Come Clean (1989)

by Bill James

  ‘Not all that well.’

  ‘I know you went to a school, because it says so on your papers, but were the teachers there pissed all day? The point is this, Col: if people like Benny are allowed to think that kind of progress might come to pass, they will work the harder and dirtier to make it come to pass. That is a very perilous situation, and one we help create if we don’t act effectively. We’d deserve impeachment. Myself, I think Lane should have gone that way a dozen times already, for having a heart of gold and marshmallow teeth. But, when I get myself into the festering, neat lounges of people like Benny, in their half-million quid, tawdry houses, and when I open my mouth and let them get a glimpse of what’s blocking their way to the real cream – I mean to respectability and peace of mind – and of what’s certain to go on blocking their way for as far ahead as they can see, they lose a vast slab of their bloody arrogance and optimism. I can get through to these people, like an Old Testament prophet crying woe. They hear what I say and think to themselves, “Christ, I’m still just a crook, and this bastard’s got me noted.” After that, they’re always liable to panic and do something stupid and give-away. That’s what policing is about, Col, and it’s a noble, knuckle-duster job, and a holy joy to be in. It encloses me. Perhaps that’s half my trouble at home. All the time I feel like crying out, “Wist ye not I must be about my father’s business?”’

  ‘You’re into whist, sir? I didn’t know that. But Sarah likes bridge. Is that the problem?’

  Iles stared at him. Harpur was never totally sure how far he could go with the Assistant Chief, but now and then for self-preservation’s sake he had to score a few points against him in retaliation, and try to bring him back to earth.

  At Idylls, Sarah’s car was still absent. Iles gave no reaction, as if he had known it would not be there yet. ‘We’ll have a nightcap, Col.’

  Harpur might have preferred to go, but decided the decent thing was to wait for her with him: Iles had achieved some happiness through the encounter with Benny and the rest, but it could soon disappear if he were left alone. The Assistant Chief made some cocoa and they sat together in the unkempt living room.

  ‘It’s likely Sarah had a phone call, fixing a rendezvous,’ Iles said. ‘They’ve got some sort of code – probably a ring at an exact, specific time. I could have the thing bugged, but what sort of man does that to his wife? Or, I could tail her, but likewise. She’s entitled to run free, sod it.’

  ‘You’re very tolerant, sir.’

  ‘I don’t step into fights I can’t handle. If I got tough with Sarah I’d lose.’

  ‘You think she’s with Aston now?’

  ‘Where else?’

  ‘A lot of people are looking for him.’

  ‘Aston would tell her where to look.’ Noisily he sipped his cocoa. ‘I ought to kick her out, I suppose. Or maybe she’ll go to him for keeps, if he’ll have her. Things are touch-and-go, Col. Still can’t face losing her, that’s all.’

  ‘It could blow over, sir.’

  ‘Yes: there must be a chance some of these people will find him. Perhaps he could end up at the bottom of the dock, too. I pray constantly about him, in those terms.’

  Harpur left at half-past midnight, and she had still not returned. He did another tour of the area, looking for the Golf and the Panda, and found neither. On his way home he dropped into the control room and glanced through the incident reports for the night. None of them sounded like Sarah or Aston or Tommy Vit. It would have been easy enough to bring up the Panda’s number on the computer – probably the Golf’s too – and ask for patrols to keep an eye open. How did he explain that, though, and especially how would he explain to Iles, if he learned about it? Harpur considered, too, going back to Benny’s place and getting him out of bed to ask whether Tommy Vit was on Sarah’s tail, and whether he had reported back. That would be real doorstepping. But did he want Benny aware of how much he knew? No, Sarah, running free – in Iles’s phrase – would have to look after herself tonight.

  Chapter Thirteen

  The call from Ian Aston had brought back almost all the old joy to Sarah, and when she set off to meet him it was with the same sort of excited fearful pleasure that used to grip her at the door of the Monty. They were juvenile feelings, and she recognized it now and then, but they did not let up.

