‘This is social housing, still fulfilling in many ways its original tremendously worthwhile purpose, yet somehow that purpose has been compromised, shaken, and the estates turned into battle grounds where ignorant, but well-heeled, armies clash by night, and day. Surely we have a duty to show this and to look for the reasons.’ Nellie paused, held up two hands, as if in surrender on a battle ground. ‘I’m aware, of course, that I speak as an outsider to at least one here who is very much an insider – yes, I refer again to Larry.’
‘The estate is certainly characterful,’ Edgehill said.
‘The Tasker killing remains unaccounted for. And then, not so long ago, we had the turf battle death of that Whitsun pusher,’ Nellie said, ‘Gladstone Milo Naunton, who would have won Trader of the Year except he got shot. We covered both slaughters in the news at the time, as one-off crimes, obviously, but we’re seeking now the wider viewpoint, the context, so the programme will have a universal touch. It will say something about civic decline and criminality everywhere. Why I talk of “root and branch”. The barons, parading in their limos, feared, revered by some, full of money and power.
‘We’ve done serious research. Two villains on Whitsun, I gather, are arts fans, would you believe, and actually Anthony Powell fans – the upper-crust novelist. I’m told one of them gave a paper at a Powell conference. This is quirky. Fascinating programme material. Additionally, Gladstone Milo Naunton’s ex-lover, Bert Marsh, still lives on Whitsun, apparently pensioned by the super-baron, Adrian Pellotte. A sort of family, in the Mafia sense. Wonderful deep, complexity to the scene. What we need. Plus, talking of books, I get whispers about Vagrain. Abel Vagrain? Was featured on Larry’s show a while back. Now, the word’s around he’s planning some sort of book on Whitsun and Temperate – maybe fiction, or documentary, or faction. Whichever, it shows there’s major interest. He’s a considerable figure, crap writer or not.’
‘Oh, that’s harsh,’ Edgehill said.
‘Or because he’s a crap writer and reaches all those readers who want crap and wouldn’t be able to tell it from caviar,’ Nellie replied. ‘He’s not put off by Tasker’s death, apparently, nor the wars. In fact, of course, the violence is what attracts him, might be the makings of his book. Anyway, we feel we must be in on this topic, too. We shouldn’t let ourselves get scooped, by him or, say, the BBC or ITV1.’
Flo switched herself on full. ‘No, indeed,’ she said. ‘No, no, no.’
‘And isn’t there an angle special to us – admittedly a trifle delicate, but intriguing?’ Nellie asked. ‘I hear that the topmost – the only? – Whitsun baron has a daughter who’s making it with Larry’s frequent presenter, Rupert Bale – a Temperate resident. More tension? That’s what I’d expect. It’s all pretty ripe. This guy – the girl’s father – Pellotte, Adrian Pellotte– the tale is that if he parks his BMW outside a house, the lad or lass inside has very severe trouble, sometimes terminal. Generally, a skimming matter to be righted. Is there someone called Hodge in dodgy circs at present? Larch Street? That’s the gossip. And Pellotte and Dean Feston, his baggage man, splitting big funds between them in Pine, up near Hodge’s house. Hodge and Naunton were Pellotte’s best operators it’s said. So, all told, various bad knocks for the Whitsun firm. Explosion or implosion certain? We ought to be getting background filmed in good time, Flo, stored for the eventual moment.’
‘Perhaps, perhaps. But, yes, parts of it are delicate. That shouldn’t stop us, though. Let me have something on paper, would you?’ Flo said.
Sport and Drama took the rest of the hour. In the afternoon Edgehill and Tom Marland lined up a couple of items for the next A Week in Review, then at just after six p.m. Edgehill left for home. As he neared Chancery Lane Station he became conscious of someone about five foot ten inches with a hair wedge up front walking alongside him, and staying alongside him.
‘Gordon Basil Hodge of Larch Street, Whit?’ Edgehill said.
‘Best done like this,’ Hodge said. He gave a hugely accomplished smile, glittering in the street lights, probably the kind of thing Udolpho had mentioned: definitely a plus in this long, donkey-chops face, but lacking any basis, any cause. Still, a lot of smiles were like that, and not all of them in mental hospitals. ‘Too flagrant if I’d joined up with you this morning,’ he said.
