‘Some people do, yes,’ Harpur said.

  ‘It’s usually about his job,’ Jill said. ‘Police so far.’

  ‘Yes, his job,’ the woman said.

  ‘There are many sides to his job,’ Jill said. ‘All sorts.’

  ‘Yes, I expect so. But it’s just one of them that interests me,’ the woman said.

  ‘It’s true about most of the people who call,’ Jill said. ‘They have a simple topic that is troubling them.’ Hazel joined them in the porch.

  ‘I’d have guessed as much,’ the woman said.

  ‘Some of it is confidential.’

  ‘Yes,’ the woman said.

  ‘He won’t be able to talk to you about that,’ Jill replied. ‘I think you should understand this so as not to be disappointed. He’ll do whatever he can but there are boundaries imposed by the situation. He’ll say the inquiries are “ongoing”. This is one of those police words – “ongoing”. If an inquiry is ongoing, it means that nobody who is not a cop will be allowed a true sniff of it. In fact the inquiries might not be ongoing at all, but they can’t admit that because it would make them look lazy and stupid.

  ‘Or then there’s “at this juncture”. He or one of his team will say, “We cannot disclose further information at this juncture.” Of course, that makes it sound like although they can’t reveal anything at this juncture, meaning now, there’ll be other junctures in the future and the information will be available at this later juncture, so all that’s required is patience and the ability to spot the kind of juncture that will be helpful. There are plenty of junctures floating about. Some people believe what they’re told about junctures, some don’t.’

  ‘Right,’ the woman said.

  ‘I’m sure you knew that was his job.’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Or you wouldn’t be here,’ Jill said.

  ‘It’s definitely the police side of things I wanted to discuss,’ the woman said.

  ‘He doesn’t do Traffic or lost dogs or anything like that. Those are other departments. Dad hardly ever wears a uniform. He’s a detective, detective chief superintendent, and he spends his time finding out things that were hidden. Investigations, they’re called. Most of the time he tries not to seem like police. This is why he doesn’t wear a uniform. He can merge with the population. He digs.’

  ‘That’s what I want,’ the woman said.

  ‘Sometimes we can help Dad – that is, help Dad help the person he is doing his best to help, because sometimes his best is not the kind of best needed, isn’t good enough. No, I’ve got that wrong. It’s because he is coming from another era. Things are different. It’s sad, really. I believe it depresses him, makes him think he should try a different kind of life. New for him.’

  ‘I’m sure he appreciates your efforts,’ the woman said.

  ‘The female angle,’ Jill replied. ‘We can give him some of that. His girlfriend called Denise has plenty of it, but she’s not always here, owing to being a student with a lot of friends. Maybe we’d be able to help him help you, for instance. There used to be our mother also to show the female angle. But she’s not here now, either.’

  ‘I heard about that,’ the woman said.

  ‘Murdered.3 It had something to do with an investigation.’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘And also youth,’ Jill replied.

  ‘Youth?’

  ‘Although Dad’s not old – you’re not old are you, Dad?’ She turned her face towards him again. ‘He’s not young, either. Pension in sight. So, we can let him know any youth stuff. Guidance. That’s me and my sister, Hazel. I mentioned an era just now.’

  ‘I’m not youth,’ the woman said.

  ‘No, but you are young, youngish,’ Jill said.

  ‘So far,’ the woman replied.

  ‘When we’re talking like this, I’m sorry to call you just “you”. I don’t know your name. “You” sounds so cold,’ Jill said.

  ‘Rebecca.’

  ‘It’s a Bible name, isn’t it?’ Hazel said.

  ‘What?’

  ‘Rebecca in the Old Testament. Dad knows the Bible. His parents made him go to Sunday school, although he didn’t want to,’ Hazel said.

  ‘Rebecca was the wife of Isaac, mother of Jacob,’ Harpur said.

  ‘There,’ Jill said.

  ‘We generally spell it with two cc’s in the middle, the Bible with a k,’ Harpur said. He decided it was time to stop Jill, and now Hazel as well, trundling on in that style of hers.

  ‘I have a feeling you’re here about a man found dead at the sand and gravel wharf in the docks, Lawrence Ilk Masel,’ he said. He eased Jill aside so he could speak more directly to the visitor.

