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by Bill James

  ‘I didn’t consider it wise in the circumstances to have Pam wandering about here solo, no matter how fond of nature she might be,’ Iles replied.

  ‘Which circumstances?’ Harpur asked.

  ‘I agreed at once when she asked for local help, as you can understand, I’m sure, Col.’

  Pam, standing a little behind Iles, had a torch. She lit up the gates with it, and a blue plaque fixed on one of them. ‘Something written there,’ she said and leaned forward for a closer view. ‘It’s a Latin tag.’ She read aloud: ‘“Omnes Eodem Cogimur”, meaning, I’d say, something like, “We are all shoved in the same direction.” That seems to cover the way we’ve met here tonight. Is Lamb a scholar? I don’t think his dossier mentions that.’

  ‘Good old Horace,’ Iles said. ‘He had a nice flinty outlook. You’ll ask who is my companion, Col?’

  ‘Who is your companion, sir?’ Harpur said.

  ‘Lamb would be puzzled if he knew about this night-time colloquium gathering spontaneously at the entrance to his realm, even if we are all shoved in the same direction,’ Iles replied.

  ‘It wasn’t my intention to hang about for very long,’ Harpur said.

  ‘No, I expect you’ve got something nice and amenable waiting for you under the duvet in Arthur Street,’ Iles said. ‘Col’s extremely conscious of his social responsibilities, Pam, and keeps markedly close ties with tertiary education and the local university through an undergraduate called Denise. She is very safely above the age of consent, which some people believe is set too high, anyway.’ Iles paused, then formed those lips to produce a quavering, malign hiss. ‘Col is even more safely above the age of consent. My wife could confirm that some while before Denise if—’

  ‘I feel inhospitable talking like this when you are standing in the cold,’ Harpur said. ‘You should get into the car.’

  Iles said, ‘Do you think I want to get into a car that you might have used for your disgraceful—?’

  ‘Which dossier?’ Harpur replied.

  ‘Dossier?’ Iles said.

  ‘Pamela mentioned a dossier – Jack Lamb’s dossier,’ Harpur said.

  ‘I’m with the national arts and antiques team in London,’ she said. ‘As you’d expect Lamb has come to our notice, if only because of the shooting. Actually, it’s not only because of the shooting.’

  ‘Pam and I worked together on some cases when I was in the Met,’ Iles said. ‘We’ve kept in touch. Pamela Venning. She and colleagues believe there’s been something big and potentially nefarious for at least months on our ground, Col. She wanted a discreet scan of Lamb’s place. So it needed to be night.’

  ‘What big and potentially nefarious thing under way on our ground for at least months?’ Harpur replied.

  ‘Only potential. Col’s offended, Pam. He’s supposed to notice anything nefarious. But Pam’s a specialist. She’s handled some very large art-world cases,’ Iles said. ‘She’s bound to be a bit ahead in this kind of case. Please don’t feel any more superfluous than usual, Harpur.’

  ‘I don’t think I am ahead,’ Pam said. ‘He’s out here, casing Lamb’s place, isn’t he? Lying doggo, lights and engine off so he can watch and not be watched. Routine skills. That signifies he knows something, perhaps the same kind of thing that I know, or half know.’

  ‘Which kind is that?’ Harpur replied.

  ‘The kind you don’t want to talk about,’ Iles said. ‘This would amount to several wagon-loads. Harpur generally comes at situations from some weird personal angle which by the fluke of flukes might now and then pay off. But you, Pam, you are the naturally gifted and educated expert.’

  ‘Oh, yes, Colin,’ she said. ‘If anyone were made for such work it is emphatically and incontrovertibly I.’

  Harpur found it unsettling to be addressed with terrific intensity by a woman wearing a balaclava, and who could do Latin. He associated balaclavas with Arctic exploration, usually by men, or old fashioned bank hold-ups. Her judderingly correct grammar – the ‘I’ rather than ‘me’ – also troubled him.

  ‘I detest art, you see,’ she said enthusiastically. ‘It began as a suspicion but grew into a whole-hearted, healthy revulsion.’

  ‘Oh?’ Harpur replied. ‘All art? Jack Lamb is a great fan of what he calls “the soldier’s art”.’

