Play Dead

by Bill James

  Iles had now begun to scream, as he usually did when discussing Harpur and Sarah Iles. His voice went back to the high register needed to do Maud, and soon soared and quivered much higher. Minor froth appeared on his lower lip - minor in quantity, as compared to other foamings from Iles that Harpur had witnessed in the past, but not at all minor in quality, no: thick, throbbing flakes of spit, each a wet, glistening proof of his pain and disarray. His breathing became laboured and desperate, like a dog’s half strangled by its lead and collar.

  In a while he recovered and asked: ‘Does Maud realize you have no respect for—?’

  ‘As I say, sir, Maud would have spoken direct to you, but met unavailability,’ Harpur replied. ‘Daisy, her PA, tried repeatedly. Maud felt deep disappointment, but made do with talking to me. Very made-do. Possibly you were at another of these civic bean-feasts. Understandably you get so many invites. You confer on their little occasions what I think is known as cachet - brilliant distinction. They adore having someone of rank present in full but tasteful gear to bring undeniable class, don’t they?’

  ‘Well, was I at a function?’ Iles said. ‘When did she speak to you? This is easily checkable against my diary. Couldn’t she have emailed, voicemailed?’

  ‘Not regarded as secure. Think of the News of the World hacking scandal. Think of detectives trawling emails for evidence of corruption at The Sun.’

  ‘So she goes to dearest Col whose ears and zip are always open. If he’s not debauching my wife, he has this undergrad piece from the university up the road. Denise? That’s her, isn’t it?’

  ‘Maud particularly wanted us to carry out any further digging at Larkspur, not have the matter handed over to some other combo,’ Harpur replied. ‘We already understand so much about the situation, the murder venue, the supposed hunt, the ambush, the blood spillage. And she was very insistent that I should let you know of this development soonest.’

  ‘Should “let me know”?’

  ‘Soonest.’

  ‘Allow me into the loop finally?’

  ‘Soonest.’

  ‘Kindly,’ Iles said.

  ‘I think she has you very much in mind, sir.’

  ‘Nice.’

  TWO

  Maud did get the operation ‘reactivated’ and Harpur and Iles went back to re-snoop and re-interview and re-dredge at Larkspur. Maud must have managed to convince her chiefs that sending the gunman to jail should be only the first move in a full Larkspur clean-up. He’d been very tidily scapegoated: loaded with all the blame for Carnation man’s death. But who’d done the loading? Who’d given the executioner his orders? Who controlled him? Who, ultimately, hung him out to dry? Who could scare him so much he wouldn’t talk, even for a reduced sentence trade? Who was money-doling and generally protecting his family as long as he stayed shtum? Who’d be making sure he got good stuff in jail, also as long as he stayed shtum? What dug-in crooked power group lay behind him? Did it still flourish?

  This last she regarded as the crux question, touching now and the future. The murder and trial and conviction were the past. Or merely the past, Maud would probably say, in that brusque, now-get-your-ear-around-this style of hers. Maud thought big. Maud thought practical. Maud thought the present, but Maud also thought days and maybe years beyond the present. Maud thought the Home Office could often do with a kick up the arse from somebody who worked there and who despised non-interventionism - such as Maud Logan Clatworthy. She’d be late twenties, not more, maybe less. Daisy Fenton, her personal assistant, was at least twice Maud’s age.

  According to Iles, Maud would have a first-class Oxford or Cambridge degree in a very non-vocational subject, such as Philosophy or the Classics or both, and this should indicate true brain-bright scope. Also according to Iles, though, most of her superiors in the Home Office would similarly have first-class Oxbridge degrees in a very non-vocational subject. This ought to mean, didn’t it, that they likewise should have true brain-bright scope? Just the same, Maud thought some of them needed a kick up the arse. From inside Maud knew the slowness and blasé languor and indecisiveness of the place. Maybe Maud had a super-first-class degree, a first-class degree with bells on, and therefore her brain-bright scope outscoped theirs. The kick up the arse might help them extend and revitalize their scope.

