Vacuum (20 page)

‘It's not like him. Well,
some
of it's not like him.'

‘The lateness?'

‘He ought to be here.'

‘Which of it
is
like him?' Harpur replied.

‘You know how he can be.'

‘The Franco stuff?'

‘We were over in The Porter early in the evening.'

‘Yes.'

‘You've been there tonight?'

‘Yes.'

‘Well, it was all going fine at first.'

‘Trade talk.'

‘Exactly. Good, sensible trade talk. Nobody can beat Mike at that. He'd asked for four of our people to be there for a bit of a meeting. They could skip street work tonight. We had replacements out – good, industrious replacements, eager to get a feel of the territory, map the trading points.'

‘I hear he's great at business surveys,' Harpur said.

‘A true talent. Onassis wouldn't be in his league.'

‘Gifted.'

‘Wonderfully.' Edison shifted in his seat, turned his head half right suddenly to look out of the driver's side window. A man had crossed the Square near Morgan's. Edison must have thought it was Arlington. But, no. He slumped back. ‘Was that little sod Alec Geen still there when you went to the pub tonight?' he asked.

‘He broke down.'

‘Broke down why?'

‘He thinks the whole fabric will get ripped to bits.'

‘Fabric? Which fabric?' Now, Whitehead stared directly forward through the windscreen, as if expecting to see some of this fabric flap and billow in the breeze off the sea.

‘The commercial arrangements,' Harpur said.

‘Oh,
that
fabric.'

‘The confab in the pub turned awkward, did it?' Harpur said.

‘Awkward? Maybe that's the word. It will do, anyway. At a certain stage, as always, no pause between sense and lunacy, we started to get Granada and Seville and Navarre and all that holy insurgency crap from Michael, plus a town called Huesca this time, which I'd heard of. In the north. Orwell served there. Got shot in the throat near Huesca, I think.'

‘He was a well-known writer, wasn't he?'

‘Michael laughed and laughed, sort of satirical, because some enemy general said, “Tomorrow we'll have coffee in Huesca,” but his army never took the town from the Nationalists. Look, Mr Harpur, I've had to work out a way to deal with these fits. I try and act as if they're not happening. That's my usual. But I can see this Geen is in a fucking rage. Anyone could tell he thinks Michael is just a prime liability who could sink everybody. Maybe one of the others does, too – Galileo Smith – but milder, more reasonable, though definitely not happy with Mike. OK, OK, we've been through this kind of situation before, often before. My job? My job is to play it indifferent, which I do. That's to say, in their presence I do. Some harm has been done, though – harm to Mike, his image in the firm. It's plain. Ossie Garnet might be OK, and maybe Vernon. Only maybe. The other two, not at all. Garnet – he's older and doesn't want to be older. So, the ponytail, meant to proclaim plentiful locks, and not grey. Plus, on the psychological side, the urge to be positive, to seem open-minded, progressive, a youth in outlook.'

‘This Spanish excursion upset you?'

‘Mike's a wonderful guy, in many aspects a near-genius. Would Manse Shale have picked him otherwise?'

‘But there are lapses?'

‘We were going on from the pub to see a couple of our people in the flats. He's all right with them. Not a mention or even a hint of Seville and the fucking Huesca coffee – non-coffee. When we're coming away, I mention to him in the nicest way you can imagine, Mr Harpur, that these meetings in the flats were absolutely great – so I'm giving him the positives first – but I added that the Civil War thing could get staff irritated, unfortunately. Example? Geen and Smith in the pub. I said they couldn't see the relevance of these journeys into the past.'

‘And he reacted badly, did he?' Harpur said.

‘He jumps on that one word.'

‘Which?'

‘“Relevance.” He asks, “Relevance to what?”'

‘This was a big and idiotic mistake on my part, Mr Harpur. I could see that at once. I'd have liked to ignore it and go on to something else. But I had to stick with it now.'

‘With “relevance”?'

‘He asks again, “Relevance to what?” I know the way his mind's going. There will be hellishness.'

‘I'd have thought it quite reasonable to say people like Geen and Smith grew tired of the unreal, didn't see where it fitted in, and therefore regarded the extra, imagined, battlefield role of Arlington as irrelevant, though interesting and extremely well-researched.'

