Rules of Engagement

by Hurley, Graham

  Gillespie came to a halt, his case stated. Ingle studied him carefully. Then he nodded at the photos.

  ‘What would you say if I told you these punters got no further than the harbour mouth?’

  ‘I wouldn’t believe you.’

  ‘And what if it were true?’

  Gillespie hesitated.

  ‘It wouldn’t make any difference…’ he said. ‘Nothing would have changed. The principle’s the same. Like I said, dog eat dog.’

  Ingle nodded, paused, looked at the ceiling. One more question, he thought, one more nail in the coffin. Then it’s time to do a little thinking. He and Davidson. The outlaws from the Smoke.

  ‘So why were you here?’ he said finally, reaching forward and tapping the photos. ‘Why these?’

  Gillespie looked at him for a moment. Then he smiled.

  ‘I have a friend,’ he said, ‘in the media. She likes this kind of thing. Turns her on. She’ll make a meal of it. Give it the treatment it deserves.’

  Ingle nodded. ‘Annie McPhee,’ he said. A statement, not a question. Gillespie hesitated a moment, off-guard.

  ‘You’ve got her too?’

  Ingle nodded again. ‘Of course,’ he said.

  ‘Here?’

  ‘Up the corridor.’

  Gillespie leaned back in the chair, genuine admiration in his voice, the government machine working the way it should.

  ‘Nice one,’ he said.

  Evans and Goodman arrived at the city mortuary shortly before noon. The mortuary was a small, single-storey, red-brick building, attached to the city’s busiest hospital. Big vents, with extractor fans, were inset into the grey slate roof, and there was a tiny Chapel of Rest at one end.

  Evans parked the car, and helped Goodman out of the back seat. Goodman had been awake for several hours, drowsy at first with Largactil, but better after a wash. Fiona, his secretary, had sponged the congealed blood from his chin, and bathed the deep gash in his forehead, sealing it up with a wide strip of Elastoplast from the bunker medical chest. Goodman had watched her hands in the mirror, marvelling at how deft she was, his mind otherwise blank.

  He remembered everything that had happened over the last day or so, every last detail, but he felt no responsibility for any of it. It was simply something that had happened, as inevitable as rain, utterly removed from any notion of right or wrong. He didn’t want to talk about it. He didn’t even want to acknowledge that it had happened. It was already remote, a set of events in an ethical void.

  He followed Evans towards the mortuary. His mouth still hurt, and Fiona had found another swelling on the back of his head where he must have hit a chair, or the side of the desk, as he fell. Otherwise, physically, he didn’t feel too bad. From Evans, he’d gathered that the international crisis had receded, that there was some prospect of peace breaking out, and that too, met with his approval. Perhaps, after all, there’d be a world to go back to, and a life to lead.

  A small woman in a white coat emerged from the mortuary, and came across to greet them. She extended a hand. Goodman shook it.

  ‘Dr Mossiter,’ she said, ‘I’m the pathologist.’

  Goodman nodded.

  ‘Martin Goodman,’ he said vaguely. ‘I hope this won’t take too long.’

  The woman looked at him for a moment, and Goodman was aware of her eyes on the bandage on his forehead. Then she turned on her heel and led the way to the mortuary. The ante-room was small, no more than a lobby. There was a large pile of folded bags against one wall, black shiny material, big dull metal zips. Goodman looked at them, fascinated.

  ‘What on earth are they?’ he said.

  The woman paused for a moment, one hand on the door.

  ‘Body bags,’ she said, ‘our entire NHS allotment.’

  Goodman frowned, trying to remember the exact figure, one of the hundreds of pre-war statistics he’d tried to file away. Already, it seemed like years ago, relics from some previous existence. He gave up, following the woman into another room. It was tiled white, big and bare and shiny. Tall fridges lined one wall, and there was a faint smell of bleach. There were no windows. Goodman paused. A policeman in uniform was waiting at the far end of the room. He was young, fresh-faced, slightly hesitant, and there was a clipboard in his hand. Another man stood beside him, much older, buttons missing on his stained white coat. The pathologist nodded at the older man.

  ‘Yes, please,’ she said.

