PART TWO
The now and the near future
TWENTY-THREE
Chief Superintendent Colin Harpur had heard a whisper that Ralph Ember might be in special danger this Christmas. Of course, because of his glorious trading status, Ralph was always in danger from the envious and acquisitive. But, apparently, during this particular, approaching holiday period the risks would be exceptional, unparalleled.
The tip-off came from someone Harpur graded as the most talented informant he’d ever dealt with; perhaps the most talented informant any detective anywhere had ever dealt with. It was difficult to know this for sure: informants didn’t have a merit league with someone at the top on highest points and entitled to a silver cup and medal. Informants preferred obscurity, concealment, no general recognition. They tended to whisper, not shout. General recognition would be perilous, and, in any case, was bound to make the informant useless: once recognized, his, or her, urge to leak secrets could be guarded against. And punished, perhaps fatally. Informants liked to deliver information, but didn’t like being information.
There’d been, as there quite frequently was, a telephone call to Harpur at home in Arthur Street. His daughter, Jill, aged thirteen, picked up the receiver first. ‘Dad, it’s for you,’ she yelled.
‘OK,’ Harpur said.
‘I think it’s your stool pigeon,’ Jill said, without covering the mouthpiece or pressing the Secrecy button. ‘That shady, finky sort of voice?’
Harpur took the phone. ‘Was that the younger one, Col?’ the shady, finky sort of voice asked pleasantly.
‘Sorry about the crude language. She watches a lot of telly crime, talks Detroit sometimes.’
‘Can you make it to Number Three soonest?’
‘I’ll be there,’ Harpur said. He put the phone down.
‘Was I right, Dad?’ Jill asked, awarding herself a thumbs-up sign.
‘I have to go out,’ Harpur replied.
‘It’s late,’ Jill said.
‘He’s an adult,’ Hazel, her sister, said. ‘He’s not afraid of the dark.’ Hazel was nearly sixteen, old enough to be left in charge. Jill often got a snub from her. They were in the big sitting room of Harpur’s house, the girls playing some computer game. The three of them had put up Christmas decorations earlier in the day. Harpur enjoyed that kind of joint family project. He was a single parent now, after the death of their mother. He tried to keep things reasonably peaceful between the children. Tricky.
‘Will you be tooled up? Are you stepping into unknown territory? Police often have to step into unknown territory. Is it urgent?’ Jill said. ‘Will he make disclosures? That’s what finks do, isn’t it – make disclosures?’ She gave that word real punch.
‘Routine,’ Harpur said.
‘These disclosures wouldn’t be available to police otherwise,’ Jill said. She put on a deep, harsh, muted tone: ‘“For your beautiful ears only, Mr Harpur.” These disclosures come from someone able to get stuff from inside a crooked firm, having done observation out of the corner of his eye so as not to be noticed observing.’
‘He couldn’t have said much,’ Hazel replied. ‘So brief.’
‘Security,’ Jill said. ‘Kept short because phone lines could be listened in to by all sorts. Coded, I expect. Was it, Dad? Sort of sounding harmless, but meaning something else. Like The Eagle Has Landed on the movie channel, not to do with an eagle, really, but a plot to capture Mr Churchill by Nazis in the war.’
‘Oh, God,’ Hazel said, ‘we’re into German Secret Service stuff now, are we?’
But, yes, perhaps there had been a kind of elementary code. Number Three was a concrete defence post on the foreshore, as a matter of fact left over from that war, a kind of museum piece now. After all those years it didn’t smell too good, but was used as a shelter by fishermen if the weather turned rough, by unwealthy lovers who wanted privacy, and by Harpur and possessor of that shady, finky kind of voice, Jack Lamb. They, also, wanted privacy. They had other meeting spots and rotated them, so each needed a number.
Jack adored the military touch given by this little, redundant, circa-1940, anti-invasion fortress and, to harmonize, would turn up at Number Three in historic clothes bought at an army surplus store. Tonight he had on one of those hip-length, khaki overcoats – bum-freezers, as they were known – that British cavalry officers used to wear when in the saddle; and a French kepi-style soldier’s peaked cap. Although Jack liked discreetness and codes he went in for this kind of conspicuous, warpath gear. But he would be getting on for 260 pounds and was six feet five inches tall, so perhaps he reasoned he’d be noticed whatever he wore. Harpur was hefty – some said like a fair-haired Rocky Marciano, undefeated world champion heavyweight – but Jack dwarfed him. People thought of informants as slinky and furtive, like Toothpick Charlie in Some Like It Hot, twitchily trying to hide behind his upturned coat collar. Jack wasn’t slinky or furtive and didn’t twitch.
