I Am Gold

  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. ‘

  ‘Mr Harpur and I have daughters, so we know how helpful girls can be to their fathers. We’ll take your advice and leave it to someone in the firm.’

  ‘Daughters? Another story around Bracken was you fancied one of Mr Harpur’s. The older one, Hazel, but not old enough, all the same.’

  ‘Tell Inspector Coulter everything you saw, would you, please,’ Iles replied, ‘from the first moment you noticed the parked silver car.’

  Chapter Four

  Going back to them moments when Manse first started feeling he might get killed, he had definitely decided he would not want a vulgar, newsy funeral with black horses and black plumes fixed in their head bridle. Showiness Manse loathed. He hadn’t thought it right to discuss this kind of dark matter with Naomi pre-death, but he hoped she’d realize from knowing him pretty well by now that he hated nearly all display, although Sir Winston Churchill’s funeral, seen sometimes in TV documentaries about history, didn’t seem too bad. But, obviously, Manse knew he himself would never get a gun-carriage.

  Also, his art worried him. He had a lot of paintings at home, many what was known as Pre-Raphaelite, from a span in history, and with brilliant colours, especially girls’ hair and clothes. He really loved these works. But imagine his estate had to be probate-valued, suppose he got popped. It would be sickening if a scholar came in and said some of them, or even most, was fakes, and worth next to nix, not a couple of million. Manse would look a bonus-package fool then, for getting killed, and for spending big money on duds that he hung on his walls, causing visitors secret, superior giggles. He wouldn’t like his children to grow up thinking he had been a full-scale idiot, and not having all that much to leave them, the art being a joke.

  The only art expert Manse knew was a picture dealer, Jack Lamb, who lived out in that country mansion, Darien. No point in asking Lamb to check the paintings because Manse had bought most of them from him. He wasn’t going to say, ‘Glad you asked, oh, yes, I slipped you a phoney there, Manse, for six hundred grand, if I remember right,’ was he? And then: ‘This lad I know does Burne-Joneses Tuesdays and Thursdays. It’s one of his, and one of his best, as I recall.’

  You didn’t quiz Lamb too much about where he got the items. Suppose you did, he’d reply things like, ‘Many’s the collector after this one, but I knew it would be so right for my good and discriminating friend, Mansel Shale.’ Or, ‘Yes, you’re correct to sense it’s heavily, even madly, discounted, Manse, but I like to think long-term, and look after my steady customers. Ultimately, this always pays off in my business.’

  Manse had considered going to the City Museum and asking if he could commission their Pre-Raphaelite wallah to come to the house and do a valuation. But there was two snags about that, wasn’t there? First he, or she, might recognize some of these paintings as being on a police missing list. Second, how would you know he or she was straight? Working in a museum didn’t make someone honest. He or she might say some was fakes, and offer to get real ones as replacements, so as Manse would not look a cunt when dead. Then this trickster would go off with the paintings, which might really be genuine, and bring Manse other Pre-Raphaelites to hang where they’d been, these being fakes. Manse would have to pay him or her a fortune for these, so he or she would clean up twice, by also selling the others, maybe to Jack Lamb.

  Of course, art was how he and Naomi met, on visits to a gallery a couple of years ago. He’d admit it must be quite a step for her, from discussing pictures to finding out something about the kind of commodities career Manse had. Although art really grabbed him – some art, anyway –it couldn’t be his complete life, could it? She had to realize he could only buy good art because he earned good money at work. You did not get paid for looking at pictures, unless you was Anthony Blunt, and think what happened to him.

  If Manse mentioned to Naomi that she should take different approaches to and from Bracken Collegiate with the kids when he was away, he knew she found it a pain and frightening and difficult to understand. He didn’t think the children would explain to her. Some matters, such as the swap of school run roads, just happened, that was all, like a leopard being a leopard or a starling a starling.

  ‘But why, Manse?’ Naomi had said, the first couple of times he’d asked her not to stick to the same trundle.

  ‘People notice if you start a pattern,’ he said.

  ‘Which people?’

  ‘Oh, yes, they notice.’

  ‘Does it matter?’

  ‘They’d know the timetable.’

  ‘Who would?’

