by Bill James
‘Harpur will get at these traces, believe me,’ Iles said. ‘He’s famed for giving short shrift to traces. It’s coded on his personnel documents: SSTT.’
‘Any faults that may be found will be immediately and vigorously corrected,’ Ruth Bowles said. ‘Though we expect nothing of that sort to come to light, because they do not exist.’
‘And would already have been dealt with if they had been located earlier,’ the Chief said.
This seemed to Harpur an exceptionally powerful description of nothing at all: there were no faults and, even if there had been, they’d gone now. Was Maud wasting her own time as well as his and Iles’s?
Cass said: ‘Although it is obviously a pleasure for you to have Mr Iles and Detective Chief Superintendent Harpur here again, I believe you didn’t actually suggest this second visit, did you?’
Dathan had a big, worldly, charmless laugh. ‘Now isn’t that just like a newspaperman? He listens to our version of things and as a first response tries to pick holes in it! Well done, Mr Cass. You admirably abide by the precepts of your trade.’
‘Not to pick holes,’ Cass replied, giving a very pleasant smile, to match Dathan’s geniality. ‘It’s just that I need to see the sequence of things.’
‘Sequence! Oh, sequence. Who did what and when, d’you mean?’ the Chief said.
‘This can be important in some instances,’ Cass said.
‘Possibly, possibly,’ the Chief said.
‘What I mean is, the push for the second investigation came, didn’t it, not from you, Chief, but was ordered by the Home Office, and you . . . you, well, concurred, as you would be obliged to?’
‘You’ve been talking to Maud Clatworthy, have you, up there in London?’ the Chief said. ‘Or more likely listening to. Or - another or - more likely listening to that PA of hers, Daisy Something. Daisy Fenton. A famed carrier of tales for a fee.’
‘Daisy Fenton?’ Cass said. Harpur thought it a pretty poor pretence at ignorance - the bafflement in Cass’s voice and on his face badly overdone. Then he said: ‘It would change the complexion of the investigation, wouldn’t it, if you had suggested to Maud that the case should be reopened, rather than Maud ordering in the two outside officers as a personal initiative.’
‘Complexion?’ the Chief said. ‘In what manner?’
‘Well, as Inspector Bowles said, you have nothing to hide and therefore would have no objection to a second look at the situation.’
‘But if we have nothing to hide, as is, indeed, the case, we would hardly call for another investigation, would we, because we wouldn’t be aware of anything that needed investigation,’ Dathan replied, with what Harpur considered damn grand phoney logic, the kind all Chiefs should have ready when keen to get out of a rotten spot.
‘Subtle points, sir,’ Iles said. ‘You show that police work can move beyond warning people to cancel milk deliveries when going on holiday so it doesn’t pile up on the doorstep, inviting burglars. No, there are also complicated, virtually philosophical issues to be dealt with.’
‘So, I can take it that the decision came from Maud and the Home Office,’ Cass said.
‘Since you’ve obviously been briefed by her, or whispered to by Daisy Fenton, you will have arrived here with your views on that issue already formed,’ Dathan said.
‘I’m open to correction,’ Cass said.
Dathan had discarded his amiability for the last few moments but resumed it now, not with a full-on guffaw or chuckle, but a definite grin. ‘This hair-splitting is . . . is hair splitting! Wherever the first move in this second inquiry originated, it is now under way and it is under way with our enthusiastic approval and with our stated intent to assist it.’
‘Bravo!’ Iles cried. ‘What’s that lovely old Welsh song, “We’ll keep a welcome in the hillsides”? We’re not in Wales, but Harpur and I have felt what is probably the equivalent of that welcome - or even warmer - here, haven’t we, Col?’ Iles sang softly for a while, substituting Larkspur for Wales in the lyrics where necessary, regardless of scansion.
Iles gestured to Harpur to join in, but Harpur said: ‘Remarkable hospitality,’ and left it at that.
‘I’m intrigued by the Leo Young side of things,’ Cass said.
‘“Intrigued” in which particular?’ the Chief said.
‘It’s the aspect where Inspector Bowles’s remarks about the effectiveness of a fresh viewpoint comes into play, I feel,’ Cass said.
‘I’m not sure I follow,’ Dathan said.
