Hotbed (12 page)

‘And I'm sure I've seen the postman call here as I left for work – three or four times over the last few weeks,' Sally said.

‘Suppose she was right about someone watching the flat, why would that be?' Graham said. ‘I hope he realizes there are two flats here, and that 15B has nothing to do with 15A. One can be drawn into things inadvertently.'

‘Entirely inadvertently,' Sally said.

‘It's disquieting,' Graham said. ‘We've had hardly any contact with Mr Brown. You know that phrase people use on TV news when they find someone living next door is a mass murderer or serial rapist – “he kept himself to himself”.'

‘And likewise ourselves,' Sally said.

‘What?' Ember said.

‘Keep ourselves
to
ourselves,' Sally said. ‘I don't mean standoffish, but respecting others' privacy, and expecting ours to be respected in its turn.'

‘It's that kind of neighbourhood, and we like it so,' Graham said.

‘Have you heard sounds from 15A, sounds you might not have taken much notice of at the time, but now, looking back, you wonder about them?' Ember replied.

‘Sounds?' Graham said.

‘Something beyond the normal,' Ember said. ‘Possibly not seeming something beyond the normal at the time, but now, in hindsight, and in view of developments, perhaps different. There'll always be a certain amount of noise heard between flats in one property – that's routine. But, possibly in retrospect, significant, not routine at all.'

‘When?' Graham asked.

‘Say, just before he disappeared,' Ember said.

‘
Has
he disappeared?' Sally said. ‘He is missing?'

‘In the sense that the flat seems unoccupied for a longish period,' Ember said.

‘And doesn't he turn up at your business, if you're a colleague, that is?' Graham said. ‘So, he's not at home or at work.'

‘
Violent
sounds, do you mean?' Sally said.

‘Anything unusual,' Ember said. ‘Raised voices. He lived alone, didn't he? Did you hear sounds of company at all?'

‘We often wondered what business Mr Brown was in,' Graham said. ‘He seemed to keep strange hours. And his beard. It didn't seem an ordinary office worker's type of beard, nor suitable in a manual job.'

‘Just unusual sounds that, when you recall them now, you wonder what might have been happening in 15A,' Ember said, ‘yet at the time you let it pass.'

‘What
was
happening?' Graham said.

‘This is scary,' Sally said. ‘It's always been a trouble-free road. We're buying our flat, not just renting. It seemed a sound investment.'

‘Is there a lot of travel in . . . well, in your kind of work, suppose you and he are colleagues?' Graham said. ‘Perhaps there's an entirely simple explanation for his absence. If he were visiting clients elsewhere – possibly abroad.'

‘These younger people think nothing of distance,' Sally said. ‘Talking of phrases, there's one to sum this up, I feel – the world has become “a global village”.'

‘Ah,' Ember replied. He walked back to his car. Neither leg gave trouble.

‘Are you leaving on account of more commitments?' Sally called.

When Ralph arrived at the Monty, he saw Harpur standing near the bar with a drink – what looked like his usual, gin and cider mixed in a half-pint glass: a double or triple gin, the rest cider. A couple of people played pool. Not many members would hang about in the club once Harpur showed there, especially if they were evolving some project. They'd wonder what he wanted. They'd wonder what he knew. Ember wondered what he wanted. Ember wondered what he knew.

‘I've been out and about, Ralph,' he said.

‘I won't ask where.'

‘Why not?'

‘Where?'

‘And now I thought I'd look in for a nightcap,' Harpur said.

‘Excellent,' Ember said. Harpur was the sort who could guess from watching who talked together in the club the kind of job they might be planning. He knew people's individual flairs – safes, or hold-ups or driving or menaces, or sometimes a combination.

‘How's everything generally, Ralph?' he said, in his grand, man-to-man, phoney fucking way, keeping matters vague and harmless so far, but then moving in on what he'd really come for. They had police courses in lulling.

‘Good,' Ember said.

‘Good. And Manse?'

‘Good. You know Mansel! Always positive. And then there's his marriage coming up.'

‘This will be a blessing for him. You're to star, I hear.'

‘Not quite star. But, yes, Mansel has kindly invited me to be best man.'

