by Bill James
‘Jason’s not here,’ she said. She didn’t ask Harpur in but stood back, as if to invite him.
‘Well, he’ll be selling or overseeing somewhere. I’ll look for him,’ Harpur said. So, it was back to plan A. ‘That is, if you still want me to speak to him.’
Her position seemed to Harpur very like Margaret Ember’s, in fact. Margaret and her children had a wonderfully stately existence behind a magnificently solid front door thanks mainly to Ralph’s ardent trade in the substances, but Margaret had at least once, a little while ago, felt she couldn’t accept any longer a life paid for by villainy, even cop-tolerated villainy. Like Karen Lister, Margaret had come to Harpur with her anxieties and, in Margaret Ember’s case, had actually left home, though not for very long.
‘You’ve heard nothing?’ Karen asked.
‘What should I have heard?’
‘People would report to you, wouldn’t they?’
‘Which people?’
‘Your people, police.’
‘Report what?’
‘If there’d been anything.’
‘If there’d been what?’
‘An incident.’
‘Which?’
‘He should be here,’ she said. ‘We were eating in. I’ve been to Tesco.’
They went into a dining room at the rear of the house. There were shopping bags on the table. The floor was close-carpeted in plain beige. A couple of half full red-wine bottles stood on a low, pale-wood sideboard. Four dining chairs matched the sideboard. The walls were emulsioned off-white. There were no pictures. Neither of them sat down.
‘You went to Tesco and came back expecting him to be here?’ Harpur said. ‘Was he at home when you left?’
She nodded. ‘I asked the neighbours.’
‘What?’
‘If they’d seen him go out. God, they must think I’m in a panic attack.’
Harpur would half agree.
‘They told me some people had come for him in a car,’ she said.
‘He went with them?’
‘Two men.’
‘Went willingly?’
‘It wasn’t the kind of thing I’d like to ask, was it? These are our next doors. We have to live here. It wouldn’t sound good if I suggested he’d been muscled into a vehicle, abducted. What sort of people would they think us – to have acquaintances like that?’
She wanted the household to be respected. Margaret Ember possibly longed for something of the same at Low Pastures. Lately, Harpur’s daughter Hazel had been studying a play at school called Juno and the Paycock, by an Irish writer. One of its points, according to Hazel, was that the women characters all seemed to have more sense and sensitiveness than the men, particularly the one called ‘the Paycock’ because of his crazy vanity and showiness. Hazel considered this a very fair glimpse of the difference between the sexes, and so did her teacher, apparently – a woman, of course. Harpur would admit to himself that Karen Lister and Margaret Ember might show more wisdom than their mates, but possibly less moneymaking skill. Denise could be wise, too, although so young, and the nicotine seemed to ginger up her brain and give her extra clarity. Occasionally, or more often, Harpur thought about taking up ciggies himself now Megan could no longer nag him.
Karen said: ‘The neighbours didn’t suggest Jason was forced. They thought the three must be off on a stag night out somewhere. That makes it all sound cheery, doesn’t it? People see what they’d like to see.’
‘Did they say what car?’
‘Just a car. One of them had happened to glance from the front window. They weren’t anticipating anything unusual. They wouldn’t bother about the kind of car. Jason went into the back with one of the men. The other drove.’
‘You didn’t ask?’
‘Again, I’m trying to act normal. This is an ordinary evening in an ordinary street. Or ought to be.’
‘You didn’t get a description of the men?’
‘I couldn’t ask for that, either. I’d have sounded scared. I was scared. Am scared. But I wouldn’t let on to them.’
‘I wondered if you might have recognized the pair from what your neighbours said.’
‘They just mentioned two men.’
‘If they assumed a stag night, the men would most likely be around Jason’s age, I suppose,’ Harpur said.
‘I don’t know.’
‘So, you didn’t ask them much beyond whether they’d seen Jason?’
‘A simple question, not pursued. I acted puzzled, slightly puzzled – said he should have been here, which he should have been.’
‘Had he said anything about going out? About a stag night?’
‘No.’
