by Bill James
More film. The visitor came out from the apartment block with his wheeled luggage, glanced about, then went to the Lexus, lifted the trolley in to the rear, got behind the wheel and drove away. The screen blanked. ‘Now, we’re at a minute or so later,’ Belinda said, and the film began again, the camera on the white van. A man of about thirty-five to forty came from the back of the vehicle and took the driving seat. He started the engine. Harpur recognized him from the Maud material. ‘Sergeant Tom Mallen,’ Belinda said, ‘also sometimes Parry.’
‘Dead whichever, now,’ Iles said.
The van left, but not in the direction Rice and the Lexus had taken. A blue Astra followed the van, and not long afterwards a Citroën followed the Astra.
Iles said: ‘So, no, the van was not a police gambit? Tom had been pulled into a power fight in one of the firms, hadn’t he? This is how it always is in undercover. The seemingly simple process of putting a man or woman into spy is catastrophically affected, catastrophically shoved sideways, by some totally uncatered for, uncaterable for, factor. He should have been pulled out as soon as this fucking van had been identified for what it was.’
‘But I say again, we didn’t know at first what exactly it was, except falsely registered,’ Belinda replied. ‘And we didn’t know, either, that an undercover officer had been placed in one of the firms. None of us could have recognized Tom Mallen, alias Parry, outside Emblem Court.’
‘Of course you didn’t know,’ Iles said, ‘of course you didn’t recognize him. The two parties, police and Customs, worked separately, kept secrets from each other. And this separateness did for Tom eventually, or quicker than eventually, yes?’
Harpur could see that Iles was beginning to irritate Belinda. She kept her cheerfulness, but her voice, already very level, almost throwaway, became cold and super-rational. ‘I’m not a police officer, but I can visualize certain types of crime where only an undercover operation could crack it,’ she said.
‘Visualize away,’ Iles said.
‘Is it possible that at your high rank, Mr Iles, you’ve forgotten some of the basic very formidable, very basic, problems that might confront your detectives?’ she said.
‘No,’ Iles said. ‘I forget nothing. I don’t know how to forget.’
She became more aggressively reasonable. Perhaps earlier in her life she’d had to find a way of dealing with racist bullies and did it by intellect, or tried to. Iles was not, was never, racist. But he could bully well enough. Belinda said: ‘I wonder if Mr Harpur – possibly more used to the everyday demands of policing, the, as it were, realities – I wonder if he sees the undercover debate differently.’ She paused, obviously waiting for Harpur to say his twopennyworth.
Maud cut in, though. It was as if she wanted to protect Harpur from a dangerous disagreement with the ACC – dangerous for Harpur and his career and general comfort under Iles. Yes, it was obvious she had developed those feelings for him, so forcefully spoken of earlier by Iles. Harpur couldn’t respond, though. Perhaps in a way this was his own method of dealing with pressure, almost bullying, by Iles. Harpur would use it to keep himself sort of chaste, the opposite to what Iles intended. ‘Maud said: ‘Tell us about the road trek on the tail of the van, Belinda. I’ve heard some of it,’ she explained, turning to Harpur and Iles. ‘It’s fascinating.’
‘Maybe you’re easily fascinated,’ the Assistant Chief said.
‘Not by you,’ she replied.
Belinda gave a little, amused moue. ‘You two been squabbling? Or is this only banter? I love banter. Remember the butler in The Remains of the Day, who says he’ll have to learn how to banter, so as to keep up with his new boss?’ She sounded patient, commanding, bookish, like an elder sister coping with two ill-behaved younger kids. Perhaps the head of ITAR outranked Maud and even Iles and felt entitled to patronize. Or perhaps this was another learned technique for dealing with stroppy people: treat them as harmless, confine them to the jolly old banter department. She got on now with what mattered. ‘I won’t do a full reading of the debriefing logs from the Astra and Citroën drivers, just what seem to be the significant bits – or what we can hindsight view as the significant bits. They spoke into recorders. I have transcripts:
‘Astra: “Van pulls in at large cycle store and driver appears to buy a mountain bike. Puts this into van Rear doors open for minutes and I see him roping bike to possible commode chair fixed to right wall of van. Call V.L.J in Citroën and suggest this good moment for position change. Top-up fuel.”
