Pix (Volume Book 24) (Harpur & Iles Mysteries) (10 page)

3. Other outside firms fancied the rich and steady look of things here and wanted to edge in, trying to set up trade in untraditional districts away from Valencia Esplanade. Some was foreign, especially Albania. There'd been battles. Hilaire Wilfrid Chandor might be starting that kind of move, but like more subtle, the sod. The drugs laws had been made easier lately, and all sorts wanted a go at trading now. The good understanding with Iles didn't seem so necessary any longer.

4. Harpur. You could not tell about that one. Of course, you could not tell everything about Iles, either. But Harpur disagreed with Iles's wise policy towards Manse and Ralphy and would get troublesome sometimes. A boyfriend of one of Harpur's daughters might of been pulled into the street battles and that had affected how Harpur saw things.
*
This situation seemed to of sorted itself now, though.

Ember said: ‘Workmen in, Manse?'

‘I got like tired of how things looked on the stairs.'

‘The stairs can set the whole mood and tone of a house, I always think,' Ember replied.

‘Exactly, Ralph.'

‘At Low Pastures many of the walls are simply the natural stone, you know.'

‘That so?'

‘Oh, yes. I can save a couple of quid on wallpaper! And the stairs – just the original mahogany. No carpeting.'

‘Sensational.' Shale wondered if this fucker had heard a whisper of what happened here on the stairs. Was he giving a bit of torment by talking about the papering and carpeting? It would be
so
like the scheming lout.

‘There's a word around that Iles is getting on top again, despite this new Chief,' Ember said. ‘Harpur, still a minor problem, yes, but Iles is Iles. Iles is the power.'

‘I been looking at the accounts for last month, Ralph, and they're nice. All right, the prices are down, but that means bigger turnover. What it seems to me is the customer base have widened. We're making inroads.'

Ember had brought the Kressmann armagnac bottle and they done some sipping, no hurry. It was good stuff. Then for half an hour they really examined the accounts, not just last month's but a full quarter's, and plenty of detail – noting selling points up, selling points down, weekends against weekdays, talented personnel, dozy personnel, club discounts, supply costs, wholesalers. Things had really righted since their last conference.

‘But we see off one lot of competition – more than one – yes, more than one – we see off a bucketful of competition and then there's another trying it on,' Ember said. ‘This Chandor – Hilaire Wilfrid.'

‘I've heard of that one.'

‘He could be grave trouble,' Ember replied.

‘That right, Ralph?'

‘He's a thinker. He has his own ways of getting forward. Supposed to be property development, a perfect screen.'

‘That right, Ralph?' And so Shale decided Chandor better be killed. This would be what they called on the international scene ‘a pre-emptive strike'. Although Manse came to this conclusion so sudden, that did not make it easy or thoughtless. He would never be casual about murder. And this would be a murder that might lead Iles and Harpur to Manse if they knew about the body on the rectory stairs. But Chandor had to go. No, not an easy or thoughtless judgement, just unavoidable. Probably the
first thing to do was find his home address. Manse knew Chandor's business headquarters – the property development outfit – was down on the new marina, and maybe some property deals did go on. If you started a mask firm the firm had to look like it operated, and marina property projects paid good most likely, anyway. Manse must try to work out where might be the most happy spot to do him, perhaps on a drive-by, perhaps something else. As soon as Ralph left tonight, Shale began some planning.

He believed in an entirely open mind, and in good preparation. He would work with an assistant. Most likely Chandor always had minders around. It would be stupid to take them on by himself – cocky, gung-ho. Good, considerable fire power was vital. Shale hadn't made up his mind yet who would suit as aide, although a lad called Eldon seemed the proper sort. Of course, if Denzil still worked for Shale, the choice would of been obvious. Or if Alfie Ivis hadn't died like that.
*
Denzil used to piss about now and then and refuse to wear a chauffeur's cap, the bolshy, chauffeuring prat, but he understood fire power, loved fire power. Didn't he have not just one but two gun barrels in his mouth when they found him dead? And then, Alfie. He shot Big Paul Legge in the 1980s. Alf was such a famed example of enterprise and vision.

