Play Dead (7 page)

‘And Jane had it more or less right,' Iles replied.

‘Yes,' Jane said. ‘I'd gone a few steps off towards whatever it was to cut the distance and could see him more clearly then.'

‘But not a vagrant, of course,' Gerald said. ‘A police officer, as we discovered later.'

‘I expect you've been to the Elms site as part of your investigation?' Jane said.

‘Well, yes, we've had a quick look around there, just to get the geography in our minds. That's basic,' Iles said.

‘You'll know it's quite a big development,' she said. ‘Not always easy to see accurately what's what far off.' Harpur could tell she tried to keep herself from staring at the unusual mess on the left side of Iles's face, but this was difficult. Jane's eyes would switch to it automatically for a half second, then get deliberately pulled away - then sneak back involuntarily for another short, appalled gaze, and so on. Gerald, the same, more or less. It was that kind of prominent, mysterious pit and widespread blemished vista. They'd be speculating in their heads about the cause, but would probably never think of a mock-up ribcage massage and the pre-emptive old Biro as explanation. These were fairly unusual events, not easy to imagine.

If Harpur and Iles were back on their own manor, and one of those important civic functions took place, Harpur felt sure the Assistant Chief would refuse an invitation because he looked such a deep-pecked calamity. Already, Iles detested his Adam's apple, considering it too glaringly prominent and gristle-craggy; and to have another defect in his appearance could make him very jumpy. The city treasurer, and/or director of parks and baths, shouldn't be allowed to see him like this. He'd realize they and others would be laughing in private about it, even if they didn't know the lesion was caused by a shagged-out bit of pen during a dramatization snippet on a stricken building site.

But Harpur and Iles were here now in Larkspur, not back home on Cowslip. They had easy chairs with tea and biscuits in the flat's large, very spruce living room. There were pictures, prints and photographs of animals and birds on the walls. Iles would be noting these as a guide to Jane and Gerald's tastes and characters. Iles had told Harpur several times in the past to be careful what art he displayed in his house because art told tales about the owner's psyche. ‘Stick to watercolours of dinky little sailing boats on a calm, azure sea, Col,' Iles had said. ‘They're so wishy-washy and slight they haven't got the strength to reveal anything but their individual triteness.'

‘That Elms estate - an ugly nuisance now, really, so near the town centre,' Gerald said. ‘Off-putting for visitors. And it can still be troublesome.'

‘Oh?' Iles said.

‘In what respect?' Harpur asked.

‘I heard the police were up there again last night,' Gerald said.

‘Really?' Iles replied.

‘An incident?' Harpur asked.

‘Possible mugging or a fight, a kicking, perhaps? Violence, anyway. Possibly not far from the area where Mallen died - Davant Road, to be, perhaps, perhaps. People can get so savage, given a chance,' Gerald said.

‘Yes?' Iles replied.

‘Oh, yes,' Harpur said.

‘A colleague in the office was passing and watched the police activity. He didn't think the patrol found anything. The offenders had run off, alerted by the sirens. But you see what I mean,' Gerald said.

‘Yes, a problem,' Iles replied.

‘Last night?' Harpur asked.

‘Yes,' Gerald said. ‘Why? Is that significant?'

‘Harpur's keen on dates, times, and suchlike,' Iles said. ‘It's a sort of tic with him, a tick-tock tic.
'

‘Perhaps some folk are drawn there in a macabre way, knowing of the murder and, in a sense, trying to re-run the situation, repeople the scene, recapture the frightening atmosphere,' Harpur replied.

‘In
which
sense would that be, Col?' Iles asked.

‘Yes, in a macabre, bizarre sense,' Harpur said. He had his other suit on today. His daughters had told him never to wear it if he were with anyone he wanted to take him seriously, but he didn't have another with him.

‘God, hooked on a killing! What a notion,' Gerald said. ‘A sort of lunacy.'

‘Right. A dark, obsessive fascination with the scene, regardless,' Harpur replied.

‘Regardless of what, Col?' Iles said.

‘Mud.'

‘Obviously, we shouldn't have been there on that awful night, the night of the killing,' Jane said. ‘But we weren't, aren't, the only ones to use the site. A kind of unofficial set path has been made by so many people crossing on the shortest, most direct route.'

‘Ah!' Iles said. He smiled and the cheek bruising wrinkled, like small, unadventurous waves in a murky patch of sea.

‘Something, Mr Iles?' Gerald asked.

