Ellery Queen’s Mystery Magazine. Vol. 129, Nos. 3 & 4. Whole Nos. 787 & 788, March/April 2007

Say That Again by Peter Lovesey

Copyright © 2007 by Peter Lovesey

A winner of the Cartier Diamond Dagger, the CWa’s life-time achievement award, Peter Lovesey is a longtime contributor to EQMM and a former winner of our Readers Award. The following story emerged from a seminar he and friends Michael Z. Lewin and Liza Cody presented at a crime writers’ conference in Britain — one of many projects the three have participated in together. Mr. Lovesey’s latest novel is The Circle (Soho Crime).

We called him “the Brigadier with the buggered ear.” Just looking at it made you wince. Really he should have had the bits surgically removed. He claimed it was an old war wound. However, Sadie the Lady, another of our residents, told us it wasn’t true. She said she’d talked to the Brig’s son Arnold, who reckoned his old man got blind drunk in Aldershot one night and tripped over a police dog and paid for it with his shell-like.

Because of his handicap, the Brigadier tended to shout. His “good” ear wasn’t up to much, even with the aid stuck in it. We got used to the shouting, we old farts in the Never-Say-Die Retirement Home. After all, most of us are hard of hearing as well. No doubt we were guilty of letting him bluster and bellow without interruption. We never dreamed at the time that our compliance would get us into the High Court on a murder rap.

It was set in motion by She-Who-Must-Be-Replaced, our so-called matron, pinning a new leaflet on the notice board in the hall.

“Infernal cheek!” the Brig boomed. “They’re parasites, these people, living off the frail and weak-minded.”

“Who are you calling weak-minded?” Sadie the Lady piped up. “There’s nothing wrong with my brain.”

The Brig didn’t hear. Sometimes it can be a blessing.

“Listen to this,” he bellowed, as if we had any choice. “ ‘Are you dissatisfied with your hearing? Struggling with a faulty instrument? Picking up unwanted background noise? Marcus Haliburton, a renowned expert on the amazing new digital hearing aids, will be in attendance all day at the Bay Tree Hotel on Thursday, 8th April, for free consultations. Call this number now for an appointment. No obligation.’ No obligation, my arse — forgive me, ladies. You know what happens? They get you in there and tell you to take out your National Health aid so they can poke one of those little torches in your ear and of course you’re stuffed. You can’t hear a thing they’re saying from that moment on. The next thing is they shove a form in front of you and you find you’ve signed an order for a thousand-pound replacement. If you object they drop your NHS aid on the floor and tread on it.”

“That can’t be correct,” Miss Martindale said.

“Completely wrecked, yes,” the Brigadier said. “Are you speaking from personal experience, my dear? Because I am.”

Someone put up a hand. He wanted to be helped to the toilet, but the Brigadier took it as support. “Good man. What we should do is teach these blighters a lesson. We could, you know, with my officer training and George’s underworld experience.”

I smiled faintly. My underworld links were nil, another of the Brig’s misunderstandings. One afternoon I’d been talking to Sadie about cats and happened to mention that we once adopted a stray. I thought the Brig was dozing in his armchair, but he came to life and said, “Which of the Krays was that — Reggie or Ronnie? I had no idea of your criminal past, George. We’ll have to watch you in future.”

It was hopeless trying to disillusion him, so I settled for my gangster reputation and some of the old ladies began to believe it, too, and found me more interesting than ever they’d supposed.

By the next tea break, the Brigadier had turned puce with excitement. “I’ve mapped it out,” he told us. “I’m calling it Operation Syringe, because we’re going to clean these ruffians out. Basically, the object of the plan is to get a new super-digital hearing aid for everyone in this home free of charge.”

“How the heck will you do that?” Sadie asked.

“What?”

She stepped closer and spoke into his ear. “They’re a private company. Those aids cost a fortune.”

The Brig grinned. “Simple. We intercept their supplies. I happen to know the Bay Tree Hotel quite well.”

Sadie said to the rest of us, “That’s a fact. The Legion has its meetings there. He’s round there every Friday night for his G and T.”

“G and T or two or three,” another old lady said.

I said, “Wait a minute, Brigadier. We can’t steal a bunch of hearing aids.” I have a carrying voice when necessary and he heard every word.

“ ‘Steal’ is not a term in the military lexicon, dear boy,” he said. “We requisition them.” He leaned forward. “Now, the operation has three phases. Number One: Observation. I’ll take care of that. Number Two: Liaison. This means getting in touch with an inside man, Cormac, the barman. I can do that also. Number Three: Action. And that depends on what we learn from Phases One and Two. That’s where the rest of you come in. Are you with me?”

