by Bill James
The ACC loved his own legs. Harpur had often noticed him admiring them at quiet moments, and even at less quiet moments. They were not especially long but straight and slim and he had his trousers – uniform and civilian –cut to emphasize this. His legs went beyond the ornamental, though. As well as grace they had power. His running now proved it. Harpur could only just about keep up. The ACC obviously hadn’t done himself any damage in stopping Dodd with that high leap and enveloping, flattening descent.
The shop’s door on to the street was shut, though possibly not locked. But Iles didn’t try it. He stepped in through the big gap made by the missing window, neatly avoiding tall spears of glass that remained jutting up balls-wards from the lower frame. Harpur could guess at his thoughts. Iles would see this method of entry as the only right one. Direct and immediate, it took account of the altered state of things. It was practical. It put him into the heart of the situation while he might still have been fiddling with the door. A saviour had arrived. That’s how he’d regard it. But a saviour who’d be an easy target stepping through that space. If you were Gold you had to get to where Gold could claim or reclaim mastery of a crisis, though, even if you were gunless.
Harpur flogged himself to go faster. If you were Gold’s Silver aide you had to get with him. As Harpur reached the ex-window area he heard Iles from behind a rack of very second-hand dresses say: ‘Oh, God, what a muck-up. But I don’t blame that fucking Rockmain entirely. He was trying his little best.’ It looked as if a wheeled rack of clothes had been pushed against the window during some sort of fight.
Chapter Twenty-Six
2008
‘No, I don’t think I’ll be needing you in any capacity, thanks, Lionel-Garth. Your car awaits. My car has to get going to somewhere else, with just me in it.’
Shale had expected Lionel-Garth to ignore such aggrofilled words, or argue or even turn rough. Instead, though, he said with quite a show of what could be true sadness, if you could believe it: ‘Well, Mansel, I’m sorry I’ve been unable to convince you of my potential worth to your operation. Of course, I can understand your attitude. You’d hardly wish to admit there could be anything untoward about your new and much valued lady, Naomi. In some respects, this is an admirable reaction, a wonderfully loyal and loving reaction which you believe is completely deserved by her. After suffering so much distress via the wandering Syb, you are naturally very sensitive to any suggestion that her likely replacement might also have … well, might also have disturbing aspects. But I’m terribly afraid, Mansel, that this attitude could leave you seriously exposed. Yes, seriously.’
‘How?’
‘Please accept, Mansel, that I wish you only well.’
‘Right.’
‘It pains me that, in order to help you, I have to deliver what are troubling facts about someone who is so wholeheartedly esteemed by you.’
‘Right.’
‘Mansel, I feel a considerable debt to you for the way you took care of my cousin, Denzil. You gave him accommodation at the top of your own fine property and provided him with a distinguished career in a company created and developed by you through extraordinary personal endeavour.’
‘I believe it’s part of being human that we should try to help those around us,’ Shale replied immediately. And he did think this answer was correct, up to quite a point. Up to a point: obviously, Manse did not want to help someone like Lionel-Garth or his cousin, Egremont, nor any of the other pirates from fucking London who decided they’d like a slice of this ground, or more than a slice – the lot. This kind of try-on invasion was happening all the time and had to be smashed.
Lionel-Garth said: ‘The fact that despite the grand treatment you gave Denzil he may have killed himself in what has to be described as an exceptional, even gaudy, fashion is in no way attributable to you. Very much contrariwise, surely. As I see it, that death displayed massive ingratitude. Admittedly, we can’t know the inner state of Denzil’s mind at the time – his secret problems and failings – but we can still ask whether this self-destruction was a proper response to the infinitely considerate reception given him by you and your firm. Note the double guns in the mouth, as though he wanted to be totally sure he saw himself off and didn’t have to put up with any more of your kindnesses, Mansel, so freely given. It’s bound to be damn hurtful. Anyone can see that. People who ask, could he have pulled both triggers at exactly the same moment and, if not, how did the second trigger get pulled when the first bullet would have killed him? – questions of that sort are no more than base mischief.’
