Play Dead

by Bill James

  Harpur used one of the gaps now and made for the chosen house. It had originally been boarded up, but the vandals or firewood seekers had jemmied off most of this protection.

  And, smack on cue, Harpur heard a muted, high-point explosion from Iles’s mouth. It was not like real gunfire, but a theatrical version of real gunfire. The Assistant Chief made his skilfully formed, lippy popping sound and, after it, the whistle of a speeding bullet. The pop wasn’t really loud enough for even the most efficiently silenced pistol, and bullets over such a short distance didn’t whistle. But the general effect suggested menace, clear purpose and team hate and fear of a fink. These were what counted.

  Harpur thanked God his ears usually functioned OK. If he’d failed to get into death mode - into a fold-down-into-the-mud mode - when Iles fired his cod rounds the ACC might assume Harpur found the whole exercise juvenile or even insane, and meant in his disrespectful, malicious way to fuck it up at the key denouement moment. Harpur could imagine the ACC muttering to himself, ‘Col won’t croak, the mean, selfish sod.’ Suppose Harpur didn’t respond as though hit, the Assistant Chief would have been sending his brilliantly fashioned fake bullets of good-grade compressed air out into nowhere. Dispiriting. Humiliating. To wait crouched and vigilant in that cold, token bedroom and then, eventually, get pissed about by Harpur would really antagonize Iles and lead to very rough reprisals. Cooperative work on the current Larkspur investigation together into police racketeering might become more or less impossible.

  Luckily, Harpur had brought two suits. The one he wore now would have to go to the cleaners after he tumbled to the filthy ground, theoretically struck twice by the 9mm Magnum lead. The first hit was scheduled for Harpur’s face around the nose area, carrying through into the mouth and throat, probably fatal. He had never actually been hit in the face by a bullet of any calibre, so didn’t know in full from experience how the victim would react in those moments before sinking. Would he lift a hand to check whether the layout of his features was still as it had been, sort of inventorying? Harpur couldn’t be certain on this, but he did put his right up towards his nose, as a means of indicating to Iles in the property via an unspoken signal that he knew perfectly the script for this evening’s interlude, loved it to bits, and would unswervingly follow it - face/head first, then chest. To butter the ACC occasionally seemed only humane because his mother was no longer around to extol and encourage him with comments. Harpur considered it strange that, despite her loyalty, Iles didn’t like her.

  Harpur keeled and went down, stood again and heard from above another terrific pop and whistle. This would be the later shot, ripping into his upper body before he reached the ground on a second visit, the old one-two. He lowered himself slowly, not a headlong plunge to the ground, which Iles might have preferred for dramatic impact, but which could have caused Harpur actual injury. Brick and wood fragments lay part-buried in the soil, liable to give an unpleasant jab. Harpur lay without movement for a couple of seconds on his stomach. He kept his eyes open and could have done a thorough itemizing account of the ground’s make-up near his face - the brick and wood fragments, shreds of newspaper, an expired green ink Biro, a small cluster of defiant weeds, a metal ring-pull from a drinks can, what looked like small patches of spilled cement. Harpur reckoned the word for most of it - not the weeds - would be detritus. Had Tom noticed this array? Harpur felt a kind of detritus bond with him.

  Then Harpur forced himself to crawl a few metres towards the front of the house, as Tom Parry/Mallen had forced himself to crawl, leaving a blood trail in the dirt. Harpur duly re-collapsed before he reached it though, as Tom had re-collapsed. Harpur tried to guess what Tom thought about as he lay there helpless and dying - if he could still think. Would he have gone over in his mind how he’d behaved and spoken lately, striving to spot what gave him away? But would there be any point to that? It had happened, and here was the plain, catastrophic result. Would he have spotted the larger aspect - the symbolism diagnosed by Iles?

  Harpur did not budge again until Iles descended and came to stand over him. The ACC wore fine, Bowpark-Linden black lace-ups today. His trousers were long in the leg and swaddled the shoes generously. Harpur could examine them from his level, as he had examined the weeds and ring-pull and so on. ‘I wept to see life leaving you, Harpur; actually, copiously, unstintingly, audibly wept,’ Iles said sweetly down at him.

  ‘I didn’t hear that, sir, only the bullets.’ No tears dropped on Harpur’s skin from Iles, but possibly on to his clothes.