He would have found it contemptible to take money for his disclosures, but it was understood by both men that Harpur shouldn’t look too closely into the splendidly profitable, infinitely dodgy art business Jack ran, selling great works by renowned painters, many of them genuine, apparently. Lamb said it would be tedious and irksome and such a bore for Harpur if he thought he should check how certain of these priceless items got into Jack’s hands, and had a magnificent purchase price put on them by him, although they were priceless.
Jack stood massive and wholly undaunted at a loophole now, gazing out into the darkness, ready, eager to repel solo any seaborne, landing-craft attack, the kepi to the side of his head, making him look devil-may-care and gallantly unfazed/unfazable. ‘Ralph Ember, Col,’ he said, over his shoulder. ‘Or “Panicking Ralph”, as he’s called.’ He spoke quietly, but in this enclosed, thick-walled pillbox the words got a crackling, nearly raucous, echo. They seemed to break up into strange, eerie, black-magic chant combinations: ‘Ral Fembercol; Ralph Embercle; Orpar Nicking Ralfasi Scald.’
‘People don’t call him “Panicking” to his face,’ Harpur said.
‘No, not to his face, but by competitors in the great druggy game, and by villains generally. He’s in jeopardy, Col, in serious jeopardy. Naturally, he attracts the normal territorial jealousy but I hear, too, there’s something unforgiven, unforgivable, in his past – something not defined so far. London, possibly? Is south-east London in his background? Maybe a moment of cowardice in a gang fight – how he got the nickname? Because of his failure, perhaps people were killed, or injured, and/or locked up. It’s a while ago but isn’t it conceivable that someone’s out of jail now and still aggrieved? Releases speed up for Yule. Maybe a relative or chum of one of those killed or permanently disabled has let resentment fester and now wants to do payback.’
‘You know this?’ Harpur asked. ‘How, Jack?’ It was the kind of question any detective would ask an informant, and the kind of question no informant would answer. Sources had to be protected or the informant would get no more information to inform with, and could even get killed or permanently disabled himself for gab.
Jack said: ‘There might be trouble aimed at Panicking around Christmas time. Opportunities. Good King Wenceslas looked out, and Ralph should look out, too.’
‘What type of trouble, Jack?’
‘Kill-Ralph type,’ Jack replied. ‘I don’t like it.’ As an informant, Lamb was very selective. He didn’t betray willy-nilly for reward. There had to be what he considered a decent purpose. To safeguard from outside attack a considerable local figure like Ralph Wyvern Ember would amount to a decent purpose. If Jack could be called a fink, his finkdom was of a noble, protective kind. ‘I think Ralph started his career up in the capital, didn’t he, Colin? Do I recall reading of a major street imbroglio somewhere near Peckham?’
‘Do you?’
‘I read a lot. Five pavement deaths, much blood, much trauma, much jail?’
‘Were there?’
‘A pillar box prominent.’
‘Was there?’
‘Also a statue.’
‘Yes?’
‘Two firms and an armed police party involved. Some controversial behaviour by Ralph on that occasion?’
‘Was there? What kind of controversial?’
‘The panicking kind? Or possibly not something he would regard as panic. Perhaps to him it seemed only wise caution. Others might demur. A lot of demurring goes on in the substances realm.’
‘How did the panic, or whatever it was, show itself?’
‘Goodbye, Col.’ Lamb obviously believed bum freezer officers and kepi troops would be terse. He had to behave in character. He turned from his sentry duty at the loophole, his vigil over, and sort of sidled towards the door and then his car. But it was difficult for someone built like Jack to sidle. He surged. Harpur waited a few minutes and then himself left: unwise for a cop to be seen with his talebearer-in-chief at a place like this and at a time like this.
In the morning, at breakfast, Jill said: ‘Did he disclose, Dad – cough some good stuff? “Strictly restricted”?’ Harpur had cooked the breakfast himself today. He saw this as obligatory for a single parent. Or obligatory when his girlfriend, Denise, hadn’t slept over. She did great breakfasts and the children loved it when she stayed. Denise was an undergraduate at the university up the road and had gone home to Stafford for the early part of the Christmas vacation. That, too, amounted to an obligation, though not one Harpur rejoiced in.
