Play Dead

by Bill James

  ‘You seem to be saying there’d been previous “in extremis short periods” when you looked for shelter on Elms,’ Harpur replied.

  ‘You’re wanting to ask whether I was in one of the houses for a kip-down the night Mr Undercover got the bullets.’

  ‘Were you?’

  ‘No. That’s what I wanted to discuss.’

  ‘What’s to discuss?’ Harpur said. ‘You weren’t there.’

  ‘I can understand why you turn abrupt, Mr Harpur.’

  ‘Sorry. But if you weren’t there you weren’t there. You’re no witness.’

  ‘That’s too simple. What’s the reason I wasn’t there? Have you pondered that, Mr Harpur? It’s like in the Sherlock Holmes story, the dog that didn’t bark. This negative was the clue nobody spotted except Sherlock himself. Similarly in this case. My name, though, is Hill-Brandon. Ivan Gladstone Hill-Brandon.

  ‘Why weren’t you there?’

  ‘Exactly.’

  ‘In what sense?’ Harpur said.

  ‘Because of one thing and the other, such as getting here to outside the nick at the start of the day, in case you and Mr Iles showed as a politeness matter towards this Chief, I seem to have missed breakfast,’ he replied.

  Harpur looked about. ‘There’s a caff open up the road.’

  ‘Ah, so there is.’ They walked towards it, Hill-Brandon carrying the holdall. ‘This is the kind of situation where it’s important to have on a becoming outfit, or they don’t let you in, won’t serve you. They’re afraid of odours and/or lice. Their priority is their other customers, the regulars. I can sympathize.’

  ‘Mr Iles doesn’t have breakfast so it wouldn’t affect him even if he was in scruffy clothes,’ Harpur replied. More interrogation technique: to soothe the target you tried to follow up topics raised by him/her, even if it made you sound inane. They took a table. Harpur ordered two full Englishs although he’d had eggs and bacon at the hotel. It was necessary to achieve a kind of bonding: knife and fork comradeship.

  Hill-Brandon said: ‘I don’t think I’ve got this wrong, despite the dark, but my impression was you stabbed Mr Iles in the upper-left cheek with what seemed to me a small, dirk-type weapon, small, yet able to cause quite a wound. I didn’t know where on your person you’d been carrying this blade, but your arm came around in an arc as if you’d pulled it from a hidden sheath and administered a very corrective blow, corrective of his attempt to strangle you, possibly owing to a woman who’d put herself amiably - too amiably? - in your direction. If you’d been fishing in his pool it would be understandable you’d carry a knife in case he found out about it and went for you in extremely conducive circumstances, such as an unpeopled building site at night, unpeopled except for me, which neither of you would be aware of. Conducive, also, in that you were flat on the ground, helpless, apparently, as part of a re-enactment of the Jaminel pot-shot night. But only apparently. Somewhere about you was that defensive dirk.’

  The food came. Hill-Brandon ate very systematically, no gobbling and no splutter of particles here and there as with Iles’s father’s beans. Hill-Brandon got more or less equal amounts of mushrooms or bacon or black pudding on to his fork every time, and gave each load a matching long chew. Harpur kept pace. There could not be bonding and comradeship otherwise. To peck at the meal would suggest superiority, as though Harpur had reserves of nourishment aboard and never fell into troublesome hunger, as Hill-Brandon might, owing to an unstructured existence lately.

  He kept his trilby on, not to conceal lice, but because it had become a crucial part of his present image. Staff here might think that after a hearty, very British, sort of Empire-building meal from the old days he would be off to watch one of those traditional polo games he’d spoken of, or to buy another racehorse at auction. He said: ‘That assault on Mr Iles’s flesh seemed to work fine. I think there was a groan and then sighs from him and his hands fell back from around your throat. It was impossible for me to tell how far in the dirk went, but I had an idea it might have severed something important in his nervous system causing partial collapse of intent. A fraction of his morale could leak out through that kind of hole.

