Vacuum

by Bill James

  ‘I’m grateful,’ Margaret said. She felt guilty at having been so resentful earlier. The information they brought – the laboriously, cleverly, joined-up ‘fragments’ – could be important for her. She couldn’t tell what they meant, and Frank and Beryl might not know either. But they meant something, and something serious. Margaret decided she wouldn’t be calling at number eleven Carteret Drive to quiz Karen about feelings in the Shale camp. That mission seemed naive, almost simple-minded, to her now. There were all kinds of involvements and shadowy connections. She was afraid of blundering about in a scene she knew only a fraction of. Perhaps that early tension was her body intuiting a threat.

  Frank said: ‘But I think you’ll understand, Mrs Ember, that we have also a selfish interest in calling on you.’

  Margaret felt a sudden marked reversal in the nature of this meeting. These two had seemed tentative and gabby. She’d considered herself in command of the situation, able to shape it and, perhaps, profit from it. But a kind of upending seemed under way. Frank’s tone had sharpened. So had Beryl’s. Had they pre-choreographed this interview? Were they much smarter than Margaret had thought? ‘Selfish?’ she said.

  ‘We considered it should be face-to-face,’ Beryl said. ‘This is not something for the telephone, even if we had a number, which we don’t, since you seem to be ex-directory.’

  ‘Our point is this, Mrs Ember: we apparently live next door to people in whom a highly placed police officer has a considerable, though clandestine, interest,’ Frank said. ‘Rather worrying. You spoke of a link between our neighbours and the unusual situation overnight in Gladstone Square at the Valencia, a link via this watchful police officer and his Mazda car. Mrs Ember, everyone who lives in this city has an idea of the main business that goes on in the Valencia. Or possibly I should say businesses. But the principal one is the pushing of drugs, isn’t it?’

  ‘This is commonplace in most inner city areas,’ Beryl said.

  ‘Possibly it is unique to our city that this selling is to some degree tolerated by the police,’ Frank said. ‘Most local people have heard of this, also. We have grandchildren at school who mention it.’

  ‘And they mention, also, the names of some of the most significant people in this regime – on the one hand the Assistant Chief Constable, Desmond Iles, and on the other – on, that is, the trading side – the two firms, Shale and, yes, Ember,’ Beryl said.

  ‘You will see why we are curious and somewhat anxious about your visit to our neighbourhood last evening,’ Frank said.

  ‘As we’ve mentioned, we are very fond of Karen and have never had any cause to think ill of her, nor, indeed, of Jason,’ Beryl said. ‘Now, though, we are bound to be conscious of new factors.’

  ‘Which?’ Margaret replied. She knew which, of course, and realized that pretending not to would look ludicrous. But she needed Beryl and Frank to do the talking for a while longer. She wanted time to adjust to the changed state of things.

  ‘One new factor is that linkage between our neighbours and some kind of crisis at the Valencia, the Valencia being what it is,’ Frank said. ‘And – excuse me, Mrs Ember, but this has to be said—’

  ‘Can’t be avoided,’ Beryl said.

  ‘Perhaps the most striking development,’ Frank said, ‘is the visit to our next doors by someone from one of the two families notable in the local substances trade.’

  ‘Dominant in that trade,’ Beryl said.

  ‘Dominant,’ Frank replied.

  ‘Naturally, we, like most other people in this city, are aware that following the retirement of Mr Mansel Shale from hands-on control of his companies, a new precariousness has come upon the drugs trade.’

  ‘This is a word – “precariousness”, “precarious” – that Frank has frequently used about present conditions in the commerce here, and I believe it justified,’ Beryl said. ‘There is bound to be a jockeying to replace him. Oh, I’ve heard – again from the grandchildren – that Mansel Shale named a successor. But, apparently, this successor, while very talented in some respects, also has massive flaws.’

  ‘What we are getting at, Mrs Ember, is that we’ve entered a time of acute instability in the business set-up, and this could lead to what are known as “turf wars”, in which individuals or gangs try to take over ground previously secured by a powerful and skilled leader, but now – as they see it – sloppily run and conquerable.’

