Undercover by Bill James

self is always there, dormant, maybe, but ever ready to make a comeback.’
    â€˜You mean the id?’ Maud asked.
    â€˜That kind of thing,’ Harpur said.
    â€˜The ego makes us try to shape the id so it can cope with the world outside. Wolsey wills himself to love guns, or seem to, wills himself to get good with them, because that’s the kind of milieu he lives in – the reality he has to cope with,’ Maud said. ‘But ultimately the id will always win against the ego. What’s bred in the bone won’t come out in the wash.’
    â€˜Along those lines,’ Harpur replied.
    â€˜When he’s not leching, Harpur often does a bit on the psychiatry side,’ Iles said. ‘Don’t imagine he’d be a complete dick at that, merely because of the yokel appearance.’
    Maud gave a bemused sort of smile. ‘Naturally, I looked into Colin’s circumstances as soon as I heard you were taking him on this job,’ she replied. ‘I hadn’t had your explanation then, of course, Desmond. You’re a one-parent family, Colin, aren’t you? Megan, your wife, victim of a terrible murder 3 ? I believe Hazel, your elder daughter, is only fifteen. Is it proper – indeed, is it legal? – for you to leave her and the younger girl alone in the Arthur Street house for what might be quite lengthy spells during this operation?’
    â€˜My sister – divorced, no kids – will move in while I’m away,’ Harpur said. ‘We’ve had this arrangement several times before because of the job. Hazel and Jill get on well with her, luckily.’
    â€˜Plus Harpur has something substantial and deeply non-Platonic going with an undergraduate at the university up the road from where he lives,’ Iles said. ‘Modules: lit, langs and engineering drawing. An all-rounder. I expect she’ll call on the girls now and then.’
    â€˜This would be Denise Prior?’ Maud asked. ‘College lacrosse and swimming teams.’
    â€˜She’s not much more than a child herself, but, of course, that wouldn’t stop Col,’ Iles said. ‘Stop him? Hardly. The opposite.’
    â€˜She doesn’t live at Arthur Street permanently, though, does she?’ Maud said. ‘She has a student room in Jonson Court. Sleeps at Arthur Street only off and on.’
    â€˜Much more on than off,’ Iles said. ‘“Cohabitation” is her second name.’
    â€˜And it would be only when Colin was there, wouldn’t it?’ Maud said.
    Iles said: ‘That’s Jonson without an h – Ben, the plays and poems, not Dr Sam, the dictionary. Ben’s often commemorated. I’m reading a novel set late nineteenth century where one of the boys is in Jonson House at his boarding school.’
    â€˜And getting buggered in standard fashion,’ Maud said. ‘
The Children’s Book
, by Byatt.’
    â€˜I adore scholarly talk,’ Harpur said. ‘Have you and Mr Iles rehearsed this?’
    â€˜Yes, Harpur can turn envious of an education and grow sarcastic and bitter, poor sod. I don’t know what her parents think of their daughter running a relationship with someone like him,’ the ACC said. ‘As I understand it, they’re quite decent people now, though students themselves in the 1960s, that freed-up, pill-gifted, wild time.’
    â€˜You made a play at one stage for Hazel, I’m told, under-age or not, Desmond,’ Maud said. ‘Didn’t you flourish a glamorous crimson scarf?’
    â€˜Mr and Mrs Prior are from the Midlands area,’ Iles replied. ‘I expect they have grand hopes for their daughter. Does that mean Harpur will show some compunction and restraint? I don’t think so. “Unbridled.” Is that the word for him and his tendencies? If you can think of a better one, Maud, text me with it, would you? The classics have a grand range of nicely graded terms