Pix (Volume Book 24) (Harpur & Iles Mysteries) (17 page)

Harpur kept alert in case the Laguna gunship did a loop and returned. Its crew might hope he had gone, leaving the blast path open. But after a couple more minutes he thought that unlikely. He could end the chatter. ‘Ralph's what I would call an all-rounder,' he said. ‘Often he discusses environmental topics in letters to the Press. As Ralph W. Ember. Pigeon shit on monuments. That kind of thing.'

‘We'll watch for those,' Chandor said. ‘The environment is a real issue in this day and age.'

‘True.'

Mid-afternoon, Iles called Harpur up to the Assistant Chief's suite at headquarters for a one-to-one. The ACC looked rotten. ‘I worry, Col.'

‘
I
worry.'

‘This woman who gave you the missing picture of her man – could she be in some peril?'

‘It's possible. You know some parts of this situation better than I do.'

‘Is that right?'

‘Of course it is. You get into Mansel's place and –'

‘So, I worry,' Iles said. And it would be true. Of course, he had the standard excesses and lunacies of his rank, but he could become genuinely emotional about someone he thought at risk on his ground –
his
, as he would term it. Nobody would argue, except possibly the Chief and police committee, and ‘Who gives a twopenny fuck for them?' Iles might ask, often
did
ask. Responsibility as well as malice, self-pity and general egomania inhabited the ACC. He could care, but you had to stick around and stay watchful to catch him at it. Harpur occasionally caught him at it. The caring did not necessarily involve lust. No, not necessarily. He had never seen Meryl Goss, for
instance, and Harpur had not described her looks to him. Harpur thought that if Meryl Goss had been a man on the same kind of quest, but for a woman, the ACC would still have wanted to involve himself. This was how it could be sometimes: Harpur would see they were joined by common anxieties, dreads, intents. The double-act sparring and spite and abuse might conceal this shared purpose, but it lay there, always present, strong and mysterious. It was policing.

This certainly did not make the enmity from Iles to Harpur only a show, or negligible. Iles had great reserves of fury, continuously ready for mobilization like the National Guard. He could still grow frenzied about Harpur's affair with Sarah Iles, and the fact that Harpur got her, though you saw better dressed men in soup kitchen queues. This resentment was on eternal stand-by. Elsewhere in Iles, though, and in Harpur as well, the concern for some cause or for some person could more or less exactly coincide. That factor linked them unbreakably. Naturally, it was not to be spoken about and defined. Iles would have thrown up.

‘Col, tell me this,' he said, ‘is it right for us to allow this woman who's searching for Trove . . . is it humane, ethical, for us to let her go on trying to find him, go on
hoping
to find him, when we know he's dead?'

‘It's bad. But
I
don't know he's dead, sir. I've not seen his body.'

‘Almost a kind of cruelty.'

‘And you can't disclose
you've
seen it because you shouldn't have been there, in Manse's rectory and Matilda's bedroom,' Harpur replied. ‘You're an ACC, for God's sake! You can't even admit it to me, let alone to Meryl Goss.'

‘There's a play called
Inadmissible Evidence
, Col. Rather seminal.'

‘That right?'

‘Oh, yes.'

‘A pity. You could have used the title for your autobiography,' Harpur said. ‘We've got a ton of it. And what
might have happened if they'd found you spying? Did they bring
two
body bags with them?'

‘So many shifts in the pattern of things, Harpur,' Iles said. ‘I have to ask myself and ask myself again, do I still understand this domain?'

‘What answer do you get?'

‘For instance, Shale and Sybil went for dinner at Low Pastures, Col,' Iles replied.

‘How do you –'

‘Now, naturally, in your inquiring way, you'll ask me what I read into this.'

Harpur said: ‘Well, no, sir, I don't think I'd –'

‘Seismic, Col.'

‘It's an evening out, that's all.'

‘ “That's all.” ' Iles smiled, but with some sadness. He did not give the ‘That's all' an exclamation mark or turn it into a mocking question. He spoke the words flat, as though their absurdity didn't need pointers. ‘No wonder you're stuck at that fucking rank, Harpur,' he said. The Assistant Chief was shirt-sleeved and wearing a turquoise tie striped with silver, probably some rugby club's colours. Iles refereed occasionally. God. He sat behind his desk. Harpur had an armchair across the room opposite.

