Hotbed

by Bill James

  ‘People talking to conceal, not disclose. A sort of semaphore, but by someone behind a wall.’

  This woman possessed cleverness as well as all the rest of it. So how could she think of marrying Manse? Of course, Manse did have the money and the art and the big ex-rectory. These might count, but he didn’t think Naomi would be captured by all that. Somehow, Manse had always been able to do a bit of pulling, though. Ralph wondered about women sometimes, or more frequently.

  ‘So many topics came up – I mean, serious, often terrible, topics – and they’d be on show for a moment but then seemed just to disappear,’ she said. ‘Seemed made to disappear.’

  ‘Oh, I didn’t notice that.’

  She laughed. ‘Look, it’s happening again now, isn’t it?’ She tried to make her voice gruff and male. ‘“Oh, I didn’t notice that.”’

  ‘I don’t follow,’ Ember replied, following.

  ‘You say you didn’t notice some comments just sort of . . . sort of got buried. And is this now, today, another blackout?’

  ‘I think I would have noticed something like that.’

  ‘Well, for instance, Unhinged thought it weird, and more than weird, that you and Manse should be talking chummily about the death of Turret. I asked why, but no answer. Not just no answer – I sensed a feeling around that I shouldn’t even have asked why. Way off limits. Suddenly, all the discussion was about Unhinged and whether he’d been grassed.’

  ‘People tend not to spend much time on ideas coming from Unhinged,’ Ralph said. ‘Ideas are not his long suit.’ He smiled. ‘His morning suit is his long suit. Sorry! But subjects raised by Unhinged will not occupy people for more than a moment or two.’

  ‘But what did he mean? He found it unbelievable that you and Manse should be friendly and peaceful with each other “after what happened to Turret”. Words like that – they stick. We know what happened to Turret, but why should this affect your relationship with Manse and vice versa?’

  ‘About almost any matter Unhinged always has some jumbled theory – if one can call it as much.’

  ‘Well, I don’t know. Patches of lucidity, I thought.’

  ‘Few.’

  ‘Then, that man, Brown, speaking about the death of his brother – a terrible, vicious death – and you – you, Ralph – you ignore it and ask about his club and the Monty,’ she said.

  ‘No, I wouldn’t say ignored. The talk just flowed that way.’

  ‘You directed it that way.’

  ‘Not at all, Naomi. I –’

  ‘It’s important. Why I’m here today.’

  ‘Because we spoke briefly about the Garrick and the Monty?’

  Her tone became super-methodical, super-rational, as if she were expounding a lesson, laying out a theorem to someone backward. ‘I’m supposed to be marrying Manse,’ she said ‘Have you got hold of this idea? Not just shagging him, as Unhinged so sweetly and decorously put it. Marrying him. A church job. A life job.’

  ‘Yes, of course. Supposed? I don’t understand. I thought it a fact. What’s going on?’

  ‘It is a fact, was a fact.’

  ‘Which?’

  ‘I’m not sure. Let me tell you what I got from that conversation yesterday – from what was said, and what wasn’t. All right?’

  Ember didn’t much like this. She had a brain, but no notion of custom and practice here. And if she did come to understand the scene, she probably wouldn’t think much of it, or comply with it. ‘From what wasn’t said?’ he muttered. ‘But wow! That puts us on to infinity, doesn’t it?’

  ‘Silences. Evasions. They could be felt. They could be measured. They dominated.’

  ‘I really can’t say I –’

  ‘Mansel killed Joachim Brown, or had him killed.’

  ‘What? My God, what?’ Ralph detested blaring declarations of the totally obvious, and not just from women. She despised tact. That might be fine and healthy in some settings. This was not one of them.

  ‘That’s the message I got,’ she stated.

  ‘From the semaphore flags behind a wall?’ Ralph replied. He had quite a belief in wit, though he tried never to do bad injury with this, except to Iles, and certainly never to injure a presentable woman.

  She said: ‘It’s what Unhinged seemed to be hinting at. It’s what the cop, Iles, meant, wasn’t it, when he said Manse looked “profoundly stricken” about the death. This was a sort of joke – his sort. You could have filled a truck with the sarcasm. That one knows things.’

