Harpur learned as well that some aspects of an investigation might never become clear; this seemed particularly so about the baffling minor travels of the shoebox parcel. Failure to understand every detail about a case wasn’t unique to Harpur. Every detective was sometimes defeated. Harpur would occasionally ask Iles for help if he was stuck, but this didn’t seem like the right kind of problem to involve him in now. Harpur wondered whether a well-established private investigator might manage to sort it out. He wasn’t that.

  Harpur let his mind slip back again. He’d kept tabs on Intelligent after the trouble, and had got himself and his trolley close to Percy as they made for the check-out. The Security troupe had accompanied them. There were occasional outbreaks of applause from customers and staff as the Target, Intelligent and Harpur passed.

  He’d had enough of this craziness and wanted some neutral topic to discuss with Intelligent. He could do without any more hilarity about the alarm fiasco. He’d nodded towards the bottles and remembered pretty well all the conversation about them, it was so interesting.

  ‘Where will the celebration party be, Perce?’ Harpur had asked. ‘Ralph Ember’s club, The Monty?’

  Percy had unleashed a very thorough guffaw. ‘That dump? Hardly! My mother would never allow it. She likes to maintain what she regards as a decent social standard. There’ll be her judges, fashion goddesses, lordlings, bishops, brigadiers among the guests. She wouldn’t want them obliged to mix with lowlife. She’ll run the do at her place, of course, the Bay Penthouse, music from Toejam, a top-class pop group. Acquittals deserve the full treatment in her view. I’d give you an invitation – honestly, Mr Harpur,’ Percy had said, ‘but I know the bouncers would be told to keep out anyone … well … anyone not what she’d refer to as “perfectable”.’

  ‘Ember is working devotedly to bring the club up to very select standard,’ Harpur said.

  ‘She’s heard about that,’ Percy had replied. ‘Mother thinks it will never blossom. “Impossible”. She likes to keep her eye on things generally from her gorgeous nest in the Bay.’

  ‘Ember will stick at it,’ Harpur said.

  ‘Of course, you’ve got a soft spot for Ralphy, haven’t you, Mr Harpur?’ Intelligent said.

  ‘He doesn’t like being called Ralphy,’ Harpur had replied.

  ‘Too bad.’

  ‘Soft spot?’ Harpur said.

  ‘The word’s around.’

  ‘Which word?’ Harpur said.

  ‘Up a ladder at God knows what time of night at Ralph’s place, making sure the precious china’s OK. Mother thinks Ralph is trying to do too much in his lust to get pukka – extending Low Pastures, extra prettifying for The Monty. She believes there are going to be immense changes – real changes,’ Perce had said.

  ‘What changes?’ Harpur asked.

  ‘Not the kind of piffling alterations Ralph is messing about with. This will be a true shake-up. Did you catch what he said?’

  ‘What who said?’

  ‘Your target, as you call him.’

  ‘There was too much talk and confusion. I missed some of it,’ Harpur had replied.

  ‘He said, “I’ll be back. You’ve only seen the start of it at the sand and gravel wharf.” I hope I’m around to help you again, Mr Harpur.’

  Intelligent had become very solemn then. He’d said his mother would think of the knockabout in the supermarket as part of a much bigger scene.

  Perce had said: ‘There was some sort of deal done, yes? I sense delivery of something very significant. A gun? Possibly a gun supplied by one of the small drugs firms. Or for one of the small drugs firms. Someone was waiting for it over a period of days, but then this sudden siren shambles, everything goes missing. Anarchy. It still prevails.’

  ‘It does, Perce,’ Harpur had replied. There hadn’t been much else to say.

  FOURTEEN

  Ralph took Mansel Shale on a drive through the city, and then out across the two counties nearby to the north and northeast. Manse wasn’t good at visualizing from words. He wanted to see the actual. And Ralph wanted him to see the actual. By ‘the actual’, Ralph meant he would show Mansel the site of some terrible recent violence in these neighbouring areas. Why? That was an easy one; because it was the kind of terrible violence that might come next to this home patch – Ralph’s and all those enjoying that home patch with Ralph, such as Manse, Margaret, Harpur, Iles, the whole very special local population. It had to be stopped before it arrived.