  Although he had telephoned when Sarah was alone in the house, Ian would speak only briefly, obviously in case Desmond had the line bugged. And he named no rendezvous point but asked her to go to a pay phone in a suburban street and wait for another call. When she arrived, she saw he had chosen carefully: in this prosperous area, few people would need to use a public box or break everything up for habit cash. It was unoccupied and unvandalized, and she had been waiting inside for only five minutes when he rang again. This time he was ready to talk for longer, but still delayed telling her his address.

  ‘Sarah, love, this isn’t to cause alarm, but could you check there’s nobody behind you?’

  ‘Behind me?’

  ‘Following.’

  ‘Who?’

  ‘I don’t know. Desmond? Or people who know we were at the Monty?’

  ‘Desmond – following me?’

  ‘Who knows what he’s found out, Sarah?’

  ‘He wouldn’t, whatever he’s found out. Desmond? Good God, he’d think it paltry and beneath him to care that much.’

  ‘People do all sorts of things when they’re angry and jealous. Please, just look around, outside the box. Remember, we had trouble before.’

  She didn’t look, because the idea that Desmond might tail her really was absurd and gross, just like the idea that he might bug her calls, but she took a few seconds pretending she had surveyed the street. ‘Nothing.’

  ‘Nobody? Not Desmond, nor someone who might work under him, nor anyone else?’

  ‘Ian, it’s all right, believe me.’

  Then he gave her directions. It was a long run-down road she knew, behind Valencia Esplanade and parallel to it, only a mile or so from Margot’s place but to date outside the tarting-up plan for the dockside, and still definitely lacking the chicness and bijou qualities of Margot’s area. To avoid pinpointing the house, he asked her to park a distance away and do the rest on foot. She agreed, although it was the kind of district where she would never normally have walked alone in the dark, nor even left the car unattended: but again she reminded herself, if you got into this sort of life, you took the conditions.

  ‘It’s lovely to hear you,’ he said. ‘And even more lovely that I’ll see you soon.’

  The words were simple and not too original, but, to be told something like that in a voice sounding as if he meant it through and through, she would put up with the mad, tiresome precautions and forgive all Ian’s edginess. Even in a phone call to a street box, he could soothe her, warm her, make her feel properly alive again, and nobody and nothing else answered that kind of need. Ten times, and maybe more, she had told Margot what he could do for her, and she always listened full of sympathy, and seemed to understand, but then might suddenly ask, ‘So what’s keeping you with Desmond and at Rougement Place?’ And, if Margot were here now, Sarah knew she would recognize her pleasure at talking to Ian again and going to meet him, but she would also spot the squeamishness over visiting him in the Valencia, and her lack of patience with Ian’s endless anxieties and suspicions. Margot would certainly make a meal of all that in her frank, niggling, flat professional voice. Once, she had even grown witty on the subject and said Sarah was only half-and-half in love with the demi-monde. Margot could go stuff herself. She might be honest and worth the money, but she was also a top-class pain sometimes, regardless. Sarah said: ‘I’ve been going nuts, Ian, waiting.’ The line broke up for a moment.

  ‘Wanting, did you say?’ he asked.

  ‘That as well.’

  He had rooms at the top of a once stately Victorian house in Tempest Street, now subdivided three or four times, its staircase covered in battered green and gold carpet,
the landings dark and littered, and the wallpaper, probably high-quality when new, whenever that was, now hopelessly faded and chipped and scrawled over. The house was full of sounds from behind the closed doors – music, shouting, talk, television voices, pots and pans – but she saw nobody as she hurried up the stairs. He opened his door as soon as she knocked and took her hand to draw her inside. In the poor light from the landing and the little passageway to his rooms he appeared shockingly haggard and pale. He hadn’t even smiled yet. For a couple of seconds he remained on the threshold, staring back down the stairs, his body arched and tense, obviously listening for the sound of footsteps above the barrage of noises from the other tenants. Perhaps he looked what he was, a hunted man, and the signs would probably have been familiar to Desmond or Colin Harpur, whose business was with such people all the time, alive and dead.

  Then he closed the door and turned and took her in his arms and kissed her, but it was still as if his mind were somewhere else, and his body against hers felt unyielding and ready to move away fast at any moment.

