‘I’ll have to risk the disappointment of not bumping into you again. But I’ll remember the house – its pinkness – and the tumult of tints in the sarong.’
‘That small-scale VW is the kind of car plain-clothes police would pick – anonymous. And your clothes are definitely plain.’
‘Often I try to keep them on in working hours.’
‘Goodbye, then. Continue your damn chase,’ she said. ‘Yes, the Peugeot went left.’
‘Thanks.’ He went left, too, but didn’t find the Peugeot. There’d been too much chat, too much lost time. Or perhaps she resented his attitude and had deliberately lied as retaliation. She might have preferred to give him a kicking with the fell boots, but that was impossible. Harpur drove back to the Silver Bells And Cockleshells district and found another timed spot to park in near the charity shop. He felt that the only way he could get insights on Rossol now was to talk to the woman who’d been in the machine gun tower with those two children, and who seemed to know Rossol from a visit to the nursery – seemed to know something about Gordon Loam, also, from a visit to the nursery.
Harpur would wait for her. Best not call there and start questioning. If he did that he’d be more or less obliged to say he was the police, even if the people there couldn’t deduce it from the plainness of his plain clothes. He’d prefer not to cause alerts at present. That could mess up future inquiries. He was not investigating any offence and wouldn’t be able to explain why he’d become interested in Silver Bells And Cockleshells. He saw nobody in the tree house now.
Harpur was growing fond of this stretch of ground – the well-ordered parking facilities, a good-cause Oxfam store, a busy bank, the handsome nursery. This healthy thriving mixture surely typified how a city’s essence should be. After about ten minutes he noticed a shirt-sleeved, burly looking man of about fifty watching him from inside the Oxfam shop, over the top of an attractive blue and white kitchen crockery front-window display: A TENNER THE LOT INCLUDING CONDIMENT HOLDERS. Harpur gave him a friendly half-smile, adequate for a lumpish charity worker, he thought. The man withdrew, as if unhappy at being spotted, but in a little while appeared at the window again, this time with a slightly older, skinnier, balder man, and they both stared at Harpur. He didn’t bother with giving further smiles, in case they assumed he was interested in the plates and so on, but looked ahead at the nursery. He had the Golf head-on to Silver Bells. There hadn’t seemed any need to disguise surveillance by observing from the rear.
He glanced back to Oxfam and saw the two men had come out from the shop and were approaching the VW. They looked purposeful. Did they have a down on VWs, like the sarong woman, though caused differently? The thin man carried an American baseball bat, a much longer and weightier item than the bats used in British baseball. He didn’t look the sort who would buy that kind of thing, even with a charity-shop price cut, and there were no local American baseball teams, anyway, of course. He thought these two must be volunteer assistants at the shop, and the bat might be kept handy to clobber anyone trying to mug the cashier.
The burly man bent down and pulled open the driver’s door of the Golf. It was not a friendly or helpful pull. Hostile. Combative. ‘Who are you?’ he said, his tone virtually a snarl, sounding as though whatever Harpur answered the man wouldn’t like it, or believe it.
‘I’m always getting asked that,’ Harpur replied genially. Sitting behind the wheel he felt constricted, disadvantaged for any fight.
‘Who the fuck are you?’ the man said.
‘Who the fuck are you?’ Harpur said.
‘You’re a damn paedo, aren’t you?’ he said.
‘Yes, a damn wanker paedophile,’ the thinner one said. ‘Hanging around to gawp at the Silver Bells nursery kids, and maybe worse than gawp. We’ve had your sort here before, eyeing, lusting, breathing the little ones’ innocent air. And today, you’ve been around twice. We noticed.’
‘As a matter of act, I’m moving off now,’ Harpur replied. He’d seen the woman from the guard-tower leave by the nursery front door and walk quickly away in the opposite direction from where Harpur waited. ‘Shut the door, will you, chum? You can get back to your ethical commerce.’
‘Moving off? Moving off? Hark at him, Albert. So smooth and brass-necked. Don’t “chum” me, you pervert! You’re not going any sodding where, sonny,’ the burly one said.
‘I thought you were to do with charity,’ Harpur replied. ‘What about “the greatest of these is charity” – First Corinthians, New Testament – meaning the greatest virtue is love and consideration, so shut the door, will you, or I’ll break your fucking arm?’