‘Do you like dealing with squealers, Dad?’ Hazel said. ‘Don’t they give you the creeps?’
‘I don’t think of them as squealers,’ he said.
‘No? What then – narks, touts, snoops?’
‘He has to deal with them,’ Jill said. ‘It’s what detectives are for. You think it’s all magnifying glasses and DNA, Haze. It’s not like Shylock Holmes any longer. There have to be finks.’
‘Sherlock,’ Hazel replied. ‘Shylock’s someone else. “You spat on me on Wednesday last.”’
‘I wouldn’t ever, Haze,’ Jill said.
‘And Sherlock Holmes was before DNA.’
‘Well, anyway,’ Jill said. She’d always defend Harpur from Hazel’s digs. He was grateful.
Of course, he would never tell his boss, Assistant Chief Constable (Operations) Desmond Iles, about any insights that came to Harpur from Jack Lamb. Iles believed he should already know everything, and would get deeply ratty if Harpur suggested he didn’t. And – another factor, more important – no detective was supposed to have a one-to-one, exclusive arrangement with an informant. A rule laid down that an informant belonged not to an individual officer but to the whole detection force. So, informants had to be officially registered. It was a categorical, virtually even absolute, command, to prevent corruption. And to prevent a reversal of the arrangement when an informant might take over a detective rather than the other way about. But – obviously – Jack would never have let anyone officially register him, so Harpur ignored the categorical, even absolute command, and would have ignored it if it were even more categorical and absolute.
Mid-afternoon at headquarters today the ACC knocked at Harpur’s office door and walked in, leaving it ajar. He had on his magnificent pale-blue, high-quality dress uniform. Most probably he’d been at some formal, festive, civic luncheon, offering good chances for him to give offence. He seemed unhappy. ‘This Counties Youth Orchestra, Col, that I read of. Why does it have to come here, for God’s sake?’
‘A short stay.’
‘Why at all?
‘I gather that gifted youngsters are picked to go on a brief, concentrated course where they’re coached by expert instrumentalists. It happens every year in the days just before Christmas when kids are on holiday. They assemble in a different city each time, with a concert at the end to show what they’ve learned. Our turn to accommodate them. A privilege.’
‘Greasy old pros in cardigans encouraging girls, and maybe boys, to get their lips right to do blow-jobs.’
‘Yes, brass and woodwind.’
‘What I said – blow jobs. Haven’t we got enough problems on our patch already, Col, some unseen as yet but definitely there? They’ll all be heated up by toccatas and fucking fugues. Orchestrated lust, Col. Scandals in our bailiwick. I worry, Harpur.’
‘In which respect, sir, other than the youth orchestra?’
‘Christmas,’ Iles said. ‘The whole caboodle. People think we’re off guard. Carols and mince pies and goodwill to all men.’
‘Which people?’
‘They make their moves,’ Iles replied.
‘Which moves, sir?’
Iles took a seat. For a while he gazed down to admire the slimness of his legs as nicely swathed by the fine material. His hair was quite long again now, after a spell when he had it cut close to capture the Jean Gabin style he’d seen on old films. ‘They’re out there all the time, Harpur.’
‘Who, sir?’
‘Take my word for it. I sense things. It’s a unique flair. Yet I hope I’m not one to boast, Col.’
‘Few would accuse you of that, sir.’
‘Which fucking few, Harpur?’
‘Many’s the person I’ve heard exclaim after meeting you, “That Assistant Chief Constable Iles – he’s not one to boast. Boasting and ACC Iles could not be further apart.” Then they’ll mention chalk and cheese – very different commodities. Likewise you and boastfulness. Or, another way of putting it, there’s clear blue water between boastfulness and you.’
‘I get feelings, Col. I get sort of hints about the future, and about hidden elements in the present.’
And it was true. Harpur had long ago recognized that Iles’s mind could sometimes leave Harpur’s own far behind. Chalk and cheese. Clear blue water. ‘Hints from where, sir?’
‘Oh, yes,’ Iles replied. ‘Intimations, Col, in the fullest reach of that term.’
‘But from where, sir?’
‘Who knows? They simply arrive. I am their, as it were, passive but deeply thankful receptacle.’