  ‘Only the bullets. Only the bullets,’ the ACC said. ‘Oh, my God! Is life nothing but the pathfinder to death, Col?’ His voice keened. He almost went sobwards.

  Harpur didn’t have an answer to the query and hoped it was the sort that contained its own reply, in this case, ‘Perhaps.’ ‘You can stand now, Col,’ Iles said. But, obviously afraid he might get soiled, Iles didn’t offer his hand to give Harpur a tug up. The ACC had on a beautifully tailored light grey overcoat that would mark. Harpur could see his shoes and lower trouser legs were already streaked. He must have felt glad of the coat while he waited in the unheated room to do the vengeance chore. ‘Others use this short cut, Harpur. We don’t want to draw attention - you lying there like rat-arsed.’

  Harpur stood. ‘Did we learn anything new, sir?’

  ‘Patience, Col. This is the kind of experience that must be mulled over and weighed. No rush into views and judgements. Did you get to feel you knew him? Did you sense your pulse gradually, irrecoverably subside? Yet you uttered no cry for help or of pain. Such courage, Col.’

  ‘It was quality gunmanship, sir,’ Harpur replied. ‘Economical. No splattering, frenzied automatic barrage, just the two expertly slotted single shots.’

  ‘Well, yes,’ Iles said.

  ‘Those bullets definitely had my names on - Parry, Mallen, Carnation, Harpur,’ Harpur said. ‘Each with the four, not split two and two.’

  ‘You carrying anything, Col?’ Iles replied.

  ‘For this kind of operation, no.’

  ‘Which?’

  ‘Turning over another force. The armoury would refuse to issue, most probably. Protocol’s involved - carrying an undeclared firearm on to someone else’s ground.’

  ‘Fuck protocol, Col.’

  ‘Yes, sir, but—’

  ‘Protocol, Col, is there to serve us, not mess us about.’

  ‘But now and then we have to abide by—’

  ‘Protocol, Col, is for flunkies and baggage men. You mean you couldn’t browbeat that twerp in the armoury to issue, regardless of protocol, Col? Wallace Vayntor - an inspector?’

  ‘You got something, sir?’ Harpur replied.

  Iles shrugged, meaning, Harpur knew, ‘Of course I fucking did, Col.’ The Assistant Chief undid the buttons of his overcoat, reached in and fiddled about under his left arm. Soon, he produced a holster with shoulder harness and an automatic in the pouch. ‘It’s a Walther, not a Browning, but will have to do,’ Iles said. ‘Strap it on, Harpur. We have to match Tom, or almost. We’ll resume after the interval.’

  ‘Resume?’

  ‘You’re not one to leave things incomplete, are you, Harpur? Thoroughness is your thing, isn’t it? Not necessarily right, but thorough.’

  ‘Incomplete in which sense, sir?’

  ‘Culmination,’ Iles said.

  ‘“Culmination” in which sense?’

  ‘Discovery, and then what followed,’ Iles said.

  ‘A couple short-cutting from the Ritson mall came across the body lying there.’

  ‘Exactly, Col.’

  ‘By that time, he was dead.’

  ‘Or dying,’ Iles replied. ‘These were good, brave people.’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘I’ll do both voices,’ Iles said.

  ‘“Both voices” in which sense, sir?’

  ‘I’ll have to improvise their words as they approach the body on the ground, namely you as Parry/Mallen. What they said to each other didn’t
come out at the trial, did it? Not relevant, Harpur. Simply, the court wanted to hear how the officer was found - prone, hands and arms hidden beneath himself as if he’d been crawling and collapsed. Trousers knee-muddied, also suggesting a crawl, as did the blood track, in places a metre wide, moonshine on it, hence observable even in the dark.’

  ‘A useless crawl,’ Harpur said.

  ‘In many ways a perverse crawl, Col. More symbolism here? I think so.’

  ‘In which respect, sir?’

  ‘Oh, yes, emphatic symbolism.’

  ‘This is the thing with people of your staff rank, sir. They see beyond.’

  ‘Beyond what?’

  ‘The immediate.’

  Iles expounded patiently, mentor flavour. ‘We have to ask how the immediate came to be the immediate, Col. What is its genesis? What was it pre-immediate? This is our concern.’

  ‘True.’