“I don’t know what he’s on about,” Sadie said to me.

“Don’t worry,” I said. “He’s playing soldiers, that’s all. He’ll find out it’s a nonstarter.”

“No muttering in the ranks,” the Brigadier said. “Any dissenters? Fall out, the dissenters.”

No one moved. Some of us needed help to move anywhere and nobody left the room when tea and biscuits were on offer. And that was how we were recruited into the snatch squad.

On Saturday, the Brigadier reported on Phases One and Two of his battle plan. He marched into the tea room looking as chipper as Montgomery on the eve of El Alamein.

“Well, the obbo phase is over and so is the liaison and I’m able to report some fascinating results. The gentleman who wants us all to troop along to the Bay Tree Hotel and buy his miraculous hearing aids is clearly doing rather well out of it. He drives a vintage Bentley and wears a different suit each visit and by the cut of them they’re not off the peg.”

“There’s money in ripping off old people,” Sadie said.

“It ought to be stopped,” her friend Briony said.

The Brig went on, “I talked to my contact last night and I’m pleased to tell you that the enemy — that is to say, Marcus Haliburton — works to a predictable routine. He puts in a fortnightly appearance at the Bay Tree. If you go along and see him you’ll find Session One is devoted to the consultation and the placing of the order. Session Two is the fitting and payment. Between Sessions One and Two a box is delivered to the hotel and it contains up to fifty new hearing aids — more than enough for our needs.” He paused and looked around the room. “So what do you think is the plan?”

No one was willing to say. Some might have thought speaking up would incriminate them. Others weren’t capable of being heard by the Brigadier. Finally I said, “We, em, requisition the box?”

“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 thumbs-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 bubble wrap, 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 pay phone 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, Joneses, 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.

My job was to shepherd the Never-Say-Die residents as quickly as possible out of the corridor and back to the bus. I was starting to do so when a man in a grey pinstripe suit came marching up and said, “What’s the trouble here? I’m Buckfield, the hotel manager.”

“No trouble, Mr. Buckfield,” I said. “The system can’t cope, that’s all. Some of these old people have been waiting an hour for an appointment with the ear specialist. I’m suggesting they come back next time. We’ve got transport outside.”

He looked at me with some uncertainty. “Are you their warden?”

“Something like that.”

“One of the bellboys tells me he delivered a box of valuable hearing aids to Room 104. Was that at your bidding?”

I said, “Yes. I think you’ll find it’s still there.”

He had a passkey and opened the door and picked up the parcel that was waiting there. I gave all my attention to ushering the old ladies towards the foyer and the waiting bus. Most of them were pleased to leave and didn’t understand what we had achieved. A few genuine customers for the hearing aids were just as confused, and when we got to the bus I had difficulty persuading two of them that they weren’t in the Never-Say-Die party.

Finally everyone except the Brigadier was on board. It was my job to see that all was clear and help him out of Room 104 with the parcel we had requisitioned, the most dangerous part of Operation Syringe.

Trying to look like any other guest, I crossed the foyer and stepped along the corridor. It was now empty of people. I tapped on the door of 104 and immediately realised that there was a fatal flaw in our plan. How would the Brigadier hear my knocking? I tried a second time.

No response.

Along the corridor, the door of Haliburton’s suite opened and an old man came out. I tried to ignore him, but he said, “Are you waiting for a consultation? It’s that room I just came out of.”

I thanked him, but I don’t think he heard. I took off a shoe and tried hammering on 104 with it.

At last the door opened and there was the Brigadier with the parcel in his arms. For the first time since I’d known him he looked concerned. “Take this to the bus and tell the driver to put his foot down.”

“Aren’t you coming?” I said.

“Cunning? Far from it,” he said. “I’m a silly arse. Left my service revolver on the bed and some beggar in a pinstripe picked it up.”

“Leave it,” I shouted into his ear. “Come with me.”

“Can’t do that,” he said and made a little speech straight out of one of those war films when the doomed Brit showed his stiff upper lip. “That revolver is my baby. Been with me all over the world. I’m not surrendering, old boy. I’ll get back to base. See if I don’t.”

I said, “I’m leaving with a heavy heart.”

He said, “Don’t be so vulgar.”

No use trying to talk sense into him. He really had need of a decent hearing aid.

I carried the parcel to the bus. Everyone cheered when they saw it. Then Sadie said, “Where’s the Brigadier?”

I didn’t want them to know he’d brought a gun with him, so I said he was hiding up until it was safer to leave.