‘He might have spoken of it a while ago and you’ve forgotten,’ Harpur said.
‘No.’
‘Do the neighbours know his trade?’
‘They know he’s in sales.’
‘Yes, that’s what he’s in, flogging the commodities. I was going to have a drift around the Esplanade area,’ Harpur said. ‘I will now. I imagine there’s been a rota change, and he was needed. That kind of staffing emergency. The two might be his team for tonight. Nothing much to it. You’ve tried his mobile?’
‘Voicemail only. I’ve asked him to call. He doesn’t much like using it.’
‘No, some people don’t.’
‘His sort of people, you mean?’
‘People in that type of specialized commerce. Mobiles are insecure. All phones are insecure, mobiles most. Anyway, it might be better for me to meet him away from your home,’ Harpur said. ‘This was my first idea. It makes things more plausible.’
‘I’ll come with you.’
‘That wouldn’t be clever, Karen.’
‘Why? I want to find him.’
‘You arriving with me in my car? It announces where the information came from, doesn’t it? Others might see, as well as Jason. Yes, it would broadcast. Crazy, I’m afraid.’
‘Please.’
‘Stay here and I’ll keep in touch. I’ve got the number.’
‘You could put me down on the edge of the district. I’d help with the search. We could stay linked by mobile phones.’
‘Best for you not to be walking around alone there,’ Harpur said, and meant it. Perhaps those people in Sandicott Terrace were right when they complained the police had lost control of the streets. Iles hadn’t objected to the charge. Hell, even the Chief Inspector of Constabulary – Britain’s topmost cop – said so a little while ago. There’d been terrible headlines about his findings, and not only in the forever snotty Lefty Press.
Something weird, something glaringly illogical hit Harpur – something anti- logical: for no reason he could pinpoint, he thought the plainness of this room and the dreary paleness of the wood helped him back off from regarding Karen as, above everything else, brilliantly exciting sexually. Instead, he saw her only as a young woman who had turned to the police for help, and who should be helped if he could manage it. He was able to place the urgencies of the job uncontested up front, and not those other urgencies which could niggle and arouse when a man and woman were together unscheduled in an otherwise empty house.
He felt damn proud of this onset of maturity at last. His daughters might have been surprised and pleased. The room said domesticity, and suffered from a beige-ish, wishy-washy, absolute lack of oomph. He gladly inhaled this disenchanted atmosphere as possibly one way to get desire nicely and officially deep dungeoned, on a temporary basis. It had no place now. Good God, there could be a genuine crisis here: Jason picked up by a pair of General Franco’s people – perhaps including the General himself – because there had been other leaks about an insurgent plot, and this was the pre-emptive, preventive, wipe-out strike. Such a conspiracy would be hard to keep confidential, and might produce a bevy of rumours. Clearly Karen sensed this. To call her reaction a panic attack was probably unfair. Panic attacks might have no evident cause. Her present fears had a very definite, clear cause. The General was the kind of s
uccessful soldier who’d have built into him a determination to make the first strike.
‘Please take me with you,’ she said.
But he looked at that bloody foul sideboard and gratefully used the sight to push him towards flintiness. ‘No, I’ll work faster alone,’ he said.
‘I don’t see that.’
Neither did Harpur, but he needed an exit line. ‘I know the district.’
‘All right, so you can show it to me.’
‘But when I showed it to you I’d be showing others that you were with me.’
He drove towards Valencia Esplanade and the tangle of side streets off it. He was in an unmarked Mazda from the police pool. After a couple of miles, when he routinely checked his mirror, he thought he saw Karen’s blue Mini three or four cars back, maybe with only a driver in it, her. He went on and did a lot of rear-view watching. The Mini seemed to stay for about another mile, and then, as he crossed the Valencia’s frontier, it disappeared. Perhaps he had been wrong. There’d be other blue Minis, wouldn’t there? He’d love to be wrong. He’d never had a clear view of the car or driver because of vehicles between. Or possibly she’d done her own version of what she’d suggested earlier: left her car at the edge of the Valencia and started a search for Jason on foot.
