All this added up to one blunt message from Iles and Harpur, and, of course, it was a message that Ralph found entirely right and good. He could purr agreement with this message. Certainly he could. If he was into composing messages himself, this might be the kind he’d send.

  But, although he agreed absolutely with what the message said, it angered him that they clearly felt compelled to deliver it urgently to him, as though otherwise he might go under, might crumple, might fall apart before he could be given some guts. Was this a respectful way to deal with Ralph W. Ember of Low Pastures and The Monty? Was it, fuck! In their devious, contemptible fashion, they insisted there could be no effective change from the present smooth arrangement between Ralph and the ACC – peace in our time its admirable, wholesome aim. Although this was not a particularly usual arrangement – top cop, drugs commodore – it worked. Until now, that is; and Ralph thought it beautifully comfortable. But for them to behave as though he lacked the will and courage to help guard this fine, time-blessed set-up was surely a rotten smear.

  Ralph realized his own interests were not the only ones involved. Obviously ACC Iles wouldn’t want on his ground a bigger recreational business, headed by unpredictable, potentially very aggressive strangers. And it would be even bigger if Mansel Shale’s handsome empire also was infiltrated and colonized.

  ‘I’m going to increase patrols around Low Pastures and on the route from there to the club and back, Ralph,’ Iles said. ‘Oh, I’m sure you’ll protest and say it’s not necessary and meddlesome. But you’re regularly driving there alone late at night. And we’ll keep an eye on your children – gymkhanas, netball, school, that kind of scene. We’re devoted to holy status-quo-dom, aren’t we, Col?’

  Harpur didn’t answer.

  ‘Yes, I do feel none – none of this might be necessary,’ Ralph said.

  ‘None of which, Ralph?’ Iles said.

  ‘We’re talking about possibilities, not facts,’ Ralph replied.

  ‘Thank you for the correction, I’m sure,’ Iles said.

  ‘Anyone could have made this point,’ Ralph said.

  ‘Yes, anyone could have,’ Iles said. ‘Dozy, bland unpreparedness is commonplace. I’ll increase the patrols, I think. We don’t want you riddled and leaking Kressmann’s Armagnac on to the highway, Ralph. That’s your tipple, isn’t it?’

  FOUR

  About a week later, at 2.15 a.m., driving up alone towards Low Pastures, near Apsley Farm, Harpur saw a parked Volvo in a layby ahead, no lights. It was a fine, almost cloudless night. As he drew nearer, he could make out two people in the front seats, the one behind the wheel possibly a woman. Good: he was half-expecting to see a parked, occupied car showing no lights on this stretch of road now. As for stretches of road, this stretch could be notable and he needed to be on it and taking a look.

  Although the two in the Volvo wore plain clothes, Harpur knew they must be one of the ACC’s increased patrols. He’d mentioned the route Ralph Ember generally took to get back to Low Pastures after a late-night spell at The Monty.

  Harpur had decided to do a couple of checks and make sure the new ‘arrangements’ were functioning OK. It suited him anyway to come out tonight. Denise, his undergraduate girlfriend, had gone home to Stafford for her mother’s birthday and wasn’t sleeping at Harpur’s house in Arthur Street as she often did – some nights there, some in her room at Jonson Court, a student accommodation block without an h. It was easier to leave his bed when Denise wasn’t in it. Harpur’s daughters also liked it when she stopped over and cooked special breakfasts, heavy on the black pudding.

  Harpur didn’t mind all that much giving up a couple of hours for a little non-urgent tour. He assumed it would be non-urgent, though Iles had astonishingly sharp instincts and frequently spotted big trouble on the way before anyone else noticed, Harpur sometimes included.

  He pulled in and parked partway along the Volvo so he and the driver could talk with their side windows rolled down. He recognized Detective Sergeant Tracy Dilk now. In the passenger seat alongside her was Detective Constable Roy Verity-Wright. ‘Good morning, Mr Harpur,’ Tracy said. ‘We’ve nothing to report.’

  Tracy was cheerful, quick to cotton on, her fair hair cut short, snub nosed, small chinned, tipped for fast promotion. ‘Nothing moves, total stillness,’ she said. ‘Explainable: our unit watching The Monty tell us he’s going to be later than usual. There’s a big club thrash celebrating Intelligent Percy’s acquittal against the odds in that wounding with intent trial verdict yesterday.’

