I Am Gold

by Bill James

‘Yes, some.’

  ‘I suppose it reaches out to quite a few in many different kinds of life.’

  ‘Well, we hope so. It’s what these papers depend on.’

  ‘I can see that.’ He waited for anything more. That was it, though. ‘Well, we can go and see Percy later today.’

  ‘Yes, later,’ she said. She put her empty coffee cup back on the table and slid down in the bed. To Shale she seemed such a damn mystery, and he loved it – the unknown aspects. She was definitely more than just someone who had to buy poster-prints, and whose eyes rolled back into her head when she fucked. She wouldn’t do anal but Manse considered this was only a quirk and would pass. It seemed not natural for someone who loved the Pre-Raphaelites.

  Chapter Twenty-Seven

  2009

  Harpur loathed walking on broken glass. Through his soles these fragments on the street or the floor of a building brought a deeply hellish message. He got one now at the charity shop. To Harpur, the splintering din from such trodden-on bits proclaimed the collapse of order. Windows were civilization. They’d helped man quit the cave and climb to domesticity. They made palaces, conservatories and hospitals possible and banks. They had a kind of flat or curved useful beauty. They let in light and barred weather, dust, smoke, fog, moths, bats, seagulls and some noise. Windows separated inside from outside but also allowed those snug and corporate inside to see outside while remaining inside, and vice versa – a lovely, simple, sophisticated invention. But they were also hopelessly fragile. A sudden smack at any spot on their surface could make the whole translucent caboodle fall to bits, as if the total windowly structure had been a harebrained gamble or con. This shop window had fallen to bits. Civilization and its required orderliness could fall to bits.

  Harpur didn’t normally go in for such highest-high-flyer philosophizing. He left that to the supremos. Mark Lane, the previous Chief Constable, used to regard any major local crime as the start of universal catastrophe, catastrophe that would be blamed exclusively on him, because it began here, thanks to his slackness and all-round incompetence. In those days, Iles would mock this obsession – claim that Lane frantically studied the final Bible book, Revelation, to see if he appeared there in some disguise as the prime cause of the world’s end. I am Apocalypse. Lane was gone from this patch now, but, very strangely, Iles had turned into that same kind of broad field worryguts himself. Lately, he’d shown classic symptoms of dread that some bad situation on the manor proved general rot was setting in, and by general he meant worldwide. The shooting and the siege could be classed as bad situations, or very bad.

  And now Harpur found he, too, had begun this kind of woolly, cosmic theorizing. Perhaps he was due for promotion. He had found the sight of Iles running, in that imperturbable, designated way, a sign that goodness on a universal scale might survive regardless. ‘I am not only Gold. I am alchemy – can by my skill and magic create gold. I will put things to rights.’ But these brittle, ruined glass segments, articulate under Harpur’s shoes, said something so different, didn’t they? They said that windows were weakness, and that this weakness might be symbolic of untreatable social weakness everywhere. He’d heard of Kristallnacht 1938 – Crystal Night, as it was prettily, callously, called – when the Nazis went on a spree smashing the glass fronts of Jewish-owned German shops in a storm of organized, authorized terror. There would have been a lot of it underfoot that day. It had signified. It had signified chaos. Yes. Yes.

  Harpur stepped into the shop, as Iles had, and as much an easy target as Iles would have been. The sun hadn’t gone down yet and in any case all the shop lights were on. Harpur had heard no further shots, though. Out of sight behind racked display garments the ACC said: ‘Good evening, folks. I’m Iles. Is he dead?’, his tone slightly muffled by all the shop’s hanging, worthy gear

  ‘He might be dead,’ a woman said.

  ‘He hasn’t moved, not for a couple of minutes,’ a man said.

  ‘There was a struggle,’ another, older-voiced woman said. ‘The pistol went off.’

  ‘We have it,’ the man said.

  ‘Put it on the floor and stand away,’ Iles said.

  ‘Stand away?’ the man said.

  ‘A contingent of my people will be here in a minute,’ Iles said. ‘They’ll be excited and gun-happy. I know these folk. They are admirable and home-loving, but it’s best they don’t see a man unknown to them with a firearm just now.’

  ‘Right,’ he said.

