Vacuum

by Bill James

  ‘No, indeed,’ Upton said.

  ‘What would I wish to warn him of?’ Iles replied.

  ‘Quite,’ Upton said. ‘Oh, quite. Now, I can, of course, see that Ember’s prompt appearance in day attire might not be totally exceptional, because he is a club owner and no doubt is kept late on some special nights there.’

  ‘He does have occasional trouble persuading people to quit The Monty, despite the sty that it is,’ Iles said. ‘I rather like the French word for doorman or bouncer – it’s videur, as you probably know, sir. A chucker-out. An emptier! Often, Ralph could do with a couple of those.’

  Upton said: ‘And then we have your introductory words to him, Desmond, as reported by Francis Garland just now. I wrote these as: “Ralph, here’s a treat!”’

  ‘It might well have been a cry of that sort,’ Iles said. ‘Something matey and exuberant to take away a little of the shock and unpleasantness of our arrival pre-breakfast.’

  ‘And yet it does not appear to have been a shock at all, does it?’ Upton said. ‘In a sense, anti-shock, flagrantly non-shock, since he was totally prepared.’

  ‘One couldn’t have forecast that,’ Iles said.

  ‘Possibly not,’ Upton said. ‘Possibly not. First-name terms?’

  ‘It’s how it is with people like Ember,’ Iles said.

  ‘“People like Ember” being?’ Upton said.

  ‘That’s quite a tricky one, sir. Ember is very various,’ Iles said. ‘I think most here would agree with this.’

  ‘People like Ember are rare, thank God,’ Upton said. His voice became steely and purposeful. ‘They are shameless, large-scale, ruthless, moneyed traders in illegal substances, and most likely parties to all types of criminal violence connected with their business, including the murder of a woman and child. They mix what they call “bash” with the cocaine they trade – traditionally uncostly stuff like baby milk powder or caffeine, but now potentially dangerous pharmaceutical products such as benzocaine – to fool customers and hugely increase profits.’

  ‘We’re working on the murders, sir,’ Iles said.

  ‘But it’s Ember’s answer to your greeting that surely is bound to stand out, Desmond,’ Upton said. ‘“I’d heard you’d be calling at around this time today.” I have this right, too?’

  ‘That’s how he responded, yes, sir,’ Iles said.

  ‘Yes,’ Garland said.

  ‘“I’d heard,” he says. But how could he have heard?’ Upton asked. ‘Not simply that there would be a raid, but the time and date. Had there been gossip outside the team?’

  ‘I’d ordered complete silence. My people would understand that need,’ Garland said. ‘We do this sort of unheralded visit as virtually standard. And the confidentiality is standard, also.’

  ‘The blatant and complete failure of that confidentiality here must make for some uneasiness, mustn’t it?’ the Chief said.

  ‘Unquestionably,’ Iles replied at once.

  ‘And Mr Harpur expressed uneasiness at once, didn’t he?’ Upton said.

  ‘That kind of directness, meat-and-potatoes frankness, is typical of Col,’ Iles replied. ‘It’s not necessarily naive.’

  ‘I make it that he raised the matter three times,’ Upton said, looking again at his notes.

  ‘He’d persist. That also is typical,’ Iles said.

  ‘With finally the statement,’ Upton said, and read out: ‘“You’ve got a stipended voice that talks to you from inside our building, have you, Ralph?”’

  ‘Stipended, yes,’ Iles said. ‘Harpur can come up with some quaint vocab. He’s more or less self-educated, and when the self is his kind of self there are going to be some odd results, aren’t there, sir?’

  ‘What exactly did you mean, Mr Harpur?’ Upton replied.

  ‘I’d assume he was suggesting some officer had been long-term bought by Ralph Ember and supplied him regularly with confidential material,’ Iles said.

  ‘What exactly did you mean, Mr Harpur?’ Upton replied.

  ‘Yes, as the Assistant Chief suggests,’ Harpur said.

  ‘Someone bought?’ Upton said.

  ‘Yes,’ Harpur said.

  ‘This would be a grave offence, wouldn’t it? Perverting the course of justice,’ Upton said.

  ‘Yes,’ Harpur said.

  ‘Certainly,’ Iles said.

  ‘You think money would be involved – bribery?’ Upton said.

  ‘Almost definitely,’ Harpur said.

  ‘Almost? There could be some other reason, in your view?’ Upton said.

