Play Dead

by Bill James

  ‘Yes, but can’t always get it charged.’

  ‘I’ll take the number, anyway.’ Hill-Brandon gave it and Harpur made a note. ‘It’s good the killing hasn’t put you off Elms altogether, or you wouldn’t have seen that little playful episode. Those houses might get completed once the economy picks up. I’m glad to hear there’s the fallback pad at Tesco.’

  ‘Tell me, Col, do you carry that dirk as standard?’

  Harpur ignored this. He was the one who asked the questions. And, in any case, to say the stabbing had been done with an old Biro would take away much of the drama and raw humanity of those minutes. Hill-Brandon seemed keen on humanity, and Harpur didn’t want him disillusioned.

  THIRTEEN

  Harpur watched Iles watching Rhys Dathan, Chief Constable of Larkspur. Harpur found it as hard to read Iles’s face as it was to assess his feelings from the clothes he chose each day. The wound made it even trickier than usual to learn anything from the ACC’s expression. The wound, of course, remained pertly, pinkly constant, no matter what might be happening elsewhere to Iles’s features. Or might seem to be happening. Despite the difficulties, though, Harpur thought it would be reasonable to say Iles looked as if he didn’t swallow all they were hearing from Dathan. The snag with this, of course, was that Iles rarely looked as if he swallowed everything from anybody - anything from anybody, more like it.

  He had arrived exactly on time for the Larkspur HQ meeting, dropping his original scheme to make a delayed, gloriously uncowed, smirking entrance to Dathan’s precinct; no call in the event for Harpur’s cry of rapture that Iles had somehow managed to fit Dathan into his schedule. Typical Iles, this switch of plans. Although his actions and words often seemed to defy what would be expected of a very senior police officer, ultimately that’s what he was, a very senior police officer. He accepted this - had to and probably wanted to. The rules and customs always finally took him over. He believed in these rules and customs. But he’d flout them temporarily now and then, and do some of his freewheeling, soaring, unfettered soul stuff, just to show he could. Also, he liked to upset and confuse those he regarded as enemies: many.

  And although very senior he wasn’t at the top, and perhaps recognized he never would be. A Chiefdom, full-out and unadjectived, not an Assistant, was possibly beyond Iles. Occasionally this would infuriate him and he’d describe himself as an Asssissstant Chief Constable, the extra, crawly S sounds to emphasize his job’s high-grade, bum-sucking servility. But Harpur thought Iles knew he needed a presence above him. He had to operate inside a frame, a frame fashioned by someone else. Iles was part of a hierarchy and must take his due spot in it. A Chief was a Chief, Dathan included, here at Larkspur. If he arranged a meeting you turned up when he said you should, even if you’d claimed you wouldn’t on account of your freewheeling, soaring, unfettered soul. Hierarchies and souls didn’t fit together very well.

  They were in Dathan’s office at headquarters. Because of the second breakfast with Hill-Brandon, Harpur had been forced to postpone his trip to the shops and he’d arrived in the headquarters foyer at the same moment as Iles, right on 11.30. The ACC had said in the lift on their way to Dathan’s suite: ‘Col, of course he’s going to tell us again how happy he is to see us back, and that he’ll make sure we get maximum cooperation, but I wonder. True, he accepted Maud’s decision to send us in last time - not that he had an option. But, in any case, a second visit is something else. This makes it look as though he’s presiding over a snake pit. How is it he’s allowed things to develop like that? Now, he’s got the dead reporter to make the scene even darker. He’s going to worry that Maud and those above Maud in the HO will think he’s lost control of this manor, and should be chucked.’

  In his conference area Dathan pointed them to blue upholstered easy chairs. ‘I’m so happy to see you again, Desmond, Colin,’ he said. ‘And as ever you can count on maximum cooperation from all of us here.’

  ‘Thank you, sir,’ Iles said.

  ‘But you are injured, Desmond!’ The Chief spoke considerately, no trace of a giggle. Perhaps he really hadn’t noticed previously. Or there might be some tactical reason for postponing his sympathy.

  ‘An old wound playing up, as it will, occasionally,’ Iles said.

  ‘When did you suffer it? How?’ Dathan said.

