by Bill James
‘Would Lamb agree for the items to be moved, anyway?’ Bainbridge said. ‘Unlikely. They’re his wealth, his capital, his social status, his manhood, still valuable even if the prices fell a bit. He’s used to having works of the great around his property, some of them quite possibly genuine and reeking with aura. He can rub shoulders with Chagall and Bocklin. He’d miss them too much. He might trust Harpur – almost certainly does – but, as you say, Enid, he couldn’t rely on the children and the girlfriend to stay silent if they came across the works hidden away, but not hidden away well enough.’
Of course, I thought about saying that I’d gone out to have a look at Darien some while ago and saw the approach of the van and so on, plus later, the van in the lay-by and my baffling conversation with the unknown woman. But I didn’t see that this would take us very much further on. I hadn’t mentioned it to Bainbridge at the time: the trip wasn’t a Righton job, just personal curiosity because of Judith. I was, and still would be, very tight-fisted with any discoveries I made. I know why. Although the private detective course Bainbridge had sent me on covered a lot of the trade’s skills, I’d also picked up there what Enid might have called the nod-and-wink message, an unspoken, but very present and pervasive theme. It was that information might be immensely precious and should never get casually passed on to others unless advantageously needed; not even to allies, friends and work mates. After all, it’s fitting for a private detective to be private, and for a private eye to see things he/she might not let others see. Let’s adjust the childhood jingle: ‘I spy with my little eye something beginning with confidentiality, and maybe staying like that …’
‘Alice has money,’ Enid said. ‘She can cope with your fees. There was a good divorce settlement in the States. Her husband built a fortune and knew how to look after it – at least until Alice’s lawyers got going. And I’m all right for cash: family boodle that came my way despite the shooting – or some would say because of it. I can help if required. That’s the kind of buddies we are. Jail has some positives, you see.’
‘The Pilgrim’s Progress written in prison and The Ballade of Reading Gaol written about it. But also Mein Kampf is a choky book,’ Bainbridge said. ‘You’re talking about continuous protection, are you?’
‘That’s what Alice wants, at least short term,’ Enid replied. ‘The cop, Harpur, obviously believes you can do it, and do it well.’
‘The agency couldn’t undertake that kind of commission unless the subject of it – Lamb, in this case – agreed,’ Bainbridge said. ‘This is not like covert surveillance where the agency operatives act without permission, of course, and, if possible, secretly. We’d need authorization and cooperation. It would be a kind of imposition, a kind of stalking, otherwise.’
‘We understand that, Alice and I,’ Enid said. ‘What she wants is someone from the agency to go with me to see Jack Lamb and let him know what his mother wishes and if possible persuade him to accept. She’s tried talking to him along those lines, naturally. It didn’t work. She would like an outsider to confirm to Jack that her worries are reasonable and have to be dealt with urgently. How to deal with them can be worked out later – but not too much later. The objective now, though, is to convince him that he and the girl he lives with and his collection are not safe.’
‘Oh, this sounds very practical and possible,’ Bainbridge said. ‘Tom could certainly accompany you for that kind of meeting with Lamb.’
‘Pleased to,’ I said, and I think more or less meant it.
THIRTY-THREE
‘Got a pencil?’ Memory of the blurted question – questions – still made Harpur disgusted with himself. They had been a brush-off. They tried to reduce things to a bit of clerking. He’d longed to escape from Alice Lamb’s voice and loud cleverness, so he’d manufactured a chance. ‘Got a pencil?’ The words glittered with indifference. They’d told her, without actually telling her, kindly to get lost behind a heavy steel door.
When he hindsighted all this next day, it struck him as heartless and slippery. Untypical? He hoped it was. He decided he must do something to show he wasn’t an arrogant, uncaring, treacherous twerp. He needed this correction. It might soothe his conscience. Normally, Harpur could keep his conscience reasonably well dungeoned, only rarely let out and then on a very short chain. To be bothered so much by it now puzzled him.
‘What’s wrong, Dad?’ Jill said.
