‘When I mentioned casing, this is a police word,’ Fay said. ‘It’s to do with drifting around an area, ahead of some dirty business, scrutinizing.’

  ‘Is that why you think Col and I are here?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Why, then?’ Iles said.

  ‘A view?’ Fay said.

  ‘Oh,’ Iles said. ‘A view of what?’

  ‘Across.’

  ‘Across what, where?’ Iles said.

  ‘Over to the fairground and the Ferris wheel,’ Fay said.

  ‘Col’s casing the area for that, do you think? Why?’ Iles said.

  ‘You tell me,’ Fay said.

  ‘He’s a quiet one,’ Harpur said. ‘Now and then.’

  SEVENTEEN

  People – especially women – often told Ralph Ember that he looked like the young Charlton Heston. Ralph thought there was something in this. But it was only a matter of physical appearance. Ralph, personally, saw a resemblance between himself and not any actor, however handsome, but a famous character in a theatre play – Hamlet. The thought went considerably deeper than the Chuck Heston comparison. This idea had come very suddenly to Ember, a real shock. He knew where it had begun, though.

  As part of his campaign to raise the social stature of himself, Low Pastures, and The Monty, Ralph had begun a mature degree course at the local university. He’d had to suspend it at present because of business pressure, but he’d completed the Foundation Year and meant to resume his studies soon. He had enjoyed the seminars on Shakespeare’s plays and particularly Hamlet, a drama about the young prince’s failure to get his finger out and do something. Of course, if he had done something there would not have been a play, but the lecturers didn’t make much of that. What especially fascinated Ralph was the similarity he felt to himself in the unpleasant matter of delay and backing off from action, despite efforts by others to get him going.

  There’d been prompts from Margaret, his wife, who seemed to fear that the wonderful calm and safety of the city so far was in danger. Assistant Chief Constable Desmond Iles displayed the same sort of uneasiness. And the dead man at the sand and gravel wharf possibly brought a threatening sign. Ralph hadn’t been there at the time, but he’d heard on the gossip network that the stranger involved with Detective Chief Superintendent Harpur and Intelligent Percy at the supermarket had said he’d be coming back, and it wasn’t said sweetly. It was a threat. Ralph felt as if the city was tamely lying there, passively, feebly, hopelessly.

  Incidentally, Ralph was also told that Intelligent’s cow of a mother, rich on stocks-and-shares fraud, had made some slighting, evil comment about The Monty. She was another who probably believed he was pathetically weak. Ralph longed to show this was absurdly wrong.

  So, Ralph realized he had to get back to where he once was. In those days it had been more or less routine for him to feel a readiness to kill if required. That ‘if required’ was important. He had never been merely someone who blasted off at the least provocation, or no provocation at all. He had belonged to a firm that occasionally needed to protect itself and Ralph had gone along with that response. Of course he had. But there had been a change, a development: he was now ready to kill as one of a team, a team of two, and he had to be the main man of that two, leader of that pair. He was the older, the established. He was Ralph Ember and Ralph Ember sky-highed. Ralph Ember showed how to star.

  Then there was the matter of flesh, of skin. Oh, yes, this was the crux, very special to Ralph. His idea of leadership and his precedence came with provisos. Shooting wouldn’t do. Although he was ready to kill, he was not ready to kill by mere handgun. That didn’t seem right to him – unsuitable. It lacked the personal element, was too mechanical, not close enough even if physically close. It missed any – all? – flavour of splendid heroism. Ralph needed this grandeur and flamboyance. Without it, leadership had no significance for him. He demanded the contact. He wanted his supremacy made blatant.

  He recognized that death by pistol could have its noble aspects. Defeated generals sometimes shot themselves to preserve honour. But Ralph had no taste for suicide. He didn’t want to write off the future, he wanted to dominate the future, the bit of it coming his way: Low Pastures and the extension was the future; the kids’ education was the future; a secure, expanding business was his future. He would have liked the school to offer ancient Greek and Latin teaching: that in a special, reverse way was the future.

