I Am Gold

by Bill James

  Harpur thought Dodd’s forehead had been shoved forward in a jerking movement and slammed hard against the highway surface when he collapsed with Iles on his back. Dodd was thin, with a long neck as skinny as Rockmain’s, which would be liable to such uncontrollable flexing. Although the ACC was not burly, his weight would make that a bad blow for Dodd under him. Harpur saw no movement from Dodd on the ground. He didn’t struggle to throw Iles off, or attempt to wriggle free. Dodd must be concussed. Iles remained on top of him, also motionless, but as a shield. Without turning his head back towards the caravan, the ACC shouted, as if into the tarmac, or a roadside rain drain, or Dodd’s ear, ‘I am Gold. I, Iles, remain Gold. I await our man’s recovery. All of you, stay where you are. I repeat, stay sheltered. I repeat, it is Gold who speaks. I, Iles, am Gold.’ The outside audio detector picked up his announcement and broadcast it booming in the caravan. Harpur thought the words had a fine, solemn, Old Testament rhythm, as if the letter l should be dropped out of Gold. There was a chaos of noise. John continued to hurl questions over the Conference telephone: ‘What’s happening, you sods?’ ‘Who are these people?’ ‘Are you attacking?’ ‘Is this the start?’ ‘Who are they? Who are they?’ ‘Do you want fucking war? War is what you’ll fucking get, and so will these in here with me.’ ‘Who’s the talky-talky one in the big-brass uniform? Is he mad?’

  ‘I’ll go and help the ACC bring Dodd in,’ Harpur said. ‘He’ll have to be carried.’

  ‘That will be defiance of Gold,’ Rockmain said.

  ‘Yes, technically. I often defy Mr Iles. He expects it. He despises obedience. He’ll say things like, “Take a peep at the Atlantic. Not much obedience there I think.” He has his own way of looking at things. It’s not quite lateral thinking. Quadrilateral – he sees all sides, one or two of them more or less sane. I’m Gold for the moment,’ Harpur said.

  ‘You can’t be Gold while he’s still Gold,’ Rockmain said. ‘There can be only one Gold.’

  ‘It’s impossible for him to be Gold,’ Harpur said. ‘How can he see things overall when he’s like that on Dodd?’

  ‘He explicitly did not hand over Gold status,’ Rockmain said. ‘Very explicitly.’

  Harpur could part sympathize with Rockmain’s objections. Harpur himself loved the clarion nature of that cry, ‘I am Gold’ – the certainty, the unquestionable authority and worth, the absence of maybes and but-on-the-other-hands. Rockmain’s attitude to Gold, the title, proved its absoluteness. Harpur had, for a moment, queried that absoluteness. Iles seemed incapable of being Gold, spread-eagled over Dodd. For Rockmain, though, Gold was Gold, spreadeagled over Dodd or not.

  Yes, Harpur sometimes wished everything could have the bare, declarative strength and power of ‘I am Gold.’ So much of life was secrets, half-truths, quarter-truths, non-truths. ‘I am Gold’ said what it had to say and said it short, plain and straight, able to enthral even a high-falutin, passably reputable (Cambridge starred First, apparently), arrogant, jargonizing, psychologist cop like Rockmain.

  And then Harpur thought, yea, yea, yea. Could you run a police force without secrets, half-truths, quarter-truths, non-truths? Could you run a life without secrets, half-truths, quarter-truths, non-truths? Adultery generally required some secrets, half-truths, quarter-truths, non-truths, didn’t it? Hadn’t you, C. Harpur, specialized in secrets, half-truths, quarter-truths, non-truths, when you were cuddling up and so on with Sarah Iles, the ACC’s wife?* ‘I am dross’ could have been your cry then.

  The negotiator said: ‘Rest easy, John. I note your question: “What’s happening?” You asked what’s happening, didn’t you?’

  ‘Yes, what’s happening?’

  ‘I thought you’d ask what’s happening, John.’

  ‘Well, of fucking course I’d ask what’s happening if something is happening, namely, two men running this way, then hitting the ground.’

  ‘It is only an incident, John.’

  ‘I can see it’s an incident.’

  * See Come Clean

  ‘I certainly understand that this kind of incident would puzzle you, John. It’s only a single, minor incident. It doesn’t affect the general situation.’

  ‘What kind of single, minor incident that doesn’t affect the general situation is it? Is one of them lover-boy?’

