Bill James and The Murder Room

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The Murder Room

Where Criminal Minds Meet

themurderroom.com

Naked at the Window

Bill James

Contents

Cover

The Murder Room Introduction

Title page

Chapter One

Chapter Two

Chapter Three

Chapter Four

Chapter Five

Chapter Six

Chapter Seven

Chapter Eight

Chapter Nine

Chapter Ten

Chapter Eleven

Chapter Twelve

Chapter Thirteen

Chapter Fourteen

Chapter Fifteen

Chapter Sixteen

Chapter Seventeen

Outro

By Bill James

About the author

Copyright page

Chapter One

Although enemies and rivals sometimes called Ralph Ember Panicking Ralph, or even Panicking Ralphy, his panics were actually quite rare and only ever started from very particular causes, major causes. For example, a panic could never be touched off by the sight of three slaughtered people scattered higgledy-piggledy in a games room, no matter how well he knew them, and no matter how the bodies might have been mutilated and/or disfigured. Of course, hardly anyone ever used the name Panicking – either Ralph or Ralphy – to Ember’s face, but he knew the rotten slur was around, and this grieved and angered him. In any case, he hated being addressed as Ralphy, even without the Panicking. He would tell people, ‘Call me Ralph or R.W. or Ember.’ Ralph W. Ember was how he signed letters to the Press, mostly on environmental topics such as air pollution and restoration to limpidness of industrialized rivers. He considered that ‘Ralphy’ sounded like somebody’s retarded cousin who had to be made allowances for.

In fact, looking at these three bodies, what he felt almost immediately was not panic but a slight, brief but wholly genuine rush of shame. This came because his absolutely first reaction on seeing the untidy deads and identifying them despite the injuries had been: Where the living fuck do I get my trade stuff now, then?

More or less instantly he recognized it as a callously selfish response to a scene that could reasonably be regarded as tragedy – Barney and both his women destroyed like this and strewn about. After all, these three, operating together, with quite an obvious and lovely fondness for one another, must have been among the greatest bulk providers of prohibited drugs in Britain, if not all of the European Union. Barney, Maud and Camilla had long supplied Ember’s own fine network pretty satisfactorily. All right, the women, Maud and Camilla, were not young and had never in Ralph’s memory been anything but null sexually, as far as he, personally, was concerned, though clearly not Barney. But he knew this should not make the sight of them now like this any less poignant. And Barney? Yes, Barney certainly had times as the supreme posturing, grab-all, exploitive turd who tried to treat Ember as a serf, not a colleague. Yet in some ways Barney was also an affectionately regarded business connection, and surely something of a loss: a loss as a person as well as a commodity importer and super-wholesaler.

It had always been a worthwhile journey for Ember to drive all those motorway hours to Barney’s place near Southampton and the Isle of Wight to negotiate delivery and payment of the next consignment for his, Ember’s, fine pushing network back home. Tiderace, Barney’s house, was a big, modern waterside place looking out on opulent sailing craft, and that fucking yachtsman’s tan he always flourished like semaphore was holding up pretty well now despite the blood drain. There had been true depth to Barney if you could be bothered to look for it, and some of the darker blood might be coming from there.

Beau Derek was with Ember. Beau had sobbed one big terrified sob when they first entered the room and saw Barney, Maud and Camilla. Then Beau covered his eyes for a second with those lumpy red fingers. If you were not familiar with his cracksman career path you would never believe he could do safes. The thing about this room was that there was hardly any furniture, only a high-backed church pew against one wall, so all the bodies were totally in view at once, although not together. This was why Beau put those slab hands over his eyes, trying to lessen the shock. Beau could turn showy. He would know Ember saw him do it. Beau liked to be thought of as emotional.

It always used to enrage Ember that he had to bring Beau on these visits to Barney and the women, but Barney insisted. He would say it was crucial that both partners in Ember’s business should attend, for the sake of continuity. The fucker meant, in case Ember was arrested or killed or coshed into gagadom one day and Beau had to take over and run things, and handle the deals with Barney. Beau running things? Jesus.

Oh, well, Barney boy, we can see now who’d get killed one day and cut about, can’t we, and it’s not Ralph W. Ember, thank you.