His daughters were very good at spotting changes of mood in Harpur, and tireless in trying to find what caused them. ‘Wrong?’ he said. ‘Why should anything be wrong?’
‘Because something is,’ Jill said. Harpur and the two girls were talking in the big Arthur Street sitting room, the TV silent but showing a soccer match.
‘Is it to do with Denise?’ Hazel said.
‘Is what to do with Denise?’ Harpur replied.
‘The anxiety,’ Jill said. ‘The suffering.’
‘Which anxiety?’ he said ‘Which suffering?’
‘Yours,’ Hazel said. ‘We’ve discussed it, Jill and I.’
‘Do you worry about her lungs?’ Jill said.
‘Lungs?’ Harpur said.
‘The smoking,’ Jill said. ‘We had that medical lecture at school with pictures of a smoker’s lungs. Like old bath mats. How many Marlborough a day? She doesn’t seem to care. It’s a known fact that although men are cutting down on their smoking, girls aren’t. In a way, it’s very nice that you are worried about her, because it shows you really love her, which, obviously, would include her lungs, not just her outer body, the various aspects of it. Don’t you ever say to her that she shouldn’t do so many ciggies? She plays lacrosse for the uni with a lot of flinging and dashes, so she needs bags of breath, but can her lungs give her enough?’
‘She’s an adult,’ Hazel said. ‘She has to make her own choices. Dad can’t live her life for her. The warning’s on the packets. She can read.’
‘But he could tell her that he wants her life to go on and on, which it might not if she’s always sucking in these loads of tar.’
‘I have to go out,’ Harpur said.
‘Or you might very reasonably be concerned about the age gap,’ Hazel replied.
‘Which?’ Harpur said.
‘She’s not twenty and you’re nearly forty,’ Hazel said.
‘Dad’s only thirty-seven,’ Jill said.
‘Yes, nearly forty,’ Hazel said.
‘That doesn’t bother her,’ Harpur said.
‘The age gap has always been there,’ Jill said. ‘Why should he get upset about it now?’
‘She’s with young people including men most of the time at the uni,’ Hazel said. ‘They’re reading poetry full of stuff about romance and intimacy.’
‘So what?’ Jill said.
‘It could make students think along the same lines,’ Hazel said.
‘She loves Dad,’ Jill said. ‘She doesn’t have to fancy men students just because they’re the same age as herself and getting turned on by literature. Think of that film star on the movie channel sometimes – supposed to be funny – Charlie Chaplin. He had a girlfriend much younger than himself.’
‘And nearly got sent to jail for it,’ Hazel said.
‘But, like you said, Haze, Denise is an adult. Dad’s not a what-you-call-it. A paedo.’
‘Do you know how I see things, Dad?’ Hazel replied.
‘Which things?’ Harpur said.
‘You and Denise. I mean, where’s it going?’ Hazel said.
‘Does it have to go anywhere?’ Harpur said. ‘It’s the present. It’s now. That will do, won’t it? She’s off to see a French movie called Tip Top in the university Film Society. She’ll come here afterwards. I’ll be busy elsewhere for an hour or so.’
‘Haze means what about the future, I think,’ Jill said.
‘Denise keeps a distance,’ Hazel replied.
‘But she stays here very often,’ Harpur said.
‘Yes, very often. But she doesn’t stay here only. She�
��s got that flat or room in the student block, Jonson Court, Jonson without an h. I don’t think she wants to be here all the time in case it seems like she’s our stepmother, although only nineteen. That’s why I asked where it’s going, the relationship. It’s a lovely relationship and we’re always pleased for her to be here, but what next?’
To Harpur it seemed another instance of wanting a definition where it might be much more comfortable without. He would have liked something permanent. He and Denise had talked about it once or twice. Once. He could see she wasn’t ready for that. The topic had faded.
‘Denise always has one life in sort of reserve,’ Hazel said.
‘I don’t understand that, Haze,’ Jill said.
‘A main life and a sort of backup. ‘I don’t know which we are, important or on the side. So, just think of tonight: she choosing one way – to the cinema – and you disappear elsewhere, destination unknown, separate existences.’
