I Am Gold (2 page)

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Easy Streets

In the homework poem, perhaps the dog knew it would die of big madness soon and wanted to show it still had life and could do the kind of thing dogs did
because
they was dogs, and which
made
them dogs, like biting people – the way someone with a weak heart might go skiing or running the marathon to prove they could, though they couldn't, and dropped dead on the slopes or track. Many questions regarding this poem did trouble Mansel, but, just the same, people
could
mess up when forecasting a death, and he thought he probably had it wrong about what would shortly happen to him. He must not give in to madness and shadows. He still worried, though. Garrotting he regarded as deeply Continental and sick.

It delighted Manse to find Laurent studied ancient, truly useless stuff like that infection poem. If you paid the rosy fees charged by private schools, recession or not, you'd hope for far-out items like aged poetry and similar. Ordinary lessons, such as the multiplication tables, or mortise joints in a woodwork class, you could get anywhere. Manse had both the children, Laurent and Matilda. Clearly, their mother didn't want them hanging about her when she did any of her flits. Sybil was more or less settled in North Wales the last he heard with a roofer or optician or snooker table salesman or vet – that kind of employment. Of course, quite often Syb wanted to come back, but after the divorce he'd married again, and this made a definite difference. He had to consider Naomi and would of considered her even if he didn't have to. Manse hated casualness towards people – some people.

After Denzil Lake, he had felt nervous about employing anyone else in that bodyguard job. Manse tried Eldon Dane for a while, but he didn't seem right, and Eldon went back to selling, especially at discos and raves. He had a grand gift for discos and raves, perhaps inherited and in the genes, though there wouldn't of been many discos and raves in his father's time, and none in his grandfather's. Bodyguards kept very close to you. Well, obviously – their bodies had to be in place to guard yours. That might be OK, if you could totally believe in their loyalty. If you couldn't, though … If you couldn't, if they'd been worked on and turned by some smart and filthy enemy, they was in a great spot to do damage. The greatest. Didn't an Indian politician get assassinated by her own bodyguards? As a matter of fact, Manse could not speak Hindi, but he fancied he heard her yelling in the local language, ‘You are paid to look after me, not this!' And they'd reply with some big-time political statement, probably, and cry, ‘Nothing personal!' So, Manse hesitated to replace Dane, drove the Jaguar himself, went without a holstered chaperon, thank you.

Not just the Jaguar. The car was pretty well known on this territory. He'd use one of the smaller vehicles sometimes, including a van, hoping to stay unnoticed: a very basic ploy he'd adopted for years, even when Denzil drove, and not something new, because of the recent death fear. Taking the children to Bracken Collegiate, and bringing them home, gave him the most worries, of course. He could not use a van or dinky car for that kind of trip. This was a school where parents came in the big BMW, or a Mercedes or Lexus or 4×4, the 4×4s with mud streaks on them to show the family had paddocks. Matilda and Laurent would be ashamed if they had to climb out of or into the back of a beige van, however new. They'd never said so, but he thought they might of already been on the end of some snoot and snidenesses from other kids, and even the staff at Bracken, because of Manse's particular career. He knew unholy rumour about his firm drifted around the town, not all of it fully correct, and none of it provable in court, even with witness protection.

If you picked private education you had to put up with occasional shit. Mostly, it was envy, especially now. The teachers and the pupils saw that Laurent and Matilda had big, steady money behind them. A recession couldn't hurt Manse, not badly. The opposite. The 50 per cent tax on high earnings wouldn't touch him because he didn't pay tax, except on minor income from a next-to-nothing, legal, cover business he owned – haulage and scrap, the usual folderol. How could he pay tax on his chief business earnings when they didn't exist, not officially?

On account of that 50 per cent, several big companies had shifted their headquarters overseas where tax was lower, so they could attract better staff. Manse didn't need to go abroad either to recruit or sell. Some commodities people had to have regardless of a slump, people in this city like all others. For such troublesome days they might even need more help to relax. He felt bound to supply. A mission and duty. Manse had brought some prices down, but only by 5 per cent maximum. The result? Turnover up. Profits in line.

