Vacuum

by Bill James

‘The thing is, we had to stand well back in our room or they might have seen us and thought we were having a snoop,’ Frank said.

  ‘Which we were,’ Beryl said. She giggled.

  ‘Well, yes, but only because we were concerned about Karen,’ Frank said.

  ‘Right,’ Beryl said.

  ‘Very understandable,’ Margaret replied.

  ‘We’re discussing all this with you since you have become an element in the activity, you see, and perhaps you’ll be able to work out what’s been happening,’ Frank said. ‘You might see a pattern in it, on account of information you have, not available to us. You come at matters from a different angle.’

  ‘Soon, the two men, plus Jason, left the house and climbed into the car,’ Beryl said.

  ‘How did they seem?’ Margaret said.

  ‘In which respect?’ Frank said.

  ‘When they went to the car,’ Margaret said.

  ‘Karen asked us that,’ Beryl said. ‘This is a sort of crux?’

  ‘You’ve spoken to her?’ Margaret asked. ‘That would be when she’d come back from Tesco, would it?’

  ‘She came back and found the house empty because Jason had gone with the two men,’ Beryl said.

  ‘Jason in the rear with one of them and the other driving,’ Frank said.

  ‘What I meant was, did he appear to go willingly?’ Margaret replied. ‘Or did he look scared, try to resist?’

  ‘I had an idea Karen wanted to ask us that, but she couldn’t because she wouldn’t like us to think they knew people who might come for Jason when she was out and make him go with them,’ Frank said. ‘This is quite a good area, and I know Karen was very keen to fit in.’

  ‘Coming for someone in a car and trucking him off – it would be like one of those crime films,’ Beryl said. ‘There’s that old, grim phrase, isn’t there, to “take someone for a ride”, meaning the someone is not coming back, owing to a fusillade, most probably in some secluded rural spot.’

  ‘It’s not the kind of thing you expect to happen in Carteret Drive,’ Frank said. ‘But that’s how people always comment, isn’t it – e.g., on TV news when police start digging up bodies in someone’s back garden? Local people want the audience to realize it’s not happening all the time in their district, discovery of multi remains under a private lawn. They always remark they’re “devastated” by that type of discovery in their neighbourhood, though not as devastated as the victims being dug up.’

  ‘We saw Karen return from Tesco and carry her shopping inside,’ Beryl said. ‘I think Jason had left some lights on, so she would not realize until then that he’d gone. She most probably checked their garage and saw his car still there. After a few minutes she came around and rang our bell and asked if we’d seen him go. She had never done anything like that before. We told her about the callers.’

  ‘This is when we both began to think of what was going on as activity, although we didn’t realize at the time that the other one had also decided on that word,’ Frank said.

  ‘At first, I didn’t like it very much,’ Beryl said.

  ‘What?’ Margaret said.

  ‘Karen coming to ask. As though she thought we were always secretly watching what went on outside,’ Beryl said. ‘Sort of spying. In a way it was cheek, like, assuming we’d have been in the front room observing because we did a lot of it. We had been in the front room observing, yes, but she shouldn’t have guessed that.’ There was a low fence and some shrubs between Margaret and them, and the division seemed to stop Beryl and Frank from asking her into their home.

  ‘But then Beryl came to understand there might be something strange going on tonight,’ Frank said. ‘We could see Karen was really bothered, though she pretended something different – like, acting casual, sort of amused by the mystery of it, such as where had he skipped off to, the naughty boy?’

  ‘It didn’t work,’ Beryl said. ‘She wouldn’t have come to us like that unless she was really worried; her face tense – mouth screwed up tight, breathing rather difficult. You’ll know the signs. Well, anyway, we couldn’t help more than that – speak of the car and the two men – and she went back to her own place to wait for Jason, maybe ring around to where he might have gone.’

  ‘And then, what was definitely a matter of “activity” happened,’ Frank said.

  ‘Who do you imagine arrives and rings at the mauve front-door next?’ Beryl asked.

  ‘Who?’ Margaret said.

  ‘Beryl thinks it was,’ Frank said.

  ‘Who?’ Margaret said.

