Vacuum

by Bill James

  She knew the invasion of their house had really shaken Ralph, not just because of that disgusting episode itself, but because of what it told. It told a lot. It told that the special Iles formula of trade tolerance as payback for street peace had been abruptly shut down. Ralph and his family and his property were treated as any old lag and his family and property might have been treated. Iles said they shouldn’t consider the raid as spinning Ralph’s drum – to use the gross police lingo: just what it was, though, and, obviously, Iles knew it. His remark had been a poisoned slice of waggery, a contemptuous tease. Ralph would be badly upset. Because of his resemblance to the young Charlton Heston, she knew some thought of him as radiating the dignity and worth of Heston’s great, heroic roles: El Cid, Moses, Ben Hur; El Cid especially. He’d realize that for them to learn his fine home had been thoroughly thoroughfared by a four thirty a.m. law posse with a warrant would be an appalling shock, possibly not recoverable from.

  Although Margaret saw nearly every bit of these Chuck Heston comparisons as idiotic film flimflam, she knew they counted for Ralph and garrisoned his ramshackle ego. It troubled her that if they ceased to work, his morale and his self-image might collapse. They had always been fragile, despite his showmanship. Yes, she’d heard there were men in the business who’d shared dodgy situations in the past with her husband and who now referred to him as Panicking Ralph, or Panicking Ralphy, nicknames that made him sound like a gibbering dud. She hated this, had to help him prove them mistaken, envious and evil, even if they weren’t mistaken; most of all if they weren’t mistaken. Who’d want to be linked to a Ralphy wreck? She’d admit there came times when, looking at him in the right half light, she, also, saw El Cid. Or Ben Hur. Hadn’t she thought of him like that when that bloody raid on Low Pastures started and she’d been ashamed of her half-formed intention to quit with the kids? It was a privilege to back him, wasn’t it? Wasn’t it? She needed to witness and have a part in that legendary dignity and worth.

  Something else Iles had said during the house search remained stark in her memory: the security difficulties at Low Pastures. An abundance of growth offered cover even in winter for anyone wanting to approach the house and grounds unobserved. She stood with Ralph now in one of the paddocks, watching Venetia and Fay on their Welsh cob ponies practise gymkhana jumps, Venetia riding Jasmine, Fay with Billyboy. Because of Iles, Margaret found her attention kept turning away, though. She had to stare and re-stare towards the strung-out beech copse, the shrubbery and hedges, which stood between Low Pastures and Aspley Farm. She eye-hunted for any kind of unusual movement.

  It was still her fears for the two girls that disquieted her most. She worried about Ralph as a target, also, and about herself, but less intensely than for the children. She had locked herself into a kind of tit-for-tat logic: Laurent Shale had been shot, and therefore Ralph Ember’s daughters could be, should be, must be, vengeance objects. The fact that Shale’s second wife was also shot mattered, but it was Laurent’s death that brought Margaret Ember her major terrors. Some people in the business thought Ralph must have masterminded the Sandicott Terrace ambush. She didn’t know whether they had it right or not. She found that ultimately it didn’t matter. God, this did come as a shock and revelation, though. She was his, he was hers, and they must stay together. Although her fears for their children remained great, the conviction that she must not leave Ralph had become a crucial fraction greater.

  But, of course, she would like proof that her worries about retaliation against her daughters were unnecessary, were even foolish. Perhaps Manse Shale, and the successor to Manse Shale, didn’t at all believe Ralph had fixed the Jag shooting. They might know who did. Or think they knew. That should be enough. It would take the danger away from the Ember household. When she made that solo trip to Sandicott Terrace and saw the distance – the lack of distance – where the two cars must have briefly stood alongside each other, she’d registered acute doubt that Naomi Shale had been killed by mistake, the actual objective, Mansel. She could accept that the boy was probably shot by accident: collateral damage, as the military called it. But would even the most inexperienced and jittery gunman fail to see that this was a woman, not Manse, driving, and open up regardless?

