Vacuum

by Bill James

  ‘You don’t need “like, automatically”,’ Harpur replied. ‘“Automatically” will do.’

  ‘Did that scent send your mind back automatically to the first time you smelled it one day?’ Jill said. ‘Or, of course, night. Some women do more scent at night owing to socializing and so on. I think she’d be an Allure fan.’

  ‘No,’ Harpur said.

  ‘No, what?’ Jill said. ‘You think, not Allure? Something else? Red? Or something else altogether? You know, do you? Which scent was it, then?’

  ‘No, I didn’t recognize her scent – any scent,’ Harpur said. ‘How could I if I’ve never met her?’ And scent wouldn’t figure in her file.

  ‘That’s what we’re talking about, isn’t it, Dad?’ Jill replied.

  ‘What?’

  ‘Did you know her, but have forgotten you knew her, and the scent might remind you you knew her,’ Jill said, ‘leading to a complete memory of that previous meeting? This is the kind of thing memory can do. Why I said “tricky”.’

  ‘No,’ Harpur said.

  ‘Why didn’t she just ring up and arrange to see you, Dad, not street-loiter?’ Hazel said. ‘We’re in the book.’

  ‘Some people don’t trust phones,’ Jill said.

  ‘So she displays herself in Arthur Street instead? If she was wearing sandwich boards with “I’m looking for Col Harpur” on she wouldn’t have been more obvious,’ Hazel said. ‘She leaves her car out of sight, so you might think she knew something about security and undercover, but then she struts along in front of the house, and then struts away from the house so fast anyone would know she’s only in the street because of number 126.’

  ‘Desperate people do things that aren’t always very brainy,’ Jill replied. ‘She said she “bumped into” Dad, though we know she’d been on the prowl, so that wasn’t very brainy either. I suppose she had to say something to explain why she was there. But because of stress she chose something stupid.’

  ‘Do you think she’s to do with the Shale situation, Dad?’ Hazel said.

  ‘This is a case with many sides,’ Jill replied.

  ‘There are difficulties with it,’ Harpur said.

  ‘If you regard her as just a nuisance, there’s no need to go back to the house immediately, even though it’s arranged,’ Jill said. ‘She’ll call there, but if you didn’t show she’d realize that wasn’t the way you wanted to do things, such as a police matter, a work matter. It should be dealt with at the nick. Too bad she doesn’t like going there. If she wants something she got to follow the right procedure. Pity she’s not here now. I’d say, “Sorry, Karen, but that’s the picture.”’

  ‘Has to follow the right procedure,’ Harpur replied.

  ‘Yes, she has to,’ Jill said.’

  ‘I believe she’s a moll of some sort,’ Hazel said.

  ‘What’s that?’ Jill said.

  ‘In a crook’s crew, or partner of a crook,’ Hazel said. ‘It’s the mixture of breeziness and nerves. These I noted in her.’

  ‘I’ll probably see her briefly at home,’ Harpur replied.

  ‘I don’t think it’s wise, Dad,’ Jill said.

  ‘Why?’ he said.

  ‘It doesn’t seem . . . well, it doesn’t seem very suitable, that’s all,’ Jill said.

  ‘Why?’ Harpur said.

  ‘Yes, unsuitable,’ Jill said.

  ‘I agree with Hazel,’ Harpur replied. ‘This woman has troubles. We’re here to give help when there are troubles.’

  ‘Which “we” is that?’ Jill said.

  ‘Police,’ Harpur said.

  ‘Or what if Ilesy suddenly calls at 126, like, not expected one bit, the way he does?’ Jill said. ‘Even now when he’s not after Haze any longer and flashing his crimson scarf.’

  ‘Creature,’ Hazel replied.

  ‘So?’ Harpur said.

  ‘You’re there with another woman in the house, not old. Older than Denise, but not old,’ Jill said. ‘Purple slingbacks. Boobs.’

  ‘In the way of business,’ Harpur said.

  ‘He’ll believe that?’ Jill said. ‘This is why I say unsuitable.’

  Harpur pulled in at the judo. ‘Pick you up here at the usual time,’ he said.

  ‘Maybe I should come back with you now,’ Jill said. ‘Haze can stay. If Des Iles called in it would be all right then, because I’d be in the house as well, saying I had to miss judo because too much homework.’