  ‘If you get samey. They see the car in the usual place, usual moment, morning or afternoon.’

  ‘Who do?’

  ‘That’s enough for them. They think, “Right. We’ll be there.” They expect it to be me, you see.’

  ‘Who do?’

  ‘I can show you on the map new ways to go. Like them signs, “Diverted Traffic”. Only a few extra miles and minutes. We don’t want to make it easy for them, do we, Naomi? They could be watching.’

  ‘I still don’t know who they are.’

  ‘We mustn’t make it easy for them, must we?’

  Chapter Five

  Harpur watched Iles. The Assistant Chief had pulled his head out from the cabin of the Jaguar, but still gazed down at Laurent. The paramedic took Matilda away. Most probably, Iles would be continuing large, Assistant Chief-type thoughts about the symbolic meaning of this outrage – its significance as a pointer to savagery and moral disintegration throughout the country and perhaps the Western world. Although he used to make fun of a previous Chief here, Mark Lane, because Lane saw vast implications in any big crime on his ground, now Iles seemed to suffer from the same cosmic twitch.

  But, as well as this wider view, Iles would also have formed a detailed picture of what had happened here and how. This might be what Assistant Chiefs and upwards brought to the job: they did global, they did nitty-gritty, too. Or, Iles did, anyway. He could see the core of a situation more or less instantly, and then would know where to place it in the great, overall context of things. As only a detective chief superintendent Harpur didn’t have to mess with contexts. He specialized in actuality and in guesses at it. He knew he’d better try to work out a version of the actualities here. Soon, Iles would return from general focus on the universe, and his part in it, and order Harpur to speak a step-by-step scenario of how he saw these sad events and the lead-up to them.

  In fact, perhaps he’d already begun to swing back towards the particular. ‘Manse Shale went up to Hackney, London, for Denz Lake’s funeral, didn’t he, Col, a while ago – after Lake’s termination by double-barrelled mouth-wash? Was it two Astra pistols doing deep throat with him?’ Iles said. ‘Some said suicide, didn’t they?’

  ‘The trip to Hackney is the kind of high-management gesture Manse would always make, sir. Nobody’s more committed to the duties that come with supreme rank. When he gets a title, his escutcheon motto will be, Noblesse oblige. Pinched.’

  ‘We ran surveillance on Shale at the time, yes? This would be 2007. March?’

  ‘Not surveillance. We had information.’

  ‘From?’

  ‘Yes, certain information,’ Harpur replied. ‘Who went with him?’ Iles said.

  ‘It obviously required some travel and at least a day’s absence from the firm, but this would not deter Manse. He’d feel compelled to show respect as chairman of the companies. Suicide or approximate suicide – a tragedy either way.’

  ‘I saw some of the reports, didn’t I?’
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  ‘I like to keep you in touch, sir.’

  ‘Is that right?’

  ‘It’s routine.’

  ‘Is that right?’

  ‘If an Assistant Chief is Assistant Chief (Operations) he should obviously be kept informed about operations.’

  ‘Logic I love, Col,’ Iles said.

  ‘Thank you, sir.’

  ‘Shale was in private discussions post crem, I think.’

  ‘With a brother of Denz, and a cousin.’

  ‘Separately?’

  ‘One to one.’

  ‘Did the one know about the other one?’

  ‘Sir?’

  ‘Was the brother aware Manse talked privately with the cousin and was the cousin aware Manse talked privately with the brother?’

  ‘I have nothing on the content of these conversations,’ Harpur said. He waited for more questions, hoping he could then work out the direction of Iles’s thinking. But the ACC went silent now, his face unreadable, his mind possibly back among those vaster, staff officer issues. What did this shot boy and his shot stepmother and their shot car indicate about the state of the planet and the Assistant Chief’s responsibility for it?

  So, Harpur entered his own realm: the actual. Clearly, the street – Sandicott Terrace – was part of that. It would lead up to the main Landau Road and a further straight, four-mile drive to Bracken Collegiate. She could probably have joined Landau Road and the direct, swift-flowing traffic sooner. The route through Sandicott Terrace and other minor streets was most likely a deliberately complicated roundabout course to guard against ambush. But no good.