‘You know a lot of top police?’ Esther said.
‘And then I hear from Jeremy that your husband goes to one of the Temperate pubs with his gang and shouts all sorts of poison. He knows he’s safe, because of you, the big officer.’
‘I hope he’s safe,’ Esther said.
‘Of course he is,’ North said. The children returned. North clasped them both affectionately to him, the affection very, very equal. Esther had a sense of real power in his arms, though he wasn’t using all of it now, naturally. He might have been strong enough on his own to get Tasker’s body from a car and on to the children’s slide.
Sixteen
Bert Jutland Marsh lived on Whit supported by a very tidy spouse-pension from Adrian Pellotte. This followed the death of Gladstone Milo Naunton, Bert’s former lover, in a two-hour territory battle around William Walton Avenue, that famed frontier area. At home in Moorhen Street, Bert heard the communication box on his front door crackle, indicating someone had pressed the button and was about to speak. He listened but didn’t recognize the voice or the name when it came. ‘Mr Marsh, I wonder if we could talk briefly. It’s Abel Vagrain.’
‘Don’t know you,’ Marsh said. ‘You selling? Bettaware?’
‘Personal.’
‘How did you know I was Mr Marsh?’
‘Good to see old-style and historical first names coming back – Albert, Jutland.’
‘I don’t go in for personal things these days. They’re best left to others.’
‘About your ex-partner, Gladstone Milo Naunton.’
‘You police?’
‘No. What makes you think so?’
‘Giving all his names. Police do that, and courts. Makes people think no chance of dodging out. Nailed in triplicate.’
‘It’s how I noted it down.’
‘Noted it down from where?’ Marsh said.
‘References.’
Marsh said: ‘You found references to Gladstone somewhere?’
‘Tragically dead.’
‘Yes, tragically. And nothing done about it.’
‘By the police?’
‘By anybody,’ Marsh snarled. ‘Did you know Gladstone? Is that it? Is that why you’re here?’ More anger swirled in Marsh. ‘Listen, I was the only one he truly cared about. It’s a fact. If you’ve come here to say you knew him – really knew him in a fucking fond or fond fucking way – you can piss off, because I was the one he treasured, despite his damn waywardness from time to time, and only from time to time. Always he returned to me and in a totally committed fashion nearly.’
‘Regrettably, I never met Gladstone.’
‘All sorts say now they knew him – knew him close, I mean. Easy for them to say it. He can’t show it’s not true, can he? Your name – not one I’ve come across on Whitsun, although a lot of strange ones here now.’
‘I’m from outside.’
‘Outside where?’
‘Not from either estate.’
‘You expect me to open up to someone who just turns up in the dark from what you call outside saying it’s to do with Gladstone?’
Marsh had every security fitting, including the voice box, cost no concern. Gladstone saw to that far back. Everyone who could afford it saw to that on Whitsun, but especially someone in Gladstone’s type of active career, and, naturally, he could afford it: front door solid wood – not your two slices of mahogany veneer stuffed with porridge – chains, two bolts, three locks, two of them mortises, and a fire extinguisher right alongside the letter box, to douse flaming arson rags, plus tongs and a shovel for shit packets. The letter box had a wire cage around it in case of posted rats, which could be shot or knifed in there, meaning blood and mess around the hallway, but better than having them run about the property and undoubtedly breeding in the eager fashion of rats. It grieved Bert Marsh that Gladstone had organized home precautions yet couldn’t keep clear of the bullets in the boundary struggle with Temperate for William Walton Avenue. Always William Walton.
Marsh hated the names of some of these streets. Another avenue was called Gustav Holst, also famed for music. The council wanted to make the streets, avenues, roads, sound distinguished, like taking people who lived here up a level. This made the names ridiculous and full of dud hope. William Walton? Everyone knew he was quite a composer, but you did not get much harmony in the avenue – nothing but fucking warfare and casualties, because it was a frontier between Whit and Temp.
The front door had a spyhole. Marsh did not recognize this visitor, standing bent over a bit for the voice box. He looked thin, almost tall, in a dark overcoat, white scarf with six tassels each end, no hat, very flat dark hair – what Marsh thought of as ‘Hitler hair’. However, moustacheless. About forty.
