In the Absence of Iles

by Bill James

  ‘According to Superintendent Channing, Dean Martlew’s manager and liaison officer during the undercover operation, a secret meeting took place between the two on 4 June. And the Superintendent said he received a brief call from Dean Martlew on his mobile telephone in the evening of 6 June, Martlew using a public pay line. The Superintendent told the court that in both of these exchanges, Dean Martlew spoke as if he were still in place as a bogus, freelance member of the Cormax Turton work force. He said the unscheduled 6 June telephone call was to report that the chairman of the group, Cornelius Max Turton, intended entering hospital soon for a knee operation, and that the accused, Ambrose Tutte Turton, and Nathan Garnet Ivan Crabtree would both take on increased responsibilities in the companies.

  ‘Superintendent Channing also told the court he thought Martlew had sounded especially uneasy during this telephone call, as if afraid some members of Cormax Turton doubted his cover. Martlew did not say this explicitly, nor mention any new warning signs. It was the Superintendent’s impression – the impression of an experienced senior police officer, though not specifically experienced in managing an undercover operative. Channing felt so troubled that he asked the twenty-four-hour rescue party to be on special alert.

  ‘Now, it’s clear that meetings and telephone conversations between the two men would always be tense, because they might be seen or overheard. But, according to the Superintendent, voice stress during the 6 June telephone call became exceptional. The cell phone conversation between Dean Martlew and Superintendent Channing was not recorded. We heard this is normal in undercover work, even for landline calls, because preservation of recordings might endanger security. The Superintendent said he did, however, keep a coded log of all meetings and telephone calls. Each log entry is timed and dated and comprises a summary of what the witness tells us was said by both parties.

  ‘Members of the jury, you also saw extracts from the log as exhibits, with Dean Martlew referred to under the code name Wally. I should say, names are bound to take on some complexity in undercover operations. There will be the real name of the officer, in his case Dean Martlew. Then there will be the assumed name used in the target firm – Terence Marshall-Perkins. And, because the real identity of the detective has to be kept secret even from most other police officers for fear of leaks, there will often be what is termed a “working” name – this being the name by which the Out-located man or woman is known, say, to those who might have to conduct a rescue. Dean Martlew’s “working” name was Wally. We heard in an amusing aside from Superintendent Channing why this had been chosen and its origin in the name of the poet Walter de la Mare, author of “The Listeners”.’

  Esther recalled Officer B on monikers and her anxieties when people in a penetrated firm repeatedly used her assumed name in conversation – Dawn, Dawn, Dawn, as if to prove they believed absolutely in it; which meant they didn’t. Did Cormax Turton people start calling Martlew Terry, Terry, Terry? Had that been one of the factors troubling him?

  The transcript said: ‘Relevant times and dates in the log are 1845, 4 June for the latest meeting; and 2015 on 6 June for the phone call. The summaries are written as if Dean Martlew (Wally/Marshall-Perkins) was still Out-located and functioning in Cormax Turton. The 6 June summary contains a reference to the possibly impending knee operation for Mr Cornelius Max Turton.’

  Esther thought that if she’d been in court to hear this she might have felt cheered for a while by the judge’s reminder to the jury of Channing’s impeccable, methodical note-making, carefully dated and timed. But Esther was over at East Stead then, observing – some would say interfering – and mourning. She had spent several hours there, drawn by that compulsive, haywire, farcically illogical, sense of connection with DC Amy Patterson, neé Dill.

  Esther came to one of the chief passages in the transcript. ‘Members of the jury, the disagreements about time are obviously very profound and are one of the main issues in this case. The Prosecution says Dean Martlew remained in place with Cormax Turton until 8 June, when he was murdered by the accused, acting out of hatred for a spying intruder, and in order to silence him. The Defence says nobody at Cormax Turton had any reason to hate an undercover officer, and that Dean Martlew left the group on 27 May but, apparently for private reasons, did not inform his police superiors. If the Defence argument is correct, there are considerable gaps in what we know of Dean Martlew’s activities and whereabouts from 27 May, until he was killed by a person or persons unknown and his body found on Pastel Head beach. The only information we have about Martlew during these ten or so days is Superintendent Channing’s report of the meeting on 4 June and the telephone call on 6 June. The Superintendent says he believed Dean Martlew to be still installed at Cormax Turton on these dates.

