Hotbed (4 page)

‘The theory. The built-in, unstoppable, free-enterprise drive. Firms may thrive alongside one another in the hotbed conditions of retail, but all those firms have chiefs who wonder whether one firm – theirs – wouldn't thrive even better if it didn't have to waste energy fighting competition. No, no, they don't wonder, they
know
one firm – theirs – would thrive better. Of course it would. They
wonder
about ways to achieve that excellent state. How do you rid yourself of the others? My daughters get all this from school or it's something they've read.'

‘My God – their school teaches how drugs firms' chiefs slaughter each other? But I suppose it's a state comprehensive.'

‘Mainly, the children talked ideas. Hazel needed examples, that's all.'

‘
Is
he going to wipe out Ralphy, Col,' Lamb said, ‘in the cause of art and his new woman? Try to? Have you got other pointers – I mean, besides your daughters? I don't like the idea of Ember dead. Why I'm talking to you. Equilibrium would be smashed. Equilibrium's a very dodgy item. Disturb it and you're into chaos. Carnage. No good to anyone. These two are pillars, Colin.'

‘Pillars of what?'

‘The imperfect, priceless civic structure.'

‘I heard Ember's to be his best man.'

‘I heard that, too. Clever?'

‘To tranquillize Ralph and the rest of us, you think, Jack?'

‘Manse could not not ask him or Ralph would know something rough was coming his way soon.' The wash programme finished and Harpur and Lamb collected their laundry. ‘I'll think about it,' Harpur said as they left.

And he'd thought about it and decided on the basis of Lamb, Hazel and Jill to come to the Agincourt tonight. Or to the Agincourt car park. This couldn't be termed high-tech bugging, but perhaps it had produced something. Taxis began to arrive now and the diners dispersed. He waited until both Shale and Ember had emerged at different times into the bit of light and departed safely and separately. Then at just before 2.30 a.m. he drove home.

Luckily, Denise was staying over tonight – luckily in the happy sense that she'd be in bed when he got there, and in the sense that she'd be with them for breakfast. His daughters liked this. It felt like family. They missed their mother, dead a long time ago now.
*
Denise had a room in student accommodation at the local university, but she'd often sleep at Harpur's house, in Harpur's bed, at 126 Arthur Street. Harpur knew she didn't like the substitute-mother role. The idea scared her, maybe seemed to snare her. After all, she was only nineteen, less than five years older than Hazel. Denise tried to treat them as pals. The girls got the hint and reacted right, but they still took obvious comfort and satisfaction from having her at home with them. So did Harpur.

Although he tried to be silent entering the house now, Jill, his younger daughter, must have heard something and came downstairs in her dressing gown. Possibly, she hadn't slept but waited for him to return. She often did some monitoring of Harpur's hours away from the house.

‘We said surveillance,' she told him. They were in the big sitting room, but not sitting.

‘That's right, surveillance.'

‘When Denise arrived we thought we'd better explain it by saying surveillance.'

‘Explain what?'

‘Why you weren't here.'

‘Thanks, but I'd already told her I'd be late. She mobiled me to say she was coming over. I mentioned I'd have to be out a while. Tuesday mornings she has no classes. We can sleep on.'

‘Yes, she said you'd mentioned you might be late, but we thought we'd better explain it was surveillance. Just to be sure.'

‘OK.'

‘Was it?'

‘What?'

‘Surveillance.'

‘Of course.'

‘Dad, do Detective Chief Superintendents have to go on surveillance in the middle of the night?'

‘Not “have to”. This was special.'

‘Why?'

His daughters worried about Harpur's morals and feared his occasional unexplained absences might offend Denise and make her finish things with him, and them. They'd had a loss and didn't want another. ‘It was something you and Hazel said,' he replied.

‘Something Hazel and I said kept you out on surveillance until two thirty in the morning? What?'

‘About competition and monopoly.'

‘So, where did you have to do this surveillance about competition and monopoly because Hazel mentioned Karl Marx?'