  ‘There’s a saying, “Nature abhors a vacuum”,’ Beryl said. ‘Always, we’ll find forces attempting to fill that vacuum, and attempting it with extreme ruthlessness and disregard for the interests of those who might be accidentally, innocently, involved.’

  ‘I’m sure you can see the direction of our thinking,’ Frank said. ‘And the reason for our uneasiness. Well, more than uneasiness. For our fears.’

  ‘No, I don’t think I follow,’ Margaret said, following.

  ‘There is, first, the general feeling that we have become sucked into something rather questionable. We are friendly with Karen and to a lesser extent with Jason,’ Beryl said. ‘But now we have cause to think they might have a side to their lives which is . . . which is, well . . . dubious. And then – forgive the bluntness – we find we have been talking to you in a very public way when you called on one of these neighbours, to what purpose we, of course, cannot know. But as much about it as we do know is rather uncomfortable.’

  ‘As if a situation – a rather mysterious and disturbing situation – has suddenly enveloped us,’ Frank said.

  ‘I don’t know whether there is a “situation” or not, but even if there is, you’re not part of it,’ Margaret said.

  ‘To be more specific: a very senior detective is apparently interested in our next-door neighbour, or neighbours,’ Frank said. ‘This detective is also concerned with some kind of crisis in a drug-dealing area of the city. One of our neighbours is visited, unsuccessfully at this stage, by the wife of a so-called drugs “baron”. Surely the pile up of these elements would make almost anyone worried. We have heard of drive-by attacks during gang battles in other cities. Not all such onslaughts are totally accurate. Bullets are sprayed. Do we live next to someone who might be a target for one of these fusillades? I don’t think anxiety about such dangers is alarmist or cowardly. We might be hit, though in our own property.’

  Especially if you were having a pry from the front room. But Margaret said: ‘This is all so speculative.’

  ‘It is the wider sense of being implicated and helpless to resist that troubles us,’ Frank said.

  ‘Is your family firm, your husband, in some kind of alliance with Jason?’ Beryl replied. ‘Was that why you called at the house? We don’t want to be drawn into anything potentially violent, you see,’ Beryl said. ‘At our age.’

  ‘We felt it best to be open with you about these concerns,’ Frank said.

  Margaret longed to turn full-power ratty and tell them to get out of the house. Their intrusiveness, their yellowness, their insolence – renamed by them ‘bluntness’ and ‘openness’ – and their nosiness all angered her. She knew they ought to have done more than that: they ought to have enraged her, as they would enrage Ralph if he came back and heard their bleating. But she couldn’t get beyond a fairly mild resentment. After all, in describing their own feelings they had described fairly accurately some of hers. She, too, feared getting sucked into a scene which she didn’t properly understand and certainly couldn’t control. The reason she’d been at number eleven Carteret Drive was to see whether Karen Lister could help her understand and possibly control – part control, anyway – the life that Ralph’s position in the drugs baronage imposed on her, and, possibly, on the children. Margaret shared that sense of being ‘enveloped’, not suddenly in her case, but relentlessly and totally.

  ‘No,’ Margaret said, ‘my husband has no alliance with Jason Wensley. I’m sure you’ll be safe. I don’t think I’ll be visiting their house again.’

  ‘But why were you there last evening?’ Beryl sa
id.

  ‘And now I must go out to an appointment,’ Margaret said, standing. Maybe that word, ‘appointment’, sounded woolly and pompous on its own, so she added something to give it exactness and ordinariness. ‘A dental appointment. It’s been good to talk with you both again.’

  ‘Oh dear, have we overstayed?’ Frank said. He and Beryl also stood.

  ‘Not at all. But I must make a move,’ Margaret said. She thought she’d drive around for half an hour going nowhere special, then come home.

  She did that and when she returned found Ralph there. He seemed cheery. ‘Manse rang while you were out,’ he said. ‘He wanted a meeting, one to one over at his place straight away.’

  Shale lived in a big, old ex-rectory on the edge of the city. ‘Is he all right?’ she said.

  ‘Still in grief, but not totally floored any longer.’

  ‘Poor, poor Manse.’

  ‘His attitude has changed.’

  ‘Which?’

  ‘Towards me. Towards our firm.’

