Pix (Volume Book 24) (Harpur & Iles Mysteries) (16 page)

‘It's always best to be civil to such people,' Ember replied. ‘They're entitled to do their search.'

‘Civil but uncommunicative,' Sybil said.

‘I
couldn't
be communicative because I have nothing to communicate,' Ember said.

‘And likewise,' Shale said.

‘This is two invasions tonight from the bad world beyond,' Sybil said. ‘Manse and I first, then these two.'

‘Oh, really, we don't think of you in that way at all,' Margaret said. ‘Always welcome.'

‘Indeed, yes,' Ralph said. Sybil hadn't gone into actual tears, so he more or less meant this.

‘What's that bitch going to put in the fucking paper?' Shale replied.

‘Only that someone's missing and Ralph Ember and Mansel Shale don't know anything about it,' Sybil said. ‘Or their wives, or the Ember daughters. Can that matter? If she puts anything at all in the paper. People go missing every day. Routine, not man-bites-dog stuff or even dog-bites-man.'

‘The Press – you got to watch them,' Manse said. ‘Continuous. They can do bad bloody damage. They don't care, as long as it gives them a big headline.'

‘Damage how?' Sybil said.

‘All sorts of ways,' Manse replied. ‘I believe there should be a law of privacy.'

‘But in this instance,' Sybil said. ‘It's a nil response, isn't it? What harm?'

‘You got to watch them, that's all I say. Think of them two reporters that done Nixon in a film on TV sometimes.'

Margaret took Sybil to freshen up. Ember said: ‘That's a very nice gesture, Manse – the redecoration and locks and so on, if they're to welcome Syb back. Yet typical of you.'

‘I thought I got to do something to sweeten things. I mean, Ralph, them other females who been giving me companionship and so on – that's not pleasant for a wife to think about.'

‘But
she'd
left
you
, Mansel.'

‘Even so, I felt the repapering etcetera, like a compliment. In any case, I had a little stumble carrying a bottle of sauce on the stairs and so some staining. I saw I could put that right and at the same time do a what you call for Syb.'

‘A gesture.'

‘Right, a gesture for Syb.'

Ralph remained quiet for a couple of minutes in case Shale decided to cancel the bullshit and say what had really happened on the rectory stairs, as described by Empathic's decorator pal. The great thing about ferrety eyes was they never changed from being ferrety, so you couldn't read much there. Their eternal message – ferretiness. Manse picked up his glass and said: ‘Here's to what's
been a great fucking evening – lamb, wine, Kressmann's – on your magnificent property, Ralph.'

Ember raised his own glass in response and drank. Then he said with a thorough smile: ‘And here's to a grand future for you at the rectory, Manse. Between us, we have given this region marvellous, sustained peace.'

‘I don't suppose we'll get the sodding Nobel Prize for it, though,' Shale said.

‘I believe we are appreciated by those with a proper regard for this city,' Ralph replied. They drank again. When Margaret and Sybil returned, Ralph topped up all round and Manse mobiled his driver and told him to bring the Jaguar in half an hour. Of course, Denzil Lake was a goner now. Manse must have taken on a successor. When the car arrived, Ralph went out to have a look. The replacement looked pretty solid and weathered. Ember knew Denzil used to defy Manse sometimes and refuse to wear the chauffeur's cap supplied, because Lake thought it made him look like the dogsbody he was. This driver had that kind of shiny peaked cap on and didn't seem to mind. He jumped out of the car to open the rear door for Sybil and Manse. ‘Thank you, Eldon,' Manse said. Eldon's jacket tightened as he bent swiftly to the Jaguar door handle and Ralph thought he saw the outline of something sizeable in a shoulder holster.

Harpur took another trip alone down to the marina and the region of Hilaire Wilfrid Chandor's offices and home. He recognized this as no more logical than his last visit, but he went, just the same. Harpur still worried that Meryl Goss, trawling for property contacts, collecting gossip at the bus station caff with his children, and elsewhere, would have heard Chandor's name and come here calling and questioning. Probably dangerous, if all his suppositions were right. And they would be.