  Harpur pushed aside the castored show stand of used jackets and suits and went to stand near Iles. Over by the bric-a-brac display a fair-haired man lay half-curled on the floor. He’d be late twenties or a little older, in a good suit, newer and smarter than any for sale here. He wore brown cowboy boots. A pool of blood had formed on the carpet near his chest and was spreading.

  Rockmain arrived, gunless, at the shop. He came in through the front door. A warning bell jangled when he opened it. The sound seemed to Harpur absurdly normal, given how things were here now. Iles said: ‘You shouldn’t have come, Andrew, dear. You’re much too valuable to be put at risk. The country needs your brain and general, measured aplomb. No siege is complete without you.’

  ‘Was this necessary, Gold, really necessary?’ Rockmain said.

  ‘Was what necessary?’ Iles said.

  ‘The intervention, the potential violence.’

  ‘Ask the people here,’ Iles said.

  ‘With respect, they could not see the full picture,’ Rockmain said.

  ‘Could you?’ Iles said.

  ‘There is a great deal of proven, handed-down wisdom on the conduct of sieges,’ Rockmain said.

  ‘This one will be added to it,’ Iles said. ‘My canter and Doddy-neutralizing will become part of that proven, handed-down wisdom, perhaps a necessary, amending contribution, to demonstrate that wisdom and waiting are not the same.’ He turned slightly. ‘Ah, here come the boys and girls in bulk and bristling with armament.’ Ten officers wearing plain navy dungarees and grey, big-peaked baseball caps rushed into the shop through the window gap and the door. They moved with astonishing quietness. Some carried pistols, others Heckler and Koch sniper rifles or semi-automatic carbines. They fanned out quickly around the shop. White capitals on the caps said POLICE.

  Iles raised his voice: ‘No shooting, please, my brave and timely ladies and gentlemen. You’ll all know me. I am, unmistakably, Iles and Gold. With me is Commander Rockmain, a tactician and discard, short-arsed and runtish but nonetheless on our side. And then we have DCS Harpur, also almost certainly known to all of you as someone occasionally well-intentioned but’ – the ACC’s voice began to escalate from shouting towards screaming – ‘but who, prick-driven, is always ready to get at other men’s wives, even, I have to tell you, the wife of someone superior to him in rank, education, taste and breeding, and who had always treated him with the kindness and unpatronizing generosity that I, Iles, am justly known for and –’

  Harpur said to the attack group: ‘All other personnel standing are hostages and of no danger. Four individuals, three female, one male.’

  ‘That’s one of his damn tricks,’ Iles said. ‘Did you notice it? Of course you noticed it.’ He spat in rage on to the carpet twice, dredging hard inside himself to get stuff for the second go. He spoke to the hostages, who stood grouped among the chock-a-block display stands. ‘He’ll cut into my very reasonable statements, about his obnoxious, sickening, lech behaviour, with some unnecessary, diverting banality to do with the work scene.’ Iles did a smarmy, sing-song, contemptuous imitation. ‘“Four individuals, three female, one male.” A brilliant piece of sexing, wouldn’t you agree? Does the bugger think you can’t see or count? Deviousness? He’ll get a bleeding Nobel Prize for it.’

  People in the police party had probably heard Iles carry on like this at other times in public, often featuring more vehemence and phlegm, and they listened and watched now without their features under the baseball caps showing much interest. The hostages stared
at him, perhaps already disorientated by their hours kept captive here, now subjected to extra rough shock and strain, maybe a slice of that chaos Harpur had forecast to himself. Iles, this time addressing the whole mixed gathering, said with a resounding, loony chuckle: ‘I can assure you all, though, that when my wife, Sarah Iles, and I discuss those degrading episodes now – what we refer to jointly, entirely jointly and in total accord, as “the Harpur blip”, that’s it, “the Harpur blip”, an appropriate phrase, isn’t it? – yes, when we discuss them now Sarah Iles is amazed that she could ever have regarded him, Harpur, as someone entitled to any kind of relationship with her, and certainly not service-lane knee tremblers or activities in fleapit hotels, municipal parks and bandstands, and backs of cars, no, certainly not any of those. Recalling that time, Sarah Iles and I laugh together in our home at the obvious, hindsight preposterousness of it and –’

  ‘Why do you keep calling her Sarah Iles?’ the older woman said. ‘If her name is Sarah and she’s your wife we would know she must be Sarah Iles.’

