Play Dead (29 page)

‘There's a photograph,' Harpur said.

‘Of course there's a photograph. If you're doing someone damage you want everybody to know who the someone is. Maud will hear of this publicity. Maud's bosses will hear of this publicity. Are they going to let her keep me on the investigation? They were already giving her pressure merely on that ponce Dathan's second-hand description of what happened. Now, it's from the rooftops.'

‘Bungalow rooftops. It's only a local paper, sir. Maud and her superiors are in London. The tale probably won't get picked up by the nationals. It's not weighty enough.'

Iles took the decibels up a degree or two. ‘What's not weighty enough?'

‘These incidents.' Harpur had known he was gambling: he wanted to assure Iles there probably wouldn't be wider publicity, but the only way to do it was by suggesting he didn't count for much. Iles might choose to accept the offered comfort. He might not: impossible to turn back now, anyway. Harpur said, ‘The London papers are concerned with very hefty topics at present - Syria, the Greek shambles, B Sky B television, the Chancellor of the Exchequer, the Afghan war, for instance.'

Iles waited until Harpur had finished this list, then said, ‘We are talking, aren't we, Harpur - I hope I haven't made an error on this - we are talking, aren't we, about Desmond Iles, an Assistant Chief Constable, top of his intake at staff college, yet made a monkey of in the backstreet theatre of a shit-hole provincial town by disguised but very present insults in a mercilessly savage play? You say this is not an adequately important topic to interest the national Press? Is that really your view, or are you only misguidedly trying to comfort me?'

Harpur read some more of the
Alert
article: ‘What makes these extraordinary events even more extraordinary is the identity of 4/12. He is an Association of Chief Police Officers member here on a mission to investigate and report on the condition of our own police force, his name—'

‘Dathan will make super-sure Maud or Maud's bosses are informed of this grossly disrespectful, indeed, lampooning write-up,' Iles said. He glanced around the room to see whether anyone else was reading the
Alert
or eavesdropping on them. Harpur didn't spot any special interest in the ACC. People might be scared to show it, though. Iles could produce that effect, whether he had on a stuff-the-lot-of-you tie or not.

But now, in a pleasantly conversational style, he said, ‘I don't imagine when you were debauching my wife, Harpur, often in degraded and degrading settings, that you realized this would lead one day to difficulties for a work such as
The Revenger's Tragedy
,
rightly deemed a valued item in the British literary canon.'

‘Regardless of doubts about authorship, sir,' Harpur replied.

‘They'll shut us down, Col,' Iles said. ‘Or shut me down. The investigation's dead. We fail to advance. I've had a go at those two officers on the path that you identified, Alan Silver and Graham Quick, and more absolute brick wall. They've been expertly terrorized or expertly coached in saying nowt.' He leaned over his own plate and Harpur's and gently took the copy of
Alert
from him. Now, Iles did the reading aloud, as though he knew an indictment of some sort must be coming at the conclusion of the piece, and meant to face up and speak the judgement himself: ‘His name is Assistant Chief Constable Desmond Iles (pictured) - it says that, “pictured”, like a Wanted photo - Desmond Iles, present on this ground to rectify and purify. Some will no doubt ask whether he is altogether suited to this task, given his tendency to get pushed drastically off balance by nuances and frets. Who polices the police was a traditional tricky question. Now, it's a lot trickier - who polices the police sent to police the police?'

A man of about fifty, well-barbered, thick grey hair, beige slacks, ginger suede jacket, approached from a breakfast table across the room and stood smiling alongside them. Harpur hadn't noticed him earlier. Maybe he'd come from one of the rooftops. ‘Forgive, do, the interruption,' he said, ‘but a question. I, too, have been reading the “Talk of the Town” piece, which I see in your hand, and I'm defeated by one remark therein. This crude mispronunciation of the word “insurrection”. What on earth can that be?'

‘Prick,' Iles replied.

‘Prick? But that's nothing like the sound of “insurrection”. It could hardly be called a mispronunciation. A substitution, perhaps.'

‘No, I mean
you
are a prick,' Iles said.

