by Bill James
Harpur could see her tactics. She wanted to tell Sarah Iles he was already part of the household and therefore absolutely unavailable, if Sarah Iles fancied a wander from her marriage.
‘They can say for themselves what they want. They don’t need you,’ Hazel said.
‘Who?’ Jill said.
‘Dad and Denise,’ Hazel said.
‘I thought it would help if I explained things for Mrs Iles,’ Jill replied.
‘No need,’ Hazel said.
‘To me it seems like an emergency because she’s never come here before,’ Jill said. ‘Therefore we have to give her the full picture.’
‘Of what?’ Hazel replied.
‘Of how things are,’ Jill said.
‘Which things?’ Hazel replied.
‘Here,’ Jill said.
‘She’s grown-up. She can see for herself.’
‘Not everything.’
‘Why not?’
‘Oh, you know, Haze.’
‘No.’
‘Yes you do,’ Jill said.
‘No,’ Hazel said.
‘Oh, Hazel is embarrassed,’ Sarah Iles said. ‘I think I get it. Did Desmond foolishly try something on with you, Hazel? Such an egomaniac dolt.’
‘He had a red scarf,’ Jill said, ‘sort of dashing and romantic.’
‘Quiet, dung-beetle,’ Hazel replied.
Denise came back with the tea on a tray. She and Hazel sat on the chesterfield settee, Harpur, Sarah Iles and Jill in red leather easy chairs.
Sarah said: ‘It’s to do with the rumours about a possible reinvestigation, Colin. I felt I had to talk to someone in the know.’
‘Which rumours?’ Jill said. ‘Dad hasn’t told us about any rumours.’
‘Concerning Desmond,’ Sarah Iles said.
‘How concerning him?’ Hazel replied.
‘Haze is bound to be interested,’ Jill said.
‘Gob shut, please,’ Hazel said.
‘A double murder, one a garrotting,’ Sarah said.
‘I remember reading about it in the papers,’ Denise said.
‘I think it was on TV news,’ Jill said.
‘We never got anyone for it,’ Harpur said. ‘The file’s still open.’
‘What does that mean?’ Hazel said.
‘Unsolved,’ Harpur replied.
‘What’s known as historic,’ Jill said.
‘Cases get re-examined,’ Denise said. ‘Are they going to do this one?’
‘That’s the rumour, isn’t it, Colin? And I gather television is doing something about it tonight. This is not a news report, because it’s no longer news. But it’s going to be a drama based on the facts.’
‘Rumour, yes. That’s what it is,’ Harpur said.
‘But why should this trouble you and bring you here, Mrs Iles?’ Hazel said. ‘Is it because he was in charge at the time?’
‘Well, of course, he was in charge at the time, but possibly more than that,’ Sarah said.
‘More in which way?’ Hazel said. But to Harpur her voice sounded as though she knew in which way.
‘Not just because he was in charge,’ Sarah said. ‘Is he involved in the aftermath double deaths?’
Harpur said: ‘It’s all rumour and only rumour. This sort of thing comes up all the time in policing.’
‘Which sort of thing, Dad?’ Jill said.
‘What’s rumour, what’s facts,’ Harpur said.
‘What are the facts, then?’ Jill said.
‘The full facts about the murders are not known,’ Harpur said, ‘or, obviously, there would have been charges.’
‘Why are the full facts not known?’ Jill replied.
‘It’s how it can be sometimes,’ Harpur said.
‘Why?’ Jill said.
‘Murderers don’t usually come along and confess,’ Harpur said. ‘We have to find them, and find the evidence. It can be difficult.’
‘You haven’t got the evidence for who did those two?’ Jill said.
‘Some murderers can be extremely clever,’ Harpur replied. ‘But, as I said, the file is still open.’
Hazel held up a hand as if to say ‘Cut the blah and listen.’
‘Dad, do you know what all this seems to say?’ Hazel asked. ‘It seems to say people in some government office, or some editor, or some TV chief think Des … think Mrs Iles’s husband, might have done the two murders as revenge for the death of an undercover officer, and so demand a new investigation by outsiders.’
‘Yes, I thought that, too,’ Jill said.
‘Thank you so much but I don’t need your opinion,’ Hazel said.