  ‘We’ve chosen a profession that has its perils, sir,’ Iles replied. ‘We do not succumb, dare not succumb, because of those who depend on us for quiet enjoyment of their lives. Enforcement of the law must be “in good hands”, as George Savile, first Marquis of Halifax, said all those years ago, didn’t he? From time to time the possessors of those good hands are subjected to attack and harm in other parts of their bodies. We decline to bleat or whimper. We display our wounds as red badges of service.’

  ‘Oh, quite,’ Dathan muttered. One of his staff brought tea. The Chief said: ‘I had hoped the conviction of Jaminel marked the end of the case, you know. Maud Clatworthy thinks otherwise, and Maud . . . well, Maud is Maud.’

  ‘Harpur also considered we’d failed here,’ Iles said.

  ‘You’re hard on yourselves, surely, Colin,’ Dathan said.

  ‘Col is like that,’ Iles said. ‘His way is unflinchingly, utterly unflinchingly, even ruthlessly, to examine a situation and his part in it. If he sees faults or inadequacies he will say so, he will act.’

  ‘And your own view, Desmond?’ the Chief said.

  ‘A quite interesting relationship has developed between Harpur and Maud, and may develop further, I believe,’ Iles answered. ‘She seems prepared to overlook what might be regarded as rather grossly, cruelly, libertine aspects of his, shall we call it, form?’ Iles’s voice began to rise screamwards, and a little froth lined his lower lip. ‘For instance, without decency, shame or compunction he—’

  ‘What Maud is disturbed about is the possibility that a whole network of sophisticated crookedness and corruption lay behind the shooting of Mallen,’ Harpur said. ‘A network we have touched only the edge of. It is powerful enough to demand, and get, silence from Jaminel despite the standard offer of a lighter sentence if he gave names and details of others in this probable complex criminal conspiracy.’

  Iles said: ‘You might think, sir, that a woman like Maud, wonderful brain, fine teeth, extremely capable lips, endearing arse, would not find herself drawn to an ageing, comically dressed, dick-driven—’

  ‘We have, of course, some possibly useful leads from our previous investigation which were not proceeded with when the Jaminel conviction seemed, as you mentioned, sir, to close the case,’ Harpur said. ‘Maud believes it closed a section of the case, and potentially not the most important section.’

  Iles seemed to have subsided. He brought a handkerchief from a jacket pocket and wiped his mouth. These fits never lasted very long and Harpur liked to shepherd him away from his fury before he began to list the locations where he believed Harpur and Sarah Iles had betrayed him. As the ACC frequently made plain, the sordidness of some of these spots especially enraged him.

  The three discussed for a while the direction of these new inquiries. Dathan listened, asked the occasional question. Iles answered one or two of them and batted the others away. Dathan said: ‘And now this murdered reporter. We’ve spoken to his department head in London, who was very guarded, I gather. He claims to have had no contact with Cass since he arrived here, but admitted he was on what this editor called “a general investigative assignment”. We can guess what that means, I think. There’s a lot of media interest - one of their own killed. We’ll hold a formal Press conference tomorrow.’ The Chief was burly, square-faced, strong-jawed, wide-necked with a good mop of grey hair worn fairly long and pushed up at the front in what Harpur saw as a 1950s’ style quiff: it was boyish and historic. He seemed defensive and very uneasy. Harpur could understand that, almost sympathize. Dathan had survived the indignity of seeing one of his senior people nailed by outside investigators - Iles, Harpur - and sent down for murder. Now
, this pair of troublesome invaders had come back, aiming to prove that things in his domain were rotten all through; possibly more rotten now than they’d appeared at the Jaminel trial. And, as the Chief said, the Press were on to it, and would be on to it in numbers following the slaughter of one of their gifted and best-known colleagues.

  Harpur and Iles walked back to the hotel together. As they passed the breakfast cafe Harpur recalled a remark of Hill-Brandon’s. He’d said that anyone looking in through the window would see him and Harpur together with the meal and coffee and they’d decide the two of them must be pals and in true accord. Just after that had come the mutual mopping up of egg yolk with fried bread, perfectly synchronized eating, a picture of considerable, all-round buddiness. Harpur’s memory of part of Hill-Brandon’s statement might not be verbatim, but the resounding last phrase ‘in true accord’ certainly was.

