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by Bill James

  She wore an unnaturally broad wedding ring, very binding; one of those things that had ‘intervened’. A slap across the chops with her shapely left hand might knock an enemy’s front teeth out. Her own front teeth were pleasantly uneven and very strong looking. Clearly they could give a formidable bite, but she’d always been very careful and skilled with her mouth where it might have caused wounds and permanent untidy scarring.

  I always used to think Judith’s behind too gorgeous to be merely sat on, yet she did, of course, sit on it, and she gracefully sat on it now in The Knoll. I would bet I wasn’t the only one there who tried to visualize the thigh, hip and loins details of that movement and the eventual caressing, undercarriage contact with the chair.

  ‘Do I seem like something of a nanny, Tom?’

  ‘I don’t think I’ve ever seen anyone who looked less like a nanny,’ I said.

  ‘I mean, fretting about my brother, poking into his life on the quiet, as if he can’t look after himself.’

  ‘You think he can’t?’

  ‘I don’t know. It’s one of the reasons I’ve come to you.’

  ‘You don’t want me simply to find out what he’s doing, but to get an idea of whether he can cope with what he’s doing?’ I said.

  ‘His judgement might have gone askew. He’s got the big house and, I imagine, a big mortgage. He’s got a wife who likes to spend. He’s got three children at private schools. There might be a need for quick money. Possibly he thinks he’s found one.’

  ‘Legal?’

  ‘Maybe.’

  ‘But maybe not?’

  ‘Possibly.’

  ‘In design?’

  ‘Related.’

  She ordered half a dozen oysters and then veal. I chose sardines followed by steak and kidney pie. We had a half bottle of Chablis and a half of red Burgundy.

  She said, ‘My parents are so proud of him, Tom. They’d be poleaxed if he came unstuck. He’s their eldest child. They regard him as a figurehead. They’re obsessed about family reputation. I’m not sure what they make of me, or what they’d have made of me if they knew everything. Perhaps my fussing over Keith is a kind of sub-conscious recompense to them.’

  ‘Steady, Judith. “Unstuck” how?’

  ‘I don’t know exactly. That’s why I need you.’

  ‘So, what do you know?’

  ‘I pick up persistent hints from Olive, his wife. She’s less guarded with me than he is. She seems to think any talk is inside the family so no need to be uptight.’

  ‘Talk about what?’

  ‘To do with art – pictures. Plus maybe sculptures.’

  ‘To do with them how?’

  She shook her head, a slight, puzzled sort of movement. ‘Olive says there was big trouble lately at a rather dodgy dealer’s place.’

  ‘Jack Lamb’s.’1

  ‘That’s the name. Attempted robbery and a death.’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘So police swarming there at the time and on super-alert since for any aftermath. I gather that certain late-stage buying and selling was interrupted by all this activity and general chaos. Some valuable items that were in transit or were about to be in transit had to be put on hold. They might or might not have been of dubious history, disputable provenance. What Olive seemed to be saying was that Keith fancied he saw a chance for anyone smart and determined in this breakdown of normal commerce.’

  ‘Keith?’

  ‘That’s the way she figures it.’

  ‘A chance how?’

  ‘I don’t think she has any notion of that. She seemed to believe it would all be so simple for anyone smart and determined.’

  ‘Keith.’

  ‘Can you have a peek at it, Tom?’

  Peek. That was supposed to make it sound routine, even trivial. Her voice shook slightly, though. Her face was for a few moments miserable, perhaps touched by fright. She didn’t meet my eyes. ‘We’re not cheap,’ I said.

  ‘I’ve got savings. I’ll pay.’

  ‘But as you’re a virtual creator of one half of the firm there might be a decent discount.’

  ‘Thanks.’

  ‘Talking of which, what happened to that evil piece who put us under surveillance – or whom you thought put us under surveillance?’

  ‘I hear she left her husband and went off with a married sex therapist, kind of coals to Newcastle.’