‘I wonder along these lines, as well,’ Sarah Iles said. ‘It’s why I’ve come to see you today, Colin; I’d like to ask whether you know or suspect there are people – the people behind these rumours – who are out to get Desmond, ruin him by suggesting a link to the double killings? Is there a sophisticated, malign, destructive scheme? And, if so, it’s possible, isn’t it, that they want to get and ruin you at the same time? They’ll hint you deliberately failed to run a proper murder inquiry because you had no wish and no aim to find the murderer. When these people consider Desmond they see someone who, in your words, Colin, is “extremely clever”, and who knows a bit about detection and how to thwart it. They might float the idea that, if two crooks kill an undercover cop, someone – Des, for instance – might decide out of perverted esprit de corps and police comradeship that the pair deserve a privately arranged death themselves, especially if the courts declare them innocent.’
NINE
‘Col, I would understand,’ Denise said. ‘Absolutely.’
‘Understand what?’ Jill said.
‘If he tried deliberately to cover up for Mr Iles,’ Denise said, ‘if there was something to cover up.’
‘Such as the two deads?’ Jill said.
‘Don’t talk TV Detroit gangster, please, Jill,’ Harpur said.
‘Yes, the two deads,’ Denise said.
‘Do you mean that would be OK – the killings, and then only a sloppy, useless go at solving the case?’ Jill said.
‘It could be,’ Denise said.
‘How could it be?’ Hazel said. ‘Oh, how?’
Harpur thought she sounded deeply eager to believe Denise, but couldn’t. He felt pretty much the same. Could anyone believe it? He still wondered whether the investigation of the two deaths had been weak – unconsciously weak – because of the possible danger to Iles. Harpur found it strange to hear this discussion take place as if he wasn’t there. True, his daughters often talked together as though he wasn’t present, and he’d regard that as standard behaviour between children and parent. But Sarah and Denise were here now and the subject matter very possibly enormous.
‘Revenge,’ Denise said.
‘Yes, of course there’s probably a revenge element,’ Sarah Iles said. ‘Revenge can be respectable. ‘“I will repay,’ saith the Lord.” Although the Lord doesn’t come into it here.’
‘Not just an element. Crucial,’ Denise replied. ‘It explains the lot.’
Denise had learned how to be ruthless in arguments. She was used to uni seminar argy-bargy about fine points in French poems.
‘Revenge might not be lawful,’ Sarah Iles said. ‘In fact, generally it isn’t if it entails violence.’
‘Oh, stuff lawful,’ Denise said. She waved one hand, a cigarette two thirds smoked between her fingers. It wasn’t a stuffing movement but a sweep-away, get-out-of-my-sight shove. Harpur loved it. The bombast made her sound so young and thoughtless, and the ciggie showed acute dependency – on smoke. Didn’t it all mean there was room for him to help her move on?
‘Lawful – or not – matters,’ Sarah Iles said.
That kind of polite, mild, thoughtful style Harpur remembered as typical of Sarah. He found it strange to hear the two women who were, or had been, his lovers cross-talk like this, part of that complicated sexual tangle he’d noticed earlier. As tangles went, this was a happy one for
Harpur. Tangle on, you tangles! To see Sarah and Denise both present brought a tonne of extra life to the room, a grand improvement on the time when Harpur’s late wife, Megan, had all her fucking books on flagrant shelves in here. Harpur thought there was definitely a place in life for books, but this room wasn’t it. A decent while after Megan’s death, he’d got rid of most of the books to second-hand dealers and had the shelves removed.
‘Maybe some forms of revenge are not lawful, but are morally OK, entirely virtuous, even necessary,’ Denise said.
‘Yes? Honestly, Denise?’ Hazel said.
‘You want to hear only good things about the gorgeous Desy Iles, don’t you, Haze?’ Jill said, her voice oozy, mock-sympathetic.
‘Keep out of it, Most Reverend Yobess,’ Hazel said.
‘Muhammad Ali,’ Denise replied.
‘What about him?’ Sarah Iles asked.
‘Let’s recall what he said,’ Denise answered.
‘Regarding what?’ Hazel said.
‘Revenge,’ Denise said.
