by Bill James
‘Or even Lib Dem,’ Hazel said.
‘Called “Labour heartland”, due to docks and steel in the old days,’ Jill said. ‘But, of course, there’s already druggy firms down the Valencia and on that floating restaurant near, in the docks, The Eton Boating Song. Some say Mr Iles looks after them as long as they keep off of violence. That’s the tale around in school, anyway. It’s Ralphy Ember from the crummy Monty club and Manse Shale, mostly, isn’t it, dad?’
‘You should be careful with names,’ Harpur said.
‘But if these other firms, some foreign, such as Albanian, come down from Morton Cross and wanting to take over the Valencia because Morton Cross is dead useless because of a visible police presence, then there’ll be big war down the Valencia,’ Jill replied. ‘In Sociology lessons we also heard about what’s known as “the territorial imperative”. I don’t know if you ever heard of that, dad. I expect Denise heard of it in the university, though. There’s books re this. It means animals and people will always fight to keep their own ground, even if they are not usually fighters. Such as hen sparrows. This means you got big trouble in the Valencia and it could be so big you won’t be able to pretend it’s not there, known as blind-eyeing, even if it is only in the scruffy old Valencia.’
‘We don’t pretend,’ Harpur said, ‘or discriminate because of wealth and social class. That would be very poor policing indeed. One district is like another to us.’
‘Yeah?’ Jill replied. ‘Hark at him, Denise.’
‘Is that what will happen, dad?’ Hazel asked.
‘What?’ Harpur said.
‘Just the trouble shifts and gets worse – more dangerous?’ Hazel said.
‘In school the tale is that Ralphy Ember and Manse Shale are very nice and no bloodshed if things are going sweet for them, but if someone gets out of line they know how to hit. Well, obviously. Would they still be around and coining it if not? They don’t like invaders. That’s what I said – big trouble.’
‘Is that right, dad – more dangerous?’
Harpur said: ‘This is all simply –’
But Hazel didn’t wait for his answer. She put Denise’s cup and saucer down on the floor, slopping the tea a bit, and went quickly from the room. Harpur thought she was near weeping again. Perhaps she shared his bad intuitions. But possibly she couldn’t suppress them, the way he tried to.
Jill said: ‘She’s worried. She’s scared for Scott, isn’t she? All right, you’ll say, Just a kid romance. But think of Romeo and Juliet. William Shakespeare. Many plays. This is also something I get at school. Don’t tell me they was old, Romeo and Juliet. And yet this was real love, bringing death. That’s why the play is what’s known as a tragedy, although they were young. The comedies of William Shakespeare are not comedies. They don’t make you laugh, only groan. But the tragedies are tragic and plenty of deads.’
Denise turned slowly on to her back in bed and opened her eyes. She had brought a short-sleeved nightdress with her because of the way the girls barged in first thing. ‘What’s it all about?’
‘It’s about what if it’s Scott,’ Jill said. ‘Dad’s frightened her. I don’t say he should not of frightened her, it might be right, even kind. But all this has what is called “impacted” on Haze. I don’t know if you’ve heard that word around.’
‘Have frightened her,’ Harpur replied.
Denise propped herself on an elbow and reached down for the tea. She had no tattoos on her arms, only the couple of entwined green and gold leaves, maybe Olympic laurel type, just above her arse, for low-slung trousers, and naturally not on show now. She took a few sips. ‘ “If it’s Scott.” Is it? Was it?’ she said. ‘Is she afraid that if these firms move to the Valencia, Scott will go, too? That’s supposing it was Scott. Do we suppose it was Scott, Col?’
Without being asked Jill passed Denise her cigarettes and lighter from the dressing table. The girls knew her procedures. Surprisingly, they had no policy on smoking. Denise did it, so it must be OK. Also, they thought that if there was a campaign against something it must be totally fine to do it. For instance, Harpur didn’t know how to make them observe the warnings against unprotected sex and sex too young. ‘All that just now – it was Hazel who really thought it out,’ Jill replied.
‘What?’ Harpur said. Denise lit up and gave herself a vast invasion of fume.