What Ember used to loathe was the implication that he and Beau rated equal. Ember had brought Beau into his quite distinguished pushing firm as a partner because he was loyal and spare, but it was as a dogsbody partner, not much more than hired help, really. Beau knew it. Naturally he knew it. Could someone always referred to except by relatives and his woman as Beau Derek be regarded as a full boardroom figure, for God’s sake? His name was Derek and joky, cruel people had stuck the Beau on because of Bo Derek, the film actress, and because Beau looked a slob, not beautiful at all – that red cabbage skin and his random teeth. Yet Barney would always treat him like chocolate, just to unnerve Ember and push him down. When Beau sobbed in the doorway to the games room it could have been sorrow at realizing Barney would not be about any longer to offer him status. Barney was nothing now and Beau next to nothing, as ever.

There was no real trouble about identifying Barney, Maud and Camilla despite the treatment. After all, this was the house the three of them lived in. Who else could they be? Ember had visited often before, sometimes alone, sometimes with Beau, sometimes with previous partners such as Harry Foster and Gerry Reid, now very safely dead and for ever interred, oh, yes, surely to God, possibly even built over by a housing estate. Frequently Barney had led them to this room for meetings. There was a dartboard at one end, which was what apparently transfigured it from just any sort of damn room into a games room, or The Games Room. Barney always spoke its title with a holy boom to his voice, like he was talking about the Vatican. Discussions had been awkward because everyone sat strung out in a line on the church pew. Barney would be at one end and he usually managed it so that Beau and the women sat between him and Ember. This meant that when Ember wanted to speak to him he had to lean forward like a battery hen hunting feed. This was another way Barney had of making Ember feel subservient.

Yet Barney, plus Maud and Camilla, had been in Ember’s view tolerable. You did not expect saintly egos in this game. Grab prevailed and you wouldn’t find anyone better at it than Barney, except possibly Maud. Of course, what Ember saw now in these bodies was that some other dark team was going to take over and would immediately require Ember to start drawing his supplies from them instead. It was an uncomfortable idea. He felt minionized. These had to be savage people. Look at the deaths. Ember might have been able to understand why Barney and Maud required slaughtering – compare a foot-and-mouth cull – but Camilla always seemed to him almost decent, civilized and broad-minded. There could even have been a time far off when she did not look anything like as bad.

Gazing at this corpse tableau, Ember wondered whether it might be his cue to do something he had been considering for many months, even more than a year: to pull out from the drugs game altogether and go full-time and uncompromisingly legitimate. It was not impossible. He had other business areas to tend, all legal, and especially ownership of his club, the Monty. Ember’s wife had lately been trying to persuade him more or less non-stop to go straight. He knew she craved that. He had even given some promises, sort of promises. You had to strive to be kindly to them. They did not always seem to understand how money was got, the kind of money Ember and his family needed. Skimping he hated.

But, yes, a sight like this at Tiderace was bound to make Ember wonder again whether Margaret had it right and now was the time to go pure. It could certainly be argued that a man well-placed in a commercial occupation should not be confronted with bodies on this scale out of the blue. Maud was on her side under the dartboard, her old, cruelly messed-up face towards them, legs slightly hunched on the cracked cream lino, and wearing one of those greenish pauper cardigans. This was a huge property in grounds and facing a stretch of river where Modesty, Barney’s own grand yacht, and the yachts of several neighbours, lay moored. None of these boats was worth less than half a million and Barney’s house must have cost at least as much. But when it came to furnishing and carpeting the place, or kitting out the women, it looked as if he had grown bored by wealth and did not care how scruffy the property and Maud and Camilla appeared. It could happen to the very rich. They began to feel contempt for their money and the ways they had collected it and refused to give any more evidence of surplus. In the magnificently large hall that Ember and Beau had crossed on their way upstairs to the games room, part of a car exhaust system was laid out on copies of the News of the World and the Economist across the mahogany-boarded floor. It had been there the last time Ember came. Behind this were an unconnected and dilapidated fridge-freezer and an open wooden crate containing what seemed to be the insides of a couple of television sets. Outside, the house was all gloss and capital gains. Inside, a scrap yard. Barney dressed damned nicely himself, though, usually with a casual, yachty theme: navy trousers, navy jumper in winter, smock-style shirt in the warmer weather, usually blue. Even now, with his mouth sagging like that and his gear so stained, he had a kind of chicness, a dead kind, yet rich in pointers to how he was until really quite recently.

Beau whispered: ‘Do you think whoever –?’

‘You mean they’re still here?’

‘Could be, Ralph. But the front door was open.’