  ‘The Defence argument which aims to refute this produces two possible implications. First, the Defence suggestion could mean the liaison officer, Superintendent Channing, was deceived into thinking that at the time of the 4 June meeting and 6 June telephone call Dean Martlew continued as an Out-located officer in Cormax Turton, and therefore the Superintendent’s notes on this meeting and telephone call are entirely unreliable. The Defence cannot say where Dean Martlew was or with whom, only that he was not in Cormax Turton with former work colleagues. The Defence is, of course, under no obligation to provide evidence of where Martlew spent those intervening days. It is not the duty of a firm like Cormax Turton to remain in touch with freelance labour that has been paid off.

  ‘The second implication of the Defence’s argument is considerably more serious. Does it suggest that the meeting and telephone call might not have taken place but were invented as part of a strategy by the police to make conviction of the accused more likely? The Superintendent’s account of special stress in Dean Martlew’s voice on the telephone could be seen as contributing to this aim, and his warning to the rescue group. In other words, the allegation would be of perjury, a very grave crime, and especially when committed by a police witness. This will be a key matter for your deliberation and judgement, members of the jury.

  ‘I come now to the matter of Mr Cornelius Max Turton’s knees, age and general state of health. These may sound marginal and even a little humorous, but are nonetheless important. Superintendent Channing suggested that the telephone call of 6 June in which he said Mr Turton’s knee trouble and possible hospitalization were reported proved Dean Martlew to be still embedded in the group and so able to pick up new, private information. But Mr Cornelius Max Turton said in evidence that there had been talk about his knee trouble and possible surgery for many months, if not years. No hospital appointment has, in fact, ever been made. He said it would be quite possible for Dean Martlew to have heard talk about these matters much earlier than June. In fact, MrTurton’s knee trouble and other complaints were widely known about outside Cormax Turton.

  ‘Mr Turton said Dean Martlew might also have heard earlier than June discussion of how the companies would be run if Mr Turton did, one day, decide to go into hospital and subsequently cut down on his work within the group, possibly handing over further shared responsibilities for leadership to the accused and Mr Nathan Garnet Ivan Crabtree. We heard they had already taken on some aspects of leadership because of Mr Cornelius Turton’s age. The Defence argued that long-term, contingency planning of this kind was natural for any mature company, and would have been in the minds and discussions of directors as soon as Mr Turton’s knee problems began to look chronic. In other words, ladies and gentlemen, a mention of Mr Cornelius Max Turton’s knees in the telephone call referred to by Superintendent Channing would not necessarily have the significance suggested by him.’

  According to the transcript, the judge didn’t add ‘supposing, that is, the 6 June telephone call ever took place,’ but Esther thought she could almost hear the words. And the jury might have thought they could, too.

  Chapter Twelve

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

  1. Preparation (cont
inued)

  To date:

  (a) Project approved.

  (b) Manager approved – Superintendent Richard Channing.

  (c) Final shortlist (alphabetically): (i) DC Amy Dill, (ii) DS Dean Martlew.

  (i) Amy Dill

  From the days of the first, wide-focus computer searches for someone to do undercover, Esther agreed with Channing that this girl looked extremely likely. No question, she’d be there among the last few or pair at the final choice. Of course, Esther realized that what she saw and assumed in Amy Dill might not tally altogether with what Channing saw and assumed. For a while, Esther had thought this didn’t matter too much, though. They both liked what they read of Dill on file, including no dependants, and all the requirements for a reasonable shot at anonymity undercover: she was young, hadn’t figured in any cases covered big by the media, and she worked in a fairly remote part of the domain over at East Stead. Her dossier contained praise from two chief inspectors for her calm and resourcefulness in bad situations. Naturally, though, these situations didn’t much match the kind of situations she might meet when Out-located. What did?