  ‘Yes,’ she said. ‘Clever of you.’

  ‘There are times when Dad can be clever,’ Jill said. ‘This murder has been in the papers and on telly.’ She grasped Harpur’s arm. ‘But, dad, aren’t we terribly rude to be keeping Rebecca out in the porch like she was some nuisance sales person?’

  ‘Very rude,’ Harpur said.

  ‘You knew the dead man, did you, Rebecca?’ Hazel said.

  ‘We were close.’

  This kind of front-door vetting was a procedure the girls had used before. If one of them answered the doorbell before him they’d do a sort of scrutiny routine on the stranger, trying to work out whether it was the kind of caller who could be useful to their father, or only a possible gabby nuisance. There were enough of those available. Not everyone who came made it into the house. But Jill stood aside now, tugging Harpur with her, and the woman stepped past them. Harpur pointed through the open door of the house towards the sitting room, inviting Rebecca in. But she said: ‘I have this fierce need. I’d like to go now, immediately, to see where it happened to him. I’m sorry if I sound demanding and impatient. But perhaps you’ll understand.’

  ‘Of course we do,’ Jill said. ‘Yes, yes. Dad will drive us, won’t you, Dad?’

  ‘It all looks so cosy in the sitting room, but I’m not here for cosiness.’

  Hazel suddenly went out to the middle of the little lawn in front of the house. She arranged herself into what Harpur thought must be a ballet stance on her toes, arms above her head and stretched upwards. They did some ballet exercises at school. She performed a slow spin, a big, exuberant smile on her face. It was as if she had an enthusiastic audience, not just Rebecca, Harpur and Jill. Harpur felt deeply surprised. Hazel was not normally an exhibitionist. There were times, in fact, when she looked formidably stern, especially stern for a child.

  ‘I depict contentment,’ Hazel said. ‘That room you glimpsed, Rebecca, is what people are looking for. It brings satisfaction, happiness, restfulness.’

  ‘Which people?’ Jill said.

  ‘People looking for somewhere comfortable, tranquil.’

  ‘Like me?’ Rebecca said.

  ‘I’m sorry to say so, but yes,’ Hazel said. ‘It tells them they are on the right track. This room is part of that peace and quiet pleasure, and is part of why Rebecca is here. Nothing against you for that, Rebecca, absolutely nothing at all. Only sensible. But it will give you a taste for it, won’t it?’

  Jill said: ‘And her … well, ex-boyfriend was the same.’

  ‘Right then, I think we ought to go and see the site,’ Harpur said. ‘That’s probably why Rebecca has come from London. Well, she has said as much.’ One of his daughters had invited Rebecca – or more or less invited her – into the house; the other had laid on a stage show for her. Harpur thought them wonderful assets.

  ‘I want to see personally how matters are going – the investigation,’ Rebecca said. ‘I fear things might be developing as they have in other big cities. The drugs trade has taken over. These are new conditions, not happy ones. Was my dead friend trapped in them? It’s a very scary notion.’

  Harpur drove the four of them to the docks. Another dredger was moored at the same sand and gravel wharf as when he’d found the body. A ten-foot-high pyramid of sand stood near the ship, ready for distribution by truck to building works somewhere, maybe at Ralph’s. It was the kind of commerce Harpur understood and sympathized with.

  While they watched from the car, three teenage boys began to play around the sand heap, flinging handfuls at one another. One of them did an imitation stagger of how someone might collapse if just about to die from a shooting. He fell face down into the sand. The others giggled and hooted. In its addled way, the childish moment of corny theatricals comforted Harpur. For cities much accustomed to murders, there would not be any point in mocking someone’s death performance: mickey-taking of it would be no more than farce. Gross, doomed farce. Perhaps Rebecca was used to that kind of cruel gig. Rebecca got out of the car and approached them, but said nothing. Soon, Hazel came and stood alongside her. She took a light grip on Rebecca’s shoulder. Neither spoke. The boy in the sand twitched a bit like death throes, setting off little grubby rivulets near his knees and his jaw.

  Harpur drove them back with Rebecca alongside him in the passenger seat. He thought she had become sort of sheepish. ‘But look, I’m not sure I should be saying this – not sure at all.’ She made her voice big and plonkish. ‘Is there free speech here?’