‘But she said it must be me who said it because she’d get too upset, so I learned it off. Like the territorial imperative, and the Third World War and the modem and Middle England up Morton Cross making a fuss because their properties get to be worth less,’ Jill said. ‘Haze knows about that kind of thing from Sociology. I know some from Sociology but she’s two years ahead so she knows more about it on the political side and she finds books about it in the library. And it was Hazel who knew about Susan What-youcall. But she didn’t say the thing about Iles. She wouldn’t never say anything to hurt Iles, such as letting them forget the law, and trade drugs for the sake of peace. That was me said that. Some say Iles can’t run things like that now, anyway, because of the new Chief and other things in the law. It was Hazel who said about the brassy voices and the bird bath getting chipped nearly. Hazel said Scott’s mother calls their house a property. His mother thinks people who got vans up there for work shouldn’t park them on their drive because they’re not right for the properties. And I expect she doesn’t like police vans up there, either. She doesn’t like police at all, really.’
‘A visible presence will remain necessary for a while,’ Harpur said.
‘Anyway,’ Jill said, ‘how Hazel sees it is this – if these dealers move down to the Valencia, it’s going to mean, most probably, more shooting, more people dead – but she knew if she said it it would make her cry – being scared for Scott. Well, she’s crying just the same, most probably, which is why she went like that just now. And she asked me to say it to you instead, but I do agree it could be right what she worked out, so I didn’t mind saying it and adding the bit about Iles, which people at school say, anyway, it’s not a secret. She did not mind if I said her stuff in front of Denise because Denise is part of things here – you, Denise, Haze, me.’
‘Of course,’ Harpur said.
‘Thanks, Jill,’ Denise said.
But sometimes Harpur wondered whether Denise totally liked this kind of favour. She might feel the girls aimed to tie her into the family. The girls did aim to tie her into the family. So did Harpur, though he tried to be less blatant, worried she’d get frightened off. Denise was young and perhaps edgy about too much commitment. And maybe she had to consider what her parents would say about involvement with a widower and two children. He could sympathize. ‘You’d better go to Hazel, Jill,’ Harpur said. ‘She shouldn’t be by herself.’
‘OK.’ Jill sat down on the side of the bed. ‘Is it right, dad?’
‘What?’
‘What she said. Worse trouble.’
‘We’re alert to any developments,’ Harpur said.
‘Oh, you sound like a spokesperson. And is it true – Mr Iles, his power’s gone?’
‘Mr Iles is still Assistant Chief (Operations).’
‘But he used to be the Chief (Operations), didn’t he? Under Mr Lane, Iles did what he liked. Will they all have to fight for themselves now – Ralphy Ember, Manse Shale?’
‘It’s our job to prevent fighting of any sort,’ Harpur replied. ‘The main duty of police is “to keep the peace”. Haven’t you done that in Sociology or History?’
‘But you can’t, can you? Look at Chilton Park.’
‘We contained it.’
‘What’s that mean?’
‘Kept it within limits.’
‘What limits?’ Jill said. ‘Inside the park railings? Three dead, some hurt. It’s funny in a way, isn’t it, dad?’
‘What?’
‘All of this being about Scott and Mr Iles – the two of them around Hazel, like sexual,’ Jill said.
‘Oh, I don’t like that word much,’
Harpur said.
‘Which?’ Jill said. ‘ “Sexual”?’
‘ “Around”.’
‘Why?’ Jill replied.
‘I don’t know. It’s off-colour,’ Harpur said.
‘Like flies around a honey pot,’ Denise said.
‘Well, yes,’ Jill said.
‘Cheapening,’ Harpur said. ‘And not true. Mr Iles clowns about and wears his vermilion, tasselled scarf but it’s all a joke.’
‘You think,’ Jill replied.
‘And nobody has said the trouble at Morton Cross involves Scott,’ Harpur said. And he never had said it to them, as a certainty. Occasionally, and more than occasionally, he did say it to himself as a certainty, but he was attempting to deal with that.
‘It could be Scott, though,’ Jill said.
‘Nobody has said it involves Scott,’ Harpur said.