‘Citroën: “Van pulls in to lay-by. Purpose unknown. I have to drive on. Can’t stop in lay-by for fear of suspicion as tail. Drive mile to next lay-by ahead and wait for van to pass. Resume position.”
‘Astra: “Mobile message from V.L.J. saying, ‘Van in lay-by.’ Drop speed to give van time to clear lay-by. Seems OK.”
‘Citroën: “Van gets local attention parked outside house at Wilton Road (eleven). Driver takes mountain bike into house. A light goes on upstairs and is then extinguished. Neighbour photographs van. Girl, about twelve, arrives at house then group of boys, young teenage. Pizza delivery. Youngsters’ party? Astra takes over surveillance while I bring fuel up to full.”
‘Astra: “Van stays two hours then driver and woman about his age get into cabin and drive to lay-by used previously. Purpose unknown. Have to drive on. Roundabout. Return. Van has left lay-by. Is parked at eleven Wilton venue again. It leaves. Tail for forty miles, when Citroën takes over.”
‘Citroën: “Van stops for fuel. I watch from far pump. He puts in minor amount, as if adjusting. Buys three beakers of drinks from twenty-four-hour shop and takes them into rear of van. Doors open. Distant, but appears to pour them into other containers. Texts. Resumes journey and drives to known country house property of Leo Percival Young, Midhurst. House stands apart, so am exposed if watching. Withdraw therefore. Mission concluded. Possible saloon car left property soon after my withdrawal but it would have put security of operation at risk, so unchecked.”’
TWENTY-FOUR
AFTER
‘“As if adjusting,”’ Belinda said, in almost that same deadpan tone, but Harpur thought he could detect some special warmth and even excitement there, sort of leadership-speak. ‘This we now believe was an astonishingly sharp interpretation. Indeed, the culmination of an astonishingly fruitful operation.’
‘Yes?’ Iles said. ‘The damehood is on its way.’
‘Naturally, we went back to Wilton Road next day and did some inquiries to determine the significance of number eleven,’ she said.
‘“Determine the significance?”’ Iles said.
‘Well, yes,’ Belinda replied. She spoke this with what sounded to Harpur a kind of saintly, forgiving patience, as if even the dullest prick should expect ITAR to go back and systematically try to develop and add to what they’d discovered the day and night before, more or less by chance.
‘What kind of inquiries?’ Iles asked.
‘Basics,’ Belinda said.
‘Which?’ Iles replied.
‘The obvious,’ Belinda said. ‘We had the Mallen name, names, from the voting register, of course, and the net, but nothing beyond.’
‘And how did you and yours get beyond?’ Iles said. ‘Did you knock at number eleven and say, “Good morning, Mrs Mallen, but who are you and your man beyond that mere name? And who were all those kids?”’
‘No, not eleven. Even before we’d discovered he was a cop, we knew something pretty complex must be under way and tact would be needed,’ Belinda replied. ‘By tailing the van on the return we’d established a link between the driver and Leo Young at Midhurst. And checks had shown the van and Acme horticultural specialists were phoneys. I went with the unit myself to make sure our people were careful.’
‘So how did you get your information?’ Iles said.
‘In the normal way for these kinds of delicate inquiries,’ Belinda said.
‘Which normal ways?’ Iles replied.
‘Oblique rather
than head-to-head,’ Belinda said.
‘“Oblique” meaning?’ Iles said.
‘Not head-to-head,’ Belinda said.
‘“Oblique” meaning you asked around,’ Iles replied. ‘Neighbours, the local shop, if there is one. The man who did the photographs.’
These were statements, not questions, but Belinda treated them as though they were. ‘Yes,’ she said. ‘How else?’
‘And when you were being oblique, how did you explain why you wanted to know about eleven, why you were stalking a police officer? Whom did you say you were?’ Iles asked.
‘Admittedly tricky,’ Belinda said.
‘Tricky and perilous,’ Iles said.
‘Unavoidable,’ Belinda said.
‘Oh God, a reproach,’ Iles replied.
‘We were TV researchers for a coming programme on neighbourliness. So, for instance, what do you at number seven know about the people at, say, choosing entirely randomly, eleven?
‘God,’ Iles said.
