Pix (Volume Book 24) (Harpur & Iles Mysteries) (6 page)

‘But he/she noted the break-in scared Shale?' Harpur asked. ‘Did he/she install Shale's safes?'

‘Has Shale got home safes?'

‘I wonder.'

‘And some kind of bad staining on the stairs – carpet and wallpaper,' Lamb said. ‘Naturally, the contact had to go up to look at first and second floor windows.'

‘What kind of staining?'

‘Quite extensive.'

‘But what nature?'

‘Shale told him/her he'd stumbled while carrying an open bottle of sauce and pitched forward, causing a jet. It's possible. People carry open bottles of sauce upstairs? Apparently, both the children repeated this explanation several times, really hammered it, said they'd seen it happen and found it almost comical, except that Shale nearly fell down all the way and could have done himself damage. They explained that Manse often took sauce upstairs for breakfasts and suppers in bed, being “a very sauce” person, the girl child said.'

‘These are loyal kids. What did the contact think of the sauce aspect?'

‘He/she thought he/she'd better tell me in case
I
thought it should be passed on.'

‘Do you pay the locksmith?'

‘Shale's having the carpet replaced and new wallpaper,' Lamb replied. ‘Immediately.'

The old concrete road, laid by the Royal Engineers for transporting troops, supplies and ammunition, could still be used and Harpur and Lamb had parked their cars a little way down the hill. They began to walk back to them. Harpur said: ‘Manse has some valuable pictures in the rectory, hasn't he? I seem to recall that from the dossier. Perhaps he's worried about them, too.'

‘I've sold him some works, yes, most probably genuine.'

Lamb ran a fine art dealership. Not too much was known about this, and Harpur never pressed to find out. Jack looked for no informant fees, but he appreciated tact. ‘Manse favours the Pre-Raphaelites. You probably know, Col, that there are a lot of very high quality fakes of Pre-Raphaelites about, some as good as the originals. People make careers at it. Judgements can be difficult. I give Manse a call now and then if I hear of something up his street. He likes girls in rich colours and with tresses, generally auburn. His wife used to call them his “wank women”. That might help explain the cooling between Manse and her. ‘

‘Sad.'

‘But, Col, isn't Shale's enthusiasm for pictures heartening? I feel a sort of bond to him, which is why I knew I must talk to you about his problems. Always we find this impulse in people, even crooks like Manse, towards the wholesome and estimable. It's a sign, surely, that humanity is basically good, not evil. Here we see dirty money put to high purpose. Shale deals drugs and with his profits buys a one-time Church of England rectory, no doubt happy and proud to immerse himself in the religious ambience. He also goes in for fine art, some of which might be authentic, and for which, in any case, he gladly paid an authentic price. Similarly, the Kennedy family purchase the White House with J.F.'s dad's bootlegging loot and so the Cuba missile crisis can be defused and peace maintained. Or then again, Ralphy Ember hopes and strives to refurbish and transform his for ever unchanging and unchangeable lags' and slags' club, the Monty, into the Athenaeum.'

‘Policing depends on a belief in all people's search for virtue, or at least eventual virtue. Sometimes, it will be very bloody eventual. And there might be slips back.'

‘You can be so philosophical, Col.'

And as to the Monty, on his way home, Harpur decided to drop in there and sniff some atmosphere. Perhaps, and treble perhaps, Ralphy's club would one day become as selective and professionally glittering as he wanted, but for now it could occasionally give hints and glimpses of what might be going on, or might be about to go on, among the present, generally unglittering membership. Harpur often called at the Monty, alone or with Iles, on the pretext of spot licensing check-ups. It probably worked better without Iles, because the Assistant Chief frightened everyone shitless and made helpful conversation difficult. Iles didn't really go there for conversation or intimations. He went to dominate. As he'd explained to Harpur: ‘I show the flag, Col, and
am
the fucking flag.' Iles adored these visits. They were his monkey gland. They told him he could still quell a room by will and stare and unforgiving, know-all grin, despite his Adam's apple and gone-grey quiff.