  The older man, a mortuary attendant, stepped forward and opened one of the fridge doors. The whine of the fridge motor got abruptly louder. There were bodies on metal racks, one above the other. They were shrouded in white, heads towards the door. The attendant pulled at one of the lower racks. A body slid into the room. Goodman gazed down. Unlike the bodies above and below, this one was wrapped in clear polythene, sealed with sellotape. The hands inside the polythene were covered in plastic bags. The head lay to one side. There was bruising around the eyes and temples, dark blotches on the neck. Goodman stared at the face. Suzy, he thought absently. My Suzy. He felt the pathologist’s hand on his arm, the lightest of touches. He looked up at her.

  ‘Miss Wallace?’ she said.

  He nodded. ‘Yes.’

  ‘Are you sure it’s her?’

  ‘Quite sure…’ He hesitated, looking down at her face, her lips, the surprising lack of damage, thinking briefly of her bathroom, the smell of the lotions she used, the way she wound the dental floss around her index finger, sawing back and forth. He looked up again.

  ‘Will you be doing a post-mortem?’ he said.

  The pathologist nodded. ‘Of course,’ she said, ‘circumstances like these.’

  Goodman looked at Suzanne one last time, then turned away. The policeman stepped forward with his clipboard. There was a form attached. Suzanne’s full name. Her address. A place for him to sign beside a formal declaration. Suzanne Wallace. The figure in the plastic bag. One and the very same. The policeman handed him a pen, and he checked the details against his own name before he began to scribble his signature. He heard the rattle of metal rollers as Suzanne was returned to the fridge. The door closed with a bang.

  ‘Do you have any ideas…?’

  He handed back the pen and the clipboard to the policeman, and looked at the pathologist, the rest of the sentence unfinished. She shook her head.

  ‘No,’ she said, ‘except that she obviously fell.’

  Goodman nodded. ‘Yes,’ he said, ‘obviously.’

  He turned away from the fridges. Evans was waiting for him by the door. He thanked the pathologist and returned to the car. Only when they were back on the main road, clear of the hospital, did it really begin to hit him.

  ‘She’s dead,’ he said to no one in particular. ‘Gone away.’

  Davidson met Ingle on the seafront, Ingle’s idea. The back end of a big Atlantic front was moving through the area, and the sky was full of fat tumbling cumulus clouds. The wind was chill, and Davidson turned up the collar of his coat, stepping out of his car and meeting Ingle on the long stretch of promenade. The seafront was quite empty, the city still hours behind the news from the Central Front and the Barents Sea.

  Davidson thrust his hands deep in his pockets.

  ‘Bit melodramatic, aren’t we?’ he said.

  Ingle ignored the comment, telling Davidson the gist of the exchanges with Gillespie, the man’s obsession with what had happened at the dock, the depth of his knowledge, the detail in the pictures, his anger, his determination to share the news with as wide an audience as possible. At this, Davidson interrupted, pausing in mid-step.

  ‘How?’ he said.

  ‘The girl,’ Ingle said, ‘his little friend. McPhee. The reporter.’

  ‘Does she know?’

  Ingle looked at him for a moment.

  ‘I’m not sure,’ he said, ‘but probably not.’

  ‘Probably not?’

  ‘Yes,’ Ingle acknowledged the distinction with a wry smile, ‘probably not.’

  ‘Do
we get to know? For sure?’

  Ingle nodded. ‘Yes,’ he said, ‘of course.’

  There was a silence between them. Then they walked west again, into the sunshine.

  ‘So tell me…’ Davidson began, ‘how do we dissuade Gillespie?’

  Ingle smiled and produced a manila file from the depths of his anorak. The file was creased. Someone had written WALLACE on the outside, big, clumsy capital letters. He opened the file and extracted a sheet of paper. Davidson recognized the preliminary Scenes of Crime Report, a précis of the basic facts: location, obvious clues, fingerprints, relevant circumstantial detail.

  ‘Quinn sent this round,’ he said. ‘He thought it might help.’

  Davidson nodded and read it quickly. Then again, taking his time. When he looked up, he was smiling.

  ‘Fine,’ he said, ‘me or you?’

  Ingle stopped again. The sun had gone in.

  ‘You,’ he said.

