Come Clean (1989)

by Bill James

  Now the girl was away, Jack had said: ‘What could be of interest, Col – this has come in roundabout fashion, I admit, and it’s taken a long while to reach me – what could be of interest to you, recognizing your general anxieties and so on, a pimp I know, I won’t give any names, if you don’t mind, but a fortnight or so ago this pimp took a heavy beating, trying to get cash out of a trio of clients of one of his girls, a really scientific knocking about that left him blotto near the Lister warehouse at Young’s Dock. When he came to it was very much later at night. He didn’t feel like trying to move for quite a while, so he just lay there, piecing his components back together, as much as he could, quiet, stoical, like an injured cat, or like a pimp shunning contact with ambulances, police and all the uniforms and questions parade. While he’s recovering in the shadows two cars arrive opposite the main doors and one – he thinks a silver Metro, though his observation might not have been too grand, in the circumstances – this query Metro is taken very close to the edge. He’s sure there were two people in it, men. The driver lowers all the windows a bit and gets out quickly. He opens the passenger door, unstraps the man, unbuttons an overcoat and pulls it and a scarf off him. My pimp says it looked then as if the man – the docile passenger – was naked. Anyway, the shoulders and top of his back were bare. The driver straps him in again and closes the door. A couple more men leave the other car, a red Sierra, and they push the Metro into the dock, not that it needed three, it was so near. The nude is still strapped, apparently not able to get out, or do anything else. The three stand at the edge for a minute or two, presumably while it filled and sank, then hopped back into the Sierra and are away. My contact thinks – again, only thinks, he claims no more than that – but he thinks he recognized the driver of the Metro as one of Benny Loxton’s people, Norman Vardage: rimless glasses, thin grey hair? Heard of him, though I don’t know him myself, but apparently that’s right.’

  ‘Yes, sounds like Norman.’

  ‘So, there you are, Col. What bets the passenger is Justin Paynter? Looks a bit of an obvious, amateur job, but this was 3.30 a.m., and if they hadn’t been spotted the car could stay there for ever undiscovered.’

  ‘Registration numbers?’

  ‘Col, my informant was hardly conscious, one eye almost closed up. You want the earth.’

  ‘They’ll have been stolen for the job, anyway, I suppose.’

  ‘Of course.’

  Returning at a rush, Helen had cried: ‘Oh, you must come and see these flower pieces, both of you. Don’t you love plant portraits, Colin? When they’re good, so meticulous, yet warm. Such a gift this man has. I do hope we can have some of them, Jack. The shining pondweed and pyramidal orchid? Yummie.’

  ‘Anything you say, love,’ Jack replied. ‘Feel incomplete without.’

  Harpur had taken the chance to leave.

  Now, the sergeant came out of the Land Rover and gazed up, assessing the light. ‘Another half an hour, sir.’

  If they found someone below, the divers would not bring him up immediately, because a water-weakened body could be easily damaged, and because, if a crane lifted the car with him inside, it would give a virtually intact scene of the crime for examination. Harpur might have preferred it different. A crane operating would bring television and the press, then pressure to say who was in the car, and what the police meant to do about it. And, on that point, Harpur had doubts. To cling on to confidentiality for as long as possible, not even the divers had been told who might be down there. Their orders were to look for a car and a body, nothing beyond.

  They were out of the vehicle now in their ‘woolly bear’ thermals, ready to put on the dry suits and aqualungs. It would be cold below and they might have to stay under for anything up to a couple of hours. ‘Will he be still recognizable?’ Harpur asked the sergeant.

  ‘Oh, yes, sir, unless he took a bang in the face before, or going in – and the belt should prevent that. The water’s pretty chill and it’s only two weeks, isn’t it? Yes, not too much damage from bacteria. Of course, the windows are open, as I understand it, sir. That means fish and crabs inside. They make for the eyes first.’

  ‘Yes?’

  ‘But I’d bet he’ll be reasonably presentable still – cold water, a shortish period.’ Possibly feeling he deserved some reward for this assurance, he asked: ‘Anyone we know, sir?’

  ‘What we’re trying to ascertain, sergeant.’

