Play Dead (20 page)

‘Well, you have to go to work.'

She shrugged, as if the obvious was the obvious, but it still didn't excuse her. ‘He might have
been
seen and noted by cops on the path. That gaudy cravat. You'd be interested more in what he saw than in whether he'd been seen, wouldn't you? But it's a clear possibility, isn't it, that he was spotted? He wouldn't speak of it. He'd regard that as alarmist.'

‘You'll see office blocks with notices on declaring, “This building is alarmed”. Sometimes it's right to get alarmed.'

‘Of course it is, but Ivan isn't the sort who'd want to cause worry by suggesting he might be living under a threat. He told me about giving up on the path because of what he'd seen. I personally worked out that he, himself, might have been seen. And then I come back this time and hear a journalist who possibly knew something about the real situation here had been killed. Silenced? A reporter who'd only recently arrived, but with a reputation for digging out stuff. Well, Ivan knows something about the situation here, too, doesn't he? He must, or why would you be stalking him? And, I'm not on hand to keep him off the streets, where he's so damn conspicuous with that holdall for his alternative costume.'

Harpur found this term ‘costume' strange as a means of describing a man's clothes. He wondered whether it told something about her work. He could imagine her running karaoke on a holiday ship and switching costumes for each show. That pleasantly rounded, friendly, multi-purpose chin would help get passengers into a party mood.

‘In the Tesco bin - I mean, what chance would he have, shrouded with newspaper, if someone came looking?' she said. ‘Lift the lid, and there he is, like a prisoner in a dungeon. A gunman speaks the Tesco discount vouchers motto down at him, “Every little helps” and adds, “So here are a couple of rounds for you, Ivan, neither bigger than point-thirty-eight inches wide but able to tear suitable holes in you at very short range, anyway.”'

‘I've thought about that Tesco slogan myself. We should go over there,' Harpur replied. ‘We could knock gently on the lid so as not to shock and terrify him.'

‘I've been earlier. It's on my way. He's not there, either.'

This area where they talked would justifiably be called a hall when the house was finished. It would be about twelve metres square. The squareness mattered. Harpur's mother would always refer to the equivalent feature in the house he was brought up in as ‘the hall', spoken with a mild clang of pride; whereas most of the neighbours called that section of their homes ‘the passage'.

As a child, he used to think this description about right. It wasn't square but like a thin corridor with doors off to the living room and sitting room and reaching the kitchen finally. But his mother considered that to dub it ‘the passage' was humiliatingly basic and low class. There'd been a barometer in their hall and every day his father used to tap the glass with his knuckles, not hard but persuasively, to get the latest atmospheric pressure reading and forecast. His mother and father obviously thought that such a relationship with Nature's workings needed the proper kind of setting: a hall. In other words, that hall had a climate function. It was not just an indoor alleyway and rat-run. Halls set the tone of a house. His mother would undoubtedly have regarded this potential hall on the Elms development as brilliantly suitable for the discussion of something perhaps extremely serious, such as the disappearance of Ivan Hill-Brandon. Harpur continued with the torch beam, not directly and offensively on Veronica but to the side, fixed now on a patch of wall that would be ideal for a barometer. ‘Are you to do with karaoke at sea, such as on a cross-Channel ferry?' he asked.

She held up a hand as though about to begin some sort of performance in witty answer. But after a moment he realized her signal meant they should be quiet. He heard what she might have already heard, footsteps on the dirt outside, nimble but less than assured footsteps, like someone pretty certain he or she was in the right general area, but not exactly, absolutely, where he or she wanted to be. That was the thing about Elms: it offered quite a degree of choice. Harpur sensed movement near the coat fender. He shifted slightly and put the torch ray on to the gap in the front room. They saw Iles, crouched and squinting into the property. It was not the squint of someone examining the house because he might one day want to buy it; no, this squint showed he thought an individual or individuals might be in there and he wanted to know who and why.

The focused beam made his Biro wound glow reddish, like a level-crossing warning light. He had on civilian clothes, of course, and no hat. To Harpur, the ACC looked like somebody who'd been having a fine and educational time with fiction lately, such as
The Revenger's Tragedy
,
but now demanded the real, and would examine it ruthlessly. ‘Is that you behind the glare, Col?' he said. ‘I recognized the coat, bought cheap when they were putting down many cattle diseased by badgers, so oodles of leather available. I thought you'd be around here - a secret carry-on that you'd prefer to the theatre.'