Laurent and Matilda said some children had been moved from Bracken and sent to state comps because daddy, the estate agent or accountant or advertising exec, was having it grim, such as out on his one-time moneybags earhole and down the Jobcentre. The big BMWs and Mercedes and Lexuses and 4×4s still rolled up, though not so many of them now: doctors, dentists, undertakers, cut-price clothes shop directors, MPs, car-boot sales landlords, Tesco management, takeaway owners, still did all right. They kept their kids at Bracken so they could become doctors, dentists, undertakers, cut-price shop directors, MPs, car-boot sales landlords, Tesco managers, takeaway owners one day, and get through the next crisis – or maybe this one if it dawdled.

Whatever the situation at Bracken, Manse wouldn't give extra problems to Matilda and Laurent by using a van, or even the Audi or small Peugeot. On these journeys he had to risk the Jag. He made sure they both rode in the back. Obviously, rapid automatic fire in a thorough, arcing burst could take in them as well as him, and even a single hard-nosed bullet might travel right through Manse and hit the child immediately behind. You couldn't ask kids to wear helmets and flak jackets over or under their blazers. It would look like Belfast in the bad times. He'd told them in a vague sort of way that if anything seemed to go wrong on the school trip they should get down at once on to the floor. They hadn't asked what ‘go wrong' would mean, so he supposed they knew.

They'd always been savvy. To some extent this pleased him. But he also felt sad they
needed
to be savvy about matters such as a possible street ambush on the school run, with anything up to twenty or thirty rounds flying. Should a childhood be like this? Because he was who he was, he notched high earnings for them to help enjoy, but he also brought peril. And, so as not to scare them too much, or add to their shame, he added to the peril by driving them on many term weekdays in the Jaguar, very vigilant, and chatting in as easy a style as he could manage about all sorts, though not that skip-around wanderer, Syb, their mother. Occasionally Laurent and Matilda used the bus for school, but this unsettled Manse and he would certainly not allow it to become a known habit.

He had a Heckler and Koch 9 mm, thirteen-shot pistol in a shoulder cradle under his jacket on the Bracken run. He wondered whether the children knew this, and hoped they didn't. It could seem bad for a simple school shuttle – like Belfast again. He varied their routes. They'd spot this, naturally, though they never spoke about it to him. If you were a kid you accepted as ordinary the kind of life you'd been given because you didn't know anything else, not from the inside. A leopard cub or young starling would grow up doing the things leopards or starlings did, because that was what they was, the leopardness or starlingness being all they had.

He thought he remembered from Sunday school a Bible verse, ‘Can the leopard change its spots into stripes or oblongs or zigzags?' – the answer being, ‘Are you fucking stupid?' – though not spelled out. He felt glad the children accepted tricky conditions as normal, but also, again, he was sad that they had to. When they grew up, would they think they must go a different way to work every day, even if they was only librarians or hairdressers? Manse didn't necessarily want them in his sort of retail. This was not a role like being a king, where the boy kid had to take over finally, because that's how it worked with kings.

Of course, now and then he might be away, seeing bulk people or London lawyers or constructing an alibi. Once, when Manse was absent from the city for a few days, that cheeky, sarcastic prat, Iles, had suggested he must of gone on a sacred pilgrimage or retreat to Santiago de Compostela, being so pious and saintly. Naomi insisted on doing the trips at these times, although Hubert V.L. Camborne or Quentin Noss from the firm could of taken the duty.

It always troubled Manse when Naomi did the driving. The Jag was the reason still – too easily recognized, but necessary. He would always leave it for her. In a rush, some hired thugs might see the car, assume he must be at the wheel, and shoot before they realized their error. They probably wouldn't care much anyway. As they'd regard things, it was only Manse Shale's woman, so why fret? And children, possibly.

Chapter Three

Iles remained with his face and head into the car, staring at Laurent. Harpur didn't often get much silence from Iles, but he got some for two or three minutes now. Matilda with the woman paramedic behind came around to Harpur's side and also stared at her brother, but through the open door. ‘You should be sitting down, dear,' Iles said, eventually.