  ‘We’ve been discussing this lurking roadside duty, Mr Harpur,’ Roy said, speaking across Tracy.

  ‘Well, I suppose so,’ Harpur replied. Roy was new to the Force and Harpur guessed he’d be striving to get the tone of things. Harpur could imagine what a tough exercise this must be for someone unfamiliar with police methods here. Roy was about twenty-six, lean, long faced, athletic looking, smooth voiced.

  ‘Out on a quiet country road at this time of night,’ Roy said. ‘Why is Ralphy Ember so precious?’

  ‘He doesn’t like being called Ralphy. It’s Ralph or Ember,’ Harpur said.

  ‘But why so precious to Mr Iles? He’s behind this operation, isn’t he?’ Roy said.

  ‘He’s assistant chief (Operations),’ Harpur said. He would frequently hear this kind of niggly inquiry about Iles. Even more frequently, he’d be aware of it hovering near during a conversation, though not actually spoken, perhaps from tact, more likely from uneasiness. These questions asked in their various forms, and behind their suggestive, evasive, money-bags words like ‘precious’, whether Iles was on Ember’s payroll, and obliged to look after him in case Ralph and the stipend were abruptly stopped.

  Harpur knew that Iles would never touch that kind of relationship, or that kind of money – would regard both as ridiculously beneath him – but Harpur also knew how it must appear to someone like Roy, fresh to the situation, unfledged, and with his own rather inaccurate idea of how policing functioned, possibly, and more than possibly, familiar with TV documentaries or playlets about police corruption where officers were bought by criminals for their influence.

  ‘Mr Iles is to do with operations but also with overall policy,’ Tracy said.

  Harpur was thankful for her intervention. It didn’t really say much – perhaps she genuinely didn’t believe Iles bribable just as Harpur didn’t – or not much that actually answered Roy’s queries—but she saved Harpur from having to say something empty and trite himself.

  ‘It’s a matter of domain, is it?’ Roy said. He gave that word, ‘domain’, a hearty emphasis.

  ‘Domain?’ Harpur replied. He tried to call up in his memory Roy’s CV. Did he have a degree in history, perhaps ancient history?

  ‘Realm,’ Roy said. ‘His territory. Do you know whom it reminds me of when people speak of Mr Iles, sir?’

  ‘Who’s that then, Roy?’ Harpur said, getting some strong interest into his tone.

  ‘King Ashurdanipal of Assyria.’

  ‘Ah, yes, of course,’ Harpur said.

  ‘Shouldn’t that be Ashurbanipal?’ Tracy said.

  ‘There’s the famous excavated stone relief known as The Lion Hunt,’ Roy said. ‘It shows the king fighting off the savage beasts because as monarch he has a duty to create and preserve order, and the lions represent an evil threat from outside.

  ‘Is Mr Iles in that role? We are deputed on the assistant chief’s behalf to repel a threat, but we don’t know where it’s supposed to be coming from or even what or who it is,’ Roy said.

  ‘Not lions,’ Harpur replied. Sometimes he wondered whether recruiting graduates at all was very wise.

  ‘I don’t think we’ve been briefed in detail on our function here,’ Roy said. ‘Very non-specific. We are like traffic cops but are not traffic cops.’

  ‘The worst threats are often like that,’ Tracy said. ‘Undefined, at least early on.’

  ‘Right,’ Harpur said.

  ‘Something else troubles me,’ Roy said.

  ‘Oh, yes?’ Harpur replied.

  ‘Sergeant Dilk is armed, but not me,’ Roy said.

  ‘You’re still due a gun course,’ Tracy said.

  ‘Does Mr Iles think Ralph Ember is essential to good order and lawfulness on his bailiwick?’ Roy replied. ‘Doesn’t he think his officers are capable of doing the job?’

  ‘Mr Iles is a real fan of peace,’ Harpur said.

  ‘And he thinks that a drugs tycoon will help him secure it?’ Roy replied. ‘Or two drugs tycoons, if we take in Mansel Shale’s companies?’

  ‘Manse is certainly part of the general scene,’ Harpur said, ‘and part of a happy collab with Ember.’

  ‘So I’ve heard,’ Roy said.

  ‘Oh, yes. That’s a remarkable, enduring, tranquil dual-act, Ralph and Manse,’ Harpur said.

  ‘And cheered on by Mr Iles?’ Roy asked. He sounded amazed, horrified now.