‘Exactly what I want to talk about, as a matter of fact, the set path,' Iles said. ‘A beaten track?'

‘Sort of, yes,' Jane said.

‘And, as Gerald told us, you had to detour,' Iles said. ‘You left the beaten track because of what you'd seen, Jane?'

‘Like that, yes,' she said.

‘So, Harpur, you were right about the beaten track,' Iles said.

‘Was I?' Harpur replied.

‘Jane, Gerald, you go to him, this unknown man, and attempt resuscitation,' Iles said.

‘Gerald tried kiss of life,' Jane said. ‘He's trained in first aid.'

‘Of course, some authorities prefer chest massage these days,' Iles said.

‘Is that right, sir?' Harpur said.

‘The BBC put out an instructional film,' Iles said. ‘They had an actor, a famous ex-footballer, demonstrate the procedure.'

‘The BBC? Is that a health organization, then?' Harpur said. ‘Is the actor-footballer medically qualified? Which would you go for, sir, if you met this kind of crisis?'

‘Which what?' Iles said.

‘Which emergency method?' Harpur said.

‘But in vain, Gerald?' Iles replied.

‘Yes,' Jane said.

‘It was during this physical closeness that you found the holster and pistol, wasn't it, Gerald?' Iles said.

‘Alarming,' Jane said.

‘In which respect?' Harpur said.

‘We thought it indicated some kind of street warfare,' Jane said. ‘And that turned out to be a fact, of course.'

‘We'd accidentally become involved,' Gerald said.

‘Involved?' Harpur said.

‘Helping one of the participants,' Gerald said. ‘As if we belonged to his side in the battle. Dangerous.'

‘Possibly,' Iles said.

A painting of the head and long neck of a cormorant was over the fireplace in their flat. Harpur studied it, liked it - liked it because he thought the artist had done the head and long neck of a cormorant damn well. No doubt, that long neck helped with the fishing. Despite Iles's theory, the bird couldn't tell Harpur anything about the minds of Jane and Gerald, except they admired a picture showing the head and neck of a cormorant and had a space for it over the fireplace.

‘So, you had left the established path - unofficially established, but nonetheless established - and done what you could for detective sergeant Mallen, though, of course, not aware he
was
detective sergeant Mallen - not aware of
who
he was. He didn't speak, did he?' Iles said. ‘These were admirably responsible reactions towards someone you knew only as another human being, and rightly commended by the judge.'

Iles raised his hand and skimmed it across last evening's skin rip, maybe to test whether it had begun to improve; alternatively, whether it had begun to erupt, cascading something colourful and utterly unwanted. Iles hadn't so far asked what creviced him on Elms, although he'd probably corner-eyed it when Harpur raised the Biro from ground near him and swung it up in a bent-arm, accelerating arc to give the ACC that invasive, warning poke, Hiroshima mode. Or he could have glimpsed it on withdrawal. Iles might consider it shaming to have been waylaid by a time-expired, cheapo pen, and wouldn't want to discuss what happened. Getting quelled by a Biro was not normal for Assistant Chiefs.

Iles said: ‘Your clothes inevitably suffered blood staining, Gerald, through contact with Mallen. I hope you were reimbursed for cleaning costs.'

‘Fine,' Gerald said. ‘Only jeans and a donkey-jacket. My shopping gear.'

‘Good. On the other hand, a badly marked suit can be a real problem, especially if poor quality. Oh, yes, I'm afraid there's no shortage of quaint suits around. The mud has to be removed, certainly, but will such a ramshackle outfit stand up to getting tumbled and pummelled at the cleaner's? That's so, isn't it, Harpur - the anxiety?'

‘About what, sir?' he said.

‘Misshapen suits can come out even more misshapen,' Iles replied, ‘shoulder pads gone knobbly.'

‘But Gerald told us he wasn't wearing a suit at the time,' Harpur said.

‘I'm making a general point,' Iles said, ‘re: crap suits going from awful to very much worse.'

‘General points are not my area, sir. They're too . . . too, well, is “general” the word I'm after? But I do recognize muddy suits generally are quite a topic for general discussion,' Harpur replied. ‘It's a side of things I must catch up on - one of my blank spots.'

‘You didn't notice an uncapped Biro among the detritus on the ground when you were down so close to Mallen, did you, Gerald?' Iles replied, in a smooth, sing-songy sort of friendly, hate-hiding voice. This tone usually indicated some kind of smart-arse shock was
en route
from the ACC. So, yes, he'd seen the pen as dagger on its way to or from him, or both.'

