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resembled a fair-haired Rocky Marciano, not a film star: undefeated and unscarred world heavweight boxing champion just after the war.
    But it wasn’t a woman who joined Ember after a few minutes in the small patch of light. Instead, someone Harpur recognized as a commonplace courier member of Ralph’s firm, Joachim Bale Frederick Brown, came and stood with him. It looked planned. As Harpur remembered him, Brown had a flimsy moustache and small beard, just about discernible, despite the shadows. Although he owned three first names, most people called him Turret, probably following a gang spat somewhere – not on this ground or Harpur would have recalled it. Brown must have done well in the fight. ‘Turret’ suggested a blast-away all-rounder.
    Ember and Brown talked briefly, earnestly. From where he sat, Harpur could hear nothing of what they said, but it definitely seemed more than chit-chat. The meeting had purpose, and, most likely, a secret purpose. Why come out into this murky yard otherwise? So, what kind of secret would a chieftain like Ralph share with this fetch-and-carry lad, Brown?
    Harpur had no answer to that one – nor to a few others. For instance, he didn’t altogether understand why he decided to come here tonight. These company dinners happened regularly and wouldn’t normally interest him. They were for show only – no disclosures. Any information presented there had been sieved and pasteurized by Ralph and Shale. Occasionally, it was true, Harpur’s boss, Assistant Chief Constable Desmond Iles, might suggest a joint stroll into the banqueting hall at about the oatcakes and various cheeses stage to queer the do and cause disruption. Iles loved – lived – to cause disruption. But he hadn’t suggested a visit tonight. Once, when they’d invaded a dinner, Iles compelled silence and recited what was apparently a send-up of some famous poem:
    â€˜Stilton! thou shouldst be living at this hour:
    England hath need of thee . . .’
    Iles had a lot of knowledge, some of it not much use, but plenty of it terrific.
    Did Harpur’s trip here now amount to more than an on-spec lurk? He lacked a precise motive for the stint, just sensed that somebody ought to take a peep. And he felt unable to send anyone from his department to watch, because he couldn’t brief him/her on what to watch for . Why target a dinner? Harpur simply had what he described to himself as ‘a vague prompting’, and he’d respond in person. This basic surveillance wasn’t the kind of duty a Detective Chief Superintendent usually handled. But now and then he would feel forced to take on a private session of low-level, street-level, car-park-level policing, especially if such a session seemed perverse and non-delegatable.
    â€˜A vague prompting’? Oh, hell! Some bright, fucking folderol wordage. Where did it start then? He thought he could spot the moment. His daughters, just back from school the other day, were discussing in that loud, Now-hear-this, know-all yap of theirs what one of them had read or heard – maybe in the classroom, maybe elsewhere – about a famous book by Karl Marx attacking capitalism. Apparently the argument there was that capitalists try to eliminate one another’s businesses so that a smaller and smaller number of them can dominate. All capitalists have this deep, inborn, compulsive need to destroy rivals. The few surviving firms – or even single survivor – have the power then to fix prices as they like and milk the customers. Harpur’s elder daughter, Hazel, had seemed to agree with this analysis. She said, ‘A bit like our well-known Ralph Ember and Mansel Shale, the drugs biggies here. They’ve seen off rivals and one day each might try to see off the other, so as to win total control of the market.’
    This snippet of economic wisdom had got to Harpur, and especially Hazel’s mention of Ember