  ‘Of course, sir.’ He went back to the Land Rover to prepare.

  In a few minutes, two of the divers waddled over to the steps leading to the water. Each had a big, underwater flashlight at his belt and a heavy sheath knife strapped to the right calf, the blade to free the diver from entanglements, and the handle for use as a hammer if he needed to break windows. They entered the water and immediately went down, both trailing ropes to the other two divers, who stood on the edge of the dock and waited for pull signals. The sergeant, also all kitted up now, stayed near the steps, ready to go down if there was any trouble. Harpur watched the early rush of large bubbles change to smaller ones as the men went deeper.

  Iles arrived in one of the new Granadas. Lately, he had seemed dismally low and brooding, in anguish over Sarah, Harpur guessed, though the ACC had not spoken about her for a while. To butter him up now, Harpur mentioned the half-recalled, misty painting, confident Iles would identify it instantly and so feel warm and superior: it was not that he lived by pictures, like Lamb, but Iles simply knew more or less everything worth knowing and a lot that wasn’t. ‘Do you remember it, sir?’ Harpur asked, and sensed at once that his welfare effort was doomed. To fool Iles took some doing.

  ‘You joking?’ he grunted. ‘No, you’re trying to make me feel good, aren’t you, Harpur, doing a bit of therapy, you patronizing fart?’

  ‘Sir?’

  ‘Giving me doddle questions, for my morale. Christ, even a gold card jerk as ignorant as you has to know it’s Sunrise, Le Havre, Monet, 1872 – the picture that began Impressionism. The Volvo estate mob bound for the Dordogne talk of nothing else as they come in there on the car ferry.’

  ‘Yes, I thought Le Havre.’

  ‘Gee. Ever considered taking over the Tate? What the fuck’s that on your head?’ Iles went to the edge and gazed for a long while at the bubbles. A wedge of grey hair fell forward and he brushed it back langorously with his hand. Harpur had once heard him apologize for that narcissistic gesture, denouncing it as being copied subconsciously from the ex-Cabinet Minister, Michael Heseltine, but here it was again. Iles wore a magnificently cut beige suit, in gamekeeper’s tweed, and weighty brown brogues. The whole grand, ageing, Country Life profile seemed to proclaim him prime for cuckolding. He came back and stood close to Harpur.

  As if picking up his thought Iles asked: ‘No chance this could be that charming longcock, Ian Aston, is there, Col?’

  ‘I don’t believe so, sir.’

  ‘No I should be so lucky. One would very much like to think of that decent, grimy, workaday water sluicing all trace of Sarah from his lover-boy flesh. Eel raids on a dead Aston appeal to me.’

  ‘We ought to prepare a strategy in case this does turn out to be Justin Paynter, sir,’ Harpur replied, labouring back towards normality. Once before, a long time ago, he had watched Iles driven to appalling frenzy and violence by pain over a woman: not Sarah then, and not a matter of betrayal, but of death. Harpur dreaded seeing anything like that again.

  ‘He’s been up the house,’ Iles murmured, almost inaudibly.

  ‘Sir?’

  ‘Aston. Did you know that?’ Now, Iles seemed to be trying to make his voice conversational, even offhand, like, Did you know the vicar had called?

  ‘Well, no, sir. I wouldn’t.’

  ‘Oh, a neighbour informed me. The description’s right. Generously told me of seeing him from a window leave our kitchen and go down the lawn and over the fence. Then Sarah, obviously upset and searching for him.’

  ‘Sir, one always has to consider other explana
tions – the job teaches us that, above all.’

  ‘It’s really nice to think all Rougement Place knows Sarah brings her bit of extra home with her, isn’t it? A giggle at their parties: “That wife of the fuzz, so democratic and body-bold.”’ Somehow, he kept control of his tone. ‘What’s that Byron thing, in “When we two parted”, about the lady’s light fame? Oh, Jesus, no use asking you, you have difficulty with the Beano. He’s probably been ploughing my furrow in my own bed.’

  ‘Sir, you can’t –’

  ‘Know that? No. I regard it as a very unpleasant likelihood, though, Col, which would be difficult to forgive.’

