I Am Gold
Authors: Bill James
i
am
Gold
Also by Bill James in the Harpur and
Iles series:
You'd Better Believe It
The Lolita Man
Halo Parade
Protection
(TV tie-in version,
Harpur
and Iles)
Come Clean
Take
Club
Astride a Grave
Gospel
Roses, Roses
In Good Hands
The Detective is Dead
Top Banana
Panicking Ralph
Eton Crop
Lovely Mover
Kill Me
Pay Days
Naked at the Window
The Girl with the Long Back
Easy Streets
Wolves of Memory
Girls
Pix
In the Absence of Iles
Hotbed
Other novels by Bill James:
The Last Enemy
Split
Middleman
A Man's Enemies
Between Lives
Making Stuff Up
Letters from Carthage
Off-street Parking
Full of Money
Short stories:
The Sixth Man and other stories
By the same author writing as
David Craig:
The Brade and Jenkins series:
Forget It
The Tattooed Detective
Torch
Bay City
Other novels by David Craig:
The Alias Man
Message Ends
Contact Lost
Young Men May Die
A Walk at Night
Up from the Grave
Double Take
Bolthole
Whose Little Girl Are You?
(filmed as
The Squeeze)
A Dead Liberty
The Albion Case
Faith, Hope and Death
Hear Me Talking to You
Tip Top
Writing as James Tucker:
Equal Partners
The Right Hand Man
Burster
Blaze of Riot
The King's Friends
(reissued as by
Bill James)
Non-fiction:
Honourable Estates
The Novels of Anthony Powell
Copyright © 2010 by Bill James
First American edition, 2011
First published in Great Britain by Constable and Robinson Ltd.
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any
form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information
storage and retrieval systems, without permission in writing from the
publisher, except by a reviewer, who may quote brief passages.
ISBN 978-0-88150-951-9
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
has been applied for.
Published by The Countryman Press,
43 Lincoln Corners Way, Woodstock, VT 05091
Distributed by W. W. Norton & Company, Inc.,
500 Fifth Avenue, New York, NY 10110
Printed in the United States of America
10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1
Chapter One
2009
One of the notable things about Iles was he'd get very upset at the death of any child, but especially a child who'd been shot. He gazed at this lad on the floor of the Jaguar, and Harpur could read the self-blame, anguish and despair in Iles's face. It had happened on his territory, and in daylight â that's how he would think: a damned affront, a stain; someone, or more than one, monkeying with him, with
him
, Desmond Iles.
Usually, the Assistant Chief's face didn't say much at all. He could do terrific, almighty, disturbing blankness, except, of course, when he went into one of those twitching, loud, lips-froth fits about his wife and Harpur, though that had finished aeons ago. Looking in at the riddled boy through the gap where the window should have been, Iles seemed near to weeping. The boy's stepmother, dead in the driver's seat, would also register with him, certainly, but his main reactions and grief were for the child, Laurent.
Sometimes â not now, no, not now â Iles had quoted to Harpur a saying from one of his famous literary figures in the past: âGrief is a species of idleness.' Very snappy and cool and clever-clever, but wrong for Iles today, wasn't it, sir? The ACC did a lot of heavy reading and came out with plenty of quotes, now and then fairly sane.
Detective Chief Superintendent Colin Harpur reached the scene at about the same time as the first armed response car and an ambulance. Iles arrived a couple of minutes later. It was the kind of incident the ACC would want to attend personally. He'd find it symbolic, foully symbolic, a sign of possible general breakdown, and on his plate. Laurent Shale's sister who'd been with him in the back of the car seemed unhurt, though her school clothes, forehead and hair were splashed with his blood. Harpur had opened a rear door of the Jaguar and lifted her off the floor and out. Ambulance people declared Laurent and his stepmother dead at the scene, or they'd have been removed at once, too.
A woman paramedic had taken the girl from Harpur and sat with her on the low front-garden wall of a house alongside the Jaguar. She wiped the girl's face with a dressing pad and tried to talk some comfort. âHer name's Matilda,' Harpur called.
âIs it a mistake, Col?' Iles said.
âIn what sense, sir?' Harpur said.
âDid they expect Mansel Shale to be driving?'
âWe do know he generally did the school run.'
âAnd the car's recognized everywhere,' Iles said.
âIt's the kind of school where parents are expected to roll up in at least a Jaguar. Manse is hot on that kind of thing â attention to tone.'
âSo, Shale must be away talking to an importer, or getting shriven at some abbey, and the wife deputizes,' Iles said. âHasn't this family heard about not sticking to the same route? Manse is not in some ordinary, safe career, after all.'
The ACC and Harpur spoke across Laurent's body. Harpur stood in the road. He hadn't closed the Jaguar rear door after bringing Matilda Shale out and he bent now towards the interior of the car and Iles. The Assistant Chief was on the pavement. The near-side rear window had been shattered by a bullet and he crouched with his head through the space. He was in uniform. He'd reverted lately to that
en brosse
cut for his grey hair, copied from Jean Gabin in an old film on TV. His admiration for Gabin came and went. There weren't many people Iles admired non-stop â the poet, Alfred Lord Tennyson, the French revolutionary politician, Robespierre, and the ancient, toughie British queen, Boudicca, sometimes called Boadicea, though not by Iles.
