In the Absence of Iles

by Bill James

  ‘It would be a changing number.’

  ‘“A changing number”. What would cause such changes?’

  ‘Some parts of the inquiry might require specialist officers who would be co-opted temporarily.’

  ‘You mean officers with special investigative skills in some particular area, do you?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘What type of specialist skills?’

  ‘For example, in commercial and business matters. Also dockside practices.’

  ‘These specialists would augment and assist the officers already conducting the inquiries, would they?’

  ‘On a temporary basis.’

  ‘The specialists would come in for a limited period and deal with a particular aspect of the investigation?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘How many officers would comprise the central core – that is the ones permanently on the inquiries?’

  ‘About ten.’

  ‘About ten officers permanently on the inquiries into the Cormax Turton companies over an eight-month period?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘And then this number would be increased by the specialist officers, is that right?’

  ‘On a temporary basis.’

  ‘How many of these specialist officers might join the basic team at any one time?’

  ‘This would vary.’

  ‘What would be the lowest number?’

  ‘Possibly only one.’

  ‘And the highest?’

  ‘Perhaps five.’

  ‘This means, does it not, that over a long spell of eight months ten officers at a minimum and fifteen maximum were at work on an investigation of the Cormax Turton business concerns?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Would you, then, regard this eight-month inquiry by what we might call conventional detection methods as a major investigation?’

  ‘Yes, of its kind.’

  ‘“Of its kind”. How would you describe its kind?’

  ‘Exploratory. Routine. Without prejudice, as I’ve said.’

  ‘What does “without prejudice” mean?’

  ‘That no adverse reflection on the company is necessarily involved.’

  ‘An eight-month investigation and then an undercover penetration, but no adverse reflection is necessarily involved. Is that what you’re saying?’

  ‘Yes.’

  Of course, Esther had already known in outline how Channing would deal with cross-examination, and thought that perhaps it would work. Now, though, she felt only the absurdity of his words.

  Parkhouse said: ‘Very well, Superintendent. You would agree, I take it, that as well as being a major investigation this was an extremely thorough investigation – about ten officers permanently concerned, plus specialists drafted in when required.’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Who was in charge of these ten-to-fifteen officers?’

  ‘Detective Chief Superintendent Simon Tesler, head of CID.’

  ‘This, again, confirms what you have told us, doesn’t it, that the inquiries were major and thorough, requiring management by the most senior detective?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Whom would Mr Tesler report to?’

  ‘To Assistant Chief Constable Davidson, Operations.’

  ‘And since these inquiries were “major” Assistant Chief Constable Davidson, Operations, would wish to know of them in day-to-day detail?’

  ‘She would know of them.’

  Yes, she would know of them, all right. Esther saw the tactics of this cross-examination and loathed them, and loathed Parkhouse QC. Feared them? Feared Parkhouse QC? The investigation into Cormax Turton would get apparent praise from him for its rigour and scale and energy. But this was so he could subsequently show it as null – a sheer, laborious, large-scale, dick-headed and perhaps malicious farce. And not so much subsequently. Now, for God’s sake.

  ‘Thank you,’ Parkhouse said. ‘Superintendent, could you tell us, please, what did this major and thorough eight-month inquiry produce?’

  ‘Produce?’

  Esther wanted to groan at the stupid stalling but kept it under.

  Parkhouse said: ‘The result, results, of this major and thorough inquiry. Such an inquiry would be aimed at reaching some result, some outcome, would it not?’

  ‘In what sense?’

  For fuck’s sake, Channing!

  ‘In the sense of discovering whatever it was you hoped to discover,’ Parkhouse said.

  ‘Much of the information is still being processed.’

  ‘I’ll speak plainly now. Have there been any charges arising from this eight-month investigation?’

  ‘This was a routine assessment. Charges were not necessarily the objective. In any case, some information is still being processed. This is ongoing.’

