by Bill James
When Harpur reached Arthur Street only Jill was in the house, watching boxing on television, but Hazel and several of her friends arrived soon afterwards, probably after one of their regular meet-ups at the central bus station café. The area had become a bit of a haunt for kids of her vintage. Hazel could cycle there in ten minutes: one of the pluses from living inner city, if getting to bus station sessions was a plus. Harpur did wonder. She must have walked her bike back with the girls. Apparently, they’d come here to rehearse scenes from a play they had to perform in Drama class at John Locke. Jill switched off the bout. ‘But we’ve already had some drama, Mr Harpur,’ Simone said.
‘That right?’ he said.
‘Hazel on the caff balcony, like Juliet – that’s Juliet in Romeo and Juliet,’ Simone said.
‘I’d have guessed,’ Harpur said.
‘By William Shakespeare,’ Simone said.
‘Well, yes,’ Harpur said.
‘He’s giving you irony, Simone,’ Jill said. ‘Because – like – well, most know Romeo and Juliet is by William Shakespeare. Although dad is police he’s not ignorant on some things. For instance, I’ve heard him mention literature. And he looked up John Locke in a book and found he wrote about human understanding, which is why they called the school that, because we’re human and the school tries to make us understand, although it’s a comp. This room used to be full of books. My mother’s. Titus Andronicus, James Thurber, La Peste. Real volumes. We had to chuck them, or most. They got on everyone’s nerves.’
‘Stupid people, that’s all,’ Hazel said.
‘Who?’ Harpur asked.
‘In a Clio,’ Hazel said.
‘Who?’ Harpur said.
‘Men,’ Hazel said.
‘You know what they’re like, Mr Harpur,’ Rose said.
‘Who?’ Harpur replied.
‘Men in a car,’ Rose said. ‘If they see a girl on a sports bike.’
‘What about them?’ Harpur said.
‘Tail,’ Simone said.
‘That’s what they call it,’ Rose said.
‘What?’ Harpur said.
‘A girl sitting on a bike saddle. Tail,’ Nathalie said.
‘So they tail tail,’ Rose said. ‘Childish.’
‘Some men are obsessed by arses,’ Simone said. ‘This is well known. Women’s arses, I mean. Heteros.’
‘There’s actually a theory about this – like biological, I mean. Some professor. I read it. Or zoological,’ Rose said.
‘Which is that?’ Harpur said.
‘Some men, heteros, see the shape of the woman’s behind . . . the, well . . . they see the two cheeks . . . as a sort of match for or image of her . . . well, two breasts,’ Rose said, ‘and therefore . . . well . . . part of womanliness. This comes in certain nudes in sculpture – you can notice things are sort of balanced: buttocks, boobs. Like all chiselled into the same sort of curves. Four . . . As if from a kit. Rodin?’
‘This is an eye-opener for me,’ Harpur replied. ‘The Clio men spotted you in traffic, did they, Haze?’
‘Like that,’ she said. ‘Two.’
‘And followed?’ Harpur said.
‘It happens to all of us,’ Rose said, ‘especially on bikes.’
‘Pathetic,’ Simone said.
‘Hazel gave them some good slagging, didn’t you. Haze?’ Rose said.
‘Very good,’ Nathalie said.
‘They were waiting outside the caff,’ Hazel replied. ‘So, I asked them to push off.’
‘Meaning she gave them the finger and tongue-poke,’ Nathalie said. ‘You know that phrase do you, Mr Harpur – “giving the finger”? It’s a youth phrase, meaning “Up yours!” ’ She showed him. ‘Or sometimes it can be two fingers, like a V but the other way around, not V for Victory. Obviously “Up yours!” has some crudity to it. What can you do, though, sometimes, blokes being so blokeish? The “yours” in “Up yours!” is –’
‘Did you get a number?’ Harpur replied.
‘Registration?’ Hazel said. ‘No, it didn’t seem . . . well, it was just tailing.’
‘Just spotted you and followed you by chance?’ Harpur said.
‘What else?’ Hazel replied.
‘We thought harassment,’ Nathalie said, ‘and we would have taken the number but when we went out to the balcony the Clio had gone.’