  ‘Our shot sergeant, he regards a house - even an unfinished house - as a place of safety, a place of security and shelter. That’s an instinct with most of us. Home - it’s our castle. Walls, a roof, doors, cat litter, locks. But here, on that night, the house he longed to reach can offer only the opposite of all those comforting qualities. It is no place of safety, it’s a sniper’s eyrie. It is no place of security but one retailing deep danger. It is no place of shelter, except for a brilliantly capable, murderous, handgun lad. It’s not Parry/Mallen’s castle, it’s an enemy turret. Do we observe disintegration of our most lovingly held, property-owning values, Col? Social break down? Chaos is come again, Harpur?’

  ‘You produce some grand phrases, sir, despite standing out here in the symbolic, yet real, mud.’

  ‘So, yes, the crawl is in the full meaning of the term, absurd. It is an attempt at escape but an attempt that makes escape less likely, shortening the distance, should the killer fire again. But, of course, it is also an inspiring, stirring glimpse of the dogged, unquenchable human spirit. He might tell himself that to crawl, to move at all, signified life. He could still, somehow, get his body to do it. This is the final struggle, a doomed, hopeless struggle, but a positive, thumbs-up struggle, against annihilation, Col. In his fading mind he might hear a voice cry out, “Do not go gentle into that good night”, or “I was ever a fighter, so one fight more, the best and the last.”’

  ‘One he can’t win.’

  ‘When you’re down there on the muck again, Col, post-crawl, post-more-or-less-everything bar snuffdom, I’d like you to have that kind of thought in place, just the same. Nobleness in defeat.’

  ‘“On the muck again”?’

  ‘What I meant about not leaving things unfinished,’ Iles replied. ‘The intervention of this couple brings a new, special element to the narrative. We have to include them and their reactions in our present recapping treatment, haven’t we? I believe you’ll accept, Col, that the dialogue I manufacture for them will be credible, likely, and as near to the actual as we can get. One of my flairs, Col, is quickly to know people through and through and, therefore, how they will articulate.’

  ‘Did your mother mention that as remarkable in you, sir, at all?’

  ‘Empathy, even though I haven’t yet met the couple,’ Iles replied. ‘I can deduce from their actions what is their essence, Col. This is why I feel competent to do both their voices as they enter inadvertently and unbidden upon this crisis with their innocent mall carrier bags at five pence a go.’

  ‘You’ll display a remarkable range of mouth-lips expressions tonight, sir. First the bullets, then a two-sided conversation.’

  ‘We know, don’t we, that Tom was carrying a fully loaded Browning? The armament would have given the couple big worry, wouldn’t it? Their testimony described the shock. They see someone laid out, inert, and think, maybe a drunk - a wino who squats in one of the to-be properties and hasn’t quite made it back after a usual heavy night. Or maybe a stroke/heart attack for someone crossing the site. In their civically responsible way they come to the body and turn him over on to his back, maybe to give kiss-of-life, possibly expecting to see replenishment booze cans under the body.

  ‘However, at this stage they get a view of his demolished face, and can tell this isn’t just a piss artist or someone sick. The wound, blood and fragmentations would indicate the passage of high-velocity metal from close range. This is the first very unpleasant revelation. Then, they become conscious of the bulge near his armpit. They’d guess at once it was no abscess or roving goitre. They find he’s tooled up. It confirms they’d farcically misread the situation earlier. They suspect - more than suspect - they understand they’re into something very fucking hazardous and intemperate, Col. They’d think gang war, wouldn’t they? Yes. They said so at the trial.

  ‘Of course, they’d have no notion that he might be cop. They assumed a turf battle. Helping someone who took part in it could bring peril. But it doesn’t stop them trying to assist him. These were fine people, Col. Kindly and responsible folk. I’m going to compose their dialogue as they see and then approach the body. Could you get down again, Harpur, and I’ll as if discover you there - or, rather, we’ll as if discover you there. We’ll put our purchases from the Ritson on the ground and do what we can for you, admittedly not much. No alternative to my supplying both voices, is there, the man’s and the woman’s? It would ruin verisimilitude if you spoke one of the couple’s words from the ground, taking two parts yourself - Tom and a shopper. They’d be discussing you as someone flat on the soil, but you’d be piping up as if you were one of them and standing, your actual voice coming, though, from below. Just lie there, destroyed, anonymous, would you, Col, please?’