  ‘Peace is a slippery item, Roy,’ Harpur said. ‘Not everyone is in the hunt for it, and so there’ll be strange alliances, unspoken bargains, stretched tolerance.’

  ‘Yes, but—’

  ‘In London peace has gone absent. Murders daily. Gang-based,’ Harpur said. ‘Mr Iles hates that sort of degenerate turmoil, doesn’t want such appalling break-down here – thinks it unnecessary and his mission is to prevent it. Maybe it can develop in Manchester, possibly Birmingham, but it’s not us. And it won’t be us for as long as Mr Iles is in charge.’

  ‘Unnecessary?’ Roy replied. ‘A strange word in this context, if I may say so, sir. Obviously, it couldn’t be thought of as necessary.’

  ‘Exactly.’ Harpur started his engine.

  ‘The question has to be, “Is he actually in charge?”,’ Roy said.

  ‘I’ll take a swift look at Low Pastures,’ Harpur replied. He drew away from the Volvo.

  FIVE

  Harpur didn’t know much about age-old houses, but he did know that some people were very keen on properties with a lot of history, preferably standing alone in their own grounds, though a lengthy past was the absolute essential, not the location. Low Pastures could claim both: Harpur had heard it dated from the seventeenth century, and the house stood solo, surrounded by its lawns, gardens, walks, pergolas, paddocks, a small arboretum, stables, patios. It was approached by a broad tree-and-bush-lined drive, part gravelled, part tarmac.

  Distinguished people had occupied this estate at various periods over the centuries. Harpur knew Ralph Ember was exceptionally pleased and proud to figure in that succession, and aimed to be absolutely worthy of it – a compulsion. He could reason, couldn’t he, that if impressive figures had lived here in the past, then its owner now must inherit a fair portion of that impressiveness? Well, no, that wasn’t in the least logical. It didn’t at all follow that personal distinction came with the title-deeds. But Ralph could probably kid himself that it did. He would most likely feel able to shut out from this inane but comforting deduction the fact that, not long before Ralph moved in, Low Pastures had been occupied by an outright, brutal villain, Caring Oliver Leach. Did he inherit some of this impressiveness, too? Not that Harpur had heard. He understood, though, why Low Pastures did so much for Ralph’s morale and ego.

  It was a couple of miles from the Volvo layby to Low Pastures. As he drove, Harpur went over in his memory bits of the conversation with Verity-Wright and Tracy. He thought Roy might be OK despite that cumbersome, showy education. Some questions were best kept shelved.

  No, Roy couldn’t have the replies he wanted and almost forgivably felt entitled to, but Harpur thought Roy did get something to consider while he and Tracy waited for Ralph, and whatever else – ‘and whatever else’ being why they were there. Harpur wondered if Roy might begin to realize as he took on his new job that it was like entering a country of bewilderingly vague outlines and borders, some considerable areas extremely murky and misleading or blocked off; but very small sectors of it nearly clear-cut and untricky.

  Ember would probably have been able to explain some of these deep complications to Roy. Harpur felt sure Ralph was stuck with an awkward load of them. For instance, think of The Monty and Intelligent Percy’s non-clink gala there tonight. Ralph, this ardent, indomitable seeker after respectable eminence and honour, dedicated environmentalist and enemy of river pollution, proprietor of an esteemed, time-graced, classic home, was, regardless of all that flagrant top-notchery, taking part in and hosting a grand, hearty, celebratory piss-up at the club for an infinitely dubious character, Percival Cranfield Nain, or Intelligent Percy, as he was dubbed.

  OK, he had been found not guilty, and in some senses he and his shindig were totally pure, completely wholesome and innocent. But Harpur knew that in Percy’s wounding case, as in so many other cases these days, it had been impossible to find witnesses brave enough to go into the box and say what they had seen. Yes, yes, it was an acquittal for lack of evidence, but what brand of acquittal? Would Verity-Wright be able to get his head around this? Roy might need another year or two in the job for such brands of setback to seem normal. Roy would come to realize why so many cases brought by the police depended on informants. Although informants did not appear at trials, because they could give detectives only tip-offs, not proper evidence, the tip-offs could be priceless. Perhaps that was the wrong word: most informants were paid.