‘Udolpho thought you’d do it like that.’
‘What I mean,’ Hodge said. ‘I edit what I tell Udolpho.’
‘He’s a friend of yours, isn’t he? You don’t trust him?’
‘Udolpho hears a lot, blabs a lot. Pellotte and Dean call in there for papers and scuttlebutt, you know. It’s wisest you’re not seen with me – not someone in your role.’
‘Which role?’
‘Potentially, you’re in a sensitive spot. I can appreciate it.’
‘Sensitive? How?’ Edgehill asked.
‘We must apply discretion and more discretion. Things can get difficult. You’ve heard of the journalist, Tasker, I expect.’
The pubs were full and noisy with office staff on their way home, or not. They went into the Nonesuch and stood in a corner. Edgehill bought beers.
‘You and I, we’re connected, in a way,’ Hodge said. ‘Which is why I – why I feel you wouldn’t mind being asked to help me.’
‘Connected how?’
‘Dione. Pellotte’s Dione. I’d say we’re both concerned there. When I ask myself why you and they should hold that long Gideon road conference, and thereafter, I can only come up with one answer,’ Hodge said. ‘Dione. Some people read the BMW meeting all wrong, in my view.’
‘Which people?’
‘On Whitsun. They imagine it’s to do with the trade. I’d say not a bit.’
‘How could it be?’
‘No. It’s Dione. Adrian Pellotte would think you’re able to help with the Dione-Rupert Bale romance, because you regularly employ Bale. Have I got it right? This is why they wanted to talk? Udolpho says you told him it was all about the arts! We had a giggle over that. Sorry, I don’t buy it. Pellotte’s got problems on Whitsun with some of his outfit – the nuttier, more poisonous, more violent ones – because Bale’s Temperate, of course. I’ve gone about – I swear this is right – I’ve gone about trying to smooth them down for him. Why I said we have similarities. I try, unprompted, to help, and he comes to you seeking your help. And that obviously gives you a true, robust status with him and Dean. It’s important, brings you power.’
‘Haven’t noticed,’ Edgehill said.
‘By the way, don’t underrate Dean Feston. He can do damage as much as Adrian. They’re making a fuss about some pretty piffling amount. Not much over twenty thousand. Did they mention it to you, as mates to a mate? This little sum could easily get overlooked by me during all the work pressures. You’d agree on that, I’m sure, especially when, as an extra task, I’m busy flitting around to people and trying to put them right about Dione. But, consider: I can’t go to Adrian or Feston and tell them they’re being unreasonable, hasty and footling. I’m not in that kind of position. They value me as a salesman, but that’s it. Plenty of us around. Naunton was almost as good. But you, Mr Edgehill – Larry – you’re different. There’s a special familiarity you and they enjoy, and they obviously have a special regard. You could suggest in a very gentle, tactful but effective way, that taking the overall picture, a minor lapse by one of their most established, loyal and successful people is not to be made overmuch of. It would be an acquaintance of their own calibre putting a fair point to them, and I feel they’d accept the sense of it, even some vicious lout like Dean.’
‘I’m not in a—’
‘Obviously in my kind of trade I meet all sorts, form good connections with all sorts. Taxi firms. Well, as you’d expect. Punters strange to the area jump into a cab and want to get taken to a B and B, or a girl or a dealer offering something to snort or swallow or veinline. I talk quite a lot to taxi people and vice versa. And so I understand Adrian and Dean were at your place without the BMW. That woul
d be a very secret, respectful, significant call. It shows they have exceptional esteem for you. It’s massively enviable. I shouldn’t be mentioning the taxi driver to you. He could have bother if they knew he spoke to me. You’re the kind who would not disclose such material, I’m sure. Of course, I didn’t talk to Udolpho about this second meeting between you and them.’
‘He says they called on you, but with the BMW and some things in the boot. What things?’