  Dill had helped disarm and arrest a man who’d gone wild with a shotgun; and, solo, she’d chased and caught a thief on a warehouse roof. Great . . . brave . . . nimble, but . . . But (a) could she convincingly act villain in a villain scene over weeks and maybe months? and (b) come up with information/insights obtainable in no other way, and likely to at least maim and possibly dismember Cormax Turton?

  In fact, it was trickier than that because the villains in the Cormax Turton villain scene pretended not to be villains at all. They would like to be regarded as a legitimate, successful business outfit; and, above all, they would like to be regarded as a legitimate, successful business outfit by the police and the Crown Prosecution Service. CT really worked at this. Many firms did. Some meant to move gradually away from all crookedness and become genuinely law-abiding and auditable, though still in profit. Or they half meant to, or hoped to. Robert Maxwell, newspaper owner and notable swindler, might have hoped along those lines, though he made the mistake of getting found drowned from his yacht before he could manage it. But Cormax Turton had more or less managed to keep up the pretence they were pure. That is, they continued to perform as if a legitimate, successful business outfit because the police – meaning, as she saw it, Esther, in particular, poor, poor cow – yes, because Assistant Chief Davidson – that is, Assistant Chief Davidson (Operations) – had, in fact, failed to lead an operation that produced enough black evidence on CT’s operations to persuade the Crown Prosecution Service to get operational and bring a case.

  It followed from this that an officer Out-located to Cormax Turton would have to act villain, but villain acting lawful. There would always be an element of this in undercover work, naturally, because few villains went about proclaiming themselves villain. They tried for a respectable front. With Cormax Turton that front was brilliantly, superbly, presented and guarded by the combined families, and any credible undercover officer would have to help maintain this grand façade, while getting deep into the day-by-day villainy that made the grand façade so necessary. Maybe potential Out-loc detectives should be sent to the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art for a stint. At Fieldfare hadn’t Officer A struck her as someone theatre-trained?

  Esther saw again that it must be an eternal, eternally cruel, problem when selecting for undercover: you wanted someone with reassuring experience as an effective multiface spy in the past; but not someone who’d been so emphatically effective that his/her fame and description spread among bent firms, making any future Out-loc a total and potentially suicidal no-no. Regardless of the hints in Officer A’s talk that he, personally, had taken on several undercover assignments, Esther found the two fundamentally dissimilar demands couldn’t live together, and decided she’d probably have to settle for a detective wholly new to undercover.

  That’s how it had been for herself far back in Esther’s career. Davidson, we’d like you to get yourself into the Beeling crooked outfit as one of them and bring us back untold goodies. OK? You’re new to that kind of work? Great! We’ll get you some training, dear. Esther considered she’d done the job then reasonably all right; all right enough for the word on her to get around the firms that some young female cop had sneaked into the Beeling outfit and, despite having to bale out early, sent half of it to jail and the rest to the Job Centre. She could never go Out-loc on that patch again. She, Esther Davidson, had exactly typified the selection dilemma. Occasionally she dreamed up recruitment ads for Out-loc: Experience indispensable and will disqualify. Good, non-existent track record vital.

  Channing also could come up with a phrase or two. For instance, ‘the Dirty Dozen factor’. By this he meant that perhaps they should note and enjoy some of the thumbs-down comments in the dossiers of Dill and others, as much as the praise. What might be bad qualities for general policing could have unique, plus qualities for Out-location. And so, Channing suggested, consider The Dirty Dozen, regularly rerun on the Movie Channel: Lee Marvin leads a gang of hardened ex-crooks on an important, perilous mission in Nazi-occupied France, their villain skills and savagery suddenly alchemized to the side of good. All right, all right, nothing in Dill’s dossier – nor in any of the others – suggested lawlessness. But some of the character judgements there pointed to apparent defects which might, in fact, turn out brilliantly, unmatchably useful for undercover work.