The man's smile fell away. ‘It was a valid query, I think. There's surely no need for rudeness.'

‘Yes, there is an acute need for rudeness,' Iles said. ‘Bugger off back to your eggs Benedict.'

‘Have you been pushed drastically off balance again?' the man asked.

‘Do you want to get thumped drastically off balance?' Iles said. When the man had gone, Iles said: ‘Do you pity me, Col? Do you see me as a target for lurking prats in suede like that? Am I diminished?'

‘Never! Believe me, I regard you, sir, exactly as I always have.'

‘Oh, God.'

B
ut Iles was right about Maud and those above Maud. He and Harpur had arranged to see Leo Young at his home, Midhurst, this morning and they were in Iles's car after breakfast and about to leave, when Harpur's mobile phone rang. ‘It will be Maud,' the ACC said. ‘She wants to talk to you privately. She wants to talk to you privately because it's about me. You and she have an empathic understanding, don't you, Col?'

It
was
Maud, wanting to talk to Harpur privately. Iles, who would be doing the driving, didn't switch on. They stayed in the hotel car park. ‘Can you speak all right, Colin?' she said. ‘I wanted to catch you before your day really began. You're alone for a moment?'

‘Absolutely.'

‘It's delicate.'

‘Right.'

‘Dathan's been talking to us again.'

‘Rhys?'

‘The Chief.'

‘Yes?' Harpur replied.

‘The local paper. The
Alert
.'

‘Yes, I know it.'

‘You understand what they're like up here about publicity, do you?' Maud said.

‘They hope to what is called “manage” it, I gather. Sometimes they're keen, aren't they - to launch new proposals and laws, that type of thing.'

‘Not the
Alert
kind of stuff. The tone.'

‘It's the gossip column you mean, is it, Maud? “Talk of the Town”? That kind of journalism is usually done in a light-hearted, perky style, surely?'

Iles nodded perhaps to agree, perhaps to indicate he'd been right to guess the caller was Maud.

She said, ‘Treats Iles as if he's a complete buffoon. A cuckold right for craziness every time he hears a key word such as “fret” or “lust”. He's like someone who's been hypnotized and can be put back into a trance if he gets a cue. Did you ever see the original
Manchurian Candidate
on the movie channel? Like that. People here - well, they feel he exposes them to attack for selecting him, exposes the Department to attack. I'm referring to people as far up as the Secretary himself. Our press office fears the nationals and even TV news will get interested in the situation. They already have Cass, the murdered reporter, to wonder about and focus on, haven't they? There could be a Question in the House. I don't know for how long I can support Iles - support, in fact, the investigation itself. I
want
to because I picked him and you for the job, but I'm aware of increasing opposition.'

After the nod, Iles, alongside Harpur, remained utterly silent and still. Harpur couldn't tell whether he was able to pick up some - all - of what Maud was saying. He could probably guess most of it, anyway. He'd closed his eyes, as though relaxed and dozing. It might be to maximize concentration, though, or to dream hate schemes against Dathan.

‘You'll wonder why I'm ringing
you
about it,' Maud said. ‘He's your superior and I shouldn't be discussing him in this way with a subordinate - excuse the term. It's against protocol. Why I said “delicate”. But I feel that you and I, Col, have—'

‘I don't think the people above you there appreciate properly how Mr Iles functions,' Harpur said. ‘Even you, Maud, might not realize this in full. People of immense talent often have their little quirks and foibles. It is part of their unconventionality. I've called it talent. Some might say “genius”. Think of that artist who cut his own ear off.'

‘Van Gogh.'

‘The one.'

‘You consider Iles is in that league?'

‘As to the mysterious scope of his abilities, maybe.'

‘Mysterious?'

‘The way he can intuit, the way he can sense the essentials of a situation, a problem,' Harpur said. ‘Often, it's phenomenal.' Iles didn't open an eye.

‘In what regard?' Maud said.

‘Mrs Young.'

‘Leo Young's wife, Emily? I remember her name from the original inquiry,' Maud said. ‘What about her?'

‘Some strange behaviour, perhaps promising behaviour from our point of view.'

‘Yes?'

