by Bill James
‘I think I’ve heard of that,’ Harpur said. ‘There’s quite a lot of it around, I believe.’
‘The subjunctive expresses what’s wished for, whereas “I am here” means I’m suppressed, not subjunctive – locked up. It’s how jails are. But you know that: clink is your kith. The girls find it funny to be taught English by someone with an American accent. But I tell them I’m as English as they are, but went to America, re-married there. It didn’t last. I stayed in the States but changed my name back to what it was, like my son’s, Lamb.’
‘Yes, of course,’ Harpur said.
‘We can pay for what’s known as a phone facility every so often. It’s absolutely secure. And your office switchboard should be the same, I hope.’
‘You talk to Jack?’
‘Why I’m ringing you. This is something else the girls find funny – me using up phone cards calling the cop who had me sent down. They’ve heard we knew each other pre the Darien death and ask had we been shagging as a regular thing, but then I stopped it and so you turned nasty and fitted me up in revenge. Mostly, these are lovely people, but their thinking is pretty basic. It’s how some of them regard police. Nasty, they believe is cop default mode. But flattering for me in a way. I mean the age difference. You like them very young, don’t you? Jack’s the same. I gather there’s an undergraduate in your life. Right? Denise, is it?’
‘You were waiting for us in Jack’s gallery with the gun and the corpse,’ Harpur replied. ‘No need for fitting up, was there? And no detective work. It’s a very unusual case. We don’t get many – or, in fact, any – where a woman shoots another woman surrounded by pictures, some quite probably genuine. I’ve never heard of such a shooting in, say, the Tate, although, clearly, plenty of pictures hang there.’
‘Don’t the high-ups object to your sleeping with a student not long out of school?’ Mrs Lamb said.
‘Fingerprint testing wasn’t required. You acknowledged the shooting at once,’ Harpur replied.
‘In the States, that wouldn’t be a crime. If someone breaks in to a property and gets shot for it, hard cheese, to borrow an Orwell phrase.’
‘We went for manslaughter, not murder. Best we could do.’
‘I’m not going to say “Thank you”.’
‘I think Jack accepts it.’
‘Maybe. I worry about Jack,’ she replied.
‘In which respect?’
‘Yea, yea, “in which respect?”.’ She gave that a sing-song touch of oh, you’re so hoity-toity, Harpur. ‘Jack’s just a kid.’
‘He’s done well for a kid – a manor house, and all that goes with it.’
‘No, not all.’
‘What’s missing?’
‘Safety.’
‘Nobody’s got that in full.’
‘Jack’s got less of it than most. I’m not talking about the past. I think of tomorrow, next week, next month. I phone him on the card and he’s full of jokes and bonhomie and jauntiness because he thinks that’s what I want to hear. Same when he visits. The round trip is 110 miles but he acts blissfully content, like he’s cast as Filial Duty in a Morality play.’
‘Yes, he wouldn’t want to depress you.’
‘He depresses me,’ she said. Her voice had moved out of the earlier light bantering tone to a harsh quack-quacking of up-and-coming attack. ‘The bouncier he is the lower I feel. He’s a kid. He came wearing a busby one day, for a laugh. The screws here didn’t know what to make of it.’
‘He likes military uniforms. He might have the complete trooping of the colour gear on next time. Some people get a thrill from dressing oddly. I heard of someone who spent a year costumed as a zebra.’
‘Look, Harpur, I don’t have to tell you your cop-job, do I?’
‘In which respect?’
‘“In which respect?” I’ll tell you in which fucking respect, Harpur. In respect of the previously mentioned tomorrow, next week, next month. All police know, don’t they, that if a place gets hit, like Darien got hit—’
‘By the woman intruder?’1 Harpur said.
‘By the woman intruder, with a team behind her, most likely. If a place gets hit like Darien was hit, it moves into a new category.’
‘What does?’
‘The place.’
‘Which category?’
