Free Vacuum by Bill James Page A

of course. Poor, dear, thought-prone prick.’
    â€˜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.’
    â€˜He’s someone who thinks he sees straight. They’re always sickeningly dangerous, Col.’
    â€˜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.’
    â€˜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.
    â€˜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.’
    â€˜Ralph has depths.’
    â€˜Sir Matthew might regard that as a fine double-bluff, mightn’t he?’
    â€˜He’s a prey to obsessions.’
    â€˜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?’
    â€˜Hardly, Col, on the face of it.’
    â€˜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.’
    â€˜Yes, that’s probably how Upton will see it, in his footling, top-rank, infantile, paranoid way.’
    â€˜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.’
    â€˜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.
    â€˜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.’
    â€˜Inevitably.’
    â€˜Can you put up with this distrust from him, sir?’
    â€˜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.’
    â€˜I don’t know where I stand on this,’ Harpur replied.
    â€˜Which?’
    â€˜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.’
    â€˜It is a tricky one, isn’t it, Col?’
    â€˜I can see likelihoods on both sides of the question.’
    â€˜You’re not one to rush to judgement.’
    â€˜Thank you, sir.’
    â€˜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.’
    â€˜Which lines?’
    â€˜Defending me, testimonializing me, attempting to protect me at this jaw-jaw we’re on our way to.’
    â€˜Surely it would be helpful if—’
    â€˜Don’t champion me. Your support would