âThe second wife of Mansel? A wedding not long ago?' Iles said.
âNaomi. The first one â Sybil â cut loose.'
âThey can do that, Harpur.' But, perhaps because of the special situation, Iles didn't turn mad or high-decibelled this time.
âWell, yes, I've heard something along those lines,' Harpur said.
Chapter Two
Of course, there'd been a build-up to all this. It began just over a month ago. One point about Mansel Shale was he knew nobody could see the future, including him, but back then â say more like five or six weeks than a month â yes, back then he'd had this strong idea he'd get killed soon: like shot in the head, most probably, though maybe garrotted.
But, he also had to think, perhaps that's all it was, a strong idea. A strong idea could be a stupid idea. Strong didn't mean sensible. Some madmen became very strong
because
they was mad, requiring straitjackets. It might be the same with certain ideas: powerful but crazy.
As a matter of fact, one evening around that time his son, Laurent, had been told at school to study an old poem about this sort of topic and they talked it over. The poem had a dog in it, and showed people could make a total mistake when guessing who'd die. In many ways Shale regarded poetry as quite worthwhile. Undoubtedly, all sorts liked it, with or without rhymes, stiff covers or paperback. Poetry could tell you things. Manse would not deny this.
But, naturally, he'd realized that if he spoke to other experienced folk in the substances trade about his fear of getting killed they'd say immediately, âSo, hire a bodyguard, or bodyguards.' It would be their reply even if Manse admitted his worry could be foolish and panicky. However, people in the dog poem had turned out to be foolish and panicky, and Manse would hate to look the same. That was not right for someone in his position at the head of a top-class firm.
The poem had mentioned that a very good man, but not named, got bitten by a mad dog in Islington, London. Most probably in them historical days Islington had all sorts. Anyway, neighbours and friends went into a true flutter, because they believed the man would die of them bites. No. The complete opposite. The last line of the poem stuck hard in Manse's head. âThe dog it was that died.'
And this was the thing, wasn't it â there might be a lot of doubts about who was actually going to get it? Manse could guess that if he used these arguments with others in the trade they wouldn't listen, they'd just say again, âGet a bodyguard.' Here's how they'd see it:
(a) in the snort, smoke and mainline trade, slaughter was always a danger for the boss of a rich, pusher company such as Manse's, so maximum self-protection made sense. And,
(b) a business leader like Shale, who knew the scene and its vibes so well, could somehow
feel
if special peril was around, even though out of sight. That being so, to take notice of such signals also made sense.
Therefore (a) and (b) together said, Pay a heavy, or heavies, to keep you safe. That sounded simple. Bodyguards had been trained to wipe out all who tried to attack their chief and, in any case, to put theirselves between him and the bullets or garrotting or Samurai sword. This was what bodyguarding
meant
: you guarded someone else's body â such as, say, Manse's â not your own. Good fees covered this fine flair. You could either pick someone or more than one from your private organization to become a bodyguard, or bodyguards, or you could go to an agency. Almost all bodyguards was men, many black. Sex equality hoopla didn't seem to work in this occupation yet. Nobody said it was not fair to women that only men could get murdered guarding someone else, male or female: think of the Queen or Madonna.
Laurent said the final words in that poem, âThe dog it was that died', came in this strange order so the dog arrived bang at the start and gave a terrific shock. Ordinary language wouldn't do. For instance, if the poem ended with, âBut, to everybody's astonishment, it was not the man who died but the dog', we'd have to wait until word number fourteen for âdog'. But the poem put â
The dog
' right up front, to really hit you, when you'd reckoned the
man
would die from the very serious fangness of them bites, most likely causing rabies or fatal rips.
This was what Laurent thought, or what his teacher had told him to think. Manse wondered. The poem had a title, âElegy on the death of a mad dog', so you knew where the story would go. âElegy'
and
âdeath' â a doubler. He was pretty sure only deads got elegies. How could you be surprised? Did the dog get poisoned by biting the man, regardless of him being so good? Did he have something rather murky in his blood that killed dogs? There would of been plenty of blood, some swallowed by the animal, probably. Manse felt confused, especially when he tried to get some message from that poem for the present. And what good was poems if they didn't help us now?
Way back, he'd had a great bodyguard, Neville Greenage, black, late twenties, but he went to Yorkshire or Austria, somewhere like that, to start his own operation. Later came Denzil Lake, originally from Hackney, London, white, dead now, owing to extensive gunshot damage to his mouth-throat-skull area, with suicide a possible, no question.
*
No question. Denzil had some stress. Well, he had a lot of stress. Understandable. Eventually understandable. He turned out to have been, for God knew how long, one of the most heartfelt and treacherous sods in ongoing commerce, and some thought the two-timing needed for this wore the rat right down, destroyed him. Manse had trusted Denz. Mistake, soft mistake. Deeper checks should of been done. His parents and family in Hackney didn't seem very much at all.