‘What do you make of that, Beau?’

‘A rushed exit and careless after this.’ He waved feebly towards the bodies.

‘Or they’ve left it open, ready for their escape.’ Ember enjoyed his total coolness, the precision of his brain, the judge-like steadiness of his voice as he summed up for Beau. It was moments like this – leadership moments, dominance moments – that Ember cherished, and made him radically undecided about turning prim. He said: ‘Yes, they could still be here.’

‘Jesus, Ralph.’

‘We need to search.’

‘Or get out.’

‘We need to search,’ Ember replied.

Abruptly, then, he realized he could not have varied these words to Beau. At a monstrous gallop after all that confidence, the beginnings of terror suddenly began to move in on him. He loved to sound brave and collected, but wasn’t. The repetition – that sort of chorus effect – gave him something to lean on, like congregation responses in the funeral service.

‘Do you think any of them might be alive, Ralph?’ Beau said, waving feebly towards the bodies.

‘Touch nothing. We’re a long way from home ground. The police here don’t know us. We could be done for this.’

‘Maybe best just get out then, Ralph.’

‘We need to search.’ Yes, yes, yes, naturally it was best just to get out, and he would have if he had been here alone, no Beau. But Ember was Ralph W. Ember, wasn’t he, not Panicking Ralphy? He could not disintegrate in front of a dogsbody. Like everyone else he was more than one person, and he had to fight to be what he regarded as the best of these – the Ember who was Ember, or Ralph Ember or Ralph W. Ember, not Panicking Ralph, or Panicking Ralphy. Always it was a touch-and-go fight, no certain winner.

Chapter Two

‘So, I’m leaving him, Harpur,’ Margaret Ember said. ‘If you’re interested. You’ll say, Why come and tell me – I’m not Marriage Guidance?’

‘Will I say that?’ Harpur replied.

‘You can save Ralph. He wants to go legit, he really does. There have been undertakings.’

‘Yes?’

‘Oh, yes.’

‘But?’

‘But I’ve decided I can’t wait. Talk to him, Harpur. Or you, Mr Iles.’ For a moment she turned away from Harpur and towards the assistant chief, who was standing at the window. He seemed to make a small bow to her. She said: ‘It might take a while, but talk to him. It’s why I came, before I disappear. I’m going, but I want him happy, I want him safe.’

‘Maybe you could save him, then. Stay with him, talk to him, Mrs Ember – Margaret,’ Harpur said.

‘I’ve talked and talked. He’s promised and promised.’ Her face seemed about to break up into weeping. Then she stopped all that. Harpur watched her deliberately harden her features, straighten out her jaw. ‘This is the end now. Sort of end. I mean, if he really did it – went straight – I mean, really, really did it – I might still . . .’

‘Think of going back to him?’

‘Talk to him, Harpur.’

‘That’s not the only reason you’re here, is it?’ Harpur replied. ‘Salvation of the Ralphy soul.’

Her face turned harder still. Her eyes rubbished him. ‘Why do you call him that? Is it really how you think of Ralph?’

‘He’s various.’

‘So are we all.’

‘True, indeed,’ Iles remarked.

‘OK,’ Harpur replied. ‘So, why are you here – other than salvation of Ralph’s soul?’

‘I’ll need protection. He adores his children. He’ll come looking, Harpur.’

‘I’m sure he adores you as well.’

‘He can be extreme, Harpur, if he’s pushed.’ Harpur loved it, the routine absence of title when she spoke to him, no Mr, or Detective Chief Superintendent. When she addressed Iles it was with more formality. Harpur thought this directness with his own name seemed to give him solidity, as though he were a feature of the terrain, familiar, and without need of a handle. And he was, wasn’t he? Iles, assistant chief constable, might seem a bit stratospheric to her.

Mrs Ember said: ‘Ralph’s away at present and I suppose you’ll think it cowardly to walk out on him with the kids now, but –’

‘Away where?’ Harpur replied.

‘What?’ She seemed to find the question trivial and was offended.

‘Is he down Southampton boating country way, the Solent, with his bulk man, Barney Coss?’ Harpur asked.

‘You have to show how much you know, don’t you?’ Small-voiced, small-mouthed, she was snarling just the same. ‘On your patch or off.’

‘He is at Barney’s?’

‘Do you have him under surveillance?’ she replied.

‘Not now. We did for a while. We like to keep up with his procedures. I don’t suppose they change much. Ralph’s a status quo man.

