‘No shame? Right, sir? Is that your point?’ Harpur replied.

  ‘One sees an inevitability about these developments,’ Iles said.

  ‘Right, sir.’

  ‘There were bound to be side-effects,’ Iles said.

  ‘To what sir?’ Harpur asked.

  ‘Oh yes,’ Iles replied.

  Harpur searched his store of vocabulary for some soft soap: ‘I wouldn’t be so brazen as to rush in with an interpretation of your comments, sir, but I think I do see their main thrust and respect it.’

  ‘Thank you, thank you, thank you, I’m fucking sure,’ Iles said.

  ‘Inevitable. Exactly. Destined,’ Harpur said. Iles had his own way of looking at things, not always what Harpur would have expected; possibly not always what Iles would have expected either, and he’d hit back. ‘Thank you (in triplicate) I’m fucking sure,’ was not a friendly response to Harpur’s lame praise.

  Harpur’s method of dealing with Iles’s occasional egomaniac outbursts was to pretend they hadn’t taken place, and keep talking about something else, that is, move sideways, the same technique as he used when he and Iles talked about Sarah: escape, if escape were possible.

  ‘How I see it, you as Operations have given this domain, sir, a serene and prosperous reputation and character through a progressive attitude on drugs, namely toleration of the trade as long as it keeps gang warfare off the streets. It’s what I tried to get at when I referred to the “immediate” and “the general picture”. Property values here have soared, as they have in other areas with permissive policies of that sort – Colorado in the States, for instance, I’m told. Some of the more distinguished housing on our patch has seen a rise in worth of almost a third in less than a year. I’m thinking of, say, Panicking Ralph Ember’s Low Pastures. I was chatting to an estate agent recently.

  ‘But, of course, our radiantly admirable conditions are envied by those living in less comfortable parts of the country and, yes, other countries, too. The good word about our enlightened regime is around and far reaching. Our success attracts others. People want to leave – get away from – those rough conditions and switch to here. I mean not just smokers and snorters, though there are many of those. But it’s also folk who want no more than a safe, ordered and cheerful environment for themselves and their children. Brilliantly, devotedly, courageously you have helped provide that for them, sir,’ Harpur said.

  ‘Regrettably, there is a bad side to that picture of our grounds, though,’ Harpur continued. ‘This fine city by its very excellence makes it liable to attack and, yes, to its own possible devastation. Drugs big-fellows from elsewhere see marketing opportunities in this charming, peaceable, well-heeled community. They naturally want to establish themselves and their business here. As we’ve said, “inevitable”. And more than one of these opportunists hopes to break into this territory. Hence, there will be, or already is, vicious competition. Is our dead stranger part of it? I think so. The property inflation is very comforting for the owners like Ralph Ember, of course. Yet, it is also unnerving. It is bound to attract money launderers, crooked gang masters, bent tycoons. We can visualize, can’t we, some big villain telling one of his women, “I’ll get to lie down in Low Pastures”.’

  Harpur knew Iles would not like this kind of plonking verbiage even if true, or especially if true. The assistant chief was sure to be infuriated by somebody who would actually say ‘hence’ in serious conversation, which was why Harpur had used it.

  ‘Did you mention implications, Col?’ Iles said. ‘Yes, I think you might be on to something.’ Now and then the ACC liked to hearten Harpur with a bit of praise. Iles had created for himself a kind of brisk aggression when dealing with Harpur. He would stick with it now. Of course, Harpur’s affair with Sarah Iles made an extra reason for enmity. Anyway, whatever the reason or reasons. Iles found he couldn’t rid himself of them, except very infrequently: now, for instance. This surprised him. Maybe a shift away would make him gentler.

  They left the body with the Murder Squad and Harpur drove home. It was near dawn. He more or less liked this time of day – or night. It meant you had a job. Who else would be up around now? True, the job had Iles in it and his monstrous quirks, but these could be managed. Harpur had heard those rumours that the ACC might be looking for an even bigger rank elsewhere, perhaps making any discussion of how to cope with him here irrelevant.