  ‘I don’t –’

  ‘Well, impossible to forgive, really, wouldn’t you say, even you, disgustingly temperate as you are?

  ‘Nothing like that ever happened, sir. Probably. You’re creating the situation.’

  ‘So, you’ll ask why I just don’t tell her to get lost – go to him, if he means that much to her.’

  ‘No, sir, I wouldn’t ask that. I can see you’d want to keep her.’

  ‘Yes, I’ll keep her.’

  ‘Sarah isn’t someone to –’

  ‘Vic’s coming up, sarge,’ said one of the men holding a signal rope.

  They went and stood alongside him, staring at the water. Harpur had the impression that Iles was trembling, and not from the cold, although he wore no overcoat. More likely, it would be excitement and irrational hope. He wanted this dock to put an end to all his personal troubles through what would be revealed soon. The case they were working on – what there was of it – had ceased to count with Iles and private suffering had taken control. Occasionally, that could happen when police work overlapped a cop’s own life, and it meant a sticky situation.

  In a little while the diver’s head broke surface, and Iles gave a short, impatient gasp. The man finned to the steps, sat and took his mask and fins off, then came up. A little breathless, he leaned against the Land Rover for a moment before speaking. He addressed Harpur: ‘A Metro, lying on the passenger side. Geoff’s got the registration. He won’t be long. Not much more we can do, sir. A man strapped in the front passenger seat, naked. We put both beams on him but were still not seeing much. I thought maybe a wound of some kind in the stomach. Knife?’

  Iles said: ‘Yes, Vic, it’s good work, very good work. But when you lit him, all right, you’re not seeing much, but what did you see? I mean, colouring, say. How old?’

  ‘It’s difficult, sir,’ the sergeant said. ‘Down there –’

  ‘I know it’s difficult,’ Iles snarled. ‘Let him answer, will you? If I’m talking to you I’ll turn your way, so you’ll be able to tell.’

  ‘Dark hair, plenty of it,’ the diver said. ‘Age? Mid-twenties? What I could make out, I didn’t recognize him. I don’t know about Geoff. Nothing else in the car, as far as I could see. We didn’t do any breaking or try to get in.’

  ‘No, that’s fine,’ Harpur said.

  The other diver came out soon afterwards and confirmed it all. He did not recognize the man either, but had memorized the registration.

  Iles said: ‘Dark hair? You’re sure? There was enough light for that?’

  Both divers confirmed the man was dark.

  Iles turned to the sergeant: ‘I’m sorry I barked. No possible excuse, except disorientating envy of people wearing rubber, of course.’

  He and Harpur and Iles talked briefly near the Granada. ‘Colin, do I recall that Aston’s fair? Do I recall! Christ, what verbiage. As if I didn’t have the bastard’s description burned into my brain.’

  ‘Yes, he is, sir.’

  ‘Ah, well, there’ll be other corpses. Where there’s death there’s hope.’ He climbed into the car and was about to drive off. Then he rolled down the window: ‘That sounds so bloody smart and unhinged, I suppose. But I do want her, Col, and he’s taking her away. It’s just normal, unsophisticated hatred.’

  ‘I understand, sir.’

  ‘Oh, kind.’

  Chapter Ten

  ‘I think he knows,’ Sarah said.

  ‘This is what, instinct on your part? Have there been hints?’ Margot was at the window of her flat, gazing out over the new marina, apparently fascinated by something happening far off at Young’s Dock, on the other side of Valencia Esplanade.

  ‘And, if he does – Des is not one of your long-suffering types. This is in his own house, his own bed, Margot.’

  ‘I’m not sure –’

  ‘Oh, you’ll tell me the venue’s unimportant. I said to myself at the time. But it was important. I wanted it to happen there, because it would be another step. Margot, it was a real compulsion. God, that sounds so crude, crude and hungry.’

  ‘But you are, or were, hungry.’

  ‘It seemed so right. I don’t know if that makes sense to you. Does it strike you as simply spiteful, juvenile, or maybe just anarchic?’

  ‘None of them. I understand.’ Margot seemed still enthralled by something at the dock.