  Did the jargon make him feel safe – ‘processed’, ‘ongoing’? These were his life-rafts?

  ‘Police would conduct an eight-month inquiry, supported by undercover penetration, and not hope to make charges?’

  ‘Not necessarily.’

  ‘Have there been any charges arising from this investigation?’ Parkhouse asked again.

  ‘The investigation is not yet complete.’

  ‘Have there been any charges arising from this investigation?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Thank you.’

  Esther thought: the answer gets agonizingly squeezed out of him and so becomes three times as notable, three times as disastrous.

  Parkhouse said: ‘It’s true, isn’t it, that we have a team of never less than ten, and sometimes as many as fifteen, working for eight months on one dedicated inquiry, led by the Force’s senior detective, responsible to and guided by the Assistant Chief Constable in charge of Operations, and nothing incriminating has been found?’

  ‘Rapid results are not usual from this type of major assessment.’

  ‘Would you say that a result after eight months of intensive work by up to fifteen officers would be “rapid”?’

  ‘Some business assessment operations are immensely complex.’

  ‘If you please. Now, Superintendent, in one of your answers to my learned friend you said that an undercover, or Out-located, officer might be used with the aim of collecting information that would otherwise be unobtainable. I have a note and think that’s right: “not otherwise obtainable”.’

  ‘Yes. In some cases.’

  ‘“In some cases” certain information would be “unobtainable” except by undercover work? Is that your view and the view of police generally?’

  ‘Yes, it’s my view.’

  ‘In this case?’

  ‘I mentioned that Out-location of an officer will often supplement other, parallel forms of inquiry.’

  ‘Or replace other forms of inquiry, because the other forms of inquiry have failed?’

  ‘Usually supplement other forms of inquiry.’

  ‘You told my learned friend that an Out-located officer would be in great, continuous danger – in danger of death and torture – didn’t you, Superintendent?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Even on what you described as a routine exploratory business inquiry?’

  ‘I was asked a general question about the dangers of Out-location. I was answering in general terms. There are certainly instances where an undercover officer would be in danger.’

  Oh, God, the wriggling.

  ‘If you please. Now, one of the main requirements for a senior officer like yourself, or like the head of CID, or the Assistant Chief Constable, Operations, is to do all possible to ensure the safety and welfare of your subordinates, is it not?’

  ‘Yes, naturally.’

  ‘“Naturally.” Does it follow from this that you and your superiors would not wish to expose an officer to the risks of Out-location unless all other means of acquiring the kind of information you and they were determined to find had proved unsuccessful?’

  And Esther would admit that, yes, it did probably follow. Of course it follo
wed. Esther wouldn’t have to admit it, not to the court, because at her rank she was not likely to be called. But to herself she’d admit it. After all, this explained why she reluctantly went to Fieldfare. Esther had longed to be assured there that, given the right preparation and precautions, Out-location could work, and work within the limits of acceptable risk. And she had been assured of this, and gradually let herself come to believe it.

  At Fieldfare the speakers – A, B and others – had not hidden or even downplayed the hazards, but their overall tone was positive. Do it! Again, of course. Of course, of course, of course. That’s why this Fieldfare programme existed: it had been created to teach management techniques for undercover. Naturally, no outright and absolute condemnation of Out-location had been – could have been – voiced by platform personnel at Fieldfare: it would scupper the whole Fieldfare purpose. The fact that there were platform personnel at Fieldfare, who had done undercover and then turned up and talked about it, showed the work could be handled, and that those doing it could survive. Esther herself proved this, but she’d needed extra evidence and had got it.

  If Iles had come he might have hissed influential dissent from the floor. However, unlike A and B and the others, Iles did not show. He considered his flagrant, picturesque, non-attendance should be sufficiently meaningful. Mountainously, imperviously, vain, he would naturally think this. Iles expected the stark gap created by his absence to turn out far more significant and vivid than the actual presence of anyone else. He was the dog that didn’t bark in the Sherlock Holmes story, and this non-bark said a bucketful. As a minus quantity at Fieldfare, Iles added up to more than all the rest together as pluses – this would be his thinking.