  And he knew he wasn’t alone in wanting to drive forward into whatever came next. The future obviously looked good for many in the borough. This is what made it attractive and dangerous. Any menace, he must try to destroy. He didn’t expect to bring about such improvement by a bit of pot-shot handgun work. This death required stature and meaning. Detective Chief Superintendent Harpur and Assistant Chief Constable Iles kept things reasonably serene; Harpur with that young, beautiful, bright college student, Iles not so obvious in his private life, but a kind of family man, apparently. Ralph’s target might taint this lovely peacefulness and profitability. Ralph would prevent that vandalism if he could.

  This starkness in his thinking, this unflinching purpose, came to Ralph with another major condition. It had to. He needed decisive contact with the skin, the flesh of someone. Which someone? Whose skin? Whose flesh? He had to know that. He did know it, didn’t he? This was a profound matter of clarity and certainty, surely? Yes, he could rely on that, surely. Surely.

  In fact, Ralph was watching someone who might suit now, actually had him physically in view near the Wilson Street corner. If Ralph had been carrying a weapon – if he hadn’t made that absolute decision – he could have riddled him right away. The nearness would make this simple and foolproof. It wasn’t a matter of ‘he thought’ he could bring this about and pick the right one from the list of three possibles he’d formulated. Ralph was no longer in that sort of dithering area of doubt and hesitance, was he? Was he? It was not long ago, but not now, was it? Was it?

  His present selected target dressed harmless, as it was known. That is, it had been a harmless fashion for people in the drugs trade not long ago, but not long ago was still the past. Too many people had fancied this unobtrusive style and used it. So, the mode had become a sort of label, but a sort of label meaning the opposite of what it was supposed to mean: not at all harmless; instead, devious, smartarse professional, driven by greed beyond the customary even for this brand of commerce.

  It was off-the-peg gear, what used to be called a ‘sports jacket’ and grey flannel trousers, a white button-down collar, done up, and an autumnal-shade tie, a small knot, brown, plus well-polished shoes. The quality of all this was good, perhaps excellent, but wilfully dull and anonymous, It lacked – avoided – the flashiness of some drugs firm chiefs and hadn’t yet reached the sort of resounding, big-time reality of Ralph’s beautifully solid wealth.

  If he hung about certain streets in the centre of town, he might see half a dozen men dressed like this, perhaps see them do some dealings. There could be a couple of women too, but he found them less easy to classify by dress, though there were names around in gossip, or possibly more than gossip. He knew that some women liked to buy their fixes from women. They felt safer. This could be an error.

  Ralph saw Bernard Chail manage a couple of quick sales to a mixed trio of teenagers – two male, one girl – and there were lots of smiles and a nice glint of twenties. Ralph could not be sure how Chail ran his business – day and night. Ralph had just watched a deal done in the sunlight of mid-afternoon, speedily, confidently. The apparent smoothness of it might indicate that this was a regular, well-practised service. Might. It could also be a one-off, though, response to a single call, spotted by Ralph only through fluke. Chail was off his proper ground. That could be another explanation for the swiftness.

  There were all sorts of variables: availability of supplies, evidence of police interest, enough customer funds and, of course, there’d most probably be potential witnesses about. Not ideal. There was a strange bond he’d noticed between himself and someone like Chail. Ralph didn’t much like the idea of doing Bernie – doing anyone, in fact; no, didn’t like the idea of doing anyone – in full daylight. He did want a strong personal aspect – the skin element, but not when outsiders might get a privileged look at what was going on. What was going on would be the wipe-out of somebody. Perhaps earlier in his business career, Ralph would have regarded these kinds of objection as footling quibbles. They could still hold him back, though, in this day and age. Pathetic, yes, but absolutely capable of reaching him, hindering him. Since those distant days, he had become Ralph Ember of Low Pastures and The Monty, happy social club, and this required recognition and fitting behaviour, nothing undignified or paltry.

  Ralph was watching from behind a couple of parked builders’ lorries, feeding some reconstruction work in a shop opposite. He realized he’d become conspicuous if he stayed there for much longer, though the lorries weren’t actually engaged in any of the work at present.

