Vacuum by Bill James

‘It’s just routine, Margaret,’ Ralph said, his voice steady.

  ‘Certainly,’ Iles said.

  ‘Routine at four thirty in the morning?’ she said.

  ‘Routine in the sense that most of the search people here do many visits of this kind,’ Iles said.

  ‘How does that make it routine?’ Margaret said.

  ‘It’s routine for them,’ Iles said. ‘These are what you might call 24/7 experts. They come into work of an evening and wonder to themselves, “What’s on tonight?” And so they look at the briefing papers and murmur to one another, “A shakedown of Ralphy Ember’s Low Pastures? Right.” It’s just another assignment to them. They don’t feel any malice or antipathy. It could be anywhere, you see, Margaret.’

  ‘But it isn’t, is it?’ Margaret said. ‘It’s here.’

  ‘Ralph’s name and address simply came up on the worksheet,’ Iles said.

  ‘Who put it there? Why?’ she said.

  ‘It’s done without vindictiveness, please believe me,’ Iles replied.

  ‘No,’ Margaret said.

  ‘No what?’ Iles asked.

  ‘No, I don’t believe you,’ she said.

  ‘Work at it,’ Iles said.

  ‘What are you looking for?’ Margaret said.

  ‘Ah, what are we looking for? I hope we approach a search of this type with an open mind,’ Iles said. ‘It would surely pre-empt the very purpose of the search if we decided before the search took place what the search was trying to find. Our prime aim in an operation of this kind is fairness.’

  ‘What are you trying to find?’ Margaret said.

  ‘This is why Harpur and I are here,’ Iles replied.

  ‘Why?’ Margaret said.

  ‘He won’t answer queries, not sensibly,’ Ember said.

  ‘Are you set on fitting Ralph up for the Shale deaths?’ Margaret said. ‘Are you going to find something here, find something you brought? What is it? The gunman’s business card – “Established 2010, Multiple Kills Catered For”? Who’s got it to plant? Is there a trained expert at that kind of thing among your gang here?’

  ‘He won’t answer queries, not sensibly,’ Ember said.

  ‘Heterosexual women officers will, of course, do the girls’ rooms,’ Iles said. ‘Officers familiar with, and uninflamed by, female garments.’

  ‘How can you tell which rooms they are?’ Margaret said.

  ‘We felt it important when dealing with a property of this distinction to know our way around it before we arrived,’ Iles said. ‘That seemed only respectful and due.’

  ‘I hear you’re quite keen on young flesh yourself,’ Margaret said.

  ‘A remarkably fine residence, but not ideal as to security,’ Iles replied. ‘The fields, copses, hedges – a lot of approach cover. It would be quite a place to take care of – to defend – if Ralph were not around for a time.’

  ‘But he is around,’ she said.

  ‘Well, yes,’ Iles said.

  ‘Suppose – suppose Ralph did have a lawless side. If he knew you were coming, you’re not likely to find anything, are you, unless you’ve brought it yourselves?’ Margaret said. ‘He would have made sure the place is OK.’

  ‘That’s certainly a point,’ Iles said.

  Harpur said: ‘How did you know about the call, Ralph?’

  ‘Harpur sticks to a query,’ Iles said. ‘It’s what got him to where he is. Many would admire the tenacity. I esteem him, even though, as you’ll probably have heard, he deceitfully, lecherously—’

  ‘You’ve got a stipended voice that talks to you from inside our building, have you, Ralph?’ Harpur said.

  SIX

  The search split into three units: one downstairs, one up, one in the outbuildings. None found anything linked to the murders of Naomi Shale and the boy Laurent. Garland closed the operation at just before seven thirty a.m.

  Standing in the doorway of Low Pastures, Margaret Ember yelled at the departing police vehicles: ‘This was victimization. This was oppression. This was and is persecution!’

  Iles nodded. At Margaret Ember’s side, Ralph patted her gently on the shoulder, as if attempting to bring some calm. He looked vindicated, Hestonized, solid, grandly imperturbable. For the moment Harpur could not have connected him with that dismissive, earned nickname, Panicking Ralphy.

