To Cut a Long Story Short

Anna watched as her husband folded up The Times, placed it on the table in front of him and shook his head.

Oh my God, thought Anna. He is wearing a tweed jacket and an MCC

tie.

‘I’d love to,’ said Robert, ‘but I’m afraid I have to make several phone calls.’

‘On a Saturday morning?’ said Muriel, who was standing at the laden sideboard, filling her plate for a second time.

‘Afraid so,’ replied Robert. ‘You see, criminals don’t work a five-day, forty-hour week, so they don’t expect their lawyers to do so either.’ Anna didn’t laugh. After all, she had heard him make the same observation every Saturday for the past seven years.

Robert rose from the table, glanced towards his wife and said, ‘If you need me, my dear, I’ll be in my bedroom.’

Anna nodded and waited for him to leave the room.

She was about to return to her letter when she noticed that Robert had left his glasses on the table. She would take them through to him as soon as she had finished breakfast. She placed the letter on the table in front of her and turned to the second page.

‘Let me tell you what I have planned for our anniversary weekend while the prune is away at his conference in Leeds. I’ve booked us back into the Lygon Arms, so we’ll be in the same room in which we spent our first night together. This time I’ve got tickets for All’s Well. But I plan a change of atmosphere once we have returned from Stratford to the privacy of our room in Broadway.

‘I want to be tied up to a four-poster bed, with you standing over me in a police sergeant’s uniform: truncheon, whistle, handcuffs, wearing a tight black outfit with silver buttons down the front, which you will undo slowly to reveal a black bra. And, my darling, you’re not to release me until I have made you scream at the top of your voice, the way you did in that underground carpark in Mayfair.

‘Until then,

‘Your loving Oberon.’

Anna raised her head and smiled, wondering where she could get her hands on a police sergeant’s uniform. She was about to turn back to the front page and read the letter again when she noticed the P.S.

‘P.S. I wonder what the prune is up to right now.’

Anna looked up to see that Robert’s glasses were no longer on the table.

‘What scoundrel could write such an outrageous letter to a married woman?’ demanded Robert as he adjusted his glasses.

Anna turned, horrified to see her husband standing behind her and staring down at the letter, beads of sweat appearing on his forehead.

‘Don’t ask me,’ said Anna coolly, as Muriel appeared by her side, tennis racket in hand. Anna folded her letter, passed it over to her oldest friend, winked and said, ‘Fascinating, my dear, but for your sake I do hope Reggie never finds out.’

CRIME PAYS*

KENNY MERCHANT - that wasn’t his real name, but then, little was real about Kenny - had selected Harrods on a quiet Monday morning as the venue for the first part of the operation.

Kenny was dressed in a pinstriped suit, white shirt and Guards tie. Few of the shop’s customers would have realised it was a Guards tie, but he was confident that the assistant he had selected to serve him would recognise the crimson and dark-blue stripes immediately.

The door was held open for him by a commissionaire who had served in the Coldstream Guards, and who on spotting the tie immediately saluted him. The same commissionaire had not saluted him on any of his several visits during the previous week, but to be fair, Kenny had been dressed then in a shiny, well-worn suit, open-necked shirt and dark glasses. But last week had only been for reconnaissance; today he planned to be arrested.

Although Harrods has over a hundred thousand customers a week, the quietest period is always between ten and eleven on a Monday morning. Kenny knew every detail about the great store, in the way a football fan knows all the statistics of his favourite team.

He knew where all the CCTV cameras were placed, and could recognise any of the security guards at thirty paces. He even knew the name of the assistant who would be serving him that morning, although Mr Parker had no idea that he had been selected as a tiny cog in Kenny’s well-oiled machine.

When Kenny appeared at the jewellery department that morning, Mr Parker was briefing a young assistant on the changes he required to the shelf display.

‘Good morning, sir,’ he said, turning to face his first customer of the day. ‘How can I help you?’

‘I was looking for a pair of cufflinks,’ Kenny said, in the clipped tones he hoped made him sound like a Guards officer.

‘Yes, of course sir,’ said Mr Parker.

It amused Kenny to see the deferential treatment he received as a result of the Guards tie, which he had been able to purchase in the men’s department the previous day for an outlay of PS23.