‘How was
The Revenger's Tragedy
, sir?' Harpur replied. ‘You're the sort who would pick up the theme of a drama, whether you were in the stalls or the dress circle. Did they have intervals - to cater for your quite manageable complaint?'

‘I'm Veronica Pastor,' she said. ‘You must be the other one.'

‘That depends on your starting point,' Iles said. ‘But, in principle, no. Harpur is the other one. I'm more towards the supremo position.'

‘Do come in. We mustn't keep you on the doorstep, must we, Col?' she replied. Iles climbed through. ‘Two police officers from a different force came to examine the situation here after the undercover murder and now, bingo, you both seem to have come back,' she said.

‘It's necessary, Veronica,' Iles said. ‘Not only Harpur and I realized this, but a girl called Maud, very ready to put out for Col, in my opinion. Reading all that ancient Greek soft porn at Oxford makes them exceptionally questing and inventive sexually. Maud didn't like what she saw here, and what she still sees. How are you connected with the killings, Veronica?'

‘She frequently accommodated someone named Hill-Brandon,' Harpur said, ‘but in a catch-as-catch-can mode. To her he's Ivan, skint, and implicated oddly, interestingly, in the Mallen narrative.'

‘How did you find that out?' Iles said.

‘I'd have given Ivan a key,' she said, ‘so he could use the flat when I'm not at home, but my sister lives with me and was afraid that if I wasn't there neighbours would think Ivan was fucking both of us on a turn-and-turn about schedule. If it's Tuesday it must be Veronica. I should have ignored her prissy objections. Ivan's safety should be prime. A really urgent need, this. My sister isn't the sort he'd fancy, anyway - those thick legs, like a larder in her stocking.'

‘This Hill-Brandon is involved how, Harpur? I don't recall the name,' Iles said.

‘In mainly a negative sense,' Harpur said. ‘He wasn't here on the night, but almost here. This is crucial.'

‘How?' Iles said.

‘I've got nothing against theatre,' Harpur replied, ‘old or current. But this evening I felt a yen to get down here to the Elms, even though this yen was founded mainly on the negative aspect I've mentioned.'

‘You felt a yen, did you, Col?' Iles said. ‘He felt a yen, Veronica. Did you feel a yen, also? Were plenty of yens getting felt around here?'

‘A yen like that comes unexpectedly out of nowhere but is very compulsive,' Harpur said. ‘Clearly, I might have had a yen to see
The Revenger's Tragedy
,
which would have been more positive, I admit. But this was not the yen that took hold of me.'

‘The thing about leather in a coat like that, although folded and set down in a packet on ground hardly spruce, is that once it's been uncrumpled by wearing, or hung up in a wardrobe, it will soon recover its proper shape and smoothness,' Veronica said.

They left the house. Harpur recovered his jacket and put it on. The planks fell back into place, seeming to shut off the prospective dwelling, yet providing an entry method if you knew where to look and how to operate the movable panels. Veronica said: ‘I can't help noticing that facial lesion, Mr Iles, which is definitely not leprosy. Did Col Harpur organize the wound?'

‘Why do you say that, Veronica?' Iles replied.

‘The non-reference to it between the two of you, as if it's an embarrassment, because you're supposed to outrank him, yet you've taken a rather picturesque degradation,' Veronica explained.

‘That's what Harpur would passionately like it to be, but it isn't, can't be, can it?' Iles remarked.'My core remains my core, intact, robust.'

‘Isn't it this disagreement that puts any discussion off-limits, censors it, redacts it?' Veronica said. ‘There's a very gentlemanly, unspoken treaty to avoid talking of it.'

‘I don't see Mr Iles as a gentleman,' Harpur said at once.

‘No, I wouldn't want to be herded into that shit flock, ta very much,' Iles replied. ‘Curtailed. Restricted. I'm fiercely interested in Harpur's coat. It has a massive bearing on the Mallen case and subsequently, such as now.'

‘My jacket to do with all that?' Harpur asked. ‘In which respect, sir?'

Veronica said: ‘The main part of your evening was at the theatre, yes, Mr Iles? Virtually an afterthought brought you to the Elms. You wouldn't want any delay in your search. Sight of the coat helped speed things for you. It directed you to the desired spot.'

‘Yes, but that's not what I mean,' Iles said. ‘Likewise the discussion of the wound and the concept of gentlemanliness. These are very significant. Incidentally, on the matter of gentlemanliness and class generally, Harpur's family is in Berks' Steerage.'

