by Bill James
Harpur thought he knew what might be coming and went chewy and very evasive, what Harpur’s daughters called his ‘know-all plonking’ voice. Although he prized the kind of insights Lamb often brought him, he didn’t like hearing Jack’s splendid talents applied to private, internal police matters. Harpur did a bit of a now-hear-this chunter. ‘There’ve always been cases that were unresolved at the time, but then, much later, a new piece of evidence shows up and clinches everything,’ he said. ‘DNA might not have been available originally, but now it can give the truth. Many examples. The murderer of a prostitute in Wales was caught like that, ages after the killing – and ages after wrongful conviction of several men for her death. Also, there was a powerful campaign led by very loud, distinguished people to prove James Hanratty innocent of murder and rape, but DNA eventually showed he was guilty of both when hanged.’
‘Iles,’ Jack replied.
As replies went, Harpur didn’t like this one very much, but there it was and had better be dealt with. He trundled on with his attempt at diversion. ‘Or a new witness might decide to bring something absolutely crucial to what had been an unbustable mystery. These days, there’s so-called “double jeopardy”.’ Previously, no one could be tried for the same crime twice. Now, though, Jack, there’s jeopardy – the first trial – but also the chance of another one – another helping of hazard in court, a second jeopardy. The past, the historic, became much more reachable and forced the change in the law.’
‘Garrotting is a topic that figures,’ Jack Lamb replied.
‘Plus, of course, the Stephen Lawrence case,’ Harpur said. ‘A black teenager was stabbed to death in London and a group of white youths was accused but found not guilty of the killing. Then, though, two were retried and jailed because of new scientific evidence. History, yes, but history that has come alive.’
Lamb said: ‘It’s not only Mr Iles I wanted to talk about; this affects you as well, Colin. That’s what troubles me. Mr Iles is important, definitely, but I considered it a prime duty to look after you. I felt I should get in touch with a warning. There’s two sides to these developments: first, the situation itself; second, TV might want to make something of it.’
‘Always glad to hear from you, Jack,’ Harpur replied.
‘Oh, you talk breezy, but this is serious. If I see you’re at risk I have to act, haven’t I? The whole beautiful, time-shaped structure is threatened.’
‘Structure?’
‘This.’
‘What?’
‘Meetings like tonight’s. Or at the other places. A system. A structure. We’ve built it.’
‘I like the idea, Jack – a structure.’
‘Of course you do. You belong to one – another one: the police. There’s the chief, then Mr Iles, then you. That’s a structure. But we have our own.’
Harpur had wondered sometimes whether Jack’s fondness for military gear showed a longing to be part of some platoon or squadron or flotilla, with its own clan solidarity and discipline – its structure, maybe. The Swiss Guards and British commandos would have their strictly organized lives and so would the Pope and priests whom the guards had in their care: structure upon structure.
‘I see,’ Harpur said.
‘That structure – ours – is threatened,’ Jack said.
‘In which respect?’
‘Gravely.’
‘Where does it come from – the threat?’
‘Our happy cooperation might have to end.’
‘How do you know this, Jack? Who’s been talking to you?’
Naturally, no informant would answer that breed of question, or, at least, not with the truth. To ask it, though, was one of those formalities from Harpur’s training that sometimes surfaced, a sort of automatic twitch.
‘There’s movement, Col.’
‘In which respect?’
‘That’s what I mean about past cases,’ Lamb said. ‘Revived interest in them. It’s dangerous. It’s modish. It helps those interested feel vigilant and nobly persistent. Television adores the topic. Producers see a potential programme in the way that garrotting and non-garrotting deaths have been investigated, or not.’
They’d arrived at about the same time and had both driven front-on to the gates and shut off their lights. Then Harpur had joined Jack in his car. Now, Harpur heard a faint, gentle but persistent noise, a sort of rustling or shuffling, from nearby, and flicked the Lexus main beam on briefly. A couple of hundred rats were busying about between the dump bins and junked fridges. They took no notice of the lights. But they’d obviously been scared by the noise of two car engines when Lamb and Harpur turned up together, and had gone out of sight. They’d come back now.