  And he had it cataclysmically wrong. She left there converted; not as spectacularly or completely as Saul on the road to Damascus, but enough: enough to get Dean Martlew into a spot where he could be carved and slaughtered. The only sustained bit of scepticism about undercover had come from Inigo Ivan Mullins, and she realized at the time that he was like her – secretly keen to be convinced in favour, though, apparently, with big doubts: he’d expressed his, she hadn’t, but Esther felt his attack to be an exercise only, a token. Fieldfare persuaded him into approval of Out-loc, as it persuaded Esther. Fieldfare knew its business. Fieldfare recognized, treated and cured intelligent and very intelligent doubt.

  Now, in this cross-examination, Parkhouse QC wanted to demonstrate that the police – she, Esther, Operations honcho – would do more or less anything, including risk a minion undercover, to manufacture usable material against the Guild because they – she – had pre-decided the Guild was crooked, pre-decided without any valid evidence. Parkhouse would probably go beyond that and say without any evidence. Routine, unprejudicial exploratory inquiries? Bollocks.

  Parkhouse QC’s chambers were in London. He hadn’t lived in this city and watched the dark, expanding Cormax Turton operation on the streets, in the clubs and rave sites, at the docks; and, even if he had lived here and seen it all, he’d been hired at QC rates to argue that, because there’d been no charges, there’d been no villainy. He wouldn’t know about the witness intimidation, protection contributions and the skilled and ample bribery. And, even if he did know . . . yes, even if he did know or could guess, he’d been hired to argue that, because there’d been no charges, there’d been no villainy. He’d suggest the argument was so simple as hardly to need an argument at all; QED, as they briskly and smugly said in mathematics when a problem had been dealt with: Latin for ‘which was to be proved (and has been, thank you very much)’.

  Having failed in a major and devotedly thorough, long-haul way to nail the Cormax Turton Guild, police eventually chose Out-location – this was his point. And he’d allege that, when the Out-loc officer turned up hacked and dead on a beach, Channing and the police generally would instinctively and instantly assume he’d been savaged and killed because people in the Guild discovered his identity and silenced and disposed of him, after the routine gangster mode of these things. Esther, battered by the lawyer’s theme, dismayed by the neat way its sections interlocked, wondered, Oh, hell, did Parkhouse QC portray the situation right? Had her resolve to hit the Guild become an obsession, and drowned her judgement?

  Parkhouse said: ‘Superintendent, I suggest you were part of an unflagging campaign to prove what the police had decided must be proved despite a complete lack of evidence.’

  ‘Our purpose was to gather such evidence by proper means, as in all such investigations.’

  Robot-speak. But what else could he have spoken?

  Parkhouse said: ‘I suggest that when your undercover, Out-located, officer was found on the beach near Pastel Head you immediately concluded for no valid reason that he had been killed because he’d discovered something the inquiries over many months by up to fifteen officers failed to find.’

  ‘No.’

  ‘I suggest you at once decided he was eliminated to ensure he could not pass on this information.’

  ‘That is not true.’

  ‘I suggest it was on account of this totally unjustified rush to judgement that you and those above you in the police hierarchy sought to concoct a case against my client, Ambrose Tutte Turton, who appears here charged with the murder of Detective Sergeant Dean Martlew.’

  ‘That is false.’

  ‘I suggest you saw this death as tragic, but also as a splendid opportunity to do what you and your colleagues had failed to do previously – bring charges against Ambrose Tutte Turton.’

  ‘Tragic only.’

  ‘You told my learned friend during your evidence-in-chief that the reason an undercover officer might be murdered was to make sure he could not pass on information he had secretly gathered, did you not?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Did you automatically think this was the motive for Detective Sergeant Dean Martlew’s death when you saw his body on the shore?’