‘Denise asked me to go to the Film Society with her,’ Harpur replied.
‘She knew you’d turn it down. Foreign picture, a bit highfalutin, in your opinion. I’ve heard of the film. It has the great actress Isabelle Huppert in it as a detective.’
‘You won’t say any of this, well … very difficult stuff to Denise, will you, Haze?’ Jill said.
‘Of course not,’ Hazel said. ‘Denise is great, no question. But I was just wondering what’s what?’
‘I’ll make a move,’ Harpur replied.
‘Is this to do with what’s been niggling you?’ Hazel said. ‘Can you put it right in just an hour?’
‘Put what right?’ Harpur said.
‘Whatever it is that’s niggling you,’ Hazel said.
‘Who says something is niggling me?’ Harpur said.
‘Jill and I,’ Hazel replied.
And he recognized that they had it right. When it came to guessing how he felt this day or that they usually did get it right, though not the cause. They couldn’t know about his blundering interview with Alice Lamb, his regrets, and his fairly useless urge to do something about them.
As promised, he meant to order increased patrolling around Darien, very soon. But, of course, Iles would have to be notified of such a change in duties. Harpur didn’t want participation from anyone else yet. He saw this mission as a kind of apology. It had to come from him personally and, in the first instance, at least, him, very solo. He’d have a little tour of the Darien area himself. He assumed that if there was going to be trouble it would happen at night, so he’d double the patrol surveillance between 9 p.m. and 6 a.m. and he was setting out tonight at just before 10 p.m. to do what he could to match these conditions.
Denise had a key and Harpur’s daughters might still be up, anyway, when she arrived. He thought an hour could be an over-estimate for his trip. It would not be much more than a gesture, a gesture aimed only at him, but crucial – for him. Jill would probably understand why he felt like this. Hazel would probably understand, too, but would regard it as weak, sloppy and illogical. Hazel was strong on logic.
THIRTY-FOUR
Harpur drove towards Lamb’s country house and estate, Darien, a few miles from the city. It stood in just over four acres at the foot of a wooded hillock. Quite a few people who ran dodgy, or more than dodgy, businesses liked to live somewhere non-urban, spacious, sedate, with plenty of manageable greenery, a shoe-scraper at the front door, durable trees and restful views. For instance, from Darien, Jack could just see the plentiful chimneys of Low Pastures, fine home of Ralph Ember, club owner and brilliantly successful wholesaler of most recreational substances, often referred to – though not in his presence – as Panicking Ralph or Panicking Ralphy, on account of some alleged disastrous chicken moment in his past.1
Darien’s notable history was an extra, unique factor that had persuaded Jack to buy. From occasional visits on the quiet for confidential talks with Lamb, Harpur knew the layout well. But last time it was an official call as top detective after Jack’s mother shot and killed an intruder. The property had seven bedrooms and looked out over a small lake, then agricultural land and, in the far distance, a stretch of coastline and the sea. Two of the original five reception rooms downstairs had been knocked into one to create a gallery, and there was a strongroom in the basement. The main downstairs room was panelled in mahogany and had a minstrel’s gallery. From there a couple of times on a mouth organ Jack had played ‘Keep The Home Fires Burning’ and other First World War songs while Harpur listened below.
During the seventeenth-century British civil war that led to the execution of Charles I, the house apparently served as a Royalist outpost. This thrilled Jack, though not because it took the king’s side: he’d have been just as delighted if the then owner favoured Cromwell’s Roundheads. What excited Lamb was the notion of a thoroughly documented link with serious military disputes and violence, and the fortunes of battle. Soldiering fascinated Jack. He’d never enlisted but possessed a fine and constantly growing collection of international army surplus uniforms. His meetings with Harpur weren’t always at Darien and often when he arrived at some rendezvous spot outside with fresh tip-offs, he might be wearing a French peaked kepi, German SS tunic and Scottish regimental kilt, or a British bum-freezer short overcoat that rested on the mounted officer’s saddle, when cavalry meant horses, not tanks.