It troubled Harpur that a police failure to find her man – a police failure even to look for her man – could push Meryl into risk. Harpur knew his daughters would feel a mix of rage and shame if he let things go bad for her. Although they'd accept that an adult like Graham Trove had a right to disappear or not as he fancied, the girls would expect something extra from Harpur, because Goss actually came to Arthur Street looking for support. They'd regard this personal contact as giving them and Harpur a definite guardianship role. In his daughters' opinion, if people called at the house they became sort of dependants, wards. This could be a right nuisance, but Harpur feared his daughters' contempt. Oh, hang on, he'd put it a lot higher than that. Harpur longed for their esteem, struggled to earn and keep the girls' admiration. As a single parent he lived for their approval. He could tell that the plight of this beautiful, sad, committed woman, Meryl Goss, searching in strange territory for her lover, would grab their feelings. In fact, her plight reached his own feelings, especially as Harpur more or less knew the search to be
hopeless, and Meryl's lover dead. He could not tell the children that, nor even hint at it, and couldn't tell her, either.

Harpur saw only one way to help. He must make sure she did not drift into peril herself now by taking repeated inquiries to the wrong place, meaning the right place – Hilaire Wilfrid Chandor. What Harpur had to contemplate was the terrible possibility that not just Graham Trove's but Meryl Goss's body might one day turn up on this ground. Harpur's daughters would regard that as a disgusting, cruel blunder by him. And he'd see it like this himself. Then there would be Iles.

Apart from Goss, Harpur worried that Manse Shale should have been doing his little survey here, the medicinal morning stroll, obviously casing the area. Why? He planned retaliation? Had he built a big hate against Chandor – saw him as an insult and threat? That's how it had seemed on the Iles illegal transcript, hadn't it? Shale would be inclined to fight – to hit before he was hit again. He'd grown used to success and peace, and might want to remove anyone who jeopardized these. No, not
might
. Manse
would
. Perhaps removal of Chandor could be treated as a boon by Harpur – by the police generally. But bullets loosed off among ordinary, uninvolved people in an ordinary street could not be.

This time, Harpur parked a distance from the handsome old converted bonded warehouse that housed Chandor's offices and walked. Although much of the marina layout was cluttered tat, a few Victorian and Edwardian dockside buildings had been magnificently adapted to new roles. Manse enthused about the marina and, yes, parts of it did look good.

Harpur felt a need to be on his feet, he felt a need to be clearly seen, a reckonable presence. He thought he might have to intervene, not just observe. Now and then he got these feverish, white knight impulses. He felt he had to save Meryl Goss, already stalked by tragedy, though she couldn't know that yet in full. It was lunchtime. If Goss wanted to reach Chandor she would possibly attempt to confront him in the street at some predictable moment, like
arrival, lunch, or working day's end. And the same tactics could appeal to Manse Shale. Perhaps Manse had discovered during reconnaissance that Chandor left the offices at, say around 1 p.m., maybe going home, maybe on his way to a restaurant. This wide marina highway could be turned into drive-by land – a big volley through the open window, windows, of a stolen, moving car and fast exit. It might appear fairly simple to Manse. Traffic here was usually light. Shots should not get blocked by other vehicles, getaway not hindered by jams. One essential: the ambush must happen close to the office building, for fear Chandor came out and jumped into a car. Shale might have thought of all this. He'd moved currently into a rich, sedate, rectory-blessed existence, but he wouldn't forget basic urban foray wipe-out tactics – the same kind of urban foray wipe-out tactics which . . . yes, the same kind of urban foray wipe-out tactics that most likely helped land him this current rich, sedate, rectory-blessed existence. He'd blasted his way to tranquillity, hadn't he?

As Harpur approached the bonded warehouse just before 1 p.m., feeling pretty relevant and saintly, he saw Chandor, plus a couple of other men, emerge from the front of the building, Chandor between the two looking fully Nordic. Protection? Well, naturally protection. Harpur thought he recognized the pair from the Monty. Chandor had on jeans and a short denim jacket. The two companions wore dark suits, white shirts, broad tie, flunkey garb, the suits loosish, perhaps to shroud weapons. Harpur walked a bit faster. In fact, the three did not get into a car but came towards him on foot, which should mean Chandor was making for his house, in a side street near where Harpur had parked. He got some amiable chat ready.