  Hill-Brandon had meant this in a positive, heart-warming sense that helped show his change of attitude towards police. Harpur thought of it differently now, though. Somebody looking in might decide this was an informant cascading what he knew to a cop over an on-expenses meal: the cop’s expenses. As Hill-Brandon had pointed out, Harpur’s face was familiar following media coverage of the previous investigation. Hill-Brandon, due to his homeless wandering around the city, his holdall and alternative garbs, might also be familiar. Perhaps among those looking in were officers on their way to or from the HQ across the road. And among these might be profit-sharers in the ‘arrangement’ between police and drugs dealers that Harpur and Iles had been sent to expose and destroy.

  Harpur wished now he’d been more emphatic and more thorough in warning Hill-Brandon to go carefully when he began to ‘work on’ the identity of the officers he’d glimpsed ahead of him that night on the Elms short-cut path. Hill-Brandon wasn’t trained in the skills of sensitive research, where ‘sensitive’ meant hazardous. He’d been a shopkeeper. He lacked elementary wariness. Hadn’t he possibly made himself conspicuous by hanging about outside the nick scheming to intercept Harpur or Iles or both? Such clumsiness and maybe new instances to come could be . . . yes, hazardous. Someone, or more than one, might see the link between his nosing activities and the level-pegging, mates-together breakfast.

  At the hotel when he was alone for a short while Harpur tried the mobile number Hill-Brandon had given him. No contact, though. You couldn’t recharge a battery in an unwired shell of a house on Elms, or in a recycle bin at Tesco: the supermarket’s slogan, ‘Every little helps’, didn’t include free use of power points.

  FOURTEEN

  Apparently, in one of the local papers Iles had noticed a theatre advertisement for a play called The Revenger’s Tragedy, by somebody centuries ago he had heard of, or by somebody else he’d also heard of. One of the things about Iles was he’d heard of quite a few people from the past, not just the obvious like Nelson or Moses, but less familiar folk. This play was on at The King’s theatre in the city centre. He said: ‘As you’ll know, Col, some give the authorship to Tourneur, spelled with two U’s, not just the one as in “turner and fitter”, but many claim it for Thomas Middleton, and others say others. There are scholars who earn a fair screw by saying, “I’d bet on Cyril Tourneur with two U’s”, or “I’d bet on Thomas Middleton”, or “I think X or Y or Z because of the unique way he uses the word ‘and’.” The piece has killings, rape, seduction, procurement by the hero of his sister - really zestful, joyous, lip-smacking evil. The hero talks to his very dead mistress, calling her “the bony lady”, meaning not that she’s anorexic but a skeleton. You probably didn’t realize there were people called Cyril so long ago.’

  Iles proposed he and Harpur should relax by going to see the tragedy together this evening. Harpur didn’t fancy that. Although he greatly liked some of the plot, as vividly summarized by Iles, Harpur always tried to keep social contacts with him to the minimum, as distinct from unavoidable contacts through work. There had to be a limit. Possibly this guardedness on Harpur’s part dated from that time when Iles, flourishing his crimson scarf, would make a play for Hazel, Harpur’s elder daughter - elder, but still under age. Iles seemed to have given up on that now, but Harpur’s caution had become built-in, permanent.

  Of course, the sexual tensions between Harpur and Iles were complex and not at all one-sided. There’d been Harpur’s daughter, but there’d also been Iles’s wife. Revenge could be a tricky topic. Something in a play of this sort would probably set off one of the ACC’s uncontrollable resentment spasms about Sarah Iles and Harpur, and he’d start shouting the location and frequency details of the love-making, and perhaps noisily blubbing from massive self-pity, messing things up for the rest of the audience and for the actors, and looking especially awful even in the theatre’s subdued lighting because of the Biro face cleft. From what the ACC had said about the play’s violence, Harpur thought that, if there’d been Biros about in those days, there could easily have been a similar stabbing. Extreme drama ought to stay behind the footlights.

  Supposing Iles did one of his rants, he’d probably be asked to leave and, naturally, wouldn’t, not peacefully. There might be fighting in the aisle, with Harpur and usherettes or management trying to quell the Assistant Chief, who had a PhD in head-butting. Some might feel amused, thinking it a deliberate, scripted ‘happening’, designed to give a sort of updating and parallel to the rough stuff on the stage. But most people would be annoyed, perhaps scared, and might demand refunds, calling Iles a loony or piss-artist or a loony piss-artist, though the Assistant Chief could, in fact, create this kind of shambles without the help of drink. He had enormous bedlam reserves. Harpur hated getting caught up in such public, Des-Ilesean, essentially sad disturbances. And Rhys Dathan wouldn’t think much of it, either, if word got back. There seemed something rather off-key about an ACC fucking up a very worthwhile literary occasion.