  ‘It sounds to me like it could be helpful, whatever it is,’ Jill said. ‘Doesn’t it seem to you, Dad, that Rebecca might have something quite helpful to tell us.’

  ‘Certainly,’ Harpur said.

  ‘Kindly of you to say so,’ Rebecca said. ‘But I wondered if you knew it already.’

  ‘Know it already?’ Hazel said.

  ‘Which?’ Jill said.

  ‘Which bits of it do you think Dad knows already?’

  ‘He is from a sort who know a lot without showing,’ Jill said. ‘That’s how police are, blank as blank, but they’ll bring an item out suddenly, give you a shock, put you off balance. They have to deal with real hard people who won’t talk. So police must find a way to shake them. Which bits of it are you thinking of when you say he knows it already?’

  ‘Everything,’ Rebecca replied.

  ‘He’ll listen for a while to you or Haze or me and won’t interrupt in case buried here or there is a little fragment that is not new, not mentioned before. Crafty. Careful. No waste,’ Jill said. ‘Or it will be something we don’t see the true importance of.’

  ‘Sitting on stuff,’ Rebecca said.

  ‘Are you sitting on stuff, Dad?’ Jill said. ‘We know that sometimes you do, because you want to get one up on Des Iles. It’s like a game, such as chess.’

  ‘Not that kind of stuff,’ Rebecca said.

  ‘Which kind?’ Hazel said.

  ‘I have a notion that someone might be watching me,’ Rebecca said, ‘at the place where I’ve got bed and breakfast. And perhaps your dad knows of this.’

  Jill said: ‘Did you have that already, Dad – someone keeping an eye on Rebecca?’

  ‘We didn’t know about Rebecca until she called here today,’ Harpur said.

  ‘There’s not much to know,’ Rebecca said. ‘Lawrence and I didn’t live together. Nothing like that. I’d seen him only a few times. It’s so bleak and awful. There was no reason for the police to contact me, London police or the local police here. He interested me, though. I wanted to find out why he finished up at the docks wharf. I recognized his name from the news reports and the town’s name, of course. Then, chatting to some people I met on the train and in the bed-and-breakfast, I heard of a Mr Harpur, top detective, and where he lived. I picked up hints that it might be Mr Harpur who found the body in that grim place. And so I arrive on your doorstep. I wondered – wonder – whether this city was going the same way as other big cities in Britain and slipping towards anarchy because of the drugs trade. I ask again, how did Lawrence get caught up in something like that?’

  ‘That’s enough of this kind of conversation,’ Harpur said.

  ‘Which kind?’ Jill said.

  ‘Going nowhere,’ Harpur said.

  ‘So, why?’

  ‘Why what?’ Harpur said.

  Hazel said: ‘Why is it going nowhere? Why so daft and stupid – the chat about Rebecca’s names and so on. It all sounded very silly.’ Occasionally Hazel and Jill would form an aggressive alliance. It wasn’t only Jill who could get tough.

  ‘I have to feel my way,’ Rebecca said.

  Jill said: ‘We’d help you, wouldn’t we, Dad, but not with something that makes no sense.’

  ‘Well, try,’ Harpur said.

  ‘Was it you who found the body, Dad?’ Hazel said.

  ‘It’s the kind of thing Dad wouldn’t tell us, Rebecca, but never mind, we still would like to assist. And I think this could be handy, couldn’t it, Dad?’ Jill said.

  ‘Handy?’ Harpur replied.

  ‘You know what I mean,’ Jill said.

  And, yes, he did have an idea of what she meant.

  ‘On a plate,’ Jill said. ‘Kind of an exercise in the new career.’

  Rebecca said: ‘On a plate?’

  ‘Jill gets quite a few notions,’ Harpur said.

  ‘This is not some new notion,’ Jill said.

  ‘Oh?’ Harpur said.

  ‘We sort of discussed it,’ Jill said.

  ‘Sort of? Which sort of?’ Harpur said.

  ‘When you said you were thinking of retirement,’ Jill replied.

  ‘Just a dream,’ Harpur said, ‘a bit of escapism.’

  ‘That’s not how it sounded,’ Jill said.

  ‘No? It should have,’ Harpur said. ‘Quite a few people my age and rank are considering it.’