‘So, what did he say?’ Jill asked. ‘He was so great.’
‘He said, “I believe in the eye-for-an-eye business.” He couldn’t respect a man who didn’t hit back,’ Denise said.
‘You think Desmond was hitting back?’ Sarah Iles said.
‘Perhaps he wanted to vindicate himself,’ Denise said.
‘Vindicate himself? Desmond?’ She made it sound as though ‘vindicate’ meant ‘declare himself Sovereign’. ‘He’d never believe he needed that,’ Sarah said. ‘Des believes that whatever is is right, as long as he’s the one doing it.’
‘As I see it, he knowingly puts an undercover man on a very perilous job and the cop gets rumbled and executed,’ Denise said. ‘Possibly, the assistant chief thinks he’s got to hit back or he’ll lose respect in the ranks and elsewhere. And possibly he does hit back and does it double, to make sure the lesson is clear.’
‘What lesson?’ Hazel said.
‘“Mess with me or mine and here’s what you get”,’ Denise said.
‘You have information on this?’ Sarah said.
‘I had to study the topic at uni,’ Denise replied.
‘Which topic?’ Hazel asked.
‘Revenge,’ Denise said.
‘There are sixteenth-century plays about it, aren’t there?’ Sarah Iles said.
‘They show good people striking back against vile enemies,’ Denise said. ‘Hamlet. He thinks he’s got to kill his uncle because his uncle killed his dad and screwed his mum. “The time is out of joint,” he says, and regrets he was born to set it right. Notice those words – “to set it right”. He’s the opposite of what you said, Sarah.’
‘Which?’ Sarah replied.
‘“Whatever is, is right.” Hamlet thinks you’ve got to work at it.’
‘Do you think the assistant chief is like Hamlet?’ Jill asked. ‘Hamlet’s the one who meets up with a skull in the graveyard, isn’t he? Des Iles would enjoy this: no talkback from the skull.’
There’d always been a bit of a literary flavour about this sitting room. When Megan was alive she’d had the full bookshelves on three of the walls and this used to depress Harpur: it seemed to turn a house into a library. Some of the books had difficult or murky titles – U and I, Edwin Drood, The Rule and Exercises of Holy Dying, Old Fortunatus, The Virtues of Sid Hamet the Magician’s Rod. They were so weird they’d burned their way into Harpur’s memory. After his wife’s death, and following that quite considerate, respectful pause, he’d got rid of the shelves and the books, except for a couple Jill wanted: The Sweet Science, about boxing, and The Joe Orton Diaries. He was fond of the sitting room now. Today it seemed bursting with cleverness and knowledge. He didn’t want to interrupt.
It was great to hear Sarah’s voice again. She would be in her mid- or late-thirties by now but her skin was unlined and her fair hair had kept its shine. It was cut at just above shoulder length with a fringe, the mode nicely framing her face. Her eyes were grey-blue and very alert, intent on the conversation. Harpur wondered what she made of Denise. Perhaps she’d heard of her from Iles and so wasn’t wrong-footed by finding her installed here. Or, at least, Sarah didn’t show any sign of shock. Harpur thought she’d probably found the lecture on revenge very clunky, but appeared to listen. Most likely she was familiar with this scholarly stuff, but didn’t try to compete. She looked good in a lightweight navy skirt and ivory-coloured top. She shifted about in her chair to face whoever was talking or listening and occasionally, and very briefly, because of a particular angle of her body, Harpur thought she might be showing an early sign of pregnancy.
‘A part of our brain stops most of us from behaving on irrational, wild impulse,’ Denise said. ‘That’s why Hamlet hangs about for so long, thinking he should get on with it, but doesn’t. That special sector is in the brain’s front area. It orders sensible, inactive caution. In other revenge plays, though, characters can lack this influential helping of grey matter. We had a lecture on all this to explain dark and bloody Jacobean drama. The characters become what’s known in psychology now as “disinhibited and compulsive.” That is, they don’t suppress violent, maybe illegal, urges. In fact, they can’t suppress them. Of course, those revenge play writers had never heard the modern jargon phrase “disinhibited and compulsive”, but they understood the condition by instinct, by genius. Characters in their plays just go ferociously at things regardless.’