  When Harpur and the ACC arrived at Larkspur for this second investigation and had booked into the same hotel as before, Iles decided there should be a bit of theatre. ‘Let us go then, you and I, when the evening is spread out against the sky, and defy time, Harpur.’

  ‘Time’s always out there, sir.’

  ‘That’s a fact, Col. Time future is contained in time past, you could say.’

  ‘And I do, sir. It’s one of the chief things about time - it never stops. Even while we’ve been talking about time, time has moved on. Clocks can stop, but not time.’

  ‘Don’t go fucking ruminative on me now, Harpur. Look, Col, we’ll re-create those rough, past circumstances and observe them as though afresh.’

  ‘Which circumstances, sir?’ Harpur said.

  ‘A death, of course.’

  ‘How?’ Harpur said. They were in the hotel bar. Harpur had a double gin topped up with cider in a half-pint glass, his usual. Iles drank what he called ‘the old tarts’ drink’, port and lemon, his usual.

  ‘How what?’

  ‘How re-create the circumstances?’

  ‘We’ll mimic the gunshot moments of the undercover man’s murder.’

  ‘Mimic?’

  ‘Reprise. Closely imitate. Carry no identification, Col, just in case.’

  ‘In case of what, sir?’

  ‘Yes, just in case. We’ll do it on location, where it actually happened. Authentic.’

  ‘Play-act the killing?’

  ‘Ah, you’ll, naturally, be thinking of Hamlet, I know,’ Iles said.

  ‘Inevitably.’

  ‘You’ll have in mind, Col, the theatrical troupe who portray a murder, while Hamlet is considering a real murder, himself. It’s eerie. I should imagine you’ve had many a shiver while watching this part of the drama from your seat in the gods.’

  ‘Right. But what can we discover? We’ve already identified the killer and had him convicted.’

  ‘We’ll possibly learn something we previously missed - something in addition to the simple, limited shoot-bang-fire of the assassination, Col. We must seek its context, Harpur, its place in the overall villainous pageant.’

  ‘Most probably the Carnation officer wouldn’t have regarded the shoot-bang-fire as limited, sir. It finished him. But I suppose it was limited in the sense both bullets hit him, and nobody else.’

  ‘He was just one step up from a nobody, Col, only a minor figure in a savage, wider scene. Our aim is to find the meaning of this figure among many others, some vastly more tasty and grand.’

  Harpur accepted that Iles had a right, even a duty, to think and talk in this large, billowing, bullshitting style now and then. He was an Assistant Chief, for God’s sake, and Assistant Chiefs always came with a cartload of wordage. And so, at what Harpur had called ‘the murder venue’, he took the part of the twice-shot man, and Iles became the sniper. There wouldn’t be any Oscars. It was a building site of new dwellings, but hit by the recession and uncompleted so far. They’d be comfy, hygienic, executive-style villas with three bathrooms if they ever got finished - and if there were enough solvent executives around then to afford the deposit, and tell members of the household which bathroom they’d been allocated.

  Harpur and Iles had come to look at the site previously, of course, on their earlier trip to Larkspur for Maud and the Home Office. Now, Iles wanted to sort of start from scratch - restart from scratch. They’d seek extra insights through a reconstruction; standard police procedure when a case grew uncrackably difficult. Iles didn’t always fancy standard police procedures. He must be feeling daunted. His remedy was this atmospheric, in situ mock-ambush, a sketch: Iles to ambush, Harpur to get ambushed, as the un
dercover officer had also been ambushed from what might eventually be a front bedroom of one of the well-placed, detached property shells.

  ‘Symbolism here, Col?’ Iles said.

  ‘In which respect, sir?’

  ‘A society in accelerating decline, Harpur. No funds to build shanties for its people. Contrast this, would you, with heaven, Col?’

  ‘Heaven?’

  ‘“In my father’s house are many mansions. If it were not so I would have told you.” Notice that, Col: “I would have told you.” In other words, high-grade accommodation for one-and-all is so much the norm there that any shortfall would trigger a warning. Impossible for us to match that. We lag and may lag more. Then, as if to add extra misery, extra grief, to this deplorable scene, the slaughter of a law officer among the blighted properties. Are we into breakdown, Col? Are we witnessing a slide towards chaos?’