‘That Young and his companies should continue along their successful business path as though they were in no way involved,’ Cass said. ‘And this is apparently accepted. How can that be?’
He was looking at Ruth Bowles, directing the question there, but she did not answer. Although she’d said she would field questions from Cass, Harpur could tell this was one of those areas where the limits on what could be said and what couldn’t came into play - specifically what couldn’t.
‘But no connection to Leo Young or the Young companies was established at the Juminal trial,’ Dathan said. ‘I think Mr Iles and Chief Superintendent Harpur will confirm that.’
‘We failed,’ Harpur replied.
‘And it’s because you failed that you have been sent back now by Maud Clatworthy?’ Cass said.
‘There was a conviction,’ Dathan said. ‘I wouldn’t call that failure. But Maud does, does she? You’ve been given a privileged account of her thinking, have you, Mr Cass, possibly with Fenton as conduit? Perhaps Maud Clatworthy actually put her up to whispering to you, so you’d think you had something special, something exclusive, and would move in on it urgently.’
He paused and changed tone again - grew brusque and authoritative. ‘I’m going to speak off the record for a minute or two, Mr Cass, and I know you will respect this. The Home Office doesn’t get much favourable publicity, so where there’s a chance of some, people there grab at it - and particularly favourable publicity in one of the daily broadsheets, the Epoch and/or the Telegraph, two heavy, serious-minded papers. Television and radio trust them and are likely to follow up their stories. The main dread in the Home Office is not that it will make errors but that it will be seen as a do-nothing, a fainéant department, slow to intervene where it should intervene, and even fail to intervene altogether. Therefore, there come panic moments when any kind of activity is regarded as a plus, as a virtue, even though it might turn out eventually to be disastrous, or sooner than eventually. Maud, like all of them at or near the top there, is affected by these sudden spells of corrective restlessness. Hence the return of our two investigative friends.’
This shrewdness and easy word-flow surprised Harpur, after Dathan’s earlier display of semi-bonkers reasoning. Momentarily, it was possible to see why he might have made it to Chief. He had the indispensable, evasive, bullshit side, but also a sharp, cogent side. Of course, the central question now should ask whether he was sharp and cogent enough to realize that some of his people were on the payroll of crooks. And to take it a huge step further: was he sharp and cogent enough to lead a police force whose apparent only task was to do the law and order bit, while also being personally signed up in a fine, prosperous and murderous alliance with a thriving drugs firm, for instance, Leo Young’s?
Cass said: ‘Is Young untouchable, legally? That’s how it might appear.’
‘Appear to whom? You? Maud? Your boss at the Epoch? Nobody is untouchable. But nobody is touchable when we lack evidence,’ Dathan said.
‘Mrs Young.’ Cass replied.
‘What of her?’ Dathan said.
‘Has she been interviewed, questioned?’ Cass said. ‘Mightn’t she be of help?’
‘Help in which way?’ Dathan said.
‘This is a classic case, isn’t it? The family financed by illegality and the wife/mother keeping herself deliberately ignorant of where the money comes from? Michael Corleone’s Kay in The Godfather.’
‘We don’t look to fiction for guidance,’
Dathan said.
‘Mrs Young, a distinguished scholar, prominent in the community, she must have some uneasiness, surely, about her husband’s business. Businesses.’
‘Ah,’ Dathan said, ‘it’s not just Maud who whispers in your ear, but one of our local ladies - though rather older. This is Helga Ormond’s line you’re taking, isn’t it? She’s always nagging us about the need to get at Emily Young. That’s what your lunch was about, was it?’
Ruth Bowles hadn’t spoken since doing her statement but now said: ‘The Platter, Tuesday last.’
‘God,’ Cass said, ‘you keep Helga under surveillance? An ageing woman who does something now and then for the papers?’
‘No, no, not surveillance,’ Dathan said, giggling at this absurdity. ‘But you weren’t exactly inconspicuous there. In fact, is Helga ever inconspicuous? Somebody eating in The Platter noticed her and recognized you from byline pictures in the Epoch. He mentioned it to someone, who mentioned it to someone, who mentioned it to someone in CID - the way so much information comes to us, isn’t it? Libations? Vodkas to start, two bottles of Sauvignon—’
Ruth Bowles glanced at some notes: ‘New Zealand Chardonnay, I think, sir.’