  Ralph felt very strongly that he himself could deal with the words-and-ideas side of matters. This was not Shale’s sort of thing at all. It would be a kind of cruelty to require that from him. But he had other fine assets, not just business skills but life and death. He’d had some rough experience of these, and knew how to apply what he’d learned.

  The car trip today was Ralph’s first move in his plan to break away from all the hesitations and indecisiveness that had held him back lately. Held him back from what? He recognized this was a fair question, but he had a fair and formidable answer. He thought those who feared that an onslaught of some sort was very possibly due – was very likely due – were right, and this was the time to put an end to it before it started. Ralph saw this as an important, perhaps vital, journey with Manse, and it had taken him a while to decide how to run it. Was this another deliberate, evasive delay? But he couldn’t allow that. He had made himself immediately consider the options: should he handle it alone or organize some help? Well, everyone had heard about what happened when Harpur tried to act solo. So Ralph had resolved to look for some assistance.

  Look where? Should he do a trawl for a suitable, professional gunman? The idea hadn’t appealed to Ralph. He felt that for a job of this kind he needed someone he knew and whose actions and reactions he could count on. And there would be security worries: he didn’t want the project discussed by hired partners or pals. That’s how dangerous rumour was born and how whispers thrived.

  Therefore, he had chosen Manse, someone he’d known for years and whom he more or less trusted and who most likely more or less trusted him. Theirs was a marvellously effective partnership.

  Ralph lifted a hand from the steering wheel and pointed towards a fairground, with a Ferris wheel in operation ahead on the other side of the road.

  ‘That’s it, Manse.’

  ‘Is that it?’

  ‘That’s it. There was battling for best part of an hour before enough armed police turned up.’

  ‘An hour? “Three dead, one amputation”.’

  ‘Three dead?’

  ‘Three dead and a leg,’ Ralph said. ‘Not our ground but very close. It could come our way soon. We’ve got to prevent that.’

  ‘I think I’ve seen him around.’

  ‘Who?’

  ‘The one-leg.’ Mansel said: ‘In a way he was lucky, wasn’t he, Ralph?’

  ‘Which way?’

  ‘A hospital near, able to do that job,’ Manse said. ‘Think, if it was Antarctica, Ralph.

  ‘This is the kind of sickening violence they want to bring to our lovely city. They were running around with their weaponry and daggers, firing from behind the Speak-Your-Weight machine, coconut shies, Electronic Ambush stalls, fortune-telling tents.’

  ‘What’s that?’

  ‘What?’

  ‘Electronic Ambush.’

  ‘Oh, yes. Fairground people have to keep up with the state of the new technology, Manse.’

  ‘All this – the way you explain things, Ralph, is a great help to me. I’ve been very anxious these last weeks. I could tell something was wrong, or would be in a minute or two. Ember gets protection at home and I don’t. Why? I asked a London mate from the old days to get me a gun – just in case. I was going to pick it up by what you could call “special delivery” in a supermarket car park, and then it was all ruined – the careful arrangements – when Harpur, the detective chief, very nearly messed everything up. But no, he didn’t, I got the pistol and had the feeling it might be needed. It’s made me a bit edgy. You calm me down, Ralph.’

  Ember didn’t fancy an analysis of Shale’s anxiety. Ralph had word of the supermarket trouble but hadn’t realized Manse might be part of it. Ralph saw a parking space, pulled into it and stopped. He brought from his pocket a piece of white card. It had on it what looked like a line drawing, or basic map of a ground floor somewhere. He showed it to Manse.

  ‘Ah, yes,’ Shale said.

  ‘You see what it is?’ Ralph said.

  ‘Ah, yes,’ Mansel said.

  ‘You sure?’

  ‘Ah, yes,’ Mansel said.

  ‘Here’s the Ferris wheel,’ Ralph said, pointing to the sketch.