  ‘You’re bound to ask what kind of one-off incident it is.’

  ‘And what sort of general situation is it?’

  ‘The situation in general.’

  ‘What I think is, a decoy – something to make me look that way when the trouble’s coming from elsewhere.’ ‘

  It’s natural for you to think it’s a decoy, John.’

  ‘Is it a fucking decoy?’

  ‘“Is it a decoy?” I can see what you’re getting at, John –the implications.’

  ‘You can see what I’m getting at. I say, “Is it a decoy?” And you say you can see what I’m getting at such as, “Is it a decoy?” Fucking brilliant.’

  ‘This is another of those questions.’

  ‘Which?’

  ‘Questions I’d expect,’ the negotiator said.

  ‘But you’re not going to say, “Yes, it’s a decoy, John,” are you, because then it wouldn’t be a decoy any longer, would it?’

  ‘You ask would it still be a decoy if I said, “Yes, it’s a decoy, John,” because it’s vital with a decoy that people don’t know it’s a decoy, otherwise it’s no decoy. The essence of a decoy is that the person or people it’s intended to deceive don’t realize it’s a deception, a decoy. I appreciate your point.’

  Harpur said: ‘If John flips and starts firing at Dodd and the ACC we’ll have to go in – the full assault team.’

  ‘Yes,’ Rockmain said.

  ‘I’d have to order it,’ Harpur said.

  ‘Iles could order it from where he is,’ Rockmain said.

  ‘He might not be able to, if John has been firing at them,’ Harpur said.

  ‘It’s a long way for a handgun shot.’

  ‘They might get hit, all the same.’

  ‘In that case, if Iles were hit and … yes, you’d be Gold,’ Rockmain said.

  ‘It might be too late for Dodd and the ACC then,’ Harpur said. ‘I’d be Gold but only because Gold was dead or crippled. I’ve got to go and get them.’

  ‘Gold has ordered against that,’ Rockmain said.

  ‘I’ll go,’ Harpur said.

  ‘That fucking Dodd,’ Rockmain replied. ‘An idiot.’

  ‘Maybe more than he knows,’ Harpur said.

  ‘What? How?’ Rockmain said.

  ‘John?’ the negotiator said. ‘John, are you there?’ He couldn’t keep urgency, anxiety, out of his voice. That was not typical. He had played calm and repetitive, as the negotiator manuals recommended. John didn’t answer. There’d been earlier spells when he refused to reply: the line would stay dead because he’d leave the receiver down. It seemed different now, though. The connection remained open, but John didn’t talk.

  Over the amplified system they heard sounds Harpur couldn’t place at first. He’d been about to leave the van and crouch-run to Dodd and the ACC, ready if necessary to clobber Iles, suppose he offered Gold trouble, and he almost certainly would. But Harpur waited and listened: a couple of thuds, a woman’s brief scream, grunting –male – furniture splintering, a man’s shout, though no words. Harpur read anger or panic in these shouts. The noise varied in volume, as if the phone at the shop end might be hanging loose on its wire and spinning, so its pick-up field continually changed, a fading, an increase, then the same sequence again. Harpur decided some kind of physical battle had started.

  Rockmain said: ‘Have they gone for him in there?’

  ‘They might need help,’ Harpur said.

  ‘Yes,’ Rockmain said. ‘A new phase.’

  The main shop window on to the street shattered with a great, very brief, jangling din. The negotiator said: ‘John, John, what’s happening? We note the window. Have you noticed the win
dow? A breakage.’ Through the caravan’s open door, Harpur saw Iles suddenly unhook himself from Dodd and stand. He would have heard the glass break and cascade, and he’d probably agree with Rockmain: a new phase. Dodd remained prone on the ground and still. Iles stood with a leg on each side of him like the victor on an ancient, hand-to-hand battlefield, and yelled, ‘I’m Gold. I, Iles, am Gold.’ He waved an arm, urging immediate onslaught. ‘All go, go, go,’ he called. Harpur thought the ACC in his pale blue, insignia’d uniform looked glorious, whatever the outcome, and the outcome might be terrible. But this was the kind of moment Iles fitted into so sweetly. Evening sun gave a rich, steely shine to his cropped grey hair. He had no cap on. He’d left it in the van.