  Harpur thought Ralph might ask himself this – the validity of the acquittal – though probably not out loud, and definitely not out loud if Intelligent was close by. Percy had been declared guiltless, but he did know about knives. Ralph himself could still get caught up in a dire hotchpotch of possible reactions. First, he’d fear that news of his loud, comradely involvement in Percy’s sleazy carnival at The Monty would spread. This must disastrously damage Ralph’s holy, preposterous crusade to improve the club’s profile and lift it into the same class as, say, The Athenaeum in London. Ralph might be willing to admit that The Athenaeum could have a member nicknamed Intelligent, but it would be for winning the Nobel prize, not for repeatedly making the police and courts look twats.

  Secondly, though, while Ralph would certainly realize how risky it was to encourage and cheer on tonight’s crummy jubilation, he had to oblige because The Monty was his, and The Monty had – in Ralph’s unwavering opinion – a famous, positive, warm, major social role in this city, and might soon become even more major when he started a series of improvements.

  Ralph would be accustomed to such confusion, such a frustrating jumble, such contradictions. His middle name could have been Contradictions, but in fact it was Wyverne. If he and Roy met and had a little time, Ralph could certainly tell him about the troublesome shifts and staggering variety hereabouts. Stay alert, Roy!

  Harpur passed the entrance to Low Pastures’ drive and parked on a patch of grass a little way beyond. He took a torch from his car and walked back. He tried to step quietly. He wanted to have a quick, private look at the house close to, and particularly at the extension works mentioned by Iles. The ACC was probably right to sense extra danger. As much as possible, Harpur would imagine and imitate the possible approach of someone – perhaps more than one – aiming to get at Ralph and/or his family. It might help Harpur plan Low Pastures’ defences.

  The fact that Ralph wasn’t here now didn’t matter very much. It was the vulnerability or not of the house that concerned Harpur. It concerned him because it had obviously concerned Iles, and Iles didn’t get concerned easily, except about his Adam’s apple.

  Harpur realized that when Ralph saw the Volvo on his journey home, he would tense up and wonder why they were there. This wasn’t a much-used bit of road. What orders had those two been given? They might be in place simply to see Ralph got back to Low Pastures safely, and wouldn’t need to intercept unless someone else, or, again, more than one, tried to waylay him. Harpur hoped everything would pass peacefully, and he’d gone that small distance out of sight beyond the entrance so his car wouldn’t tell Ralph he had a prowler. He might be able to slip away eventually without Ralph knowing he’d been here.

  Harpur didn’t stay long on the Low Pastures drive. He felt obvious there. He’d be caught in Ralph’s headlights if he returned shortly from the club. Harpur made his way instead across one of the paddocks towards the eastern end of the house. Scaffolding had been erected there. A JCB, a couple of wheelbarrows and a cement mixer stood nearby, and there were several metal ladders on the ground. Except for a single light over the porch, the house was dark. Harpur thought he remembered from the earlier survey that there was an anti-burglar camera over the door.

  Near the edge of this paddock he saw a summerhouse, tongue-and-groove-wood-built, painted dark green to merge with the natural setting. It faced west and would get afternoon sun. Harpur liked to think of Ralph sitting on a padded garden chair in front of the summerhouse, possibly with a glass of Armagnac, planning that glorious future for The Monty. He might be making a list in his head of well-known intellectuals, business leaders and high-grade politicians – all definitely vetted by research as proven non-paederasts – who would be invited to give talks there, mentioned in advance on the public appointments page of The Times in the next column to the Court Circular. Ralph took The Times because it contained that kind of stuff. A paper like The Sun wouldn’t have it. All The Sun was interested in was what celebrities, as it called them, were up to, mostly sexual.

  The summerhouse had windows on both sides, and front and back, and Harpur thought it could act as an excellent security post if Iles decided Low Pastures needed serious protection, perhaps armed protection. Harpur knew that during the Irish troubles, people considered at risk often had all-weather shacks installed in their back gardens to billet minders. The summerhouse had good vision over large stretches of the grounds, though only in front of the main house, not the rear. That area needed something different, something just as effective. To neglect the back of the property would be utterly stupid.

  As far as Harpur could make out at this stage and in the dark, the addition to the building would be a two-storey job of stone about 30 feet square, pitch roofed and gabled to match the style of the main house. Some of that sand from the wharf might be in use. Harpur saw why Iles thought the work could possibly bring extra safeguarding problems. The alterations required a break through the end wall at ground and first-floor level to join the two parts of the house. Although these gaps had been boarded over and the planks nailed in place temporarily when work finished for the day, there were obvious weaknesses, almost invitations.