  ‘I’ve seen his picture in the media after that shooting in Sandicott Terrace, the woman and boy,’ Beryl said. ‘This is a police officer, though not in uniform. He’s the kind who wears plain clothes.’

  ‘A detective,’ Margaret said.

  ‘This is one of the chief detectives,’ Beryl said. ‘Chief Superintendent, or something of the sort.’

  ‘If she’s right,’ Frank said.

  ‘What did he look like?’ Margaret said.

  ‘Do you know anything about boxing?’ Frank replied.

  ‘Not much,’ Margaret said.

  ‘It’s a long way back, anyway,’ Frank said. ‘There was a world champion called Rocky Marciano. American. This one looks like him, but fair-haired, not dark like Marciano.’

  ‘Harpur?’ Margaret said.

  ‘You know him?’ Beryl asked.

  ‘Are you police yourself, then?’ Frank said. ‘I wondered – the smart way you’re dressed and the questions.’

  ‘I’ve heard some describe Harpur as like some boxer, but with fair hair,’ Margaret replied.

  ‘Do you know people who talk about the police a lot then?’ Beryl said.

  ‘It came up in conversation once or twice,’ Margaret said.

  ‘In which regard?’ Frank said.

  ‘And he went into the house?’ Margaret replied.

  ‘We counted the time. He was there for twenty minutes,’ Frank said. ‘Then he drove away. But before his car disappeared, Karen came from the house, jumped into the Mini and seemed to go after him. I think you’ll see now why we considered all these events very puzzling and exceptional.’

  ‘And then, bless us, you arrive,’ Beryl said. ‘No wonder that by this time we’re calling it activity. We’d really appreciate it if you can tell us what’s happening. It seems to me we have a right to know, being close neighbours who might possibly be involved in some . . . well, in some situation.’

  ‘I think he’s out there now,’ Frank said.

  ‘Who?’ Margaret said.

  ‘The one like Marciano, but not altogether,’ Frank said. ‘Although he’s parked quite a way off, I believe it’s him.’

  ‘You didn’t say, Frank,’ Beryl said.

  ‘I mentioned a watcher. But I don’t want you frightened, particularly as I’m not sure,’ Frank said.

  ‘How would it be frightening?’ Beryl replied.

  ‘Why would he be there now?’ Margaret said.

  ‘I was hoping you could tell us,’ Frank said.

  Margaret looked up Carteret Drive. ‘Which car?’

  ‘The black one,’ Frank said.

  ‘The Mazda?’

  ‘I’m not good on cars,’ Frank said.

  ‘Excuse me, but are you acting surprised now?’ Beryl asked Margaret. ‘You knew he was there, did you?’

  ‘Are you police?’ Frank said. ‘Is this an operation?’

  ‘Has something happened to them – Karen or Jason, or both?’ Beryl said.

  Margaret’s car was facing away from the Mazda. When she left Beryl and Frank, she thought of turning, so as to get close enough for an examination of the driver as she passed, but decided this would tell him he’d been spotted, if it actually was Harpur. It might be best he didn’t know that.

  ELEVEN

  From his Mazda parked in Carteret Drive, Harpur had watched as a red Lexus convertible coupé, about sixty grand’s worth, passed him and pulled up near number eleven, the Lister-
Wensley house. He routinely noted the registration number of every vehicle that moved along Carteret Drive in either direction. He’d seen this car before, anyway. It had stood on the Low Pastures forecourt alongside Ralph Ember’s Bentley during that early morning call sponsored and later wholly mistrusted by the Chief. Now, Margaret Ember stepped out of the Lexus, walked the few steps to number eleven, went through the front garden and put out a hand to ring the bell. Although Harpur was a long way from her, he thought she seemed very formally and elegantly dressed. The house remained in darkness. The blue Mini was absent.

  Margaret stood waiting in the porch and raised her hand again, apparently to try another ring. Harpur saw an elderly woman come out from the house next door and begin to talk to her over the fence and shrubs. Soon, a man of around the same age as the woman appeared from behind her and joined the conversation. They must have seen and heard Margaret’s arrival from their front room. It was not lit or curtained. They’d probably be on high alert tonight. Had they decided to do their observing in secret? There must have been several callers – the two men in the car, mentioned by Karen, and, of course, Harpur himself. The neighbours might have recognized him as police: he got some television and Press publicity during big cases. If they did, it would stoke their edginess. Then the departures: those two men plus Jason, the relationship between the three uncertain, possibly rough-house; later Harpur would leave, and then Karen, probably. Now came this other visitor in the glossy car, Margaret Ember.