‘It worked,’ Belinda replied. ‘TV is a magic term. People thought they might get on the screen.’
‘How do you mean, “It worked”?’ Iles said.
‘We got some useful stuff. Very useful,’ Belinda said.
‘You think everyone swallowed the TV tale?’ Iles said.
‘It doesn’t matter, does it, if some didn’t?’ Belinda said.
‘Yes, it matters,’ Iles said.
Belinda said: ‘But it’s not as if Sergeant Mallen were operating as undercover in that area, was it? He was working a long way from eleven Wilton Road.’
Iles raised both hands in the air and kept them there for half a minute. He might have been trying to get God’s attention, to ask Him how much longer he, Iles, had to put up with this crapaloo from Belinda. Iles didn’t seem to get an answer, though. He lowered his hands. ‘Scenario,’ he said. ‘Someone who doesn’t believe the TV yarn – and the list would run into millions – gets on the phone to the local constabulary and reports that a crew of flagrantly bogus buggers have been around the houses asking questions about a police detective who’s a neighbour. He adds that the day before, the detective, Tom Mallen, was home, driving a van the joke of the road, with a company name ACME LAWN AND GARDEN SERVICES on it and a phone number which, in his public spirited way, he has tried but which is unobtainable.
‘The message is passed up the line and reaches a lad or lass in the nick who knows Mallen has been sent sub rosa to another area and another police force to do undercover. He or she rings the other force and asks what Mallen is doing back home in a crazy van. Isn’t he supposed to be quietly embedded in one of their major drugs firms? Should he be here? Is this a collapse of security – the undercover man joining up with the family man? Has he been rumbled and followed and are these door-steppers after him?
‘Now, as I understand things from Maud, the suspicion is that Tom Mallen lost his cover somehow and was shot by a renegade police officer or officers in that other force who has, have, a lot to hide, such as an established, lucrative commercial treaty with Leo Percival Young, ensuring clandestine police aid to him and his firm. Lucrative to both sides. Suppose this officer, or one of these officers, takes the call about Mallen from the local force here? As a matter of urgency, the officer tells Leo he’s just heard that there’s a spy cop in one of the firms, the spy’s duties lately to involve driving a white van advertising Acme Lawn And Garden Services with a phone number that doesn’t exist, but which has been tried by our sceptical neighbour.’
Belinda said: ‘A bit far-fetched?’
‘Which bit?’ Iles said.
‘Tortuous,’ she replied.
‘Things always get tortuous in undercover. And sometimes just torture,’ Iles said. ‘You go clumping and obliquing about there, spouting questions, quickening people’s curiosity, more or less fingering him. Are you surprised he’s dead?’ he said.
‘With subtlety,’ Belinda said. ‘We did our inquiries with subtlety.’
‘I’m sure that would be so,’ Maud said.
‘Oh, it must be OK, then,’ Iles said.
‘In a way, I admire you for your concern, Mr Iles,’ Belinda said.
‘In which way?’ Iles said.
‘Yes, it’s admirable that you behave as if you’re the only one who would know how to conduct a sensitive trawl for information,’ Belinda said. ‘It shows confidence. It shows, well, yes, a sensitivity to match the sensitivity of the task’.
‘The task shouldn’t exist,’ Iles replied. ‘Undercover is shit. No amount of sensitivity or any other ivity can put that right.’
Belinda didn’t pause, but went on chattily: ‘Well, anyway, we found that the husband/father in the Mallen family was a sergeant detective officer, Tom Mallen, and that he’d been away from home for a while, and was away again by the time we returned. We were told there’d been a birthday party for the young son, Steve, and that his father had made a special trip home for the occasion. There was a general feeling among neighbours that his duties elsewhere involved secrecy, which would account for the strange, seemingly non-police van. Of course, as soon as I heard from our people that the man was police, I assumed an undercover project and ordered exceptional care in the way questioning was conducted from then on by the ITAR unit.’
‘With sensitivity, I expect,’ Iles said. ‘That was the word, wasn’t it? But by then most of the fucking damage had been done.’