  It was night, to match conditions when Carnation man had been shot in that limited, focused, dead-on-arrival way. As part of the dramatization, Harpur would convulse, stagger, fall, get up somehow, then collapse again and finally, as if hit first in the face and secondly in the chest by successive, excellently delivered bullets from the upstairs. He would dread to tumble before that, though, by tripping over rubble and dumped litter. Following nightmares, Harpur had a long-time horror of lying among reeking, torn black plastic rubbish bags like some giant maggot in its chomping element. And up till now in real, waking life he’d been able to avoid that. If he saw a full, mysteriously bulging black plastic bag in the street, possibly fallen from a cleansing lorry, he would skirt it, but with no lapse into trembling or hysteria.

  Although some light came from an adjoining street and a half moon, it was not much. Harpur stepped carefully. This would be pretty well exactly the way Tom Parry came on the night he got it: Thomas Derek Parry being his Larkspur undercover label. His true name, when home in Wilton Road, Carnation, was Detective Sergeant Thomas Rodney Mallen, married to Iris, father of two, Steve and Laura. And the funeral had been for Tom Mallen, of course, married, father of two. As Tom Parry, he’d managed to infiltrate the main and massive Leo P. Young Larkspur drugs firm, establishing himself as a valuable new recruit: a huge achievement, by any reckoning, and glorious if it had lasted. Disastrously, though, while Tom Mallen was still, on the face of it, totally and effectively Tom Parry, people at the top of the L.P. Young company had discovered his actual name and background: the Carnation detective sergeant; married to Iris; father of two, Steve and Laura; seconded, as someone not likely to be recognized in Larkspur, for undercover duties monitoring Leo Young’s business; the aim eventual charges and elimination of the firm.

  Consequently, as Tom Parry he had been tricked on to the building site that night and, as Detective Sergeant Thomas Rodney Mallen, executed with two 9mm rounds from a marksman cop in a potentially prestige setting, one or more of the bathrooms possibly en suite.

  Undercover people tended to keep their first name, as long as this wasn’t something freakish like Treasure or Breastfed. They’d had decades of automatically responding to it when called, so to stick with this handle made the identity-switch a fraction easier. Fractions mattered. ‘Tom’ was commonplace enough to suit a cop or a gangster. Tom, aka Tom.

  Harpur felt thankful the funeral took place months before Iles and he had any involvement with Larkspur. Iles could get very emotional, violent and boomingly claptrapish at funerals, sometimes hijacking the proceedings from a vicar or minister by force, scrapping religiously for the pulpit like an example in miniature of all holy wars, yelling and blubbing his complex personal views, covering quite a range. The Assistant Chief would have been very upset and therefore dangerously bolshy at the service for Mallen. Iles disapproved absolutely of all undercover work because it brought terrible risks, and he would regard the death of Mallen as a flagrantly tragic and predictable instance. The ACC had once put an undercover officer into a gang, where he was rumbled and garrotted. Although some believed Iles subsequently garrotted the garrotters, he never properly recovered from the loss of his man.2

  Harpur regarded such enslavement to one past incident, however grave, as sentimental and close to nonsensical. There would always be occasions when undercover was last-resort necessary. Iles refused to acknowledge that. Part of his splendid, tearaway brain had been shut down, like some mothballed frigate: a sloppy, posturing indulgence, Harpur thought, but would never say - or would never say to Iles, at least: garrotting was a painful death.