‘You’re sure it was only fluke, Hazel?’ Harpur said.
‘That’s how they are, Mr Harpur,’ Simone said.
‘Who?’ Harpur said.
‘Men,’ Simone said. ‘When they’ve got a car. They think they’re prime. They think we’re all interested in them because we’re too young to drive ourselves.’
‘What colour?’ Harpur replied.
‘What?’ Hazel said.
‘The car,’ Harpur said.
‘Red. Why? There’s plenty of red Clios about,’ Hazel said.
‘They can feed “Clio, red” into the computer and come up with a list,’ Simone said. ‘The police. That’s right, isn’t it, Mr Harpur?’
‘But obviously better with a reg,’ Jill said.
‘Two men?’ Harpur replied.
‘They probably look like puked dinners,’ Rose said. ‘Nobody would go near them. That’s why they get their kicks on wheels.’
‘But age, build, Haze?’ Harpur said.
‘Oh, you know what it’s like, dad, in the half dark and faces behind a windscreen.’
‘Tricky,’ Jill said.
‘But some idea,’ he said. Harpur felt she would not have spoken about any of this if Simone hadn’t started it. And now Hazel obviously wanted to stop the questions.
‘One fattish, one thin, dark clothes,’ she said.
‘Ages?’ Harpur said.
‘Thirties? One could be forties,’ Hazel said.
‘That might be it,’ Nathalie said. ‘Might.’
‘What?’ Harpur said.
‘Past it,’ Nathalie said. ‘Clubs, discos – they’re too old to pull girls. So they do a cold trawl, a bike chase.’
‘It’s obvious, when we go out and they’re gone,’ Simone said.
‘What’s obvious?’ Harpur replied.
‘They know they’re not going to get anywhere with Haze,’ Simone said. ‘They can see she’s too smart for them – had them spotted when they thought they were being clever. And she told them what she thinks of them – OK, in sign language, but no mistake. So they go looking for someone else. I expect it’s their usual night out.’
‘White?’ Harpur said.
‘Yes,’ Hazel said.
‘Hair?’ Harpur said.
‘Yes,’ Hazel said.
‘Light? Dark?’ Harpur said.
‘Dark,’ Hazel said.
‘Who else was there?’ Harpur said.
‘Where?’ Hazel replied.
‘The café. Scott?’ Harpur said.
‘No,’ Hazel said. Her drawbridge-up voice.
‘Oh, Scott’s often there, isn’t he?’ Harpur said.
‘Sometimes,’ Hazel said.
‘Only girls,’ Nathalie said. ‘It’s an all-girls cast for the play.’
‘Anything like that, it would be best if you give me a ring,’ Harpur said.
‘Like what?’ Hazel said.
‘People hanging about,’ Harpur said.
‘I’ve got to deal with it,’ Hazel said. ‘It’s what girls have to deal with, dad. Ask Nathalie, or Simone or Rose – or Denise. And Jill, soon.’
‘Yes, I think it would be better if you give me a ring,’ Harpur said.
‘Most likely it’s nothing,’ Jill said.
‘It’s men hounding a girl,’ Harpur replied. That previous feeling grew stronger. He sensed now that Jill as well as Hazel knew more than they said. Occasionally, they’d do some conspiring – shut him out of their secrets. Mobile phones allowed a lot of secrets, and spread a lot of secrets, too: ask Prince Charles.
Nathalie said: ‘When you were quizzing if it was just fluke they followed her, Mr
Harpur – was it because you don’t think so? This would be a police way of looking at matters. Police always wonder about things that seem to be obvious, don’t they, referred to as “keeping an open mind”?’
‘Well, everybody wonders about some things,’ Jill replied.
‘But police wonder more, don’t they? They try to see what’s underneath something that’s simple to everyone else,’ Nathalie said. ‘This is their training.’
‘Wonder what?’ Rose said.
‘Well, if it wasn’t a fluke perhaps that’s because they were waiting at the house for Haze to come out,’ Nathalie said.
‘Why?’ Rose said.
‘If she’d lead them somewhere,’ Nathalie said. ‘Did you notice a lurk car, Haze? Or Jill. Were you in Arthur Street earlier, Jill? Anyone sitting in a car – just sitting?’