‘That was how it began.'

‘Where?'

‘This was a matter of watching how certain people behaved.'

‘How certain people behaved?'

‘Exactly.'

‘Which people?'

‘Certain people who interest us.'

‘Yes, if you stay out in the middle of the night to do surveillance on them they must be people who interest you. I suppose surveillance is always about watching how certain people behave, isn't it, dad? It's what surveillance is. But which people? Where?'

‘You had it absolutely correct when you spoke to Denise,' Harpur replied. ‘Surveillance.'

‘You're brickwalling, are you? Why?'

‘You should get back to bed now we've settled everything.'

‘
Have
we settled everything?'

‘I think so.'

‘Yes,
you
would. You think something's settled if you can keep talking without saying anything at all.'

‘We've been all around the subject.'

‘Around, around, around, without really getting anywhere.'

‘I think you should get to bed,' Harpur said. ‘That's where to get now.'

‘Well, say “Surveillance, as a matter of fact, Denise,” if she wakes up and asks where you've been so late.'

‘She won't wake up.'

‘Or in the morning.'

‘It
was
surveillance.'

‘But say it, so it's the same as what we told her, and then it will sound true, totally true, because three people said it.'

‘It
is
true.'

‘But best say it – “Surveillance.” Then she'll reply, “Hazel and Jill told me that. Surveillance.” But what if Denise asks, “Surveillance where?” You could cook up some answer for her, couldn't you? You won't cook one up for me, but you could cook one up for her, couldn't you? This might be important. We don't want her wondering where you've
really
been. Perhaps she'd get upset.'

‘I don't have to cook up some answer. I went there.'

‘Where?'

‘Get your sleep now,' he said.

When he climbed into bed with Denise she grunted and muttered ‘Col,' as if to prove she definitely knew who was sleeping with her tonight and didn't object. To welcome him, she gave a feeble half wave of her right hand, but without raising her head.

‘Surveillance,' he said.

‘Ugh?'

‘Surveillance.'

She grunted again and then went silent. He put an arm around her and they slept spoons. Denise liked morning lovemaking and then a cigarette or two to begin the day right. Harpur didn't smoke but thought the rest of it would be fine. They'd get up to have breakfast with the children before they went to school, then go back to bed for a while, their lips tasting of black pudding at first.

Iles said: ‘Something's around, Col.'

‘Around?' This was a Jill word, wasn't it?

‘No question, around.'

‘In what respect, sir?' Harpur said.

‘I get that feeling.'

‘Which?'

‘Perhaps you do yourself.'

‘Which feeling?' Harpur said. Iles could intuit. Iles had unstrangulated genius somewhere within and always liable to break out full of puff and brilliance and concealment. Iles heard things, but also sensed things, foresaw things, stored things. Harpur tried not to tell the Assistant Chief too much, hoping to balance up and give himself a chance. Harpur, of course, realized that one of the things the ACC in his magical fashion most probably sensed was that he (Harpur) held back from telling him (Iles) everything he (Harpur) knew. This meant each of them suspected the other of using the spoken word to cloud and even obstruct understanding rather than assist it. They conscientiously and skilfully struggled to avoid all-out disclosure. Harpur thought that anyone listening to them talk would feel each took his own dedicated route, and that these routes only rarely and briefly criss-crossed.

‘They had one of their Agincourt hooleys last Monday,' Iles said.

‘Is that right? I don't diary them any longer.'

‘Why not?'

‘Absolutely routine.'

‘In what respect, Col?'

‘We know who'll be there. And we know the sort of trimmed stuff they'll be told. But, yes, they do come around. Is that what you meant – “around”?'

‘Its flavour – I didn't like its flavour.'

‘You
know
its flavour, sir.'

‘Something's around, Col. Something basic, considerable and perilous.'

‘We'll have to deal with it.'