  ‘No, it will be fine,’ Harpur said. He put their sports bags out on the pavement.

  ‘You seem in quite a hurry,’ Jill said.

  Of course it pissed him off now and then, this obsession of theirs with women he met, but he understood where their uneasiness came from and so didn’t show he resented it and felt monitored by it. If you were the single parent in a single parent family, you ought to try to avoid too much single-parent rattiness, otherwise the children would come to regard rattiness as natural to being a parent: they’d have no other current experience of parenthood for comparison. He drove back to the house and tidied up the place a bit.

  Although, these days, he liked the big sitting-room, it used to darken his soul and cause him shortness of breath when Megan was alive because she had her books on hardwood shelves, floor to ceiling, around all four walls. He thought the spine-names on some of these pitiless volumes would have depressed almost anyone, not just himself. He kept a few of the titles fully and accurately in his head so he could relish the fact they’d been carted away free on a strictly non-return basis by a dealer. It used to buck him up when he felt forlorn if he made his mind recall, one by fucking one, these gloriously gone works: Old Fortunatus, The Rules and Exercises of Holy Dying, Edwin Drood, The Virtues of Sid Hamet the Magician’s Rod, U And I. He’d had the shelves removed, and the room redecorated, a decent, respectful while after Megan’s death. It would have been crude and unfeeling to do an immediate chuck.

  Jill had wanted a couple of the collection for herself – one on boxing, The Sweet Science, and one the diary of a playwright called Orton – but the rest went. He would have hated for this woman, Karen Lister, to come into the house seeking help and get unnerved, even panicked, by sight of that smug, engulfing, interminable book depot.

  He drew the curtains after he led Karen in. She’d expect that. The sitting room had windows on to the street, and she wanted this visit discreet, not blatant under lights. It was usual to close the curtains on autumn and winter evenings, so the kids would not be able to kick up about crafty concealment for something sexual.

  Karen Lister said: ‘I’m trying to work out where you stand in all this.’

  ‘All which?’

  ‘The drugs tableau.’

  ‘I’m a police officer.’

  ‘So is the one called Iles mentioned by your daughter. Everyone knows he has his own views re drugs. He thinks decriminalize, doesn’t he, with more money for treatment? Like in Portugal.’

  ‘Mr Iles is concerned with big-time strategy.’

  ‘How about you?’

  ‘I’m a police officer.’

  ‘And then this new Chief,’ she replied. ‘A dawn raid on Ralphy Ember’s house. You were there, weren’t you, and Iles, although the operation was run by someone else. Symbolic, your and Iles’s presence? So, where are we?’

  ‘Gossip gets around.’

  ‘When I say, “Where are we?” what I mean is, are Ralphy Ember and his firm to be wiped out?’

  Yes, if Upton could manage it, Ember was to be eliminated as first stage in something larger. ‘I’d be interested to know where you pick up your rumours,’ he said.

  ‘The changes – potential changes – bewilder me,’ she said. ‘They’re frightening.’

  He made tea and served it in proper china cups decorated with blue leaves and tendrils, plus matching saucers. He was keen on china and thought he might do some systematic study and buying when he retired. He loved how, with the best examples, something solid like the side of a cup could be almost transparen
t.

  ‘So?’ Hazel had said when he spoke admiringly of it one day. His daughters considered this interest an affectation and ‘salon snobby’, as Hazel termed it. Jill didn’t seem to get what ‘salon’ meant, but she agreed about the snobbery. He’d seen them pour tea out of the cups he’d used when they had company and into stubby beige mugs.

  For the meeting with Karen Lister, he’d also marged some slices of currant bread and arranged these on a large plate from the same set. She seemed to enjoy the snack. Hazel usually made sure some of the bread in the cupboard was reasonably fresh.

  ‘You’ve got a file on me, I expect,’ Karen Lister said.

  ‘I deliberately don’t go ex-directory so that anyone with a problem who thinks I might be useful can look me up in the book and get in touch,’ Harpur replied. ‘I’m glad you took advantage of that.’