He said: ‘Look, sir, a couple of businessmen and their wives meet in pleasant social circumstances at the country house of –'

Iles held up one hand, like a benediction or traffic stopper. ‘I don't know if you've ever come across the word “vision” at all, Harpur,' he said. ‘It's fairly run-of-the-mill.'

‘Well, yes, it's to do with –'

‘Exactly right, Col. This is a quality I think of as among my prime gifts. One of the main differences between me and you.
One
of.'

‘I should think you were known as Visionary Iles at Staff College.'

‘And then, as well as the shock of Ralphy's invitation to Shale and Sybil, Manse's daughter came to see me earlier, of course,' Iles replied. ‘Matilda.'

‘What the fuck does that mean?'

‘What?' Iles said.

‘ “Of course.” '

‘It means of course. A kid of that type.'

‘Which?' Harpur said.

‘Convinced by their own imaginings. It's commonplace. Known to be worse in girls.'

‘Which imaginings?'

‘They mistake them for second-sight.'

‘Second-sight of what?'

‘Arrived on her own by bus in the school lunch hour. A determined lass. I had them send up a chop and two veg from the canteen, though, plus bread and butter pudding and a ginger beer.'

‘But here for what?'

‘As to vision, Col, the Bible says, “Where there is no vision the people become diabolically stressed,” ' Iles replied.

‘Yes, actually it's, “Where there is no vision the people perish.” Proverbs.'

‘Ah, you did the King James version at your back street Sunday school, Col. “Diabolically stressed” is the Revised Prozak Edition. I think of Ralphy Ember – that terrible turmoil of his mind leading finally to an invitation for Manse to Low Pastures. Shale and those teeth in Low Pastures, Harpur! The implications for social class. Seismic, yes, Col. Emblematic. This is 1917.'

‘1917? On your digital watch? The time Manse and his wife set out for Low Pastures? You always get things very exact. Vision, but also precision, if I may say.'

‘1917 – the Bolshevik revolution, twat. Upending all settled ways for ever.'

‘How did you find out Shale and his wife went to Low Pastures?' Harpur replied.

‘What does this change of Ralphy's attitude to Shale
mean
?'

‘
Mean
?'

Iles stood, took his jacket from off the back of a straight chair and put it on. ‘Now, I think we should go and see Hilaire Wilfrid Chandor,' he said. ‘I've got addresses.'

‘See him with what purpose?'

‘Simply drop in on him at his offices,' Iles said.

‘Why?'

‘I've got to look after that London woman. Well, we.'

‘Thank you, sir.”

The ACC smoothed down his jacket. ‘
You
might be able to afford a suit like this one day, Col.'

In the lift, Harpur said: ‘I ran across Chandor at lunchtime.'

‘In what sense?'

‘In what sense what, sir?'

‘ “Ran across.” '

‘Yes, ran across,' Harpur replied.

‘You are not someone who runs across people, Harpur. You scheme. This was schemed?'

‘He likes it here.'

‘Why?'

‘The ambience,' Harpur said.

‘Yes, plenty of that around. This is the thing about ambience. It's ambient. You fret in case the Goss woman makes herself a target?'

‘Of course.'

‘Why you ran across him? Yes, it could be grim, Col. She sounds wonderful. Devoted.'

‘I think so.'

They took an anonymous car from the pool. Harpur drove. Iles said: ‘I wonder if anyone would come looking for me if I disappeared, Col? I wonder. I wonder.'

Harpur felt that to his credit the ACC fought off sobs. ‘Are you thinking of going, sir? People would definitely notice.'

‘Which?'

‘Which what, sir?'

‘Which people would notice I'd gone?'

‘Oh, many.'

‘Can you name them?'

‘Many, sir. I'd probably need both hands off the wheel to finger count.'

‘Why do I need this constant reassurance, Harpur?'

‘A foolish yet becoming modesty, sir.'

‘Yes, it could be that.'

‘A selling of yourself short.'

‘Yes.'

‘Many have noticed this.'

‘Who?'

‘Many.'

‘Think of Ralph dialling that number, the rectory number,' Iles replied. ‘He's going to ditch – yes, actually going to
reverse
– all his former notions about Mansel as too deep-dyed coarse and non-grammatical for admission to a
gentilhommière
like Low Pastures. This was a brave act. Indomitably, Ralph picks up the instrument and phones. He has become the great ring-giver, like that guy in
Beowulf
.'