‘It has become a place that gets hit. Before, it was just a place. OK, it was a big place with a fancy name out of a poetry book, but it was a big place with a fancy name out of a poetry book that didn’t get hit,’ she said. ‘Now it’s a big place with a fancy name out of a poetry book that does get hit, and there could be another hit, other hits, tomorrow, next week, next month. It’s on lists. It’s on lists kept by people who are interested in hits. They’ll say to themselves, and they’ll listen closely to themselves when saying it to themselves, they’ll say that if it’s been hit it must have things there – items – yes, the owner must have items there that are worth organizing a hit for. It’s true, that first hit failed. Why? Well, not because there turned out to be nothing worth hitting the place for. No, it failed because the owner’s mother, i.e., me, happened to be staying there on holiday. She sniffed the approach of trouble, at which she was remarkably gifted and always has been. I don’t like to give my second husband, the American, credit for teaching me much, but one special little trick he had did stick. He never left home with less than $1500 on him in case he needed to buy his life from a mugger. His thinking was, expect shit, prepare to deal with shit. I don’t go around with $1500 dollars in my handbag but I do try to foresee disharmony and keep equipped to fight it.
‘Therefore, Harpur, early on in her stay at Darien this year the mother, viz., self, thoughtfully acquired a piece. Alice Lamb knows and knew how to use a gun, thanks to living in the United States; and knew and knows what a naughty world the world could show itself to be. Yes, this visiting mother has about her a considerable flavour of the United States where matters such as putting a shot or shots into a housebreaker is merely good citizenship. Well, that mother – and I mean not the US curse word some have developed it into by tacking on another – that mother won’t be there with her gun tomorrow or next week or next month because she’s locked up for a very convenient spell of years before the possibility of parole. “Alice Where Art Thou?” as the old song asks. Answer, “In jug.”
‘But I’m big here, a celebrity, you know, Harpur. Homicide is prestige, even though it’s only manslaughter, not murder. These girls have been caught for petty stuff, most of them. Awe is what they regard me with, top of the range awe. They sense I’m part of a bigger scene. I get asked over and over for my story. I’m Bonnie and Clyde in one. They want details from the burgled, the burglaree, the burglar being unavailable, so they would know where exactly in the house resistance might come from if they matured and were on a breaking and entering sortie themselves. How did I know there was a break-in? Was it something I saw or something I heard? Did I hide waiting to surprise the intruder? Hide where? How did I get the piece, it not being as simple here as in the States? I found an armourer? How? What model, the piece? How many rounds in the chamber? So, straight arm when you fired? One hand or two on the butt? Or from the hip? One of them might do a sniper crouch, right hand pointing an imaginary Browning. And then her pal will ask me whether I know the gospel.’
TWENTY-EIGHT
‘The gospel?’ Harpur said.
‘The gospel of hits – what I’ve just been talking to you about. Do you remember from science at school about the amoeba being able to reproduce itself, no second party. Same with hits,’ Alice Lamb said.
‘Self-generating?’
‘Right. During this mother’s trial – mine – not much evidence was given in court because I pleaded guilty. A deal had been hatched by the lawyers: admit manslaughter and avoid a possible life sentence if I fought a murder charge and lost. But the media did a lot of background to the case. There were descriptions of the interior and grounds of the house with pictures, and emphasis
on the private gallery Jack has created there. This is glorious information for those in the hit and take business. Might as well put a road sign pointing at Darien with a single word on it, “LOOT”.
‘Background stuff of such quality is scarce. Because there was a glut of it about Darien, the house took a priority in future plans. I’ve explained this to Jack, as you’d expect, but he smiles and tells me not to worry, says he knows the scene.’
‘And he certainly does.’
‘What does it mean, “knows the scene”?’ she asked in a scathing, ferociously contemptuous voice announcing ahead of the actual answer that “knows the scene” meant bugger all. ‘It’s gibberish. It’s kiddywink, boasty stuff. Knowing the scene’s not the same or even near the same as controlling it. In any case, what scene? Define it. There isn’t a scene until something happens and by then it’s too late to do much about it. Did he know the scene when somebody breaks into the property and he’s tucked up snug and intimate with Helen, his young partner. Result? His mother – I – has to deal with a situation which anyone who was supposed to know the scene would have been on high alert for?’