  ‘And the girl?’

  Ingle smiled. ‘Me,’ he said.

  Goodman elected, in the end, to go home. He’d spent a chilly five minutes with Quinn in what had once been his own office, listening to the big policeman recommending a spell in hospital, extolling the virtues of proper psychiatric care. The exchange had all the trappings of an interrogation, Quinn sitting on the edge of the desk, looking down at him, emotionless, cold, tabulating the pros and cons on the fingers of his left hand. In hospital, he said, they’d know what to do. In hospital, they’d put things right. In hospital, they’d get him better, quicker, than any other form of treatment. What he referred to as Goodman’s ‘little turn’ had been entirely understandable. Impossible demands on his time. No sleep. The pressures growing hour by hour. To be frank, said Quinn, he’d been lucky to get away so lightly.

  Goodman had listened to it all, letting it wash over his head, all too aware of what a spell in a psychiatric ward would do to his career prospects. The past few days had been bloody, and he’d come very close to a total collapse, but whatever they’d given him had begun to work. He felt much better, calmer inside, and now he wanted to go home. There, he’d be safe. There, he could recover at his own pace. There he could begin to rebuild a life with Jo-Jo and the kids. Pleading madness would be a convenience for Quinn. It would be used against him. He knew it.

  Finally, he shook his head, and looked at Quinn.

  ‘Thanks all the same,’ he said, ‘but I think I’ll go home.’

  Quinn hesitated a moment, then shrugged.

  ‘Use the phone outside,’ he said briefly, nodding at the door. ‘I expect you remember the number.’

  Joanna answered the phone. He said he loved her. He said he wanted to come home. And he smiled when she said she’d come and get him. School, he thought. Just like school.

  Ingle came at it again, different angle, different point of the compass, different mind set. Annie sat in front of him. He wasn’t messing, and she knew it, and it frightened her.

  ‘We picked you up with the film,’ he reminded her, ‘and you say you don’t know where it came from?’

  ‘No.’ Annie shook her head, tired of it all, the incessant questions, the way his voice had changed, flinty hard, no prisoners. ‘I’ve no idea.’

  ‘Then whose film was it?’

  ‘Gillespie’s.’

  ‘And what was on the film?’

  ‘I don’t know.’

  Ingle hesitated a moment, then launched in again.

  ‘Suppose I told you they were films of his boat. Some fishing trip. Cod. Salmon. Whatever he catches.’

  ‘I wouldn’t believe you.’

  ‘Why not?’

  ‘Because he went out specifically. I tried to —’

  She stopped abruptly, aware of the mistake. Ingle pounced at once, seized the admission, prising it open, laying it on the table between them.

  ‘He went out where?’

  Annie shook her head.

  ‘Nowhere,’ she said.

  ‘You said he went out specially. Out specially where?’

  She shook her head again.

  ‘Nowhere. I made a mistake. I’m tired. All this…’

  Ingle bent very close to her, over the table, the huge white face, the warm, yeasty smell of his breath.

  ‘Where?’ he said, ‘where?’

  Annie closed her eyes. Soon, she knew, he’d hit her. She could feel it. The impatience. The anger. She opened her eyes again.

  ‘I don’t know,’ she said.

  ‘You don’t know where he went?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘He wouldn’t tell you?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘This man you kip with?’

  She nodded. ‘Yes,’ she said, ‘sounds daft, doesn’t it?’

  Ingle said nothing for a moment, the dog with the bone, pushing it around with his nose, looking for the last shreds of meat.

  ‘You say you don’t know what’s on the film,’ he said slowly, ‘you say you don’t know where he went, what he did. Yet here you are, in a relationship with the man.’ He paused. ‘That make sense to you?’

  Anne shook her head. ‘No,’ she said, ‘but then you don’t know Gillespie. He hates journalists. Television. He thinks it’s all crap. He does what he does. Not my business. Not yours. Simple as that.’ She smiled at Ingle, genuine sympathy. ‘I’m no wiser than you are,’ she said. ‘Frustrating, isn’t it?’

  At the other end of the building, on the floor above, Davidson let himself into the small bare room with the table and the three chairs. He carried a large black briefcase. He put the briefcase on the table, and opened it. He took out three manila envelopes, foolscap size, and laid them carefully beside the briefcase. Then he sat down.