‘Wonderful. Mysterious, sir. Like the Book of Revelation in the Bible. If there was a racing card for the four horsemen of the apocalypse you’d have picked the winner, even if an apparent outsider.’
Iles’s voice began to go high and screamwards, and a light, purest white froth flecked with jostling, tiny bubbles coated his lips. Harpur quickly stood and hurried to close the door properly. ‘So, you’ll ask, won’t you, Harpur, how come, if I get these sort of supernatural promptings, one of these supernatural promptings didn’t supernaturally tell me you were disgracefully banging my wife in flophouse beds, al fresco under hydrangea bushes in public parks during daylight, even on the back seat of marked police patrol vehicles, despite your undeniably inferior rank to mine?’
All that with Sarah Iles was a while ago now, but the Assistant Chief still had loud, famous fits of agonizing. Harpur always kept himself ready to check the door was shut when Iles dropped by for a chat because the ACC’s contribution to the chats could get noisy and hysterical, occasionally howlingly tearful. People would loiter in the corridor outside hoping to hear another repeat of the Assistant Chief’s performance. This brand of in-house entertainment wasn’t usual from ACCs. It helped to make the day interesting for some. Harpur took his chair again. ‘Exactly what intimations, sir?’ he said.
Iles did another admiring inspection of his legs and this seemed to comfort him. The rage passed. ‘Something, somewhere on our ground, Col,’ he said.
‘I’ll keep an eye,’ Harpur said.
‘I know I can half trust you, Col. On some things.’ His voice seemed about to soar and sharpen again.
Harpur said: ‘I’ll tell everyone in the Department to keep awake, sir. Thanks for the early warning.’
Iles, in that uncharming, telepathic, yes, mystical way of his, stared at Harpur. ‘Oh, you already knew from one of your damned hidden contacts that catastrophe was on the Christmas menu, did you, you eternally sly bugger?’ he said. ‘To do with Ember? O
r, maybe, Manse Shale? What form will it come in, Col?’
‘Talking of music and specifically carols, I’d certainly be interested to know your favourite, sir,’ Harpur replied.
When he set Iles’s vague, inspired unease alongside Lamb’s warning about Ralph and the Christmas ‘opportunities’ Harpur thought it might be sensible to speak a word to Ember, put him on guard. Harpur drove down towards The Monty. Ralph should be there now, getting the club ready for another festive night’s business. Harpur felt what could be jargonized as ‘a duty of care’. And it would be bad, wouldn’t it, if some trouble came to Ralph after that quite particular warning from Jack Lamb; and a sort of general alert from Iles, though the ACC couldn’t say where exactly the danger might strike. He had mentioned Ember’s business associate, Mansel Shale, as well as Ralph himself. Harpur’s concern grew and he’d left headquarters immediately after the talk with Iles.
Despite Ember’s high position in the substances trade, Harpur felt a kind of affection for him. He saw absurd, floundering nobility in Ralph. It came from his daft, dogged, utterly impossible efforts to achieve a refined, cultured, intellectually distinguished status for his backstreet, thieves-kitchen club. Even Iles occasionally showed some fondness for Ralph, although the Assistant Chief would mock and ridicule him when they met. Ember probably realized Iles mocked and ridiculed almost everybody, so Ralph needn’t take the insults too personally.
He could voyage on in his doomed search for The Monty’s new, cleansed, glittering identity, still fiercely powered by that barmy, constant ambition. A poem Jill studied lately for homework contained what seemed to Harpur like an exact reference to Ralph. Jill had asked Harpur what ‘inviolable’ meant. It came in the lines about a gypsy who was also a scholar. He’d given himself a mission to search non-stop for some special truth not far from Oxford. Harpur could recall the words: ‘Still nursing the unconquerable hope, Still clutching the inviolable shade.’ Harpur had needed to look up what ‘inviolable’ meant: ‘never to be broken or dishonoured.’ That description fitted absolutely Ralph W. Ember’s plans for his club. Surely, there was something crazily, admirably epic about such useless determination in Ralph? Harpur mentioned to Jill this resemblance between Ember and the gypsy and she’d wanted to put Ralph and The Monty into the composition she had to write about the poem. ‘This would perk it up, Dad,’ she said, ‘by proving that an old poem with whiskers on could still be about matters today, such as The Monty.’ Harpur persuaded her against, though.