Peter Lovesey - Murder on the Short List

“Ha!” He lifted a finger. “I thought you”d say that. We can do better. What we do is requisition the box.”

There were smiles all round at my expense.

“And then,” the Brigadier said, “we replace the box with one just like it.”

“That’s neat,” Sadie said. She was beginning to warm to the Brigadier’s criminal scheme.

He’d misheard her again. “It may sound like deceit to you, madam, but to some of us it’s common justice. They called Robin Hood a thief.”

“Are we going to be issued with bows and arrows?” Sadie said.

“I wouldn’t mind meeting some merry men,” Briony said.

The Brigadier’s next move took us all by surprise. “Check the corridor, George. Make sure no staff are about.”

I did as I was told and gave the thumb-up sign, whereupon the old boy bent down behind the sideboard and dragged out a flattened cardboard box that he rapidly restored to its normal shape.

“Thanks to my contacts at the hotel I’ve managed to retrieve the box that was used to deliver this week’s aids.” No question: he intended to go through with this crazy adventure. In the best officer tradition he started to delegate duties. “George, your job will be to get this packed and sealed and looking as if it just arrived by courier.”

“No problem,” I said to indulge him. I was sure the plan would break down before I had to do anything.

“That isn’t so simple as it sounds,” he said. “Take a close look. The aids are made in South Africa, so there are various customs forms attached to the box. They stuff them in a kind of envelope and stick them to the outside. What you do is update this week’s documents.”

“I’ll see what I can manage.”

“Then you must consider the contents. The instruments don’t weigh much, and they’re wrapped in bubblewrap, so the whole thing is almost as light as air. Whatever you put inside must not arouse suspicion.”

“Crumpled-up newspaper,” Sadie said.

“What did she say?”

I repeated it for his benefit.

Sadie said, “Briony has a stack of Daily Mails this high in her room. She hoards everything.”

I knew that to be true. Briony kept every postcard, every letter, every magazine. Her room was a treasure house of things other people discarded. She even collected the tiny jars our breakfast marmalade came in. The only question was whether she would donate her newspaper collection to Operation Syringe. She could be fiercely possessive at times.

“I might be able to spare you some of the leaflets that come with my post,” she said.

Sadie said, “Junk mail. That’ll do.”

“It doesn’t incriminate me, does it?” she said. “I want no part of this silly escapade.”

“Excellent,” the Brigadier said, oblivious. “When the parcel is up to inspection standard, I’ll tell you about the next phase.”

The heat was now on me. I had to smuggle the box back to my room and start work. I was once employed as a graphic designer, so the forging of the forms wasn’t a big problem. Getting Briony to part with her junk mail was far more demanding. You’d think it was bank notes. She checked everything and allowed me about one sheet in five. But in the end I had enough to stuff the box. I sealed it with packing tape I found in Matron’s office and showed it to the Brigadier.

“Capital,” he said. “We can proceed to phase four: distracting the enemy.”

“How do we do that?”

“We inundate Marcus Haliburton with requests for appointments under bogus names.”

“That’s fun. I’ll tell the others.”

Even at this stage, it was still a game, as I tried to explain later to the police. Some of us had mobiles and others used the payphone by the front door. I think a couple of bold souls used the phone in Matron’s office. I don’t know if we succeeded in distracting Haliburton. He must have been surprised by the number of Smiths, Browns, Jones and Robinsons who had seen his publicity. The greedy beggar didn’t turn any away.

And so the day of the heist arrived. Almost everyone from the Never-Say-Die had been talked into joining in and clambered onto the bus the Brigadier had laid on. Half of them were so confused most of the time that you could have talked them into running the London Marathon. The notable exception was Briony. She wanted no part of it. She stayed put, guarding her hoard of newspapers and marmalade jars. The Brigadier called her a ruddy conchie when he found out.

In their defence, few of them knew the finer points of the battle plan. But they still amounted to a formidable squad as they alighted from the bus and listened to the Brigadier’s Agincourt-style speech.

“There are senior citizens all over Britain who will think themselves accursed they were not here with us. We few, we happy few, deaf but not downtrodden, stand on the brink of victory. Onward, then.”

So began the main assault, as the Brigadier called it. Four old ladies crossed the hotel foyer walker to walker, a vanguard forging a route for the main party, twelve more on sticks and crutches, with two motorised chairs like tanks in the rear. Inexorably they headed for the suite used by Marcus Haliburton for his consultations. Their task: to block all movement in the corridor.

Because of my supposed underworld connections I had been selected for a kind of SAS role, along with the Brigadier himself. At some time in the first hour, while all the new patients were being documented, tested and examined, a security firm would deliver the latest box of hearing aids to the hotel. One of the staff was then supposed to bring it to the suite for Haliburton to begin handing out the aids to people who had placed orders on his previous visit. Thanks to the congestion in the corridor this would not be possible.

The next part was clever, I must admit. The Brigadier had booked the room two doors up and he and I were waiting in there with our own box filled with crumpled-up junk mail. The porter was bound to come past with the box containing the expensive digital aids.

We waited three-quarters of an hour and it was a nervous time. I had my doubts whether two elderly gents were capable of intercepting a burly hotel porter, but the Brigadier was confident.

“We’re not using brute strength. This is our strength.” He tapped his head.

“But if it doesn’t work?”

To my horror he took a gun from his pocket and gave a crocodile grin. “My old service revolver.”

“That would be armed robbery,” I said, aghast. “Don’t even think of it.”

He misheard me, of course. “From another pocket he produced a flask of brandy. “You need to drink a bit? Take a swig, old boy. It stops the shakes, I find.”

Before I could get through to him I heard the squeak of a trolley wheel in the corridor outside. The moment of decision. Should I abort the whole operation? Unwisely, disastrously as it turned out, I decided to go on with it. I stepped into the corridor, right in the path of the trolley, and said to the porter pushing it, “Mr Haliburton said to lock the parcel in here for the time being. He’ll collect it when the people waiting have been dealt with.”

He said, “I can’t do that. I’m under firm instructions to hand it to Mr Haliburton in person.”

I winked and said, “I work with him. It’s as good as done.” I pressed a five-pound note into his sweaty palm.

Persuaded, he wheeled the parcel into the room and left it just inside the door. The Brigadier meanwhile had stepped out of sight into the bathroom. The porter had the impression he was locking the parcel in an empty room. The idea was that the Brigadier would then emerge from the bathroom with our box of junk mail and make the switch, returning to the bathroom with the box containing the aids, where he would lock himself in for an hour.