  Harpur tried to work out why she would be calling here. The neighbours must be doing the same, he thought. Margaret’s clothes suggested this was an important visit. Harpur failed to get much beyond that bit of guesswork, though. He didn’t even understand how Margaret could be on visiting terms with these people. Their links were with a different firm. He wondered whether the neighbours had found out anything from her. The talk appeared quite intense for most of the time. But at one point the man turned away briefly and gazed up and down Carteret Drive. Did his eyes stay an extra second on the Mazda and Harpur? He would need 20-20 vision. Harpur was in the back of the vehicle. If you were watching somewhere from a car you used the rear seat, not the driver’s, where you’d be more plainly on show, and where people would expect you to be. The distance from numbers eleven and thirteen ought to make the Mazda look unoccupied.

  After about a quarter of an hour Margaret moved away from the house and got into her Lexus. For a couple of moments, Harpur feared she would do a U-turn and again pass the Mazda and who was in it, but this time face-on. Perhaps, after all, the oldies had mentioned the possible surveillance to her. Or had she spotted him when passing the Mazda on her arrival? But she drove away out of the other end of the Drive, presumably back home to Low Pastures.

  Harpur wished Iles were here. He could be brilliant on people’s motivation. This had astonished Harpur when he first witnessed the ACC’s gift. After all, Iles’s outlook was so enthusiastically, and so vastly, at variance with all normal human impulses, it seemed unlikely he’d understand how others’ thinking might work. Harpur attempted to get his own head into the kind of mind-reading state that Iles would apply so effortlessly, if a situation interested him. Occasionally, a situation did. Harpur believed the Assistant Chief would almost certainly want to diagnose Margaret Ember’s reasons for coming to Carteret Drive. Harpur wondered if they had anything to do with his own woolly, go-nowhere reflections on the lives of women partnered by villains. Was Margaret here to suggest a female alliance with Karen across the two firms, and to hell with the men? Margaret might have calculated that Jason would be out at work, so she and Karen could talk privately. Did Ralph know his wife had made this trip?

  Harpur saw questions and more questions, but no clear answers. Iles would regard that as pathetic, retarded, and fully in character for Harpur. He thought he could recall from Margaret Ember’s dossier that she went to a Keep Fit class on Wednesday evenings. Had she come on from there? It would explain why she entered Carteret Drive from one direction and left by the other. If Margaret had quit the class early she could carry out this visit without Ralph knowing, although the smartness of her clothes would possibly have made him curious. People didn’t normally dress up for the gym.

  Harpur waited. At just before ten o’clock a grey Volvo estate car drove into Carteret Drive and passed him from behind, as the Lexus had. Three men aboard, two in the back? The car stopped outside number eleven, but in the middle of the road, not pulled over to the pavement. Harpur sensed its engine must still be running, though he was too far off to hear. A tall, dark-haired man of about thirty wearing a black leather jacket and jeans got out from the rear seat. Harpur instantly recognized him as Jason Wensley. He seemed to give a thumbs-up sign to the two in the car, then quickly entered the house and closed the front door after him. Some lights came on inside. The Volvo moved away at once and turned left out of Carteret Drive.

  Harpur rang in for a trace on its registration. While he was phoning, Karen’s Mini passed and she found a parking spot near number eleven. She climbed out of the car, locked it and sprinted to the house. She let herself in. Yes, ‘sprinted’ was the word: arms pumping, hair flying behind. He thought he could read excitement and joy in this short, vigorous dash. She would have seen the lights in the house and deduced Jason was home. After a few minutes, the couple from next door came out again and stood in their front garden staring up and down Carteret Drive and occasionally at the mauve front door. Then they went back into number thirteen. They might feel the ‘activities’ were over now and they could relax. The Control Room told Harpur the Volvo had been stolen two days ago in East Stead.

