Vacuum

by Bill James

  ‘Often in my prayers, Harpur, I say, “Thank you, God, for Col and his continuous, stupid optimism,”’ Iles had replied.

  Today, for visit five, Harpur parked a good way from the site of the shooting and walked a hundred metres or so. He stood at the minor junction where the gunman’s Mondeo had waited. On the face of it, this had been an almost ridiculously simple pounce – ridiculously simple as long as the Jaguar came that way making for Bracken Collegiate private school, which the children attended. This was likely, though not totally certain. Shale’s daughter had told them that he advised his wife to vary her routes there and back when she took over the run if he was away, but she would not always bother. Apparently, she didn’t like to be instructed by Manse – to be bossed by Manse. So, the Mondeo had a fair chance of picking the right spot.

  Harpur stood on that spot now, across the street from the restored wall. They had witness statements explaining what had happened. The Mondeo, one man in it – white, late twenties or early thirties – waited near the junction. The Jaguar came into Sandicott Terrace from the far end, the second Mrs Shale driving today, and had to slow and go round the Mondeo, aiming to turn left into the main highway – Landau Road – and on to a straight four-mile stretch to the school. But, as the Jaguar drew abreast, the automatic firing had started from the Mondeo into the Jaguar, with Mrs Shale a car’s width away and Laurent, in the back, about the same. The nearness, and that kind of weapon, made it virtually impossible not to get a hit, at least of the Jaguar driver.

  But the nearness also meant that if the main target should have been Mansel Shale, the gunman must have seen it was a woman at the Jaguar wheel. Nerves? No previous hit experience? Gung-ho madness – the need to kill for the sake of killing? A plan to hurt Manse, but not directly: lasting pain from immense grief? All this assumed, of course, that the objective was Manse, either to be eliminated himself or to be tortured by the deaths of those very close to him. Was the young girl, Matilda Shale, intended for execution, also?

  The Mondeo had screamed away within a minute of the attack. Panic? Professionalism? Good luck? Exceptional luck? After all, the uncontrolled Jaguar might have taken some other streets that day. It might also have veered left not right after the shooting and hit the Mondeo, possibly disabling it.

  Harpur walked back to his car. It had been another profitless, nervous-twitch, time-wasting sojourn. He thought he had glimpsed the woman from the repaired house watching him through the front-room window. She hadn’t come out to talk, though. Perhaps she could tell from his manner that he knew no more than everyone knew, and had only returned to the Terrace as a kind of face-saving spasm: his attempt to show he still governed the streets, at least until someone proved he didn’t.

  TWO

  Naturally, others besides Iles speculated on the new situation. A couple of days ago at home Harpur’s daughters had also spoken to him about Mansel Shale. Inevitably, the news of his substantial retirement from the shopping corpus had circulated. Some of the older pupils at their school, or teenagers in the clubs, had probably been customers. They’d hear of changes. The word would be around. And Harpur wondered whether one or both of the girls themselves did weed now and then and bought from Shale’s people. Jill might be still a little young for that, but Hazel was fifteen. He thought he should have seen the signs, sniffed the signs, witnessed the giggles, but the girls were wily.

  They found the whole Shale tale intriguing, anyway. Inevitably, the shooting of his wife and son, Laurent,1 had made big news on television and in the papers. Shale’s thirteen-year-old daughter, Matilda, who’d been in the car but survived, was Jill’s age. That gave an extra interest: a sort of bond.

  For much of the time, Harpur assumed – like almost everyone else – that the kills were in fact a cock-up by a hired gunman: young, cheap, incompetent, nervy, a novice. Firearms found weaknesses, in the user as well as the target, and one of the weaknesses could be wrong target. Yes, the marksman had almost certainly been sent to take out Mansel. Maybe a vengeance commission of some sort; not everyone found Shale lovable. The pot-shot briefing for this sloppy executioner must have said Manse usually drove the school-run Jaguar. Correct. So, the attack plan came down to: (a) identify the car; (b) shoot the driver, and anybody else if unavoidable; (c) scarper back to base; (d) collect the second half of the fee – in cash, not vouchers for concerts in the Albert Hall.

  Mansel wasn’t even aboard the Jaguar that day, though, but en route to a London conference in a different vehicle. He’d never spoken about the shooting: or, rather, never spoken about it to Harpur or any other officer. They’d tried to discuss it with him, naturally, but he wouldn’t have it. Simply, he quit the active part of the game, and apparently had frequent conversations with vicars and so on these days. They’d do their best for him, explaining considerately and patiently why life had to be like that as part of the divine pattern: innocent people wiped out on the way to school.