  ‘Changed in a good way? I mean, if he rang and asked for the meeting.’ She felt grand relief, not full scale yet, still uncertain and tentative, but a start.

  ‘Yes, a good way,’ Ralph said. ‘What would you call a good way, Maggie?’

  He doesn’t think, after all, that you laid on the Jaguar killings, and so won’t be looking for how to get square. She didn’t say this, though. ‘Well, friendlier, I suppose.’

  ‘Yes, friendlier.’ He had a chuckle about this, obviously finding it a jolly slice of understatement. The scar along his jawline, so fascinating to some women, seemed to take on an unflickering, carmine glow from his amusement. ‘He doesn’t suspect any longer that I sent the gunman who got his wife and son by mistake, intending to wipe out him.’

  ‘Did he ever believe that, for heaven’s sake?’ Margaret replied, knowing Shale probably did. And half believing it, or more, herself.

  ‘The boy was a mistake, but she wasn’t.’

  That shocked Margaret. It took a while for her to reply. ‘Someone wanted Naomi Shale murdered?’ Margaret said. ‘Is that really so, Ralph?’

  ‘There seem to have been people in London she’d offended.’

  ‘And they sent someone to kill her – is that what you’re saying? Is it credible? What sort of people did she know in London? I thought she was some kind of journalist.’

  ‘Journalists get killed, and not just when they’re covering wars.’

  ‘For what, though, in Naomi’s case?’

  ‘The boy got hit because he was there and didn’t keep down in the back of the car. Naomi was hit because people wanted her dead.’

  ‘Which people?’

  ‘She and Manse met in London, at an art gallery, you know. He’s a Pre-Raphaelite man. She was connected with a celebrity paper – part-owned it at the time, I think. It did – still does, maybe – interviews with big names visiting the capital, puffing their shows or books or romances. That kind of thing. It put her in touch with a lot of wealthy types. Some of them had a very expensive habit. She could what’s called “facilitate”.’

  ‘Put them in touch with suppliers?’

  ‘That kind of thing. This was a dangerous area. One supplier might get pissed off because she’d pushed one of her clients towards another supplier. These people can be unforgiving.’

  ‘And Manse has only just found out about this aspect of her life?’

  ‘He had a hint or two just after the killings, apparently, but ignored them. He didn’t want to think of her like that. Protective of her memory. Recently, though, a couple more bits of evidence have come to him, and he can’t dismiss them. He wouldn’t say what they are, but they’re enough to alter his mind.’

  ‘Wonderful,’ Margaret said. ‘Well, wonderful in a way. Wonderful for you. And for me. Not for Manse.’

  He gave her a bit of a gaze. ‘Did you think I’d set up the slaughter, then?’

  I wasn’t sure. But she didn’t say this, either. ‘Of course not. But it’s wonderful that Manse can accept this at last.’

  ‘Has to accept it. What he’s heard about her and her contacts up there lately is cast iron, apparently, irrefutable.’

  ‘Someone punishing Naomi?’

  ‘That sort of thing. He’s able to feel less guilt about it.’

  ‘Guilt?’

  ‘He thought he’d brought the attack on her because she was mistaken for him, but also because she was associated with him and his firm. That self-blame has lifted. He’s re-emerging. He’d like to go back to the old arrangement here – the two firms working peacefully alongside each other.’

  ‘He’ll take over the running of his company again?’

  ‘It sickens him to see the way things have gone. The body found in that Valencia house is one of his people, possibly killed by someone wanting the leadership. Manse sees a kind of chaos and waste. He has to return.’

  ‘And can the old arrangement be resumed? What about the new Chief? Isn’t he against tolerance – against the Iles policy? He sent that gang to search the house, didn’t he?’

  ‘Which resulted in nothing, in a fiasco. Of course it did. There was nothing to find.’

  ‘Did you get a warning, though, that it was coming?’

  ‘I’m sent intimations from their side sometimes.’

  ‘Who supplies them? Who exactly?’

  ‘Manse and I think Iles can turn Upton towards sense,’ Ralph replied. ‘He’ll convince the Chief that Nature abhors a vacuum, and for reasons which have just become obvious. Shale back at work will fill that emptiness, make peace possible again. And I bet Iles has looked into Upton’s life and background and found something he can use to pressure him.’