  ‘It’s possible,’ Harpur said.

  ‘How would you intend to deal with the matter?’ Upton said.

  ‘There must be inquiries,’ Harpur said.

  ‘You have to identify this source,’ Upton said.

  ‘Yes,’ Harpur said.

  ‘This source had impeccable knowledge of our raid plans,’ Upton said.

  ‘Clearly,’ Harpur said.

  ‘Certainly,’ Iles said.

  ‘That should limit the possibles,’ Upton said. ‘Someone exceptionally well placed.’

  ‘Yes,’ Harpur said.

  ‘It’s a situation putting a shadow on everyone who had pre-info on the raid, isn’t it, Mr Harpur?’ Upton said.

  ‘It is,’ Harpur said.

  ‘How do you feel about it, Mr Garland?’ Upton said.

  ‘It is uncomfortable,’ Garland said.

  ‘Desmond?’ Upton replied.

  ‘Affronted,’ Iles said. ‘Utterly. It is contemptible behaviour.’

  ‘You spoke of trying to lessen the shock for Ember in this early morning visit, but were you, yourself, shocked by his statement that he’d been expecting you?’ Upton said.

  ‘Massively,’ Iles said.

  ‘A very natural reaction, if I may say. Did you question him about it, in the way Mr Harpur did?’ Upton asked.

  ‘People like Ember are unlikely to answer such a question – answer it truthfully,’ Iles said.

  ‘Ah, we have that phrase again,’ Upton replied.

  ‘Which phrase, sir?’ Iles said.

  ‘“People like Ember”,’ the Chief said. ‘What are people like Ember like, in your opinion, Desmond?’

  Iles chuckled and gave the table a small blow with his fist. ‘It’s remarkable you should ask this, sir, because, as a matter of fact, Ember has a plaque on one of the gates at Low Pastures hinting at that very need, the need to define personality,’ he said. ‘Of course, you’ll recall it from your undergrad days at . . . yes, your undergrad days: “Mens cuiusque is est quisque.” Cicero being Mr Fucking Cleverclogs with all those Qs, but not clever enough. He tells us a man’s mind is what the man is, but he doesn’t tell us how to find out what a man’s mind might be up to.’

  ‘You think Mr Harpur was wasting his efforts asking Ember how he knew everything about the operation?’ Upton replied.

  ‘Col has his style of dealing with things,’ Iles said. ‘It’s more or less unarguable that he has had successes. And I stress the plural.’

  SEVEN

  There would be two more killings. Possibly, they proved Upton’s analysis of things right and Iles’s wrong. Or the opposite. Upton might say that wherever large-scale drug dealing went on – tolerated or not – violence was sure to accompany it, and so Iles’s attempt to achieve civic peace through a bargain with the main outfits would ultimately fail. Against this, Iles might say that once the law started monkeying with the type of arrangement he favoured, or even talking about those kinds of changes, firms would get scared and lash out, trying to protect themselves. Harpur couldn’t settle in his head which of them had things correct.

  And – another sweet uncertainty – could he have prevented the two deaths? He’d had the warning, hadn’t he? There’d been that surprising conversation backed by tea and currant loaf while the kids were at judo. Should he have done something, something life-preserving? At the time, it had seemed impossible. He didn’t feel so sure when confronted by those
deaths and looking back. Perhaps he’d treated the tip-off casually because of where it came from, and how it came. Had he begun to get slack?

  On the day of this conversation he’d been just about to get into the car with his daughters. The two deaths were still a long way ahead then, of course. Jill said quietly: ‘Over there, Dad, someone hanging around in the street. I’ve seen her from the window, as well. Twenty-fiveish. Fair-to-mousy cowlick. No lipstick. Denim top and jeans. Purple slingbacks. I think she wants to talk to you.’ Jill didn’t point but gave a small, almost unnoticeable nod towards her. ‘You know this person at all?’

  Harpur looked. ‘No.’ But, yes, though only from dossier pictures and profiling: Karen Lister, live-in girlfriend of one of Mansel Shale’s top people, Jason Ivan Claud Wensley. Harpur’s daughters always worried that some woman he’d never told them about would turn up and make Denise hurt enough, and jealous enough, and angry enough to ditch him. If she ditched him, she’d ditch them, too. They obviously considered him lucky to have kept her this long. He wouldn’t argue. They wanted him to be careful. They wanted him to behave right. They tried to watch him as much as they could, which they knew wasn’t very much at all. They wondered what went on when they couldn’t, which they knew was often. They’d been forced to learn about family frailty. It made them suspicious and jumpy.