  ‘Ah, yes,’ Mansel replied.

  ‘And here’s the Electronic Ambush and the coconut shies,’ Ralph said.

  ‘Anyone could see them,’ Mansel said. ‘This is graphic.’

  ‘What does it tell us, Manse?’

  ‘We can learn a lot in that sketch,’ Mansel said. ‘Grand.’

  ‘I’d meant to put arrows on, but forgot.’

  ‘Yes, arrows might be useful, but it does the job just as it is. Definitely,’ Manse replied. ‘It’s possible to get through the situation without arrows. I wouldn’t have known you’d forgotten the arrows unless you’d told me. I can take arrows or leave them alone.’

  ‘The arrows would show the stage-by-stage direction of the attack, using the various tents, stalls and huts as firing points or cover. These arrows would have indicated progress, relentless, quick.’

  ‘Ah, yes,’ Mansel said. ‘I’ll admit the arrows would have been a plus, but they are not indispensable.’

  ‘And this tells us, I believe, that they can and will scheme. They’ve been successful so far by scheming to bring enemies down – and perhaps we are now that enemy, and they have evolved an impressive way of doing it,’ Ralph said. ‘It makes sense, doesn’t it, Manse, to think that if the rumours are right and there are outfits waiting to take over our area, it would be a mob – or mobs – close to ours geographically. They will have heard of the grand trade done here and favourable Ilesian philosophy like sunshine for the Whitsun Treat.’

  ‘Mr Iles knows religion,’ Shale said.

  ‘What?’

  ‘Religion. That Whitsun Treat, Whitsun’s religious, isn’t it?’

  Ember started the car and they drove away.

  ‘I’m going to keep that in my mind,’ Mansel said.

  Ralph had, in fact, brought him out to see something he could keep in his mind – the slaughter site.

  ‘Good, Manse,’ Ralph said.

  ‘Yes, Whitsun.’

  ‘Whitsun?’ Ember said.

  ‘Sunshine and the Whitsun Treat.’

  This was the thing about Mansel: if you were discussing an idea or ideas with him, such as Iles’s views on policing, Manse would always fail to get the main point or points. There were times, of course, when he wasn’t wrong, and you had to hope you’d catch him at one of his clear, important moments. He could be formidable, even totally devastating, then. This was not one of those moments.

  FIFTEEN

  Of course, informants had informants. No informant could be expected to see everything, hear everything, himself/herself.

  Jack Lamb was in touch with Harpur unusually soon after the gun meeting. Jack had had a whisper. It was a whisper he reckoned would interest Colin Harpur, and after so long he also obviously reckoned he knew what should interest Harpur. On this he was right. Like most careers, informing operated in stages: there was a beginning, a middle stretch, a conclusion when the information reached whom it was intended for.

  It was Jill who answered the phone this time.

  ‘Have you got a bag of sparkling disclosures for Daddy?’ she asked. Harpur picked up the extension.

  ‘He might tell you,’ Jack said.

  ‘No, he won’t and you know it,’ Jill replied.

  ‘True, he can be a bit unhelpful,’ Jack said. ‘It’s his training.’

  ‘Can’t you show him how to shed some of that? We’re his flesh and blood, aren’t we? Doesn’t that bring privilege? OK it would be limited privilege, but privilege just the same.’

  ‘Not really my job, Jill. He goes his own way.’

  ‘Isn’t some of that against the rules?’ Jill said.

  ‘He doesn’t make a habit of it,’ Jack replied.

  ‘We talk over these little parleys.’

  ‘Who do?’

  ‘Hazel and I. But we realize all the time that these calls could be only a fraction of your contacts with Dad. We are shut out.’

  ‘Are you asking me whether this is the case?’ Jack said.

  ‘You spotted that, did you?’ Jill said. ‘You’ve got a brain.’

  ‘Thank you, Jill.’

  ‘Dad wouldn’t be snitching to you if you didn’t, would he?’

  ‘I think that will be enough now,’ Harpur said.

  ‘Goodbye Jack,’ Jill said. Harpur heard her put the phone down. He had to check that.