‘Mr Iles discovered - don't ask me how - that she had been on a night visit to the murder house on Elms.'

Maud was silent for fifteen seconds. Then she said, ‘To what purpose, Colin? What's the significance?'

‘She went solo but met Mrs Mallen there.'

Another pause. ‘Leo Young's wife met Tom Mallen's widow at night on Elms?'

‘Right.'

‘Why?'

‘At the Jaminel house,' Harpur replied.

‘They both entered the Jaminel house?'

‘No, they talked outside. Only Mrs Young actually went in.'

‘Why?'

‘Her shoes and clothes were not suitable for such a visit, but she'd brought a torch. This would seem to show intent. There's loose boarding that provides a gateway,' Harpur replied.

‘Did she meet Mrs Mallen by arrangement?' Maud asked.

‘Unclear at this stage.'

‘Iris Mallen would have driven quite a way, wouldn't she? From a different police patch. Doesn't that suggest a rendezvous?'

‘She had a separate purpose - separate from the encounter with Mrs Young.'

‘Separate in which sense?

‘Iris Mallen was there to look for a kind of memento of her husband.'

‘Which kind?'

‘Apparently, a Biro.' Iles remained completely still.

‘A Biro pen?' Maud said.

Was there any other kind of Biro? ‘She'd left it in the ground to show the spot where her husband died. A kind of marker, but a marker with a sentimental status, because it used to belong to Tom. She was afraid that, if construction picked up because of more quantitative easing as they call it, by the Bank of England, the Biro might get overlaid and lost.'

‘Mrs Mallen trekked to Elms at night to look for a pen? Did she find it?'

‘Apparently not.'

‘Did Mrs Young help her look?'

‘Unclear at this stage.'

‘Mrs Mallen expected to find a Biro left there in mud and rubble months ago?' Maud asked.

‘She's probably still in shock and not too rational after the loss of her husband.'

‘So you must have been told all this by Mr Iles himself,' Maud replied.

‘Absolutely,' Harpur said.

Another pause. ‘And do you find it credible - not a further . . . a further example of Iles once more in the grip of his talent, his genius, as you describe it, this time fabricating a sequence around the Jaminel house?'

‘Absolutely not,' Harpur said.

‘All right, suppose it's as he says: we come back to the question, what's the significance?'

‘I don't know yet. But that's the point, isn't it, Maud?'

‘What?'

‘He might get an intimation, a hint, from his remarkable mind about the significance - from his
subconscious
mind, possibly.'

‘An intimation, a hint, from his subconscious?' Maud replied. ‘As to what?'

‘This is the kind of exceptional, sort of instinctive, insight that your masters and mistresses up there don't allow for. They should be told of it, Maud, and in strong form. I hope you believe enough in Mr Iles's splendid, inspired competence to take this message effectively to them. It must be made plain that removing Mr Iles from the inquiry would be a terrible error, an act of destructive folly just when things seem about to open up, to open up under his astonishing, unique influence.'

‘Open up in which regard?' Maud asked. ‘Why do you make so much of his knowledge of the Jaminel house visit? He might have been in or around the house when Mrs Young and Mrs Mallen arrived there, and merely observed them. A total fluke.'

‘Certainly he might have been,' Harpur replied. ‘He hasn't said so, but, yes, he might have been. That begs a considerable question, though, doesn't it?'

‘Does it?'

‘If he was around the house at that time,
why
was he? There would be nothing more to learn there so long after the crime. The house has been examined and re-examined exhaustively. Or, at least, there
appeared
to be nothing to learn there. You see, Maud, if he were there, I would identify this as another of those inexplicable, thrilling aspects of his work. A kind of amazing telepathy. When I call it inexplicable, I mean inexplicable to basic thinkers like myself, and, perhaps like your honchos up there. Oh, no doubt they have fine incisive thoroughly trained minds, but they are fine, incisive minds trained in dealing brilliantly with the tangible, the factual, the practical. At times, though, Mr Iles is far outside those categories. He is pure flair, he is consummate hunch and sharp sixth-sense.'

‘OK, OK, but—'

‘You're still concerned about the significance of all this,' Harpur replied.