  ‘Don’t fucking well abuse me with your logic,’ Iles replied. ‘I came to effect a rescue.’

  ‘No need,’ the woman said.

  Harpur said: ‘What Mr Iles – i.e. Gold – means to indicate, I think, is that our firearms party should with-draw at this point. The siege is effectively over. I believe that was your drift, wasn’t it, sir?’

  ‘Thank you, Col,’ Iles replied. ‘Yes, put up your weapons. The man dying or dead near the trash stall there would obviously have been our boy to blast, but no longer. He does not, repeat not, require further clinching, coup-de-fucking-grâce rounds in the head or anywhere adjacent, thank you.’

  Rockmain, fingering one of the tweed display coats, said: ‘Do you think, Gold, that someone –’

  ‘The garment’s not at all your style, Rockmain,’ Iles replied. ‘You should go for the subfusc. The subfusc is right up your street, wouldn’t you agree, Col?’

  ‘Do you think, Gold, that someone with your type of acute mental variability should be in charge of anything, let alone a life-and-death siege?’ Rockmain said.

  ‘I don’t imagine you’re the first one to ask that kind of question,’ Iles said. ‘Not by a long chalk.’

  ‘No, most likely not, but what is the answer?’ Rockmain said. He unhooked the coat and held it against himself.

  ‘I told you, you’d look rubbish in that,’ Iles said. ‘But you put things very well. “Variability”. That’s quite a word, taking into account the context, wouldn’t you say, Harpur?’

  ‘But we have to ask whether it amounts to a disabling quality,’ Rockmain said. He replaced the coat. ‘Ask whom?’ Iles replied.

  Harpur went over to the man lying face down on the floor and crouched to get a better look at his face. He avoided the blood. This was the kind of absolute ground-level closeness that Iles would usually bag for himself when examining a corpse, or about to be, especially when the ACC was in uniform. He liked to demonstrate that rank didn’t get in the way of nitty-gritty policing, particularly when there was blood. Harpur knew he’d better act immediately to beat him to ‘John’. Harpur resented having only been second in the gallop and entry to the shop, and with having no part at all in the nulling of Dodd. Also, Harpur felt ashamed for allowing Iles to step first into the place, when the risk of being shot was max. Harpur needed to rebuild himself. Iles was Gold and magnificent in many ways, but Harpur knew he must not let the sod get imperial. Iles adored domination – his – and so there had to be a snaffle bridle on him somehow. Harpur, getting his own nose down to alongside John’s bent nose before Iles did, amounted to a decent pick-me-up and triumph. About twenty-nine, yes, slightly aquiline, thin-lipped, blue-grey eyes, both open.

  ‘Do we know him?’ Iles said.

  ‘I don’t,’ Harpur said. He went through his pockets. ‘Nothing on him except this other pistol – a Walther. Full chamber.’

  ‘So, a pro,’ Iles said.

  ‘Not a very good one if he was after Manse Shale,’ Harpur said.

  ‘Not a very good one if he gets scragged by hostages,’ Iles said.

  ‘You see, he had defects. He would obviously have capitulated if given a little more time and pressure,’ Rockmain said.

  ‘The people here gave him pressure,’ Iles said.

  ‘With respect, not the right kind,’ Rockmain said.

  ‘Oh, I don’t know,’ Iles said.

  Chapter Twenty-Eight

  2008

  When Naomi and Manse went to look at Percy Ardoyne’s stock of engagement rings in the afternoon, Manse felt pretty happy – yes, obviously he did – this was a fine occasion – but he had to think, also, about Naomi going to London tomorrow, for something to do with the celebrity paper she said, and it certainly might be right. He definitely didn’t have nothing to show it wasn’t. As he told himself recently, a consultant had to be on the spot sometimes to be consulted. That’s what consultants did. Anyone would see this. You couldn’t be a consultant if nobody could consult you now and then face-to-face, or via some other body part.

