The façade was shiny enough when they ran Pickles to earth behind a glossily painted shop front with opaque and, Mower thought, significantly reinforced windows on the outskirts of the town centre. The BPP logo was discreetly displayed but the doors were locked and it took someone inside some time to manipulate several keys and bolts in response to Mower's peremptory knocking. The two officers found themselves facing a tall, heavy, shaven-headed gorilla of a man in jeans and a sweat-top adorned with the same logo as the windows, who scowled at Mower and almost snarled
when he took in Sharif, darkly good-looking in leather jacket and designer jeans. Mower flashed a warrant card at him quickly.
“We're here to see Ricky Pickles,” he said. “He's expecting us.”
The doorkeeper nodded, although his eyes remained mutinous.
“Yeah,” he said, allowing them into the building and ostentatiously locking the door behind them again. What had obviously been the shop part of the premises was divided by a counter piled high with boxes of what looked like leaflets, and the posters on the walls advertised Pickles' most recent attempts, so far unsuccessful, but only just, to gain election to the local council.
“Through there.” The taciturn doorkeeper waved a hand towards a door marked office at the back of the shop area and Mower tapped and went in without waiting for a response. Pickles was sitting behind a large executive desk with a telephone to his ear and waved benignly at his two visitors as he wound up his call.
“Sorry about that, Sergeant Mower,” he said. “Craig's here for security not his social skills.” He had stood up and held out his hand as his visitors came in but Mower ignored the gesture and Pickles sat down again with a shrug, without acknowledging Sharif's presence at all.
“What can I do for you?” he asked curtly, his enthusiasm for the visit evidently waning within seconds.
“We just wondered if you knew anyone who might have been throwing acid around in the Aysgarth Lane area,” Mower said, his face bland and his voice mild in spite of the bluntness of his assault.
“And why would I know anyone like that, sergeant?” Pickles countered airily. “This is the office of a political party
not a hangout for yobs. We've espoused the ballot box rather than the acid bullet, as you might say, just like our Fenian friends. Not that I've ever waged war on little girls, you understand, unlike the fucking IRA. A bit OTT that, don't you reckon?” He flashed a triumphant glance at Sharif, who was simmering beside Mower but who had learned the hard way not to rise to the racist bait.
“However legitimate your own ambitions are, I'm sure you know a few people who are less â shall we say? â scrupulous,” Mower said. “DC Sharif here certainly knows that there are plenty of white lads willing to raise hell round Aysgarth Lane when the mood takes them. Are none of them your supporters, then?”
“What folk do in their spare time is nowt to do with me or the Party,” Pickles said, the smooth façade beginning to look a little strained. “I've told you. I've gone legit. I know you know I were a bit of a wild lad once but I've put violence behind me. I know I can get where I want to get in this town through the political system.”
“You're sure of that, are you?” Sharif asked suddenly.
“Oh aye, I'm sure of that,” Pickles said. “You'll see, all your lot'll see, and sooner than you think an'all. There's more people don't like your lot than you can ever imagine. More and more since New York.”
“And what exactly's your platform for the white voters?” Mower asked. “I'm assuming no one of Asian descent will want to vote for you.”
“No, well, they wouldn't would they? Knowing that they'll lose all the favours they're getting from tâcouncil now. Special this and special that and let's not upset the minorities. Fair shares of what's going for white folk is all I'm saying. Nowt wrong wi'that, is there?”
“It depends what you think's fair, I suppose,” Mower said.
“But we're getting away from the point. I'm looking for three or four lads, young lads probably, prepared to run around the streets close to Earnshaws mill looking for trouble. Any ideas?”
“No ideas at all,” Pickles said, regaining his ruffled composure. “Why should I have?”
“And if you had you wouldn't tell us?” Sharif asked.
“Did I hear summat then?” Pickles asked Mower. “Sort of chattering noise, like a monkey or summat?
Mower felt Sharif tense beside him and put a restraining hand on his arm.
“I think at the very least you need to pass on a message to your supporters, Ricky,” he said. “I think you need to let them know that we're going to get whoever did this acid throwing. It was a disgusting attack on innocent kids and they won't get away with it. Nasty, vicious, child abuse I suppose. Let them know it's me they need to contact if they've got any information. And tell them that this is the sort of crime I don't forget and I don't let up on â ever. Pass it on, will you?”
When the shop door eventually closed behind them, Mower glanced at Sharif who banged his fist so hard against the wall that it skinned his knuckles, although he did not wince.
“Leave it, Omar,” he said. “You can't let it get to you. You won't survive in this job if you do.”
“Sarge,” Sharif agreed, his dark eyes blazing. “So maybe I won't survive in this job if I come up against that scum one dark night. Might be worth taking a chance on.”
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Jack Ackroyd was late for his dinner engagement. Laura and her grandmother had arrived at the Clarendon just before
seven thirty and settled themselves in the bar where Joyce, in a blue dress that was beginning to seem loose on a frame that was thinner and more stooped than it used to be, sipped a sherry with an air of faint disapproval as a noisy group of young people in dinner jackets and revealing dresses milled about prior to what looked like an office dinner dance. For her part, Laura gazed at her vodka and tonic and wondered if she was too old for anything quite as revealing as one of the little slinky numbers being thrust in her face. She glanced down at her own black silk dress, low enough at the neck she had thought until she had seen tonight's competition, and wondered how had she managed to fall in love with a man ten years her senior and a not-so-closet puritan to boot.
“We'd have been locked up if we'd gone out looking like that,” Joyce whispered fiercely.