Harpur thought they must have some system, some team structure – Jack’s word – to their activity. He couldn’t work it out, though. Jill, his other daughter, had told him not long ago that her biology teacher mentioned a strange book about rats. It described how a zoologist who’d been studying their ways became so impressed by their organizing and social skills that he’d decided to join them and left papers explaining why and how. This was a made-up story, though. Harpur had thought it a bit far-fetched, but what he saw now made him wonder. Rats were said to leave a sinking ship. They sensed disaster before the crew did. Superior intelligence?
How would the rats feel about this scholar wishing to ratify himself by, so to speak, ratifying himself? Harpur opened the door of the car and stepped out in what he hoped was a courteous, unaggressive style. The rats offered no welcome but withdrew again for cover among the bins and kitchen equipment. It was an urgent but orderly retreat. Harpur got back into the Lexus and turned the lights off. Before he shut the door he heard their pitter-patter returning. Smart.
Lamb ignored the break in their talk. ‘You’ll know the phrase “rough justice”, Colin.’
‘It contradicts itself.’
‘Perhaps.’
‘It means justice without the essentials of justice such as a fair examination of all the facts, and therefore isn’t justice at all. It’s the lynch mob.’
‘Maybe proper justice has failed,’ Lamb said. ‘And now and then it does – or someone believes it has, because it didn’t offer the right result.’
‘The desired result.’
‘I’m talking about the garrotting and so on, aren’t I, Colin?’
‘Are you?’
‘How do we regard those deaths, Colin? Think: In some countries, State executions are, or were, by garrotting,’ Lamb said.
‘Yes, I’ve heard that.’
‘Could I ask where you heard it?’ Lamb said.
‘Oh, it would be in conversation, I expect.’
‘Yes, I expect,’ Lamb said. ‘If you heard it how else could that have happened?’
‘Where or when I don’t recall,’ Harpur said.
‘But do you recall who with?’
‘Difficult.’
‘It must be an enthusiastic fan of garrotting,’ Lamb said.
‘That should certainly reduce the number of possibles,’ Harpur replied.
‘And someone who most likely believes in garrotting as one method of personal execution, if the law has failed to punish flagrant villainy. This is the sort of controversial situation that the TV people will love to exploit in a slightly tarted-up, semi-fictionalized documentary.’
Someone pulled open a rear door of the Lexus and climbed in. It was possibly a practised movement, smooth, athletic and swift, adaptable for any make of four-door car; no violent, raiding tug at the door but gentle, and easy-going, as though they’re entitled to enter. The approach to the car must have been skilled and well-angled. Harpur had seen nothing. Lamb wouldn’t have central locking on while the Lexus was occupied, so no trouble about entry.
Harpur and Jack both turned. There was a little, intermittent light when a three-quarters moon came out from behind clouds. ‘Hello! and felicitations! Are you boys looking for some veritable, indiscriminate closeness?’ the man said. He’d be m
id-fifties, Harpur thought, with a nicely cut suede jacket, vermilion T-shirt, scrumpy-enhanced breath, voice light and upbeat, acquainted with ejaculations. He was white with a thin, bony face and small, fair moustache; the kind of face Harpur had often seen under a courtroom wig. He closed the door behind him. It made a hearty, heavy-duty, limo-category click. The Lexus felt homely.
‘I like them big,’ the man said, ‘and you two are, in fact, that, one enormous. Not perfect light, but I can tell you’re in a sensational outfit, Mr Heavyweight behind the wheel. Don’t tell me. Swiss Guard? Not the hat, of course – John Wayne green beret. To dress like that is use of colour as a fine, respectful compliment to our very amiable, bracing pursuits. Of course, I saw your joyously vivid signal just now, the flashed headlights. It really beckoned. Thank you, oh, thank you. Those beams, so powerful, so far-reaching, yet also reaching me, in my car not far off and, like you, awaiting high-jinks. Oh, yes, jinks very much at the high end of the jinks agenda. In which regard, I hurried here, oh, hurried, hurried, like compelled, like magnetized, knowing that your rear seat was aching with welcome and that I need not fear rejection or brutality, other, of course, than tasty, charmingly stimulating brutality.