  For instance, if you thought of a hospital consultant, well, he needed to be at the hospital to do operations and check on piles or brain tumours. Being a celebrity paper’s consultant was not exactly like being a hospital consultant and some of Naomi’s work could most probably be done by telephone or email. Now and then, though, she would have to get there to explain which pictures ought to go on this or that page, and make sure the crossword puzzle was OK, if they had one, and maybe interview some important star in that grand restaurant. Having quite a feed with vintages could be an important part of a consultant’s job.

  Just the same, this new trip was bound to give Manse some worry. He’d always worried when she went back to London for a day or two, and maybe he should of worried more. The thing was, what Lionel-Garth had said re facilitating truly troubled Manse. Yes, it might be all rotten guess and flimflam. But if someone or more than one had been watching him and Naomi up there at the gallery and so on, maybe they’d be watching her now when she went on her own to the paper and anywhere else.

  All right, it had been easy to get behind Manse and dog him, because they knew where he’d be starting from – the Hackney drink-up and eats after the highly tragic Denz funeral. It might not be as simple as that with Naomi, but they could have a watch on the paper’s London offices in case she showed. Or they might even be spying on the house here so as to get with her when she set out. That idea really angered and upset Shale – to have snoopers doing a lurk and sly peep at such a once-religious building as a fucking rectory. This would be terrible disrespect and a sort of insulting sin, in Manse’s opinion. He’d kept an eye lately, of course, but he didn’t observe nothing troublesome of a surveillance kind.

  Anyway, he considered Naomi ought to have someone with her. Joan Fenton, the lawyer, had told him off for not taking a bodyguard when he went to London. Now, because of Naomi’s link to him, maybe she ought to have a bodyguard herself in London. He could see problems with this which nagged him hard even while they talked to Perce and tried to choose the ring in his shop. Shale had told Naomi that Percy would never offer imitations or heist-hot stones to such a noted customer as hisself, or to anyone connected to him, for example, Naomi, and Manse more or less believed this. Perce would be careful never to offend Manse – never to get up his nose, you could say, because noses did come into this, oh, yes! Perce had to think he might want to get back to nostrilizing coke lines some day, and he would know from not very long ago that Manse could always supply at an honest price, with home delivery if required, due to illness, a collapse or just lying low after some bother.

  And Percy would also know that, for customers Manse liked, the stuff was certain to be of through-and-through quality. That had always been one of the things Shale and Ralph Ember agreed on in full. The customers you knew well, and even had a sort of friendship with, you looked after, making sure the commodity you sold them had deep but jaunty chara
cter and no over-mix. Regulars who very plainly had good, steady money to spend deserved this, if everything was OK between them and Manse or Ralphy. So, Perce would have to go careful, and no messing now with the ring.

  Well, of course, Perce was very interested in Naomi and the engagement, not just because he’d most likely make a very nice sale, but also relating to Manse’s changed situation as far as a partner was concerned. Curiosity gave Perce’s eyes a real bubbly glint. It was like he’d climbed a mountain and could see from the top a landscape he’d never viewed before on the other side. He knew Syb, naturally, although he hadn’t supplied the engagement and weddings rings for her and Manse way back, because his shop wasn’t there then. But Shale had often taken her there for Christmas and birthday jewellery, and on anniversaries of the first Liston–Clay fight, 25th February 1964, which Sybil regarded as a very important date, and not just because she got jewellery out of it every year, such as an unbase metal bracelet or necklace.

  Manse was in favour of jewellery as how to beat inflation, always a peril regardless of which gang of cruds ran the government. Also, he liked jewellery if he had a lot of cash income to get rid of. To put a whack of it in the bank could make people there wonder where it came from. Or, of course, they’d know where it came from, but if it was massive they’d start talking about it. Heard how much Manse Shale put across the counter today? Go on, have a guess, and then stick a couple of noughts on the end. This kind of gossip could be harmful, and Manse regarded it as extremely unnecessary. Also, if you had a lot of accounts to spread the funds, someone in the fucking Revenue might wonder about that, too. W.P. Spilsby, known as Cummerbund Spilsby, used to advise him on investments, but Cummerbund went through a big religious experience with visions one afternoon when very close to sober and, they said, later became a friar or something like that in the Persian Gulf or Tasmania, or around there. It might be wrong to call him Cummerbund now, because there wouldn’t be no dressing up for him in this new post.