Both out of things now, Denzil, Alfie. Never mind. Shale's firm had some very gifted people – Eldon and others – and it would be just a matter of selection. Manse considered himself intuitive on Personnel, one of his greatest flairs. Obviously, nobody could run a company without
some
of that flair, but Manse felt his own intuition and its extent had to be regarded as a marvel . . . a marvel because he could not say where this Personnel flair came from, only that he had it. There was no courses to go on for intuition, not that he ever heard of! Genes. Birthright. A natural interest in people as people, because that's who people was – people, though not everyone seemed able to grasp this.

Manse put out an inquiry and discovered Chandor lived near his firm's offices on the marina. Shale used the Ford Focus, not the Jaguar – too noticeable, even if he changed the plates – yes, he chose the Focus and took a drift around the waterfront, again driving himself. He had a personal rage on against Chandor, but as well as this it would be business tactics to remove him. So, two reasons why Shale told himself it had become unavoidable. Part of Mansel's rage concerned the art. Of course. He hated to think of them Chandor creatures, and maybe Chandor himself, manhandling his pictures – manhandling them twice, once to take away, once to bring back. And then their total fucking carelessness about where the pictures hung. Manse had really worked at planning the right spots for them, gave that task true sensitivity, but them crude sods thought anywhere was as good as anywhere. No wonder Matilda felt so upset when she saw paintings in the wrong places. Clearly, this girl had absorbed some of Manse's taste and his touch at presentation.

He also blamed Chandor for defiling the rectory, and for causing Manse such humiliation and anguish – that abandoned love-making with Syb, and then Harpur and Iles tramping about in the house like they been invited, and Iles rapping the drawing-room door and talking insolent – the only way he knew how to talk. Somehow, them two guessed there'd been incidents at the rectory, and they'd come out to have a prod and a stare, causing in this way the break-off of a glorious, intelligent screw in a very favourable spot, and Syb's coolness afterwards.

Shale thought Chandor might try something evil again, to wear him down and get him out of the trade. This was what Manse meant by ‘pre-emptive' and tactics. He would not just sit there and wait to be a target once more. He would flatten any threat, destroy it. Manse saw this reaction as very much in line with his personal character. He knew how to turn a situation around. People might try to make him a victim. He would show he was never that, could never be that, or he would not be Mansel Shale no longer. He needed to guard his true self. No other sod
would for him. And there were the children to provide for, provide plenty for.

Chandor had a neat-looking town house in a side street near what had once been a dock, now transformed into a rectangular, ornamental lake used by ducks and swans. Someone took care of the bit of lawn in front and the curtains seemed clean enough. The talk said he had a woman partner and a son of six or seven. This woman might do something part-time in the firm. Chandor's offices occupied one floor in a former bonded warehouse, now converted, a few hundred yards away. If he walked from his house to the office every morning or home to lunch, this could be how and where to knock him over. There was a decent road to get clear on afterwards, probably not too chock-a-block even at rush hours.

Manse liked the idea of seeing him off near his business premises – cancel him just before he got there or just after leaving. There'd be a message in that. It would say, unambiguous, Kindly don't try to float higher in the commercial scene by struggling to push Manse Shale under because Manse Shale is not the sort who gets pushed under, he is the sort who pushes others under when required, such as doomed losers like you. That first name of Chandor – Hilaire – really gave Manse gut pains. Hilaire, bollocks!

Harpur and Iles might not mind seeing someone like Hilaire Wilfrid Chandor snuffed on their behalf. Iles aimed for clean, safe streets and he expected help in keeping them clean and safe – that is, safe for most people, not for H. W. Chandor. So, all right, if dear Hilaire got it and Harpur and Iles thought this must be Mansel at work, they'd feel grateful, especially Iles, who was the power. Ralphy had that correct. Ralph could be a big-talking prat, but he could also see things spot-on. Of course he could, or would Manse have a lasting trade pact with him?

*
See
Girls
.

*
See
Pay Days
.

Naturally, Harpur asked the computer to say its piece on Trove and, also naturally, Iles had to be told the result because he knew about the photograph and knew about the body on the stairs, knew about the body on the stairs better than Harpur, most probably, or definitely. In fact, Iles always tended to know plenty, despite Harpur's eternal fight to keep him at least half out of things and so achieve basic sanity in running the patch.

