by Bill James
‘But I don’t know your objective.’
‘Don’t you? Don’t you?’
‘Followed you? How could I have followed you?’ she replied.
‘Why not? You’re in a car, aren’t you? Is the Peugeot you?’ He nodded towards it. ‘Where did you pick me up? The Monty? What were you doing there?’
‘Are you talking about tailing in traffic?’ Liz replied. ‘That’s a tremendously high skill.’
‘You might have it,’ he said. ‘I didn’t notice anything. Dozy of me. You’re not police, are you? Not in gear like that.’
‘Police? Why would police tail you?’
‘Why do you answer every question with a fucking question?’
‘Do I?’ she replied.
He shrugged. She saw he was giving up. Had she won a victory of sorts, she wondered. Which sort, though? Verbal and inane. She’d lost him and whatever she might have learned from him about the scene here. So, sodding Pyrrhic! He turned and walked away towards his Audi. She decided she wouldn’t try to tail him again. He’d be alert to that now, and he’d know he was looking for a green Peugeot in his mirror.
EIGHTEEN
Harpur had a call from Rapid Response saying the Peugeot was parked at a permitted one-hour spot in Brendan Street between the Silver Bells And Cockleshells children’s nursery and an Oxfam charity shop. As an additional map reference, the message mentioned a tree house in the nursery’s front garden, a wholly carpentered tree house with a timber staircase, no tree. The vehicle seemed unoccupied, but a woman and a man were talking on the pavement near it, the woman, tall, probably in her twenties, three-quarter-length dark-blue woollen top coat, the man older, perhaps late thirties, brown leather jacket. Someone in the RR car had half recognized Gordon Loam, and the sighting report suggested the man might be that gun-toter who’d had recent publicity, including a picture, following the shoot-bang-fire Blake incident at the Monty club in Shield Terrace: Basil Gordon Loam, art world connections. The conversation looked animated: maybe a quarrel, maybe just a happy, unexpected re-encounter.
Harpur realized the descriptions had to be very brief. The RR crew would have to behave as if they just happened to be cruising in Brendan Street – no pause, no obvious eyeballing of the pair on the pavement. RR vehicles were conspicuously coloured, easily identified, jam-sandwich police cars, so they could get fast through traffic. Officers were uniformed. This patrol could not hang about as if interested in the chatting pair because Harpur’s instructions said to keep things distant and non-involved; or as distant and non-involved as possible. This was a start-point only. Cameras banned.
He took the unmarked VW Golf from the pool and drove over at once to Brendan Street. More or less as he arrived, the two finished talking. The man walked away quickly, no formal leave-taking, no looking back. Harpur thought he seemed very offended, his footfalls heavy and reproachful. He strode with his shoulders hunched forward, as if to cradle and protect his anger for further development, like a mother kangaroo with its pouched joey. The RR guess appeared correct, and this was, in fact, Gordon Loam. The woman gazed after him for a while, perhaps revealing some regret. Maybe she admired him for loosing off at The Marriage Of Heaven And Hell – found it audacious, amusing, unconventional. Gordon Loam went to a black Audi saloon parked in another timed space and started the engine. Harpur once more noted a registration number. He had pulled in on double yellows, and the Audi passed him and also passed the Peugeot. Gordon Loam seemed to ignore both it and Elizabeth May Rossol. Gordon Loam apparently had big-wheel ancestors. A portion of hoity-toitiness might lurk in his genes, liable to show itself if he felt someone had bugged him. But bugged him how, if she had? Harpur put the VW into the space left by the Audi.
So, Cog – or, at least, Cog as represented in Elizabeth May Rossol – had a connection with blaze-away Gordon Loam. What connection, other than a street interlude? And how had this pavement conference come about? A fluke, as hinted at in the RR account? Well, fancy bumping into you! Or did she follow him after hurriedly quitting that other parking spot near Ralph’s Monty? Harpur had no reliable answers. And additional mysteries came his way now.