  ‘Nobody came after me, Ian,’ she said. ‘I took care when I parked and I made sure in the street.’ Although none of it was true, she felt a sort of duty to ease his worries, and, besides, she wanted his attention.

  ‘These people, some of them, they’re so good at it, Sarah.’

  ‘At what?’

  ‘At staying unseen.’

  ‘Darling, I looked. Nobody’s invisible.’

  ‘Close.’

  They went into his sitting room, and he must have sensed her recoil momentarily at the bareness of it, the lack of comfort. There were a couple of straight wooden chairs, a small table, a cheap-jack sideboard, one armchair, a small television set, a spotty wall-mirror, no pictures.

  ‘Makes my other place look luxurious, doesn’t it? The hamster wouldn’t put up with this, I bet. But it’s a transit camp, that’s all, love,’ he said. ‘And a hidey-hole. So far, it’s done the job.’

  ‘It’s fine,’ she replied. And, for a longish second, she had a view of herself occupying this sort of grim dump with him for ever, perhaps always ready to run and find somewhere else because of new threats and fears. It knocked her a bit. So, was she really so sold on comfort and the big house – wedded to them? She felt ashamed and told herself she had been pushed off balance by seeing Ian in this state, and that some of his fears about the future must have reached her.

  He went to the window now and, standing at the side, gazed down at the street for a few minutes. Then, coming back into the centre of the room so as not to be seen from below, he went to the other side and looked along the street in the opposite direction. Sarah sat on a straight chair and waited.

  ‘I think it’s all right,’ he said.

  ‘Ian, I know it is.’

  He turned back into the room and now he did smile, so that, for a few minutes, he looked as he did in those early Monty days, full of life and devilment and warmth.

  ‘I like your outfit,’ he said. ‘Class.’

  ‘What else, coming to see you?’ It was a rust-coloured gabardine suit she had bought for some police social occasion, a loose-fitting, male-style jacket and wide-legged trousers. Desmond liked it, too, so she reckoned her taste must be holding its own. Herself, she had been undecided about the suit. Yes, it did look classy and expensive. And that meant you had time to shop and enough money, which probably showed you must be getting on a bit. Mutton dressed as mutton. Surrender.

  ‘I haven’t been here long,’ he said. ‘I have to keep changing addresses. For the moment.’

  Her vision of a scared, gypsy life rushed back.

  ‘Why I wasn’t in touch sooner, Sarah. I stayed well away for a while.’

  ‘I understand,’ she said. ‘All I want is for you to be safe. Well, almost all.’

  ‘I had to come back. You. And there was a job I had to do. Have to do. It’s not finished yet, but promising. Sarah, this could be the biggy I’ve been waiting for.’

  Now, he not only looked as he used to, he sounded like it, as well. Often she had seen and heard him display this sort of optimism over some vague, confidential project that was supposed to change everything and set him up for ever. It hadn’t happened, of course, not yet, but the hope kept coming back, and she had loved that in him. All right, so he was a bit like bloody Micawber, but probably much sexier.

  ‘There’s a bedroom?’ she asked.

  ‘Decor and furniture by the same gifted consultants. Are we in a hurry?’

  ‘I’m at bridge. Coffee afterwards. No, no hurry. Just I’ve been missing you.’ But there was more to it. She feared that his sudden cheerfulness and confidence could be fragile, liable to break up, and she wanted to make love while he felt good, and while she felt good, because he did. These rooms, this district, the threats he lived with, the fear of someone, or more than one, in the street or on the stairs or into his place again, could throw a chill over both of them at any time. If there was one thing she did not want with him it was fucking that was gloomy. Keep that for home. She was here looking for joy, never mind the crumminess and the perils, or imagined perils, and the dicey future. She wanted her clothes off and his clothes off and for the two of them to be warm and touching and happy and relaxed, but not too relaxed, in a bed, preferably a big bed and preferably a clean bed with nice sheets, but fussiness could be taken too far: this relationship was not after a hygiene award.

  ‘Just let me tell you this,’ Ian said, getting into the armchair.

  He seemed so full of himself that perhaps it would help to wait and listen.