Jill pointed at him with the index fingers of both hands. ‘Oh, that’s what he does when he doesn’t want to talk about something, Denise. He keeps saying the same thing. He’s the way politicians are in TV interviews – keep on spouting what they’ve been told to spout regardless of the question. “On message” they call it. I think dad hopes people will get tired of it before he does. Or it could be he doesn’t want to say something is true in case that makes it turn out true. Do you know what I mean? I expect he does it with you sometimes, if you ask him something he wants to keep to himself. I expect there’s a lot of things he wants to keep to himself. He’s like that. It’s not just police things. All sorts. It’s like him saying, “Get lost” but more polite. Or he’ll start this heavy, big-time talk, like “We’re alert to any developments,” meaning “We know how to shut a stable door after the horse has gone.” It could be about Scott, couldn’t it, dad?’
‘Nobody has said it’s about Scott.’
‘We can like feel things sometimes,’ Jill said.
‘Who?’
‘Haze and me.’
‘ “Haze and I”,’ Harpur said.
‘No, not Haze and you. Haze and me.’
‘It should be “I”. Grammar. What things?’ Harpur replied.
‘Like in the air. Things that nobody’s said at all but that are there in people’s heads – like in your head, dad. Sometimes we get a message from inside people’s heads.’
Intuition. ‘You do telepathy? I didn’t know,’ Harpur said. ‘Telepathy and Sociology.’
‘Well, I suppose everyone can do it – guess what’s in someone’s head,’ Jill replied. ‘Like when they say, “I know what you’re thinking.” But the Chinese are what’s known as “inscrutable” because they don’t let you see anything in their face. Is it in your head?’
‘Am I inscrutable, although not Chinese?’
‘You’re police. That’s even more inscrutable than the Chinese. Is it in your head?’
‘What?’
‘About Scott.’
‘Nobody has said it involves Scott,’ Harpur said.
Jill went into an enraged, cold whisper. Sometimes she seemed to have dumped childhood and behaved like someone twice her age. ‘I know nobody has said it involves Scott, but is it in your head it might involve Scott? And is that idea coming through to Haze and I?’
‘Me,’ Harpur said.
‘You?’ Jill said. ‘It can’t come through to you if it’s in you already – in your head.’
‘I meant you should say “coming through to Haze and me” not “Haze and I”. Grammar,’ Harpur replied. He liked a chance to correct her. It helped bring her back to kid status. ‘Go and see she’s all right, will you, Jill, please? Calm her down.’
‘No good anyone asking him, is it?’ Jill said. ‘Scott himself.’
‘I don’t think so,’ Harpur said. It might happen, if Harpur collected some real evidence, enough to convince not a court but Hazel. Yes, he must consider how to get it.
‘Most likely Scott would say, “No,” nothing to do with him,’ Jill said.
‘Yes, most likely he would,’ Harpur said.
‘And then maybe Scott would get nasty with Hazel, or even finish it, because he’d think dad – dad, the police – has been sniffing.’
‘Which is right, isn’t it?’ Denise said.
‘Even if it was only Haze who asked him, not dad, Scott would think that and he wouldn’t like it. He’d hate it and might even hate Hazel,’ Jill said.
‘I’m not going to ask him,’ Harpur replied. ‘I’ve promised Hazel, haven’t I?’
‘It’s not just because Scott and Haze are . . . are like a relationship,’ Jill said. ‘But it’s like about peer group loyalties, isn’t it? That’s another saying from Sociology, “peer group”. That’s peer with two “e”s not the other one, in the sea. I don’t know if you heard of them, them loyalties. They’re strong. It means kids don’t just listen to what their mothers and fathers say – or just their father, here – but also they got to fit in to how other kids think and what they do, such as Haze got to fit in with Scott. It’s natural. Kids who only listen to their parents and not to their peer group – well, their peer group would think kids like that were against the peer group and goody-goody.’
‘Thanks for this briefing, Jill,’ Harpur replied.