‘I think Jack will be OK,’ Harpur replied.
‘You hope he’ll be OK, so you think it. My mother used to say, “The wish is father to the thought”.’
‘Mothers do make remarks. It’s a right the suffragettes strove for.’
‘That’s not the way the mind ought to work. It’s selfish, crazy optimism.’
‘Jack’s strong. There’s more to him than a busby.’
‘We come to the gist.’
‘Which gist?’
‘Are you going to give him protection?’
‘In what respect?’
‘“In what respect?” Oh, God, Harpur. Two respects. First, in respect of making sure he stays alive and unmaimed. He needs full-time minders. There should be protection at Darien or with him when he goes out. Listen, Harpur, I’ve been telling the girls the difference between continuous and continual. Continuous means something that goes on and on without a break. Some cinemas have a “continuous performance”, meaning you can go in at any time and pick up the story or newsreel. Continual means something that goes on and on but has stops here and there before resuming. A guy might cock-flash continually on a long-haul air flight but not continuously or it wouldn’t be flashing but forgetfulness or naturism. Or ventilation. What Jack should have is continuous protection.’
‘We don’t do that kind of thing,’ Harpur replied.
‘Which kind?’
‘A continuous watch.’
Bollocks. Harpur knew it and had to hope Alice Lamb didn’t. In some crises police would offer that kind of twenty-four-hour safeguarding for someone considered valuable and at risk. But unique conditions made this impossible for Jack, although he certainly was valuable and might be at risk. Perversely, his massive value worked against him here. Lamb was the greatest informant Harpur had ever dealt with; perhaps the greatest informant any detective anywhere had ever dealt with. That relationship would immediately disintegrate if it became known to villains – and it would become known to villains – that Lamb had a cop or cops looking after him and living very close, either continuously or continually.
The rules said that an informant belonged to the whole police force, not simply to one officer. Naturally, Lamb and Harpur ignored this. Lamb whispered to Harpur and only to Harpur, and what he whispered was almost always brilliantly useful. Harpur prized this exclusiveness. His career was part built on it. Predictably, as a businessman Jack expected and got some return. Not cash. A quid pro quo, but not a quids pro quo. Instead, Harpur had never looked too closely into Jack’s art commerce and the back-stories of fine and pricey works he offered for sale.
Harpur could not let this immaculately and sweetly balanced arrangement be disturbed because Alice Lamb was anxious about her 6′ 5′′ and 260lb kiddywinks. Now and then she hinted that she knew or suspected something about the delicate, reciprocal back-scratching agreement between Harpur and her son. Perhaps she thought this connection would strengthen the case for giving devoted, round-the-clock care to someone so helpful. On the face of it, this seemed reasonable. Only on the face of it. The reverse was true. She didn’t seem to understand that such special precautions would permanently wipe out Jack’s function as a secret source. Although she was a worldly woman who knew about guns and how to cope with a mugging, she apparently couldn’t understand the subtleties of running an informant. It was, though, a special craft, with its own very precise and careful regulations and ways of evading them.
In any case, Harpur felt sure Jack would never allow the kind of constant bodyguard companionship Alice wanted for him. She should surely have known this much about her son. She obviously thought him naïve and stupidly, ignorantly happy. Didn’t she realize this might be only a front? Jack wouldn’t want to make things worse for her by appearing scared. Jail, plus the knowledge that she had slaughtered someone, ought to be enough pain.
‘There’s no evidence that Jack is threatened,’ Harpur said. ‘I couldn’t justify the kind of manpower, womanpower, you’re talking about.’
‘Iles wouldn’t allow it? Why is he so damn evil and heartless?’
‘Yes, Mr Iles can be both of those, or either, though continually, not continuously. He suffers from recurrent sharp, but not life-threatening, fits of galloping seemliness. He’s embarrassed about them afterwards, when he’s back to his usual malign self. However, I know that whatever state he was in he would not approve the measures you’ve spoken about. I’ll have patrols take in Darien rather more often than is usual for them, but that’s the limit.’