“Come on, Nan,” Laura remonstrated. “You're not telling me you never showed a bit of bosom in your salad days, are you? It's not what I heard. I've seen the photographs. You were a stunner. Good enough for Page 3.”
“We knew what to keep for the bedroom, any road,” Joyce said tartly. “You can see up to that lass's knickers.”
“If she's wearing any,” Laura said doubtfully. “I don't see how she can be.” At which both she and Joyce both collapsed into delighted giggles.
“What's so funny, then?” Jack Ackroyd asked. He had pushed through the crowd to their corner table without their being aware of his approach.
“Tell you later, Dad,” Laura said. “Have you got a drink or do you want to eat straight away? I'm starving. I didn't have time for much lunch.”
“Aye, let's eat. I can have a Scotch at the table while they're bring the food. Is Michael coming, then?”
“He can't. The old story, working late,” Laura said, pulling
a face, although in some ways she was relieved that Thackeray had eventually declined the invitation. She thought she might get more out of her father about his mysterious plans if she was not accompanied by a detective chief inspector this evening.
In the restaurant the head waiter evidently recognised Jack, even though it was more than six years since he had lived and worked in Bradfield, and he ushered them to a table in the large bay window which overlooked Exchange Square and its cluster of statues of local worthies, mainly those who had transformed an early nineteenth century village into a bustling manufacturing town in the space of less than fifty years, making themselves millionaires in the process.
“Still got your finger on the pulse then, Jack?” Joyce said as she sat down and accepted the large leather-bound menu as if it might explode in her hand.
“Oh aye, here and there, Mother, here and there,” Jack said. “Now as I recollect they always had a good roast here. I do hope they've not mucked the menu up with olive oil mash and onion marmalade and towers of roast cod on spinach. I just fancy a traditional English meal tonight. Can't get that easily in Portugal. It's all bloody cod there, an'all.”
“That's the price you pay for the sunshine and the golf,” Laura said unsympathetically.
“Your mother still likes fish,” Jack muttered, as if this were a character defect in his wife he should have eliminated by now. He ordered their meal and a bottle of Bordeaux old enough to impress although Laura knew it would suit her father's roast beef much better than her chicken. Jack was not a person who would willingly put his pleasures second to anyone else's. Joyce declined wine and sipped mineral water with her asparagus and herb omelette, seeming
subdued although Laura could not tell whether it was by her surroundings or a more general depression which she thought she had noticed before. Joyce was not taking kindly to the frustrations of old age.
Laura had to admit that Jack was never less than generous with his treats and she felt the wine going to her head as it met the vodka and tonic which she had drunk with David Mendelson and followed up with Joyce in the bar while they were waiting for Jack. It would have to be a taxi home tonight, she thought wryly, or a frosty reception from Thackeray if she arrived in her own car after drinking. But if anything the wine emboldened her and, as she nibbled a trio of miniature chocolate puddings which she knew she would regret ordering next time she got on her bathroom scales, she tackled the subject which had been simmering at the back of her mind during the family small-talk which Jack had masterminded throughout the rest of the meal.
“So come on, Dad,” she said. “How's this rescue plan for Earnshaws you're being so mysterious about going? What are you going to do, take them over, or what? That would be a shock to the local system.”
“Aye well, it might be no more than they deserve,” Jack said. “But it's not as simple as that. It never is in business. No, a take-over's not on the cards. I told you. I'll let you be the first to know when there's owt to tell.”
“I met one of the younger Earnshaws once at a party when I was a student,” Laura said. “But the awful thing is that I can't remember if it was the son who's been killed or the other one, what's he called? Matthew is it?”
“Bumped off the wrong one if you ask me,” Jack said unsympathetically. “Matthew's bloody useless, by all accounts. Booze, cocaine, you name it, he does it, apparently.”
“Will it muck up your plans then, this murder?” Joyce
asked sharply, evidently deeply suspicious of Jack's interest in Earnshaws.
“I'd not think so, no. He was out of the loop, was Simon,” Jack said. “It's Frank I'm dealing with, any road. I've known him from way back. He'll not muck me about, won't Frank. A sight different from his father. Now he's a cantankerous old beggar, is George. I met him a couple of times years ago and he could teach me a thing or two about keeping a work-force in order.”
“And that'd be difficult,” Joyce said, her voice sharp.
“He knew a trick or two, did George,” Jack said with a gleeful glance at his mother.
“Surely he's long retired?” Joyce asked. “He must be as old as me, must George Earnshaw. I remember him an' all. Nearly got taken to the Race Relations people for refusing to employ Asian workers when all the other mills were bringing them over here in their thousands. Had to back off in the end, of course, when he found that no one else would work for him for the wages he was prepared to offer. Now of course a lot of those poor devils are unemployed, and their children and grandchildren as well.”
“Aye, well, I don't think old George's got much to do with the business now,” Jack said. “I've no doubt he'd like to keep the place going until it goes spectacularly bust, but I reckon we can do better than that. You should be grateful, Mother, if we can keep Earnshaws viable and employing a few folk.”
“A few?” Joyce said. “Time was it were thousands. It was the biggest mill in the town in its day, was Earnshaws.”
“Time was no one in the third bloody world knew what a loom looked like,” Jack said without sympathy. “Times change and you've got to change with them, or go under. Your Mr. Blair knows that.”
“He's not my Mr. Blair,” Joyce objected, her lips pursed.
“Come on, Dad,” Laura said. “Let's not have a political row now. But I'll hold you to your promise, you know. I want this story, when there's something to print. It'll earn me a few brownies points with Ted Grant and I'm short of those at the moment.”