‘My name’s Zachary but Zed will do. Did you see the rats, their pelts so made-to-measure, so silvery in the beams, their eyes roguish, no resentment at the human intrusion? What a gorgeous backdrop to our explorations! Thrilling! Threesomes – don’t you adore them, so much more range than just two or self-catering? Do you like silence during things or lots of worldly, explicit wordage and rousing squeaks? You’re the Lexus sex-us host and set the terms. I acknowledge that without demur. I keep demurs to an absolute minimum these days.’
‘We’re leaving now, Zed,’ Harpur replied. ‘Disembark please. The rats won’t attack. I’ve shown them we’re nicely behaved and harmless.’
‘Oh?’
‘Perhaps on another occasion,’ Jack replied. ‘This chic pleasure garden is on our map now.’
‘I might not be available. There are uncompromising calls upon my time,’ Zed said.
‘Same here,’ Harpur said.
‘I’m very into carpe diem,’ Zed said.
‘It suits you,’ Harpur replied.
‘That’s “seize the day”, of course, or more likely night,’ Zed said.
Lamb said, ‘Scarper diem, OK?’
Zed began to weep, perhaps emotionally hurt and frustrated by this clumsy harshness from Jack. The sobs were profound and noisy, seeming to come from a good stand-by store sub-chest, like someone doing grief at a screen test. He put a hand on each side of his face and banged his forehead down repeatedly and rhythmically on the back of Jack’s seat. The sound of this hammering plus the quality sobs suggested that things had ceased to be OK in the Lexus: a possible happy evening had turned out very poorly. Did the Swiss Guard uniform aggravate things? A unit that took care of the Vatican should surely know about holy kindness and humane behaviour. Maybe Zed expected that sort of response. Lamb’s actual response, though, was the reverse of this, and as a result super-shocking and painful.
Harpur felt a lot of sympathy for this stranger, though did not weep himself. He stepped out of the Lexus again and went around to a rear door and helped him down. The rats stayed out of sight. Harpur walked with the man back to his Subaru. ‘Never shall I approach a parked Lexus again, no matter how many are in it – one, two or even more,’ he said, ‘and no matter if I am summoned and summoned repeatedly by headlights.’
‘I don’t think it’s reasonable or fair to blame all Lexuses,’ Harpur replied.
‘It’s my nature.’
‘What is?’
‘Genres. The Lexus is a genre, yes?’
‘It’s a make.’
‘If one member of a genre rejects me it is as though all members of that genre reject me.’ He was no longer sobbing, though his voice remained shaky. ‘My body will not allow me to engage with any vehicle of that specific breed. It would be a betrayal, a descent into ignoble catch-as-catch-can.’
Harpur left him at the Subaru. As he walked back to his car and the Lexus he thought some more about the development over the millennia of rats’ intelligence. It enabled them now to order their lives so slickly: to have no fear of main-beam headlights, but to watch out for someone taking a walk very near their ground. He did feel some envy. In comparison, his life seemed over-complex. He had to deal with rumour; with a Subaru hysteric; with history, disputed history, dangerous history – dangerous to Iles and to himself; with possible TV half-truths; with justice as against so-called ‘rough justice’, and with the safety of someone who should be able to secure his own safety, and had done that so far, but might in new conditions fail: Iles. The Lexus moved off before Harpur reached the two vehicles. Jack didn’t wave. He looked crusty and must be feeling resentful and embarrassed. He’d picked this dump as a rendezvous point and it was clear now that it wouldn’t really do. The rats might be interesting, but there was also Zed, and possibly other doggers waiting out of sight. Discreet it wasn’t.
Harpur could understand Jack’s disappointment and forgive a bit of rudeness. But Zed might feel otherwise. Jack had been crudely harsh to him with that dud joke: ‘Scarper diem, OK?’ Harpur had tried to dish out comfort and end the volcanic blubbering, but Zed stayed badly upset. His sad, cranky embargo on all Lexus cars came from a mind not working too well. And if he saw Jack drive off, like in a bitter rage, rejecting the whole scene and those involved in it tonight, this would injure Zed even more.