He rang their house and got the answerphone. He didn’t talk to it. He should have taken her mobile number, but hadn’t wanted to ask anything that suggested they’d trawl together for her man. How the hell could she have thought that possible? Fright and near-despair must have shut half her brain down. She certainly had one.
He cruised around the Valencia – along the Esplanade itself and through the other, smaller streets. He saw plenty of pushers, and plenty of customers, but not Jason, and not Karen, either. Of course, Jason might be in the Nexus or one of the other clubs. He could be at work aboard The Eton Boating Song, a beautiful, ex-China clipper, now a bar and restaurant moored in Spencer’s Dock at the far end of the Esplanade: a select clientele – academics, media folk, major villains between chokey spells, company executives, soccer agents, Health Service chiefs, airline pilots. It was the only vessel in the dock. Shipping business had dwindled since those days when the Valencia district got its name to mark good trade with Spain. On the land side of the Esplanade were large Victorian houses, once occupied by merchants, chandlers, ship owners, sea captains. Now, they had been converted into flats, were dilapidated and scruffy, and probably due to be demolished and replaced when local authority budgets perked up, or if.
Harpur parked on some waste ground from where he could watch The Eton Boating Song and Nexus and most of the Esplanade. It was a busy evening, very busy for so early. Jason ought to be here somewhere cashing in with his assistants – if Jason was all right. People liked to come down to the Valencia from other, chicer parts of the city for their clubbing and dealing and, perhaps, girling; and they came from outside the city, too. It made them feel undaunted and worldly, bordering on louche. They arrived looking for what he’d heard one classy E.B.S. client describe as ‘frissons’. Apparently, the Valencia gave frissons by the bucketful. This could be a dangerous spot. Of course it could, or Harpur wouldn’t be sitting here searching for at least Jason, and possibly Karen.
Iles’s cherished street tranquillity did not always operate in the Valencia. There were freelance, maverick traders unaware of the unspoken, sanctified agreement with Iles to avoid violence, or who were aware of it but didn’t give a shit. East European and other immigrant dealers sometimes tried to establish themselves in the Valencia. They couldn’t be expected to acknowledge and respect a blessed covenant with the Assistant Chief. They were used to fighting for what they wanted and for what they meant to hold, such as parts of the Valencia, for instance. Big volley battles could suddenly flare, and quieter acts of injury or death, too. So, where was Jason, and, maybe, Karen?
Harpur saw a couple of men, both late twenties, early thirties, approaching the Mazda, one smiling towards him with terrific mock fondness. Harpur recognized Michael Redvers Arlington, Manse Shale’s chosen successor as managing director of his firm, who sometimes thought of himself as General Franco and planned the bombing of Guernica. A little behind him, in due bodyguard style, walked Edison L. Whitehead, a long-time heavy in the firm, famous for the quality of his mercy – dead low. Whitehead wore a dark overcoat, almost reaching his ankles, with reinforcing shoulder flaps. Harpur thought it a style copied from nineteenth-century coachmen, and capacious enough to conceal quite serious weaponry. Whitehead had a plump, broad, unlined face that could easily be mistaken for genial. This was one of his outstanding assets. It could beguile enemies – new enemies who didn’t know him. His mouth was wide and his lips full. You would expect something hearty from them.
Arlington had on a much shorter tan overcoat. It would have been right for a cavalry officer when cavalry still meant horses. He had a glistening white cutaway collar and a very subdued tie, dark green with ochre flecks. He was fair, light-skinned with pretty-boy features, not at all like pictures Harpur had seen of Franco. It must be a soul matter, this transformation now and then from Arlington, the drug pusher, to the ruthless Nationalist soldier. Arlington would not let himself get hemmed in by the merely fleshly.
Harpur had the driver’s side window already down. Arlington came alongside and bent to speak, leaning against the door. His voice did a lot of first-class affability. ‘Mr Harpur, Mr Harpur – Edison was just saying how satisfied you must be to gaze out on the scene here, so animated, so positive, so magnificently civil and friendly. And how has this been achieved? By the enlightened efforts of Mr Iles and yourself, despite opposition.’