  Harpur was just going to drive them to the judo club. Hazel said: ‘Yes, I’ve noticed her, too, Dad. She looks really anxious. She brings trouble for someone, I think.’

  ‘For Dad?’ Jill said.

  ‘For someone,’ Hazel said.

  ‘Very slim,’ Jill said. Harpur interpreted: not at this point accusingly belly-bulged, up-the-duff. ‘Very slim, but also boobs,’ Jill said.

  ‘She could be looking for almost anyone,’ Harpur said. ‘So many of the houses in this street are multi-flatted and poorly occupant-labelled.’ Sometimes he’d try to crush his daughters with a gross pile of ugly, lifeless syllables.

  ‘Yes, she could be looking for almost anyone, but she isn’t, unless you’re almost anyone,’ Hazel said. ‘Which I suppose you could be mistaken for, though.’

  Karen Lister was a little way down the street on the other side. When the three came out of the house, she had been right opposite, but began to walk away fast. ‘There,’ Harpur said. ‘She’s not concerned with us.’

  ‘Of course she’s concerned with us,’ Hazel said. ‘We appear on the doorstep and she belts off, pretending not to be concerned with us because she is.’

  ‘Look,’ Jill said.

  Lister had stopped, as if suddenly hit by a change of mind; maybe by shame at having chickened. She turned, crossed the street and approached them quickly. ‘This is luck,’ she said, with a very nice, hearty boom to her voice.

  ‘What is?’ Harpur said.

  ‘Luck?’ Hazel said. ‘Excuse me, but only an idiot could call this luck, or someone putting on an act.’

  ‘I’m delighted to have bumped into you, Mr Harpur,’ the woman said. ‘It is Mr Harpur, isn’t it?’

  ‘You know it is,’ Hazel said.

  ‘Bumped into him?’ Jill said. ‘Is this “bumped into him”?’

  ‘Mr Harpur, could we talk somewhere for a couple of minutes?’ Karen Lister replied. She meant privately, without the children. Her tone said it. The boom and phoney heartiness were for him only. ‘I recognized you from TV news.’

  ‘Well,’ Harpur said, ‘I’m afraid I have to take—’

  ‘Is this something urgent?’ Jill asked her. ‘Yes, it must be, mustn’t it, or why lurk here?’

  ‘I’m Karen Lister,’ she replied.

  ‘Should Dad know this name?’ Jill said.

  ‘Karen Louise Lister.’

  ‘Dad knows all sorts,’ Jill said.

  ‘You might recognize the name, Mr Harpur,’ Karen Lister said.

  ‘Dad? Do you? He can go very shutters-up sometimes,’ Jill said. ‘That’s partly from the job, but in any case he’s like that. Into secrets. He does blankness. Have you noticed that in him, I wonder?’

  ‘We’re due elsewhere,’ Harpur said. ‘Could you call at my office tomorrow if it’s a work matter?’

  ‘I don’t go to police stations,’ she said.

  ‘Ever?’ Jill said. ‘What if your bike’s pinched, or the Labrador lost?’

  ‘Would I want to be seen going to a police station?’ Karen Lister enjoyed a small laugh, as though going to a police station would be as mad as high-diving into a fruit bowl or joining the Labour Party.

  ‘Would you?’ Hazel said. ‘Why not? That’s what police stations are for – so people can go to them.’

  ‘I think I understand what she means, Haze,’ Jill said.

  ‘Oh, you would,’ Hazel said.

  ‘It’s not so very unusual, believe me,’ Jill replied.

  ‘Tell us about it, do,’ Hazel said.

  ‘She has a special way of thinking about police stations,’ Jill said. ‘It’s special, but it’s also quite common.’

  ‘What special way?’ Hazel replied.

  ‘This is like in omertà,’ Jill said. ‘But, Karen – OK to call you Karen? – Karen, you’re afraid someone might find out you’ve been spilling to police, are you?’

  ‘Oh, omertà!’ Hazel said. ‘This is crazy. She’s the Mafia, the Godmother?’

