Vacuum

  Harpur said: ‘So, let’s try for a narrative, please: you drink the champagne and clink glasses for the toast, which must have been the culmination of the visit. Did Franco give any indication of where he would be making for afterwards?’

  ‘Of course, the words I want to focus on in Alec’s question are “and then”,’ Oswald replied. ‘“And then what do we fucking get?” Alec asked. What, I would in my turn ask, does that vital “and then” suggest?’

  ‘Franco’s movements after the little Civil War ceremony here could be of real significance,’ Harpur said.

  ‘Clearly the “and then”, in Alec’s rather hostile question, means that something has gone before,’ Oswald said. ‘This is what the then-ness of then is all about, isn’t it – something following something else? So, let’s examine what preceded Alec’s “and then”. What preceded it was, as described by Galileo, the excellent company talk concerning sale figures, mixture proportions, deliveries and, above all, a suitable business plan for the current situation. We note that Galileo rated these proceedings as “fine”, even though Galileo is not well disposed towards Arlington. I would agree with Galileo’s comment on those initial discussions. In fact, I go further than “fine”. They were excellent. They proved how brilliantly perceptive Manse was in spotting Mike Arlington’s talents and rewarding them with the chief exec post.

  ‘I’d like to point you towards that business plan Galileo spoke of. The trading conditions for the future on this patch are not easy to predict. A credible plan has to be both flexible and clear. For example, tonight, we have the advantage of Mr Harpur’s presence at our deliberations. But will this happy cooperativeness continue? It is part of a civilized ambience established and cultivated by Mr Iles. However, we know, don’t we, that a new Chief has taken over, and a Chief who does not see the commercial scene in the same positive, healthy fashion as Mr Iles. There is likely to be a power struggle and, despite Mr Iles’s high-quality grey matter and filthy ruthlessness, Sir Matthew Upton might prevail. Goodbye then to this constructive socializing with Mr Harpur. He would have to abide by Upton’s dictates.’

  ‘Iles was able to fuck up the Low Pastures search ordered by Upton, wasn’t he?’ Vernon said. ‘That’s the word around. Do we really think anyone can beat Desmond Iles?’

  ‘We have to cover all possibilities,’ Oswald Garnet said. ‘And the prospectus that Michael Arlington outlined to us this evening expertly does that. Every contingency, every subdivision of a contingency, was admirably dealt with. Could anyone else in the firm offer that degree of skill? Mansel obviously didn’t think so. Neither do I. Jason Wensley? Jason might kid himself he could, but I believe all of us here would deeply doubt it.’

  ‘True,’ Vernon said.

  ‘We go back to Alec’s “and then”,’ Oswald said. ‘And then, yes . . . and then, after that brilliant exposition, Michael Arlington suddenly switches to game-playing. He feels entitled to relax. He drops into fantasy. His mind soars, has no cramping, restrictive boundaries. This is a positive aspect of the make-believe Alec referred to. Shouldn’t we all see – all, including him and Galileo, possibly Vernon – that this ability springs from the same originality which enables him to visualize – and prepare for – each uncertainty of our marketing future? Alec’s “and then” was spoken in a tone suggesting a contradiction exists between Michael Arlington’s professional intelligence and his excursions into a distant, military past. They are not. They are both integral to one magnificently gifted, uniquely creative person.’

  ‘You know, I find myself coming around to Ossie’s opinion,’ Vernon said confidingly.

  ‘That’s because you’re a full-time fucking bejewelled jerk,’ Alec replied, at volume max.

  ‘Except I’m forty per cent up on your miserable sodding sales return for the quarter,’ Vernon said. He went into a silent, very thorough and long-drawn-out laugh at Alec’s rubbishy trading performance, alleged. Vernon was black, getting fat, and in jogging trousers and a navy polo-necked jersey. He wore Lennon-type, rimless glasses and had a small, imperial beard under his lower lip. Harpur thought Vernon’s dossier gave his birth date as 1976 and named a wife and three children. ‘No fucking offence meant, Alec, you hopeless fucking tit,’ Vernon added warmly.

  ‘You can see the situation is unsettling for us, Mr Harpur,’ Galileo said. ‘A certain very unfortunate edginess and harmful vocab. I wonder whether you have a comment or two to restore confidence, reinstate that previous splendid fellow-feeling among us.’

  Harpur downed his gin and cider. ‘I have to look about,’ he said.