‘I don’t know where he is. That’s not relevant. It doesn’t matter where.’

‘Oh, I expect you know,’ Harpur replied.

‘I don’t care where. I’m going, leaving, that’s what counts.’ She was small, blonde, boyish-looking, fierce and loud at the moment, in jeans, grey jumper and trainers, for travelling. Marriage break-up gear. Harpur said: ‘Those Saturday-Sunday Yachtland sessions – bound to be golden days and nights in Ralph’s calendar. I don’t mean just the deals for his supplies, but the contact with a dirty eminence like Barney in a brilliant venue. And getting treated as a serious trader by people of that grade, Barney, Maud, Camilla – people known nationwide, yet so far still unprosecutable because of their cleverness and luck and government friends – sure to fatten Ralph’s sense of self.’

‘Perhaps I can’t care very much any longer about his sense of self.’

They were in Harpur’s sitting room seated opposite each other and drinking tea he’d made and served in mugs. His daughters were out, thank God. Mrs Ember had arrived alone without announcement driving an Escort, parked right in front of the house and knocked Harpur’s door. Iles was on one of his visits to Harpur when she turned up: the assistant chief would often drop in on Saturdays. Of course, he stayed to see what she wanted. He remained standing now in the bay window, holding a mug of tea against his trouser leg. Sympathy glowed with a lovely fullness in the ACC’s thin face, for the present. Iles liked to stand. This showed off his slimness and the exceptionally smooth skin of his neck, especially when the light came in from all angles as at present through the bay windows. It made a real meal of him. As ever, his clothes were a symphony. The ACC said: ‘No, obviously it does not matter where Ralph is, Margaret. Colin Harpur invariably has trouble distinguishing between what’s central in a situation and what’s marginal. Accordingly, he’s stuck at DCS.’ He bent forward confidingly towards her: ‘Perhaps a digression, but tell me, Margaret, do you think Harpur will ever reach Staff rank? I would love to help him, love to, but my attempts are continually stifled under the sawdust tonnage of his supposed mind. All credit to him, he’s very much self-made, you know, but who would want to make such a self? You come here, Margaret – you graciously trek to Harpur’s house in this white trash street – and all he can ask, when you declare something as immense as the breakdown of your marriage to dear Ralph . . . yes, all he can ask is to do with Ralph’s whereabouts at the moment. You’re right, eternally Harpur has to show how damn informed he is – the Solent, yachts, Barney and the women. Like a kid, isn’t he?’

‘I’ve really worked to get Ralph out of . . . out of what he calls business . . . what they all call it,’ Mrs Ember replied.

‘A pinch from The Godfather. We know you have,’ Iles said. ‘Even Harpur can recognize that much.’

She seemed to notice something in the ACC’s tone. ‘Maybe you don’t want that, though, Mr Iles,’ she said.

‘Want what?’ Iles asked.

‘For Ralph to give up the substance trade. His firm and Mansel Shale’s, working in cahoots with each other, not fighting for dominance, bring a nice bit of peace, don’t they? I heard you like that. Everything so steady. If Ralph went, who’d come in to replace him? Would they abide by the rules? Terrible street mayhem again, the way it was for so long?’

Harpur thought it not a bad estimate of the ACC’s philosophy. Drugs he saw as inevitable, built into life for ever. Policing was a matter of keeping the trade contained, tidy, unviolent, with nothing hazardous or grim imposed on the non-participating populace, or the participating populace, come to that. In Iles’s view, Ember and his trade associate, Mansel Shale, helped preserve this fragile safety.

And, sometimes, Harpur did suspect the ACC’s strategy might make sense in a rough world, even though it blind-eyed illegality. Iles used to say, ‘Only current illegality, Col, totally nominal illegality. Ultimately, the law will adapt.’ Iles stuck to this version of things, ignoring the chief constable, Mark Lane. He, with all his slight, wife-backed strength and standard ethics and vocabulary, struggled to oppose Iles’s do-nothing stance. The chief backed those politicians who endlessly declared drugs an ‘evil industry’ and spoke of going to ‘war’ against them. Harpur saw, though, that the politicians then did nothing very serious to destroy the industry or win the war, because they were for the most part nicely educated and knew that demand produced supply. They noted there was mighty, continuously growing, cross-class demand: some were participants. They had heard of the Prohibition farce.