‘Forgive me for just turning up like this, Mr Marsh.’
‘Got anti-theft nuts on your wheels?’
‘I come to you because I’m interested in Gladstone as typifying a certain kind of present-day life.’
‘I store many memories of Gladstone, yes. This could get up some noses and result in peril for me. You’ve heard about that reporter, I suppose?’
‘My purpose is serious, and might, in fact, help preserve those memories. I’m a writer. If I could come in and talk of these matters it would—’
‘You more press?’ Another fucking reporter. One dead, then the next one turns up. Always trying to get through the front door. The white scarf most probably true silk. Journalists did nicely on their exes. And they’d think a white scarf with plenty of tassels at each end helped make them dashing.
‘No, not press, a writer.’
‘Reporters write. Notebooks. Shorthand. I saw a lot of reporters not long ago. That’s plenty, thanks.’
‘When Gladstone Milo Naunton was killed? This is how I found your name and so on. I’ve been researching old newspapers on the Net. The newspapers didn’t give the number, just “Moorhen Street”. I knocked some doors, asking if people knew Albert – or possibly Bert – Marsh, and what number.’
Marsh felt a sudden fiery pain in his chest. Shock would work on him like that sometimes. Now and then he thought, heart attack. ‘You knocked doors on fucking Whitsun? Any old door?’
‘Just in this street. No real trouble.’
‘And someone told you?’ Marsh said. ‘That’s well out of order.’
‘I’m interested in the setting,’ Vagrain said. ‘The two estates – Whitsun, Temperate. Tensions. What you hinted at just now.’
‘It’s getting worse. Everyone says so. They think carnage any day. I mean massive.’
‘Yes?’
‘You sound damn eager. You sure you’re not press? Carnage they live by, don’t they?’
‘This will be a story, a made-up story. A novel. Different from the press. But not unrelated to the actual. Based on the real, but the real given shape. Different names for places and people, naturally.’
‘I’d get into this book, with a different name?’ Marsh half fancied the idea. Such chances didn’t happen very often to Whitsun people who’d lost their partner in a turf fight. ‘Gladstone Naunton, as well?’ He kept up his staunch loyalty to Gladstone and felt pretty sure he might always. If he didn’t, those years together would have no meaning. They must have meaning, even though Gladstone didn’t stay too absolutely faithful, the busy, gaudy slut, bringing possible disease home regardless. Gladstone had a flair for handguns, but so did some folk on Temperate. It wouldn’t look too good on his gravestone – ‘He had a flair for handguns’.
‘Yes, Gladstone’s central,’ Vagrain said. ‘His death—’
‘Not just the death. Gladstone would have won a prize,’ Marsh said. ‘An estate prize, hardly known about off Whitsun. Not like the FA Cup. What’s referred to as “in house”. Hodgy got it, although he definitely came well behind on the year’s sales charts. A shame. Well, the word is Hodgy’s got enmity from Adrian and Dean now. Skimming? That’s ingratitude. Gladstone was shot when into true duty at William Walton, which is real W
hitsun ground, whatever those Temperate slobs think. A soldier can have what’s referred to as a posthumous Victoria Cross, meaning he did something brave that killed him, but Adrian Pellotte stopped anything like that for Gladstone. Oh, I admit they look after me since Gladstone died, and me only, definitely not those others he went with, the non-stop tart, but it still doesn’t seem OK to say Gladstone couldn’t have the award. This is to do with morale. Important. The firm paid for the funeral, a first-class box, and the drink-up after, yes, with vintages, but he deserved proper recognition.’
‘Proper?’
‘Why haven’t we killed the killer or killers? Wouldn’t that have made his death seem more worthwhile, and help us forget he lost the prize? You’re right when you say “typical”. In a way, Gladstone was what would be known as a “typical” of Whitsun. They owed him better treatment. This should have been a full and instant vengeance job.’
‘Can I come in briefly?’