It was early in the evening and Ralphy himself might
be absent. Generally, he arrived around midnight and stayed to oversee shut-down at 2 a.m., or later when the club hosted some special celebration of, say, a birth or parole. Harpur thought he'd stop off there, anyway. If big upheavals in the substances scene threatened he needed to get some inklings – more than came from Iles's tap and ‘visualizing', more even than Jack's lock and stain despatches.

To guard against assassination by contracted marksmen, Ember had arranged for a thick metal shield to be fixed high on one of the club pillars, blocking any direct line of fire from just inside the Monty main door to where Ralph sometimes sat doing accounts or dreaming of his projects at a small shelf-desk behind the bar. As a way of softening its appearance and disguising the harsh function, this steel screen was covered with a collage of illustrations. Ralph had mentioned to Harpur that they came from a book called
The Marriage of Heaven and Hell
, by a poet, William Blake, famous also for ‘Jerusalem'. Ember knew such things. He had started a mature student degree course at the university down the road, though he suspended it not long ago because of business demands. These included his tricky mission to get the Monty's social standing considerably up, plus new and persistent uncertainties in the drugs game because of government legislation, and because of constant invaders, like Chandor.

Once Harpur had passed under the shield he could see Ember was at his usual place, working on some papers. ‘In early tonight, Ralph,' he said.

‘Catching up, Mr Harpur. The Inland Revenue won't take delays, you know.'

‘But think of the extra work if you had to tell them about all the
real
money.'

‘Mr Iles not with you this time?' Ember replied. ‘Off sick? Yet it's wonderful what they can do with just one course of pills these days. He's still seeing that girl who works the streets around Valencia Esplanade, is he? Honorée? I'm sure he'll be back to his usual form very
soon.' Ember fixed Harpur a gin and cider in a half-pint glass and poured himself a Kressmann armagnac.

‘I was in the area,' Harpur replied.

‘That's the function as I see it of a club like the Monty,' Ember said. ‘Somewhere to stop off at a whim and recoup.'

‘True.'

‘It might be a marginal role to the main matters of life, but a necessary and worthwhile one, I feel.'

‘True, indeed.' At the other end of the bar near the pool tables Hilaire Wilfrid Chandor and a few friends stood drinking shorts. Yes, Nordic. Harpur would have liked to stroll over and see if Chandor and/or the others smelled of cleaning fluid, and/or of incendiarized Charles Laity shoes, and/or of an incendiarized Mixtor-Hythe hand-tailored suit, and/or of incendiarized flesh. There were few other people in the club yet. Harpur had wondered whether Manse Shale would be here and available for a general chat, but Ember did not like his close, outside business connections to use the Monty. Most likely Shale
was
a member but realized he shouldn't show up here too often. Ralph treated the club as very separate. All right, it could be regarded as a sink, but a legit sink, acknowledged fully to the Inland Revenue, and perhaps about to set off towards social eminence. Yes, very
perhaps
. Ralph might not object to Chandor and/or possibly one or more of the others having membership. After all, Chandor had not really got into the substances trade scene properly yet – which would be why he had targeted the rectory and Manse's art. Of course, Chandor might be thinking of something comparable against the other great and enduring figure in that scene, Ralph Ember. Did Ember appreciate this? Generally he was quick to detect menace. Had he become casual, convinced he'd soon be kicking out virtually all the present membership, anyway, and replacing them with cardinals, professors and ITV board chairmen?

‘Sometimes I wonder about the shield, Ralph,' Harpur said.

‘Shield? Which shield is that, Mr Harpur?'

‘
The Marriage of Heaven and Hell
. Fine against someone shooting from the door. But useless if he or they is or are actually inside the club.'

‘Oh, you mean the air-conditioning baffle board.'

‘No, the two-centimetre-thick steel slab.'

‘Yes, an air-conditioning baffle board,' Ember said. ‘The engineers maintained it would give me I don't know how many per cent better heating or cooling by deflecting air currents. They drew diagrams – looked like the wind direction maps on a TV weather forecast. I thought it worth investing.'

‘Chargeable against tax as a business expense? How do you describe it to the Revenue – “William Blake anti-hitman rampart”?'

‘And definitely my electricity bills are down,' Ember replied.

‘You let all sorts in here.'