Rossol was about to get into the Peugeot when something seemed to stop her. She stood with the key in her hand, ready to open the driver’s door, but turned and stared towards the nursery, as though she’d heard a call, or some other important sound. Harpur stared there, too. A woman was with a couple of infants on the stairs of the tree house, apparently supervising their little clamber-climb; the woman in her fifties, chubby-faced, thick necked, grey hair cut savagely short, perhaps self-done with a kitchen knife as a wager or sponsored charity stunt.
She had started waving wildly to Rossol and was obviously shouting something. Rossol smiled and waved back, the car door key still in her hand, as though to announce that her arm-wags in reply were only interim – moments of mere, basic politeness – and she’d be buggering off very soon. In profile, her face looked neat but questing. Harpur lowered the driver’s window in the Golf and listened.
The woman and the two children had reached the top of the tree house. She continued to wave and yell. There were no solid side walls to the square garret where they stood now, only a lattice of wooden safety struts. It made Harpur think of guard towers with their machine guns and searchlights above the barbed wire in prison camp movies. He wondered whether Rossol saw it like that. She didn’t seem uneasy.
The woman’s voice reached Harpur very clearly, and would reach Rossol clearly, too, the tone desperate, commanding, inexhaustible, slightly unhinged. ‘Come back, oh, do come back,’ the woman cried. ‘Leave not in such circs, please. Oh, please. So much to say. We never spoke. Do, do come back. I have so much to comment on about him and other matters. Yes, him and other matters. Who are you? Who really are you? Is there truly a prospective Christine?’
To Harpur, her monologue sounded like something in the trailer for a super-intense, soul-searching TV drama. Rossol waved again, but Harpur saw immediately that this was a farewell gesture, not a greeting. She obviously didn’t fancy discussing with someone sporting a butchered coiffure in a pseudo tree house whether prospective Christine truly was or wasn’t at all. Rossol pointed the key at the Peugeot and pressed the unlock button, then gave one final wave and one more smile before driving off. Harpur followed. It hadn’t quite been a: ‘Get lost,’ reply to the woman from Rossol. No, more a: ‘Sorry, I have to move on,’ reply. The woman stood open-mouthed up there, but silent now, obviously hurt and dismayed that Rossol had ignored her invitation.
Harpur hadn’t waved to the woman. He’d felt he was outside this relationship, whatever it amounted to. Which ‘him’ did the woman mean – ‘so much to comment on about him’? Gordon Loam? Had he and Rossol been together in Silver Bells And Cockleshells, though without speaking? Why? Who was the prospective Christine, if she existed? Prospective where, how? Sometimes, when working alone and hopelessly stymied, Harpur would wish Iles and his clairvoyant, leaping, telepathic, vindictive brain were with him and willing to help – that last bit not at all certain. One of those moments had arrived. Harpur always felt ashamed to be stricken like this – to be so dependent and feeble – but he had to recognize that it did happen now and then. Yes, now.
He couldn’t tell whether Rossol knew he was lurking behind the Peugeot. He had to drive as if she didn’t. This would give the most promising possibilities, so he mustn’t fuck it up by carelessness. He needed to keep one, or two – two maximum – vehicles between her and him for cover, but not a vehicle, or vehicles, big enough to kill his view of the target car: no furniture vans, no army tanks on low-loaders, even, ideally, no four by fours.
In a short while, though, he was forced to recognize that she definitely did know he was there, and that she did know, too, one of the standard methods for shaking off a motorized stalker – also one of the most simple, most geographically subtle, and most potentially head-on risky. Harpur thought of it as originating from some Portuguese Acad
emy of Advanced Motoring, where the basic taught principle was the opposite of what prevailed in most sane countries. That is, an over-taker had precedence over oncoming vehicles, which should get out of the sodding way. ‘I’M POWERING THROUGH!’ Given some luck, some extensive luck, the car would pass one or even two vehicles immediately in front of it and squeeze past the approaching curse-flinging, horn-screaming, lights flashing stream. The tail would not be able to follow for at least a few minutes because of safety considerations, which had been brilliantly junked by the target.