‘Lead them to the bus station?’ Rose asked. ‘That supposed to be important?’
‘If they wanted to see Scott,’ Nathalie said.
‘Why?’ Simone said.
‘I don’t know, but if they did,’ Nathalie said. ‘Scott’s there sometimes with Hazel. Is that what you thought, Mr Harpur? Why you’re bothered?’
‘So what’s the play you have to do?’ he replied.
‘Scenes from Look Back in Anger,’ Hazel said. ‘It’s got whiskers on, but there was a revival somewhere lately.’
‘Rose is the star – the Jimmy Porter character. She can do a really ratty voice for the rants.’
‘I’m Alison, cowed and loyal and good at ironing,’ Hazel said.
‘It’s very socially aware – the play,’ Rose said.
‘God, yes,’ Simone said. ‘Jimmy really had problems. There’d been a war in the 1950s you know, Mr Harpur, when it was written – Suez. That got right up Jimmy’s nose owing to Britain’s colonial past. Later on the playwright, John Osborne, wrote a real hate letter about England from France.’
‘Our problems are different these days, but bad,’ Rose said.
‘What?’ Jill said. ‘Getting bothered on bikes?’
‘All sorts, all sorts,’ Rose said. ‘You’ll find out when you’re older, Jill. It’s rough out there.’
‘Where?’ Jill said.
‘Generally,’ Rose replied.
Harpur might have stayed in the room with Jill to watch the rehearsal but just as the girls were starting he had one of those pressing phone calls from Jack Lamb. Jack asked for a meeting right away, if possible. And, of course, Harpur would make it possible. Harpur always did try to make it possible when Lamb suggested a get-together. Jack Lamb had priority built in. Pity, that: Harpur had wanted to see Hazel do ‘cowed’. Acting interested him. He would like to dodge out of his skin himself and become someone else now and then. Although he rarely went to the theatre, when he did he often enjoyed it, despite so much dialogue. On a three-day trip to London, Denise took him to a truly serious piece called Copenhagen, about the rights and wrongs of nuclear research in the war, and Harpur considered he’d behaved all right, paying attention throughout and discussing historic moral themes with her afterwards. Some plays really got at things more or less, and this one the girls were doing sounded as if it had been spot on fifty years ago.
But, but . . . there was Jack Lamb, and Jack Lamb today, immediate, not fifty years ago. ‘Col,’ he said on the phone, ‘shall I see you soonest?’ It was hardly a question. An instruction. ‘In fact, now?’
‘Where?’
‘Three.’
‘OK,’ Harpur said. They had a list of rendezvous spots, secure and confidential, or supposed to be secure and confidential, numbered one to six. These included a Second World War concrete defence post on the foreshore, a laundrette, a supermarket car park, the Anglican cathedral. Number One used to be an old anti-aircraft gun site on a hill outside the city, but Jack thought that had become known and they’d dropped it. Three was the concrete defence post, built in 1940 to resist the German invasion that never came. Harpur suspected this might also be known – might even be used by villains for their palavers – but Jack liked it best of all the venues, so Harpur did not object. He always let Jack make the conditions. The risks were his entirely, and big. Lamb favoured a military touch to their conferences, if it could be had. Often he turned up in what he considered appropriate uniform from his Army Surplus collection, depending on the chosen place. Lamb had that same impulse as actors – and Harpur – to masquerade occasionally.
‘Am I interrupting something at your home, Col?’ Jack asked. Harpur’s telephone was not in the sitting room, but he’d left the door half open when he came to take the call and Jack must be able to hear something of the first dramatic Rose rant as Jimmy Porter, ripping into Alison/Hazel on account of her middle-classness and appallingly decent, polite nature. ‘Denise is with you?’ Jack asked. ‘A tiff? Raucous. She really thinks you’re middle class? Or is Iles there, too? Is she lambasting him?’
‘Vivid exchanges are part of the tapestry of life, aren’t they, Jack?’
‘Are they?’
‘Give and take.’
‘I should think you’ll be glad to get out of there and come to meet me,’ Lamb said.
