Read Mrs. Pargeter's Point of Honour for Free Online Page B

day’s work. He should get into fights and smash up furniture in bars. It would be entirely appropriate – indeed the perfect solution to his lack of identity – for Craig Wilkinson to be a cop with a drink problem.
    The trouble was, he didn’t like the taste of alcohol that much. He wasn’t teetotal, but found that after a couple of drinks he’d had enough and didn’t want any more. What he really enjoyed was sitting down with a nice cup of tea, a cigarette, and a packet of chocolate bourbon biscuits.
    He also disliked the way alcohol affected his stomach. Even more, he disliked the way it affected his judgement. Craig Wilkinson hated to feel that he was losing control at any level.
    So, whatever his route to becoming a memorable cop was, it wouldn’t be as a boozer.
    Still, there are other ways, he thought to himself the evening after he’d met the woman in the limousine, other ways I can ‘make my mark’. I’m not finished yet, by any manner of means.
    He sat in his institutional green armchair, lighted cigarette in hand, with a pot of tea and an open packet of chocolate bourbon biscuits, and for once his mind wasn’t flooded with gloom. The old thoughts of past failures were there, sure enough, but they didn’t swamp him. Now he had a glimmer of hope. Now there was something he could achieve, something so magnificent that it would pay off all debts, eclipse all memories of the operations that had not worked out for him.
    Yes, even of the big one, the one whose recollection never failed to bring him a new pang of disappointment. He had been so close then, so very close. As usual, he had taken the ‘softly, softly catchee monkey’ approach. He had started with a tip-off from an informer, an anonymous voice at the end of a telephone line who called himself ‘Posey Narker’. That initial contact had been expensive, but worth every penny.
    And from that first detail Wilkinson had built up a huge database of information. He had resisted the temptation to rush, to pick up minor villains as soon as he had enough evidence to convict them. He had waited, patiently watching link join to link, seeing where the operations of one villain overlapped with those of another, until he had almost mapped out the complete network.
    And he had watched, with mounting excitement, the direction in which these lines of connection pointed. He had seen how they were all converging, all coming together till they met in one man, the spider at the centre of the huge complex web.
    And Wilkinson had identified that man, built up a dossier of evidence against him. He’d been within an ace of catching the man, of putting him under arrest and sending out wider and wider ripples of lesser arrests until the whole organization would have been under lock and key.
    Would have been. Would have been . . . if something hadn’t gone wrong.
    But something had gone wrong. And it had left Inspector Wilkinson seething with frustration for the rest of his life.
    Until now. Now he had a glimmer of a hope of a possibility of staging something that would settle the old scores for good. Once this was sorted, no one would ever forget the name of Detective Inspector Craig Wilkinson.
    He poured himself some more tea, puffed on his cigarette, and picked up a fresh chocolate bourbon biscuit. Once this was sorted, he reflected, everything he did would become trendsetting. The role model for all future detectives would be of a tough, hardbitten tea-drinker who liked chocolate bourbon biscuits.
    As he thought this heart-warming thought, Craig Wilkinson mouthed silently, confidently to himself, the name of his old adversary. ‘Oh yes, I think I’m about to erase all memories of the failure I had in nailing you down . . . Mr Pargeter.’

Chapter Eight
    The Indian summer was continuing. It was a glowing, golden September morning. An unobtrusive brass plate on the portico of the