  The road was empty, of course, cleared but for these two. Iles, fixed there, staring about, his body tense over the other body, had suddenly claimed this piece of land as his realm. Of course, in a sense it had always been his realm, his and Harpur’s, part of their manor. They knew all these streets and the buildings and some of the people living or working in them. But it was as if the needs of the siege had grabbed this area of ground away from them. Here was Iles taking it back. The solitariness, except for Dodd, made him epic. Circumstances – the Dodd circumstances –had pushed Iles into a prickly situation, and he emerged from it now aglow with obvious, towering leadership, resolve and dignity. The nuisance at his feet, stubbornly blotto at present, could earlier have fucked up just about everything. Iles had neutralized him and, perhaps, through personal magic, had even converted Dodd’s deep lunacy into a gain.

  Perhaps, perhaps. As Harpur saw things, and as Rockmain seemed to see things, also, the hostages had possibly turned on John, surprised him, while he was distracted, trying to work out what Dodd and Iles and their short, frantic scamper from the van signified. There’d been that rambling chat about decoys, John’s agonized nerves showing throughout. He hadn’t known which direction an invasion might come from. Had the hostages been able to cash in on his confusion and try to overpower him?

  Something somehow or somebody somehow had burst the window. Who had the gun or guns? There’d been no shooting. Not yet. Iles’s finger, pointed stiffly at the target building, seemed to say, ‘Here lies our challenge, our future, and I, Iles, can deal with it, you lucky sods. Yes, it is I who speak: I, Iles, Gold.’ Occasionally Harpur remembered lines of poetry he had learned at school and now he recalled the beginning of a verse about some old hero and his followers sighting a coastline and safety after a perilous, long sea voyage. It went, ‘“Courage!” he said, and pointed toward the land.’ And it was as if Iles might part echo this: ‘Courage!’ he’d say and point toward the shop.

  Harpur thrilled watching him, and when, now, he thought back to that long affair he had enjoyed with Iles’s wife, Sarah, it seemed a terrible treachery against such a lustrous, fluctuating colleague. Harpur knew he hadn’t felt anything in the least like that at the time, though. Most probably, an itchy conscience couldn’t be a natural feature of affairs while they were actually under way or there wouldn’t be any affairs. Occasionally, of course, or more than occasionally, Iles would still scream accusations and mad, agonized, brilliantly consonantal abuse at Harpur about it, but this evening the ACC displayed a kind of massive, unwavering nobility. Harpur felt policing was privileged to have him. Farce sometimes touched Iles, but so did a kind of special Ilesian grandeur. He made the job theatrical in very, very nearly the best sense. ‘First aiders here,’ he called. ‘Doddy’s into a total doze.’ Then Iles ran unarmed towards the shop. Harpur, unarmed, followed.

  Chapter Twenty-Four

  2008

  And then, of course, so obvious, Egremont Lake’s cousin, Lionel-Garth Field, arrived on Shale’s ground for a conversation, a turn-and-turn-about visitor procession. Them two, Egremont and Lionel-Garth, didn’t do much conversation together, that was clear. Or no conversation about nothing serious, such as getting into Manse’s firm here at a majestic level, owing to family connections through Denz. This would not be the haulage and scrap firm they had in mind. No, the main one. Well, really, as far as takings and undisclosed profits went, Manse had to admit, the only one.

  When Egremont came he thought Lionel-Garth might of already had talks with Manse here. Wrong. Now, when Lionel-Garth came he thought Egremont might of already had talks with Manse. Right. If the first one was wrong, or right, the second one had to be right, didn’t it, because the first one meant Egremont must of come here and had talks with Manse? But the fact that Lionel-Garth came anyway meant he felt unsure there’d been talks with Egremont and, if there had been, guessed they must of gone nowhere. Right, again. If he thought for definite there’d been talks and they’d got somewhere, Lionel-Garth would not be here now, because he’d know he was too late. Egremont would be, like, in – ‘in’ meaning into an executive post in Manse’s firm.

  But the question that then had to be dealt with was, why had Lionel-Garth left it so late? Although he would get no further than Egremont did, Shale considered it damn casual, almost an insult, to of waited so long. Months. Didn’t he consider Manse’s operation worth some urgency? People in London could be like that, the arrogant twerps. They thought everything worthwhile had to be there, in London, except, maybe, that rave at Glastonbury or Cowes for boating. They regarded other areas as what they called ‘the sticks’, full of what they called ‘swede-bashers’, signifying, village idiots. Maybe Lionel-Garth took his time because he rated Manse a swede-basher, and could not believe any firm in the sticks could really produce – not in the style and amount London could produce.