  ‘And didn’t you say you might turn yourself into a private investigator? But Hazel thinks you wouldn’t be much good at it because you will have forgotten all the basic skills, being shut up in your office most of the time,’ Jill said.

  ‘Hazel can be rather difficult and snotty,’ Harpur replied. ‘She’d like to be kind but now and then gets tough.’

  ‘Well, here’s your chance to show you can still do it,’ Jill said.

  ‘Still do what?’ Harpur asked.

  ‘Simple but necessary things for an investigation – such as tailing. There’s this man hanging about Rebecca’s temporary place. Could you get behind him and find out who he is and what he’s doing? Important. This is connected to the murder, isn’t it? It would have to be secret. Could you do it, Dad?’ Jill said.

  To Harpur’s mind there were unquestionably some skills of his trade that he no longer performed perfectly, including undetected tracking of a target suspect. Jill and Hazel were right, it was not a knack that someone of his present rank needed to use much now, and the ability had dwindled.

  ‘Can you be sure Rebecca’s all right?’ Jill said. ‘Is she safe? Are things in this city turning very dark because of the drugs industry? That’s what some kids in school say – like London or Manchester.’

  No, true enough. Harpur certainly could not be sure Rebecca was safe. Perhaps Jill’s classroom pals might have things right and the city was sliding towards a terrible similarity to other major places where districts might be ruled by villainy. Rebecca worried about Lawrence’s possible connection with drugs firms, and now Harpur had to worry about Rebecca’s possible involvement, too.

  ‘We’re aware of that danger from outside,’ Harpur said.

  ‘“Aware of”, but what does that mean, Dad – aware of but not trying to stop it,’ Jill said.

  ‘Or doing nothing much,’ Hazel added. ‘Tolerating. It’s Iles’s soft option, isn’t it?’

  ‘I wouldn’t say that,’ Harpur told them.

  ‘No, I repeat, we know you wouldn’t say it, but that’s how it is, tactically unspoken and accepted,’ Hazel said.

  ‘Dad will fight it, won’t you Dad?’ Jill said.

  ‘We’ll see,’ Hazel replied. ‘There’s this phrase around a lot lately – “proactive”. It’s what you’re not, isn’t it?’

  ‘I’m trying to find the truth and how Lawrence became a part of the darkness,’ Rebecca said.

  Harpur wondered whether Rebecca realized she was perhaps becoming part of the darkness herself? It took only one step. Had she already taken it?

  EIGHT

  And so, Harpur tried some undercover tracking. For this there were two motives. In some ways these were extremely different, in some others, though, very similar. They were both about how to cater for a disturbingly unclear future. One of these unclear futures was Harpur’s. Would he retire, would he try to establish himself as a private investigator when his official time was over? A month or two ago, that would have been a preposterous suggestion. Not now.

  There was also a much wider, unclear future – this city’s moral health, endangered moral health. He wanted to see whether he had the kind of smartness necessary for a private detective. He wanted also to uncover and deal with the threats to the wholesomeness and safety of this police patch and the area in general. He realized this must come across as a rather worthy, self-righteous notion, but he would need that kind of motivation.

  Harpur reckoned the start of this operation had got off well. Rebecca had given him her bed-and-breakfast address and a good description of the unknown figure she thought was watching the property and her. He was about thirty, slight, mid-height, white, fair-haired, usually wearing a black leather jacket and navy cord trousers, carrying a holdall today.

  The bed-and-breakfast was part of an ordinary Victorian or Edwardian large house. There was quite a lot of activity in the street, people setting off to work and on other journeys, but Harpur thought he identified correctly the one who interested Rebecca and therefore him. That was comparatively simple. What was not so simple was Harpur’s objective. What did he expect to find if he was led somewhere by this character? He remembered from distant training in surveillance, as it was called then, any project of this kind must have one definite and obvious aim. He couldn’t see one here.

  Of course, Harpur had realized when starting this operation unaided, that on a properly managed and resourced official police tailing job, there would have been six or more plain-clothes officers involved, with changes every half-hour or so to make sure the target didn’t notice a constant figure in his/her steady slipstream. The figure was variable, but his/her role was not. He/she was known as ‘eyeball’ and must not lose sight of the target. After a due stint another of the team would replace her/him – a very orderly procedure.