  ‘Many would find Iles a disgrace.’

  ‘Many would. Many do.’ Ralph put an arm around her shoulders, as he had the other day. She liked it better now, though. ‘There were times lately when I thought you might take the kids and run again,’ he said.

  She put her own arm around him. ‘That’s crazy. Once is enough.’

  ‘Once is too many.’

  THIRTEEN

  Harpur knew that the Assistant Chief’s smart skill at charting other people’s motives came as part of a more general, brilliant flair in measuring up character. Iles did some measuring up now and, as ever, had it totally right. For once, though, he was too late. He said: ‘I worry about what this will do to Edison Whitehead, Col.’

  ‘It’s bad,’ Harpur said. ‘And there’s similar stuff on radio and TV news.’

  ‘Who gabbed?’ Iles said. ‘“Sources” are mentioned here. Which fucking sources?’ They were in his office. He wore uniform and looked very commanding but edgy. He had the local morning paper on the desk in front of him.

  ‘Could be paramedics from the ambulance. And there was a doctor, eventually,’ Harpur said.

  Iles read from the paper. ‘“The body has been identified as that of Michael Redvers Arlington, aged thirty-one, of Peel Street, Lakeside. Sources say he had been shot twice in the face and was found fully clothed in a pink bath on the first floor of one of the abandoned Victorian properties in Gladstone Square, off Valencia Esplanade. Several inches of rain had accumulated in the bath from gaps in the roof, the drainage outlet and pipe having become clogged with fallen plaster. Sources believe the body had been placed in the bath as some kind of macabre joke, the still-preserved, bright-pinkness of the bath – despite vandalism and wear – contrasting strongly with the dark murkiness of the collected water. Mr Arlington is believed to have had connections with the drug trading that takes place in the district known as the Valencia, and had recently assumed hands-on leadership of one of the major firms.”

  ‘It’s the mention of the bath’s pinkness, Col – double mention – the jammed plughole, and the filthy water that will distress Edison. Pink is a sneer. If the bath had been white and had some still-preserved bright whiteness, despite vandalism and wear, somehow it wouldn’t be so demeaning for his champ.’

 
For his caudillo. But Harpur didn’t tell the ACC that in Whitehead’s initial shock and agony at first seeing the body he had for a moment embraced Arlington’s extensive, daft, fascist fantasy. To feed Iles this clinching detail would be an insult to the ACC. He had no need of any extra pointer to the state of Edison’s soul. Iles’s short conversation with him near the pink bath, plus the Assistant Chief’s sharp instincts, told him enough.

  Iles stood and checked his appearance in the long cheval mirror. He took his cap from a peg. ‘We should go to him, Col.’

  ‘Both of us?’

  ‘This is not something to skimp on, Harpur. He’ll blame himself for General Franco’s death. Edison is the sort. He failed in his duty to protect.’

  ‘I’ve told him it wasn’t his fault. Arlington went off alone on a big, mock-up African march in the Valencia.’

  ‘You won’t have satisfied Edison. He’ll convict himself of slackness. There’s a kind of nobility in him. I sensed it at once in the bathroom.’ Iles began to tremble and shout-scream and wave both hands around, using a finger on each of them, turn and turn about, to point at Harpur. ‘Nobility is not a quality I see in you, Harpur, nor in anyone who . . .’

  ‘I’ll find Edison’s address in his dossier, sir.’ Harpur got the finger from Iles doubled every time, once actual, once in the mirror, where the left became the right and vice versa. It seemed an attack from a multitude of directions.

  ‘. . . nor in anyone who targets another man’s wife, with no regard for . . .’

  ‘And then I’ll bring the Mazda.’

  ‘. . . no regard for normal decency or for the respect and fealty due from you to a superior officer. That’s what I mean when I refer to Edison’s noble nature. He can’t bear to think he betrayed General Franco. And you – were you ever conscious of having betrayed me?’

  Harpur drove.

  Iles said: ‘Put the screamer on.’

  Harpur activated the siren and the flashing blue lights on top of the dashboard. He took the speed up to seventy. ‘They’ll see us on the Control Room screens and wonder what it’s about. The Chief will be told.’