‘I suppose it's one way to help him feel reasonably secure.'

‘Secure?'

‘Your people won't be able to blast him when you're standing so close with the ring etcetera.'

‘I feel gratitude bordering on pride that he asked me, you know, Mr Harpur. It's a testimonial.'

‘The marriage should bring Mansel real happiness.'

‘One does hope so.'

‘In some ways, he deserves this,' Harpur said.

‘Certainly.'

‘Which ways especially would you say he deserves this?'

‘Many.'

‘The other women he's been knocking off on rota since his wife went – they'll understand he needs something settled as he gets older – Carmel, Lowri, Patricia. They'll resent the severance, yes, but shouldn't give him too much trouble. In any case, he might still have enough spare time for them.'

‘Yes, something settled.'

‘I'd hate to think of any of them yelling abuse outside an ex-rectory. Also, there's his first wife, Sybil. Temperamental. Ex-wives can turn unpleasant if their ex-husband remarries, even if it was the ex-wife who destroyed the marriage. It's a pride thing. And possessiveness. The house and so on,' Harpur said.

‘I think Manse will be prepared for possible outbursts of stonking. And his fiancée is mature and understanding. She realizes that Mansel has lived, as it were, in the world. Naomi is very much to do with art, and therefore knows something of the bohemian lifestyle.'

‘Do you see Manse as bohemian?'

‘They enjoy the Pre-Raphaelites. This provides a happy bond.'

Harpur went even more genial. ‘But then there's you and your family, Ralph. How are the daughters – Venetia, Fay?'

‘Fine. All of us.'

‘Wonderful,' Harpur said.

The barman brought a bottle of Kressmann armagnac and poured a drink for Ralph. Harpur stuck to gin and cider.

‘Is Venetia settling after France?' Harpur said.

‘No problems, thank you.'

‘That will stand her in good stead.'

‘What?'

‘The experience over there.'

‘Oh, yes.'

‘Not just the language, but another way of looking at life.'

‘Oh, yes.'

‘I should think those schools are half full of crooks' kids. They're almost the only ones who can afford the fees,' Harpur said.

‘Beautifully sited, some of the schools,' Ember replied. ‘Former chateaux with orchards and moats.'

‘Venetia will be a teenager by now, I suppose,' Harpur said.

‘Fourteen.'

‘They're developing a real personality at that age. I've watched it in my own elder daughter.'

‘True,' Ember replied.

Harpur gazed about the club. ‘It's looking great here, Ralph – the mahogany and so on.'

‘I'm thinking about some changes.'

‘Yes?'

‘In due course.'

‘Right.'

‘Developments.'

‘Right.'

‘I see potential here,' Ember stated.

‘Certainly.'

‘I think of certain clubs in London as kind of models of what I might do: the Athenaeum. Often I read in
The Times
of meetings at the Athenaeum – the Ruskin Society, that sort of worthwhile gathering. This is what I have in mind for the Monty. Or another London club I like the sound of is the Garrick.'

‘Theatrical connections there, I think.'

‘What I plan is –'

‘Someone was saying – don't recall who – someone was saying that one of your people – a lad with an odd first name – Joachim – or in that area – Joachim Brown has a brother who's doing pretty well on the West End stage,' Harpur said.

‘Yes, I believe so.'

‘Fascinating the way brothers can go in for such different careers,' Harpur said.

‘Perhaps it's best we're not all the same, Mr Harpur. When I was doing my Foundation Year at the university I remember a lecturer talked about “the principle of plenitude”. That is, the world's need for fullness, for variety, for a multitudinous creation. And so, there's a place for, say, wasps, though they might appear to us only a pest. It would be a different world without wasps, a lesser world. It came up in a book we studied,
A Passage to India
. Aprofessor in this tale will not kill a wasp because it's entitled to a life as much as the professor is – Alec Guinness in the film – and as much a part of creation.'

‘I don't have anything against universities,' Harpur replied.

‘Your friend, Denise, is an undergraduate, isn't she?'

‘What would you say were his main abilities?'

‘Whose?'

‘Joachim Brown's.'