  And if, in fact, the shots were meant for Naomi Shale and not her husband, this would surely mean Ralph had no involvement. It might be credible that in the constant, traditional aim for monopoly, Ralph would want Manse removed – on the face of it a friend, but also a massive rival and competitor, with his own menacing lust for monopoly. That kind of motivation could not apply to Naomi. She’d come to Manse and this area from London. Had she brought her own enemies? There’d been rumours saying so, though not generally given much belief. If this attack was private to Naomi, with the death of Laurent only incidental, then there should be no threat to Ralph, herself, Venetia or Fay. Iles’s analysis of the unprotected approach to Low Pastures was what she had called it before: only his kind of cruel, alarmist tease.

  Margaret and Ralph left the two girls working the ponies and went back towards the house. Although winter was certainly settling in, red, white and yellow roses and dark-blue chrysanthemums bloomed in the flower beds. She’d read somewhere lately that a famous writer, V.S. Naipaul, thought colour in a garden suburban and to be avoided. This sounded rather sweeping and harsh. In any case, nobody could term Low Pastures suburban. It was great-house rural.

  Ralph put an arm around Margaret’s shoulders as they walked. Perhaps he sensed her anxieties and felt he must comfort her. In fact, his gesture scared her more, almost to the point of throwing up under the pergola. It made him seem so thick-headedly confident, so would-be rock-like and celluloid masterful.

  ‘I’m sorry about the raid and foul intrusion, Maggie,’ he said. ‘One day, and possibly not very far off, we’ll be out of the kind of trade that brought such incivility and downright bullying.’

  Yes, he sounded assured and magnificently in control. He obviously didn’t mean that Iles and Harpur would wipe out his business. Instead, he hinted that, at a time he chose, and possibly quite soon, he would himself decide to close his trading operations: retire from drugdom to run The Monty as a full-time commitment, and possibly other interests, legitimate interests.

  Ralph said: ‘I know you were pushed off balance a little witnessing that troop swarm all over Low Pastures, and also having to listen to Iles and his mischief. It will end, I promise.’ He gave her an extra squeeze with his arm to underline his grand intentions. She found it silly and binding. He could be such an oafish dreamer. He needed her guidance, while he idiotically thought he was guiding her. She had to be here to save him from his illusions.

  ‘And did you have a warning they’d invade?’ she replied.

  Ralph enjoyed a big, noisy laugh. She thought of it as the kind of laugh specialized in by owners of large, historic properties with acres, a squire-type laugh, full, resonant, far beyond a chuckle, not too far off a guffaw. ‘That notion really upset Harpur, didn’t it?’ he said. ‘They consider themselves so smart. My remark got through instantly, made them wonder if they were smart at all!’

  ‘Did you have a warning?’ she said.

  ‘One can’t run a firm without information.’

  ‘What else do you hear?’

  ‘Much of it useless. An occasional brilliant insight,’ he said.

  She wanted the occasional brilliant insight herself. She didn’t expect to get it from Ralph. Margaret never really knew what kind of information he was giving her. He could fantasize, as his lunatic ambitions for the club showed. Half his life seemed to be fantasy, not the earning half. Most likely this talk of retirement from drugs commerce was fantasy. Maybe Manse’s withdrawal had implanted the idea, though she would have expected the reverse: Mansel’s abdication should make the competition against Ralph weaker, with a very fallible learner apparently in charge.

  Even though Manse Shale had quit, she didn’t think she could go and ask him whether he and his people sus
pected Ralph of laying on the Sandicott Terrace murders, making him therefore radiantly eligible for reprisals, along with Margaret and the girls. What kind of answers would she get from him, even if he agreed to see her while he still mourned? The search for the truth would have to be subtler than that. She didn’t know how to find the new chief executive – the one they called General Franco, actual name Arlington – and wouldn’t really expect truth from him, either; perhaps not even sense: she understood he could fantasize better than Ralph, almost enough to get him sectioned.

