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.Harpur drove down towards The Monty.Ralph should be there now, getting the club ready for another festive night’s business.Harpur felt what could be jargonized as ‘a duty of care’.And it would be bad, wouldn’t it, if some trouble came to Ralph after that quite particular warning from Jack Lamb; and a sort of general alert from Iles, though the ACC couldn’t say where exactly the danger might strike.He had mentioned Ember’s business associate, Mansel Shale, as well as Ralph himself.Harpur’s concern grew and he’d left headquarters immediately after the talk with Iles.Despite Ember’s high position in the substances trade, Harpur felt a kind of affection for him.He saw absurd, floundering nobility in Ralph.It came from his daft, dogged, utterly impossible efforts to achieve a refined, cultured, intellectually distinguished status for his backstreet, thieves-kitchen club.Even Iles occasionally showed some fondness for Ralph, although the Assistant Chief would mock and ridicule him when they met.Ember probably realized Iles mocked and ridiculed almost everybody, so Ralph needn’t take the insults too personally.He could voyage on in his doomed search for The Monty’s new, cleansed, glittering identity, still fiercely powered by that barmy, constant ambition.A poem Jill studied lately for homework contained what seemed to Harpur like an exact reference to Ralph.Jill had asked Harpur what ‘inviolable’ meant.It came in the lines about a gypsy who was also a scholar.He’d given himself a mission to search non-stop for some special truth not far from Oxford.Harpur could recall the words: ‘Still nursing the unconquerable hope, Still clutching the inviolable shade.’ Harpur had needed to look up what ‘inviolable’ meant: ‘never to be broken or dishonoured.’ That description fitted absolutely Ralph W.Ember’s plans for his club.Surely, there was something crazily, admirably epic about such useless determination in Ralph? Harpur mentioned to Jill this resemblance between Ember and the gypsy and she’d wanted to put Ralph and The Monty into the composition she had to write about the poem.‘This would perk it up, Dad,’ she said, ‘by proving that an old poem with whiskers on could still be about matters today, such as The Monty.’ Harpur persuaded her against, though.Yes, he sympathized with Ember but, just the same, realized he mustn’t get too close.As he slowed and signalled now and was about to pull into The Monty’s car park, he decided this visit would probably be wrong.Instead, he resumed his straight-ahead course and normal speed and went back to his office.If he’d gone to talk about these rumours it might have looked to others as though he and Ember were buddies, had some sort of alliance, a secret, illicit partnership.Club staff would observe the hush-hush conversation and make their assumptions.They might also talk outside to pals, relatives, of their assumptions.This was a senior police officer apparently in cahoots with a very major drugs tycoon.Harpur didn’t fancy that kind of slur.In any case, the information Harpur had … well, it could hardly be called information.Although he still valued Lamb as a marvellous font of reliable ‘disclosures’ in Number Three he’d not gone much beyond that short, imprecise promise of ‘serious jeopardy’ for Ralph; and Iles could only come up with his spooky, undefined ‘intimations’.Iles was exceptionally brilliant at intimations, but they still amounted to intimations only.Harpur thought he might have seemed panicky if he’d gone to Ralph with these flimsy hints.And it was Ember who’d somehow earned the nickname ‘Panicking’, not himself, thank you very much.TWENTY-FOURAfter Margaret left, Ralph put on an overcoat, scarf, gloves and navy, woollen bobble hat and did one of his customary, random-timed tours around the outside of the club.He was looking for arson devices secretly planted by playful trade colleagues wishing to torch the building whether occupied or not.Ralph thought that, because of the scarf enclosing his chin, and the way the hat covered quite a depth of his forehead, people would not pick up the resemblance to Charlton Heston as quickly as normal – if there had been people about.But it was very cold in the club yard and car park and he considered winter clothing wise.The point was, he, personally, knew of his resemblance to the young Chuck, was confident in it, and didn’t need constant reaffirmations from others.Some might consider it sad and wasteful for him to cover up his features, but he knew that as soon as he took the scarf off everything would be there as always, visible and intact, a dead spit.He despised vanity – the kind of vanity that would wish to dictate constant flourishing of his face.Normally, he would have gone home to ‘Low Pastures’ between his morning and night stints at the club, but over the Christmas weeks he had to put in a good deal of extra time.When he’d done about half the survey, he glanced away from his search for a moment, and towards the road.He glimpsed Harpur at the wheel of an unmarked Peugeot near The Monty car park, as if about to drive in.He didn’t appear to spot Ralph, who was part hidden by a delivery truck.Ralph could put up all right with Harpur on a solo call.He sometimes talked reasonable, unabusive sense.Harpur recognized the importance of community spirit, and knew Ralph possessed a true slice of that.It was only when Assistant Chief Iles and his damn mockery accompanied Harpur that things generally turned foul, sarky and barbaric.Of course, one way to shut Iles up was to remind him that not so long ago his supposed colleague, Col Harpur, had been giving it on a regular, but very unofficial, basis to Iles’s wife, Sarah.Ralph always regarded this as an extreme reaction, though, and would only use it if Iles kept on and on with his damn merrymaking viciousness.Ralph considered that a woman’s reputation and dignity should be very carefully protected, even a policeman’s woman, unless, obviously, it became necessary to slag her off as a way of flooring her loathsome husband.Ralph’s mother would often quote a saying to him when he was growing up, ‘Manners maketh man.’ Ralph still regarded this as very worthwhile teaching, unless you were dealing with someone like Iles, who didn’t know what the fucking word ‘manners’ meant and whose only delight was to kick shit out of people.If you tried to treat him with respectful manners he’d see this as a pathetic weakness and would kick you even harder.Whatever Harpur wished to discuss today, Ralph would gladly go along with.For Ralph civility rated high.Manners were what made man different from animals.Manners were what a laughing hyena like Iles was completely short of.But then Harpur’s Peugeot straightened, moved past the car park entrance and went on.He seemed to have been hit by sudden second thoughts.Ralph wondered what the first thoughts were, but couldn’t get far with that.Although the prospect of a visit by Harpur hadn’t disturbed him, this sudden uncertainty did.It magnified Ember’s suspicion that, behind the surface jollity of Christmas time, hovered some menace aimed specifically at him.It wasn’t only the possible fire bombs.That threat existed permanently; could be considered routine, a standard part of business success.Now, Ralph sensed special, so-far undefined perils [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]