  Harpur must have woken Jill as he unlocked the front door at home. Jill, aged eleven, slept more lightly than her older sister, Hazel. Jill appeared on the landing in lightweight, blue pyjamas. Finger on his lips, Harpur signalled to her to keep quiet. From the hall Harpur tried to wave her back to bed. But he had an idea that wouldn’t work. It didn’t.

  She came down the stairs, her face split by a couple of yawns as she neared the bottom. ‘Emergency Dad?’ she said. ‘I mean – so late.’ He lowered his finger.

  ‘All OK,’ he said, whispering.

  ‘Yes, maybe, but so late, Dad. You’re getting old for these kinds of hours – shortness of breath, blood circulation slower. A lot of research has been done on the health of the middle-aged. Do they realize the difficulties when they sent you? It’s inconsiderate.’

  They hadn’t sent him. He’d sent himself. They hadn’t known about it until he’d told them. A tipster had given him an opportunity to act solo. It had been a gross breach of rules to search the corpse and not to report the find at once. Luckily, Iles, although an ACC, went along with this kind of self-serving, devious concealment from colleagues. He might have invented it.

  ‘What was it?’ Jill said.

  ‘What was what?’

  ‘Being out.’

  ‘An incident.’

  ‘I know it must have been an incident, don’t I, Dad, but what incident? Serious?’

  ‘Well, yes, serious,’ Harpur replied.

  ‘In the death category?’

  ‘Go back to bed now, please,’ Harpur said. ‘You’ll disturb Hazel.’

  ‘Was Des Iles involved?’

  ‘Bed,’ Harpur replied.

  ‘Iles was involved, wasn’t he?’

  ‘Iles is ACC (Operations), so something of this sort would be bound to come his way,’ Harpur said.

  ‘Something of which sort?’

  ‘It’s sure to fall within his responsibility,’ Harpur said.

  ‘What is?’

  ‘Incidents of this sort.’

  ‘Which?’ she asked.

  ‘Which what?’

  ‘Which sort?’ she said.

  ‘It’s all in hand now.’

  ‘Good,’ she said. ‘Is it because you were where it is?’

  ‘Sleep, please,’ Harpur replied.

  After a few more minutes, Jill seemed to realize that she would learn no more from him and climbed back upstairs. There was something about the methodical way her feet dealt with the stairs that declared she was happy to have done her duty.

  When he went into his bedroom, Denise, under the duvet, half awoke and reached blindly for her cigarette packet on the bedside table. Harpur pushed this to where she would be sure to reach it quickly. She had on a t-shirt he long ago used for jogging runs that she’d obviously found deep in one of the chest drawers amid a lot of forgotten-about clothes. Sometimes Denise grew very curious about Harpur’s past, and she must have done a real search to find the shirt. Before going out earlier, he’d mentioned he had a call and perhaps there was something in his voice that said it was something bad, something very bad, something grave.

  It pleased him in a big, big way that Denise was here. His children loved it when she stopped over, but it wasn’t a surprise to him. If she’d sensed Harpur had been summoned to an especially grim event, she would want to support and comfort him. That’s the kind of girl she was, though so young.

  She located the cigarette packet and closed her fingers affectionately around it. There was a lighter as well. She’d been sleeping on her left side, usual for Denise. She opened one eye and seemed to see him. She gave a small smile. A light burned at the far end of the room.

  ‘You’re back.’ That would be as much as she would say. The hour and perhaps the tone of his voice when he went out earlier must tell her that he’d been called to something very troublesome. She could probably tell he was deeply shaken. She wouldn’t want to probe for details. To be near him and full of love seemed to be enough. He was thankful. He knew he’d slip into top-grade self-pity if he examined his reactions to the dockside body. And self-pity would be a bit of a daft luxury. It wasn’t available to the man with half his head shot away and his pockets cleaned out. Denise must have spotted this frailty in Harpur. She wouldn’t like it.

  She moved back a couple of inches to make room for him in the bed. She reached past Harpur and shook a cigarette from the packet. She lit up. Harpur took the packet and the lighter from her. She eked out the smoke in oblong sections from her mouth and nose simultaneously, as if offering it help to adjust to the wider environment, and could only do that if the smoke arrived divided up into neat, well-behaved portions.