  Seated near the fireplace, Sarah felt herself grow suddenly loud and ratty, perhaps offended not to have Margot’s total attention. ‘What the hell are you looking at? You say you understand! Christ, what else can you say, though, Margot? I’m paying you, aren’t I? I’m your client. I come here for a nice comforting warm bath of sympathy.’

  Margot half turned and said, gently: ‘ You want me to tell you you’re just a treacherous, leg-spread cow? Sorry, I don’t believe it.’ Then she went on watching whatever it was outside.

  ‘Yes, I felt it was so right, that it said something important. What did it say? I don’t know. But I do know that Des will think it couldn’t be more wrong. Obviously. A double invasion, wife and nest. I do see that.’

  ‘Yes, I see that, too. If he was a client, I suppose I’d have to give him a warm bath of sympathy, as well. Were those the words?’

  Now, looking a bit hurt, Margot left the window and came to sit opposite Sarah.

  ‘I’m sorry, Margot. Unforgivable – I mean, about paying you. Rotten of me.’

  ‘But you are paying. Maybe it does affect the response. I’m here to try to help you.’

  Part of Margot’s job must be uncrackable patience, endless tolerance. ‘So, have you heard it before?’ Sarah asked.

  ‘Someone driven to take a lover into the matrimonial bed? Yes, it’s not so rare. Not much chance of hitting originality in sex. What you did, it’s like making the big change without making it, like leaving without leaving. Things are reduced to metaphor. It’s more comfortable.’

  Sarah had worked that out for herself. It helped, though, to know she was not the first.

  ‘A lot of people are at that, men and women. They want the penny and the bun, but not in the oven if they can help it,’ Margot said. She nodded towards the window. ‘Maybe a tragedy out there. A crane trying to lift something from the bottom of the dock. Perhaps a car?’ She did not get up to look again, though. ‘What makes you believe he knows?’

  ‘I think Des could play very rough. Some moments, he’s not really too balanced. Anyway, who would be balanced about this?’

  ‘But why do you think he knows? He’s said something?’

  ‘He’s a cop, Margot. When they’re suspicious they don’t talk. They listen, they watch. He’s doing a lot of that. I changed the sheets, well, of course. But it was the wrong day. Did he notice? He’s a cop, Margot. My chorus. I went through the house, really checking there was nothing left behind, and footprints from the garden. But neighbours? I don’t know.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘Why what? You mean, why so much effort to conceal things? Do I really want to hang on to Des?’

  ‘Something like that.’

  ‘Yes, I wondered myself.’

  Margot grinned. ‘Half the time you’re ahead of me. I can see why you’re not sure what you’re paying for.’ The room was tidier today and Sarah had not seen or heard the cats. Margot looked formal and neat again, too, in a grey skirt and elaborately patterned han
d-knitted, multicoloured cardigan, and half-heel shoes, not the trainers. On the whole, Sarah preferred it like this. A good turnout in a decent setting seemed to promise more careful consideration of her problems. Rougement Place values would out: she could have done without these continual reminders that buried somewhere in her must be a powerful yearning for order and appearance, perhaps explaining why she had married the police. But then, what explained why she ran so hard and frantically after Ian Aston, nobody’s idea of order?

  Margot stood and went back to the window, shielding her eyes. ‘Talking of police, I think they seem to be running this show in Young’s Dock. I’m up early most mornings, and I think there were divers down today. It’s a long way, but that’s how it looked. Now, I think more divers, the crane, and bobbies keeping people away.’

  Sarah joined her. ‘Suicide? People drive in occasionally.’

  As they watched, a diver surfaced and then two more. In a moment, one of them signalled with a wave to the quay-side. Sarah could hear nothing from that distance, but two cables from the crane into the water seemed to tighten and the jib bent forward, as if taking weight.

  ‘Not how I would do it,’ Sarah said. ‘Not drowning. Slow. Agonizing.’

  ‘Do you think of suicide?’ Margot asked, moving away from the window.

  Sarah stayed. ‘Who doesn’t?’

  ‘Yes, I suppose so. There’s a time when anyone can feel cornered.’