  ‘It’s what’s known as omertà,’ Jill had said. ‘Crooks like Mansel Shale don’t talk to cops, even when the crooks have been horribly hurt. Omertà’s Italian. I’ve read about it. O – m – e – r – t – à, the “a” with an accent grave on it. Now, please don’t be afraid of words because they’re foreign, Dad. All sorts of them around these days owing to the European Union. Think of Beaujolais Nouveau, which is wine, and les sans papiers, which is immigrants. These Mafia racketeers sort out their own troubles. They don’t complain to the polizia, being the police over there. This would stain their honour, make them finks. They have to be macho. I’m glad Mansel Shale has given most of it up. If they had another go they might kill him next time and Matilda would be an orphan.’

  ‘We see her some days,’ Hazel said. ‘She seems all right now. She comes to judo off and on. Her dad brings her and picks her up. The Jaguar has been repaired. He looks very sad.’

  ‘Well, of course,’ Jill said.

  ‘Matilda’s a brave kid,’ Harpur said.

  ‘As a matter of fact, near Naples the Mafia is known as the Camorra,’ Jill replied. ‘Also it’s called il Sistema, meaning “the system”. Everything is sweetly organized, like that Brando pic, The Godfather, on The Movie Channel. They have their own lawyer, such as Robert Duvall, to state they’re not breaking the law when they’re breaking the law, say through a garrotting. They all believe in omertà and they’ll kill and torture members who go to the police, and their families.’

  ‘What will happen now, Dad?’ Hazel said. She liked to get to the practicalities. ‘There’s a story around.’ But she hesitated, apparently embarrassed.

  ‘What story?’ Harpur said. He believed he could guess.

  ‘It includes a vulgar word, Dad,’ Jill said. ‘But I should think you know it, in your sort of job.’

  ‘What’s that mean?’ Harpur said.

  ‘Meeting many kinds of people,’ Jill said. ‘Thugs, toerags, Des Iles, lowlife.’

  ‘The story is that just before he got shot, Laurent Shale realized what was going to happen and spoke to Matilda,’ Hazel said.

  ‘Something about who had set up the attack,’ Jill said, ‘in his opinion.’

  ‘Who says this?’ Harpur asked, knowing he’d get a crap reply.

  ‘I told you, Dad, it’s the buzz,’ Hazel said.

  ‘Rumour,’ Harpur said.

  ‘Maybe rumour,’ Hazel said.

  ‘This word – the vulgar word – it’s “twat”,’ Jill replied. ‘Some say it to rhyme with “cat”, like I have; others, especially in the United States, with “hot”.’

  ‘Yes, vulgar,’ Harpur said.

  ‘Some do say it, though, or make it a joke,’ Jill said. ‘For instance, there’s a café called “The Warm As Toast”.’

  ‘Yes?’ Harpur said. ‘Yes?’

  ‘Need the Enigma code-breaker, Dad?’ Hazel said. ‘The initials. We gather that what Laurent muttered just before the shooting was, “It has to be that twat Ralphy.”’

  ‘Spoken with the cat rhyme,
you see, Dad,’ Jill said. ‘I don’t know if there’s research by the Oxford dictionary to show which pronunciation is top.’

  ‘They were in the back of the car and ought to have got right down when the gunfire began, but Laurent wanted to look, so he was hit,’ Hazel said. ‘Matilda kept out of sight.’

  Yes, that’s what Laurent had said in the moment before he died, according to Matilda. She’d told Harpur just after he lifted her out of the Jaguar. She had quoted Laurent, using the cat rhyme. But he didn’t mention any of this to his daughters.

  ‘We think the Ralphy referred to in that sentence must be Ralph W. Ember,’ Jill said. ‘He’s a big trader in the commodities and owns a club, The Monty. He’s like you in some ways, Dad.’

  ‘How? I don’t trade or own a club,’ Harpur said.

  ‘He’s got two daughters at school,’ Jill said.

  ‘Well, yes,’ Harpur said. ‘I think so.’

  ‘You know it,’ Jill said. ‘You must have a dossier on him. But his daughters are not at John Locke Comp with us. Private: Corton House – a snob place. Ralph’s rich.’

  ‘He’s known as Panicking Ralph or Panicking Ralphy,’ Hazel said, ‘owing to some yellowness far back.’

  ‘It’s weird, really, isn’t it, Dad?’ Jill said.

  ‘What?’ Harpur said.