‘Regardless of what?’ Sarah said.
‘The law,’ Denise said.
‘Assistant Chief Constable (Operations) Iles is the law,’ Jill said.
‘But you think that bit of his brain is missing, the restraint, inhibited bit, although the rest of it is so brilliant?’ Sarah said.
‘It’s how people in most of the revenge tragedies behave,’ Denise said.
‘And Mr Iles?’ Hazel said. ‘You think he had an honourable mission and performed it?’ She smiled. It was a gloat. Harpur had to recognize she did have feelings for Iles. They lingered. They went beyond the crimson scarf.
‘Good old Desy,’ Jill said. ‘It should be two-eyes-for-an-eye.’
‘The revenge tragedy heroes don’t mutter like Hamlet, “Now might I do it”, but don’t do it. They do it,’ Denise said.
‘But will they see it like that?’ Sarah said.
‘Which “they”?’ Jill replied.
‘The people coming to do the reinvestigation,’ Sarah said. ‘For them, murders are murders. They don’t believe in righteous revenge, except for God: “‘Vengeance is mine,’ saith the Lord.” That seems to mean only “mine”. And then there’s John Milton in one of his poems. He seems to give the revenge job to God. “Avenge, oh Lord, thy slaughtered saints.”’
‘But maybe the snoops won’t come,’ Hazel said. Her voice had lost its bounce, though. Harpur thought he heard a touch of panic. ‘This is only rumour, isn’t it, Dad? There’s a lot of gossip about it, but it is gossip, isn’t it?’
‘All of it, rumour,’ Harpur said.
‘I worry,’ Sarah said. ‘Desmond worries.’
It pissed Harpur off to see how much she and Hazel fretted about Iles, especially in this room that Harpur prized so much now.
TEN
He was naked walking fast to a mirror hanging on the bedroom wall just before the bullet that killed him broke open his head from close behind. He’d unhooked the mirror, had it in his two hands. Of course it went down to the floor with him and smashed underneath his body. But it didn’t splinter into smithereens with a wide spread of bits and a delicious multi-crack noise. It snapped neatly across the middle into two, only two, possibly because the glass was high grade in this splendid property and did its terrific but hopeless best to stay intact.
He was holding the mirror in front of him at head height, so he’d probably have seen there the raised arm, the revolver, perhaps even the finger curled around the trigger, but after that not much else. The bullet was soft-nosed, a dum-dum, penetration limited
. It didn’t exit but nestled in the wound, like duty done, and easily recoverable. An ordinary round might have hurried on and burst out through the brow or an eye socket. It would have hit the mirror just before it fell, then most likely ricocheted to almost anywhere in the room and be hard to find – probably dug into the wallpapered masonry. This was an impressive, large, spruce room, reassuringly tidy, at least until the bare-arsed body with a segment of head now missing dropped dead there accompanied by the mirror.
Did he have time to yell before collapsing – a plea, a name, maybe, a curse? As well as the gun-arm and the revolver did he get a looking-glass glimpse of the face they belonged to? Had he recognized it? Man’s? Woman’s? Did he understand in the half a second available why this man or woman wanted to kill him? Perhaps something was said that explained it. Had he expected the attack?
The mirror – why had he gone for the mirror? It wouldn’t have been to ask, like in the fairy tale, ‘Mirror, mirror on the wall, who in this land is fairest of all?’
But suppose he had been taught or trained to believe that wherever you might be if you felt in deep danger and seriously threatened you could look around and almost always find a make-do weapon, something you could use to protect yourself. If he’d had time to turn with the oblong mirror in his hands, perhaps he could have swung it like an axe or broadsword, its metal frame giving quite an effective nudge to someone’s neck, or knocking the gun into harmlessness across the room.
He must have felt for a minute that nothing real or actual existed, only dummies in the glass. He’d see his own face and the one behind, both enclosed inside the tight bounds of the mirror, versions of two people, but not people – copies, figments. This picture show didn’t last – as most picture shows don’t. He couldn’t have known that, though. His very real actual gut flesh was pressed against real and actual glass on the real and actual magnificent, almost certainly hotel-quality, light blue carpet now due for some colour-clash staining.