  An inspired piece of plotting had been used for the wipe-out of police spy, Parry/Mallen, the object to make it seem Tom was shot in a routine pushers’ dispute, and so make unnecessary any deeper speculation about the death. Drug dealers did regularly slaughter one another in the pressing interests of commerce. It came out after the murder that Tom had been conned into believing he was on an armed stalking trip with three fellow members of the Leo Young company, their supposed job to kill another member, Justin Scray, suspected to have turned rogue. The unforgiving word was that he secretly, persistently, operated his own profitable, self-contained business on the side, by siphoning off the best punters for himself - ‘best’ meaning hooked on the highest-grade substance, and easily able to pay for it from their stout profits, salaries and/or bonuses as stockbrokers, hospital managers, hair dressers, undertakers, cosmetic surgeons, plumbers, airline pilots, bankers, chiropodists, media chiefs, bishops, soccer stars, dentists. He apparently had a firm inside the firm, a classic drugs trade heist. Scray was still around, but apparently no longer maverick, his renegade outfit finished, and accepted back into the main outfit by Leo.

  This imagined mission against Scray must have caused Tom sharp conscience worries. After all, he was still a cop, although seemingly something deeply different, and couldn’t be party to a killing, not even to keep his disguise intact. Some criminality might be necessary and acceptable to give him cred, but not murder. He needn’t have fretted about fine moral points, though. In fact, he had been the target, the quarry, without knowing it. As part of the concocted phoney trawl for Scray, the two-timing dealer, Parry was asked to take a course across this building site, where the gun waited behind what might one day be a glazed upstairs window on a comely housing estate. The south-facing house was famous and should have a special macabre interest when it came to selling. Television and newspapers had shown pictures of it during the trial.

  Harpur, approaching the death spot now in the re-run - or, actually, re-walk - wondered whether, as Tom Parry began gingerly to negotiate this piece of supremely dodgy ground, he’d suddenly noticed how wide open he was here, and how convenient the place would be for anyone wanting to get shot of him. Yes, get shot. Undercover people lived non-stop with the fear of detection. They had to act relaxed while being anything but. Training told them to watch constantly for signs that their cover no longer covered. Did Tom ask himself whether being ordered by the firm’s management to take a route through this secluded, half-dark slice of landscape might be one of those chill signs?

  If he did ask himself, he got the wrong answer, and he hadn’t behaved as the training said an undercover officer must behave in such circumstances: chuck the assignment at once - AT ONCE - and get out fast and back to base; put the undercover identity into meltdown. Instead, Tom had continued on this path. Did he tell himself he had no clinching evidence his game was known, and therefore to run would be panicky, unprofessional, yellow? Or had he reasoned that the spy role brought endless risk, anyway, so a little extra could be tolerated; had to be tolerated? Why get in a tizz about building works? Dim, Tom. You were in denial, Tom. The compulsion should have been to get home OK to your family and job in Carnation - detective sergeant, married, father of two - not to present yourself here as a blown, dumbo sacrifice.

  Did he glance up worriedly at the window spaces of these would-be houses, trying to spot stealthy human movement or the glint of a weapon in the poor light? Harpur, on his choreographed version of the kill now, knew Iles lurked, with t
wo fingers primed ready to simulate a handgun, and at which loophole-window. Harpur didn’t gaze there, though. Wouldn’t that have smashed the realism of the performance by giving Harpur as Parry/Mallen too much knowledge of the attack and where it must come from? Ambushes surprised their victims or they didn’t rate as ambushes. And, for this present mimicking of the occasion, Harpur wasn’t Harpur but Tom Parry, who’d actually been Tom Mallen. Harpur needed to stay in character while starring in this playlet, that character being Tom Parry, en sad route to becoming Tom Mallen; dead Tom Mallen. Iles had said he would give two popping sounds, to suggest a silenced piece as Harpur reached the right patch of un-made-up road in front of the house, embryo 14 Davant Road. Harpur listened.

  The construction area had been fenced off when work was suspended as the economy dwindled, and ‘Keep Out’ notices posted. Naturally, these were treated as an invitation not to keep out, and the fencing had been vandalized. There were gaps - probably more gaps now than when Tom began his recommended attempt to cross; or than when Iles and Harpur first visited on their earlier Larkspur mission. The territory offered a short-cut from the Rinton shopping mall to Guild Square. Trial evidence had shown that Tom got Rinton as his area of search for Scray, but was summoned by mobile phone to the Square, where there’d supposedly been a sighting. But the only sighting that mattered was of Parry/Mallen displayed as an offering on the spooked Elms estate.