  ‘Remember I said there could be something in all this for me – I mean, the thing at the Monty, and the scene that was obviously building up, though we couldn’t see what it was then?’

  ‘You know now?’

  He grinned. ‘Like I said, there could be big stuff here, if it’s played properly.’ For a second, the cocky grin slipped. ‘And as long as I’m careful. As long as we’re careful, Sarah.’ He stood up and went to the window again, but at least this time only looked from one side down to the street, and not for very long. The full terror and the obsessiveness seemed to have subsided and, when he came back to the chair, his good spirits had revived. ‘I’m going to be in touch with someone who could do me a lot of good, a lot, Sarah. This is a guy really powerful around here. Look, I know I say these things, been saying them for ages, and you could be tired of listening, but this time it’s true. This is somebody running an important operation, one of the two biggest operations, locally. That’s the whole point. There’s just the two of them now and one or other has to go under. Bound to be. That’s business.’

  ‘What operation?’

  ‘The thing we saw in the Monty is connected with this battle between them, no question. I couldn’t understand how, but I’ve got it sorted out now. A few things more to fit in, maybe, but minor. This is valuable information, love. It’s what I said from the start – someone would pay for this kind of material, and I know who it is. I don’t mean just a fee, but if somebody like that sees I can come up with the goods, and these really are the goods, he’s going to want to use me for other things in the future. This would be, well, a kind of consultancy, you follow? Something like that, I’ve always fancied. You’re you’re own man, but steady work. I don’t mean anything crooked. I’ve never been into that, and I’m not starting it now. All right, this person has some crooked aspects to his business, I can’t deny that, but I keep very clear, and I’ll go on keeping clear.’

  In a way, what he said appalled her, and especially what he avoided saying, but things she could guess at through the gaps and the delicate words he used for frightening realities. Now, she understood better his anxieties and nerviness. To her it sounded as if he was moving into hideously dangerous areas. Yet it obviously excited him, made him feel he was winning at last; the big break. It might involve him in large chunks of self-deception, but who the hell was she to be sniffy about that? ‘Which person?’ she asked. ‘Who
are you going to see?’

  ‘Sarah, for your own sake it’s better you don’t know.’ He was intoning, rather, going for gravity. ‘Keep out of it, love.’

  ‘I can’t keep out of it, can I? If you’re in it, so am I. We were both at the Monty.’

  ‘But leave it to me now,’ he said.

  She saw that what he meant was, Rely on me, I can handle it. And possibly he could.

  ‘I’ll just say it’s someone at the head of a rich, family business – himself, two sons, a good, close team – and they’re going to come out of all this right on top, and it will be because of help from me, Sarah. That’s bound to see Ian Aston all right, I mean, long-term all right, isn’t it?’

  ‘Sounds great, yes,’ she replied. She assumed he meant Leo Tacette, whom Desmond had described to her at the restaurant, but she let Ian keep up the secrecy, since he wanted it so badly.

  ‘You don’t sound really convinced, love,’ he said.

  ‘Yes, really. It’s just that I don’t understand it all, yet.’

  ‘No. How could you? Look, things have been happening.’

  He still spoke like somebody full of important information, generously ready to share one or two items with her. Thank you very much.

  ‘I’m not the only one who’s lying low. A lot of people are very scared. It’s made things difficult. I told you, I wanted to see the girlfriend of Paynter, that lad in the Monty, the one they pulled out of the dock. You saw the television? This girl, Amanda, went to ground and she took one hell of a lot of finding.’

  ‘You did it?’

  He grinned again. ‘Sarah, I had to do this while people were searching for me at the same time. Well, Ralphy. Oh, incidentally, I heard they thought he warned me and got a beating for it. Then someone like you found him.’

  ‘I wanted a lead to you, that’s all.’

  ‘It’s all right. I understand, love. But Ralph gave me no tips. He was really looking. He meant it. Well, he knows Loxton doesn’t mess about. It came very close.’ Ian leaned over and touched her hand. This was the first real contact tonight, and it amazed her, disheartened her, that they could sit like this after so long apart, separate, their hunger contained.