  She did know someone who’d been number three or four in Manse Shale’s outfit, Jason Wensley. She knew his partner, Karen Lister, too. Margaret had met and liked them at some Monty function and afterwards chauffeured the pair home because they’d drunk too much. People in the firms avoided what could seem small defiances of the law. They didn’t want to antagonize the police at any level. Harmony should be coddled. Even at that time, Margaret had realized it might be useful to know where Karen and Jason lived. Karen had seemed very friendly and open-minded. Margaret hadn’t thought it was only the booze. Occasionally, she felt she’d love to talk to someone in the same kind of situation as herself – not criminal, but tied to a man who was. There’d be problems to share, worries to discuss and perhaps diminish, perhaps dispel.

  Yes, she’d like to see Karen now, chat to her, put some possibly oblique questions to her, woman to woman. Karen might have picked up something of intentions in the Shale guild; had possibly heard where its members put the blame for Sandicott Terrace. Margaret thought she might feel comfortable trying Karen.

  Wednesday evenings in the autumn and winter she went to a Keep Fit class near the city centre. She decided she’d leave that half an hour early so she could call in on Karen and, perhaps, Jason. This was the kind of visit she wouldn’t tell Ralph about. It suggested – didn’t it? – that she couldn’t trust him to tell the truth about Sandicott. She couldn’t, but it was unnecessary to make this plain. Margaret wouldn’t have to worry about the children if Ralph had no part in the killings, and if Shale and his staff believed this. Obviously, these were not identical points. She rated the second as more important. Perhaps Karen Lister could reassure on that. If she didn’t – couldn’t – might Margaret have to start thinking again about taking the children away, despite her resolution to do what she could to prop him, even in his stupidities and evasions?

  NINE

  Harpur wondered whether Karen Lister really understood what Jill had called, in her know-all, read-everything, muckraking way, omertà: the holy, crook gospel of buttoned lip. Karen Lister would have heard of it, naturally. She wasn’t dim or ignorant. But did she appreciate its strength, feel – actually feel – its power: an imported strength and power, yes, a Mafia concoction, but in play here, too, on this patch? Its purpose was the same as in that native Italian scene, or scenes, if Jill had things right about the Naples variant.

  Karen seemed to think it would be safe and effective for Harpur to arrive at the house and announce he’d been tipped-off that Jason meant to wipe out General Franco, but must immediately cancel because, (i) it was known about, (ii) it was dangerous, and (iii) it was against the law, Iles’s law or Sir Matthew Upton’s. Iles’s and Sir Matthew’s ideas on the law might vary about drugs policing, but they’d be closer on something like murder, though Iles didn’t much mind when villains killed one another.

  If Harpur did call at their place, she might be present when he made the declaration and would probably act shocked. Did she think this would fool Jason? She wasn’t Dame Dench. ‘My God, Jason, it would be an appalling risk. Please, drop the idea. Now, please!’ Although there might be other possible sources for Harpur’s information, as he’d told her, she would be the most obvious. Perhaps Karen reckoned she could manage Jason, even if he did suspect. This was what made Harpur fear she didn’t really grasp the force of the omertà edict. A love-match partnership couldn’t compete.

  Harpur hesitated to expose her, and expose her for what, after all, was only a series of guesses, not a stack of facts: Jason might believe the new hands-on supremo of the firm, Arlington-Franco, lacked boss qualities; might feel re-fighting the Spanish Civil War a byway; might intend to replace Franco; might try to do it by force; might get hurt or worse in any battle for the leadership. A thick goulash of maybes.

  Harpur decided he would not drop in at their house: too direct, too blatantly set up, and set up by Karen. No, he’d take an evening drive around the main dealing district near Valencia Esplanade and the docks and hope to come across Jason on his foreman duties; or perhaps he was higher than that now. The chieftain topic could be slipped in as part of casual chat, not its flagrant only purpose. This seeming casualness would be difficult to phrase – not, for instance, ‘Oh, by the way, Jason, I heard you want to kill General Franco’ – but Harpur believed it feasible. Dealers had become used to Iles’s relaxed regime, so no longer cleared the district when Harpur or any other officer turned up, though their alarm system would announce he had entered the area.