‘His motives, a sad, sad mystery. Often I’ve said this to colleagues.’
‘Now, I know that those disgusting rumours about the death can still be heard here and there –’
‘Totally disgusting. Nothing but rumours.’
‘I was going to say, rumours from diseased, vindictive, envy-driven mouths. But one knows how to deal with them, doesn’t one – yes, with annihilating contempt. There are people who cannot believe that good and friendly actions, such as yours toward my cousin, should be regarded for what they so sincerely are. They will look for evil, where there is none, only its very reverse. They will allege selfishness where there is only patent unselfishness. They will dismiss generosity as deception and hidden viciousness. These perverse slanders are a shaming comment on some members of humankind, Mansel. Your example, though, shows that not all are so negative, thank heaven.’
‘My mother believed very thoroughly in kindness towards most, and passed this belief on to my brothers and sisters and me.’
Lionel-Garth took hold of the Jaguar door handle. ‘You are robust and morally secure, Mansel, and have the excellent teaching of your mother as well as the present support of your new partner – and perhaps soon-to-be wife – plus your children, Matilda and Laurent. These cumulatively are superb assets. At your wish, and regretfully, I must leave you now in the excellent company of those traditions planted in you as a child, and your present kith and kin. If, however, you should ever need help from outside this admirable team, please be in touch. Thankfulness shall not fade, nor the sense of obligation.’
He did not attempt to shake hands again but went from the Jaguar and made for his own car. Manse thought he seemed slightly crouched, and he walked in a plodding, sort of weary, slow, inner-suffering style. Maybe the regret he’d mentioned was affecting his body, the gross sodding slob. Or it could be exhaustion after that endless fucking slimy spiel with its smelly double meanings. What the hell was the jerk getting at when he said Mansel ‘took care of’ Denz? ‘Taken care of’ – everyone knew what that could hint at. ‘Taken care of’ meant taken out of the scene, that is, killed, because someone had become a pest or superfluous. Lionel-Garth spoke like it referred to the flat in the rectory, and the job. Manse wondered, though, and wondered again. Lionel-Garth had also said Denz may of killed hisself. Where the fuck did that ‘may’ come from then? If there was one thing Manse hated almost as much as treachery it was slipperiness in others –words used to cover things up, not to describe how they are. In fact, he hated that whole last speech by Lionel-Garth, so chummy and reasonable, and stuffed with evil. Why did he have to bring up them rumours about how Denz went under and the paired pistols?
Yes, he said they was rumours and disgusting rumours, but he still had to bring them up, didn’t he? What he said was full of bad suggestions and threats but done up as deep admiration and friendship, the sly, dangerous git. When he referred to them rooms given to Denz it was ‘at the top of your fine property’, like he had been stuck up in the loft out of sight like some old luggage or children’s board games, which was what the bastard deserved, anyway.
Naturally, Manse would never ask Naomi about the rotten things Lionel-Garth spoke of. What could he say to her? It would be like, ‘Oh, by the way, Naomi, darling, is it true you make a nice little bit of extra on top of consultancy fees, by putting big substances suppliers in touch with cash-rich, crack-head and/or mainline celebs you meet via t
he rag?’ That would be the end of Naomi and him, wouldn’t it? To be accused of this, or even just asked about it, she would regard as a full-scale insult. She might think that only someone in dirty trade hisself could imagine such a sickening idea. She’d want to know where such foul info – foul, false info – came from, and he would have to explain about Lionel-Garth and his connection with Manse via the late chauffeur, odd-job-man, bodyguard and lodger, Denz.