  Esther didn’t altogether buy the Dirty Dozen comparison, though. Marvin’s platoon naturally showed plenty of tough individuality and had terrific, manly, snarling contempt for normal army discipline and organization. OK, these might be sexy and box-office in a war drama, but the mixture wouldn’t do for Out-loc. Individuality, yes, oh, yes, as tough as you like: an undercover operative must be able to exist alone, unsupported from the police side for long spells, unsuspected and, if possible, untainted by the outlaw side. But Fieldfare taught Esther that discipline and organization in a successful undercover project had to be faultless, or as close as could be; which, admittedly, might not always be very close. Although Esther did seek someone with stacks of individuality and self-reliance, this someone also had to recognize the dull necessity of planning, timetabling, coordination, communications rules, and overall senior rank control. She and Channing both enjoyed one apparently half-adverse comment on Amy Dill’s dossier: ‘She has a quick and astonishingly thorough appreciation of strategic purpose, but will sometimes improvise unpredictably, and therefore unfruitfully, on the detailed, tactical working out of such strategic purpose.’

  Esther had a smirk at ‘unfruitfully’, a delicate, punch-pulling term. Most probably it soft-pedalled some wondrous, all-round, Dill-based fuck-ups: pity they weren’t described in the dossier. Just the same, she and Channing read the full sentence to mean Dill had excellent abilities that needed only fine tuning. Channing might fancy giving her some of that. Yes. In any case, if they picked her, the training and psychology tests at Hilston Manor should define and sort out any lacks. Esther noticed the reference to improvisation. Plenty of this would be needed, predictable or not. The achievements of undercover didn’t come by schedule. Esther also noticed the praise for Dill’s ability to cotton on to the main thrust of an operation, the ‘strategic purpose’. It should help keep her morale healthy when stuck in Cormax Turton for a stretch without real progress; possibly without any progress at all, and for a stretch that really stretched and stretched. Dill’s dossier showed no husband or dependants, but that might not be the full picture. ‘Unofficial’ liaisons would not be recorded – a boyfriend, even a fiancé or live-in partner. And if she were into a lasting relationship, separation could become irksome. She might need to remind herself frequently then how much her work mattered, and how it cornerstoned a major, overall design.

  ‘I’ve been to East Stead to talk to her,’ Channing said.

  ‘Well, yes, I expect so.’

  ‘Just recce.’

  ‘Right.’


  ‘When I say “talk to her” I mean, obviously, in a wholly informal way, at this juncture.’

  ‘Which way is that?’

  ‘General.’

  ‘In what sense?’

  ‘Yes, reconnaissance only, for now,’ he replied. ‘Very much so. As you’d expect.’

  ‘In what sense?’

  ‘Within quite definite parameters.’

  ‘Which?’

  ‘No mention of the specific upcoming undercover task yet. General only.’

  ‘How do you explain yourself, then?’ she said.

  ‘In what sense, ma’am?’

  ‘Why you’re talking to her. Why you’ve done the mileage to a bird-nesting division like East Stead.’

  ‘I talked to several young detectives over there. It seemed wiser like that. As if a pattern of interviews, of equal rating.’

  ‘Did someone at East Stead have to line up the meetings for you – these talks? You gave a list of people you wanted to see?’

  ‘I said I’d be conducting routine informal “get-to-know” sessions, reciprocal “get-to-know” sessions.’

  ‘But they’re not routine, are they? You don’t normally run them. People would wonder about the real reason. That’s how leaks can start.’

  ‘“Routine” in the sense of nothing special. Informal.’

  ‘And when you spoke to the others, would it be along the same lines as for your meeting with Dill?’

  ‘Informal, yes. General. It has to be at this stage.’

  ‘Juncture. The others are a sort of smokescreen, are they? You’re really only interested in Dill.’