Iles observed the politicians’ helplessness and made his own workaday interpretation of their platform prêchi-prêcha bullshit. He hardly ever bothered to argue full-out or in detail with Lane. Simply, Iles let it happen on the streets. As ACC (Operations) he could do that, as long as he worked under a chief who had never discovered how to control him, and who wasn’t going to learn this late in his career. Lane’s attempts to reverse the policy were entirely sincere, useless and sad.

But the ACC seemed unlikely to discuss police methods with Margaret Ember now. He half raised his mug to drink and then lowered it decisively, as though signalling he wanted no further hospitality in this house, thank you, after Harpur had crudely failed to recognize the seriousness of her visit. ‘Mind you, Margaret, one can understand why Col might not fully register the importance of a marriage collapse,’ he said.

Harpur heard Iles’s voice take on again that victimized, frenzied, wailing edge it would assume now and then, like a Tehran street mourner’s. His face suddenly had the suffering of the world in it, and the glum rage of the dispossessed. ‘Harpur is not the most committed defender of marriage you’ll ever meet, Margaret. I don’t think he would dispute this. There’s a kind of frankness to him, a big-headed kind. He was giving it to my wife, you know, over quite a spell, and ages before his own wife, Megan, was so tragically killed. Well, naturally you know. Every bugger knows. Excuse me – Everybody knows. My wife finds it incredible now that she ever let him get amongst her, and probably also his subordinate, Francis Garland, though not simultaneously, I’m convinced of that. Genuinely convinced. Absolutely. Some decencies. Of an evening now at home, Sarah and I will often chuckle over those strange episodes in her life and she will wonderingly list all Harpur’s creepy, nauseating, flagrant defects. Nonetheless it did happen, didn’t it, Harpur, you concupiscent, treacherous, uncontrolled –?’

‘And your children want to go with you rather than stay with Ralph, do they, Mrs Ember?’ Harpur replied.

‘Would I leave them with him?’ she said. ‘If you can grasp in even the most basic way why I’m quitting you’ll know I want them out of his influence. His influence as it is at present. That’s key.’ The small, immaculate features were firm.

Iles said: ‘I think of Ralph as an exemplary father.’

‘And he is, he is.’ Mrs Ember cried. ‘He will –’

‘People are – what did you call it, Harpur, various? So various. Clearly, Ralphy is a villain – Ralph is a villain –almost all the way through, from arsehole to breakfast time. Plus, they say, spasmodically deepest yellow, and a shagger around almost to Harpur’s standard. Yet he also strives to place one daughter in a fine private school, and the other, I believe, at an arm-and-a-leg French finishing establishment near Poitiers, to keep her from running pussy-wild here. I catch a whiff of nobility, don’t I? Ralph doesn’t mind spending on them.’

‘Of course he doesn’t,’ she said.

‘Admirable. Generous,’ Iles replied. ‘A pretty pony each, I gather, plus gymkhana fees and all the best clobber. Yes, there’s a seedy, eternal grandeur to Ralph, and it’s brave that you seem willing to sacrifice all this and quit Low Pastures. Or will you be able to keep in touch with his loot when you’re gone? I admit I feel almost glad we’ve never been able to nail him for anything. Can one imagine Ralph celled? I feel for him as a man, as well as a piece of commercial enterprise.’

‘I’m not here to finger him, Mr Iles, understand that, you devious sod,’ Mrs Ember replied.

‘No need,’ Harpur said. ‘We pile up our case against him. One day we’ll do him. Just as one day Barney Coss and the women will be done.’

‘I tell him that, all the time,’ Mrs Ember replied. ‘I tell him you tolerate Manse Shale and him for as long as it’s useful to you, and then the both of them will be suddenly destroyed. Away for ever. But is this all you want? His eventual annihilation? It’s possible to restore, reclaim him, Harpur. I swear you could do it. Not Mr Iles, but you I know could manage it, Harpur. He almost trusts you. You specifically.’

‘I’ve heard of one or two people like that,’ Iles said.

‘Does policing have to be only a matter of persecuting people?’ she asked.

‘We call it prosecuting,’ Harpur replied, ‘and only those who deserve it. Like Ralph. And Barney. And Shale.’