  ‘Which?’

  ‘Iles. What did he mean by saying Brown was an “intelligencer”?’

  ‘The ACC acts all-seeing and all-powerful. Part of his job. Most of it is show and bluff. Standard cop tactics. Keep the populace down. That’s us, Naomi.’

  ‘But “intelligencer”?’

  ‘Some word to baffle people, impress people. He reads a lot and goes to the theatre. That might seem strange for a major police officer, but he is strange. Probably he saw that word in some ancient volume or heard it in an old play. He’d stick it in his ready-to-use bag. It would be like him to try to sound clever with it in front of you for his own reasons. He’d want to get superior to Manse in your eyes. Manse is never going to use a word like “intelligencer”.’

  Always Ralph tried to be gentle and understanding with people from outside trying to make sense of the way things ran in this domain, and especially gentle and understanding to women: all women – not just the younger, attractive ones, though this sympathetic approach did sometimes provide a way into the attractive, younger ones. Of course, the terrible trouble was that the unattractive older ones also responded, and often responded more strongly, shamelessly. Ralph found it to some extent painful having to repel them. Overall, he naturally realized that folk new to the area must find some features of life here baffling, and he would try to treat them all with patience, lookers or not.

  ‘And the other cop – Harpur. He says less, but probably is at least a step ahead of Iles all the time.’

  ‘Ungifted. He lives in a very ordinary street.’

  ‘There seemed a sort of conspiracy to make sure everything stayed close. I can’t see why, I admit. But is there a bizarre, disgusting solidarity between you and Manse, even though he might have done you and yours harm? You’ll settle it between yourselves somehow – and nobody should ask what the somehow might be? An old business tradition, I suppose – that is, in the kind of business you and he do.’

  ‘You’re reading a lot into –’

  She leaned forward to get nearer to Ralph. For a couple of seconds he misinterpreted this and thought she’d decided to make her inevitable play for him. He could admit to a quiver of excitement. It would have been an insult to her not to feel that. She spoke more quietly: ‘Of course, I twigged a while ago that Manse’s firm had murky aspects. A lot of murky aspects. I’m a grown-up woman. I’m not totally naive. I knew I shouldn’t ask too much, and I didn’t. All right, this was weak and self-deceiving and shifty. But I wanted him. Oh, he’s got some oddnesses, but who hasn’t? At core he’s all right. At core he’s great. And he’s needy – his wife gone, kids growing up. That’s vital with me. I like answering needs, if I can.’

  She paused, shrugged, as though suddenly conscious that Ralph might have other views of her motives. ‘His money and the art and the property? I’d say they helped persuade me, a bit. Only a bit. I think I’m being honest about that. So, yes, I wanted him, and on a settled basis. I knew he’d had women living in at the old rectory for spells, but only for spells. I’m in search of permanence. And I had the idea he wanted permanence, too. There was the proviso we’ve mentioned, and I accepted it – not to pry unduly. It looked as though it might work. It was working. Yes, it was working until . . . until I heard Turret and his end talked about and untalked about yesterday. All right, I never knew Turret Brown and can’t pretend to an
y great grief. That isn’t what I’m saying. I found I couldn’t blind-eye what might have happened to him, and Mansel’s possible involvement. Things became suddenly very precise, very exact, very awful, although people tried to get them – keep them – covered up.’

  ‘You’ve allowed imagination to take over, Naomi, I’m afraid,’ Ralph declared.

  ‘And, I have to wonder now whether I want to – whether, in fact, I could – marry someone who kills and disfigures, or had killed and disfigured, an associate of one of his alleged main chums, and might have that main chum himself lined up for slaughter soon,’ she replied. ‘Which woman wouldn’t wonder? This is not just standard business viciousness. This is major butchery.’

  ‘But . . . but . . . and but again – it’s all absurd, Naomi, I assure you. You’re building a –’

  ‘Iles and Brown talk about a war. Ask “Between whom?” and there’s a flurrying gallop away into some other subject, harmless subject. I’m not to know. I’m due to marry one of the main men in any “war” but I must be told nothing.’

  ‘People exaggerate,’ Ember replied.