  ‘Ralph Ember, a crook, two kids – girls – at a private school,’ Jill said. ‘Mansel Shale, another crook, two kids – a boy and a girl – also at a private school, though a different one, and, of course, the boy dead now. Are crims the only ones who can afford private? Is this a hurtful question to a parent, such as you? It has to be asked, though. Is this a serious comment on the present state of things?’

  ‘Which things?’ Harpur said.

  ‘Like the social picture in this country. Everyone hard up except the crooks,’ Jill said.

  ‘You don’t want private, do you?’ Harpur said.

  ‘I’m just making a remark,’ Jill said. ‘Would you be able to pay if we did?’

  ‘A hypothetical question,’ Harpur replied.

  ‘What’s that mean?’ Jill said. ‘One you don’t have to answer? There’s a lot of them about.’

  ‘Ralph Ember runs a substances firm alongside Manse Shale’s, doesn’t he?’ Hazel said. ‘And now alongside this new guy, I suppose, the heir.’

  ‘We don’t believe Laurent meant it was Panicking who actually triggered,’ Jill said, ‘but Laurent seemed to think Ralph had organized it, such as paying a hit man. That’s what they’re called in plays on the telly.’

  ‘They both wanted monopoly, didn’t they, Dad – Panicking and Manse Shale?’ Hazel said. ‘I’ve done it in Economics at school – businesses always fighting each other to destroy competition, so the winner can up prices, being the only one left with the goods. Perhaps Ralphy believes he can wipe out whoever succeeds Manse, too. Will there be more trouble? In capitalism, a company has to move forward just to stand still – referred to as a paradox, which means it’s true but sounds the very opposite.’

  ‘We discussed why exactly Laurent used the term “twat”,’ Jill said. ‘It seemed important.’

  ‘If he did,’ Harpur said.

  ‘It’s someone’s last statement in this life,’ Jill said. ‘He couldn’t of prepared it, because he didn’t know the shooting would happen. This word came out, like, automatic. It’s his true, natural feelings. We got to give it attention. There are many hurtful words he could of selected, such as “slob” or “dickhead” or “louse”, but he picked “twat”. That isn’t the sort of thing you’d expect to hear in a top-of-the-range Jaguar, which it was.’

  ‘“Couldn’t have prepared it.” “Could have selected it.” “We have to give it attention.” None of it’s certain,’ Harpur said.

  ‘People say “twat” to mean someone who’s vain but not much good at anything at all,’ Jill replied. ‘Showy but useless. It’s like “prat”, only stronger. So, maybe Laurent realized it was all a mess up – his mother shot by mistake, and himself going to get it next.’

  ‘That nickname – Panicking Ralph, or Panicking Ralphy,’ Hazel said. ‘It makes him sound a complete write-off, doesn’t it, Dad?’

  ‘And therefore he can be termed a “twat”,’ Jill said.

  ‘All right, he might not have made a mistake with the gun himself, but because he’s rubbish and drops into panics he picks the wrong man to do the job for him,’ Hazel said. ‘It’s the kind of error football managers make when they’re getting too much pressure. Bad choices.’

  ‘Perhaps it really upset Laurent to think he was going to be killed by some jerk sent by another jerk,’ Jill said. ‘A sort of insult, as well as a mistake. Nothing noble about it, such as facing fearful odds in warrior sagas. And that’s why Laurent used that unpleasant word.’

  ‘A harsh protest,’ Hazel said, ‘but, of course, not with any evidence. It was just a guess or a feeling by Laurent.’

  ‘We don’t think Ralph Ember had any part in the shooting,’ Harpur replied. ‘We’ve talked to him.’

  ‘And he said, “No, no, not me, guv,” did he?’ Hazel asked, with a villain voice. ‘And you replied, “Oh, that’s all right then, Ralph. Sorry, old chum. Just thought we’d ask.”’

  ‘Is he alibied?’ Jill said.

  ‘That’s the kind of question Dad is never going to answer,’ Hazel said.

  ‘Who was behind it?’ Jill said.

  ‘We’re working on this,’ Harpur said.

  ‘It’s taking a time, isn’t it?’ Hazel said.

  ‘These things often do,’ Harpur said.

  ‘Of course they do,’ Jill said. Ultimately, she’d usually try to defend Harpur when Hazel got heavy.

  * * *

  1 See I Am Gold

  THREE

  The loyalty question troubled Ralph Ember’s wife, Margaret. One reason it harassed her was that this shouldn’t really be a question: she had married Ralph, had his children, and loyalty to him ought to be automatic. But, no, that was too simple. Obviously, marriages could come apart, marriages with children as much as those without. Life in the marriage could become intolerable for one or, perhaps, both spouses, and loyalty would have no place any longer.