  Ralph decided he’d allow himself five more minutes, in case Chail came back. This turned out wise. Chail did come back, and accompanied by someone male, elderly, bearded. They were laughing apparently at something one of them had said. This infuriated Ralph. It seemed so wrong, so blasé for the situation when the safety of a city might be in question. Ralph felt even more determined to see to Chail, a rejoinder to this oafish smugness. He thought they might have a different attitude if they’d known they were observed. He took the laughter as a kind of insult, a disrespect that must be punished. Not to know they had an audience didn’t count as an excuse in Ralph’s view. The two showed bland arrogance in their giggling. Would they have continued this stupidity if they’d known the significance of these two very useful trucks, useful to Ralph, significance to Ralph?

  It struck him that there was something deeply absurd about the situation, something preposterous. The point was, wasn’t it, that – until a matter of minutes ago – if he’d thought about lorries at all, it would be as part of the equipment he’d ordered for the improvements at his property, Low Pastures. He had hired lorries and their personnel. In a sense, for now, he was similarly the Wilson Street crew’s boss. That was his rank. He was a boss man. But, as things actually were at this moment, he had to cower and scurry and squint around the lorries, scared of being noted, like a piece of slithering low life.

  This he was certain didn’t mean he took a snobbish down-his-nose attitude to lorries. That would be foolish – the very opposite, in fact, of how things should be, and of how things were. These trucks in this street proved that the town was pushing ahead, was part of general fresh development. There was a bracing, creative feel to the work. These lorries were positive contributors to what might be brilliant improvements to an already fine commercial scene. There were excellent, handsome shopfronts and the intriguing opening to a wide arcade. Ralph was very fond of arcades: stuff on offer from both sides, and all of it in a sheltered, nicely kept setting. Arcades typified the way towns ought to be, in Ralph’s opinion – beautiful, thriving, protected. He was ready and eager to provide that protection.

  Although this reconstruction and the vehicles had nothing to do with his Chail mission, some of the debris in the lorry nearest him greatly interested Ralph. There were half a dozen old-looking bricks, still cemented together to form a kind of L, maybe part of the upper corner in a room or corridor. The bricks had a faded appearance now because of time and the probable absence of sunlight.

  Ralph realized this wouldn’t mean a lot for most people, but for him it was the vivid evidence of progress made very wonderfully plain. It told of a structure, of a worn-out structure now; of replacement of the worn-out structure; of the ability to fund replacement; of a new shape and design of somewhere inside.

  He would have liked to reach out and give the expended bricks and cement a congratulatory fondle for having done a passable job in there, perhaps for decades. This kind of gesture would make him too obvious, though. But, as an alternative, he could safely speak a tribute. Well, no, not ‘speak’ exactly. Utter. Only Ralph would hear it, which was not the usual way with tributes. ‘Very well done. You helped build a good tradition,’ he whispered. He didn’t want to be daftly lavish in his praise. After all, he kept in mind that this work poshing-up a shop – even an arcade shop – came a huge way behind the class of his very major improvements at Low Pastures.

  Ralph was always conscious of social grades. They had to be respected. He’d discovered there was quite a precedent for this attitude, a famous saying: ‘We must have distinctions.’ Ralph had begun that mature-student degree course at one of the local universities – the same university as Denise – and remembered these words from a foundation-year history seminar. They’d been used originally by the Emperor Napoleon after the French Revolution and its attempts at ‘égalité’ – equality. Ralph totally agreed. He’d put the degree stuff on hold for a year because of business demands, but he recalled plenty from the foundation year and felt a real closeness to the emperor, though he’d accept, of course, that emperors were higher up the scale than he was.

  Some of these ranks depended on very fine differences, one just a little above or below another. This would not be the case with these two projects: the Low Pastures level, and the boutique level. Low Pastures was a huge distance in front, but Ralph would still allow the shop operation to get some fraction of his attention. He felt he had a kind of clear duty to offer this. As he saw it, if the proprietor was local, he would certainly have heard of Ralph Ember. There weren’t many people in the area who had not heard of Ralph Ember of Low Pastures, and it would probably please the shop owner – if he was inside somewhere – to learn that a citizen of Ralph’s business stature should be interesting himself in this very modest, though certainly worthwhile, building project between a greengrocer’s and a men’s barber’s.