Harpur decided it would be heartless to leave Zed in that state. He turned and went back to the Subaru. He’d decided he must bring Zed another slice of consolation – make up, if he could, for Jack’s ugly surliness. The rat civilization could certainly teach him plenty.
Zed was behind the wheel of the Subaru as Harpur had left him a few minutes ago. He had been alone in the car then. But alongside him in the passenger seat now was a man of about his own age, grey moustached and bearded, in a denim jacket with a silver and blue cravat on a white shirt. Zed looked totally recovered and splendidly happy, not sobbing, and as though he wouldn’t actually know how to sob or what a sob was.
The man in the passenger seat had evidently watched Harpur approach. Urgently he rolled the side window down and called out in a shrill, panicky voice, ‘No room, no room.’ Then he bent forward to get a better look at Harpur through the windscreen. There were some minutes of moonlight. ‘Oh,’ he said. ‘Cor!’
‘What?’ Zed said.
The man spoke to Harpur. ‘Aren’t you that dick?’
‘Which?’ Zed said.
‘Which what?’ the man said.
‘Dick,’ Zed said. ‘You need to be specific about something like that.’
‘On TV local news now and then about crimes. Police. Big-time cop detective,’ the man replied.
‘Really?’ Zed said.
‘Plain clothes,’ the man said.
‘His partner has on a very vivid and very becoming costume,’ Zed replied. ‘This I can vouch for.’
‘Due to be inquired into,’ the man said.
‘Who?’ Zed said.
‘The top-spot detective,’ the man said. ‘He’s powerful, but did he use that power right?’
‘Did he?’ Zed said.
‘Why there’s an inquiry,’ the man said.
‘Historic. To do with two murders a while ago. A couple of crooks. Did they get investigated properly? Or was it a cover-up to protect another top cop – even more top, in fact. Revenge killings? Illegal punishments? An outside team will do some very serious, modish probing. That’s the word around.’
‘Around where?’ Harpur said.
‘Around. For instance, in the business community. There’s a commercial angle to something like this. People worry. People discuss. It’s in the air. Implications. Long-term shifts.’
Zed now bent forward, bent forward further than the passenger-seat man so as to speak to Harpur direct across him. ‘Although I�
�ve only just met Stanley I can tell he will be a triumph of mixed impulses and jolly skills. But I can tell, too, that he’s not into threesomes or more, I’m afraid,’ Zed said. ‘Sorry.’
‘No room, no room,’ Stanley shrieked, closing the window.
THREE
Harpur drove home to Arthur Street. He felt disturbed. He would have liked someone with whom he could talk over these hints, and more than hints, that he heard lately about a possible – probable? certain? – cold-case inquiry into the deaths of those two flagrant, acquitted villains who were either shot or garrotted. When Jack Lamb brought you information – at a rubbish dump or anywhere else – you’d better believe it, especially if Iles had told you approximately the same.
The someone he would most like to talk to about it was Denise, his undergraduate, frequently live-in girlfriend. She had a tidy, unflinching brain, which could take a problem and methodically shred it into very manageable bits, then reassemble them and produce a convincing answer. She said she’d learned this technique from the French philosophers she was reading at university, known as ‘cassez pour construire’ – ‘break open to create’. Harpur, though, thought it a flair she was born with. The French philosophers might have given it a polish, that was all.
But, regardless of where it came from, Harpur couldn’t let her loose on these particular anxieties. Couldn’t? He was scared to. This made him ashamed, but not ashamed enough to tell her. She might separate out all his worries in that clever way of hers, then put them back together but with the kind of answer he definitely did not want. He’d begun to ask himself whether he had been slack and deliberately dozy in dealing with the murder of those two villains because … well, because they were villains and ought to expect something like that; and … and … and because of the unthinkable: that Iles, as assistant chief constable (Operations), had somehow been involved in those hastened deaths.