I Am Gold

  ‘If they’re your boys, and I can believe it, why don’t you tell them to act decent?’ Manse said.

  ‘Who are you to tell me what I should tell them?’ he said.

  ‘I’m me to tell you what you should tell them,’ Mansel said.

  ‘The method of his rudeness is to repeat what you’ve just said, Geoff, and explain your own words to you, as if you’re too dim to understand them,’ the wife said. ‘It’s a convoluted insult.’ She had a burliness to her not like the women in most of the Pre-Raphaelite paintings.

  ‘Take no notice of him, lads,’ he said. ‘Carry on as if he never spoke.’

  ‘But I did speak,’ Manse replied. This was what he meant by ‘complicated’, when he considered the situation. Clearly, he needed to go over and scare the shit out of this loudmouth and inform him that if he didn’t quell his damn kids there’d be results, and not of the art type. But, along with this urgent idea, Manse did not want the woman he’d been watching the Edward Prentis sort of with to think he was the kind of presence that could scare the shit out of loudmouths by nothing much more than sudden nearness and a handful of sotto words. He would prefer this woman to have him marked in her mind as a lover of high-quality, famous pictures and especially the Pre-Raphaelites. He was a lover of high-quality, famous pictures and especially the Pre-Raphaelites, though also the kind of presence that could scare the shit out of loudmouths by nothing much more than sudden nearness and a handful of sotto words. This extra aspect of himself, a sort of bonus aspect, or like the part of an iceberg under water, he would rather stayed unknown to the woman.

  But if he did nothing to scare the shit out of this loudmouth the woman’s enjoyment of the Prentis, and his own, would be greatly negatived. Manse believed he had a responsibility to her and to the Edward Prentis and to the world of art generally. He remembered a scene from that American TV gangster show, The Sopranos, where one of the toughs thinks a group in a nightclub are getting too boisterous. He puts up with it for a while but then goes and whispers something to one of the men in the group who suddenly looks terrified, and the nuisance behaviour stops at once. A girl watching is fascinated by the delicate show of power and gets to fancy the tough. They’re soon off somewhere as a pair and well into passion. But Manse couldn’t be sure this woman in front of the Prentis would feel like that. Manse preferred to be rated a Prentis person, a Pre-Raphaelite person, not a Soprano-type person.

  Yes, tricky, tricky. Yes, complicated, complicated.

  ‘What a crummy old picture they’re looking at, anyway,’ the father said.

  ‘Crap,’ the younger boy said.

  ‘Feeble,’ the mother said. ‘Half-baked. Wishy-washy.’

  And to Manse now the comments seemed to mean that, unavoidably, he would have to scare the shit out of this loudmouth by sudden nearness and a handful of sotto words. Shale spent a little while carefully selecting the sotto words to be spoken into the loudmouth’s ear. They were: ‘Get these kids under control, as would be suitable for a room of beautiful and fascinating works, I’m sure you’ll agree, cunt, or I’ll have your fucking throat out.’ Manse could see that the loudmouth heard this pretty well. His face went like that frightened face in The Sopranos.

  ‘What did he say, Geoff?’ the wife snarled with genuine interest.

  ‘Excuse me, I didn’t intend to interrupt your gaze at the Burne-Jones etcetera, but I asked Geoff which of the seven or eight pictures in this room he thought the most Pre-Raphaelitish, if we take “Pre-Raphaelitish” to mean “in the style of the Pre-Raphaelites”,’ Manse said.

  ‘What?’ the wife said. ‘Geoff, are you all right?’

  ‘I think Geoff’s trying to make up his mind on which to choose,’ Manse said. ‘It’s a bit challenging to have a question like that chucked at you without warning.’

  ‘Boys, we’re going,’ Geoff said. ‘Now.’

  ‘Why?’ the older one said. ‘Because of ugly mug?’

  ‘Why?’ the wife said.

  ‘Now,’ Geoff said.

  ‘Has he scared you somehow?’ the wife said.

  ‘These aren’t my kind of pictures,’ Geoff said.