‘We’ve called the police,’ Albert said. ‘And we’ll keep you here till they come. It is a moral duty upon us. Your sort can’t be allowed licence to roam and pleasure yourself on a public highway in a modest, harmless-looking car.’
‘I know someone who sees only evil in VWs,’ Harpur replied. He leaned forward, aiming to grab the handle and pull the door shut. ‘I am the police,’ he said.
The burly one guffawed, the kind of total vastly-tickled guffaw he might have used viewing some tripey gift for the charity shop. ‘Oh, falsely claiming to be an officer now!’ he said. ‘Making things worse for himself! What are you hanging about here for if you’re police, panting with your tongue hanging out like on heat? And in a little Golf. Who ever heard of police in a Golf?’
‘Anonymous,’ Harpur replied.
‘He’s got an answer for everything, Vernon,’ Albert said.
Vernon was crouched and part into the car. He had hold of the front of Harpur’s jacket and shirt, with both hands, trying to pull him out through the open door. Albert had stepped back and raised the baseball bat. He could manage it all right, although so spindly. It appeared to be a rehearsed two-prong attack: Vernon to drag Harpur clear of the Golf, Albert to cosh him. Harpur felt very conscious that the back of his head would be totally exposed – realized he might not be very conscious of anything shortly.
Harpur bent his face downwards and was about to give one of Vernon’s hands holding him a deep, possibly infected bite – Harpur understood human bites out-contaminated all others – when he heard a car arrive with a big roar and hard braking somewhere near, and then running, urgent footsteps, the shoes sounding very high-grade, probably good leather throughout, uppers as well as sole. Harpur felt slightly disappointed at this interruption. He would have liked to get his teeth into that creep, Vernon. Harpur didn’t mind the taste of blood if it was in a good cause. But he sensed now that, in possibly changing conditions, biting would not be acceptable.
Side-vision, he saw Albert suddenly hit backwards in some sort of ferocious rugby tackle, his rubbish physique seeming almost snapped in half as he dropped. There was a terrible preponderance of bony elbows and knees. The baseball bat fell to the floor and rolled into the gutter. Iles shouted, enraged, ‘What the hell do you two think you’re doing to Col?’ He’d landed on what there was of Albert during the assault, but quickly got back to his feet, feet accustomed to the quality shoes identified by Harpur a minute or two ago. Iles had his Charles Laity footwear individually crafted for him on a personal last.
He was in full Assistant Chief’s uniform, including cap. Albert lay on the pavement, probably not concussed or spine-damaged, but winded and badly shocked. He began to weep, though not loudly, and Harpur felt relieved about this. It always upset him to hear a man blubbing on the ground, like a child tipped from its scooter. Vernon had released Harpur, and he turned and straightened up alongside the Golf to defend himself. Of course, he would have seen the ACC’s uniform, with its gaudy epaulettes, and realized he was police. But Vernon would most likely realize, too, that Iles was not the kind of police he wanted, or, in fact, the kind of police who would normally be in the police at all.
Iles gave him a single, middle-power punch on the right ear. The ACC did sometimes show what was known in politics and the law as ‘proportionality’ – that is, any violence coming from him w
ould be at the required force, and only at the required force. It would be meticulously in proportion to the danger and/or stroppiness of the target. Vernon fell to the ground like the baseball bat, then rolled into the gutter like the baseball bat, though still partly conscious. This had been a very nicely judged right-hand jab to Vernon, and shoulder charge to Albert, only moderate interference from the Assistant Chief, civilized, more or less kindly. His cap had remained in place throughout. He would have loathed to see it spin from his head during the bother and bounce about farcically on the pavement, like a symbol of disorder and insurgency, and liable to bedecking in dog shit.
‘They called up the Control Room and gave the car make and number, Harpur,’ Iles said, ‘and the inspector recognized it as ours. She’s a smart one; sensed it might be important and told me. I checked with the pool and found you’d taken it. I guessed this was your sort of disgusting street-level trouble and came myself, Col. We don’t want everyone at headquarters to know what a twat you are, do we?’
‘Guessed how?’