‘Got a card? The press always have a card. I’d like to see a card that says you’re not press.’
‘Yes, a card. Also . . . also it could seem a bit much, just descending on you like this, so I brought a dust jacket from a work of mine, The Insignia of Postponement, for more identification. My name’s on the front, of course, and a picture on the rear fold-over.’
Bert opened the door on the top, middle and bottom chains. The caller handed in a visiting card and the glossy paper cover between the top and middle. ‘Oh, this is how you spell Vagrain,’ Marsh said.
‘French far back. We came over with the Huguenots.’
‘I heard that was some trip.’
‘Centuries ago.’
‘You’re well settled now, though, not like some of these illegals. A stack on Whitsun. Adrian doesn’t like it. They make running Whit more difficult for him. These newsters don’t know Whit traditions. How could they? Different cultures. Some come from really rotten places over there. They’ve known people definitely worse than Adrian, blood on their teeth, and so they’re not properly frightened of him and respectful. This could damage what’s known as “social cohesion”, which Adrian so greatly values sometimes.’
Marsh unfastened the door and Vagrain came in. Marsh refitted the chains at once. If you went around saying those who did Gladstone ought to be done you had to be non-stop careful those who did Gladstone didn’t turn up and do you. There was Gladstone dead and Tasker, the reporter, dead. Marsh felt warned. Stupid not to be.
He tried to guess how Vagrain would regard this room and the furniture and pictures, seeing them for the first time. Gladstone put iron bars over all the downstairs windows, it being Whitsun, but they had curves and swirls so they could be decorative, and were not just straight bars like a jail or dispensary. Marsh thought Vagrain would most probably be impressed by this room as one part of the setting he was after. Gladstone himself chose most of the furniture and the blue carpet. He bought many of the pieces totally above board in proper antique shops. Hardly anything in this house came off the back of a lorry, and definitely nothing that would fetch above £750, say, at auction. Beautiful but stolen stuff offered by mates of his, Gladstone would generally not even look at, no matter how much of a bargain. He did not want any pricey-looking items, with a strong, evil, crooked tale to them, in property he owned. Joint-owned, of course.
They sat in Edwardian bucket-style armchairs that had been re-covered not long ago with red leather. Pellotte would look in occasionally and decide this or that needed smartening. Marsh never saw the bills. He poured rums. ‘What made you curious about this estate?’ he asked.
‘A girl at a publicity-do for my book, Insignia, in a Hampstead shop put me on to it.’
‘The girl was from Hampstead but knew about Whitsun Festival?’ Marsh said.
‘It’s amazing what you can pick up simply from a casual meeting like that.’
‘Well, especially from a casual meeting like that. It’s what I meant about Gladstone. But I hope you wore a—’
‘In the way of ideas.’
‘Oh, those.’
Vagrain said: ‘I don’t think Pellotte got mentioned in any of the newspapers reporting the Walton tragedy.’
‘He’d avoid that. Publicity is not Adrian’s thing. He’s like me – longs for privacy, guards it. That’s why it was so damn dodgy to go knocking on doors in the street.’
Vagrain had been lifting his glass to his lips but stopped now. He seemed very puzzled, sort of paralysed, the glass nearly touching his mouth, yet he cut the movement. He said: ‘Dodgy – merely to ask people your address, Bert? Why?’
Vagrain did not get it at all, did he, the fucking thicko? You’d think a writer would be able to feel a situation much quicker than this.
‘Neighbours know someone in a white silk scarf with tassels worn loose called on me,’ Marsh said.
‘That matters?’
Marsh wanted to say in a still-friendly, quiet, unpanicky way: of course it fucking matters, you turd brained twat, because some people will think I might be blowing secrets. Whitsun runs on secrets. No. Crude.
‘Word will get around,’ he replied. ‘On Whitsun word does get around if you don’t take care to stop it getting around, which most people do.’
‘But so what?’
‘People will hear you’re going to put this situation into a book.’
‘Is that bad?’