  Margaret’s debate with herself wasn’t to do with the usual causes of strain between husband and wife, though. Her anxieties were special. Because of the drugs business he ran, she knew Ralph might always be a target for competitors, for enemies. This was especially true now, after the Shale deaths. So, might Ralph’s family be a vengeance target: herself and their two daughters? Several times during her marriage, she had suffered quite long spells of fear, but never fear as deep and unrelenting as this. It closed around her, offered not even a small sight of relief. She experienced it as a tirelessly hostile presence, standing a little back for the moment as a tease, but all the time ready to rip in.

  There had been past periods when she believed the only way to rid herself of her dreads arising from Ralph’s work was to take the children and leave him. She’d asked him to quit his work, and, of course, he’d refused. In fact, she had gone once,1 but returned after only days. She often wondered later whether that had been a stupid, craven decision. She’d had the guts to up and go, but not to stay gone and settle safe elsewhere. Idiotic? Surely it was the walkout itself that required the real nerve. Cheers then, Ralph, it’s been great, but . . .

  Yet her collapse had followed. And so shamefully soon. She longed to think this frailty was deeply unlike her. She’d always regarded herself as passably dogged and constant. But the memory of such jittery backtracking stuck and seemed to disable her now in this new situation, the Jaguar killings situation. She felt she might never be able to finalize a break from him. And wouldn’t any second attempt to exit be . . . well, idiotic on idiotic, pathetic, no matter how scared she was of staying with Ralph – and, as a necessary part of that, making their kids stay?

  This responsibility battered her. Worries about them dominated. It hadn’t been qui
te the same during her previous quit schemes: although the children were important then, yes, she’d had other strong motives, also. But these days she had to consider the death of Laurent Shale, didn’t she? Although his stepmother had been killed at the same time, it was slaughter of the boy that produced Margaret Ember’s worst worries. If Shale’s uninvolved kid could be wiped out, how safe were her daughters, Venetia and Fay? Vengeance could be very thorough.

  Just before she did a runner from Ralph last time, she’d gone to see that slippery, crude, know-all, rough-house cop Harpur for advice. Obviously, you’d be insane to trust any police detective more than fifteen per cent with your fingers crossed – if so much – but she’d hoped he would understand her stress. He knew about murder, and not just professionally: his wife had been knifed to death in a car park.2 And he had two schoolgirl daughters himself. Although he’d been reasonably kind and apparently straightforward then, she drew back from consulting him again now. That would be part of the idiotic, pathetic display she must avoid. ‘Oh, on one of your little scoots again, Mrs Ember?’ She had to guard the tatters of what she’d come to regard as her main, shaky self.

  Some things her daughters said – no, not said, more like hinted at – about the car shooting stoked her alarm. They had obviously gathered babble fragments from the jungle-drums, and these disturbed them. The girls nagged Margaret with vague, roundabout inquiries that seemed based on some sort of information, accurate or not, but information they dodged disclosing. It was as if they blue-pencilled part of this gossip as too embarrassing or hurtful for their mother. Yet they couldn’t leave it, forget it. To Margaret their badgering came across as the same question put repeatedly in changed words, like a cross-examination trick. It amounted to this: were their father and Mansel Shale violent enemies? Neither of the girls actually used the words ‘violent’ or ‘enemies’. They went for ‘business rivals’, ‘competitors’, ‘opponents’.

  Struggling to unearth what they were really talking about, Margaret came to sense they might have heard suggestions that the boy, Laurent, spoke to his sister in the back of the Jaguar just before he died, said something important but perhaps crude. Margaret could not have explained how she got to this notion, but it was where her daughters’ questions seemed to point, and point constantly. Perhaps he’d attempted to account for the shooting, perhaps even accused someone. If so, she could possibly guess which someone, with or without guidance from her daughters. There must be all sorts of rumour about among local kids – buzz as they called it, though the girls didn’t use that word either now: they obviously aimed to keep things believable and weighty. Margaret would have liked to listen in to some of the buzz; wrong age-group, though, by decades. She, too, wanted to know whether Ralph and Manse Shale might be violent enemies. This helped explain the dazing degree of her fear. Good God, was it conceivable that Ralph commissioned some thug to rake the Jaguar, hoping to kill Shale and not caring too much about anyone else hit; had actually planned to ambush the school run?