  ‘You know some dangerous folk, do you, Karen?’ Jill said. ‘Dad’s used to that kind of thing. And then there’s someone called Iles who’s quite good at those carry-ons, too – squashing villains. Maybe you’ve heard of him. He could be a reason you don’t like going into police stations, because he might be there, being an Assistant Chief. Although not everybody believes it, really deep in his being Des Iles has got what’s known as integrity, meaning OKness, and, like a gent, he’s given up chasing Haze, who’s still not sixteen, because he found she had a serious boyfriend her own age, Des Iles being married with a child.’

  ‘Mouth,’ Hazel replied.

  ‘I took the risk of coming to your district, Mr Harpur,’ Karen Lister said. ‘I watched the rear mirror.’

  ‘It’s just as obvious as visiting the nick,’ Hazel said, ‘pacing about like that, pretending you’ve got somewhere to go when it’s obvious you haven’t.’

  ‘I’ll drop the girls off at judo and return straight away,’ Harpur said. ‘Can you come to the house in half an hour?’

  ‘She’s afraid of being noticed by those dangerous people I mentioned, Dad,’ Jill said. ‘She should come with us in the car, and then you can drive her back, or talk in the car. That might be best – talk in the car.’

  The girls would think there’d be time to give Karen Lister a proper, intensive vetting if she joined them now on the ride to judo. And they’d try to make sure that, never mind what they discovered about her then, she didn’t go back to Arthur Street with him. Karen Lister had a good body, slim only where it ought to be slim. His daughters might not like the notion of Harpur and her in the house on their own. Denise wouldn’t be there until later. She’d said she had crawl coaching at the university pool this evening.

  ‘Yes, all right, I’ll come back to the house,’ Karen Lister said. Harpur had the idea she didn’t want to be celled in the car with these kids and their wonderings and probes.

  Jill said: ‘But you might get spotted waiting in Arthur Street. Hazel and I picked you out. It’s to do with what’s known as “body language”. I don’t know if you’ve ever come across that phrase.’

  ‘I left my Mini around the corner. I’ll wait in that,’ Karen Lister replied.

  ‘That’s fine then,’ Harpur said. ‘See you at 126 shortly.’

  Karen Lister moved away from the car and resumed her walk.

  On the drive to judo, Hazel said: ‘She seems really very interesting in some ways.’

  ‘Well, yes,’ Harpur said.

  ‘I don’t see how she can be interesting if we don’t know anything about her, except she’s not fond of nicks,’ Jill said. ‘There’s plenty like
that, and not just on account of omertà.’

  ‘It’s because we don’t know anything much about her that she’s interesting,’ Hazel said. ‘Why was she keeping stuff from us?’

  ‘Which stuff?’ Jill said.

  ‘That’s what I’m getting at, Thicko,’ Hazel said. ‘There’s stuff she’s not telling us, and this makes us wonder what this stuff is. So, we’re interested. If you think about, say, a vicar with a sermon, we’re not interested because we’ve heard it all before and he puts it out again in front of us. But with this Karen Lister, she’s holding something back, and we’d like to get at it and to know why she’s holding it back.’

  ‘Although you didn’t recognize her at first, Dad, I was wondering if as soon as she talked to us you suddenly remembered who she was,’ Jill said. ‘It’s well known that can happen with people’s memories – they may be given a jab by something, and it all comes back to them. Say, for instance, when she spoke her name.’

  ‘If it’s her true name,’ Hazel replied.

  ‘The memory can do some weird things, yes,’ Harpur said.

  ‘Or it might be perfume,’ Jill said.

  ‘What might be?’ Hazel said.

  ‘It’s also well known that we could be looking at something and not able to remember it, such as a face and so on, or listening to a voice and not remembering that either, but then another sense takes over from sight and hearing, that is, the nose, and smelling something particular with it, a familiar scent, or once familiar,’ Jill said. ‘And this causes the memory to wake up and bring everything back, not just the memory of the smell, but the whole thing. This smell sort of opens a door to all sorts of other things in the memory, like opening the door to a pantry. I don’t think the scent she had on today was too bad. It might have been her favourite for a long while – such as Chanel’s “Allure”, or “Red” by Giorgio Beverly Hills – and when somebody gets a whiff of it now it is as though time returns, like, automatically to the first day or night he or she met the smell of this scent, sketching out that whole earlier scene, which is very helpful in the matter of recalling. Yes, Dad, memory is rather a tricky item.’