Girls

by Bill James

  ‘It’s a puzzler.’ Harpur would believe anything of Iles, apart from taking backhanders. Most other people who knew him to any depth would believe almost anything of Iles. ‘I don’t suppose you’d like it if Cologne conscripted her and then turned cruel.’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Are her feet bad?’

  ‘A lovely kid, Honorée,’ Iles replied.

  ‘These days I can’t work out which girl is with which overlord,’ Harpur replied. ‘And it’s not just me. The Vice people lose track. Kaleidoscopic tart scene. We get these infusions.’

  ‘Yes, infusions,’ Iles said.

  ‘East Europe, plus further.’

  ‘True. And yet I’m still with Honorée, more or less as constant, Harpur.’

  ‘It’s an impressive relationship, sir.’

  ‘This is a girl who must operate on her own, despite everything. I mean the syndicates.’

  ‘Remarkable.’

  ‘You’ll ask why a girl with so much character picks this kind of life.’

  ‘No, I don’t think I’d ask that, sir. A few bad decisions, a few bad bits of luck, can dig a pit for anyone.’

  ‘You’re exceptionally humane, Col.’

  ‘Thank you, sir.’

  ‘Except, of course, Harpur, when messing up someone else’s marriage by –’

  ‘I had to wonder when you said you wanted to see the emergency exit door,’ Harpur replied.

  ‘Wonder what?’

  ‘About the whole picture,’ Harpur said.

  ‘Which picture?’

  ‘Adrian. The death etcetera.’

  ‘I didn’t say I wanted to see the emergency door. I said you wanted to see it because you were keen on all the Health and Safety regs – to your undoubted credit as an officer.’

  ‘I know you said I wanted to see it and that it was to my credit as an officer, but I’d never said I wanted to see it, so I thought you must want to see it for some special reason but didn’t want to let on to Ember that you wanted to see it because if you said you wanted to see it it could be a give-away somehow.’

  ‘Wonder what?’ Iles replied.

  ‘In which regard, sir?’

  ‘You said mention of the emergency door made you wonder.’

  ‘I’d had a whisper about the emergency door. This would be pre your request to see it.’ There had been another meeting at 3 with Jack Lamb, this time wearing an RAF tunic, the single wing of an air gunner on show. Jack knew a lot of people who used the Monty.

  ‘What whisper?’ Iles said.

  ‘This whisper concerned a body out there one night, just folded over underneath the light. You mentioned the light.’

  ‘Who whispered that?’

  ‘A source,’ Harpur said.

  ‘Well, yes, I thought it would be a source, didn’t I? If you get a whisper the whisper has to come from a whisperer. That whisperer would in these circumstances be a fucking source, wouldn’t he/she?’

  ‘Right,’ Harpur replied.

  ‘What kind of body?’

  ‘Dead. Naked. Male. About Adrian’s age.’

  ‘Somebody saw a dead, naked male body and said nothing to us about it, for God’s sake?’

  ‘They don’t, do they, sir?’

  ‘Who?’

  ‘We’re not dealing with your usual citizenry.’

  ‘Whom are we dealing with, Col?’

  ‘People who go to Ralphy Ember’s place. This is not the Athenaeum. The culture is different. And, of course, it’s untrue they said nothing about it. They did say something to someone who passed it on again.’

  ‘Passed it on to whom?’ Iles replied.

  ‘My source who –’

  ‘But you didn’t pass this on to me.’

  ‘You know how it is with stuff from sources, sir.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘Sensitive – how it’s got to be handled.’

  ‘You handle it by keeping quiet about it,’ Iles said.

  ‘Up to this point.’

  ‘Because you thought I might have put Adrian there? What about the source and the source’s source?’

  ‘What, sir?’ Harpur replied.

  ‘Did they say they thought it must be me who put him there?’

  ‘I wondered if Honorée had been abused somehow. Or whether you’d had thoughts about Scott and the need to look after him for us. This would be magnificently selfless of you, sir.’

  ‘And did your source and the source’s source wonder if Honorée had been abused?’ Iles replied. ‘Is everyone in this city talking about my love life? I’m an Assistant Chief Constable, for God’s sake. I’d like some fucking deference.’ Usually, when Iles said ‘Assistant’ in ‘Assistant Chief Constable’ he lingered on the ‘s’ sounds to make the word seem footling and contemptible: only an Assistant because of the slimy, sinister, sick, sadistic system scheming specifically against him. But now he spoke clipped and made the whole title resonate with status. ‘Oh, you’ll say, if I wanted deference I shouldn’t be hooked up with a hooker. But that’s narrowness, Col. That’s offensively negative, Harpur.’