This manoeuvre operated most effectively where the main road on which they were travelling had side streets off; what Harpur meant by ‘geographically subtle’. The escaping vehicle had to get into that maze of minor routes and capitalize on the series of corners, service lanes, and junctions there, so that by the time the tail could enter this network, the fugitive had disappeared, leaving no indication for the tracker to know which of many turnings to take. The target might well get back on to the main drag from another exit point eventually and either resume its journey untroubled, or go home and make the trip on another, safer, unattended day.
Rossol and Harpur played out this episode of road theatre now, Harpur, at the end, infuriated by the simplicity of it, and the predictability of it, but not simple and predictable enough for him to cope and keep a hold on her. If Iles had been here he … But bollocks to Iles! Iles definitely was not here. Harpur had to handle the situation solo, just him and a pool Golf. The Peugeot had one vehicle immediately ahead, the white van of a green grocery firm. Harpur had been two small cars back from her – a Clio and a Mini – with a satisfactory view of the Peugeot, chuntering at a comfortable built-up area speed just above thirty mph.
But suddenly the Peugeot accelerated and brazenly started to go around the grocer’s van, not actually ignoring oncoming items – a silver Merc estate and another van, workaday grey, in the lead – but discounting them, signalling to them that they were not entitled to the slice of roadway fancied by the Peugeot.
Well, of course, of course, the Peugeot did all that. Harpur knew he ought to have anticipated it. But this woman was a surprise. Should she have been, though? Rossol went around the grocer’s van, forcing the Merc to swerve and brake and the grey van to skid and finish across both traffic lanes. The Peugeot nicely avoided these new, temporary obstructions, edged its way neatly between them and turned at mad speed into the mouth of a side street. For a couple of minutes Harpur and the Golf were blocked in by the Mercedes and the grey van. Neither was damaged, both still mobile, and slowly they picked their way back on to their proper route. Foot-down, Harpur put the Golf into the minor road and, as he’d expected, saw nothing of the Peugeot. He kept going at his own mad speed, turned right and right again. Still nothing. He felt as if he’d been on a training exercise with an instructor who’d done this kind of gifted ritual so often that error for her was unimaginable. Art fieldwork seemed to involve special skills, not all of them obviously to do with painting and sculpture. This had shocked and flummoxed Harpur. Would it have shocked and flummoxed Iles? Bollocks to Iles.
NINETEEN
Near the fag end of his jinxed search, Harpur found himself driving along a short street of late-Georgian houses that always delighted him with their elegance and muted charm. He loved the narrow glazing bars of the neat windows, and the rendered facades in gentle pastel shades – ochre, turquoise, pink, light blue; no fucking use to him today, of course. Green. He wanted the green Peugeot.
A healthy looking middle-aged woman, with forcefully auburned hair, and wearing a kind of multicoloured sarong and tan hiking boots, had come out of a pink-themed house and stood on the pavement watching Harpur and the Golf, her eyes big, placid, brown. He drew in near her and lowered the driver’s window again, as he had at the nursery to hear the tree house pleas. He asked the woman here if she’d seen the Peugeot and, if so, whether she’d noticed which way it turned, right or left, at the next junction.
‘Who are you?’ she replied in a large, conservation-area voice.
‘There would be one occupant, a young woman,’ Harpur said, ‘full of filthy driving tricks, a contempt for the normal rules of motoring.’
‘Who are you?’
‘As I say, the car was probably shifting, at some pace,’ Harpur replied.
‘Who are you?’
‘It’s a personal matter, between her and me, as you’d expect, I expect – oh, dear, much expecting!’ Harpur replied. ‘No need to embroil others in the least, except to ask very basic guidance.’
‘What is a personal matter? Who are you?’ she said.
‘As a matter of fact I’ve heard someone else ask that lately,’ Harpur replied.
‘What?’
‘“Who are you?”
‘Well, and what’s the answer?’ she asked.
‘To what?’
‘Who are you?’
‘In my own case, you mean?’ Harpur replied.
‘Why not?’