And, of course, Naomi would also ask how this Lionel-Garth knew about her link with Manse, and how Lionel-Garth could even pretend to have details of her career in London. Shale would not be able to dodge out of admitting he’d been tailed there, including the times he met her at the gallery and in the restaurant and even on the extremely special, joyful, first-fuck trip to Ealing. This would alarm and offend her, and he would look like a total arsehole to have let himself and her get followed and never notice. Manse considered he was a total arsehole in this respect.
She’d be sure to wonder what kind of existence she might let herself in for with Shale, especially if Lionel-Garth’s reports of her sort of pimping role in the London top-grade drugs commerce was not true, or only slightly true. Would she have to be looking back all the time to see who was tracking where she and Manse went? This would spoil what ought to be a happy union.
He thought around it all quite an amount. He would not mind if she did get some good takings from putting the right people in contact with the right people. ‘Pimping’ was a stupid word for it. In the general business world it would be regarded as what was known as ‘entrepreneurial’, and people considered this as not just legit but very constructive and OK indeed. Many a national economy depended on the entrepreneurial side of things. He knew the word because Matilda had been doing the growth of British commerce in history and she said some folk then had been very entrepreneurial, and showed it to him written down.
His own firm was glad of the same kind of go-between help, and paid for it. Lionel-Garth should of known Manse would be aware of what a facilitator was, the gabby, superior sod. But Manse didn’t want Naomi to know that he knew about it, if she was a facilitator, which, most likely, she wasn’t. She had not told him about it – if it was true – and he considered it would be rude and unforgivable if he showed he did know. Of course, there might not be anything to know, which would make it more upsetting if he asked her about it.
Somebody associated with a celebrity paper would certainly have good openings for entrepreneurial deals and what was termed ‘furtherance of trade’. It really delighted Manse to think that when she bought them Pre-Raph posters, it might not be because she was stuck at that dud level owing to lack of funds. No, it could be on account of having super-plenty funds, which was the very opposite. Maybe she thought it safest not to give certain possibly criminal schemers any hint of this wealth. True, Manse hisself went for the originals, and always had. You would not find no prints or posters in his property, thank you very much. He realized things was different for him, though. He could call for protection if he needed it, and one of the originals hid a fucking armoury, anyway, very ready, weapons and enough rounds to see off a swarm.
If Lionel-Garth had it correct, them posters of Naomi’s really mocked people who regarded them as pathetic, cheapo imitations. They was cheapo imitations, but cheapo imitations because cheapo imitations was wise and tactful in the circs, a smart ploy. Manse saw possibilities of a new, interesting side to Naomi, if what Lionel-Garth said about her extra activities turned out right, or even a bit right. Shale had been certain from the start that Naomi was the long-term woman for him and he felt even more certain now.
He could tell the children would be delighted if Naomi became their stepmother and lived all the time at the rectory, except, obviously, for the London business visits, maybe facilitating, or just giving a consult at the paper. Shale knew he didn’t need to ask Matilda and Laurent never to mention Carmel or Lowri or Patricia to Naomi. His kids was sharp, and definitely understood about what could be referred to as ‘situations’ and their tricky aspects, such as the way time changed various factors in someone’s life, for instance, Manse’s. He would get in touch with the three of them, Carmel, Lowri and Patricia, and thank each one for her good help in the bad times after Syb went, and he would give all of them very decent leaving presents in old notes, as well as the legacies in the will. Obviously, he would hate it for one or more of them to come to the rectory without no invitation and make a fucking to-do about the past, as women sometimes did, yelling and spitting and stating all he’d wanted was shags. Although he could see matters from their angle, it would not be pleasant for Naomi to observe that sort of thing if, by then, she had become his fiancée or even wife and moved in permanently to the rectory which, of course, none of them three never did.
He had let all of them know by many a sign that this definitely could not happen. He would hate to have to threaten them now and hoped the money managed to keep them friendly and far away – happy to recall lovely moments with him, but also to accept them moments was over, over, over, and not coming back. After all, there was plenty of other men about for them, though, admittedly, hardly any would have an ex-rectory with genuine Pre-Raphs on the walls.