  There was reassuring silence for a while and then Jack said: ‘Jill sees the difficulties.’

  ‘She has a brain.’

  ‘I thought that was me,’ Jack replied.

  ‘We’re waiting for you to come up to the mark,’ Harpur said.

  ‘Ember,’ Jack replied. ‘I’ve got something on him, though I’m not sure what.’

  ‘Ralph?’

  ‘Ralph and Mansel Shale,’ Jack said.

  ‘Exemplary pair,’ Harpur said.

  ‘Out together.’

  ‘That would be unusual, Jack.’

  ‘Out together to some purpose,’ Jack replied.

  ‘What purpose?’ Harpur said.

  ‘Unknown,’ Jack said. ‘So far.’

  ‘A pressing purpose?’ Harpur said.

  ‘Unknown.’

  ‘But you wouldn’t be ringing if you didn’t consider it pressing, would you?’

  ‘Think of the North Road,’ Jack said.

  ‘Well, yes, I know the North Road,’ Harpur said.

  ‘A trusted source of mine, driving out that way, sees a parked Renault, and recognizes the two men in it. But the source is travelling at a fair speed – this, though, not unduly fast, I don’t like contact with speed fools – so can’t be sure and drives on, then turns for a repeat viewing and confirms. As sources go, this one is very reliable. The two men recognized are Ralph Ember and Mansel Shale. They’re reasonably familiar to the source from a career in the kind of work handled over the years. I was glad the source made the two drive-pasts and saw that nothing had changed on the second. It’s an encouragement.’

  ‘It sounds to me as if Ember and Manse were viewing something,’ Harpur said.

  ‘You’ve got a brain, Col,’ Jack said. ‘First sight of them by accident or fluke, a bit of roadside fleeting interest, then second, more considerable and deliberate visit in case the two were still there, which they were. So the question is, what is it they’re looking at?’

  ‘Not easy to answer,’ Harpur said. ‘They do nothing except record impressions in their minds. We can’t get in there.’

  ‘Maybe not, but I’ve been out to the parking space,’ Jack said.

  ‘That was thoughtful of you,’ Harpur replied.

  ‘Routine. Jill wouldn’t like to hear of a job only half-done.’

  Harpur said: ‘She’s very influential.’

  ‘It’s an uninterrupted view of the Lixxt fairground and the Ferris wheel. That’s what seemed to grab their mature attention, my source said.’

  ‘I hope you pay a respectable whack for such outstanding service.’

  ‘Col, please don’t talk about money for this kind of work,’ Jack said. ‘We agreed a long time ago that it would be off-limits.’

  Occasionally Jack could turn pious and prissy like that. Perhaps the good conversation he’d had with Hazel had brought this on today. She and Jill used to be scathing about the Jack–Harpur link. The work ‘snitching’ that Jill had used just now made Harpur wonder whether she was undergoing a return to contempt for Jack and informants, and for those who dealt with informants, like himself.

  ‘Sorry, Jack,’ Harpur said.

  ‘Judas has a lot to answer for.’

  ‘Your source, Jack?’

  ‘What?’

  ‘Obviously very thorough.’

  ‘They’re like that, aren’t they?’

  ‘Who?’

  ‘Women in this game.’

  ‘I don’t know any woman in this game,’ Harpur said, ‘until now.’

  ‘Yes, she’s reliable.’

  ‘About what age?’ Harpur said.

  ‘Thirty-seven, four months, no, five.’

  ‘As sources go, it sounds as if she’s quite close,’ Harpur said.

  ‘She knows the kind of thing I like,’ Jack said.

  ‘Yes, I expect so.’

  ‘I mean the kind of work.’

  ‘Of course,’ Harpur stated. ‘Does she know about me?’

  ‘She knows that someone titanic is not far off. She knows he has to be satisfied.’

  ‘Does she know how well she does that?’

  ‘She gets no details about you and she has a degree in “discretion”, Starred First, anyway.’

  Harpur said: ‘Name?’

  ‘Daisy.’