  Margaret Ember had patrolled vigorously while the pry was under way, fixing herself for a while to each of the ferreting groups, then switching abruptly to another, then to the other, trying to catch one or more of them at some trickery. Garland had wanted her to be restricted to the Low Pastures hall, but the ACC overruled this. Although Iles might not be Gold tonight, he was Iles. Guidance came as diktat from him. ‘It’s her and Ralph’s property, Francis. They must be able to move about in it, if they wish. They have affinities with and love these exposed beams, bare stone walls and showy, farcical fat-tomed library. Besides, I’m sure we’ve nothing to conceal, have we? An examination of our activities will prove them wholesome and well intentioned.’

  Despite Margaret Ember’s obvious hostility and rage, Harpur sensed she might wish to talk to him privately. Once, she had seemed about to approach, but Iles was near Harpur, exhaustively describing a Home Office administrator he considered shit; Iles considered most Home Office administrators shit, but this one exceptionally so, and therefore needing his character and appearance very thoroughly drawn. Margaret probably feared the ACC’s involvement. Some people preferred life without Iles’s involvement. He would not have been able to get his head around this, but it was true.

  A while ago, Margaret Ember had come to see Harpur and discuss her intention to walk out on Ralph with the children. Harpur hadn’t felt able to help her much, but he’d listened, sympathized. Although she did her flit, she returned after only several days. Was she thinking again about a dash, perhaps staying away permanently this time? Would something like the humiliating, irreverent, swarming, first-blush search of her home shove her towards a new escape plan? Such resentment might be coupled with alarm that Ralph, and therefore his family, could be vengeance targets following the Shale deaths. Did she need to talk about it again to somebody, somebody like Harpur? She didn’t come to speak with him, though, so it was impossible to know as a certainty.

  Iles and Harpur would go back to the debriefing at headquarters in an unmarked Peugeot from the pool. They walked towards the car. Harpur said: ‘This could be a very difficult one for you, sir.’

  ‘In which respect, Col?’

  ‘Obviously, when the Chief hears Garland’s report on the circumstances – Ember fully dressed and ready for us, then a wholly efficient, utterly useless, comb of the property . . . Yes, when Sir Matthew hears this he’s going to think you tipped Ember off about the raid so he could get rid of anything awkward.’

  Iles sounded bored by the obviousness of this. ‘Oh, that – of course, of course. Poor, dear, thought-prone prick.’

  ‘Would you say he was more prick than cunt, then, sir?’ Harpur said. ‘This is an interesting distinction. You were always very keen on precision.’

  ‘He’s someone who thinks he sees straight. They’re always sickeningly dangerous, Col.’

  ‘There’s the blessed, unspoken concordat between you, Ralph and Shale, isn’t there? Or there was, before Manse opted out. You look after one another. This must colour Sir Matthew’s judgement on what’s just happened and generally. Looking after one another can have all sorts of meanings and applications.’

  ‘Certainly, Col,’ Iles said. They boarded the Peugeot. They had no driver. Harpur was at the wheel. As they turned away from the front of Low Pastures on to the fine, curved driveway, Iles gave his thoughtful, nodded acknowledgement through the open passenger window to Margaret Ember’s sun-up abuse screech.

  ‘The Chief will see it as especially intelligent, and therefore wholly in line with what he expects from you, sir, that Ralph didn’t put on a big yawn and nightshirt act, pretending he’d been roused from sleep,’ Harpur
said. ‘Instead, he showed he’d known what would happen, and exactly when it would, by coming to the door dressed and announcing to you yourself he’d been forewarned.’

  ‘Ralph has depths.’

  ‘Sir Matthew might regard that as a fine double-bluff, mightn’t he?’

  ‘He’s a prey to obsessions.’

  ‘It takes care of the suspicion that Ember could have been alerted, but suggests someone else, not you, did the leaking. On the face of it, Ralph’s hardly going to announce to the person who gave him the whisper that he’d been given a whisper, is he, sir?’

  ‘Hardly, Col, on the face of it.’

  ‘Unless he was coached by someone extraordinarily smart and subtle to announce to the very person who gave him the whisper that he’d been given a whisper. The double-bluff.’

  ‘Yes, that’s probably how Upton will see it, in his footling, top-rank, infantile, paranoid way.’

  ‘You, sir, not technically in charge of the operation, yet taking over the doorbell-ringing, so you’d be the first person Ralph saw on the step.’