  ‘Geoff seems to me more a Michelangelo man. It’s a matter of taste,’ Manse replied. When the family had gone, he went and stood next to the woman again, studying the Prentis.

  ‘When it comes to pictures, people’s tastes are various and unpredictable,’ she said.

  ‘My mother used to remark, “There’s no accounting for taste.” She didn’t mean it in a cruel or snobby way. No. Just that people varied. One taste was not better than another, but different, nothing else. The Pre-Raphaelites don’t do the trick for some folk and it is entirely their right to state this and move on to some other art, for instance Michelangelo, as I suggested, or, perhaps, Per Kirkeby or Manet or, indeed, Monet. Or, then, Jackson Pollock. I always think of taste as being truly democratic.’

  ‘But I definitely would not say wishy-washy for Remembrance.’

  ‘Nor half-baked. I’d prefer the words “subtle”, “refined”,’ Manse said.

  Chapter Eleven

  2009

  For Harpur, another very notable thing about Iles was that occasionally he would accept advice. At these moments he definitely seemed to realize there might be people around who knew more about a particular area than he did himself. Now and then, Harpur had seen him allow someone else to talk quite a bit. And he’d listen, at least for a while.

  At the charity shop siege now he would have to listen to the official negotiator as well as to Andy Rockmain, a police psychologist, who’d been brought in fast. Harpur felt glad to see him. Just before Rockmain turned up, Harpur was beginning to worry about Iles. A lot of lives could be at risk here. So far, the ACC had unquestionably followed settled methods for a hostage crisis, but Harpur feared he might not stick to them. Harpur thought he had already spotted some signs of wavering. He would expect some signs of wavering. This didn’t mean Iles might order an attack. He’d fear putting lives in peril. But he might decide to do something solo.

  God, Harpur loathed those times when Iles ditched the pattern of sane behaviour and might have to be physically neutralized by him, Harpur. That is, if Harpur could do it. Although Iles was comparatively slight, nearly a dandy, he had exceptional power in his limbs and knew headbutting. It had always seemed wrong to Harpur and a collapse of decorum that two officers of high rank should go at each other violently in public, Iles possibly wearing uniform. Bad, bad, for the outfit of an Assistant Chief to get bloodstained in that kind of internal team fracas. Of course, whatever the dispute might be about, he would always top it up with his bitter stand-by rage over the Harpur–Sarah Iles affair, so long ago now, but still raw with Iles. This perennial, wild resentment probably helped put that extra, frantic strength into his arms and legs, and gave the special intensity to all the unnecessary baying, frothing and sobbing.

  In the control caravan, towed here for the siege, Rock-main had gone through three recordings of the negotiator’s conversation with the gunman and now listened in live to the latest contact, trying to construct some sort of offender profile. Harpur and Iles were also on extensions. Harpur liked how the negotiator worked. His training would have been based on plenty of handed-down experience here and abroad, some of it successful. He was patient, polite, unmenacing, never used the term ‘hostages’, constantly sought agreement with deferential phrases like ‘isn’t it?’ and ‘wouldn’t you say?’ and often repeated the gunman’s words, so giving them an importance boost. He remained reasonable, always ready to chop his own spiel and let the gunman chatter and demand. That’s what link-ups were for: to get the suspect talking and keep him talking. Slowly, it might be possible to create a relationship, even a bond, between him and the negotiator. This would have no genuine basis or worth, of course. It was a ploy. The negotiator might be bonding with someone else at a different siege tomorrow. But it often worked.

  This slowness could be an asset. It gave the chance to
pile up more information about the hostages and the building’s layout, as well as the gunman, and to bring in additional personnel and equipment for a possible swat. A mob-handed attack might become inevitable if the negotiations showed no progress signs and the danger to hostages rose. But the objective was to dodge this no-choice finale, if possible. Instead, the siege manager hoped the offender could be persuaded by a negotiator’s seeming empathy and sympathy that the most sensible next step was surrender and release of the hostages undamaged.