‘Then Tia Marias,’ Dathan said.
‘This sounds like surveillance to me,’ Cass said. ‘A nasty, thorough job of it.’
Harpur agreed.
NINE
Cass rang his editor, Philip White, at the Epoch office in London. White had been a subtle and supreme investigative reporter himself - broke that famous Blue Ciel scandal tale, and the Orbit Major fraud exposure - but he wasn’t brilliant as an editor. He veered bewilderingly between super-caution and acute impatience. He could be robotic, he could be frenetic. The trouble as Cass saw it was that if White relaxed his cautiousness by just one degree he would be hit by this stupid, galloping impetuosity, and expected the reporter out in the field to ‘velocitize’, as he called it, even if that meant getting crudely blatant and/or accepting mad risks. White lacked sensible balance. It was either stay cosy and secure in barracks, or the ballsy, barmy charge of the Light Brigade. But they weren’t his balls.
He must have applied a careful mix of the gradual and the decisive when stalking Blue Ciel’s chairman and Chief Executive, and Jimmy Devonald-Lade at Orbit Major, but seemed to have forgotten those subtle means of progress now he’d been granted a chiefdom. Responsibility messed him about. Cass couldn’t ever know in advance how White would be at any stage. Cass reckoned that one of the flairs vital for an investigative reporter was how to manage your manager, counter his or her complexes.
‘Nothing publishable as yet, Philip,’ he said. ‘But there’s possibly some movement.’ At early, feeling-out moments in a conversation, Cass liked to give a dollop of negative and another dollop of unspectacular positive. He’d decided to hold back, or even leave unmentioned altogether, his suspicion that his hotel room had been frisked. This information could drive White into a disabling panic or a ferocious urge to retaliate: confront and accuse someone. Which someone, though? Cass might sense there’d been an intrusion, but he couldn’t tell who by - possibly only routinely, by a maid or cleaner. The door lock had not been forced, so the visitor must have a card-key, either Reception’s or a master, or a clever, illegal replica. But Cass couldn’t have said with certainty what told him there’d been an interloper. Nothing was out of place except, possibly, his toothbrushes, as though the guest had been astonished to find three and had slightly fanned them out in his toilet bag to count.
‘I did the standard call on their Press officer, Phil, and for once it had a useful item or two.’
‘What! Really?’
‘She recited the customary kind of claptrap statement, but Larkspur’s Chief as well as Harpur and Iles were there. In fact, the Chief more or less took over after the statement, obviously scared Madam Press Officer might say something beyond formula. Hard to tell whether he’s worried about the reputation of his force and wants to protect it; or is he worried because he’s personally involved somehow in the Mallen death, and the Leo Young business scene?’
‘But hadn’t we decided, Dave, that it could hardly be Dathan himself racketeering? Would he have invited “undercover” into the system?’
‘A bluff? Did he want to appear intent on virtue and lawfulness? He’d probably realize Maud could have important doubts about him. He might have thought they could cope with the secret invader. The undercover man had a local handler, didn’t he? That came out at the trial - an Inspector Howard Lambert, if you remember. Mallen, like anyone in that kind of work, would report his findings to the handler. What if Lambert were in on the scam? They could monitor whatever Mallen discovered.
‘Dathan possibly decided he’d prefer to have an undercover officer he knew about rather than one he didn’t. Pre-emptive. This way he could keep tabs on Mallen-Parry. Lambert, the handler, gave evidence at the trial, of course, but said Mallen had not come up with much at the time of his death. True? Perhaps he had, and they realized the bluff wasn’t working. So, get Mallen on to Elms and annihilate him in good time.’
‘Possible,’ White replied. ‘Harpur and Iles were at the Press officer meeting, you say. They’ve got an understanding with Dathan?’
‘They’re investigating him, aren’t they?’
‘Are they? They’re all police, Dave. They stick together.’
‘Yes, I had thought of that,’ Cass said. ‘Loyalties? Why they didn’t nail Young last time, maybe. Iles has a wound.’
Cass heard a gasp from White at the abrupt subject change. ‘What sort of wound?’
‘Facial. Could be from a screwdriver or bradawl. That sort of hole. Or a skewer.’
‘Facial where?’