‘Well, yes, it might be reasonable, Mr Harpur, but we're not in the realm of the reasonable, are we? This is fairyland. “Relevance to what?” he inquired once more. He can be like this when he's F.Fing as I think of it – Francisco Francoing: hostile, ruthless, determined. And I had to go ahead with it, didn't I? Unwise to defy F.F.'

‘He's not Francisco Franco.'

‘
Very
unwise to defy him,' Edison replied. ‘I said, “Relevant to now.”

‘“I see,” he said, “to now. I see.
Now
. And, pray, what is now?” He'll do this “pray” ploy when he's pissed off, turn on the hoity-toit,
de haut en fucking bas
.

‘I said – again in a fully considerate tone – “Now is here in the Square, Michael, The Porter, the Valencia.”

‘“Valencia?” He snarled it. “Full of Commie and Trotsky shit. That city strives against me. You wish to ally yourself with them? You, allegedly so close to me, so trusted by me – you wish to ally yourself with
them
?”

‘Of course, I'd felt him going Spanish again. The “now” he was living in was “then” – the Civil War – at least for now, as it were. I'd noted the swaggering and the haughty way with his head, like “show me an enemy and I'll bury him for the sake of my beloved country”.'

‘Right.'

‘The beloved country being Spain, of course.'

‘Yes, I think I got that,' Harpur said.

‘I don't really want to discuss this, Mr Harpur. It doesn't seem  . . . doesn't seem  . . . doesn't seem appropriate. It's disloyal to a great man, great intermittently.'

‘Suddenly, and for the moment,
you'd
become the enemy? Is that it, Edison?'

Briefly then Harpur thought he might have to deal with another convulsively weeping man. Edison's breathing became very shallow and rapid. He put a hand up to his face, perhaps to brush a tear away, or to check whether there
were
tears on his cheeks. The hand and arm shook a little. His face was square, his features rugged, but, as with Geen, grief or frustration or pain, or all of them mixed, brought rampant skew-whiffness to his looks.

Whitehead said: ‘He grew aggressive, asking why I was trying to pass myself off as his friend, General Emilio Mola, killed in an air crash, even though I didn't in the least look like him. “Fraud! Charlatan! Conspirator!” he yelled. We were in the street. People could hear him getting shrill – the way Mr Iles does with you sometimes, because of his wife. They were watching, some giggling. He screamed denials that he'd fixed the plane crash so there'd be no rivals for the caudillo job. Of course, I'd never said anything about the plane crash. I'd never heard of it. He thinks I'm claiming to be Mola's ghost, come back for vengeance. As you'd expect, I wanted to get Michael to the car, make things private. But he looks at the Chrysler and doesn't recognize it. No, it's more than that. He behaves as if it's not there. He's Franco, isn't he, and they didn't have that brand new Chrysler model in the 1930s, not even in the late 1930s. He says he'll walk.'

‘Walk where?' Harpur said.

‘He's done this kind of thing before. There's some tale that Franco led a big march in tough conditions when he was stationed in Spanish Morocco. Mike wants to get in his footsteps. Recreate his footsteps.'

‘So he wanders alone into the Valencia?' Harpur said.

‘Not wanders. He goes at fast infantry pace. It's meant to show disgust with me. He wants distance between us. He sees me as someone out to corrupt the military and undermine the blessed cause.'

Again he seemed close to sobbing. ‘What time was this?' Harpur said.

‘Is that important?'

‘It might be.'

‘About nine o'clock.'

‘You talked to me near Templar Street at around eight.'

‘Yes. Then we went to The Porter and to the two flats. It would be about an hour, perhaps five minutes more. Trade talk, Spanish talk, champagne in the pub, then a bit more trade talk at the flats, not completed, but good. He bought champagne in The Porter to celebrate getting his own air squadron. I think maybe he jumbles up Civil War dates. It's a farrago. Sometimes, the Civil War is over and he's
El Caudillo.
He was on the other day about some Spanish film director called Berlanga, or like that, who makes subtle fun of him in his movies. He said, “Berlanga is not a Communist, he is worse, he is a bad Spaniard.” And then that time-shift business with the Orwell-Blair name.'