When Harpur and the three were a few metres from one another he saw a car, a blue Renault Laguna, coming at a brisk but unostentatious rate from behind the Chandor group. One man drove and Harpur believed there might be another in the back on the near side, but bent low. A thicket of Shale-type dark hair? It looked as though the driver had a scarf arranged around the bottom part of his
face – nothing as telltale as a mask, yet doing a good concealment job, just the same. Who wore a scarf in June? He seemed a burly, athletic type. Yes, someone with a dark thatch still crouched on the rear seat. As Harpur reached Chandor and friends, the car was alongside and Harpur, in that public service style of his, stepped to the left and put himself between it and them, between it and them and other pedestrians.

And the Laguna passed, passed harmlessly, still at a sane, unnotable speed. The man in the back now seemed to have gone even lower and become hidden altogether from Harpur. The near-side rear window and front passenger window were down, as Harpur would have expected them to be down in preparation for a barrage, and he wanted to yell merrily: ‘Mansel, dear! Did I fuck it all up for you? But we can't have blood all over the sacred marina, can we?'

The scarf fluttered slightly in the slipstream, possibly silk, untasselled, dark blue with a red and silver motif. Manse – and it had to be Manse – must have found this an appallingly tricky abort decision. After all, if he'd catered for three deads plus any collaterals, why not four plus any collaterals? But the fourth could have been Harpur – would certainly have been Harpur because of his martyr position on the pavement. And, because of that martyr position on the pavement, Harpur might have been the
only
one hit, a more effective shield than Ralph Ember's at the Monty. Shale probably realized in the second or two he had for thinking as the Laguna approached that you could not shoot a British Detective Chief Superintendent and then expect your life and your trade to proceed as heretofore, comfortably, sweetly, not even in this new, gun-spread millennium. And there wouldn't be time for marksmanship – pick off three, fire around the fourth. No, a broadside operation. It could even be that Manse felt a regard for Harpur formed over years and chickened out of riddling him. This idea gave Harpur a small glow.

He didn't get the Laguna number. What use? The car would have been stolen. And, besides, nothing happened,
not even speeding. The hefty driver must be Shale's new chauffeur and general aide-de-camp after that problematic double-barrelled destruction of Denzil Lake. Perhaps his replacement liked Lagunas and knew how to annul their prize-winning anti-theft fittings. He did not have a chauffeur cap on for this jaunt. Possibly, he would have pulled up momentarily and joined in the salvo, through the front passenger window. There must have been some very urgent countermanding orders from Shale once he saw how Harpur had arranged himself. Would Manse be astonished, expecting Harpur to feel very all right about one outlaw knocking over three others in a cleansing spree? But probably even Iles would draw the line at that – heavy gunfire in daylight on a domesticated road busy with walkers in a prestige development like the marina.

‘Mr Harpur, isn't it?' Chandor said with a happy smile. ‘You were at Ralph Ember's club? Hilaire Chandor.'

‘You have your base here, do you? Lucky. Beautiful setting.'

‘One of the factors that brought us to the city.'

‘I love a walk in the marina,' Harpur replied. ‘Calm yet invigorating.'

‘You should call in. I'd like to show you the view of the lake and so on.'

‘Well, indeed, I might.'

‘I brought some staff from our previous home, you know, and we all agree the move has been a wonderful success. Isn't that so, lads? Oh, this is Maurice, my Director of Strategic Planning, and Rufus, Personnel. Mr Harpur.'

‘Grand here,' Rufus said.

‘Grand,' Maurice said.

‘The move from?' Harpur said.

‘Eltham. London.'

‘Quite a change,' Harpur said.

‘We've integrated rapidly,' Chandor said. ‘The Monty – a great entry to social things here.'

‘Ralph Ember's a city stalwart,' Harpur replied.

‘I doubt if there's another club of that quality outside London,' Chandor said.

‘Do you belong to a London club?' Harpur said.

‘And that collage on the baffle board. I'd guess not even the Carlton up there has anything to match it,' Chandor said. ‘As I see things, Mr Harpur, we're quick these days to acknowledge creativity in the visual arts, literature, the media, but doesn't the kind of creativity displayed by Ralph Ember deserve similar acknowledgement? Maurice loves a collage.'