  He drove to the Valencia again. Once more he did his slow tour of the Esplanade district, this time looking for General Franco and Edison L. Whitehead, his chaperone. Business in the area had hotted up since he was there an hour or so ago, but he didn’t see them on their management duties around the streets. He left the car and tried the Nexus club, and then The Eton Boating Song. The thumbs up from Jason to his mates in the Volvo disturbed Harpur. So did the report that the Volvo was stolen. Had he been coming at this problem from the wrong end? Had Karen come at it from the wrong end, too – misjudged who would get to be a victim, victims? The Nexus barman said he hadn’t seen Franco tonight.

  The Eton Boating Song had been called Imperial Majesty when it regularly brought tea from China to Britain in the nineteenth century, but was rechristened for the present role. Its new name lacked supreme majesty, but had a degree of social class, all the same. She was a three-masted vessel with a broad bow raked forward for speed: a clipper had to clip, and what it clipped was voyage time. Harpur thought the ship still looked very businesslike and capable of crossing an ocean or two if they replaced her canvas, though it would be years since she actually spread her square-rigged sails and traded. Some repairs and reconstruction had taken place over the decades to make sure she stayed afloat against the quay, and to accommodate a bar and restaurant and up-to-date plumbing, but the graceful lines of the long hull remained as they’d been when she was launched. She did very good business moored alone in Spencer’s Dock. Alongside stood a preserved but unused crane commemorating a time when the port thrived and freighters were loaded and unloaded there daily. People liked a touch of the maritime, a feeling of history.

  There were about fifteen customers in the bar, including Honorée. Although management weren’t enthusiastic about joy girls using the Eton, they tolerated Honorée because she usually dressed modestly and waited for men to pick her up, not the other way about. Also, they might have an idea about her serious, extremely ongoing connection with Iles, and realize how malevolent and unforgiving the ACC could get if he ever felt she, and therefore he, had been slighted. Plus, she was black, and to ban her could appear racist. Tonight she looked lovely, Harpur thought, in a cinch-waisted tan-coloured parka jacket and excellently tailored dark trousers, her hair cut short and tufty so there were no hanging wisps to shroud her beautifully composed profile.
She had a client with her, a very thin, hatchet-faced man in his sixties, wearing a fine, old-style, substantial, green-brown tweed suit that might have been what held him together. He had on, as well, brogues and a paisley tie backed by a yellow, tan and dark-red check shirt. He and Honorée hardly looked made for each other, but interesting, Harpur thought. He did not see Arlington and Whitehead, and went to have a glance around the crowded restaurant, but they weren’t there, either. When he returned to the bar, Honorée gave him a little wave, inviting Harpur to join her and the punter where they sat on a crimson padded wall-bench near the door. ‘This is Neville, Col,’ she said. ‘He’s from far away – Preston, or Yeovil, somewhere like that, and does roofing materials and flagstones, so fascinating.’

  Neville shook hands. ‘Delighted,’ he said.

  Harpur sat down next to him.

  Honorée leaned across Neville and said: ‘They’re after Desy.’

  ‘Yes, I know,’ Harpur said.

  When she bent forward to speak, the movement started a thick drift of scent towards Harpur. It seemed of quite reasonable quality. Iles would never give her cheapo stuff, partly because he’d hate to smell of something inferior himself after contact. Iles knew a lot about scent and always called it that, not perfume: ‘Ad-man’s term,’ he’d told Harpur.

  ‘Who’s Desy?’ Neville said.

  ‘Col knows everything, Nev,’ she replied. ‘General Franco and his corporal have been talking to you, have they, Col? They saw the big Chief with me earlier. I noticed them having a stare. Photos taken?’

  ‘General Franco?’ Neville said.

  ‘I guessed what Upton would want,’ Harpur said.

  She pulled back and sat very upright, her neat jaw jutting, warlike: ‘Oh, bloody thanks, Col! Are you saying that’s all he’d want from me?’ she said.

  ‘Was it?’ Harpur said.

  ‘Something’s gone wrong between the two of them, hasn’t it – Upton and Desy,’ she replied.

  ‘They come at things from different angles,’ Harpur said.

  ‘The tale around is the Chief thinks Des blew an operation,’ she said. ‘Like, treachery?’