  Alec said: ‘Harpur, I heard you were on the Eton earlier, talking to the Assistant Chief’s friend, Honorée.’

  ‘How?’ Harpur said.

  ‘How what?’ Alec replied.

  ‘How did you hear it?’ Harpur said.

  ‘Did you find out what Sir Matthew Upton had been saying to her during quite a long interview, I’m told?’ Alec said.

  ‘Who told you?’ Harpur said.

  ‘But we can guess his mission, can’t we?’ Alec replied. ‘He’s building a case against Iles. He’s building a case to destroy Iles. This Assistant Chief uses a girl who spreads herself for money all over the area and will go with someone who deals in roof slates. It could harm Iles, and I don’t mean infection only. Repute. Character. How will the Home Office view that sort of behaviour in a very senior married officer, a father? You can see why I’m troubled, and why Galileo is troubled, and Ossie and Vernon would be troubled too if they had the merest fucking brainpower.

  ‘We’ve got two kinds of threat to our careers in the substances vocation. There’s Michael Arlington and his whimsy, which leaves him and us liable to extinction. And then this other possible extinction – Iles. If he’s terminated and Upton installs the regime he fancies, we’re nowhere.’ Alec slowed and stopped. His thin little face twitched five or six times and didn’t seem able to reassemble itself into how it had been previously, unpleasant but stable. He began to weep, obviously battered by double despair. He did not attempt to hide his distress – didn’t lower his head or moderate the din level from what it was when he spoke. The sobbing hullabaloo reached all parts of the bar. Customers stared, some sympathetically, Harpur thought. ‘Oh God, oh God, how have we allowed this situation to come upon us?’ Alec asked. ‘Shall we see the annihilation of this beautiful, impeccable system, so lovingly formed and maintained? Are we the prey of vandals?’

  Oswald Garnet moved to Alec’s side and put an arm around his flimsy shoulders. ‘We are, perhaps, at opposing points in this argument,’ Oswald said, ‘but friendship and empathy can still prevail.’

  ‘Take the twattish twerp outside, Os, and give him a good shaking,’ Vernon said.

  ‘I forgive you that harshness, Vern,’ Alec said. ‘We are all stress-affected.’ He turned to Harpur. ‘Some think me flinty and abrasive. But I have emotions. I can suffer. Did Honorée confirm Upton’s purpose to you?’

  ‘You’re all sure Franco and Whitehead didn’t hint at what they’d be doing after The Porter?’ Harpur replied.

  ‘Why so anxious?’ Vernon said.

  Yes, why? These two were low-life, not worth fretting over, surely. It must be Karen Lister’s possible involvement via Jason that unsettled him. He didn’t want her dragged into something rough, perhaps rougher than rough. He reckoned he had a duty to her. Hadn’t she risked coming to him at home in Arthur Street for help? The children were present for part of it. They’d regarded her as a sexual danger, but they would also expect Harpur to do all he could for her. Non-sexually, that is. He had an unexpected vision again of her death mask and the small teeth.

  Harpur hoped that when he left the pub the Chrysler would have disappeared from its spot in the Square and he could assume Arlington and Edison L. Whitehead were somewhere about the Valencia on their usual, routine business programme, encouraging, checking, replenishing: this was a commercial enterprise that could not run itself; it required dedicated and en
ergetic, inspired leadership. But, as he came out of The Porter, he saw at once that the Chrysler still stood there. He thought, though, it might not be in exactly the previous position, but possibly a couple of metres forward. Another difference, and maybe more significant: the car was no longer unoccupied. Edison L. Whitehead sat behind the wheel. He seemed to be alone in the Chrysler. It remained unlit. Edison’s head moved continually, left, ahead, right, behind, then left again, as though he were looking for somebody and had started to panic at their continued absence.

  Harpur walked to the car. Edison lowered the driver’s window. Harpur bent forward and leant in. ‘It’s like a re-run of that earlier conversation up near Templar,’ Harpur said. ‘But it’s me outside this time and you in. And Mike Arlington was present then. Where is he, Edison?’

  ‘I’m waiting for him, as a matter of fact.’ He seemed to try to make it sound light and casual. It didn’t. The words came without a stumble, though.

  ‘Where is he?’ Harpur said.

  ‘He’ll be here soon.’

  ‘Where is he?’