‘Yes, in my view most Whitsun people have the wrong notion about that Gideon road session, Udolpho, included,’ Hodge replied. ‘Of course, none of them knows of the call by taxi – by taxi, for God’s sake! – at your own property, which gives a highly serious aspect to it all, much more so than the Gideon encounter. Maybe the Dione topic was only hinted at in Gideon, but at the taxi call they could go into it properly. Udolpho – he doesn’t swallow the arts explanation, naturally. He thinks it concerned Dione, as he’d tell you, but also he believes Adrian wants to expand the business, diversify, and that’s another reason he’s interested in a confab with you. Udolpho reckons the whole trade game is changing. He and others believe Adrian’s probably tired of all the wasteful, bloody battling on the estates and hopes someone like you can take their business into a quite new realm – the uptown broadcasting and media community. There’s undoubtedly a fine, safer, steadier market there, and Adrian and Dean might feel they’re missing out on it by being stuck on Whitsun. Which, as Udolpho sees it, is where you come in, although he wouldn’t talk of it to you.
‘In your kind of influential job, you could make routes into this sector for them to offer their wares. That’s Udolpho’s theory. And, as I say, the theory of others. Coke, the comfort of the middle classes, more or less regardless of price. You, a possible conduit – hence the Gideon negotiations. As they interpret them. Udolpho says, look at the way the death of Gladstone Milo Naunton has been left unpunished – just some monthly, token handout to his sweetheart, Bert Marsh. What does this indicate? Udolpho says, and others say, Adrian and Dean are losing interest in the estates and its awkward troubles. They want to get among bigger, more select pickings, and they’ve come to see the routines of vengeance as stupid, not worth their attention. Udolpho considers they’re looking elsewhere, with your help.’
‘It’s idiotic.’
‘Certainly. Me, I don’t go with it, Larry. All right, the seeming indifference on Gladstone Milo Naunton is strong, but I still think they approached you for something more precious to Adrian even than the business – his daughter. That’s why I feel you have big influence with them. That’s why I ask you to use a fraction of it for me, Larry. Make them see their reaction is extreme.’
Edgehill fought off that stupid impulse to offer aid whenever he was asked for it, regardless of whom it came from. ‘No, I won’t have another, thanks,’ he said, ‘I must get along.’
Fifteen
Esther went out to a Sunday morning service at St John’s on Temperate. She wanted to talk to the sidesman mentioned in Gervaise Manciple Tasker’s notes, and perhaps to the female vicar. Esther looked at dossier pictures of people in the Temperate Acres firm and thought she’d matched one with the laptopped description by Tasker. The sidesman might be – ought to be, on her reckoning – yes, ought to be, Joel Jeremy North, personnel director of Abracadabra Leisure, and therefore of Harold Perth Amesbury’s Temperate operation. She hoped for a chance to buttonhole him. She couldn’t expect anything better. She had nothing to justify an arrest. Profanities in church wouldn’t do, and, in any case, she had only a third party account of the profanities in church, and the third party wasn’t available to confirm.
This week’s sermon dealt with the destruction of the walls of Jericho, and Esther enjoyed it. The vicar had a real, spittle-laced enthusiasm for the shouting and trumpet blasts that knocked those walls flat. So, walls might not stand for ever. Esther liked the idea. She wanted to think this included walls of silence. These were unintelligible to people from the Home Office and the Mayor’s office.
Esther had been right to identify Joel Jeremy North. He was acting as a sidesman again and took Esther to her pew. ‘Is it Detective Chief Superintendent Davidson?’ he’d said quietly. ‘Perhaps glimpsed occasionally on TV News following a crime? St John’s indeed welcomes you. To do with?’
‘You. What else?’
‘Many possibilities.’
‘Perhaps we could talk afterwards.’
‘Certainly. I’m here to facilitate your visit, in the hope that it might lead to regular attendance.’
At the end of the service, the vicar stood at the door again, as described in Tasker’s notes, and shook hands with people leaving. ‘Where would we be without the Old Testament?’ Esther said.
‘You’d lack a first name.’ So the vicar recognized her, too. ‘You’ve come about the dead newspaper man?’
‘Do you hear anything?’
‘In which regard?’
‘The death and pre-death slapping regard.’
‘He did turn up here. I expect he made notes, and you’ve seen them. They don’t like people of that sort coming to St John’s and pretending to be pious.’
‘Which sort?’
‘Poking about.’
‘I’m here to poke about.’
‘They won’t like it. I hope this doesn’t hurt your feelings.’
‘How about you? Do you like it?’