  ‘It’s the kind of magnificent, metal studded, Wuthering Heights- type of front door that needs a heavy iron knocker modelling a gorilla’s head, not some piddling modern dulcet chime job,’ Iles replied.

  ‘And then the Chief is going to hear from Garland that Ralph continually asked what it was all about, as if entirely flummoxed. Sir Matthew will think that’s done by Ember at your suggestion, sort of scenarioed and rehearsed for the occasion.’

  ‘Inevitably.’

  ‘Can you put up with this distrust from him, sir?’

  ‘In a while, I think I might become quite fond of Sir Matt. He’s someone who knows his own mind and yet is not ashamed of it. I admire that kind of courage.’

  ‘I don’t know where I stand on this,’ Harpur replied.

  ‘Which?’

  ‘Whether you told Ralph on the quiet that we’d be coming and when, so as to mess up the Chief’s strategy before it even got properly started. Pre-emptive.’

  ‘It is a tricky one, isn’t it, Col?’

  ‘I can see likelihoods on both sides of the question.’

  ‘You’re not one to rush to judgement.’

  ‘Thank you, sir.’

  ‘If you eventually decide after this non-rush that I didn’t have a pre-word with Ember, it would clearly be best to say nothing along those lines to the Chief, Col.’

  ‘Which lines?’

  ‘Defending me, testimonializing me, attempting to protect me at this jaw-jaw we’re on our way to.’

  ‘Surely it would be helpful if—’

  ‘Don’t champion me. Your support would only help convince Upton even more that he’s interpreting things right.’

  ‘I don’t at all see—’

  ‘He knows you would feel compelled to back me.’

  ‘Not if I thought you probably had been in pre-touch with Ralph. That’s serious treachery.’

  Iles began to shout-scream and had trouble getting enough air into his lungs, although the passenger window remained down. They were in traffic, moving slowly. It was the morning rush-hour. People on the pavement, intrigued by the yelling, turned to stare at him and the Peugeot. They were used to fucking awful thump music booming through car windows, not a frenzied, inflamed live voice. ‘Do I have to mention Sarah?’ Iles said.

  ‘Your wife, sir? Surely she doesn’t have any part in—’

  ‘My wife. Upton hears you repeatedly closed with my wife – that is, let’s define what’s what, shall we? – an Assistant Chief’s wife. Yes, an Assistant Chief (Operation’s) wife. You rakehelled with her in numerous undignified and often deeply déclassé settings. He’ll assume, because he’s a typical half-soaked gent with a Humanities degree, that you are now ashamed and wish to make paltry amends, compensate, by siding with me in any tough situation.’

  Harpur said: ‘Are you sure this is how the Chief would react? Isn’t that a rather special way of reading things, sir?’

  ‘It is a rather special way of reading things, Harpur, because it’s my fucking way.’

  ‘But there’s a much wider policy matter here, sir, isn’t there?’ Harpur said.

  ‘Certainly, Col.’

  ‘You think conditions on our ground will be best if Ralph continues untroubled in business, alongside Manse’s successor.’

  ‘Certainly, Col.’

  ‘The Chief wants Ralph wiped out, as first move in a general cleansing of our ground.’

  ‘Sir Matthew is in many, many ways an almost acceptable figure but hasn’t been in post long enough to appreciate the complexities of matters in this region, Col. I’ll nurse him away from his predictable, corny new-brooming towards clarity. This is a chore, but it’s the least I can do for the confused sod.’

  ‘But your argument about tolerating the dealers is more general, more national – international, in fact – than just our region. You consider that if your methods worked here, they would be a model for countries everywhere. That’s what I meant by “wider policy”.’

  ‘True. We have some very particular circumstances here, though,’ Iles explained.

  For instance, you, sir? But Harpur did not say this.

  ‘In due course, Sir Matt will probably come to get the feel of how we run things. I do detect a quotient of brain power in him now and then, or even oftener. His degree is from somewhere making a real effort to get reputable, I hear. He’s quite open about it.’

  ‘You very generously said he wasn’t a cunt, sir, though possibly a prick, and you’re not somebody to scatter compliments carelessly.’

  ‘If there’s one quality I prize above most others it’s balance, Col. My mother would often remark on this quality in me, even when a child. “Desmond!” she’d exclaim, “you are so judicious.”’

  ‘I’d never say anything against someone’s mother. People can be very touchy about their mothers.’