Cycling for the papers, he felt all his fears reassemble. Again he wondered whether he could tail Scott for a while unspotted and discover what contacts he had. Harpur was trained to gumshoe, of course, but hadn’t tried it for years and might have forgotten the skills. In any case, as he remembered it, most of the training assumed a team of plain clothes officers replacing one another at fairly frequent intervals, so the target didn’t notice a constant face and physique behind him/her. As to physique, Harpur had always been bulky for this work, too wide for cover from a lamp post. He looked cop. But he could not enlist a team now, and he couldn’t order someone else to dog Scott. This had to be confidential. The object was not to build a prosecution case against someone, the normal reason for surveillance. He wanted to know as a certainty whether Scott had been sucked into crookedness and hazard. If Harpur did know that as a certainty he would reclaim the boy from both. There’d be no more hesitation or tact or anxiety about offending peer group values. He didn’t want his daughter devastated by another death. Scott running around with a drugs firm and carrying a gun might any day become another death. Might? Now and then, Harpur thought this didn’t do. Would any day become another death. But, with something to go on, Harpur could pressure and scare Scott into a change. Harpur knew how to pressure and scare. Of course, tailing Scott might sometimes mean tailing Hazel. She would regard that as the dirty depths of snoopery if she found out, and this might bring eternal damage to her view of him. But, to ignore the possible risk to Scott, and the shock and hurt that might hit Hazel, could damage Harpur’s view of himself more.
And on his way back with the newspapers he allowed himself some thoughts about that other option. Now and then, in comparably difficult situations, he had broken into a place – house, flat, rooms, though, possibly, never a property – and done, for special reasons, a private, illicit and illegal search. Yes, these intrusions always thrilled him. He felt he could read people from a quiet look at the arrangement of their living quarters. But perhaps the comparison with a psychiatrist was high-falutin and bombastic. So, try someone else. He kept a saying in his head from a novel he’d once looked at: ‘The mind and the instincts of a burglar are the same as the mind and instincts of a police officer.’ Occasionally, when Megan’s books still lined the sitting room, he’d pull a volume out and scan it if the title sounded interesting – Scoop, Treasure Island, Portnoy’s Complaint – and he’d found those couple of lines, or something like, in a novel called The Secret Agent. They stuck. Naturally they did.
But the police officer’s motives should be different from the burglar’s. If Scott had a handgun it might be hidden somewhere in his parents’ property when unneeded. Suppose on his visit Harpur found the weapon, he would certainly take it and any ammunition, as a burglar might
take something. Harpur would take them and ditch them, though: a safety drill, not gain. And he’d be ready, then, to believe all his other suppositions were right, and start the pressure-and-scare programme on Scott. Harpur didn’t allow himself to consider how he would deal with it if he were caught doing a prowl inside Scott’s parents’ house – property. Iles, the Chief, the Home Office, the Press and broadcasters would all find that startling. No, perhaps not Iles. On the whole, Iles did not believe in getting startled, especially by anything Harpur did. Furious, yes, contemptuous, yes, desperate, yes, startled, no.
The tailing and break-in ideas took on sharp, urgent, unrelenting form. For a couple of seconds he found himself trying to blur them, in case the children’s famed antennae reacted, discerning – intuiting – what was in his head. But the breakfast passed comfortably, with a deal more Sociology chat about class, and discussion of some music Jill liked, Hazel claimed to despise, Denise had heard of, and Harpur hadn’t. Then, after the girls left for school, Denise said: ‘I get one of those messages.’
‘Which?’
‘From inside your head.’
‘Oh, like the kids? My, my.’ He would give her the performance – amusement, mockery, blandness.
‘The message I get from inside your head, Col, is that you worry over Scott so much, and worry so much about the shock of a possible disaster on Hazel, that you could easily do something really stupid.’
‘Like?’
‘You tell me.’
‘Like?’
‘Ah, the brick wall repetition again.’
Obviously, Denise had things right and what he intended really was potentially stupid. So best not tell her, or at least not yet. She had read the message but luckily the message didn’t go the distance, provided no details. He almost always listened to Denise. She had a brain. And, even though so young, she had judgement. He regarded her as an advertisement for higher education and its analytical training. However, he did not want the brain or the judgement applied destructively to these particular schemes. He tried to imagine what she would say in her damned highly educated, analytical tones about them if he did tell her.