  The judge said: ‘In his evidence-in-chief the witness told us there were two reasons an undercover, Out-loc officer might be killed, Mr Parkhouse. One was practical – to render him silent; the other philosophical, meaning there is an in-built, traditional hatred of police spies – or what, as I pointed out earlier, the Americans call “finks” – the same word they use as for informants. “Rats” is another term.’

  ‘I’m very much obliged, Your Honour,’ Parkhouse said. ‘I believe the witness also mentioned that the two – the practical and the philosophical – could sometimes coalesce and act in unison.’

  ‘You wish to argue, Mr Parkhouse, do you, that the Superintendent, and later his superiors, might have decided these two, linked factors explained the death of Detective Sergeant Dean Martlew? Very well, you should put that to the witness.’

  ‘Thank you, Your Honour. I am very grateful for your help in general, and especially the advice on United States low-speak. Superintendent, I have to suggest to you that, when you saw Dean Martlew’s body on the beach, you decided at once, instinctively, that he must have been exposed as a police officer, and then killed to silence him; but also because Out-located detectives have always been regarded by criminals as contemptible traitors by criminals – in the words kindly supplied by Her Honour, “finks” or “rats”.’

  ‘I had no instinctive response other than accepting it as my duty as a police officer to discover how the body in that state came to have been washed up at Pastel Head.’

  The judge said: ‘On the matter of American slang, it’s perhaps worth noting, though as very much an aside, I admit, that the US term for an unmarked police car happens to be a “pastel”.’

  ‘Thank you, Your Honour,’ Parkhouse said. ‘Yes, fascinating, indeed.’

  ‘I feel one should keep up to speed on these things,’ the judge said, ‘if only to correct the impression that the judiciary are out of touch with the basics of life, either here or across the pond.’

  ‘A worthwhile aim, if I may say,’ Parkhouse replied. ‘Superintendent, I suggest you and your colleagu
es at once saw – imagined – a link between the discovery of this body at the interestingly named Pastel Head, and the abortive inquiries that had taken place over many months.’

  ‘No.’

  Yes.

  ‘And I suggest this link, utterly unbacked by credible evidence, consisted of, first, the wrongful long-term assumption that the Cormax Turton business network was criminal in some of its activities,’ Parkhouse said, ‘and, second, the conclusion that the Out-located officer had information to prove this assumption, but had been revealed as a police officer and executed to keep him quiet, and to punish him for the deception he’d maintained for four months.’

  ‘No.’

  ‘I suggest you decided at once to try to construct a case against my client because of this instant, pre-determined, mistaken interpretation of the death.’

  ‘No.’

  ‘I suggest your case against my client is of the same, stubborn, unwarranted nature as the inquiries into the Cormax Turton legal business interests which preceded it – that is, presume guilt first, then attempt to amass facts to prove this, rather than the proper route: to arrive at an accusation of guilt because evidence, fairly and thoroughly examined, leads to that conclusion.’

  Chapter Eight

  So how did they get to this? Often she would think back:

  Out-location of DS Dean Martlew: Esther’s narrative

  1. Preparation

  In her view, this had broken into five stages, five choices. She started with the most basic: (a) should she go for Out-loc or not? Well, Fieldfare and frustration had settled that for her, hadn’t they, though Fieldfare short of the agonized voice of Desmond Iles? She’d do it.

  Next question: (b) who would day-to-day, night-to-night, take charge of things and be the Out-loc officer’s controller and contact? Not herself. As Assistant Chief, Ops, she supervised all important projects, but at policy level. Fieldfare, and what happened to her thinking there, was absolute policy, and she brought a consignment of this back with her, like IKEA assemble-yourself furniture. Now, here, she had to pick someone to put it, get it, together. Assistant Chiefs, Ops, delegated the Ops, like most modern leaders of men and women. Adolf didn’t spend much time at the siege of Stalingrad.