  ‘This is a sort of regular rendezvous point for us if we have to separate occasionally.’

  ‘What’s happened?’ Harpur said.

  ‘He’ll be along.’

  ‘You’ve left him on his own?’

  The question obviously knocked Whitehead hard, and he couldn’t answer at once. Then he said: ‘But he’ll be here soon.’

  ‘Should he walk solo in the middle of the night in the Valencia?’

  ‘No, of course he fucking shouldn’t,’ Edison said. The words were still well managed, but they arrived in a rush now, as though he couldn’t act calm any longer, or keep his fears bottled.

  ‘What’s happened?’ Harpur replied.

  ‘I told him.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘That as head of a firm he shouldn’t go unprotected here. I said Manse wouldn’t have. It’s not a matter of cowardice. Basic caution. But you know how Mike can be.’

  ‘No, how can he be?’

  ‘Well, like, imperious.’

  Edison had an education and a vocabulary. Harpur said: ‘The General Franco stuff?’

  ‘I’d prefer not to discuss it,’ Edison said.

  ‘Sometimes it’s best to talk about these things.’

  ‘Which things?’

  ‘If they’re troubling you.’

  ‘Well, yes, they’re troubling me. I expect you can tell.’

  ‘I’ll get in the car. More re-run.’ Harpur went around to the passenger door and let himself in. ‘It’s troubling you that he hasn’t turned up, is it?’

  ‘It’s not like him. Well, some of it’s not like him.’

  ‘The lateness?’

  ‘He ought to be here.’

  ‘Which of it is like him?’ Harpur replied.

  ‘You know how he can be.’

  ‘The Franco stuff?’

  ‘We were over in The Porter early in the evening.’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘You’ve been there tonight?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Well, it was all going fine at first.’

  ‘Trade talk.’

  ‘Exactly. Good, sensible trade talk. Nobody can beat Mike at that. He’d asked for four of our people to be there for a bit of a meeting. They could skip street work tonight. We had replacements out – good, industrious replacements, eager to get a feel of the territory, map the trading points.’

  ‘I hear he’s great at business surveys,’ Harpur said.

  ‘A true talent. Onassis wouldn’t be in his league.’

  ‘Gifted.’

  ‘Wonderfully.’ Edison shifted in his seat, turned his head half right suddenly to look out of the driver’s side window. A man had crossed the Square near Morgan’s. Edison must have thought it was Arlington. But, no. He slumped back. ‘Was that little sod Alec Geen still there when you went to the pub tonight?’ he asked.

  ‘He broke down.’

  ‘Broke down why?’

  ‘He thinks the whole fabric will get ripped to bits.’

  ‘Fabric? Which fabric?’ Now, Whitehead stared directly forward through the windscreen, as if expecting to see some of this fabric flap and billow in the breeze off the sea.

  ‘The commercial arrangements,’ Harpur said.

  ‘Oh, that fabric.’

  ‘The confab in the pub turned awkward, did it?’ Harpur said.

  ‘Awkward? Maybe that’s the word. It will do, anyway. At a certain stage, as always, no pause between sense and lunacy, we started to get Granada and Seville and Navarre and all that holy insurgency crap from Michael, plus a town called Huesca this time, which I’d heard of. In the north. Orwell served there. Got shot in the throat near Huesca, I think.’

  ‘He was a well-known writer, wasn’t he?’

  ‘Michael laughed and laughed, sort of satirical, because some enemy general said, “Tomorrow we’ll have coffee in Huesca,” but his army never took the town from the Nationalists. Look, Mr Harpur, I’ve had to work out a way to deal with these fits. I try and act as if they’re not happening. That’s my usual. But I can see this Geen is in a fucking rage. Anyone could tell he thinks Michael is just a prime liability who could sink everybody. Maybe one of the others does, too – Galileo Smith – but milder, more reasonable, though definitely not happy with Mike. OK, OK, we’ve been through this kind of situation before, often before. My job? My job is to play it indifferent, which I do. That’s to say, in their presence I do. Some harm has been done, though – harm to Mike, his image in the firm. It’s plain. Ossie Garnet might be OK, and maybe Vernon. Only maybe. The other two, not at all. Garnet – he’s older and doesn’t want to be older. So, the ponytail, meant to proclaim plentiful locks, and not grey. Plus, on the psychological side, the urge to be positive, to seem open-minded, progressive, a youth in outlook.’