  ‘I can stay if you want, Col.’

  ‘I want. Do I ever not?’

  Denise was an undergraduate student at the local university. She often stopped over at Harpur’s house in Arthur Street. It wasn’t every night though: Denise had a room in one of the student blocks and spent some time there. Harpur knew she didn’t want anything too regular and/or binding with him – not yet, at any rate. He could understand this and sympathize. There was the matter of the age difference – her teens or twenties, he near-forties. Denise had most of her life still to come, some of it possibly exciting; Harpur had already seen off a fair chunk of his, much of it dull. He’d been thinking lately of retirement. Police pensions were very good, part paid for by officers still serving, like Harpur.

  Of course, that was not such a huge age gap. He knew of many good relationships with similar arithmetic. Denise might not like the prospect, though, and her parents probably wouldn’t feel altogether OK about it.

  He put the packet and lighter back on the table. He undressed and placed his clothes neatly on a couple of chairs. He knew he’d better be tidy in case his children, Hazel and Jill, came to welcome him later on this morning. They hated scruffiness. That made them sound prim and overbearing; the situation was not so simple, though. A while back their mother had been killed, had been murdered on a train.1 They had an idea that as a result the household, led by Harpur, unaided, would drift into chaos and they were very vigilant for early signs. It would offend and alarm them if he left his suit and the rest of his gear on the floor. They’d wonder whether shambles had set in. The fact that the cast-off gear could indicate sexual urgency should ease their worries, perhaps. He sat on the bit of bed Denise had cleared for him, then swung his legs in and snuggled against her body. She finished the cigarette and leaned across him to crush out the stub in a saucer where there were three already.

  ‘I’ve been thinking a lot about you, Col.’ She was still lying across him. Her breasts felt heart-warming. This positioning made Harpur see more of the point in smoking.

  ‘I can tell,’ he said. He had a corpse with a smashed head to think about, but that was off-limits as a chat topic. Life should be about being pinned under a girl in bed if possible. Although Denise continued to give the dibby end a very thorough belabouring, she turned her head twenty degrees. ‘How?’ she said.

  ‘How, what?’ Harpur said.

  ‘How could you know I’ve been thinking of you a lot?’

  ‘Because I’ve been thinking a lot about you,’ he said. ‘We’re like that. We match each other. No smugness, but I would expect it.’

  ‘That’s nice,’ she said.

  ‘But obvious,’ Harpur said.

  ‘Well, yes.’ She was a girl being trained by the higher education system to think ruthlessly and properly, and Harpur could tell she recognized his reply as prime bullshit, not obvious at all, but felt duty-bound to keep these few minutes of babble sweet and magical. They were rare. She wouldn’t get that kind of top-class smarm in her student accommodation block. Because of how she was physically stretched, and because of the smoke, her voice had become croaky. Briefly, as she dealt with the stub, her elbow was hard into his midriff. This Harpur liked. It was one of several factors that made it unique to him, too – the smoking, the smoking in bed, the intimacy, the carefully crafted conversation. A relationship ought to have rough points and they should be shared, particularized.

  When she’d done convincingly for the cigarette end, then moved to sit alongside him, he could pull the t-shirt up over her head with a little help from Denise and he had his arms around her, pressing her close to him, and later so much closer. She had the lovely, happy knack of suggesting in moments like this that she desired him as much as he desired her. These young nipples spoke lovingly to him. She drew nearer, putting them chest to chest. This was something that thrilled him, especially as he knew the excitement either way was brilliantly equal, or that was how it felt to Harpur, and Harpur was no fool optimist. He’d had enough good episodes in his life to help him recognize the near-perfect, and this present moment did nearly reach that. It was worth staying up late for. When they kissed it was like a celebration, an endorsement. It had in it some of the certainty Harpur craved. It did, didn’t it? He rolled further into the bed. Her body responded to him with a gentle, encompassing warmth. She no longer had the fag-end to distract her. There was a scent base but no more than faint. It had to fight hard against the smoke. It put Harpur in mind of the delicate waft that came to him when, as a child, he and his mother would gather primroses in the May sunshine.