  THREE

  Harpur went to ground again and got another deeply intimate view of the can ring-pull, thrive-anywhere weeds, and so on. He lifted his eyes, though, and watched the ACC walk off the site - walk off the site as simply Desmond Iles, an Assistant Chief, married to Sarah, father of one - and then spin around and start to come back, now representing within his creative self the two shoppers who’d found Parry/Mallen’s body on that bad night. He picked his way out and then in once more over a flattened section of fence.

  On his return he walked with a different rhythm from that familiar cheetah-like, easy, muscular stride, a conqueror’s amble. Now, he held both arms stiff down against his coat, as though carrying bagged purchases from the Ritson mall shops, most probably food for the week, as well as other domestic items such as bleach, bog paper and shampoo. These imaginary loads affected his balance a little - their balance a little - when negotiating the wrecked fence and he took it gingerly, on the couple’s behalf. If he fell it would be three people falling, a tripartite disaster. Harpur thought he could see a tolerant, wryish smile on the ACC’s features, saying that, if you took forbidden short-cuts over uncleared ground, you’d better expect snags. Perhaps it also said that, if you took forbidden short-cuts over uncleared ground, you’d better expect to come across a deceased - a violently deceased, for instance - Col Harpur prone as Parry/Mallen.

  Once on the site again, Iles looked ahead for most of the time, sorting out a safe route for the three of them - that is, Iles himself, plus the two Ritson customers, now played by the Assistant Chief in this evening performance of his own impromptu production. Flair? The word was made for him. Occasionally, he turned his head slightly left, to indicate a conversation with his - or her - partner. Then, after a few steps like that, he gazed forward again, navigating, and in a while angled his head slightly right. This would be the partner replying, of course.

  They seemed to have quite a lively, talky-talky relationship, Harpur thought. Speech wasn’t backed up by vigorous gesturing, however, because of the goods they both carried, or would have carried if they were real and present there, on site, instead of just Iles acting as them both. They had been real and present and very involved there, on site, during that murder night, and this was what mattered to Iles, as he devotedly dummied for both. Harpur could see his lips moving at these moments, but the dis
tance was too great as yet to eavesdrop, or even to know which sex Iles might be in at a particular point, the man or the woman shopper. Gender-switches wouldn’t bother Iles. He’d had some practice lately feminizing his voice when he lampooned Maud for supposedly chatting up Harpur. Again, flair - he embodied the word.

  Occasionally, the man, or woman - whichever Iles might be at the moment - would laugh at something supposedly said between them. This was a louder sound, one that Harpur could pick up where he lay shot dead. Cheerfulness would be credible for the couple at these early moments, before they spotted the body. Possibly they’d had a successful session at the Ritson shops, taking advantage of special offers and discounts, stocking up very efficiently, negating inflation. It seemed to Harpur that most of the laughs - high-toned, bubbly, tickled-pink - came from the woman. The man appeared to be an entertaining, witty fellow, not just a packhorse for mall goods.

  Harpur didn’t understand where Iles had got this notion from. The court transcript showed both shoppers answering lawyers’ questions about discovery of Parry/Mallen in a plain, forthright way. The laughter might be Iles’s invention, to give them both some individuality, the he-figure a comedian, the she with a ready sense of humour. This was one-man theatre - one man playing two. Characterization counted. Harpur could imagine the kind of dating ad that brought these two together: ‘Man with good sense of humour (jokesmith) would like to meet woman with good sense of humour (enthusiastic guffawer).’ He wondered whether Iles’s style of acting would be what was known in the theatre and Hollywood as The Method. Iles’s Method was to nab both shoppers’ parts for himself and cast Harpur as a carcass. This, too, was flair of a kind - the ‘fuck you, Harpur’ kind.

  About 40 metres away from Harpur, Iles came to a gradual stop, as if startled, intrigued, by something off to his left ahead. He, or she, pointed at Harpur, heaped unmoving on the soil, as neatly targeted Parry/Mallen. Their chosen route would not have taken them to the exact place: again, too obvious and simple - unrealistic. They’d have to divert for a proper close-up. Iles did and began to approach. He came near enough now for Harpur to make out what was said. ‘Someone there, Gerald. Look. It’s not just dumped old clothes as I thought at first. Someone,’ Iles stated, in his tense, emphatic she-voice. ‘A man, sort of hunched. Injured? Ill? A tramp?’