‘“Deal with it”! So confident! So matter-of-fact! I love your primitive optimism, Col.' ‘Thank you, sir.' ‘At my rank, Harpur, one looks for factors beyond the actual matter-of-fact facts. Yes, factors beyond the matterof-fact facts. The matter-of-fact fact in this case is the Agincourt dinner – a matter-of-fact fact in the sense that it happened.'

‘Yes, as a matter of fact, it's a fact it would probably be about time for it to, as you say, sir – come around, as a fact.' ‘I agree, we don't take much notice of it any longer – as a fact, that is,' the ACC said.

‘We can't learn much from it.'

‘Behind this fact – the dinner and festivities – is a bigger element, though – what I've termed for you – so the idea is not beyond you . . . what I've termed for you, a factor.'

‘Is that right, sir?'

‘This dinner has a context both ahead and back.'

‘Ah.'

‘Oh, yes, a factor, a context, Col. Dimensions. Width. That's what I'm getting at when I say something's around.' ‘A factor? A context?' ‘I have a contact in these dinners,' Iles said. ‘I get special whispers.
You
might have given up entirely on the occasions. Not I, not entirely. Abandonment of a project is not my style.'

‘Oh. Are you close to one of the waitresses, sir, close in your style of being close – which might bring special whispers?'

‘I'm given excellent feedback.'

‘Nice.'

‘By means of this contact I have an overview.'

‘I believe some of them are very OK.'

‘Who?'

‘The waitresses. OK in the way you like.'

‘And which way is that, Harpur?'

‘Chirpy. Forthcoming. Game for merrymaking etcetera. They wear greenish Nell Gwyn costumes at the medieval banquets, don't they?'

‘Nell Gwyn wasn't medieval, you dull sod.'

‘Her name has come down through the centuries.'

‘My source reports an exceptionally happy and convivial Agincourt dinner.'

‘Ah.'

‘That's sinister. I'm uneasy, Col.'

‘Ralph and Manse have seen off a lot of competition, mostly East European. Possibly they had rowdiness from their back benchers at previous meetings, including racism, which Ember is quite a bit against and believes should be applied only very selectively. This time, things would all have been serene and pleasant.'

‘Well, of course, you'd have a dull, limited, unimaginative formula explanation for their apparent contentment and good spirits. I have to see beyond that. I want you to think of me as like those youthful locals in South Sea tourist resorts who will dive into the sea and bring up from its considerable depths coins that have been flung in by spectating visitors.'

‘Exactly as I always
do
think of you, sir.'

‘The surface is an invitation to me. I am not content with it, as its self – mere surface. An invitation to look beneath. I need to see what is hidden.'

‘What
is
?'

‘As ever, there's a surface amity between Ralph and Manse Shale. What does it conceal, Col?'

‘You'll have an answer to that.'

‘I do believe in the standard routines of basic detective work – the kind of thing you so thoroughly, even commendably, represent, Col, in your tidy fashion, but . . . sources, Col.'

‘True.'

‘We are nothing, nowhere, without a source.'

‘
Are
you satisfying one of the waitresses, sir? And she's grateful – as she damn well should be – and gives you tipoffs in return? You're not one to mind being mentioned in the Agincourt kitchens as a lover boy with special requirements. People are very understanding these days about kinks.'

‘What do I mean by “factors”, Col? By “context, as applied to the Shale–Ember cartel”?'

‘Some people, when they talk to me about you, say, “Mr Iles is one for factors, not mere facts. And context. Hence gold leaf on his cap.”'

‘Which people?'

‘It would add up to more than quite a few, in my opinion.'

‘How many more?'

‘“In depth”. This is another term they'll use when talking of your approach. Perhaps they've spotted your resemblance to the South Seas boy divers. They'll refer to your “in depth” methods and outlook. I think they mean it well, on the whole. “In depth” links up with “factors” and “context”. The same ballpark.'

‘You discuss me, do you, Harpur?'

‘Many regard you as a considerable topic, sir. They're used to ordinary folk such as their spouses or newsagents or chartered surveyors and then you come along, and very few would say you're ordinary in the least. Probably.'