  ‘Of course, I wondered if you would try another stab, on the principle of never let an enemy recoup, Mr Iles being, at this juncture, an enemy through possible cuckolding, though in general a colleague and boss. It’s said Hitler lost the war because he didn’t wipe out British forces in 1940, but let the bulk of them get away via Dunkirk, and eventually become fighting-fit again. So, I thought you might re-strike. Then, though, I heard police sirens. They approached fast, the din increasing. Perhaps someone else had witnessed the squabble on Elms and called nine-nine-nine. You two also heard this new factor in the situation. Both of you stood and then ran off together so as not to get caught, taking a direction away from the sirens. That made me think differently of you from what I usually think of the law, which is not favourable, owing to some unpleasant encounters.

  ‘But people who start a bit of theatre, such as you and Mr Iles pretending to be the main folk in that murder, and then it turning really bad, followed by the frantic scarper because of the police arrival - it made me realize you were not so unlike the rest of us. I thought to myself, and still think to myself, I wouldn’t mind giving a couple of adventurers of that sort a bit of help - which I didn’t fancy previously, on account of me being one type of individual and you and Mr Iles being another. But anybody looking in through the window now would see you and me together with a spread and coffee and they’d decide we must be friends and in true accord.’ He mopped up some egg yolk with half a piece of fried bread and Harpur did the same on his plate, to prove fellow-feeling and team solidarity.

  ‘Thank you, Ivan.’

  ‘I don’t require thanks, Mr Harpur. I’m just describing a changed attitude on my part, which has been brought on by events. It is an inevitable development.’

  ‘But thanks all the same,’ Harpur said. ‘And please drop the Mr, would you, Ivan? I’m Colin, or Col.’

  ‘You ask how I can talk usefully about the undercover murder if I wasn’t actually on Elm that night,’ Hill-Brandon replied.

  ‘It does seem a bit of a poser. I’ll admit to being perplexed, Ivan.’

  ‘Perhaps. But I’d like you to consider, Col, why I wasn’t there that night. This will open up a new vista, and one by no means irrelevant.’

  ‘Well, you’ve said you only went to Elms for in extremis short periods. I think I’m remembering that right.’

  ‘You are, you are. But this was one of those short periods of extremis for me when the usual procedure would have been to hole up on Elms for a night or two, the first of those nights being the very one Mallen got it. Or got hit. Yet I did not proceed.’

  ‘Proceed? So, you did start?’

  ‘You’re quick, Col. You know how to pounce.’

  ‘You started but changed your mind - gave up?’ Harpur said.

  ‘Exactly that, Colin.’

  ‘Something intervened?’

  ‘Somebody. Somebodies.’

  ‘In which respect?’

  ‘I want you to think of the scene, Col - the scene that night, the night of the death. Well, of course, you and Mr Iles were trying to imagine - to act out - that night when you were down on the mud, as if shot in front of the house. But please broaden out your idea of that evening.’

  ‘In which respect broaden out, Ivan?’

  ‘Re me. Where am I in that visualizing? Where is Ivan Gladstone Hill-Brandon?

  ‘Are you in it? You said no, you weren’t sleeping on Elms then.’

  ‘Correct.’

  ‘How can you be in the visualizing?’

  ‘I was approaching Elms, Col. Approaching.’

  ‘You were intending to sleep there but it didn’t happen? Is that it? This was one of your extremis periods but—’

  ‘Let’s say I was between spells in various other accommodation units, some of a far more conventional nature than a half-finished house - y
es, other accommodation with proper running water, hot and cold, a bed, even central heating. Invitation to the rooms of a recently met girl, for instance, or a friend’s place.’

  ‘But not available on that night?’

  ‘Not immediately available in any of the locations where it sometimes was. So, I’d decided to take what in French is known as faute de mieux - something instead of the very best, but fairly OK, such as an empty property.