  Margaret came into the club and joined them. Ralph had told her about Mansel’s fiancée but they’d never met. Ember introduced the two women. ‘Naomi dropped in to check a few things for the big day with Mr Best Man,’ Ralph said.

  ‘We’re all so excited over the wedding,’ Margaret replied.

  ‘And me, too, of course,’ Naomi said.

  After all, Ralph thought, she must have learned something about the evasions she’d described. ‘It will soon be upon us,’ he said very heartily.

  Chapter Eleven

  Iles called a small meeting in his suite to hear how things were going in the Joachim Brown investigation and discuss points arising. Harpur attended, with Francis Garland, the Chief Inspector handling the case day-to-day. ‘This is nice, isn’t it?’ Iles said, looking around the room and putting up something like a smile but not very.

  ‘What, sir?’ Harpur said.

  ‘Cosy,’ Iles said. ‘Us. The Three-team.’

  ‘Well, yes,’ Harpur said. ‘Although the topic might not be cosy – someone’s death.’

  ‘Oh, don’t go worthy on me, Col, for fuck’s sake,’ Iles said.

  ‘We think a professional operation,’ Garland said.

  ‘“Professional”. That means someone shot him and he’s dead, does it?’ Iles asked. ‘Three bullets in the head even from a total amateur would do him, you know, Francis.’

  ‘We find no weapon,’ Garland said.

  ‘Of course you find no weapon,’ Iles said. ‘This is Manse, or someone employed or hired by Manse, disposing of a spy. Unlikely to leave a gun around. Shale’s Cambridge Ph.D. is in how to mess up any detection attempts to fit him to a crime.’

  ‘That’s what I meant by professional, sir,’ Garland said.

  This type of ACC’s conference could be difficult. Personal aspects might intrude. And often larger considerations arose than the mere problem of deciding – trying to decide – who might be guilty of what. Iles, and Iles’s mind, had not been made for the nitty-gritty. Or rather they could do nitty-gritty, but were not confined by it. They also looked at a wide scene. However, others might not be aware of what the scene actually consisted of. ‘Others’ could mean people like Harpur and Garland, although Harpur and Garland tried to fathom him, especially Harpur off and on.

  The ACC required that the nitty-gritty should be made to fit into a large, fairly fixed, Ilesean overview. This had become even more true since the new Chief Constable took command of the force. Sir Matthew had not yet been fully broken in to Iles’s way of looking at things. Iles believed that an Assistant Chief, such as himself, could only assist properly if the Chief Constable he was supposed to assist accepted the style of assistance the Assistant Chief felt right to offer. Iles needed to put in more work yet at shaping and generally improving Sir Matthew, teaching him the value and wholesomeness of street peace, through unspoken treaties with drugs overlords. And Iles seemed to think the Turret business might provide key chances.

  ‘When I described this meeting as cosy I had in mind that we three are quite interestingly, perhaps uniquely linked,’ Iles replied. ‘I expect you both see how.’

  ‘There’s a common interest in the murder of Brown, yes, sir,’ Harpur said hopefully, hopelessly. ‘We could be regarded as an investigative triumvirate, Francis actually running the inquiry, you and myself, sir, in support.’

  ‘My wife,’ Iles replied.

  ‘As you know, sir, we’ve unearthed several strange factors to do with 15A Singer Road, Brown’s latest domicile,’ Garland said. ‘The neighbours upstairs have made some quite useful –’

  ‘Perhaps I’ve put this to you before, Harpur, Garland,’ Iles said,’but do you think there’s another police force in the country or the world, for that matter, where three officers of notable rank, one of considerable rank, sit or pace in a pleasant, prestige room, with innocuous watercolours on the walls . . . yes, sit or pace here chatting amiably, although the two of only notable rank have sexually pillaged the wife of the one of considerable rank, who is au fucking fait with this? Might it be regarded as unusual, even in, say, France or Peru?’

  ‘Ember called at 15A, of course, one night,’ Garland said. ‘This is established.’