  Gillespie looked at him. The sun was in his eyes.

  ‘Who are you?’ he said.

  Davidson ignored the question. He put the briefcase on the floor, and opened each of the three envelopes, careful, deliberate movements. He extracted a single photograph from each. He laid the three photos in a line, side by side, facing Gillespie, the conjuror, the magician, playing games with reality.

  Gillespie, at first, refused to look at the photos.

  ‘Your name,’ he said, ‘I want your name.’

  Davidson cleared his throat, adjusted the middle of the three photographs, and looked Gillespie in the eye, taking his time. His tone, when he spoke, was utterly reasonable, the voice of a man for whom life held few surprises.

  ‘Mr Gillespie …’ he began, ‘contrary to public belief, we civil servants are very much in favour of keeping things simple. So…’ he smiled, ‘here goes. First of all, we find a body. Next, we are obliged to conduct an investigation. Finally, we must try and identify the person, or persons, responsible. But to do that, we need to establish a chain of events. With me so far?’

  Gillespie nodded, his eyes still fixed on Davidson’s face. Davidson hesitated a moment, then pushed the first of the photographs towards Gillespie. Gillespie looked at it. It showed Goodman and Suzanne on a bench in the Botanical Gardens. Gillespie blinked. It was his own shot. From his own camera. He heard Davidson beginning to talk again, the voice a little softer, a little warmer, more confidential.

  ‘A Mr Goodman is having an affair with a Miss Wallace,’ he said. ‘Nice photo, if I may say so.’

  His fingers moved onto the second of the three photos, the one in the middle. Gillespie looked at it. A telephoto shot of himself on the seafront with the woman with the red scarf. Mrs Goodman. Money was changing hands. Gillespie was frowning. He looked up. Davidson nodded, smiling, building the case, step by step, image by image, the voice silky now, persuasive, amused.

  ‘Now Mrs Goodman is very upset by this situation,’ he said. ‘So upset, she hires a man to take care of the problem.’ The smile widened. ‘That’s you. On the right.’ The finger moved again, tracking across to the last of the photos, Suzanne lying dead on the concrete.

  ‘And this one…’ he said, ‘shows the unfortunate Miss Wallace… well and truly tak
en care of.’ He paused, letting the smile die on his lips. ‘Get my drift?’

  Gillespie looked up, his brain numbed, only one question left. He nodded at the photos on the table. Two of them were obvious. The shot of him and Mrs Goodman was their own, a straightforward surveillance job. The shot of Suzanne on the concrete came from the film they’d retrieved from the VW. But what of the other shot? Goodman and the girl on the bench? Last time he’d seen the exposed roll, it had been still loaded in his camera in his living room at home. The camera had then disappeared. Now the film prints were lying on the table, the key link in Davidson’s careful exposition, graphic evidence of the situation that had started it all.

  ‘That one,’ he said, ‘where did you get that one?’

  Davidson looked at him, amused again.

  ‘Where do you think?’

  Gillespie gazed at him, not wanting to put the answer into words, but knowing that it had to be done.

  ‘Annie,’ he said, ‘Annie McPhee.’

  Annie looked at Ingle. Ingle was standing by the window, picking his teeth with a matchstick. She asked him again, a second time, not believing it.

  ‘Now?’ she said.

  Ingle shrugged. ‘Why not?’

  ‘After all this?’

  ‘Sure.’

  ‘Just walk out the door?’

  ‘Why not?’

  ‘I thought there was a war on?’

  ‘There was. But they cancelled it.’

  ‘Very funny.’

  Ingle turned back from the window, the matchstick still in his mouth.

  ‘It’s true,’ he said simply, ‘everybody bottled out.’

  Annie looked bewildered. Eighteen hours behind a locked door had conditioned her more quickly than she’d have thought possible. She’d already accepted that she’d be stuck in the place for days, even months. There was nothing she could do about it, no possible redress, no place to lodge an appeal, and the future itself had become nothing more than an act of faith. Yet here was Ingle, the Grand Inquisitor, telling her that the war was over, and that she was free to leave.