‘Biro?' Gerald said.

Harpur noticed Jane swing another gaze over towards the pierced cheek. She was a tall, lean, shrewd-looking woman, long-faced, with brown eyes, hair fair-to-mousy with some grey over the ears. To Harpur she looked the sort who could make the connection between a hole in someone's face and a former working Biro. He would trust his own estimate of her rather than follow Iles's teaching and look for clues to her personality in the cormorant.

‘Traces of green ink on the pen,' Iles replied.

‘Some people like to brighten up their writing,' Harpur said. ‘The content might be dull, so they go for vivid, vitalizing ink, like bright wrapping paper around a dud pressie.'

‘That's another of Col's phrases, you see - “vivid, vitalizing ink”,' Iles said. ‘It's quite impromptu, yet his schooling was pathetic. The alliteration and vowel music are entirely of his own make, uncribbed. He's what's known as an
autodidact
,
meaning he looked after his own education. Unfortunately, he isn't satisfied with
autodickacts
, meaning keeping it to himself, self-pleasuring.'

Although viewing Iles's injury obviously unsettled Jane and Gerald, it seemed to Harpur reasonably OK now: clean and dry at the centre of the bruising, with small furls and fronds of ruptured skin around its rim, like a springtime campion flowering pink in black soil. The Biro obviously had a very considerable rarity among Biros as species. Throughout the whole country there surely wouldn't be many of them that a senior police officer, lying in rough terrain to rehash a murder, had used on an Assistant Chief Constable's cheek bone, to stop the ACC strangling him in a vendetta convulsion away from home.

Iles had seemed to need the elementary, though understandable satisfaction - even joy - from getting his fingers terminally around Harpur's windpipe. He'd had the loaded Walther in his pocket but didn't draw it, to scare or use. He must have wanted the intimacy of flesh on flesh, to parallel the behaviour of Harpur and Sarah Iles, in fourth-rate rooming joints and so on, that her husband aimed to avenge. In any case, bullets could be matched to that pistol, which was booked out in Iles's name. It would be flagrant. Did he have the Walther aboard now as they talked to Jane and Gerald?

Gerald had obviously been thinking about Iles's last question. He repeated the query. ‘Biro? Near the body? There was all sorts of small-scale trash on and in the soil,' he said. ‘Is it important?'

‘It came to Detective Chief Superintendent Harpur's - that is, Col's; he allows the familiarity - yes, it came to Col's knowledge,' Iles said. ‘Don't ask me how. He has avenues. Someone phones him and whispers “Biro” or “pen”, then cuts the call, but it's enough to get Col's brain going. Oh, yes, there's a kind of brain there. I'm not sure whether he'd consider the Biro important.'

‘Important in what sense, sir?' Harpur said.

‘Yes, important,' Iles replied.

Harpur said, ‘Well, a building site: when it was still active, brickies, plumbers, surveyors, roofers moving about all day, so we should expect such thrown-away items. Perhaps a ring-pull from a can, shreds of an old newspaper - that sort of thing. Higgledy-piggledy.'

‘Very true,' Iles said. ‘Possibly a sample in miniature of our disordered civilization, if it deserves that term.'

‘Which, sir?' Harpur said.

‘Which what, Col?'

‘Which term?'

‘Civilization,' Iles said.

‘This is a theme of yours, sir - the withering of standards, then looming chaos. The Biro has touched it off,' Harpur said, ‘to its credit.'

‘Anyway, let's get back to the established path, the beaten track,' Iles said. ‘I know Colin believes we should be focusing our thoughts on that by-way over the Elms site.'

Of course, it was the Assistant Chief who'd first emphasized its possible relevance. Iles did this sometimes - credit Harpur with one of the ACC's ideas, as though Iles himself would regard it as vulgar and pushy to tout for possible praise, possible recognition: what he called ‘tuft-hunting'. He didn't require praise, thank you very much, you condescending sod. He knew his value. He despised most people, anyway, and would regard their praise as worthless, and possibly presumptuous. He didn't require recognition from others, thank you very much, you kowtowing creep.
He
recognized his genius. His mother had helped with that. Harpur had no idea what the hunted tufts were, but, whatever they might be, Iles didn't want one. Tufts were a no-no. He hunted crooks. Nobody did it better.