  FOURTEEN

  Yes, with its wines and oysters and steak and kidney, and the opportunist Knoll chair snug beneath Judith’s mesmerizing, unbulky arse, this stately luncheon would lead on and on and on and eventually to Cairn Close and dumdum closure. At the time, though, it was the arrant vagueness of what she’d said and its lush melodrama that I noticed most. Well, I ask you, who wouldn’t? ‘Some danger’, ‘dark realms’. Dark fucking realms? She couldn’t define them, gazetteer them, couldn’t specify the danger, or describe clearly and credibly how her brother hoped to cash in on that terrible mess-up at Jack Lamb’s place – the ‘art’ element in her worries. She relied on ‘hints’ from her sister-in-law. ‘Hints’ meant guesses.

  Another module on the PI course had dealt ferociously with the difference between evidence and fantasy and the need for all operatives to recognize when a moment of speculation and imagination might be useful, but also – this more crucial – to spot when it became stupidly distracting. The lecturer had said, ‘Of course, you’ll all know the Keats’ line, “Ever let the fancy roam.” Yes, let it roam, over the cliff.’ The sister-in-law, Olive, seemed to believe Keith would descend on the chaotic pics and sculptures trade after that Lamb upheaval and pick his way through it to ample and gorgeous gains. Oh, yea? What was that other figment from Keats – ‘realms of gold’?

  However, I felt I couldn’t refuse Judith. I reckoned she had a reasonable claim on me, including the new me, because of those distant days. They still counted, despite the hawser-width wedding ring and all the other changes that had ‘intervened’ during the last six or seven years. Her breasts stayed brilliantly persuasive. I would take the ‘peek’ or two into the Keith problem, but perhaps not more than that. I’d try to discover fast that there was, in fact, nothing much to find out about him, except that he had what seemed to be a nicely profitable business, or nicely profitable businesses, somewhere, with nothing at all criminal about it or them: no dark, satanic realms. QED.

  Out of kindness, I’d tried to keep any trace of amused disbelief out of my face as she spoke of her own and Olive’s suspicions. Just the same, she seemed to sense that I regarded most of what she’d said so far as woolly and hysterical. I could tell she aimed to counter this. She would get precise and particular, she would get concrete. We were at the coffee stage of our meal and she brought from her handbag what looked like a large, folded sheet of drawing paper. She opened it to full size and spread it between us on the lunch table. I saw what appeared to be two pencilled blueprints of the interior of a building, showing rooms, corridors, doors, windows. She pointed to one of the drawings. ‘Upstairs,’ she said, then moved her finger to the other. ‘Downstairs and garden-cum-grounds.’

  ‘What is it?’ I said, knowing what it was.

  ‘Failsafe.’

  ‘Being?’

  ‘Its name: Olive and Keith’s house.’

  ‘Yes?’

  ‘Actually, I don’t think we need the upstairs. But I thought it best to be thorough. So I sketched both.’

  She kept her voice down. I had understood why. She was talking to me about a possible break-in, wasn’t she? That’s how it looked; preposterous, of course, but, apparently, not to her.

  ‘This room,’ she said and put her finger on a small rectangle at the top left edge of the downstairs diagram. ‘It’s where he sees people, more or less remote from the busy parts of the house. There’s a direct way into it from an outside concrete path and patio. They rarely use the main front door.’

  ‘Which people?’

  ‘Because of how things are arranged, I don’t see many of th
em. But occasionally I’ve spotted one or two coming from or going back to their cars. They seem expensively dressed, the men as well as the women. The cars are mostly Range Rovers, but also a Merc and a Lexus sometimes. I don’t think the door to the corridor is locked, but it seems recognized as private by Olive – and by the children if they are around. And by me, naturally. The door at the other end, opening on to the patio and garden certainly is locked except when one of Keith’s meetings is taking place.’

  ‘So what are the meetings about? What’s going on?’

  ‘Have you been taught how to bug a place?’ she replied.

  Yes, I’d been taught how to bug, though not a place, a car, and not on the PI course. Bugging a place could be illegal. No respectable training company would have it on their syllabus. I’d learned what I possessed of this skill from Bainbridge Williamson. Where he’d learned it I didn’t know or need to. I’d had one failed attempt and, subsequently, two very successful buggings. But Righton used this ploy only sparingly. The risk of discovery was acute. And, in any case, what was discovered through a bugging had to be employed with great care and subtlety, to disguise how it had been got. Evidence obtained by bugging could not be used direct in court because it might have been acquired illegally. On account of these possible snags and hazards bugging of property was restricted to very major cases, and done by Bainbridge himself: generally divorces of the rich, or exposure of industrial espionage, when Williamson would occasionally decide the fees to Righton warranted the gamble.