‘Many a droll comment I get, as you can well imagine, Mr Harpur, when I tell folk where the illustrations come from. Couples remark they could have posed for pictures with that as the title – each claiming to be the Heaven side of their own marriage, of course,' Ember said. ‘I've heard that a hundred times but I feel it kindly to laugh. This seems to me a duty of one who presumes to run a club – kindness, bonhomie.'

‘How do you vet people?'

‘Which?'

‘Members.'

‘A definite and proven procedure.'

‘Being?'

‘I couldn't tell you how many applications we turn down, Mr Harpur.'

‘It's the ones you
don't
turn down that worry me.'

‘And how's the big scene, city-wide?' Ember replied.

‘I was going to ask
you
that. Things shift, Ralph.'

‘Constantly.'

‘But you manage to keep ahead, do you, you and Manse?'

‘ “Ahead”? I'm not sure what ahead means in that context. The club continues. And, obviously, even if I did know what ahead means, I couldn't answer for Manse.'

‘You're pals. You'd probably hear if he had problems, wouldn't you?'

‘Would I? What kind of problems, Mr Harpur?'

Chandor and his party turned to leave. Chandor gave Ralph a small nod and a small smile. Ember nodded back.

‘Yes, things shift,' Harpur said. ‘It's hard to keep up.'

Ember refilled Harpur's glass and then went off to another part of the club. Harpur sat on for a while with his drink but talked to nobody else, learned nothing and
had
learned nothing, except that
The Marriage of Heaven and Hell
might be only a placebo, and he'd known that already. When he reached home, his daughter, Jill, came out into the hall and said: ‘People here, dad. One's the Press. Both ladies.'

‘Oh?'

‘Looking for you. To do with someone missing.'

‘Oh?'

‘A man. They've come on here from headquarters. We've been taking care of them.'

Harpur didn't always like it when Jill and his other daughter, Hazel, took care of callers. The two girls could be very considerate, hospitable and deeply nosy. ‘Thanks, Jill,' he said.

She went ahead of him into the big sitting room: ‘Here's dad now,' she said. ‘He'll sort things out.'

Harpur thought he recognized one of the women, not the other.

‘Kate, of the
Evening Register
,' Jill said, waving a hand towards the younger woman. ‘She's Crime.'

‘Ah, yes,' Harpur said, ‘I've seen you around the courts, haven't I, and at press conferences?'

Jill waved again, this time indicating the other visitor: ‘Meryl Goss, from London,' she said. ‘She's on a search for someone. Well, her partner.'

‘Searching where?' Harpur said.

‘He's in this city,' Jill said. ‘Not findable yet, though.'

‘He definitely came here,' Meryl said, ‘but suddenly he's not in touch. That's entirely unlike him.' She'd be about thirty-two, tall, frizzed fair hair, fresh-faced, wearing jeans and a three-quarter-length navy fabric coat.

‘So, she's arrived from London, looking,' Hazel said.

‘Of course, someone who's grown up and seems to go missing – well, your people at headquarters wouldn't think much of that, would they, dad? They'd think he can do what he wants.'

‘This is different,' Meryl said.

‘Yes, it sounded different to me, Mr Harpur, ‘Kate said. ‘That's why I –'

‘Kate was around Reception at headquarters, dad,' Jill said, ‘waiting to see one of your officers about an article they're doing in the
Register
, and heard Meryl report this missing person, and obviously upset.'

‘I expect Kate can tell me herself,' Harpur said.

‘Yes, we talked a bit,' Kate said, ‘and I felt it sounded like something that could be . . . it could be something that would need a senior officer to look into. Not routine.'

Meaning, Kate wondered whether it might make a news story for her. He would have liked to ask Meryl whether her partner wore Paul Mixtor-Hythe suits and Charles Laity shoes, but didn't.

‘I knew you were in the phone book, so we came out here and waited,' Kate said.

‘We told them you'd be glad,' Jill said.

‘Of course,' Harpur said.

‘Her partner's in property development,' Hazel said. ‘Kate believes he came here to see some intermediaries.'

‘Yes, intermediaries,' Jill said.

‘Do you know who they are – the intermediaries?' Harpur said.