  Logic – the offender’s own – should lead him to this decision, not threats and badgering. He must be brought to realize that to give up was a preferable fate to what might happen to him otherwise. And this, of course, was logical, impeccably logical. If it came to tactical intervention, he would be priority stun-gunned, possibly gassed, possibly riddled like that deafening, lengthy, fusillade ending of Bonnie and Clyde, to stop him riddling others – hostages and/or members of the hit team.

  As long as he remained scared, though, logic might not get a look-in. Impulse and despair ruled. The negotiator had to sneak some balance and sense into him by user-friendly, cooked-up, formula mateyness. His brain should tell him then that he was outnumbered and cornered and the ultimate in no-win prats. The amassing of armed officers and assault gear outside ought to be made very obvious, though not blatantly warlike.

  Of course, he could still kid himself he had some power: that is, his gun, guns, and bullets and his hold on hostages’ lives. But one gun or even two and their bullets wouldn’t do much against the sharpshooter mob surrounding him. And, the lives of the hostages could become a weakness, not an advantage.

  Ultimately, the siege commander might decide (a) negotiating had bombed; (b) an immediate rescue attempt was now unavoidable; and (c) an intervention attack would be recognized as unavoidable by any board of inquiry and/or court hearing that followed: crucial, this. The siege supremo – Gold, ACC Desmond Iles – had two questions to ask, the second one dependent on the first:

  (a) Can negotiations bring the hostages out and disarm the gunman?

  (b) If not, when do we go in to do both?

  Harpur thought Iles might get the answers wrong, or only right in Iles’s individual version of right, which could be wrong.

  Rockmain sat crouched forward, headphones on, a pad nearby. He made continuous notes in very black ink with a proper fountain pen. He was not wearing the green cord suit but a mauve cardigan over a black T-shirt, chinos and desert boots. Although he looked more or less negligible, he wasn’t altogether that. Probably he had come away in a hurry. The gunman’s words, tone, syntax, idioms, pauses, might bring small revelations to Rockmain, and possibly a crowd of small revelations could add up to something worthwhile.

  In any case, there were two other very practical purposes of maintaining a telephone link. If it was a landline connection and you had information about the building’s interior you might be able to fix his location fairly exactly when he spoke: he’d be near the phone, wouldn’t he? Also, to use the instrument would require one of his hands. That meant he did not have two weapons covering his prisoners. This could be relevant when he needed to control anything more than a single hostage. It was very rare for a hostage, hostages, to be hurt or killed while their captor spoke on the telephone to a negotiator.

  ‘I wouldn’t be surprised if we had quite a lot of talking to do, and it might make things easier, more natural, if we had each other’s names – first names, that is,’ the negotiator said into the phone.

  ‘Things are not fucking natural, are they? What’s natural about this? I’m stuck in a charity shop. You’re out there with a carbine contingent.’

  ‘They are only a precaution, believe me.’

  ‘Yes, I believe you. They’re only a precaution in case you want to shoot my head off. You’d never mention this, would you, but you don’t have to because you know I’ll be thinking it non-stop. What else could I be thinking?’

  ‘I appreciate you wouldn’t wish to give more than your first name,’ the negotiator replied. ‘This is not an identification matter, is it? But it would help establish a kind of closeness.’

  ‘I don’t want closeness. I want you to fuck off.’

  ‘I’m Oliver, known usually as Ol or Olly.’

  ‘OK, Ol or Olly.’

  ‘Better like that, wouldn’t you say?’

  ‘Who for?’

  ‘And your name, might one ask?’

  ‘Well, yes, one might. John.’

  ‘Is that right?’

  ‘You mean, “Is that right, John?” don’t you? For closeness.’

  ‘OK, John.’

  ‘You were hoping for a name like Beauregard or Hengest, yes? You could feed it into the Criminal Records Office memory and get a manageable shortlist of possibles. There’ll be a lot of Johns, though.’

  ‘So, do I get from this that your name’s not really John?’

  ‘John will do.’

  ‘Yes, of course.’

  ‘You’re doing the sweet reasonableness act, are you, Olly?’

  ‘We’re concerned about the people with you.’

  ‘I want you to be concerned. It’s very wise of you to be concerned. I want you to be so concerned you don’t come blasting.’