The bus took us back to the home and we tottered off to our rooms for a nap after all the excitement. We’d agreed not to open the box before the Brig returned.

All evening we waited, asking each other if anyone had heard anything. I was up until ten-thirty, long past bedtime. In the end I turned in and tried to sleep.

Sometime after midnight there was a noise like a stone being thrown at my window. I got out of bed and looked down. There in the grounds was the Brigadier blowing on his fingers. He shouted up to me, “Be a good fellow and unbolt the front door, will you? I just met a brass monkey on his way to the welder’s.”

In twenty minutes every inhabitant of the house except the matron and her two night staff assembled in the tea room. The nightwear on display is another story.

“Open it, George,” the Brig ordered.

They watched in eager anticipation. Even Briony had turned out. “Ooh, bubble wrap,” she said. “May I have that?”

“You might as well, because you’re not getting a hearing aid, you conchie,” the Brigadier said.

I unwrapped the first aid. It was a BTE (behind the ear), but elegance itself. I offered it to the Brigadier. He slotted it into his ear. “Good Lord!” he said. “I can hear the clock ticking.”

Everyone in the room who wanted a replacement aid was given one, and we still had a few over. The morale of the troops couldn’t have been higher. Even Briony was happy with her stack of bubble wrap. We all slept well.

At breakfast, the results were amazing. People who hadn’t conversed for years were chatting animatedly.

Then the doorbell chimed. The chime of doom. A policeman with a megaphone stood in the doorway and announced, “Police. We’re coming in. Put your hands above your heads and stay where you are.”

Sadie said, “You don’t have to shout, young man. We can all hear you.”

We were taken in barred vans to the police station and kept in cells. Because there was a shortage of cells, some of us had to double up and I found myself locked up with the Brigadier.

“This is overkill,” I said. “We’re harmless old people.”

“They don’t think so, George,” he said in a sombre tone. “Marcus Haliburton was shot dead in the course of the raid.”

“Shot? I didn’t hear any shots.”

“After you left, it got nasty. They’ll have me for murder and the rest of you for conspiracy to murder. We can’t expect all our troops to hold out under questioning. They’ll put up their hands, and we’re all done.”

He was right. Several old ladies confessed straightaway. What can you expect? The trial that followed was swift and savage. The Brigadier asked to be tried by a court-martial and refused to plead. He went down for life, with a recommendation that he serve at least ten years. They proved that the fatal shots had been fired from his gun.

I got three years for conspiracy to murder — in spite of claiming I didn’t know about the gun. Sadie was given six months. The Crown Prosecution Service didn’t press charges against some of the really frail ones. Oddly, nobody seemed interested in the hearing-aid heist and we were allowed to keep our stolen property.

The Never-Say-Die Retirement Home had to carry on without us. But there was to be one last squirt from Operation Syringe.

One morning three weeks after the trial, Briony decided to sort out her marmalade jars and store them better, using the bubble wrap the aids had been kept in. She was surrounding one of the jars with the stuff when there was a sudden popping sound. One of the little bubbles had burst under pressure. She pressed another and it made a satisfying sound. Highly amused, she started popping every one. She continued at this harmless pastime for over an hour. After tea break she went back and popped some more. It was all enormous fun until she damaged her fingernail and had to ask She-Who-Must-Be-Replaced to trim it.

“How did you do that?” Matron asked.

Briony showed her.

“Well, no wonder. There’s something hard inside the bubble. I do believe it’s glass. How wicked.”

But it didn’t turn out to be glass. It was an uncut diamond, and there were others secreted in the bubble wrap. A second police investigation was mounted into Operation Syringe. As a result, Buckfield, the manager of the Bay Tree Hotel, was arrested.

It seemed he had been working a racket with Marcus Haliburton, importing uncut diamonds stolen by workers in a South African diamond mine. The little rocks had been smuggled to Britain in the packing used for the hearing aids. Interpol took over the investigation on two continents.

It turned out that on the day of our heist Buckfield, the manager, suspected something was afoot, and decided Haliburton might be double-crossing him. When he checked Room 104 he found the Brigadier’s revolver on the bed and he was certain he was right. He took it straight to the suite. Haliburton denied everything and said he was only a go-between and offered to open the new box of aids in the manager’s presence. We know what it contained. Incensed, Buckfield pointed the gun and shot Haliburton dead.

After our release, we had a meeting to decide if we would sue the police for wrongful imprisonment. The Brigadier was all for it, but Sadie said we might be pushing our luck. We had a vote and decided she was right.

The good thing is that every one of us heard each word of the debate. I can recommend these new digital aids to anyone.