‘She wanted to see,' the paramedic said. ‘She cried and was shaking for a time, but –'

‘A parked silver car over there,' Matilda said, and pointed. ‘Most likely a Mondeo. Automatic fire. Well, obviously. Just before he was hit, Laurent said, “It has to be that twat, Ralphy.” Those were the words. I think he meant Ralph Ember, the one they call Panicking Ralph.'

‘We've heard of him,' Harpur said.

‘Oh, really?' she said. ‘When you lifted me from the car you got some of Laurent's blood on your ear.'

Harpur brought out a handkerchief. She took it from him, folded it and rubbed at the smudge. She returned the reddened square. ‘Laurent had seen something, someone, he recognized?' he asked.

‘I don't know that. I don't think so,' she said.

‘Why would he say … what he said?' Harpur asked.

‘A guess. So many tales around our school – about a war. Ralphy Ember against dad. Turf. That's what they call it, isn't it, “a turf war”?'

‘Yes,' Harpur said.

‘You know about all this already, don't you – the substances, the turf? I mean, I'm not grassing dad up.' She was about thirteen, fair-haired, long-faced, guarded, thoughtful, off-and-on confident. She had blue eyes which for most of the time looked to Harpur very challenging, as though she expected lies from anyone talking to her and also expected to see through the lies. He was used to eyes like this in his own daughters, Hazel and Jill.

‘Mr Harpur keeps a keen watch on the commercial scene. All right, he wears deeply awful clothes, and I can tell they make you uneasy, Matilda, but he's no write-off,' Iles said. He withdrew his head from the window space and stood straight.

‘One man in a Mondeo,' she said. ‘Or maybe a Toyota. Balaclava. Black or navy balaclava. I couldn't look for long. I had to get down.'

‘You did right,' Iles said.

‘Dad told us – anything unusual on the school run, get down,' she said.

‘Lately?' Harpur said. ‘He told you this lately? Why? Had something happened to trouble him?'

‘Laurent – slower to do it, get down, I mean,' she said. ‘He wanted to see.'

‘Oh, God,' Iles said.

‘Up in Bracken Collegiate we get some dirty stuff, both of us,' she said.

‘Dirty stuff?' Iles replied.

‘Sneering. That kind of thing. “Daddy's a super-pusher, isn't he, Matty, dear?” They sneak up, mutter it at you in break time or whisper it in your ear, even during a class.
Especially
during a class. “So what does that make you –an under-pusher? He fights other super-pushers, doesn't he? Massive Manse against Big Panicking Ralphy. Baron battles. But they keep the stuff coming. Where
would
we be without them?” And I get similar at the riding stables and archery club. The word's around.'

‘We'll have to talk to you properly, soon,' Iles said. ‘One of our women officers.'

‘Yes, dad's been jumpy lately,' she replied.

‘Jumpy how?' Iles said.

‘You know – jumpy. Like he knew there could be peril. Well, I expect he always knew there could be peril, but he seemed to know it stronger than ever lately.'

‘How could you tell?' Iles said.

‘Maybe my stepmother didn't really understand about things,' she replied. ‘I'm not sure. It was hard to find out what she knew and thought. And I don't think dad could explain properly. It might have scared her or disgusted her. Yes, might. Our mother – our
real
mother– went off. He didn't want that to happen again. But now, this.' She nodded towards Naomi Shale.

Iles said: ‘Here's Inspector Fleur Coulter. Go with her in the car now, will you, Matilda? You'll want a change of clothes and a bath. She'll take you home. Will you be able to get into the house?'

‘We have keys.' She corrected that then, her voice shaky for a moment. ‘I have a key.'

‘Can you reach your dad?' Iles said.

‘They'll hear in the firm what's happened. Someone will ring him. Not Hubert V.L. Camborne. He's with dad, doing the driving and bodyguarding. Maybe Quentin Noss will make the call.'

‘Would you prefer if I or Mr Harpur rang him – told him?'

She thought about that. Perhaps it was inbred not to give police more than you had to, and inbred to be so composed now. ‘Better if it's Quentin,' she said. ‘Dad wouldn't like it – wouldn't like it if I left it to someone from outside. He doesn't trust many people. Definitely he doesn't trust either of you. You're police. But most of all he doesn't trust
you
, Mr Iles. I've often heard him say that. “ACC Slippery”, he calls you. ‘