  He lay on his back with his legs apart. She got on top of him and knelt between them, placing her head and face to fondly inspect Harpur’s. It seemed a good long stare and he reckoned it was full of joy and satisfaction. Her smile grew wider now and didn’t at all seem short of something on account of the missing ciggie. Harpur felt pleased, though not flashily. On those past trips with the plucked primroses, he’d found the flowers lost their freshness very fast but he’d enjoyed them all the same. Same with this moment? But, surely, if she were troubled by the age business, she would not want to gaze for so long and from so near.

  Harpur put up his hands and laced them together behind her head. He drew her head and face down to him so they could kiss again. He thought he felt a true and gorgeous permanence in the kiss. But didn’t he always try to persuade himself into that hope when they kissed? He sought this durability by fixing his mind and eyes on to the section of her face he felt most for – Denise’s brow merging with her cheek in a perfect, gentle slow drift. It was almost a curve, but Harpur wanted nothing so gaudy as jutting cheekbones. What he did want was her ever-welcome face looking down at him, or up at him, for that matter, if they were in reverse position – and they were often in reverse positions, as well as others.

  Despite his gloom over what had happened at the dredger, he was still capable of wonderful joy with Denise. That was not something he’d allow himself to spell out or even think very often. Of course, there had been a life pre-Denise. He mustn’t disown whatever came earlier. He thought she would understand this reluctance to talk much about the past, but he couldn’t – couldn’t – risk it. That might be the extreme caginess of age. As long as Denise was in the cage with him, this seemed to Harpur a reasonable compromise. The children would certainly OK it. Their approval was important because of their anxieties, though not crucial. They wouldn’t expect it to be crucial, in fact would regard such a demand as stupidly destructive, blasting lovers apart.

  She began to move strongly on him, keeping them locked together, him blissfully enclosed in her.

  When they rested, she said: ‘Do you know why I love you so much?’

  ‘I try not to ask myself that kind of question,’ he said. And this was fairly true.

  ‘Which kind?’ she said.

  ‘The charming and marvellously promising kind,’ Harpur replied.

  ‘I like “promising”,’ she said. ‘It’s declaring there’ll be a future.’

  ‘Yes please,’ Harpur said. ‘No need for analysis.’

  ‘I wondered whether you were afraid,’ she said.

  ‘Afraid of what?’

  ‘Too much definition of where we’re at – what we are to each other,’ she said.

  ‘Definition?’

  ‘Impairment of the magic.’

  ‘Do you think I ought to be scared?’

  ‘I don’t want you nervous and insecure, Col, I’d hate that.’

  ‘Would you?’

  ‘It’s not how love should be, is it?’

  ‘No. I’d hate that, too.’

  ‘That’s one of the reasons I come along – to tell you it’s not, and show you it’s not, regardless.’

  ‘Regardless of what?’ he said.

  ‘Some snags,’ she said. ‘Difficulties. Circumstances.’

  ‘Yes, circumstances are not totally favourable. But you’re strong, Denise, you always cope.’

  ‘I like it,’ she said.

  ‘What?’

  ‘Coping.’

  ‘I like it, too, that you cope. I feel safer.’

  ‘Good, Col. Some sleep, now,’ she said.

  ‘You’ve had some already. You deserve it.’

  ‘I’ll get up soon and keep Hazel and Jill out while you get some more shut-eye.’

  Harpur began to snore. She cuddled into him more energetically. The din told her she’d provided Harpur with a spell of peace as well as happy naked togetherness. She reckoned this was the right place for her, tucked in so comfortably against him, the noise, soothing, ugly and familiar. She felt big contentment from wearing just now his one-time jogging shirt. She had searched two chests of drawers for something crumpled like this. She wanted such an item – worn-looking, old or oldish. It might help her feel in touch with Col before she met him; in fact, most probably when she was still at school. His past intrigued her. She didn’t know much about it, however. Anyone could have spotted that Harpur was more than a bit disturbed tonight. He wouldn’t let her in on account of why, though. The job was like that. She wouldn’t query it.