  ‘Ah, Browning, and later the title of a novel by Anthony Powell. But Col is looking puzzled,’ Iles said, with a merry, sympathetic chuckle, the hiss gone from his wordage now. ‘Pam doesn’t mean some particular painting or sculpture, nor the work of a particular school of artists.’

  ‘It’s the whole fucking brouhaha,’ Pamela said.

  ‘Pamela has often spoken to me in disgust about the whole fucking brouhaha,’ Iles said. ‘I’m not sure whether she overstates things, though. Occasionally a brouhaha is justified.’

  ‘My mother always maintained that what Baden-Powell, creator of the boy scout movement, actually preached as a life-guide was not simply “Be prepared”, but “Be prepared for brouhahas,” Harpur replied. ‘Over the years, though, the latter part fell away because few boys knew what a brouhaha was.’

  ‘When I speak of a brouhaha I’m not referring merely to the kind of ludicrous and creepily reverend attitude towards canvases or stone or brass. What I object to goes deeper, so much deeper. I ask, “Why art at all?”’ Pamela stated.

  ‘In many ways this is merely a short, formal reconnaissance,’ Harpur replied. ‘Lamb had notorious trouble at Darien and occasionally I feel I should come out and take a quick squint in case of aftermath.’

  ‘Art in its various fashions seeks to represent the real,’ Pamela said. ‘But why take the trouble when the real is already there? Isn’t it grossly presumptuous, flagrantly unnecessary, to reduce the actual and active to something two dimensional and confined in a ghastly frame or stuck radiantly inanimate on a plinth? Wouldn’t you say it’s otiose, Col?’

  ‘Some like it otiose,’ Iles said.

  ‘Serving no useful purpose,’ Pam said. ‘My thinking you see, Colin, makes me a natural for this job. I’m not concerned about the supposed aesthetic qualities of this or that piece of work. I deal in its data: measurements, the type and colour of frame, its dates and recorded history, and, in the case of sculpts, its weight. These examples of supposed spectacular beauty are to me simply items, and I deal with them – or more likely with their absence – just as officers from a different squad would deal with burglary losses, robbery losses, mugging losses, pickpocketing losses, fraud losses. If alleged experts or auction records tell me this picture of a chubby looking, sullen Dutch girl holding a pooch is worth so many millions I will give a polite nod to show I’ve heard what was said and as soon as is convenient discard that information as … as, yes, otiose. I’ll listen to chat about tints, perspective and vigour in a job by Velasquez then get quickly out of sight and throw up. Integrity is my watchword, Colin. My family is famed for that going right back in history?’

  ‘Integrity?’ Harpur asked.

  ‘Watchwords,’ she said.

  ‘Pam’s going to be on our ground for some while, I think, Harpur,’ Iles said. ‘She believes she might be closing in on some exceptionally renowned items.’

  ‘If I get some luck,’ she replied. She gave a slight wave of her hand which still held the torch, but unlit. Harpur sensed that she meant to plead modesty by this gesture, a sort of, Oh, shucks, please don’t make me sound some sort of ace investigator. She turned towards him ‘Do I gather, Mr Harpur, that you saw someone, or thought you saw someone, or maybe more than one, close to the stables?’

  ‘In that area,’ Harpur said.

  ‘It wouldn’t have been Des and me,’ Pamela said. ‘I wanted to have a look at the frontage of the main building and the approach to it on the drive.’

  ‘There’s someone else here?’ Iles said. He glanced about.

  ‘Perhaps Jack and his girlfriend enjoying an evening walk in the grounds,’ Harpur said.

  ‘Perhaps,’ Pam repl
ied.

  ‘I wasn’t certain I’d seen anyone at all,’ Harpur said.

  ‘It’s interesting, though,’ Pamela said.

  ‘Perhaps,’ Harpur said.

  ‘Col’s very open-minded,’ Iles replied. ‘Well, who’d want to get locked in with a mind like his?’

  When Harpur reached home, the children were still up and Denise had arrived from the cinema. They were watching a world championship middleweight bout from the United States. Jill knew a lot about boxing. One of her favourite books was The Sweet Science, by A.J. Liebling, once a boxing writer for the New Yorker magazine. She’d asked for that one to be kept when Harpur had cleared the sitting room of his wife’s learned and academic books and the shelving after her murder at the railway station car park.2

  ‘You told us you’d be only an hour,’ Hazel said.