‘High on his left cheek. Near the temple.’
‘Prominent?’
‘Very.’
‘Self-inflicted?’ White said.
‘I wondered.’
‘He’s liable to strange fits, isn’t he? Don’t I recall he gets scream-prone and froth-flecked now and then because Harpur was giving it to Mrs Iles?’
‘In low-grade settings,’ Cass said. ‘Fleapit rooming joints. He sees it as an insult to himself, his rank, the legal system, the police profession worldwide, as well as to her. He probably visualizes the crummy duvet and rickety wardrobe with its gaggle of wire hangers.’
‘Perhaps he’s into a different kind of pain now - torn between a career bond with Dathan, and the need to expose him as corrupt. In this turmoil he reaches out and grabs something to do him some showy, pitiable hurt. He invokes sympathy, like Saint Sebastian punctured by all those arrows. Iles is normally vain, isn’t he?’
‘Abnormally, except about his Adam’s apple. Apparently he despises that, thinks it wrecks the lovely smoothness of his outline. He believes he has an obligation to be beautiful - a duty to numerous, widespread communities.’
‘Stress makes him want to diminish himself, disfigure himself - almost see himself off, if he hit the temple,’ White said.
‘Could be. I won’t be asking him, though. Or not yet.’
‘No. You’re so right. Do you feel . . . well, do you feel safe, Dave?’
‘They’re alert to any unwanted activity.’
‘Such as you?’
‘Such as nosiness from anyone. It looks as though they’ve got the local stringer under close, continuous watch.’
‘What! Old Helga? She’s given us good tip-offs for years.’
‘Which is why they’ve got surveillance on her. They deny it, of course,’ Cass said.
‘Watch your back, Dave,’ White said.
‘Dathan didn’t like my interest in Leo Young’s missus as a possible means of getting to him. He tried to spike that ploy by complaining I’d been briefed by Helga.’
‘Had you?’
‘Of course. Doesn’t Helga usually gets things right? She wouldn’t be able to buy all that junk jewellery if papers didn’t trust her, and stopped her retainers and fees.’
> ‘So, is she safe?’
‘I’ve been wondering,’ Cass said.
‘Yes, well wonder, but look after yourself.’
‘I might try to talk to Emily Young later.’
‘You’d better let me know in advance,’ White said.
I’ve got three electric toothbrushes in my toilet bag - holiday kit, one for me, one for Louise, one spare. I think someone moved them slightly to check the number. But Cass didn’t say this. He thought White sounded close to the jitters. It would be callous to shove him nearer still.
‘Mrs Young, I’ll postpone,’ Cass said. ‘I’ll see if I can reach the handler, Inspector Lambert.’
‘You’re going to get a stone wall there, Dave. This is someone who helped run a secret operation. Whether he’s bent or not he’s hardly likely to welcome the Press. He said his bit at the trial and that’ll be it.’
‘Maybe. But I’ll give it a go. He might have stuff he didn’t realize the significance of at the time.’
‘I ought to overrule this. But, yes, it could help velocitize things,’ White replied.
TEN
Harpur got two messages along the same disturbing lines. He’d told most of the people they’d talked to on the new inquiry so far where he was staying, in case they heard something fresh, or recalled something they’d forgotten to mention. Jane Matson, with her partner Gerald Beatty, had found Mallen dying on Elms, and she turned up alone now at the hotel where Harpur and Iles were having evening drinks at the bar, Iles with his port and lemon; Harpur the large gin - Old Raj if available - in half a pint of cider. He considered that this mixture, if taken aboard twice or three times at a session, gave him a clearer view of life in general: politics, the job, his daughters, Denise, anthropology, religion, Iles, travel, interior decorating. He knew some would dispute this.
Jane Matson said she would take bourbon on the rocks. Harpur could see Iles approved: it brought an international tone. He disliked ostentatious temperance in women, and even worse, teetotalism, though he also shunned two-pot screamers, women who got loud after a small amount of booze. ‘This is how things ought to be, Jane,’ he said, ‘relaxed, friendly, leisured. I expect you remember the scene in one of George Borrow’s books about gypsies and his journeys where he meets some glum-looking people but finds that after a drink or two they all perk up, seem more cheerful, so sucks to the anti-alcohol lobby.’