‘You're telling us that all this is relevant to the Mallen case?' Veronica said with a small laugh. ‘Soon, you'll claim the play was relevant, too!'

‘In a way, yes,' Iles said.

‘Which?' Harpur said.

‘Which what, Col?' Iles replied.

‘Way.'

‘
The Revenger's Tragedy
,' Veronica said. ‘That's ages old. Jacobean? By Tourneur with two U's, or Middleton?'

‘Mr Iles has already told me that,' Harpur said. ‘My name's with one U, not er at the end.'

‘And yet the play's not totally ancient and passé,' Veronica said. ‘A friend of mine who worked for the BBC said that when they were adapting a drama called
House of Cards
for TV the writer was told to “think Jacobean”, meaning, I suppose, evil as humour and nods and winks to the audience, to help out the dialogue.'

‘But that's not what I'm getting at. Not at all,' Iles said.

‘Oh?' Veronica sounded snubbed.

‘I'm thinking of time,' the ACC replied.

‘Which time?' Veronica said.

‘The time it's taking us to get back to the path,' Iles said. ‘We've been able to discuss my injury, gentlemanliness, the Jacobean period, the BBC,
and Harpur's coat. That coat has sorted itself out, as you promised it would, Veronica.'

‘Well, yes, but so what?' Veronica asked. ‘Leather does that.'

‘So you instructed us,' Iles said. ‘It's fascinating to see it happen, though, given adequate time. It makes me realize how far off the path we must have come. And how far Mallen must have come. That would seem to indicate he'd had a real fright of some sort on the path. Considerable avoidance tactics. Harpur and I tried to mock-up the events of the death night, but we became distracted by some mutual, extremely lively hatred, and had to leave before we'd learned very much.'

‘We knew he'd come off the path,' Harpur said.

‘But I hadn't realized the full distance, the massive urgency,' Iles said. ‘Stupid of me.'

‘It could be important, yes,' Harpur said.

‘You were on to it already, were you, you selfish, dissembling sod?' the ACC replied.

‘He saw two police officers ahead,' Harpur said. ‘Helmets. They're unidentified.'

‘I'd suspected this, hadn't I?' Iles asked.

‘I haven't finished my inquiries into that side of things,' Harpur said. ‘I couldn't confirm.'

‘Why you came down here tonight?' Iles asked.

‘Yes. Veronica has confirmed, but it was good fortune, not pre-planned.'

‘So, I can be told at last, can I, Harpur, because I got halfway there myself, by noticing how long the chat took and the leather progress?' Iles said.

‘True, it has substance now,' Harpur said. ‘I wouldn't bring you something merely speculative, would I, sir? No names for the officers on the path yet.'

Of course, he wondered whether Hill-Brandon could have done better with a description of the two but was holding back for his own, hidden reason.

‘Harpur aims to keep ahead by any Jesuitical trick and sophistry possible, Veronica,' the Assistant Chief said.

‘But he would never comment on that disgusting cheek hole, no matter how prominent,' Veronica said. ‘He has deep consideration for you.'

‘He has fucking
what
?'
Iles said.

‘He'd be ashamed to serve you incomplete info,' she said.

‘We need to go through all the job assignments and rosters for that evening,' Harpur said.

‘We do, we do,' Iles said.

‘There you are, you see,' Veronica cried delightedly. ‘It all works out harmoniously regardless.'

‘Regardless of what?' Iles replied.

‘Regardless in a general sense, yet also very specific,' Harpur said.

M
ost of the time, Emily Young felt like one of Bin Laden's wives, or Diane Keaton, as the fictional Kay, married to Michael Corleone in
The Godfather
:
they suspected, of course, that their husbands' careers had mysterious, even dodgy, aspects. These were intelligent women, hardly stooges. They'd learned not to get obstreperously inquisitive, though. Tactfully preserved fog hung about. Kay Corleone lived - lived well - on the proceeds of Mike's mysterious, even dodgy, occupation, and this tended to inhibit curiosity about the source of the considerable family money. It wasn't so much mercenary as an acceptance of the seemingly normal: their household ran like this and had run like it for a long while. Kay took it as natural. And, as one of Bin Laden's wives said, some of his activities were Bin's concern, not hers, and she didn't interfere. Quite. Emily had heard Leo, her husband, praise a Mrs Bin Laden for that wise demarcation.