  ‘We thought we’d better wait up to see you were OK, Dad,’ Jill said. ‘It can be pretty hostile out there.’

  ‘Hark at her!’ Hazel said.

  ‘Some complications delayed me,’ Harpur said.

  ‘What complications?’ Jill said. ‘I don’t know what it means – complications. Is it like sudden difficulties?’

  ‘You don’t need “like”,’ Harpur said.

  ‘You mean I don’t need “like” because it wasn’t just like sudden difficulties, it was sudden difficulties? So, what were these sudden difficulties? Were they so sudden that it took you a long time to deal with them owing to being not ready and prepared, which made you later than you’d expected?’

  ‘What sort of thing was it, anyway, never mind the complications,’ Hazel said. ‘We don’t expect you to cough the lot, but some ballpark indication.’

  ‘What’s that?’ Jill said.

  ‘What?’ Hazel replied.

  ‘A ballpark indication,’ Jill said.

  ‘I’m asking, which general type of police work – grievous bodily harm, drugs, terrorism, burglary?’ Hazel said.

  ‘In a park?’ Jill asked.

  ‘A ballpark as signifying a department in police work, without demanding too much detail.’

  ‘I don’t see how a park can be a department,’ Jill replied.

  ‘No, I don’t suppose you can,’ Hazel said.

  ‘Very much a formality only,’ Harpur said.

  ‘Someone of your rank going out at night for a formality?’ Hazel said.

  ‘People of my rank have a lot to do with formalities,’ Harpur said. ‘We’ve left the nitty-gritty behind.’

  ‘These sudden complications are not to do with the nitty-gritty, is that right?’ Jill asked.

  ‘But these complications are to do with the formality?’ Hazel said.

  ‘Several people, including, obviously, myself had the same sort of purpose and we met.’

  ‘They’re all concerned with the formality?’ Hazel said.

  ‘It might be a formality for Dad, but not for the others, or not so much. This is how the complications would start,’ Jill said.

  ‘Met where?’ Hazel asked.

  ‘I don’t think anyone learned very much,’ Harpur replied.

  ‘Neither do we,’ Hazel said. There was a knock down and the boxing finished.

  ‘Denise has been telling us about the film,’ Jill said.

  ‘To do with an informant,’ Hazel said.

  ‘Violent,’ Denise said. ‘But funny.’

  ‘That’s how films and stories should be,’ Harpur said.

  ‘It was in French, but Denise could understand the jokes because of her studies,’ Jill said. ‘She knows all kinds of French poems. There’s one to do with the battle of Waterloo which Wellington won.’

  ‘Really?’ Hazel replied.

  ‘This poem is by a Frenchman in French,’ Jill replied.

  ‘Really?’ Hazel said.

  ‘So there’s violence, but it’s not funny,’ Jill said.

  ‘“Waterloo, Waterloo, Waterloo, morne plaine”,’ Denise said.

  ‘There you are!’ Jill cried.

  ‘What?’ Hazel said.

  ‘In French,’ Jill said.

  ‘“Morne plaine”,’ Denise said. “Dismal terrain.” After the battle. Wellington declared that there was only one thing worse than a defeat and that was a victory.’

  ‘Do you use informants, Colin?’ Denise asked.

  ‘Dad won’t talk about that,’ Jill said.

  ‘Informants bring info,’ Hazel said. ‘Dad doesn’t.’

  ‘Bed now for you two,’ Harpur replied.

  And later in bed themselves, Denise said, ‘The star of the film, Isabelle Huppert – do you like her kind of looks, Colin?’

  ‘Never seen them,’ Harpur said.

  ‘Sort of lovely, high, delicate cheek bones, slim, so elegant, quizzical eyes.’

  ‘I’d probably prefer you.’

  ‘Only probably?’

  ‘Most probably. Quizzical eyes might put me off her. I don’t like being quizzed. I quiz.’

  ‘In another picture she’s a stern music teacher who caves in and sucks a fair-haired boy pupil off near the piano. Musicians in the brass section of an orchestra might talk about their performances as blow jobs, but this was something else.’

  ‘Does the pupil play better afterwards? He’d need to. There’s going to be a lot of competition – lads suddenly very keen on practising their scales.’

  ‘How about you?’

  ‘What?’

  ‘Are you better at things afterwards?’

  ‘What things?’

  ‘All of them.’

  ‘I forget,’ he replied.