‘These personal matters can get very pressing, because … well, because they’re personal,’ he said. ‘This is widely recognized. Identity is so intriguing, isn’t it?’
‘Personal in which respect?’
‘Yes, personal,’ Harpur replied.
‘You might not believe it, but we get all sorts coming down this street,’ she said. ‘However, perhaps that’s in the nature of an urban setting. Not wishing to be rude, but you now are one of those “all sorts” using the street.’
‘I’m after one particular vehicle,’ Harpur said. ‘A good deal after by now.’
‘With what intent are you “after” it, to use your rather baroque phrase?’
‘Personal.’
‘That tells me sweet fanny-all,’ she replied.
‘True,’ Harpur said. ‘It’s what’s known as a summarizing term.’
‘That would be fine if we knew what it was summarizing,’ she replied.
‘Fair comment.’
‘There’s one thing I hate to see,’ she replied. ‘You’ll wish to know what it is.’
‘Is it to do with unplumped up cushions? Or possibly safari park animals in Kenya?’ Harpur asked.
‘I hate to see someone male, regardless of age, in a VW.’
‘The name Volkswagen means “the people’s car”. That’s all people, no matter what gender or height.’
‘Just the same.’
‘You’re against all VWs?’
‘I don’t distinguish.’
‘A kind of allergy? Like some people with peanuts? Look, next time I come this way I’ll make sure it’s in a different vehicle. That’s easily arranged. I can choose from several.’
‘It’s not much to ask, is it?’ she said.
‘Minimal,’ Harpur said. ‘I’m not boasting about car ownership. Where I work there’s a pool.’
‘Now and then if I’m feeling in need of a bit of burnishing, a bit of stimulation, I mock up a crisis with the electric light or water heater,’ she replied. She spoke confidently, as if certain Harpur would sympathize. ‘I’ll ring the local firm, and they’ll send someone out. They have several slim, very intelligent lads there, totally spruce, despite having to deal with wiring under floorboards and in cubby holes day in day out. They naturally get intimations when they find there’s nothing really wrong with the electric at all. In due course they’ll invoice me for something minor, but in a house as old as these you have to expect repair bills.’
‘Do they come quickly?’ Harpur asked.
‘What? What?’
‘When you ring.’
‘I’ve never seen one of them in a VW of any shade or marque,’ she replied. ‘So, you’ll appreciate my present position.’
‘I don’t know whether proper research has been done on that,’ Harpur said.
‘What?’
‘Reliable data about the use, or absence of use, of VWs by on-the-job electrical engineers. Are you on the lookout now for other spruce lads?’
‘Adolf wa
s behind the Volkswagen project, wasn’t he? That’s another reason to have reservations about the model, models,’ she replied.
‘I suppose since the EU we are all volk now,’ Harpur said.
‘I have the feeling that you and I are on very similar, interweaving wavelengths. I’m wondering if you’d like to come in. I don’t want to seem inhospitable and starchy.’
‘You’re the least starchy person I’ve ever had a conversation with through a Golf window. Your invitation is kind, but I’m hopeless with electricity. I might fuse everything. And I have to do some tracing.’
‘All you can think of is that damn green Peugeot, your face scrunched up in concentration.’
‘Did you see it?’
‘A woman driving – no passengers?’
‘She’d be wearing a thong,’ Harpur replied.
‘Exceeding the speed limit.’
‘Which way did she go?’
‘I wasn’t interested.’
‘You didn’t notice whether she went left or right?’
‘Of what possible significance might that be to me?’ she said.
‘You mean, the Peugeot could offer no burnishing or stimulation?’
‘How could it?’ she asked.
‘Would this be the same for all Peugeots, as with the VWs? Do the electrical boys ever come in a Peugeot?’
‘Just don’t drive down this damn street in a VW again,’ she answered.
‘I’m going to try left.’
‘Why not?’
‘Even if you did return at some time, there’s no guarantee I’d be here like this. My temperament has its … well, temperamental aspects. Moods are not set in stone. And I go hill walking. These boots have taken me safely across many a non-urban escarpment.’