‘The church is open to anyone. We’re not behind a wall. Our theme today.’
North was with his wife and two young children. They ran off to play with friends in the churchyard. ‘You’re police,’ Mrs North stated. ‘Jeremy says you’re police. Whoever heard of police going to church on Temperate? What’s the underlying purpose? Well, I know what the underlying purpose is. You want to talk to Jeremy. He told me you want to talk to him. But then I ask, what’s the underlying purpose in wanting to talk to him?’
‘That’s logical,’ Esther replied.
Mrs North was short, small featured, unrobust, except for her voice. She wore a simple, stylishly cut blue trouser suit, with a silver kerchief formed into a large, round knot under her chin. Usually, that knot would have given her a jaunty, even jokey, appearance. Not now. Although at a distance her face would appear only neat, attractive and cheerful, from where Esther stood she could see a fair whack of hate. Policing could often bring you some of that. This woman regarded invasion of the church as . . . as invasion, and to be confronted, resisted, ferociously discouraged. The vicar seemed to share this feeling. As a requirement of the job, she must have got herself so attune to Temperate and its ways that she would suspect any intruder. Esther? Gervaise Manciple Tasker? Temperate Acres would have its community cop, and the locals had probably come to accept that. Esther in St John’s was extra: dangerously, offensively, intolerably extra. And Gervaise Manciple Tasker?
‘Jeremy says you’re high up,’ Mrs North said. ‘A Chief Super. My, my. That means you deal only with big items. Not lost dogs.’
‘Have you lost a dog?’
‘I ask, what big item says you have to go to St John’s, Temperate?’
‘Oh, a death. When you get high up you deal a lot in deaths.’
‘Which?’
‘A journalist,’ Esther said.
‘I’ve read about this in the press, Liz,’ North said. ‘And it was on television. A murder, wasn’t it, the body in a children’s amusement park, shot but with signs of a beating earlier?’ He made his tone aghast and glanced protectively towards his own two daughters, playing a game of chase.
‘Yes, regrettable,’ Liz North said, ‘but what’s all that got to do with St John’s?’
‘I’d like to find out,’ Esther said.
‘He came here?’ Liz North asked.
‘I gather,’ Esther said.
‘What’s that mean, “you gather”?’ Liz North said.
‘There’s information,’ Esther said.
‘What information?’ Liz North said.
‘Th
e vicar remembers him. You, as a sidesman, Jeremy, I wonder if you do, too.’
‘Why do you wonder that?’ Liz North asked.
‘Someone strange to the church might need a sidesman,’ Esther said.
‘So you decide it must be Jeremy. My God, that’s why you’re here, is it? You’ve got your dirty, suspicious, big-rank eyes on Jeremy.’
‘I show a lot of people to places in the church,’ he said.
‘A man of twenty-eight, on his own, would that be usual?’ Esther said.
‘Why not?’ Liz North said. ‘It’s a church. There’s no age bar. No gender bar. You don’t have to have a family.’
‘The press and TV showed pictures of him taken a few years ago,’ Esther said. ‘You didn’t recognize him then, Jeremy?’
‘Well, the thing is, I wouldn’t be expecting to recognize him, would I?’ he said. ‘St John’s has never been involved in this kind of thing before.’
‘No, I don’t suppose so,’ Esther said.
‘What does that mean?’ Liz North said.
‘What?’ Esther said.
‘“No, I don’t suppose so”,’ Liz North said.
‘No, I don’t suppose so,’ Esther replied.
‘It’s sarcasm,’ Liz North said. ‘Like saying “No, I don’t suppose many churches do get involved in murders”. As if that’s too obvious to need saying. There’s a . . . there’s an underlying purpose to your words.’
‘As far as you know, you’ve never met Tasker?’ Esther asked North. ‘Possibly not in the church. It could be a business matter.’
‘To do with Abracadabra Leisure?’ he asked.
‘Sort of,’ Esther said.
‘What does that mean?’ Liz North said.
‘Sort of,’ Esther replied.
‘I don’t think I ever did,’ North said.
‘You come here and corner us with our children in a church ambience,’ Liz North said, ‘because you think we’ll be a soft touch, no lawyers present, obviously. It’s sneaky. It’s like police, especially top police.’