  ‘This Spanish excursion upset you?’

  ‘Mike’s a wonderful guy, in many aspects a near-genius. Would Manse Shale have picked him otherwise?’

  ‘But there are lapses?’

  ‘We were going on from the pub to see a couple of our people in the flats. He’s all right with them. Not a mention or even a hint of Seville and the fucking Huesca coffee – non-coffee. When we’re coming away, I mention to him in the nicest way you can imagine, Mr Harpur, that these meetings in the flats were absolutely great – so I’m giving him the positives first – but I added that the Civil War thing could get staff irritated, unfortunately. Example? Geen and Smith in the pub. I said they couldn’t see the relevance of these journeys into the past.’

  ‘And he reacted badly, did he?’ Harpur said.

  ‘He jumps on that one word.’

  ‘Which?’

  ‘“Relevance.” He asks, “Relevance to what?”’

  ‘This was a big and idiotic mistake on my part, Mr Harpur. I could see that at once. I’d have liked to ignore it and go on to something else. But I had to stick with it now.’

  ‘With “relevance”?’

  ‘He asks again, “Relevance to what?” I know the way his mind’s going. There will be hellishness.’

  ‘I’d have thought it quite reasonable to say people like Geen and Smith grew tired of the unreal, didn’t see where it fitted in, and therefore regarded the extra, imagined, battlefield role of Arlington as irrelevant, though interesting and extremely well-researched.’

  ‘Well, yes, it might be reasonable, Mr Harpur, but we’re not in the realm of the reasonable, are we? This is fairyland. “Relevance to what?” he inquired once more. He can be like this when he’s F.Fing as I think of it – Francisco Francoing: hostile, ruthless, determined. And I had to go ahead with it, didn’t I? Unwise to defy F.F.’

  ‘He’s not Francisco Franco.’

  ‘Very unwise to defy him,’ Edison replied. ‘I said, “Relevant to now.”

  ‘“I see,” he said, “to now. I see. Now. And, pray, what is now?” He’ll do this “pray” ploy when he’s pissed off, turn on the
hoity-toit, de haut en fucking bas.

  ‘I said – again in a fully considerate tone – “Now is here in the Square, Michael, The Porter, the Valencia.”

  ‘“Valencia?” He snarled it. “Full of Commie and Trotsky shit. That city strives against me. You wish to ally yourself with them? You, allegedly so close to me, so trusted by me – you wish to ally yourself with them?”

  ‘Of course, I’d felt him going Spanish again. The “now” he was living in was “then” – the Civil War – at least for now, as it were. I’d noted the swaggering and the haughty way with his head, like “show me an enemy and I’ll bury him for the sake of my beloved country”.’

  ‘Right.’

  ‘The beloved country being Spain, of course.’

  ‘Yes, I think I got that,’ Harpur said.

  ‘I don’t really want to discuss this, Mr Harpur. It doesn’t seem . . . doesn’t seem . . . doesn’t seem appropriate. It’s disloyal to a great man, great intermittently.’

  ‘Suddenly, and for the moment, you’d become the enemy? Is that it, Edison?’

  Briefly then Harpur thought he might have to deal with another convulsively weeping man. Edison’s breathing became very shallow and rapid. He put a hand up to his face, perhaps to brush a tear away, or to check whether there were tears on his cheeks. The hand and arm shook a little. His face was square, his features rugged, but, as with Geen, grief or frustration or pain, or all of them mixed, brought rampant skew-whiffness to his looks.

  Whitehead said: ‘He grew aggressive, asking why I was trying to pass myself off as his friend, General Emilio Mola, killed in an air crash, even though I didn’t in the least look like him. “Fraud! Charlatan! Conspirator!” he yelled. We were in the street. People could hear him getting shrill – the way Mr Iles does with you sometimes, because of his wife. They were watching, some giggling. He screamed denials that he’d fixed the plane crash so there’d be no rivals for the caudillo job. Of course, I’d never said anything about the plane crash. I’d never heard of it. He thinks I’m claiming to be Mola’s ghost, come back for vengeance. As you’d expect, I wanted to get Michael to the car, make things private. But he looks at the Chrysler and doesn’t recognize it. No, it’s more than that. He behaves as if it’s not there. He’s Franco, isn’t he, and they didn’t have that brand new Chrysler model in the 1930s, not even in the late 1930s. He says he’ll walk.’