  Shale considered that Lionel-Garth’s slowness in following up the chat in Hackney after the funeral showed he decided in a cool way he could take it or leave it, as far as Manse’s firm went. He wasn’t certain he wanted a spot in the business or not. It was like, when he’d attended to all the important stuff he had in Hackney and around, he might, might, spare a small part of his red-hot brain to think about that commodities operation down in … where was it? Run by … what was his name? … the one Lionel-Garth’s other cousin used to be in trade with at the time of death. This Lionel-Garth had some fucking neck. Well, necks could get wrung.

  At least he didn’t come hunting Manse at the rectory, in that disgusting style of Egremont. This might mean Lionel-Garth had some idea how to behave proper, even if it was out here, not London but the deepest bush! Instead, he hung about near Bracken Collegiate school where Laurent and Matilda went, usually driven there and back by Shale in the Jaguar. Lionel-Garth knew of the school and had mentioned after the funeral that he wouldn’t mind his children going there if he moved the family when he joined Manse’s outfit. So bleeding gracious. Lionel-Garth must of done some research about what time they would arrive and who would be driving. Manse didn’t like that. Lionel-Garth knew about digging, did he, as well as a bit of accountancy?

  In one way, Shale thought it might be just as bad using the school for a meeting spot like this, as calling on him at home. Lionel-Garth had arrived in a big green Vauxhall now parked near the gates and flashed his lights like a bloody secret agent job when he saw the Jaguar. Laurent and Matilda was still in the car and noticed the signal. ‘Some mate or admirer, dad?’ Laurent said.

  ‘The school doesn’t like cars or men hanging about outside,’ Matilda said. ‘People waiting near schools could be sort of dubious and of a tendency. Sometimes, the school calls the police to check.’

  Well, yes, Lionel-Garth was dubious and of a tendency, and double dubious and of a tendency, but not in the way she meant.

  ‘He’s waving. He seems really friendly,’ Laurent said. ‘Why doesn’t he come to the house if he wants to see you?’

  Because he knows better than to come to the fucking house. He got no entitlement. Shale didn’t say it, though. He never swore in front of the children. You didn’t send them to a refined, big-fee-grab school like Bracken Collegiate and then undo everything by cursing like some fucking uneducated yob where they could fucking he
ar. ‘I hardly know this guy,’ Shale said. ‘Don’t ever take a lift from him.’

  ‘You sound like the school, dad,’ Matilda said. She and Laurent left the car and walked in through the gates. They joined quite a little crowd of pupils also moving towards the school, but Lionel-Garth would of had a clear sight of which was Mansel’s children. He didn’t like this, either. Yes, research might be another of Lionel-Garth’s specialities. Shale began to think that, because of the artfulness Lionel-Garth showed, he might be more difficult to deal with than Egremont, meaning more difficult to squash and get rid of. His slowness coming here could be a ploy, not a sign he didn’t care. Maybe he wanted to get Manse off-balance through wondering about Lionel-Garth’s absence, then, wham, he’s suddenly here, flashing his lights like ‘So glad you could make it, Mansel.’ Also, he’d had time to survey Manse’s ground and business.

  The thing with Egremont was, he had seemed to consider an arrangement with Manse would all be very easy and natural, like fixed by Fate and the blasting of Denz. So, it really knocked him when he realized Manse would not be letting him into the house because letting him into the house might mean Shale fancied some sort of partnership with this grand Hackney marquis, which Manse absolutely did not and wouldn’t never. Clearly, Manse had not deliberately arranged things so the porch smelled of cocked-tail toms, but in his opinion that had been a very useful extra in destroying Egremont with his bling Bentley a bit more. It gave the message – ‘Kindly, piss off, Egremont.’

  And Egremont was really a mess after that. He went to the jabber level, the retreat level. But there would be no chance of getting Lionel-Garth into that handy, downgrading, cat’s pee environment because he did not come to the rectory. Obviously, he didn’t not come to the rectory on account of the porch stink, but owing to working in a subtler style than Egremont’s. It seemed plain to Shale that Egremont had not told Lionel-Garth he’d been to see Manse, and, therefore, Lionel-Garth probably would not know about the unhelpful porch, even though he did research.