‘You've had another illegal intercept done?' Harpur asked. ‘Listen, the verse from Proverbs says in full, “Where there is no vision the people perish, but he that keepeth the law, happy is he.” Do you ever think about keeping the law, sir? I'm sure it's crossed your mind.'

‘I don't believe in happiness, Col.'

‘Do you believe in the law?'

‘In deciding on that phone call Ralphy had agreed to stoop, Harpur. Why?' the ACC said.

‘Perhaps he wanted to put on a special friend-to-friend event, marking Sybil's return to Manse.'

‘Except he didn't know Sybil
had
returned, arsehole. He rings. A woman answers. She says, “Is that Ralphy Ember?” You know what Ralphy's like about being called Ralphy – thinks it's a coddle name for some slow developer who's still peeing his pants at going on twenty-three. For a couple of moments he's wondering which of those sleep overs at the rectory would have the gall to cheapen his name like that. He'd known a woman might answer, but not a woman who'd call him Ralphy, for God's sake. In his courageous way, he's willing to risk talking to someone he can't identify yet is still bewildered when it's Sybil.'

‘You get bewilderment on the transcript?' Harpur said.

‘Ralph is anxious about something and suddenly wants this total fighting unity with Manse to resist a threat, or clarify a threat, a shadow, that he senses but can't actually pinpoint. He aims to deepen their relationship, freshen the
alliance. Answer: invite him home. Not just business mates now, but mates per se, regardless of Shale's plebiness, teeth and complexion.'

‘What threat?'

‘I felt a need to
see
this crucial Ralph-Manse development, to witness it,' Iles replied.

‘You watched him and Syb leave for Low Pastures? Why you have the time so spot-on, 1917?'

‘I hope I'm not someone who merely sits in a poncy office reading damn transcripts, Col.'

‘No, you break into people's homes and look about while they're at Severalponds, sir.'

‘I thought I'd just watch Manse and Syb set out from the rectory. He wears a superb suit. Possibly aristocratic. At least boardroom. I'd say fashioned late 1920s and for someone not totally unlike Manse physically, only a few inches taller.'

‘How did you get close enough to see?'

‘There are bushes in the rectory grounds.'

‘You'd noted that when you did the break-in, had you?'

‘Plus a mauve shirt, open collar, to represent the nowness of now, the vivid informality, as against that bold antiquity of the suit,' Iles said. ‘You see the significance of this suit, do you?'

They had come to the beginnings of the marina. Iles stared contemptuously at the cement brick, Lego-land architecture, as Harpur had earlier in the day. Iles, expounding, said, ‘Shale saw the mighty implications of his welcome to Low Pastures. He knew there were overtones and dressed like overtones. I was present at history-making, Harpur.'

‘Three-piece?'

‘Would any marquis or rusk tycoon of that Imperial period wear anything less than a three-piece, Harpur? This suit, this visit, this return of a wife, speak of brilliant social stability – the kind I work and work for, and the kind we are charged to maintain. This Chandor might menace all that. Possibly has already menaced all that and given a warning more might follow.'

‘Others have tried to destroy that harmonious social pattern here, sir. You've seen them off.'

‘Yes, I have. We have.'

‘Thank you, sir.'

‘Park now,' Iles said. ‘We'll walk the rest.' They were near where Harpur had left his car at lunchtime. ‘Our dear, fuckwit former Chief, Mr Lane, could temporarily restore his optimism and belief in life by a gaze at this sprucing of the run-down docks, the “thrilling, forward-looking marina concept”, as he smoochily called it. I keep trying for the same uplift. I do. I will now. I will.' They left the car. ‘Manse would feel not only angry but humiliated by what occurred at the rectory, Harpur. That's a hazardous mix – anger, mortification. He'd think Chandor has selected him as the one to pressurize because he's the weaker. I bet Manse hasn't told Ember about the stairs and pictures. He's scared Ralph would accept Chandor's view and perhaps start thinking it's time to switch colleagues. But Manse, a proud man, is determined to resist. That suit, Col – a proud man's suit, probably with a long, proud history for at least one other proud man, possibly several proud men before it reached the Nearly New shop. Plus, Shale's wife home again. He wouldn't want to seem weak or victimized in her eyes. Life isn't only about banging her on the Afghan rug in the Pre-Raphaelite room. He has to show he's still a tearaway business force.'