  Karen and Jason had a semi in a spruce district, not all that far from Iles’s home in Rougement Place. Pavement dog-shit here would be pedigree. Harpur planned to take a bit of a detour through their street and . . . and what? Check the property hadn’t burned down? Make sure their recycling bin was out on the proper date? Not much else would be evident. It struck him as on a par with those senseless subsequent visits he made to Sandicott Terrace, a half-baked reflex, an obsession with place, rather than what had happened in that place. He’d tootle past their house and learn nothing, except it was still there. He went, anyway. The reflexes might be half-baked but were compulsive. He drove slowly and tried to get his brain to unscramble why he gave in to this kind of time-wasting, dumbo saunter.

  For once, his brain told him he had no need to be stuck in such palsied nonsense. He could park, get out of the car and ring the doorbell, couldn’t he? Where was the snag? Where exactly was the snag? He had an answer, of course: safety – Karen Lister’s. This visit might put her in peril. But, to counter that, couldn’t he do some acting himself? All this assumed Jason was at home. Would he be out working? His file recorded that, like most big-time drugs people, he drove a BMW. Harpur couldn’t see it parked near the house, but they had a garage. Suppose Jason were there, then: Harpur would tell him that multi-whispers came from top-grade informants, saying he planned something very rough. Top-grade informants did exist, though they hadn’t come up with anything on a possible putsch. Harpur might remind him that Iles deplored such potentially bloody moves, the opposite of street peace. Harpur would add he didn’t like them himself. Hence the warning. Karen could be kept out of it.

  And as a result of the pondering, Harpur gradually came to feel freed up, no longer zombified. He did what his mind had told him was OK: parked, got out of the car and rang the doorbell. The abrupt reversal of tactics recalled for him how Karen had hurried away from Harpur’s house, then all at once turned back for that original meeting. Perhaps she and he were both liable to get kicked up the arse and vitalized by second thoughts. Harpur didn’t mind taking a lesson from her. Iles often told him he needed to expand his thinking. In a kindlier tone than the Assistant Chief’s, Denise occasionally hinted the same. She thought he wasn’t by nature dull, but nearly always mentally sort of jet-lagged and frazzled through trying to keep Iles from calamity. Ringing this bell Harpur regarded as character development. He’d ditched the do-nothing ritual, at least for now. The front door lacked the majesty of the one Iles had ridicule-revered at Low Pastures. A kid on a scooter could have ridden right through it without injury.

  Karen answered the bell. She looked strained, and perhaps had been crying, but was still a wonderfully beautiful sight. Those strong, high cheekbones stopped any serious slump of her face. She seemed startled to see him. Had he made a mistake, after all, by arriving at the house? Did it frighten and annoy her? She’d wanted him to talk to Jason, but had never said where. Perhaps Harpur’s own doub
ts about the wisdom of calling here had been correct. ‘Do you know something?’ she said. She asked it as if afraid of the answer. She was tense, apprehensive, her voice shaky.

  ‘Know what?’

  ‘Have you come to tell me something? Have you?’

  He saw now why his arrival disturbed her. She thought he had bad news that must be given face-to-face. Telling people bad news face-to-face was a standard police duty. Harpur said: ‘You wanted me to have a word with Jason.’

  ‘Oh. I see. That’s all?’

  ‘What else?’

  ‘I was afraid you might have heard he’s—’ She tried to get better control of herself, even tried a smile. It didn’t work, or come anywhere near working. At times Harpur would try to sketch in his mind how it must be for a woman like Karen, partnered with a man whose career was almost total murk. All right, people argued about whether the drugs business should be illegal or not, but as things stood supplying remained criminal, and so did many of the saucy side issues of that profession: total evasion of income tax; possible maiming and murder, in defence of a firm’s ground and/or to colonize by force someone else’s. Karen feared Jason was about to use some of that violence on a seeming workmate, Michael Redvers Arlington, alias General Franco. This scared her enough to ignore the silence rule, spill her worries to a cop, and invite him to abort a supposed master stroke by her lover. She lived on the proceeds from his crooked job, but had limits to what she could put up with. This kind of quandary must be continuous for someone like her, and for someone like Margaret Ember.