  ‘For convenience, I’ll term it a property. I thought I must make do with Elms until the situation elsewhere improved. This is what I mean by “unstructured”. There can’t be a set pattern to my life, due to an absence of certainty as to billet. I’ve had to adapt to these conditions. Previously I enjoyed a very regular existence, owning a shop, and a family home for my wife and two children. The shop went in the “downturn” as the slump’s called - making it sound not quite so bad, though, really, it’s terrible - and the house went with it and then my marriage came apart. I’ve had to get used to faute de mieux, haven’t I?’

  ‘You couldn’t reach the house on Elms?’ Harpur replied.

  ‘This would be quite early in the evening, before the shooting. If I’m thinking of a sojourn in quarters available to anyone of the general populace I like to arrive there soonest - install myself satisfactorily, getting settled before any competition. There are plenty of people with unstructured lives these days who might want free shelter on an interim basis. I read in the Press of someone who lived in a bus shelter on a main road in Wales and had decorations up for Christmas. We are an expanding group requiring what is referred to officially as “domestic substitution at a rudimentary level”.’

  ‘How far towards the property were you, Ivan?’

  ‘That’s the point, isn’t it?’

  ‘You tell me.’ This was the impulse behind all questioning, all interrogation: you tell me. There could be occasional prompts, though, if things seemed to be moving OK. ‘You were using the sort of unofficial path through the estate?’

  ‘Sharp again, Col. I’m on the path, coming from the Guild Square end, not the mall end, when I see ahead of me two figures in uniform.’

  ‘We’d wondered whether Mallen-Parry had wanted to avoid someone, or more than one, on the path. You’re saying they were police?’

  ‘Who’d wondered?

  ‘Myself. Others. So, definitely police?

  ‘Police.’

  ‘They’re going in the same direction as you?’

  ‘Well, they are, but very slowly. Sort of loitering? Yet alert with it. Looking about.’

  ‘As if waiting for someone?’

  ‘That’s what I thought at the time. So, obviously, I was worried.’

  ‘In what respect?’

  ‘Are they there to stop people getting into one of the estate houses - and to catch anyone trying to get in? Most probably it’s against the law to break in to those properties, removing boarding and so on. Maybe there have been complaints. I’ve had bother in similar environs previously. Some areas will put up with squatters at least for a while. Others won’t. So, you’ll see why I felt disturbed seeing them there.’

  ‘I think they were present for a different purpose,’ Harpur said. ‘Not at all to do with you.’

  ‘Well, of course, I think so, too, now. But now is not then.’

  ‘You stopped, did you?’

  ‘They had their helmets on. That puzzled me.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘It made them so conspicuous - I mean, if they were trying to surprise someone getting into a house.’

  ‘They wanted to be conspicuous.’

  ‘Yes, I realize that now. Hindsighting.’

  ‘Descriptions?’

  ‘Too far off in the dark. And the helmets gave some concealment to their faces.’

  ‘Build? Physiques?’

  ‘One maybe six feet. The other slightly shorter and thinner. I stopped and turned back.’

  ‘Why do you think they were there?’ Harpur said.

  ‘Why do you?’

  ‘Where did you spend the night?’ Harpur replied. He was the one who asked the questions. ‘You couldn’t stay in an Elms property and nowhere else was offering.’

  ‘Not quite true. Luckily, I have another address, not too far away.’

  ‘A different on-hold building project?’

  ‘No. Some might regard this one as even more faute de mieux. But, again, all right for a crisis. It’s walkable.’

  He went into one of his silences again as if wondering whether to disclose a secret - disclose a secret to a cop. Harpur waited. He drank the remains of his coffee and then signalled to the waitress to bring a couple more. He wanted to suggest patience and relaxation.

  Before they arrived, Hill-Brandon said: ‘There are some big metal recycle bins, like skips but with a hinged lid, in the Tesco car park. Some for newspapers only.’

  ‘Yes?’