‘Oh, yes, guessed,’ the ACC replied. ‘And I saw the siting report from Rapid Response saying the Peugeot had been hereabouts. What’s with the charity shop, then – these gentry attempting a hard sell?’
‘This is something very ongoing,’ Harpur said.
‘Yes, I thought so. What, though?’
‘Yes, ongoing, sir.’
Iles went and helped Albert to stand. The ACC took a brilliantly white, carefully folded handkerchief from his pocket and extremely caringly wiped the tears from Albert’s face. ‘Bear up,’ Iles said. ‘There will always be hazards on the Oxfam front line.’ The ACC wouldn’t want the used handkerchief near his body, especially not in a trousers pocket abutting his balls, and once the Albert clean-up finished he held the square of cotton at arm’s length and dropped it into a nearby litter bin. ‘I’m not going to proceed with charges for carrying an offensive weapon, viz., a Joe DiMaggio,’ he said. ‘I admire those who give their time freely to Oxfam for its work in Africa and Sydney, Australia, and for clothing Harpur fashionably throughout his life, if we take “fashionably” to mean “clownishly”.
‘But the thing about charity is it begins at home, you know. There’s a maxim to that effect. Think of myself and Col as looking after you and your home as part of our constant remit. The law exists to protect folk like you, and it is vital that application of the law should be “in good hands”, as an old-time thinker put it. Where, then, do we find those “good hands”? May I point you both towards Detective Chief Superintendent Colin Harpur? In return, he surely deserves better treatment than what you were offering, don’t you think? He is your standby, and you should stand by him in gratitude. And if ever you’re feeling down and would like a reassuring hour or two’s chat, why don’t you call on Col at a hundred and twenty-six Arthur Street? He’d be only too delighted to welcome you, wouldn’t you, Col? Delighted. That’s his admirable nature. There’d probably be petits fours.’
Harpur climbed out of the VW. It took him and Iles, on an arm each, to get Vernon off the ground. ‘He is police, then, is he?’ Vernon asked Iles.
‘Who?’ Iles said.
‘Him. The VW.’
‘We use that kind of vehicle sometimes,’ Iles said.
‘Anonymous,’ Harpur said.
‘But why’s he watching Silver Bells?’ Vernon asked.
‘Silver Bells?’ Iles replied.
‘The nursery,’ Vernon said. ‘That building with the tree house out front.’
‘Ah, you think he’s interested in the nursery, not your shop?’ Iles said.
‘Why would he be interested in the shop?’ Vernon said.
‘Why would he be interested in the nursery?’ Iles asked.
‘Kids,’ Albert said.
‘Kids?’ Iles replied.
‘Like – you know – under-age abuse,’ Albert said.
‘Harpur prefers them grown up,’ Iles said. ‘Don’t you, Col?’
For a moment, Harpur thought the ACC was going to slide into one of those occasional loud fits about his wife’s affair with Harpur a long while ago. But that would have sounded like a compliment now – a denial that Harpur went for children, the proof Mrs Sarah Iles. Harpur could see this step-by-step reasoning canter across the Assistant Chief’s face. He’d stay quiet about Sarah.
‘Col will have some explanation,’ Iles said.
‘Will he tell you?’ Vernon said.
‘Probably not,’ Iles replied. ‘Or not at this juncture.’
‘Which?’ Albert said, recovering quickly now.
‘Which what?’ Iles said.
‘Juncture,’ Albert said.
‘This one,’ Iles said. ‘There have been others where I’ve had to dash with urgent help for Col.1 On the whole he’s worth it.’
Harpur picked up the baseball bat and returned it to Albert.
‘We must be getting along now, lads,’ Iles told him and Vernon.
TWENTY
After that little escapade with the Golf tagging her – attempting to – Liz knew many would say she should remain out of sight for a while, adopt some low-profiling, or no profiling at all. ‘OK, Liz, you’ve done a fine job getting clear, so be thankful and stay clear, stay hidden somewhere, yourself and motor.’ That’s how the chinwag would go, intelligent, well-meant, cautious.