  ‘I try to imagine what that file would record,’ she said. ‘Karen Louise Lister, born January 1985, no convictions, live-in girlfriend-slash-partner of Jason Ivan Claud Wensley, number three or possibly four in the Shale hierarchy. There might be amendments to that last part since Manse has withdrawn. Jason’s probably number two now, after Michael Redvers Arlington, aka General Franco.’

  Yes, as far as Harpur could recall, the entry might be something like that. It would be brief, with little on her physical appearance. She signified only as a side item to the boyfriend: no need for a lot of identification stuff. Jill was right about the fair-to-mousy cowlick. Behind it, the rest of her hair hung straight to just above her shoulders. Jill was also right about the slimness, along, though, with what she called ‘boobs’. Lister had dark-blue eyes, a short-nosed, wary looking, strong cheek-boned face, fine skin, full lips, and small, even teeth. It all assembled into something as near to beautiful as anyone was likely to get. But he doubted whether that wary look was wary enough. Did she know how she was risking herself? That is, really know. She knew it sort of logically, theoretically, and had kept alert in case she had a tail. But did she know the perils in the way real perils were known – by feeling them continuously at her centre, a non-stop burn?

  With corpses, he’d always found a display of small, regular teeth in a part-open mouth especially awful, as though that mouth still wanted to say something, perhaps joke, or amend, or bite a slice of currant loaf.

  She sat straight-backed on the chesterfield, occasionally lifting or replacing her cup and saucer on a coffee table. She’d be about five foot nine inches tall, getting towards six feet in the slingbacks. Her accent wasn’t local. He thought maybe anglicized, educated Welsh.

  ‘That assault on Low Pastures – people are bound to ask what it signifies, aren’t they,’ she said, ‘after all the previous non-intervention by Iles and the rest of you. It’s like ravaging a cathedral. Until now, a kind of reverence for the place, Ralphy and Margaret Ember’s shrine. Iles looks after them, just as he tried to look after Manse Shale. All right, the Embers can be charming, perhaps earn some special treatment. There’s Ralph with the young Chuck Heston glow. And Margaret is sweet – gave us a lift home one night from The Monty when we’d drunk too much celebrating someone’s suspended sentence.’

  ‘Which people are bound to ask?’

  ‘Two possibilities lie behind all this, don’t they? Maybe three?’ she said. ‘First, Ralphy has upset Iles somehow, so that’s the end of tolerance. This would devastate Margaret. Second, Iles has been overruled by your new Chief who hates the ACC’s blind-eye drugs policy and will work to end it, and make you and he work to end it: maybe the new Chief has been posted here with particular orders to smash the drugs set-up. Third, Iles has himself lost belief in that policy – maybe because of the Shale killings – and decided permissiveness doesn’t function after all.’

  ‘You study these things, do you?’ Harpur said.

  ‘I study them because some of us might get hurt.’

  ‘Which “us” is that?’

  ‘Us. Me, for instance. My partner, Jason Wensley. You’ll have a bigger file on him.’

  Yes, there was a hefty dossier on Jason, and, besides this, Harpur had seen him now and then around Valencia Esplanade and other drug-dealing spots in what seemed some sort of managerial, whipper-in role. ‘Ah, files,’ he said. ‘Police are turning into bureaucrats. RIP Dirty Harry.’

  ‘I’d love to see what you’ve got re Jason.’

  ‘Does he know you’ve come here to talk to me?’ Harpur replied.

  She stared at him across the considerable segment of currant loaf on its way to her teeth, which she halted now. ‘Of course he doesn’t,’ she said. ‘What would I tell him? How would I put it? “Oh, by the way, Jase, I’m popping over to see that charming cop, Harpur, and will let him know I’m scared more or less paralytic in case you get killed because of your plotting, and would like him to intervene and prevent it.”’ She completed the bread move and munched slowly, as though she thought she had squashed Harpur by this surge of sarcasm and could now concentrate on her vittles.

  ‘You’re acting solely as you?’ he asked.

  ‘I’m acting solely as me, but because I fret about him. He’s got some scheme. He’s got some associates. They hobnob on the quiet. They’re preparing something.’