  ‘The point is, even if she had been working alone, someone like Adrian might have got at her,’ Harpur replied. ‘Or because she worked alone. This is competition. This could be seen as defiance. Adrian might hate freelancers. She’s a very lovely girl.’

  ‘Thanks, Col. She’ll appreciate that. I’m going to mention you to her as someone quite worthwhile. I might have already.’

  ‘Her attractiveness would in fact make Adrian even more determined to run and profit from her. She can charge big, a face and body like that and no implants.’

  ‘How do you know, Harpur?’

  ‘What?’

  ‘No implants.’

  ‘You think there might be?’ Harpur replied.

  ‘Your certainty on this – where does it come from?’

  ‘I’ve met her once or twice, if you recall.’

  ‘Oh?’

  ‘You were present, sir,’ Harpur said. ‘And, implants – one can spot them, usually.’

  ‘You being a detective,’ Iles said. ‘This is certainly a girl who doesn’t need to be cheap.’

  ‘I don’t think you’d go to anyone like that, sir.’

  ‘Thanks, Harpur. And yet if I was short of funds suddenly, I think she’d take me free.’

  ‘This is a fine woman, sir.’

  ‘Or at a damn good discount.’

  ‘A proof of real feelings, sir.’

  ‘That’s what I need, Col.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘Someone with real feelings for me.’

  ‘We all want that, sir.’

  ‘I’ve met people who find it difficult.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘To have real feelings for me. I don’t mean villains, which is to be expected. But others.’

  ‘Which sort, sir?’

  ‘Yes, she’s really rare, Harpur,’ Iles replied.

  ‘Maybe Adrian would want a slice of her earnings. It’s what I meant about competition. He’d be up against a lot of that – the East European camp. Incidentally, we think an overseas girl was in the BMW with Tirana when he died. Francis is trying to trace her. She seems to have left the city.’

  ‘Honorée – someday she might leave the city. My God, Col, where am I then?’

  ‘I thought that if Adrian Cologne had been harsh with her you’re not the sort to ignore it. You’d act on her behalf. Chivalric. Yes, I see you as chivalric. Likewise possibly over Scott, even though you stupidly fancy your elderly chances with Hazel and might have been almost glad to see him gone. If you’d been born in a different century, I think you’d probably be a stone effigy in a cathedral now, helmet, breastplate, sword, commemorating some grand deeds.’

  ‘Which?’

  ‘Which what?’

  ‘Which cathedral? Not some fucking backwater place with a pissed organist?’

  ‘And, in your calculating way, you’d know Ember would have to cope with the dispo
sal. He’d do it because of his damn magnificent and idiotic ideas for the club. We all love Ralph, obviously, but as I said the Monty’s not the Athenaeum – meaning the Monty has a way to go yet.’

  ‘ “Magnificent” is, indeed, the right word for Ralph W. Ember. And “idiotic”.’

  ‘I thought you were really gentle with him, despite the feet inquiry.’

  ‘Why not be gentle?’ Iles asked.

  ‘Of course, Ember or Manse Shale might have known Cologne menaced Scott Grant and one of them, or even both, could have done Adrian. He/they would hope I’d guess he/they had and feel so grateful I’d give them a bit of quid pro quoism.’

  ‘Would they really, after so much time, fucking well imagine you had any power, Harpur?’

  They drove a while. Then Harpur said: ‘It would be an audacious thing to dump the body under the light, and later insist on going back to the spot with Ralphy, to let him see there’s a pleasant bond between the two of you. I could associate that sort of dauntlessness with you, sir. This was what set me wondering.’

  ‘Thanks, Harpur. So, you still think I did him, regardless of the theory about Shale or Ralphy?’

  Harpur couldn’t tell whether Iles wanted him to believe it or not. The chivalry reference and general fawning rigmarole would have got to him, as Harpur had known it would, and mention of the possible grand self-denial and generosity if he’d saved Scott for Hazel. Harpur drew up at Iles’s house, Idylls. ‘I won’t come in, sir.’

  ‘Wise, Col. Sarah finds you and the memory of you and her rather comical these days.’

  ‘That so?’

  ‘Oh, yes. I’d hate to see someone wearing such a suit hurt by a woman’s uncontrollable laughter.’

  ‘Thank you, sir. These various developments are obviously going to change the girl scene overall, aren’t they?’ Harpur replied.

  ‘In what respect, Col?’

  ‘Well, you can hardly carry on farcically stalking and bothering Hazel if you’ve done something so noble for her.’

  ‘If.’

  ‘Nobility is natural to you.’

  ‘Some would agree with that,’ Iles said.

  ‘Many.’

  ‘Name them.’

  ‘Oh, yes, many,’ Harpur replied.