  Judith’s project couldn’t be treated as very major. She wanted to discover if her brother was deep into some kind of criminal trading. Suppose I proved that he was, she would presumably confront him, and try to make him stop. She didn’t want their parents hurt and shamed, and they would be if Keith messed up somehow and his crookedness came to light. Admittedly, this showed a nice concern for the parents, but I couldn’t give it very much weight.

  Judith intended staying at her brother’s place for a fortnight while her husband was abroad somewhere on an education freebie. I reckoned this would give me time to dig out enough on Keith to make her realize how crazed her suggestion about bugging Failsafe was, and how crazed her suspicions were about him altogether.

  She pointed again at the downstairs plan. ‘Here’s the door on to the gravelled path and patio. I should be able to make sure it was unlocked when the room’s not occupied. I expect you’re used to working swiftly in selecting a site and fixing the device, Tom, aren’t you?’

  FIFTEEN

  There were times when Harpur couldn’t be certain whether Iles was skittishly sending himself up; or whether he had an inborn, irresistible, taste for the grandiose. Either way, it could result in a touch of the florid in his conversation. ‘Conversation’ would possibly be the wrong word if it meant an exchange of talk. ‘Statement’ might be better. Or even ‘spiel’.

  Now, for instance, he said, ‘Madam, there will have been few, if any, occasions in the past when an assistant chief constable, brackets, Operations, has stood on this doorstep of an evening and rung your bell. In the crude but illuminating words of the present day demotic this is a “one-off”. The reason and cause are in that seemingly tagged-on, subordinate term, “Operations”. My area of responsibility within this city’s police force is, as it happens, operations. Harpur here will bear me out. That is one of his limited flairs – bearing me out.’

  ‘Assistant Chief Iles is Operations,’ Harpur said.

  ‘Thank you, Col,’ Iles said. ‘This lady might not be familiar with my ACC epaulettes insignia, though you and I know it to be meaningful and authentic. The blood on my hands and uniform will probably strike her as unusual and, possibly, disconcerting, but you and I both know, also, that there is a very simple explanation for it.’

  ‘Very simple, sir. Thomas Wells Hart’s heart.’

  ‘True. Now, when a Ford Focus and its driver, Thomas Wells Hart, are shot-up in a normally quiet, sedate close, the police response will obviously amount to an operation. Therefore, that response will be led by an assistant chief constable, brackets, Operations, viz, myself. But you, madam, will probably reply that assistant chiefs don’t normally take on such low-grade, street-level duties as house-to-house inquiries, even though the house-to-house inquiries are plainly part of a police operation and therefore fall within the ambit of an ACC, brackets, Operations. You might say that such an operation would probably be run from a Command Vehicle, constructed for that purpose, or from a Tactical Control Centre with many screens and sophisticated communication systems at headquarters itself.

  ‘This is a perfectly sound argument, and I congratulate you on your clear-sightedness. However, my companion here, Harpur, will tell you that when an operation seems to have special, perhaps symbolic, global qualities, the ACC will wish to involve himself in the most basic, nitty-gritty aspects of the case. He needs and demands contact with its core, its central fibre. This assistant chief is an all-shoulders-to-the-wheel assistant chief, including his.’

  Harpur said, ‘When an operation seems to have special, perhaps symbolic, global qualities the ACC will wish to involve himself in the most basic, nitty-gritty aspects of the case. He needs and demands contact with its core, its central fibre. This assistant chief is an all-shoulders-to-the-wheel assistant chief, including his.’

  ‘Again, very true, Col,’ Iles replied. ‘As an example, madam, of this tilt towards the nitty-gritty and central fibre we have just had a vastly dud chin-wag with that oozy, kaftan prat at number 8. And now, as you’ll observe, we have moved on and favour the expectation that you will not turn out to be such an all-time jerk as ratbag Felix. A harmless request in the pursuit of hygiene was rejected. He chooses to pass bile on the other side.’

  ‘We wondered whether you’d seen anything in the close around the time of the shooting, before, during or after, but especially before,’ Harpur said. ‘Preparations. Reconnaissance of the ground.’

  ‘I live alone here,’ she replied.