  ‘The plotting?’ Harpur found his own frets growing, but for her. He felt pretty certain he would have been as concerned even if she’d been plain, with poor legs. Or he hoped that was true. Anything other would be debased. She sat very upright. Her legs, slantwise and together, but not discouragingly together, seemed to him how a woman’s legs ought to be. He’d prefer that Hazel and Jill didn’t see her sitting like this. ‘Will Jason wonder where you are?’ he said. ‘Will others wonder where you are? The general scene is quite tense since Sandicott and then Mansel’s move out.’

  ‘I could be anywhere. Around the shops? I’m not kept on a leash.’

  ‘But you’re not anywhere. You’re here.’

  ‘You think your house is watched?’

  ‘I think you might be, Karen.’

  ‘I said I paid attention to the mirror.’

  ‘This is not the driving test. You could be dealing with very smart people who know every tailing trick. They don’t cling close to your backside. They don’t pose in your mirror. Then, there’s your car, parked and standing a long while.’

  ‘Among other cars. Not yelling for notice.’

  ‘People in the noticing trade don’t expect what they’re looking for to yell at them. They notice what many would regard as unnoticeable.’

  ‘I deliberately left it a distance from your house.’

  ‘They might allow for that.’

  ‘Oh, God, Harpur, you bring endless objections. Why would they imagine I might be flaky?’

  ‘Some of them suspect everyone always. You might have given off signs you’re not aware of.’

  ‘You’re saying I shouldn’t have come?’

  ‘Well, I’m—’

  ‘I couldn’t see what else to do.’ She spoke it plain: no tremble or tears or face slump. She chewed more currant loaf. He felt pretty sure currant loaf didn’t possess aphrodisiac qualities. ‘You just told me you were here for people with difficulties,’ she said. ‘I have difficulties.’

  That stabbed him. ‘Stay put. I’ll go and have a look at the street.’ He left the house and walked a slow couple of hundred metres leftwards, but having a good all-directions gaze. He didn’t see anything to perturb him. What the fuck did that mean, though? There were people about. A few he recognized as neighbours. The others meant nothing to him. Essentially, this stroll added up to that same nothing. Useless. Token. It was on a par with his later visits, revisits, to Sandicott Terrace. Gesture. Twitch. Pantomime. Let’s-play-detective.

  He tried to work out whether one or more of these unknowns seemed especially focused on him, or on the house. But members of that noticing trade he’d spoken of would take care they noticed without being noticed noticing: a basic skill. He might even be making things worse. He didn’t often, if ev
er, do patrols on foot in Arthur Street and stare through 360 degrees. Would his absurd saunter flag up something exceptional? Did he look as though he might be on reconnaissance? If so, why was it needed? He mustn’t prolong the stroll, anyway. He’d have to go and fetch his daughters soon.

  ‘I mentioned a scheme. You’ll ask what kind of scheme,’ Karen Lister said when he returned. ‘My partner Jason’s scheme.’

  ‘What kind of scheme?’ Harpur said.

  ‘If Ralph Ember’s company is blitzed, no matter what the reason, there’ll be increased possibilities for any firm that’s not Ralph Ember’s. This is Jason’s thinking. Take Ember out and what’s left – a vacuum where his outfit used to be?’

  ‘Nature abhors a vacuum,’ Harpur replied.

  ‘These ancient maxims can tell us something occasionally. That’s how Jason sees it, too,’ she said. ‘He wants to move in there, grab the abandoned territory, incorporate the excellent business structure built by Ralphy, establish monopoly. I think Jase has at least a couple of collaborators in on the project. But Jason’s definitely kingpin. He originated the idea.’

  So, Iles thought a vacuum because Shale had gone, and Karen’s boyfriend, Wensley, thought a vacuum because Ember would go. Hell, Manse’s withdrawal had brought big destabilization. Harpur found it tough to adjust.

  ‘Look, I’m terrified,’ she said. Again, no facial or body signs to signal inner anxiety.

  Harpur said: ‘So far nothing has—’

  ‘I want you to talk to him, Mr Harpur – to Jason. You’ll have our address in the files. I want you to show you’re aware of his plans. That will stop him. I’m certain that will stop him, and his pals. He thinks the essence of any coup by him is surprise. The situation invites him in, and he must move immediately. He doesn’t know much re such things – how could he? He’s never been in this position before – but he’s read a bit here and there. How all coups operate – surprise.’