If one of them, or more than one, became a nuisance, he’d ask Hubert V.L. Camborne, with, possibly, Quentin Noss, another promising lad from the firm, to go and have a helpful conversation with her, or them – definitely only a conversation at first, but a conversation heavier than he would feel right for him, personally, to start. They had been sweet and very considerate partners on a temporary basis, and he would never be able to forget that, or not for a while. He knew he owed the three a lot and he would like to return this to them in what was known as liquidity, on top of the will mentions, owing to important shifts that was happening. Patricia came from a rough, violent, jaily tribe. Manse would have to be alert. God, families could be such a sodding trouble.
Today, Manse and Naomi were in bed after he returned from the school run. They would often take their breakfasts upstairs and either leave the meals and percolator on side tables while they made love, or have the breakfast first and then make love. He didn’t mind at all which order things came in. Some might of been fussy in this matter but Manse, no. The coffee would still be warm, even if not taken till later, and the food was not of the cooked type. If she had Marmite on her breath or streaking a couple of her teeth black-brown, so what? In fact, it could excite him more, reminding of that first time they had it off in Ealing and he could taste and smell some of that fine restaurant lunch still toning up her mouth. And probably his own mouth had also contained a hint or two of that feast on expenses – hers. All right, so they was being watched at their table then, but he didn’t know, so that couldn’t spoil the feed nor the later full intimacy.
He didn’t like Marmite, so she wouldn’t get traces of that from him now. But he loved houmous on toast, especially the roasted red pepper kind, and she’d definitely feel some extra garlicky heat and spiciness on her tongue when she prodded it down towards his tonsils. Obviously, she couldn’t deep-throat him the way he could deep-throat her, but she wasn’t the sort to sulk because of this, so she made the best of it by deep-throating him with her tongue instead. And a tongue could bring back flavours, but a deep-throating dick couldn’t, of course. Dicks were very necessary, but they had their limits.
Manse and Naomi made great and long-lasting love this morning and were now into the breakfasts. He said, when his mouth was empty for a spell: ‘There’s a jeweller in Nash Street who gets a very nice range of stuff in, Naomi. All sorts. You might think a town like this wouldn’t have a jeweller’s with the kind of top category items that might be usual for jewellers in London, but this jeweller in Nash Street is really pretty OK.’
‘Ah’, she replied.
‘Luckily, I know him quite well, as a matter of fact. He wouldn’t never try to sell me phoney items, or dodgy pieces he might be fencing for associates, which could lead to a trace and pol
ice bother later, and even to pulling a ring off of someone’s finger, to be returned to where it was stolen from, although the ring might be the sign of a lovely relationship.’
‘There’s hardly any business where the scrupulousness of the proprietor is more crucial than a jeweller’s.’
‘I’ll certainly accept that view,’ Shale said. ‘Do you feel like a trip there, I wonder? His name’s Percy Ardoyne. People giggle at the name Percy now, but it used to be very noble. That’s what I mean about him being reliable.’
‘Hotspur in Shakespeare was a Percy.’
‘Exactly,’ Shale replied.
‘When would you like to go there?’
‘Soon.’
‘Today?’
‘Today or tomorrow.’
‘I’m away tomorrow,’ she said.
‘Oh?’
‘It’s a nuisance but I have to pop up to the smoke.’
‘Something wrong? A crisis?’
‘I wouldn’t put it as strongly as that, but I need to be there.’
‘To do with the paper?’
‘Of course.’
‘But not a crisis?’
‘Not a full-out crisis.’
‘You’re needed, though. You personally? To do with one of your contacts? That’s what newspaper people call them, isn’t it – contacts?’
‘It’s in my sort of area, yes.’
‘These contacts will only deal with you as you? Only you can handle it?’
‘Along those lines.’
‘There must be all sorts of … of aspects to a paper like that,’ he said.