The computer had nothing on Trove, just as it had nothing on Chandor. For both or either, this could mean innocence, or it could mean cleverness and/or luck and/or a shortage of talking witnesses. Harpur had begun to wonder about some kind of earlier London connection between Chandor and Trove, which had then been transferred to these parts. If Iles wondered the same, it would upset him badly. Iles loathed London and considered the capital produced only evil, except for the Queen and a barber in Holborn who understood his scalp. Perhaps the ACC had had some personal reversal up there, and this for ever darkened his view. Iles thought he'd brilliantly fashioned a kind of modified but tolerable Garden of Eden locally. He wanted to keep it isolated, manageable, sort of sanctified. Yes, sort of. In the ACC's view, London sent serpents, only serpents, their poison metropolitan, and therefore obscenely plentiful and fierce. Iles approved of a Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil, as long as he was it. The failure of the computer to come up with anything categorical against Trove and Chandor would not
console Iles. It might trouble him even more. He was sure to sense mystery.

Some evenings he would call on Harpur at home in Arthur Street. He came less often lately, and didn't dress as sexily for the visits as before. There'd been a time when he seemed worryingly obsessed by Harpur's daughter, Hazel, still only fifteen, and wanted to be near her as frequently as he could, and to impress with his profile, slim-fit trousers, wit, quotations from Lord Tennyson, charm, varying hairstyles, power and shoes from a personal last. But then, a little while ago, Hazel's official seventeen-year-old boyfriend, Scott, had seemed likely to get pulled into drugs turf wars, and Iles skilfully, selflessly, helped bring him permanently clear and restored to her. Since all that nobility, Iles seemed unable to get back to embarrassing, panting paedophilia, thank God. He no longer turned up in the crimson scarf worn dangling or flung back over a shoulder, nor even in his fine brown bomber jacket. He treated Hazel as a very safe uncle might, even a castrated uncle – politely, considerately, distantly. Harpur was not certain Hazel liked this.
He
did. He loved it. Hazel read zoology books and outdoor survival manuals and once called Iles ‘the feral loony'. But Harpur had seen it might please and even excite a fifteen-year-old to have an Assistant Chief Constable (Operations) demented about her.

Harpur's daughters were out when Iles arrived tonight. Previously, he would have regarded that as a slovenly miscalculation, but now he appeared indifferent. He said: ‘Of course, I've been mulling over Manse and Sybil so very close in the rectory Pre-Raphaelite gallery. What do you make of that, Col?'

‘He said they were working on some papers.'

‘Manse and Sybil so very close in the rectory Pre-Raphaelite gallery. What do you make of that, Col?'

‘She's still an attractive woman,' Harpur replied.

‘Try to think for a moment beyond the animal aspect of things, the flesh aspect, would you?'

‘Beyond how, sir?'

‘That room is symbolic for Shale, you know. His core. His soul lives there. It's all of one piece, Harpur.'

‘What?'

‘Manse-Sybil giving it a go among the art, and the redecoration and recarpeting.'

‘You can always draw elements together, sir.'

‘At Staff College I was known as Desmond the Synthesizer. So, what have we got here, Col?'

‘In what particular, sir?'

‘These apparently separate factors – the Manse-Syb reconsummation on that genuine Afghan rug, and the home improvements.'

‘I suppose it's –'

‘He's been shaken, Col.'

‘Manse? Well, yes, of course, if your intercept –'

‘This is someone seeking the certainties, the stabilities, the comforts, of the past,' Iles replied. ‘He trawls for these via Sybil, via the distinguished art from a former period, and via this cherished centre of a cherished, venerable building, the rectory.'

Iles had brought a bottle of Chiroubles. In the kitchen, Harpur discovered some reasonably recent pizza and cut a slice for each of them. They talked in the big sitting room. When Harpur's wife was alive this doubled as her library. Harpur had cleared out most of the books now. He used to find the sight of them depressing. They looked heavy on their shelves, and many titles seemed unhelpful: for instance,
U and I
and
The Rules and Exercises of Holy Dying
. But occasionally, when Iles did one of his vast mind leaps, such as this one about Shale and Sybil, Harpur would wish that some of these volumes were back and on full snooty show, to suggest he might have a brain as big as Iles's.