  The Chief had already arrived when they reached headquarters. He was heavily built, plump rather than burly. He listened while Francis Garland reported, and then took versions of what had gone on from each of his team. Iles and Harpur listened, also. Garland gave a full narrative of events from arrival to departure, recounting conversations, explaining that Ember was in his day clothes, detailing his and Margaret’s attitude. The search-trained officers said they’d been called by colleagues to anything that might seem significant in and around Low Pastures, but all were dead ends.

  The Chief had made some notes. ‘Have I got this right, Mr Garland? You arrived at the front door of Low Pastures at four thirty a.m.’

  ‘Yes, sir,’ Garland said.

  ‘Ember had been given no official forewarning?’ Upton said.

  ‘Not to my knowledge,’ Garland said. ‘Forewarning would be completely inappropriate. Surprise was crucial.’

  ‘And if there had been an official forewarning it would have come from you, or someone deputed by you, wouldn’t it?’ Upton said.

  ‘I would have assumed so, yes, sir,’ Garland said.

  ‘I would have assumed so, also,’ Upton said. ‘Is that how you see things, too, Desmond?’

  ‘No alternative,’ Iles said unhesitatingly.

  ‘I needed your view,’ Upton said. He had a mild, insistent voice which Harpur had decided a while back linked to a very systematic mind. His hair was present in full, no thinning or grey in the fairish mass. His square, fleshy face matched his body structure. He had a broad, short nose, dark-blue eyes, heavy lips and a four-square chin. He was in shirt sleeves, his arms surprisingly slender. He had just reached forty-eight. ‘So, you turned up, on the face of it quite unannounced as far as Ember and his family were concerned, and Mr Iles rang the front doorbell?’ He sounded cheery and encouraging, as though leading someone into a description of an amusing incident in his or her life.

  ‘That’s so,’ Garland said.

  ‘Theoretically, Mr Iles was not part of the operation, I believe, and attended as a spectator only,’ Upton
said. ‘He was, naturally, entitled to come along, as was Mr Harpur. But you had command. You were Gold for this operation?’

  ‘I was Gold, yes, sir.’

  ‘Oh, yes, no question, sir,’ Iles said. ‘Francis had charge. As I think I may have mentioned, his morals are not of the most charming – dick-driven – but he is a capable officer and in some aspects quite trustworthy, if you catch him on the right day.’

  Upton consulted his notes. ‘He led the operation, but you, Desmond, rang the doorbell, I gather.’

  ‘I suppose one could say I did that as a kind of gesture,’ Iles said. He was seated at a conference table but stood briefly now, leaned forward and with the index finger of his right acted out the decisive pressing of a bell. Then he took his chair again.

  ‘What kind of gesture?’ Upton said.

  ‘Or perhaps term it an impulse,’ Iles replied.

  ‘How did you ring?’ Upton said.

  ‘There was a button marked “Press”, black lettering on white. Several of our people had torch beams on the door. Locating the button and realizing its purpose were not difficult. You’ll remember in Alice that she comes to a bottle marked “Drink Me”, so she drinks it. It was the same for me with the button marked “Press”. I pressed it.’

  ‘No, when I ask how did you ring, I mean what, as it were, shape of ringing did you employ? What pattern? Was it simply one period of pressure on the button, as your miming just now seemed to indicate, or did you have a pattern of peals – say, for instance, two short rings or even three, or perhaps one long and two shorts, or six or seven short jabs like in the childish chant: “Dat-di-da-da-da-da. Hi-diddledy batch cakes, brown bread.”’

  Iles said: ‘I remember it rather as the first line of the song: “How’s your father? All right: slept in the dustbin all night.” Such cheerful, inconsequential days, boyhood. Do you feel nostalgic about those times, sir? I certainly do.’

  ‘And Ralph Ember, fully dressed, more or less instantly responded to the bell?’ Upton replied.

  ‘He did,’ Garland said.

  ‘It can be stated, then, that your gesture worked very well, Desmond,’ Upton said.

  ‘I think I can claim to have rung with due force,’ Iles said, ‘though I’m not here to claim that if someone else had pressed the bell, matters would have been different. Just the one, long, plain-speaking ding, however – without subsequent fiddly additions. No need for any special, pre-agreed warning signal, was there, sir?’