‘It might be.’ Marsh made a decision then. It would be wisest to take Vagrain to see Adrian Pellotte right away at his place on Whitsun. Marsh wanted this visit to Moorhen Street by Vagrain to be known about and open. It would be known about, anyway, because Vagrain did his bloody stupid, careless door knocking in the street like a Jehovah’s Witness, but not enough like a Jehovah’s Witness. And people passing must have noticed him and that clever mouth and fucking white scarf crouched over the voice box for so long with his bleat. Better Adrian heard about it all direct and honest by Bert, not from possible gossip.
Perhaps Adrian wouldn’t mind seeing Vagrain. Adrian was into books and authors. And most likely by being helpful to Vagrain, Adrian would want to show he didn’t get people such as the journalist removed because they came doing probes and then writing stuff. That is, he would want to show he didn’t get people such as the journalist removed if he didn’t get him removed. Or if he did. Especially if he did. Bert had to keep in mind how good, regular cash came by messenger every week from the firm just for having been with Gladstone on a decent domestic basis at the time of his slaughter. This money could stop absolutely, just as Gladstone’s trading prize got stopped absolutely by Pellotte. And worse than that could happen if Pellotte ever thought Marsh had fed confidential tips on the quiet to Vagrain about Whitsun. It might be regarded as unforgivable. Adrian liked books, but there were books, and books.
Vagrain had been examining a picture-print of the Pope’s Swiss Guard at the Vatican. Now he broke from the art. ‘What I’d like, Bert, is simply to watch the street for a while through your upstairs front window.’
‘Watch? Who you looking for?’ God, a hunt, after all? Was he really a writer?
‘No, not looking for anybody specific. It’s only to get the sense of the street, the pageant of day-to-day activity, the pageant of, as it were, normality. Invaluable to a novelist.’
Whitsun didn’t have any normality. What one lot considered normal, others regarded as sick or crazy or disgusting or foreign.
‘Not on, old son,’ Marsh said. ‘People would think it’s undercover surveillance. I’d get all the windows smashed – as starters.’
‘Surveillance? Surveillance.’ Vagrain sort of held this word up to examine it all round, like sexing a kitten. ‘Well, yes, in a sense I suppose it would be. I need to survey the patterns, the routines, of their days. “Surveillance” is only a heavy word for totally harmless observation.’
‘Surveillance up here means police, and so would observation, not an author on the look out for normalness,’ Bert said. ‘Perhaps this will surprise you, Abel,
but hardly any authors come to Moorhen Street and stare out through windows. That author Adrian and Dean are fans of, Anthony Powell, but not said like that – Pow-well – but Pole – he never comes up here to Whitsun or Temperate and stares out of windows collecting atmos. It will be bad for me if people think I let police use my place for snooping. They’d decide I must have an arrangement with that dame detective, Esther Davidson.’
‘I’d be discreet, keep behind the curtains.’
‘They’d expect you to be discreet, wouldn’t they? Officers on surveillance don’t stand in the middle of the glass flashing their fucking buttons and night sticks. People here are used to curtains. They know about discreet.’
Vagrain gave a small smile and nodded. ‘The fact that I mustn’t do it – that you warn me off so vigorously from doing it – that, in itself, is a unique glimpse.’
‘Not having a glimpse from the window is a glimpse?’
‘It’s a glimpse at the prevailing conditions here, isn’t it? On Whitsun, someone innocently standing at a window, even if concealed by curtains, would be regarded as a menace.’
‘Especially if concealed by curtains. Neighbours would ask, “Who’s that trying to conceal himself behind the fucking curtains, and why? And what’s Bert Marsh letting him do it for on his property?” Nobody’s going to answer, “Oh, of course, of course – silly old me! – it must be an author taking a fruitful gaze at normalness.’
‘I need to get the feel of specific pavements under my shoes,’ Vagrain said. ‘It’s how I work. I must have contact.’
‘These pavements are like other pavements, but probably more dog shit than Mayfair way. People up there scoop and bag it, considering the environment. Whitsun might do less of that. They think a bit more dog shit in Whitsun won’t be crucial one way or the other as far as reputation and aroma goes.’
‘Some novelists can concoct a place without ever having been there. For myself, though it—’