  ‘And that’s why I’m not going to ask if I could come in and wash my hands,’ Iles said. ‘You don’t want a male stranger – in off the street, unannounced – splashing about in your cloakroom and possibly bringing residue stains to an innocent towel.’

  ‘Please,’ she said. ‘We should, as it were, reach out generously to those finding themselves suddenly in our neighbourhood and requiring help. On the right. You’ll find many different kinds of soap present, used by me for a freshening up or full-scale ablution. I will select a soap which, in my judgement, matches a mood of the moment via shape, texture and scent. A mojo matter. If you are in difficulty deciding which of the ranged soaps harmonizes with your current feelings, pray give me a shout, and I’ll come and describe for you the distinctive afflatus of each bar. My belief is that almost any type will get rid of the blood but I’m thinking of the wind-down aftermath of that cleansing session.’

  The woman stood aside and Harpur and Iles entered the house. Iles made for the cloakroom. Harpur said, ‘I’ve had a look at the Cairn Close electoral register on my mobile and it gives the occupant of this property as Millicent Helen Groves.’

  ‘Mrs. Divorced.’ She took Harpur into a lounge full of shining, metal-framed furniture, with vivid upholstery in prime colours. There were large, framed black and white urban scene photographs on the walls: a dog looking out of a window; a washing line with long socks and other clothes drying; what might be a Greek orthodox church interior; boys on the edge of a lake or pool launching a toy yacht. Mrs Groves and Harpur sat opposite each other. Harpur thought she’d be in her late fifties. She had on a navy business suit, a mauve blouse, black high heels. ‘It’s true, Felix can be a bit of a cunt,’ she said. ‘He’s in therapy and has been for an age but there’s an inherent, congenital, perhaps inherited, awfulness about him that no psychiatrist can properly fight without systematically destroying Felix as Felix. This might seem desirable, but Felix is rather too fond of being Felix, and keeps reverting to his
natural odiousness. Nostalgie de la boue – “Let me get back to my slime.”’

  Iles rejoined them. Joyfully he declared, ‘I seemed to bind more or less immediately with a pale yellow soap, fifth from the left, a swift, mutual empathy, so I had no need to summon help.’ He held up his clean hands as in a surrender gesture. It would be a surrender to the elementary washing efficiency of the soap but also to its grander, spiritual, tonic power. ‘Have my hands ever been more taint free? I can reply with a resounding “No”, thanks to that particular ministering soap.’ He toured the room slowly looking at the photographs. ‘There’s something about long socks on a line, isn’t there?’

  ‘In which respect, sir?’ Harpur said.

  ‘Oh, yes,’ Iles replied with an unhurried, gentle, this-is-life-as-it’s-lived chuckle.

  ‘No, I saw nothing before the shooting,’ Mrs Groves said.

  ‘Harpur would mean not just pre the shooting this evening, but anything over the last few days that might have had you thinking a Ford Focus and its driver would be getting a fusillade here soon.’

  ‘No, nothing like that,’ she said.

  ‘I name a Ford Focus because we now know that it was a Ford Focus blitzed here tonight,’ Iles replied. ‘But, clearly, your intimations at that pre-incident stage would not necessarily specify a Ford Focus because you wouldn’t have the full, actual picture. Your intimations might figure some disaster involving almost any kind of car, a wholly random itemizing, say a Vauxhall or Skoda.’

  ‘No, nothing of that sort,’ she replied. ‘I don’t think I’ve ever seen a Skoda in this close.’

  Iles said, ‘The Skoda I cited was not intended to be a factual Skoda. Simply I meant some non-Ford Focus, such as, for instance, a Skoda. Any make would have done, other than a Ford Focus – Vauxhall, Peugeot, Lexus, Mercedes, VW, BMW, you choose.’

  ‘Mr Iles is famed for employing his own way of coming at things,’ Harpur said in the kind of friendly voice he often chose when decoding Iles’s frenzied quirks for strangers. ‘I’ve heard people who’ve just met and listened to him comment afterwards something like, “That Mr Iles, he’s entitled to be how he is, but it must take a lot of work”. He’d have that Skoda or Vauxhall very clearly in his mind, but this is the veritable nub, isn’t it? They are in his mind only, whereas the Ford Focus will arrive as something very real and riddled.’