  ‘I believe there are four. Can you help me on that, d’you think?’ ‘No.’

  ‘We have a name for one of them, the manageress. This is Mrs Beatrice South, aged fifty-two, living locally at 11 Masterman Avenue.’

  ‘That’s a name you have, is it?’

  ‘We believe there are three females, one male, one female possibly in her thirties. The male perhaps forty to fifty. All Caucasian. Are they well, John? We have nurses and a doctor here. I’m wondering about stress. There’s bound to be some stress, isn’t there?’

  ‘I didn’t hurt her.’

  ‘Who?’

  ‘The one off the street.’

  ‘You took her into the shop.’

  ‘I didn’t hurt her.’

  ‘I believe you, John. Is she all right now?’

  ‘Why wouldn’t she be all right?’

  ‘Shocked?’

  ‘If someone grabs you and pulls you into a charity shop you’ll be a bit shocked, yes. Maybe she thought it was a hard sell – “Get in there and buy something!” And two pigs with guns running towards you and yelling “Stop!” Another shock.’

  ‘You still have your sense of humour, John, haven’t you?’

  ‘Most love a joke. My father used to say, “If you can make people smile you can make them your friends.”’

  ‘Often, fathers have observed life over some decades and will come out with useful words of advice.’

  ‘What advice did your father give you, Olly?’

  ‘Where would you have been when your father made that heartening comment to you, John?’

  ‘Did your father tell you, “If you’re involved in a siege, keep him talking shit, Olly, and, while he’s at it, a couple of lads can get in and blow some holes in him of a non-therapeutic nature.” I’m assuming your father would have quite a vocabulary, judging by your own.’

  ‘But she’s recovered now?’ the negotiator said.

  ‘Who?’

  ‘The woman off the street.’

  ‘This shop’s full of rubbish.’

  ‘I wondered if you could put Mrs Beatrice South, the manageress, on the line, John. Or any of the others.’

  ‘You wondered that, did you, Olly?’

  ‘It would be simply to establish contact.’

  ‘I can’t see this would be helpful.’

  ‘No. Right. Only a suggestion.’

  ‘How many listening to this chat beside you, Olly? You smarm away so well. But who’s running things? What’s the plan?’

  ‘Obviously, Mrs South’s family are worried. I’d like to be able to reassure them.’

  ‘Reassure them then.’

  ‘It’s not the same, John, is it?’

  ‘Not the same as what?’

/>   ‘Not the same as speaking to her.’

  ‘We’re all jolly and comfy here.’

  ‘As I said, your sense of humour is remarkable, in the circumstances.’

  ‘Yes, in the circumstances. If you listen you’ll hear us all giggling like idiots. This is a game, isn’t it, Olly?’

  ‘A game? In what sense would you say it’s a game, John?’

  ‘Play-acting.’

  ‘“Play-acting”? I don’t think I understand.’ ‘Yes, you understand. And you’re play-acting some more when you say you don’t understand.’

  ‘This is complicated! I’m afraid you’re leaving me behind.’

  ‘Our palaver, so chummy and tame.’

  ‘“Chummy and tame”. Isn’t it better like that, John?’

  ‘Better than what?’

  ‘Better than unpleasantness.’

  ‘But the chumminess and tameness, they’re phoney, aren’t they? And I don’t mean just telephoney.’

  ‘There’s that astonishing humour and wit again!’

  ‘You’re pretending something hasn’t happened that has happened, aren’t you, Ol? It’s a game. It’s play-acting.’

  ‘Something that happened? You have in mind the event in Sandicott Terrace, do you, John?’

  ‘Yes, the event. I have it in mind. What else?’

  ‘Now, we have to move on and deal with the results of Sandicott.’

  ‘Tell me about it.’

  ‘In what sense, John?’

  ‘What damage?’

  ‘To those in the car? You don’t know what damage?’ the negotiator asked.

  ‘How could I know what damage?’

  ‘You don’t know because you had to get clear quickly?’

  ‘Because I had to get clear quickly – if this fucking shop and your gang outside amounts to getting clear. What damage?’