  Iles’s voice took on the high, chant-like fervour that would sometimes come when he referred to his wife, Sarah. ‘But, obviously, I mustn’t grow obsessive about her and you two in the past,’ he said. ‘That would become self-destructive. I would never allow memories of that degenerate era to impose upon my present thinking. I have to be alert, unimpaired for my current duties, under a Chief Constable who may or may not get somewhere near competence in due course or later. He will prove himself one way or the other, I’m convinced. He has that look. But meanwhile I have to accept the extra burden of making up for him. I cannot – absolutely cannot and must not – let unpleasantnesses from some way back affect my mentality. In fact, I will tabulate for you what I’m absolutely determined to avoid, because it would be pervy, prurient, brain-corroding, Othello-like. Thus:

  ‘One, I never try to visualize the kind of flea-pit rooms, or municipal park flower beds, or police vehicles, or back lanes, or beaches, or train lavatories which you and she would utilize.

  ‘Two, similarly, I never speculate mentally about whether she was running both of you simultaneously or one succeeded the other, and, if the second of these, in what order? It is, of course, incomprehensible to me why she should want either of you – and incomprehensible to her now – many’s the puzzled yet unrestrained laugh we have together some evenings over the ludicrousness, as she and I see it in retrospect – the ludicrousness of what went on in those flea-pit rooms, municipal park flower beds, police vehicles, back lanes, beaches, train lavatories which I never try to visualize . . . Indeed, it’s so incomprehensible to me that I can’t possibly guess at the priority she might have given one of you or the other. Can anybody put in order of merit different kinds of dross? Would it be what is called in politics, I believe, “Buggins’ turn”?’

  ‘Of course, Ralph has an entirely reasonable explanation for calling at 15A,’ Garland replied. ‘He is the benevolent Mr Mighty, concerned for the welfare of his under-strappers. If someone is missing, he might legitimately try to find out why.’

  ‘Three,’ Iles said, ‘because I have absolutely no wish to visualize those encounters in flea-pit rooms, or municipal park flower beds, or police vehicles, or back lanes, or beaches, or train lavatories, I, similarly, do not seek to imagine the sounds raised – the gasps, shrieks and exclamations. For me to imagine compulsively these unkempt outbursts would be another sign of a sick mind. Madness lies that way, even for someone of such robustly stable faculties as mine. And what if householders working in their garden at twilight heard such evil hullabaloo over the wall from the back lane – is
that really a civilized manner to treat others’ quiet enjoyment of their property?’

  Iles shook his head with massive sadness, obviously not thinking of Sarah in flea-pit rooms, or municipal park flower beds, or police vehicles, or back lanes, or beaches, or train lavatories, but thinking how painful it would be if he did cave in and think of such episodes. Only small amounts of froth came to the ACC’s lips, and his voice remained clangy but mild. Had he been on a Staff officers’ course in unmadness? He could be remarkably conscientious. Iles walked about the suite as he spoke, but not in a loony, jerky, frenetic style. There was a gorgeous athleticism to it. Might he have in mind that sinuous caged panther? He wore full dress uniform today for some function later. Harpur and Garland had easy chairs.

  Garland said: ‘And then a series of enigmas around 15A. Perhaps I should list these:

  ‘One, an unidentified girl of possibly fourteen years of age with a bicycle calls at 15A, presumably rings the bell, then, when this is unsuccessful, shouts through the letter box, obviously hoping Brown is inside and will hear her. This would suggest she knew him.

  ‘Two, the girl is still unsuccessful and posts a note for Brown. She claims to be delivering an important message that will “brook no delay” from “an associate”.

  ‘Three, did someone enter the flat secretly and remove this note and other mail? Nothing was in the hallway when we arrived after his body had been found. This could not have been Brown himself because the pathologist puts the date of his death much earlier than when the girl called. We found no sign of break-in, so whoever entered appears to have been skilled at that kind of operation. Plastic on the front door lock?’

  ‘Did you get in there, Harpur?’ Iles said. ‘So, where’s the damn note? With all the stuff you took from the body, is it?’

  ‘And then: Four,’ Garland said. ‘This unidentified man in an unidentified car – according to the girl, that is. Or, rather, according to the neighbours’ report of their conversation with the girl.

  ‘Five, the car’s gone by the time she tells the neighbours, and they don’t get a proper description of him or the vehicle.’