  ‘You go, sir,’ Harpur said to Iles. ‘I’ll have a prowl around.’

  ‘Around where?’

  ‘Yes, around. The purlieus, I think they’re called.’ His fears for Hill-Brandon remained. Harpur ought to try to find him and make sure he was all right and understood the hazards and threats. People got snuffed in this domain. Harpur and Ivan Hill-Brandon had been on dangerous show in that breakfast cafe.

  ‘Are you sitting on some information, Col, in your customary, festeringly stealthy mode?’ the ACC said.

  ‘Which kind of information, sir?’

  ‘The informative kind.’

  Harpur thought he wouldn’t mention the Hill-Brandon meeting and egg and bacon conference for the present. Harpur liked to time carefully any briefing of Iles and this was not the right moment to bring him up to speed on Hill-Brandon. Often Harpur loved to confer ignorance upon the ACC. In any case, Harpur realized he might not be up to speed on Hill-Brandon himself. This was what fretted him, and when Iles had left for the theatre and it grew dark Harpur went to the Elms site again. He hoped that if the more usual and comfortable accommodation remained unavailable Hill-Brandon might have moved into one of the estate bedrooms for the night, though not the one Courtenay Jaminel had fired his two death shots from: squatting observed its own special, goofy etiquette.

  Hill-Brandon had said he liked to come early to grab a favourable spot for himself and his sleeping bag. Harpur carried a torch to use in the properties and try to find outside where the boarding might have been interfered with to allow entry. This couldn’t be a foolproof process because Hill-Brandon had said he actually went downstairs to re-fix boarding in number 18 so he would have a place to himself. Harpur remembered the location Hill-Brandon had given of the house he was in on Biro night and his account of the way he’d got access. It had been by loosened boarding at the front, whereas Jaminel had used a rear door and sprung a lock in the other house.

  The Jaminel property was two to his right, Hill-Brandon said: Jaminel’s turret, his fortress. Harpur had taken his daughters on holiday recently to the Mar Minor region of Spain south of Alicante, and
they’d stayed briefly - not briefly enough - in a ghastly town called San Javier, full of big villas built to look like medieval castles with towers, battlements and loopholes, done in pink or orange. The Elms house was only that - a house, a part-completed house - but it had more warlike qualities than any of that stupendously naff Spanish architecture. Hill-Brandon had been trying to patch up the front access point from inside when he’d spotted Iles and Harpur in the mud. That suggested the boarding had not actually been removed or seriously damaged; perhaps some of the wall screws taken out, allowing the wood to swing sideways on a surviving screw like a pendulum, if you knew about it and gave a push. And Hill-Brandon would know about it: he was an habitué.

  As he approached the houses, Harpur tried to guess at and follow the exact route taken by Tom Mallen along the established pathway, then diverting from it. According to Hill-Brandon, that was because Mallen wanted to avoid the two helmeted and obvious police officers hanging about on the path ahead of him; the same two officers who had also caused Hill-Brandon not merely to divert but go to alternative, downgrade lodgings in the Tesco recycling and stopover facility. Harpur couldn’t know exactly the spot at which Parry changed direction but thought he had it reasonably right.

  In a while, he crossed the small rectangle of ground where the body had been found by Jane and Gerald on their way back from shopping, and where Harpur and the ACC had fought. Harpur felt this tussle brought a flavour of farce to things now, despite the crafted tragedy of the sergeant’s death. He stopped in front of the house sometimes used by Hill-Brandon and had a good gaze at the downstairs boarding. He thought he could detect something slightly adrift at one of the bay windows to what might some day be a top-of-the-range lounge. When he went closer he found it as he’d imagined: a couple of the planks had been freed from all but one wall plug and could be pushed right and left to make a gap, like opening a pair of curtains. He put his head through and called out at good, friendly volume, ‘Ivan, Ivan Hill-Brandon, are you in here? It’s Col. Just a social call. I happened to be in the vicinity. Nothing serious.’ No reply and no sound of any movement.