‘Oh, yes, he's a valuable part of the firm,' Ember said.

‘I wonder – is the acting flair present in him, also, though less obviously, obviously?'

‘We don't have a company Christmas panto, so I couldn't say on that one.' God, ‘less obviously, obviously'. But Ralph saw why Harpur's conversation might get clumsy: trying not to sound nosy, he skated around so many dicey topics that his words fell over themselves. Ralph went back to those basic questions – what did Harpur know, or think he knew, about Turret Brown? What did he know, or think he knew, about Venetia? And
how
did he know it, or think he knew it?

‘And Venetia rides?' Harpur asked.

‘Oh, yes.'

‘Horses and ponies, I mean, not a bike.'

‘Very keen on the equestrian side. There's plenty of ground for her up at Low Pastures, you know. Paddocks. Convenient. Do
your
daughters ride, Mr Harpur? I'm always conscious of a kind of parallel in our situations, yours and mine – both with two daughters around the same age. But do you still live down in Arthur Street? Are there stables in that area, I wonder.'

‘Which would be her favourite type of pony or horse?' Harpur said.

‘A whole range. If it's got four legs she'll ride it. That principle of plenitude again. Across the boardism, as it were.'

‘They can get themselves into attachments,' Harpur said.

‘Who?'

‘Girls in their early teens. Or
imagine
attachments.'

‘I've heard of that kind of thing. And then there are Romeo and Juliet. Kids, really.'

‘Yet genuinely powerful emotions,' Harpur said. ‘Such girls would suffer if something dark happened to the man in one of these attachments –
possibly
imagined attachments. I call them possibly imagined, because the man might be hardly aware of it.'

‘On the other hand, Mr Iles was certainly aware of it when he started buzzing around your elder daughter, wouldn't you say?'

‘But, then, we must all try to avert dark happenings,' Harpur said.

‘Indeed. Anyway, I gather Mr Iles might have given up on your daughter at last. I've always said he's got some decency in him, though kept well buried most of the time. After all, he's made it to Assistant Chief, so we shouldn't expect an excess of morality. It must be a relief to you he's backed off. Was it a kind of revenge thing because of you and Mrs Iles? Is your daughter upset, though?'

A couple of men both carrying leather holdalls came a few steps into the club but saw Harpur, paused, then turned around and disappeared. ‘Will you keep the Monty name when you relaunch, Ralph, or go for something, say, classical – like the Athenaeum?'

‘I feel the Monty must always be the Monty. It's part of the city. Many see it as . . . well as a fulcrum.'

‘Often I hear it described so, and in remarkably far-flung locations. Someone will ask a new acquaintance whether he/she knows the Monty, and the reply will instantly come, “Ah, such a social fulcrum!”'

Naturally, Ralph realized this was Harpur taking the piss in his lumbering, oafish, vox-cop fashion. You learned to put up with that kind of crude, envious tease. He would never have heard anyone refer to the Monty as a fulcrum. Ralph himself had never thought of the Monty as a fulcrum until just now. The word popped from his mouth, more or less unplanned. How the fuck could a club be a fulcrum? He had wanted an out-of-the-ordinary, daft sort of term that would take Harpur's mind off the two men who vamoosed a minute or two ago when they saw him at the bar, Shane Gordon Wilkes and Matt Bolcombe. Ralph knew them, of course. They were club members. In fact, there'd been a seven-hour Monty champagne acquittal party for Shane not long ago, when the prosecution collapsed because witnesses would not testify, despite lots of attention and encouragement from police investigative assistants. Probably, the pair had meant to come to the Monty late tonight and do a share-out over drinks, after some sortie. This would be tactless with Harpur present, though.

Ember felt glad they'd gone. But he did not want Harpur's main Monty impression now to be of a hotbed where villains arrived to share loot – and a hotbed they fled from because of him, the law. Ralph longed to get the Monty on the path to transformation. Shane and Matt's abrupt, scuttling exit knocked that hope. And so Ralph had come out with ‘fulcrum', simply to waylay Harpur's attention. Ember delighted in the two u's and the rich jostle of consonants. He spoke them with gorgeous thoroughness.