‘You haven't seen him since just after nine?'

‘He usually comes back pretty soon. The morph episode ends, and he's Michael Redvers Arlington again. I sat in the car and waited. When he didn't show, I drove around the Valencia looking for him.'

‘You were worried?'

‘Not badly then. He could be anywhere, not necessarily on the streets – in a club or a girl's room. I went to that black girl's place – the one Mr Iles is fond of. I've often driven Michael there and picked him up afterwards. He likes the notion of sharing her with an ACC, a sort of nice conviviality. But she wasn't there.'

‘Tonight, she's with a pleasant chap called Neville, from somewhere distant. You must have missed her. You've tried Arlington's mobile?'

‘Switched off. I keep returning to the Square, expecting Michael to be waiting there. No.'

‘He could have come back to what you called this rendezvous point any time while you were away searching other parts of the Valencia, couldn't he?' Harpur said.

‘He could have. But if he did, he'd be here waiting for me on the pavement when I returned from one of these sweeps.'

‘Maybe,' Harpur said. ‘I passed the car at about eleven fifteen on my way to Morgan's and The Porter, and it was empty.'

‘I hoofed it to the flats in case he'd got fed up waiting in the Square and had gone to see one of those people again. There was still some business to finish with both of them. But, again, nothing. I made one more tour in the Chrysler, and then came and parked here again. And now you've appeared, but not Michael. I don't know what to do, Mr Harpur.' Once more it seemed as though he'd come apart, mouth open, his prize fighter's chin hanging loose.

Harpur did some chronology. He'd watched Jason Wensley in Carteret Drive leave the stolen estate car at about ten o'clock, and saw him give his pals a thumbs-up goodbye. Arlington had been loose and alone in the Valencia from about nine. If he'd got over his Franco spell and returned to the Square, Edison and the Chrysler might not have been there, because they were somewhere trawling for him. Possibly, Arlington-Franco was alone and non-protected near the wrecked houses at any point after he'd soldiered off from Edison and the car. There'd be time. Did Arlington normally go armed? Harpur couldn't recall anything from the dossier about weapons.

‘I suppose a lot of people would know you often used that spot in the Square for the car when you came on calls to Morgan's and the pub and flats,' Harpur said.

‘It's not a secret. Mike hates furtiveness. That's not a quality he'd associate with F.F.'

‘He's not F.F., nor even F.,' Harpur said.

‘Just the same.'

‘What's that mean?'

Edison went silent for a while. Then he said: ‘I listen to the direction of your questions, Mr Harpur.' He tightened up his face and now made himself sound controlled and purposeful.

‘I'm trying to get the pattern of the evening,' Harpur said.

‘You think he came back when I wasn't here?'

‘It has to be possible, Edison.'

‘I was wrong to go hunting for him?'

‘It's a natural thing to do. You couldn't know how long he'd remain Franco and continue the great African march, or linger with a girl. The length of that march would be its most important characteristic for him. He'd want to give duration to it. You're certainly not to be blamed.'

‘Blamed for what?'

‘I had a tip something might have happened over here in the Square,' Harpur replied.

‘What tip?'

‘Or less than a tip, I suppose. A sort of momentary signal.'

‘Who from?'

‘Information zooms around the Valencia, doesn't it?' Harpur said.

‘Someone saw something here?'

‘Someone may have seen something and then mobile-phoned it to a friend.'

‘Which friend?'

‘This is speculation,' Harpur said.

‘But you did get the signal?'

‘A kind of signal, yes.'

‘Which kind?'

A signal half enclosed and hidden in a wave because Honorée thought it should be kept confidential from Neville. ‘Nothing very specific,' Harpur said.

‘I'm happiest with specifics.'

‘I've got a torch in my car. I'm going to have a look in these empty houses.'

‘Look for what? Michael wouldn't go in to dumps like these.'

‘No, I don't suppose he would.'

Another silence for a while. Edison must be trying to picture Harpur's scenario. ‘So you think someone saw an incident to do with Michael and these houses?' he asked.