  ‘I think I’ll remind you.’

  THIRTY-FIVE

  I’d begun to feel I was doing really well. Of course, I didn’t realize at the time that just by being alive I was doing really well, so far. I hadn’t even heard of Cairn Close at this time, and had only recently met the person who asked me to do a reconnaissance there. That’s just a general point. To get to specifics: I’d become full of what I can now see were daft optimism and dafter vanity. Hindsight is something of a speciality for anyone in my situation.

  How to explain the optimism and vanity? Well, I think the smart way I’d landed the Righton job years ago gave the right sort of gilded and precocious start: still a school kid, I’d bypassed Rory Mitchell, the Cambridge first, by natural, untaught, brilliant, instinctive flair around supermarket aisles and so on. And then, with a moderate amount of experience in the firm, I’d impressed Bainbridge Williamson enough to be put on the board, Bainbridge no mug, despite his Old Curiosity Shop garb.

  Now, with the help of two sweet jailbirds, Enid Aust and, above all, Mrs Lamb, I was apparently going to get into Darien as an authentic, chaperoned emissary – much more useful than simply taking a mid-distance gawp at the house on the day a possibly significant van nosed its way up the gravelled drive and, so it seemed, was rattily turned away. I’d hope to get beyond the cloudiness of ‘so it seemed’ and ‘apparently’. I should collect some genuine, solid stuff.

  ‘Genuine solid stuff’ to do with what? Well, to do with something, no question. And Jack figured in it somewhere, no question. Clarity might slowly dawn. I would be going to Darien with demands – requests, entreaties – from Jack’s mother for him to get out of denial and recognize things as they were. And how were things as she saw them? Unsafe. She wanted Jack to get special, close protection – i.e., probably me, though, of course, unarmed: private detectives in Britain don’t carry guns. After living in America for so long perhaps she’d forgotten that. She’d probably want to remedy it. But the States was another country. They did things differently there.

  I, too, wanted Jack to recognize how things were – unsafe – and to talk to Enid and myself about them; and particularly to myself about them, so I’d know what the hell they were. Surely no decent man could ignore or spurn a loving message from his caring, banged up, markswoman ma, who’d changed her second marriage surname back to his, reaffirming a precious bond.

  My thinking wa
s that the visit with Enid to Darien would be an advance, but a small one. The real progress – if I could expect any of this at all – would come via a different house, not Darien. After the call on Jack Lamb I knew I must try to find out what Judith from the very beginning asked me to find out: the role in all this of Failsafe, her brother’s place, near Rastelle Major. She’d wanted me to bug a conference room there. I still regarded that as too tricky. Bainbridge had shown me how to bug a parked, empty car, but not how to manage the complexities of wiring up a possibly large room in an occupied, maybe busy, household. The private detective course I’d attended had offered no training in bugging of any kind. As I’ve said, it was considered. It was considered borderline illegal, and in some cases absolutely and utterly illegal. No respectable training outfit could risk its reputation by giving instruction in those shady skills. But somehow I needed to get more than Judith had told me about Failsafe. That would be difficult. Much more difficult than a threesome chat at Darien. I’d give it some big thought.

  There was a practical point. Alice Lamb had said she’d meet Righton’s fees for looking after Jack – for looking after Jack as far as it was feasible to look after Jack. If the meeting at Darien revealed a connection with Failsafe I could work officially on that end of the case, covered by his mother’s payments, and with Bainbridge Williamson’s approval. The dangers that she believed menaced her son might in some way come from Failsafe. ‘In some way’: another of those convenient, meaningless, evasive jingles. ‘So make them clear and concrete, Thomas Wells Hart,’ I should have told myself, ‘you’re big-headed and brassy enough to believe you can.’ Early success sometimes brought problems. Confidence could become cockiness, and cockiness could become carelessness. God, I’ve gone oracular!

  I don’t know whether this is another slab of hindsight, but I had the feeling even before Jack Lamb opened the door to Enid Aust and me at Darien that the house had something wrong about it, something downcast and even defeated about it. I wouldn’t have been able to explain where that notion originated, though. The building had seen some changes over the centuries but was still as handsome and dignified as it had ever been. And Jack, greeting us, sounded, on the face of it, as warm, chirpy and upbeat, as anyone could whose mother was in jail after shooting someone dead on the premises.