‘Harpur’s been on a course in word-play,’ Iles said. ‘But, Margaret, I wouldn’t be surprised if that daughter at the finishing school in France is turning into quite a bonny little thing by now. This would be Venetia? Gorgeous name. Poitiers – a region famed for bringing deportment to teenage girls. And for china. Ralph chose well. They’d show a girl how to make the very most of her whole pelvis and upper body. Yes, her pelvis and upper body.’ The assistant chief exploded the p sounds like lust bucking its controls. He grew breathless for a moment and seemed about to adjust the crotch of his trousers. He transformed this movement in time, though. It became, instead, a fond fingering of the upper reaches of the right leg crease in his magnificent tan slacks, part of weekend wear. With them he had on a brown, orange and green tweed field-sports jacket and crimson scarf, which he had loosened indoors. ‘French women who’ve had deportment training are so fetching, but particularly when young, really young. What age would Venetia be, Mrs Ember? More than twelve by my reckoning. Glorious. I do think we have a lot to thank the French for, whatever people say about Maurice Chevalier.’

‘Anything specific that’s pushed you into your determination to leave now, Margaret?’ Harpur asked.

Again he saw she resented his search for detail, exactitude, that cop habit. Her decision was enormous and she wanted it given scale. ‘Specific?’ she asked.

‘You’ve been with Ralph for so long,’ Harpur replied, ‘and things between you have always been fine, apparently. There were his other women, yes, but you appeared able to see those for what they were, sidelines.’

‘My wife was a Harpur sideline,’ Iles screamed, and punched out as if to break one of the bay windows. He pulled back just when his knuckles touched the glass. Harpur hoped there were no neighbours in Arthur Street to see this and hear Iles’s noise. It would be bad if someone reported a domestic incident and patrol cars came to neutralize and straitjacket an assistant chief.

Mrs Ember ignored his interruption. ‘Yes, apparently fine. Apparently. Who can judge a marriage from outside?’

‘Ah,’ Iles replied.

‘All the time my uneasiness built and built,’ she said. ‘His business involvements.’

‘Margaret, I do understand,’ Iles said. ‘The gradual, relentless drawing away from him. This is how good things die, slowly, unstoppably.’

‘It might be difficult, giving you protection,’ Harpur said. ‘What reason? He wouldn’t threaten. Ralph’s too smart and polite.’

‘Unofficially?’ she replied.

‘Difficult, especially if you go off our ground, of course, and I assume you’d want distance,’ Harpur said.

She stared at him for a while. ‘Did you somehow know I was coming to your house today?’

‘What? How could I?’

‘I mean, Iles being here. Like pre-arranged.’

‘We’re buddies, Margaret, despite his filthy betrayal and appearance,’ the ACC replied. ‘Forgiveness is big with me.’

‘He comes over some Saturdays when there’s no school for my kids,’ Harpur said. ‘I have two daughters, the same as you, Mrs Ember.’

‘I hope I take an interest in a colleague’s family,’ Iles said, ‘especially as he’s single parenting. Hazel, Harpur’s older girl, is hardly a child, anyway.’

‘She’s fifteen,’ Harpur replied.

‘God,’ Mrs Ember said.

‘Luckily they’re out a lot,’ Harpur replied.

‘Hazel’s a genuinely gifted girl,’ Iles said. ‘I hope I can bring some vitality, tenderness and humour to Harpur’s household occasionally. Hazel appreciates it.’

‘God,’ Mrs Ember said.

‘At Staff College I was often called Witty Desmond,’ Iles replied. ‘Heaven knows what Harpur would be called if he ever got there, which he won’t.’

‘Where will you go?’ Harpur asked her.

‘I might tell you when we’re fixed up.’

‘How can I protect you if I don’t know where you are?’ Harpur replied.

‘You won’t, will you, whether you know or not?’

‘Difficult.’

‘So, secrecy might be better,’ she said. ‘One thing I’ve learned on this visit.’

‘You can’t be secret from Ralph,’ Harpur said. ‘Not if you’re drawing from his accounts and so on. Or was there an escape fund around the place? In the house? In the Monty? Cash? You’ve helped yourself? Prudent people like Ralph always have some bale-out treasure on hand. It could make him ratty if you’ve raided that.’

‘I might let you know where we are,’ she replied.

‘We’re not in league with Ralph, you know,’ Harpur said. ‘We wouldn’t pass on your address.’

‘No?’ Mrs Ember replied. ‘No?’

‘If Harpur assures you of something you can more or less trust it, Margaret. Oh, definitely more or less.’

‘Yes?’ Mrs Ember said.