  Ralph broke off observing Bernie very briefly and smiled chummily across the load of cemented bricks in the lorry at an elderly woman leaving the greengrocer’s with a basket of mushrooms, lettuce and runner beans. Ralph would like her to think, ‘Good heavens, it’s Mr Ember of Low Pastures in person out buying some supplies.’ It was only an accident they should meet like that, but then, Ralph thought so much of life happened by chance. He tried to keep himself ready to take any good, unplanned opportunity that came.

  ‘Bon appétit,’ he said.

  ‘You sodding what?’ she replied.

  Ralph didn’t mind this casual rudeness too much. He saw it as one result of the woman’s shock at encountering him in a sneaky situation shaped by rubbish-laden lorries. When she reached home and was chewing the salad, she might recall this incident and regret her impromptu coarseness and hostility. She looked the sort who’d have second thoughts while eating something bland and therapeutic like lettuce.

  Ralph switched his gaze back to where Chail and his friend had been when Ralph was distracted by the shopper. They were still loitering there near the entrance to the arcade, perhaps waiting for fresh customers. This spot made a nice assembly point.

  Then, though, they seemed abruptly to change. They stepped into the arcade and began to walk quite fast towards Ralph and the lorries. The laughter had gone from their faces. In fact, Ralph could detect no expression there for either of them. They stared blankly ahead to the other end of the arcade. If they continued like this, they would pass very close to Ralph, and he had the feeling that they would continue like this. Their behaviour astonished him, baffled him. Bernie was certain to recognize Ralph, even if Bernie’s new companion didn’t, wasn’t perhaps local, and remained unfamiliar with the town’s main people such as Ralph Ember. Yet Chail gazed past Ralph, gave him not even a nod. Their faces continued empty.

  Ralph came to believe it was an act by these two: they pretended to be unaware. But why would they do that? Ralph suffered a terrible confusion. He had thought he was fooling Bernie by spying on him unobserved. In fact, though, it looked as if Chail had known what was happening. He was fooling Ralph, not vice versa. The life Ralph had built for himself, or thought he had built for himself, was endangered. Bits of it might collapse – might have already begun to collapse. His fond emoting over the broken brickwork suddenly seemed absurd. His magnificent tolerance to the woman shopper appeared farcical now, condescending and grandiose. He was holed up in heavy litter. That was the full extent of Ralph’s splendour, and he knew it. And, obviously, so did Chail.

  EIGHTEEN

  ‘You can be Mr High-and-Mighty, Mr X.’

  ‘Sir?’ Harpur was used to getting unintelligible messages from the assistant chief’s partially dangerous, questing mind, but could not recall anything of this tinge before. ‘Sir?’

  ‘Be outspoken and penetrative. Think of it as an extravaganza. A jeu d’esprit. As outspoken as you like.’ A gorgeous thrum of totally unreliable friendship moved into Iles’s tone. ‘I trust you utterly.’

  ‘Thank you, sir.’

  ‘And I’m sure you would say absolutely ditto about me,’ Iles remarked. ‘We’ll con the bastards,’ he added. ‘Kindly read this, would you, Col?’ He handed Harpur a letter. It showed that Iles had somehow scrambled his way onto the shortlist for a chief constable post in Northern Britain. Harpur read quickly. He gathered that the ACC wanted to prepare himself by rehearsing the kind of interview he’d face, with Harpur playing the interviewing officer – Mr High-and-Mighty. Harpur didn’t feel altogether at ease with this prospect. To be Harpur when Iles was Iles could be difficult enough, but to be Iles when he was actually Harpur and vice versa piled on the stress a bit.

  Harpur had heard the rumours about Iles’s possible future, of course. For instance, Intelligent had mentioned them, and occasionally Iles himself had given a hint or two that he might be trying for a new post. Harpur didn’t think the ACC had spoken of that lately, though. It might be a tender subject if he’d had failures. Harpur didn’t believe his affair with Sarah Iles had much to do with the assistant chief’s alleged wish for a move. That was over, though Harpur knew the thought of it could still drive Iles half insane.