.

Time to move the enquiry on. Reluctantly deferring another mouthful of her All-Day Breakfast, Mrs Pargeter asked, 'And since that last week of term you haven't seen Jenny or heard from her?'

'Not directly, no.'

'What do you mean?'

'I did ring her parents once. Her old man managed to stay civil long enough to tell me she'd phoned them a couple of days before. But since then . . .'

'In fact,' said Truffler Mason, who could be surprisingly sensitive at times, 'I happen to know she's kept in touch with her parents right through. They last heard from her just before the university term started.'

Tom O'Brien seemed relieved by the news. Mrs Pargeter felt terrible about the other news that the young man might shortly have to hear.

'She didn't give any indication of where she was?' he asked eagerly.

'No. They got the impression she was doing some kind of holiday job, but they didn't know what or where.'

'That would be in character,' Tom mused.

'What do you mean?' asked Mrs Pargeter.

'Jenny's very proud. Neither of us had any money, so it would have been in character for her to go off and get a job. No way would she ever ask for anything from anyone else – least of all from her parents. She knew how little they'd got. I'd hear her on the phone telling them how easily she was managing on her grant – which was a load of crap. She didn't want them to be worried. I think she sometimes even sent them money that she certainly couldn't afford.'

'What's odd about the situation,' Mrs Pargeter ruminated, 'is not that Jenny should have got a job . . . but that she shouldn't have told you that she was getting one . . .' The boy nodded in downcast agreement. 'Can you think of any reasons why she might not have told you?'

His reply was drawn out of him reluctantly. 'Only the one.'

'And what's that?'

'That she didn't think I'd approve of the work she was doing.'

Mrs Pargeter understood immediately. She looked out of the window at a miniskirted girl brazenly chatting up a tourist in an anorak. 'That's why you're here, Tom, isn't it? You're afraid Jenny might have come down here to make money?'

'I couldn't think of anything else,' he mumbled. 'I had to look for her. I had to start somewhere.'

'So you've been round here, watching the girls come and go, for how long . . . ?'

'I don't know . . . Two weeks . . . three weeks?' The confession had released some tension in him. He looked suddenly haggard with exhaustion.

'Where are you living?'

'Sleeping on someone's floor.'

'Whereabouts?'

She only got a shrug by way of answer.

'And that's why you haven't gone back to Cambridge?'

'I can't. I can't go back till I find Jenny.' He looked suddenly very young and vulnerable.

'But you mustn't ruin your life and your education for –'

Mrs Pargeter never got the chance to finish her sentence. Tom O'Brien's attention had been caught by another group of miniskirted girls hurrying past the cafe window. 'I must go!' he blurted. Then, showing his good upbringing, he added from the door, 'Are you sure you don't mind paying for the lunch?'

Truffler gestured acquiescence and the boy was gone. 'Shall I go after him, Mrs Pargeter?'

She shook her head and speared a sausage. 'No point. I think we've got all we can from him. And, anyway, Truffler, if you've found him once, I'm sure you can . . .'

The detective's nod of confidence made the rest of her sentence redundant.

Mrs Pargeter finished her mouthful of sausage in reflective mood. 'Poor kid. He's clearly deeply in love with her.'

'Hm . . .'

'Or
was
deeply in love with her. You know what we've got to do next, don't you, Truffler?'

He probably did, but was polite enough to respect the rhetorical nature of her question.

'We've got to make certain that the dead girl I saw really was Jenny Hargreaves.'

Truffler Mason nodded, his conjecture proved correct.

'What about the parents?' asked Mrs Pargeter suddenly. 'Surely the hospital must have been in touch with them by now?'

'No, that's the odd thing,' said Truffler. 'I was going to tell you. Mr and Mrs Hargreaves still haven't heard anything.'

'Oh dear. Truffler, get in touch with all the hospitals in the Brotherton Hall area! As quickly as possible!'

Mrs Pargeter had suddenly turned very pale. And after Truffler had rushed off to follow her instructions, she didn't even feel up to finishing her All-Day Breakfast.

Which may be taken as a measure of how upset she was.

CHAPTER 15

'Gary . . .' said Mrs Pargeter thoughtfully, as the limousine sped through the outer suburbs, 'if you discovered that your wife was doing a job –'

'Which I never would,' the uniformed chauffeur interrupted. 'Old-fashioned it may be, but I believe a bloke should bring home enough for his missus and the nippers without her having to go out to work.'