  ‘Half full are the best, obviously. You can usually find one like that. Newspapers make good blankets. And under you they are as soft as a mattress, nearly. They call the Press “the fourth estate”. But newspapers are the second estate for me, the one after Elms.’ He had a further laugh at this, and Harpur joined in. It was more comradeship. It recognized lateral thinking and the difference in outlook of those with an unstructured life and a special attitude towards the Press. ‘Holdall as pillow. Close the lid, against the weather. But no claustrophobia because there’s the sort of letter box on the side where people can push their papers through if they don’t want to lift the heavy lid. Nobody’s going to come dumping papers in the middle of the night. Important to get away early in the morning, but, in any case, newspapers falling on you wouldn’t do much damage.

  ‘It’s not a twenty-four-hour Tesco but it opens at six a.m. I get into my good gear and go in and buy some fruit for breakfast. That way they can see I’m a genuine, very valid customer, so I’m entitled to go into their Gents to give myself a bit of a clean-up etcetera and shave.’ He sat back in his chair. ‘But you don’t want to hear all that, do you, Colin? You’re interested in the Elms.’

  ‘The stuff about the recycle bin is an eye-opener.’

  ‘How I see the night of the death is like this: Mallen-Parry, we heard from the court or local gossip, was coming back from the mall to help knock off Justin Scray, the dealer. Or so he thinks.’ He paused while the new coffees came. He took a good gulp. When the waitress left he said, ‘Mallen-Parry is an undercover cop and has to keep his cover so, although he’s a cop, he doesn’t want to run into these uniformed cops, just as I didn’t, but for a different reason. Suppose the Scray hunt was genuine - as Mallen-Parry thinks - not just a ploy. Scray gets killed. There’s a trawl for people who were in the vicinity. The two uniformed cops remember meeting head-on a man making for Guild Square on the path. They can give a description. Mallen-Parry is pulled in. He has to say who he really is. End of undercover operation, if not something worse. This is how he would calculate, anyway.

  ‘Of course that’s not how it really was, not a bit, because there’s no Scray hunt. Parry-Mallen himself is the target, and the two uniformed officers have been sent to help with that. Parry-Mallen believes he has to get to Guild Square to maintain his cover. He decides to skirt the two officers, find another roundabout track to the Square. Which is why the two have been sent in their look-we’re-police-officers-helmets. Tom turns off, and walks into Jaminel’s killing range.’

  ‘Yes, it could be like that.’

  ‘You’ll ask why I didn’t mention all this at the first investigation. Answer: I’m not sure. But, as I said, when I saw the throttle attempt and the stabbing, I thought, these are not your ordinary police. These are human beings with their own human anxieties and their own games. I felt what’s known as “rapport”. Plenty of French today.’

  ‘Good, Ivan.’

  ‘You’ll ask, did I recognize either of the uniformed men? This would give you a way into the conspiracy, wouldn’t it? The word around is that you
and Mr Iles are here to expose - that is, expose if you can - an “arrangement” between some drugs people and some police, such police taking backhander salaries for their cooperation and protection. You’d like to prove that Jaminel was just the fall-guy ordered to kill Mallen-Parry because he was a spy and might get to know too much about the “arrangement”, maybe already knew too much about it. You yourselves, or someone above you, have, has, come to realize that getting Jaminel done and locked up is only the easy bit, the insignificant bit of the job. Those two men on the Elms path were probably part of the “arrangement”, weren’t they? It would be a big advance if you could discover who sent them.’

  ‘And did you recognize either?’

  ‘No, but I could work on it.’

  ‘Work on it how?’

  ‘Work on it,’ Hill-Brandon replied.

  ‘Keep very alert.’

  ‘You’re thinking of the dead journalist, are you, Col? Was he here to probe this post-Mallen situation, too?’

  ‘It’s possible.’

  ‘Likely?’

  ‘Possible,’ Harpur said. ‘You’ll ask will there be something monetary for you in this.’

  ‘Please, Colin. It’s a matter of what I’ve already referred to as rapport.’ He put a hand up and set the trilby more firmly on his head, probably to suggest four-squareness and a contempt for lucre in their new relationship.

  Harpur paid for the breakfasts. He said: ‘I’ll talk to Mr Iles. There might well be a reward packet available. Get in touch again if anything shows. Or can I reach you? Have you got a mobile?’