‘Always, Jack.’
Harpur looked into the sitting room before he left. He did not interrupt the show but gave the girls a small wave. Jill came out into the hall to see him off. She was in a younger school class than Hazel and her friends and had no Look Back in Anger role.
‘Something vital, dad?’ she said.
‘What?’
‘Why you have to go out, like urgent.’
‘Not “like urgent”. Urgently.’
‘Urgently.’
‘Not all that urgent. But I need to see someone.’
‘Is this your informant, your fink?’
Yes, it was his informant, his fink, and perhaps one of the greatest finks in the world, if greatness and finkery could live together. ‘You know I detest that term,’ he said.
‘Which?’
‘Fink.’
‘Your grass or informant or whatever, then,’ Jill said.
‘Information comes from all kinds of sources, Jill.’
‘Mr Jack Lamb?’
‘I can’t discuss with you every phone call I get, love.’
‘I met Mr Jack Lamb. He came here once, didn’t he? He seemed very nice, I mean, for a fi– For a voice.’
‘We depend on such voices, Jill.’
‘Who does?’
‘The police. The law.’
‘But why do they do it?’
‘Who?’
‘The voices. The finks. Money? They betray people for money?’
‘We don’t see it as betrayal.’
‘But it is betrayal, isn’t it?’
‘They discover what they regard as an evil and feel a duty to get it removed. So they talk to us.’
‘For money?’
‘Some informants are paid, yes.’
‘Mr Jack Lamb? He’s got a big house in Chase Woods, hasn’t he? It’s called Darien, like in some poem. “Silent upon a hill in Darien.” And Des Iles’s house has a name from poems, too, yes? Idylls. That’s Alfred Tennyson. Sometimes I think there’s not much difference between low-life people and the legal biggies, like Mr Iles.’
‘Because of their house names? Does that make sense?’
‘Other things, too.’
‘Which?’
‘Yes, other things,’ Jill said.
‘In any case, Mr Jack Lamb is a respected art dealer, not low life,’ Harpur said.
‘So, it was Mr Jack Lamb on the finking phone just now, was it?’ Jill said.
‘I can’t discuss every call I get, Jill.’
‘And does Mr Jack Lamb get paid for his information?’ Jill replied.
No, Mr Jack Lamb did not get paid, or not in money, anyway. His art dealership was brilliantly successful and very unharassed, though. ‘They need you in there as audience for the play, Jill,’ Harpur replied.
At the blockhouse, Lamb said: ‘T
irana, Col. The one they call Tirana.’
‘Dead.’
‘I know dead. Called Tirana.’
‘We’re working on it.’
‘Of course you’re working on it,’ Lamb replied. ‘However –’
‘Yes, complicated.’
It was dark outside and darker in the blockhouse. Occasional skinny beams of moonlight penetrated through a loophole before cloud put a stopper on and at these moments Harpur could make out Lamb’s bulk against the wall nearest the sea. People who thought of grasses as small, slinky figures would have been surprised by Jack. He weighed about 250 pounds and stood six foot five. Tonight he wore a magnificently cut long grey greatcoat, possibly officer issue in the Polish or French army during the Second World War. Harpur could not make out whether it bore insignia and/or medal ribbons. Jack’s green beret, though, was certainly commando British. The desert boots might come from his Rommel ensemble. Jack didn’t mind being what he called ‘eclectic’.
‘I loathe the exploitation of young, penniless, refugee girls, Col.’
‘Certainly.’
‘That’s why I’m talking to you. I’m not your general purpose tale-teller.’ It was as if Lamb had been tuned in somehow to Harpur’s conversation with Jill about the hygiene of grassing. Harpur first heard Jack’s justification for informing an age ago, but he always listened gravely to reruns. Jill’s word – ‘betrayal’ – would be in Lamb’s mind, too, of course, and he needed to do his explanations occasionally, or more than occasionally. ‘Look, Col, people talk to me and then I might – might – talk to you about what they talked to me about. That’s how it works. Some of what they talk to me about I would never pass on. I might pay these people who talk to me, but that doesn’t mean I want to use everything they talk to me about. I sort it out.’