Others might have been surprised to hear these reactionary sentiments from such a young man, but Mrs Pargeter had long been aware of Gary's Victorian values.

'No, but if you did . . .' she persisted, 'what kind of work would your wife most want to keep secret from you?'

'What, like what kind of work would she least want me to find out about?' queried Gary, who liked to be in possession of all the facts before committing himself to an opinion on anything.

'That's it, yes.'

'Anything illegal,' the chauffeur pronounced, without a moment's hesitation.

Ah, the late Mr Pargeter had taught his protege well. It could have been her husband himself speaking. Mrs Pargeter reflected fondly, thinking back to the punctilious care with which he had kept her innocent almost of the fact that crime existed in this wicked world. 'What you don't know about, my dear,' had been one of his regular sayings, 'you're in no position to tell anyone else about.'

Gary had clearly absorbed the same values. Mrs Pargeter could not help once again contemplating the wide influence her husband had exercised. All over the world were men and women, many of whom had taken a change of career direction in mid-life, who owed all their success to the training bestowed by the late Mr Pargeter.

Gary was a good example. Her husband had discovered the boy at the age of sixteen in a young offenders' centre, where he had been committed for joy-riding. The late Mr Pargeter had taken the boy under his wing, gently showed him the pointlessness of random car-theft, and paid for him to have driving lessons. The boy had felt ready after one, but his mentor insisted on two full courses of lessons before Gary was allowed to take his test.

The result, Mrs Pargeter mused as the limousine slid through the Surrey countryside, was the safest driver she had ever encountered.

The late Mr Pargeter, philanthropic as ever, had also put the boy through Advanced Motorist's instruction, and paid for him to take courses in speed and skid-control (even going to the lengths of having him trained to cope with the additional weight-hazard of an armoured car).

Then, when Gary was proficient, the late Mr Pargeter had been good enough to find work for him in his organization, work which tested the boy's skill to the full. His boss's confidence was never once shown to be misplaced. Gary's speed and repertoire of evasive manoeuvres had frequently saved other of the late Mr Pargeter's associates from the kind of accident that could have put them out of circulation for two or three years (or in some cases up to fifteen).

When his boss died, Gary, after an appropriate period of mourning, had set up a driving business of his own with a more public profile than had been accorded to his previous work. Mrs Pargeter, always a great supporter of new business enterprise, had backed the venture from the start, booking Gary on every occasion that she might possibly need a driver.

He had at first tried to refuse payment for his services, saying, 'After all, when I think how much I owe your late husband, it's the least I can do for his widow to –'

But Mrs Pargeter had interrupted him firmly, insisting she always would pay for everything. 'Neither a lender nor a borrower be,' she had said, quoting another of the late Mr Pargeter's regular sayings (though he may perhaps have borrowed that one from someone else).

So it was that she had organized Gary to drive her from Brotherton Hall to King's Cross, and to have the limousine on hand to return her after the meeting with Tom O'Brien.

Gary who was used to ferrying Mrs Pargeter to more elegant venues than the greasy spoon, had been far too discreet to pass any comment.

'No, but give me a bit more detail,' Mrs Pargeter insisted. 'What kind of job would your wife least like you to know what she was doing?'

'Not absolutely clear what you mean, Mrs Pargeter.'

'Well, for instance, would the worst thing you could find out be that . . . that she was on the game, for example?'

'I wouldn't like that much,' Gary conceded judiciously, 'but that wouldn't be the worst.'

'What would then?'

'The worst,' he said, 'the absolute worst – the thing that'd really make me divorce her on the spot and never see her again – would be if . . .'

'Yes?'

'If I found she'd gone and joined the police.'

'Ah. Yes. Well, of course.'

Somehow, Mrs Pargeter didn't think she was going to get much stimulus to her thinking about Jenny Hargreaves's job from Gary.

On her return to Brotherton Hall, she bumped into an ecstatic Kim Thurrock – or it might be more accurate to say an ecstatic Kim Thurrock bumped into her. Kim was rushing from the gym, where she'd spent an hour increasing her weight-training circuits and repetitions, to the swimming-pool, where she still had thirty lengths to complete.