Now and then Jack spoke glowingly of ‘the soldier’s art’, which apparently was a quote from somewhere. He’d explained to Harpur that this ‘art’ wasn’t to do with pictures but with a fundamental tactic adopted by troops – ‘think first, fight afterwards’.
Jack reckoned parts of Darien were Elizabethan, but plenty of rebuilding and extensions had taken place in what he said was a ‘Georgian style’: five, narrow, vertical windows in the front upstairs; four downstairs leaving space between two pairs for the door; a stone porch or portico; a coach house converted into garages and stables. There was a wide, gravelled, larch-lined slightly curving drive that opened through high metal gates on to a minor road. Harpur intended doing a slow, circular tour around the house and grounds, a couple of ten-minute pauses with the car lights off and the engine cut, then, if everything looked all right, as he expected, a quick return to Arthur Street. It would add up to a token episode of surveillance, that was all.
During the second of these observation pauses, though, while he was parked just outside the gates, Harpur thought he saw movement in the grounds, not far from the adapted coach house. Or movements. Possibly two people. He had a pair of night-view field glasses in the glove compartment and brought these out now and looked for any more activity. Nothing. Perhaps even if he’d been successful it would have meant nothing, anyway. It was dark but not terribly late and Jack might be out in the grounds, perhaps taking a stroll with his girlfriend, Helen, before turning in. But Harpur did think there had been a kind of scurrying element in what he’d seen, something furtive and hurried and purposeful.
While Harpur still had the night glasses aimed at where he’d glimpsed the two figures – thought he’d glimpsed the two figures – a gross, grotesquely distorted, blurred face intervened at the far end of the binoculars. It blotted out Harpur’s view of the lake area, and of anything else except the vastly off-putting sight of an over-magnified farrargo of human features. It seemed to be within an inch or two of the lenses: a total disruptive take-over. To read any expression in the various fleshly lumps, outcrops and fronds would be impossible, and madness to try; or even to search for evidence of a settled, feasible shape, an identity.
What might almost certainly be a pair of lips appeared briefly in this multi-coloured hotchpotch and then, after a few moments of swirl, eddy, flux and wobble, formed themselves into what was now definitely a pair of fully functional lips, obviously made for communication, and/or food and possibly for whistling. Harpur saw very credible intimations of a nose just above them. The lips seemed to aim themselves at Harpur and spoke; spoke loudly enough to get through the side window of his car. They said conver
sationally, ‘What ho! Col.’
Harpur lowered the glasses and put them away. He opened the driver’s side door. The interior light came on automatically and was enough to reach out and show Iles and a woman Harpur didn’t recognize. The assistant chief wore a hip-length, navy donkey jacket over a black roll-top sweater, a crimson scarf, jeans, walking boots, and a tan coloured, woollen bobble hat. The woman would be in her late forties and had on a four-pocketed, waterproof jacket with a grey faux fur collar, black moleskin trousers pushed into short-legged brown wellington boots, and a beige, woollen balaclava helmet.
‘Naturally, even before we got close enough for me to recognize the car, I wondered if it was you doing a slow circuit of the house and surrounds, Harpur,’ Iles said. ‘I couldn’t see what might be the objective, but I felt extremely confident that you’d have your reasons, not necessarily sane reasons, but reasons. I remarked about it to Pamela, didn’t I, Pam? I said approximately, “This will be Colin Harpur, a quaint but occasionally effective member of our middle management, on some sort of secret prowl. He’ll have his reasons, but whether he’ll disclose them, or disclose them truthfully, is problematical. As the prophet asks: ‘can the Ethiopian change his skin or the leopard its spots?’– not that the Ethiopan would want to change his skin in these anti-racist days – a rhetorical question with the answer ‘no’ built in?”’
‘Was it you two scampering about up near the one-time coach house, now stables and garages, sir?’ Harpur said.
‘The thing about Jack Lamb is that he obviously can’t have alarms and CCTV fitted in case they get activated and bring the law and order boys and girls out here again, you at their head, Col, nosing around inside,’ Iles replied.
‘Where’s your vehicle?’ Harpur said.