She thought this would be a stupid response, though. Always she trusted her own brain, her own thinking. Almost always. Her school, Marlborough, had encouraged that kind of mental sturdiness, and it stayed with her through Oxford. Plus, she was a fieldworker and that’s what workers in the field did: they saw situations whole, say, as farmers saw the seasons, not fragmented. They never acted on impulse. They despised catch-as-catch-can stunts. Occasionally, this kind of solid independent stance might even put her into conflict with George Dinnick, founder and potentate of the Cog corporation, who didn’t much care where his people went to school. She had the idea he’d been at somewhere quite pricey and non-State himself, but he never spoke about that, never spoke at all about his background. He was Cog incarnate. He’d obviously decided to reveal nothing more.
Defiance of George could be very dangerous, but she didn’t know how to change, or want to, not as yet, anyway: George had never gone full-out unpleasant and/or threatening towards her. If this did happen one day, Liz realized she might have to accept some adjusting, some trimming. Her splendid, cocky independence had boundaries, like everyone’s. Marlborough had been a powerful influence, but Marlborough was only a school, and quite a while ago. Now, there was Cog, and minor cogs in the general Cog machinery. She figured as one of them.
The Peugeot had become an obvious liability. She couldn’t tell who knew about it, but plainly the Golf driver did, and possibly those who sent the Golf driver, and/or those who were passengers in the car. From very brief, imperfect mirror glimpses of the VW she believed that the driver was a man – a biggish, heavily made, fair-haired, blunt featured man, late thirties – and that he was alone. Perhaps. He might be the man they had on film, also in an oldish Golf.
Eventually, the Peugeot would be a give-away, no matter how long she remained inconspicuous. There might be a general call out to report sightings of the car. Instead of hiding, she decided she would finish her fieldwork now, today, immediately, while the Golf was somewhere trounced, hopeless, all wrong, temporarily neutered, then return the Peugeot and disappear back to London on a late-afternoon train. Not that she’d discovered much. Things might still change, though. She drove out towards Jack Lamb’s home, Darien.
On the way, of course, she tried to guess who exactly the Golf driver might be. Police? They were trained to get two non-bulky vehicles between tail and target. This absolutely matched the Golf’s tactics. The police often used small, unmarked, anonymous vehicles as cover – not always a smart ruse, because some big-built drivers looked so cramped that nobody could believe they’d buy that model. Although she’d managed to shuffle off the Golf, it hadn’t b
een easy. The driver seemed to have learned the motorized stalking routines, but was simply unprepared for a non-cop to apply evasion skills so expertly and ruthlessly. She’d taught herself these tricks early on in her fieldwork career – had foreseen a possible need now and then for that type of sudden four-wheeled disappearance. Neither Marlborough nor Oxford had taught such slick procedures, and she’d had to improvise a personal instruction course. She’d used them twice before, but never in such risky circumstances as today’s.
Liz reckoned those skills were only very good, not faultless. She thought she might have made herself noticeable by bolting too fast through suburban side-roads, and particularly in that Georgian terrace where, from outside a dinky pink-painted house, the strange woman in hiking boots and a lurid sarong had seemed to be watching every passing vehicle, hope and avid need in her body language and possibly eyes, though Liz had gone by too fast for a full inspection. If the Golf followed into this street, and stopped to ask for directions, she might have let them know the Peugeot went right at the crossroads ahead. Liz kept her eyes on the mirror but saw no resumed adhesive company.
Assuming the Golf was the police, she knew they’d quickly trace the Peugeot to the hirer and obtain Liz’s name and details. But, so what? She’d committed no offence, except, possibly, the speeding and wild driving when leaving the main road. They’d have no first-hand evidence for either, though. She couldn’t understand, in fact, why the police should be interested in her at all: interested enough to put her under close observation?
Liz did realize she could be absurdly wrong to assume police. The Golf driver might have been Basil Gordon Loam in a changed car, or an associate of his. Or – another or – it was perhaps someone connected to Silver Bells And Cockleshells. That seemed improbable. But, then, a hell of a lot seemed improbable. Why not this extra? She wanted to take into account all the possibles and consider every contact she’d made in the city on this visit. That’s how she was. If a job had to be done, it had to be done exhaustively, nothing discounted because prima facie it looked unlikely. No skimping. She might make that the title of her autobiography, if she lived long enough to do one.