‘At this point, I felt I could see some of the picture,’ Belinda replied. ‘It’s why I spoke of Vincent Jackman’s – VLJ’s – guess in the Citroën about the fuel “adjustment” as being so spot-on. It seemed to me that, as we can all see now, the van had been sent to watch Emblem Court by Leo Percival Young, possibly to check on private, off-limits dealing done by the man we’d identified from the Lexus reg as Claud Norman Rice. Handling such an important task for Young would seem to prove that Tom had become a trusted operative.’
‘A trusted operative who had become so trusted that he had to be shot pretty soon afterwards,’ Iles said. ‘What had intervened?’
‘The assignment at Emblem Court might have finished very quickly,’ Belinda replied. ‘Tom Mallen, acting as if for Young with the Acme van, decides then that he can get home for the boy’s birthday and back again without compromising his undercover identity. He wants to assert temporarily something of his real self – the father/husband self. I imagine many undercover people feel this kind of urge occasionally. It helps them ring-fence their real personality, and their sanity. He buys the mountain bike as a present. These items don’t come cheap – usually hundreds at least – but he’s determined to make a strong, clear message for the boy. The bike says, “Here I am, home with you, your father doing fatherly things, and I’ve arrived in time because it’s vital a dad should be with you on the right day to celebrate the occasion. It’s a priority.” Most probably, Tom needs this reassurance, this statement of his category and solid status in an ordinary family, more than the boy does. Later, Tom drives to a lay-by with his wife, Iris, and we assume this was for love-making to mark his return, and which might have been difficult in a house full of kids – their own and the party guests. He had arrived before any of the children assembled for the pizzas, so there might have been earlier bonking in the house. We’ve heard of a bedroom light switched on. Possibly, his wife wanted the second session as a means to bring this outlandish, possibly sinister, van within her, as it were, range, her control. It’s Mrs Mallen’s attempt to reclaim Tom from something so flagrantly part of the job. Maybe we can all understand that. And he, in fact, might have anticipated this reaction from her and had already cased the lay-by on his way to Wilton Road. This sojourn in that lay-by is the equivalent to the mountain bike.’
‘It is?’ Iles said.
‘He’s saying in this fashion, “Iris Mallen, I am Tom Mallen, Mallen, Mallen, your husband. It’s why we’re here, darling.” He’d regard this as crucial, to counter those troublesome Press stories about undercover men fo
rming relationships within the target group or firm so as to prove their genuineness. This van-shag has overtones, has inspirational symbolism. Then, he ships his wife back home to Wilton Road, says goodbye to all, and starts his journey to Midhurst. In a service station not far from there he takes a moderate amount of petrol aboard. He has probably already refuelled when not under surveillance, most likely after the lay-by lay. He now puts enough in the tank to make it seem he’s only been as far as Emblem Court. He behaves “as if adjusting”. Aren’t I right, and this was brilliant decoding of a situation by V.L.J.? The van goes on to Midhurst, and is possibly left there. Vince finds himself in more or less open country near the house and exposed. Wisely, he departs, but, as he does so, sees the headlights of what appears to be a saloon car leaving Midhurst, though he’s too far off to get a proper view. This we now assume was Tom on his way home in a different vehicle.’
Maud said: ‘Perhaps Leo’s wife, Emily, was in for a busy time at the museum next day and Leo wouldn’t want Tom disturbing their kip.’
TWENTY-FIVE
AFTER
Harpur said: ‘Let’s sum up what you’d discovered from the van episode, then, Belinda, shall we? Sort of tabulate.’
‘Harpur’s like that,’ Iles said. ‘For Col, itemizing is a fetish, a passion, a true and powerful passion. Give Harpur a handful of numbers and he’ll soon find paragraphs and sub-paragraphs to cement on to them. It’s his comparatively minor equivalent to building the pyramids.’ The ACC’s voice began to boom and slither depending on which way he pointed his mouth, taking in Belinda, Maud and Harpur. The film room’s marvellous acoustics seemed to fix on different prime qualities in his tone and emphasize one or the other according to the angle it came at them from. It made Harpur think of what he’d read about Cinemascope in the 1950s and 60s, when sound effects for the extra-wide picture used to attack the audience from surprising directions, and at all kinds of pitch. ‘Mind you, it’s not Harpur’s only fucking passion, of course, oh no,’ Iles said, ‘fucking is another of his fucking passions, particularly if he can wangle sly, cajoling closeness to, say, the wife of—’
