First Fix Your Alibi
Page 19
Ember would let the misunderstanding continue, of course. However, he did wonder what the moral implications might be. Would it be honourable at a future moment to call on Manse to slaughter someone for him, as per agreement, despite the fact that Ember had never fulfilled his part of it? Tricky.
But existentialism taught that random events could shatter all plans, and this had to be accepted. What happened at the Binnacle was random, as far as Ralph was concerned. He would accept it, gladly.
THIRTY-ONE
Iles didn’t get to the funeral of Wyn Normanton Vaughan, so Harpur didn’t, either. Garland went. But there was a Gospel Hall memorial service in Wales for young Vaughan later and they did attend that. Wyn’s parents were clearly very touched that the two officers had made the journey.
This kind of ceremony was familiar to Harpur: he’d been brought up in a Gospel Hall Sunday School; that is, his parents sent him, though they never entered a church or chapel themselves. He recognized some of the texts inscribed on banners around the rigorously simple inside of the place: ‘Without shedding of blood is no remission’; ‘Those who seek me early shall find me.’ The hymns he fancied, too. ‘Just as I am without one plea’; ‘Once I was dead in sin.’
The service was conducted by a middle-aged man in a collar and tie, dark suit and brown shoes. Gospel Halls did without vicars, priests or ministers.
Iles behaved dismally well, no heckling, no blasphemies, no kicking, no half nelsons or gouging, and this sickened and angered Harpur. It was as though some inner vitality and special, individual awfulness – yes, individual – had been removed from the ACC because of the failure to reach whoever ordered the Sandicott attack on his ground. On his fucking Sandicott ground. In one of the spells for silent meditation Harpur offered a kind of prayer, a plea, that the ACC might soon recover his natural, flavoursome spite, energy and glorious arrogance. Harpur hadn’t worn the jockstrap or cricket box today because he’d felt a memorial service would probably not get Iles going in the way a funeral could. But Harpur had not expected this total, bewildering, passiveness.
Iles and Harpur spoke briefly at the close to Mr and Mrs Vaughan on the pavement outside. Gareth Leo Vaughan said, ‘I heard you had further violent trouble in your manor.’
‘Yes,’ Iles said. ‘Unsolved. Unsolvable?’
‘That guy, Waverton, killed by .45 rounds. Those are big bullets, big wounds,’ Vaughan said.
‘Do you know anything about that sort of thing?’ Iles replied.
‘You wouldn’t expect us to be upset, would you?’ Mrs Vaughan said. ‘It’s good to know he’ll supply no more.’
‘No more drugs?’ Iles replied. ‘You’re entirely anti them, are you? Well, the debate will continue.’
‘Knives,’ she said. ‘I meant no more knives.’
‘It’s a mixed-up situation,’ Harpur said.
‘I’d call it closure,’ Vaughan said.
‘But, Col has a different word for it.’
‘Yes?’ Catrin Vaughan said.
‘Tricky,’ Iles said.
Footnotes
Chapter One
1 See I Am Gold
Chapter Five
1 See I Am Gold
Chapter Thirteen
1 See I Am Gold
Chapter Sixteen
1 See Disclosures
Chapter Nineteen
1 See Roses, Roses
Chapter Twenty
1 See In Good Hands
Chapter Twenty-Four
1 See I Am Gold
Chapter Twenty-Five
1 See Girls
Chapter Twenty-Six
1 See Wolves of Memory