‘I wonder if you see this situation in full, Harpur,’ she said.
‘I hope I do.’
‘There we go again – hoping. But it’s not really hoping, is it, Harpur? This is the polite, English, cold way of giving the brush off. It means, “Of course I know the situation in full, you fucking impertinent cow. It’s my job to know it in full.”’
‘I wouldn’t say that.’
‘I know you wouldn’t. But that’s what you mean. When I say “in full”, what am I thinking about?’
‘The Darien situation, obviously.’
‘But what particular aspect?’
‘There will be many aspects,’ Harpur replied.
‘Take the following aspect, Harpur, would you?’
‘That’s the subjunctive “would,” isn’t it?’
‘Yea. It means I’m not sure you see what I’m getting at, or ever will. Jack tells me he’s had at least one approach from people thinking they can buy items cheap at Darien, because of the undoubted troubles there, troubles knocking the reputation of his dealerships. He’s turned it or them down. What does that say to you, Harpur?’
‘He’s strong, he’s proud. He doesn’t cave in.’
‘Yes, that was the kind of tone he used when he told me. It was part of that “keep Ma cheerful” campaign he’s running. But what does it actually signify, Harpur?’
‘In which sense?’
‘In an obvious, practical, simple sequence sense. If he’s refused to sell it means there is an interest in these items and – crucially – that the items are still there, doesn’t it? Nobody’s bought them and taken them elsewhere. Jack wouldn’t let the items go. Darien is as much a target as it ever was, possibly more so. And Jack is part of that target.’
Harpur thought this was probably a very acute summing up of things. Jack had told him about the approach and his rejection of it. And the woman on Jack’s staff out for a quiet smoke had seen the blue van and its driver make their visit, apparently unsuccessful visit. She’d actually given him the van registration number. That led nowhere, though. Harpur had done a check and found what he expected to find, that the reg didn’t exist.
‘We’ll give Darien max vigilance,’ Harpur said.
‘Continual.’ This was her nuff said voice, her move along voice. ‘OK, so the police can’t, won’t do it properl
y. I’ll go fee-paying. Is there a private eye firm that could take on the chores?’
‘Expensive. Anything between £50 and £100 an hour, nights extra.’
‘It’s my son. I’ve brought trouble on him. Not many men have a mother who shoots someone dead on his behalf in the family home at night. I’ve got to compensate. I was counting on you, Harpur.’
‘I appreciate that.’
‘What d’you mean that you’re grateful I thought well enough of you to call for your aid; or you knew I was counting on you? Whichever, you’re not going to help, are you?’
‘Words are tricky, aren’t they: continual, continuous; appreciate, appreciate. The private eye agency is ‘Righton, proprietor Bainbridge Williamson,’ Harpur replied. ‘They’ve done some good work with us. Hang on. I’ll give you their phone number.’
‘That’s the limit, too, is it?’
‘Got a pencil?’
‘I said two respects,’ she replied.
‘Two respects of what?
‘Protection.’
‘For Jack?’
‘Who else?’
TWENTY-NINE
Alice became quiet for half a minute, and when she spoke again it was in a kind of bustling, secretive lecturette tone now. After a few words of it, Harpur realized she was continuing to use an elementary and not too effective code. It seemed to run against her belief that the calls were absolutely secure. She wanted this one to be more than absolutely. ‘We come to the second respect. Clearly, there are these certain items at Darien,’ she said.
‘Clearly. Many.’
‘I’m talking about one sort. A particular, valuable sort of item.’
The coding had become fairly ludicrous but he’d play along. ‘Yes,’ he replied, ‘there are unquestionably items present at Darien beyond the standard household gear such as cushions and dustpans.’
‘I’m referring to items of value.’
‘Yes, of value.’
‘You can see, can you, the difficulties as regards these items, Harpur?’
‘Difficulties?’