Behind Arlington, Edison Whitehead said, ‘Visionaries, both of you, Mr Harpur.’
‘We know it is Mr Iles who provided the original intellectual impetus for these charming conditions, but I say intellectual-spinterlectual, you have your part, also,’ Arlington commented. ‘Detective Chief Super Harpur is the one who day-to-day, night-to-night, applies this intellectual impetus, makes it, as it were, work.’
‘A fine combination,’ Whitehead said. ‘As near to unique as makes no difference.’ Yes, he sounded hearty.
‘We regard it as very much your entitlement to come to the Valencia, take a vantage point, and enjoy the sight of a brilliant theory actually in operation,’ Arlington said. ‘Who, I ask, deserves this treat more than you?’
‘We don’t consider it vanity that you should motor to the Valencia and view what you’ve helped create,’ Whitehead said. ‘This is natural satisfaction. True, there is a pride element present, but what is termed “proper pride”, a phrase my dad liked when referring to polished shoes, nicely brushed hair, my pullover free from Marmite stains. This is quite different from arrant, boastful pride.’
‘Who’s around tonight?’ Harpur replied.
‘You’re right, an exceptionally booming evening for midweek,’ Arlington said.
‘Did you need reinforcements?’ Harpur said.
‘Many a more conventional business would crave this kind of take-up,’ Arlington said.
‘I’m not sure I understand the command structure in your outfit any longer,’ Harpur replied. ‘Manse is nominal chairman, you come in as MD and chief exec, Michael, but who’s your deputy? You might be gunned down tomorrow. Then where are we, for heaven’s sake? Someone must be there, groomed, ready to pop in and pick up the tiller.’
‘Not me,’ Whitehead said. ‘You can believe it. I’m never one for the admin side. Doesn’t grab me. I like to be out there dealing with specifics. And there’s no shortage of those.’
‘Edison is famed for that,’ Arlington said. ‘Well, I suppose you knew already. Speak Edison’s name almost anywhere, even abroad, or on luxury cruise ships, and people will respond with: “Ah, he’s an unparalleled man for specifics,” or the equivalent in their own lingo.’
‘Give me a specific to deal with and I’ll feel at home and comfortable,’ Whitehead said. ‘This could be seen as a narrowness
in me, but I’d prefer to count it as focused strength.’
‘And, clearly, Edison is the sort I need beside me when I tackle this damned anarchist, Commie, atheistic, republican rabble government in Madrid, the so-called “Popular Front”, with its fucking intrusive Lefty Brit sympathizers,’ Arlington said. ‘The International Brigade, spouting socialist junk. Have you heard of the Trotskyist George Orwell, so-called? That’s not his real name. He’s here. I hate people who give themselves false labels. I’m damn proud of my own name – Francisco Franco – and would never change. Orwell’s real name was Blair, so you can see he might want to get rid of it.’
‘In your kind of operation, a good aide is invaluable,’ Harpur replied. He admired the seamlessness of what had just gone on: this greased move from being Michael Redvers Arlington to becoming an army commander and prospective head of state, and then back to shaping up as M.R. Arlington again, presumably.
‘Admin is certainly necessary for our sales programme here and in other local areas, but it’s simply not my flair,’ Whitehead said.
He obviously took the identity switches of Arlington as normal, and the Franco aspects as ignorable. Perhaps Manse Shale had regarded it in the same way. He saw exceptional big talent in Arlington and might feel a bit of fantasy didn’t matter. And so the advancement, not to dictator or general, but to hands-on captain of a notable firm. In fact, Manse might see Arlington’s flexible ego as a plus in business. Did it prove he could bring an unrestricted, inventive mind to things? He had originality. He had scope. In history he had found a pattern of unstoppable leadership, which could be useful now. Or, at least, Manse might imagine so in his present off-balance state. Possibly he looked with special kindness these days on make-believe. After all, what had actuality done for his wife and son? Actuality was broken glass, blood and bullets.