Come Clean (1989)

by Bill James

  Harpur noticed several parked cars, including one quite close to Iles’s big drive and standing under trees. It was dark but he had the idea that a man might be sitting alone in the back, folded down low into a corner as Harpur passed, perhaps avoiding the headlights. If he had not been on the look-out Harpur would never have noticed him. The glimpse was so fleeting and indistinct that he had no chance of making even a guess at identification, and he could not say, either, whether observation of Iles’s place was under way through the car’s rear window. For all Harpur knew it might be a couple of lovers, the woman lower still on the seat, and out of sight. All the same, this could be a watch, with someone working a fairly sophisticated surveillance trick, the kind of skill that would be second nature to Tommy Vit. People expected that if somebody did an observation from a car he sat behind the wheel with the vehicle facing towards the target, ready to move off fast in pursuit if necessary. A thousand films in the cinema and on television played it like that. But, because it was expected, it was also obvious. On the other hand, if the car had its back to the target, and the watcher kept out of the front seat and used the rear window, the chance of staying undetected was vastly higher. He drove on up Rougement Place and looked into Iles’s drive as he passed. Both their cars were there – Iles’s plain, blue police Orion and Sarah’s white Fiat Panda – so it looked as if she might be at home, and the tail in the right place, if it was a tail. Keeping the Viva at a respectable thirty, he tried to see some more of the Golf and its occupant in the mirror, but there was not enough light. He reached a junction and turned left, out of sight of the Golf, then slowly circled the block.

  Eventually, he came around to near the start of Rougement Place again but parked in a side street and decided to walk from there. This took time and made him anxious, but if it was Tommy in the Golf, a reappearance of the Viva would immediately alert him. As he recalled it, the Golf had stood pretty much on its own under the trees, between an Escort estate and a Datsun, each of them a long distance from it. When he had gone a few hundred yards on foot now, he realized suddenly that the Golf was no longer there. The estate car and the Datsun stood as before, but the long space between was empty. He tried to convince himself he had mistaken the bearings and kept on walking. But when he reached the gateway to Iles’s drive without seeing the Golf he knew his first notion had been right. This time when he looked into the drive he saw that Sarah’s Panda had gone, too.

  Harpur ran hard back to the Viva and for the next half-hour toured the area looking for either car, without success. By now they could be anywhere. He felt alarmed but gave up the search and at 8.30, as arranged, he knocked on Iles’s door and the Assistant Chief himself let Harpur in.

  ‘Perhaps we should ring Benny and say we’re coming,’ he suggested to Iles.

  ‘Like hell. Doorstepping is a very precise craft, Col, and shock is one of its main strengths.’ He seemed to have been attempting some elementary tidying of the room, which always looked pretty uncared for, and he picked up a couple of newspapers and some chocolate wrappers and put them in an overflowing waste basket. ‘Sarah’s gone to bridge again,’ he said. ‘Or something like that. Who knows? She doesn’t stay in very much.’ He sounded weary and beaten for a moment. These days he often did.

  In the Viva, on the way to Benny’s place, Iles added: ‘There are certainly times when Sarah and I go out together, you know. We can get on well. There’s adequate conversation.’

  ‘Of course, sir. And The Times crossword together.’

  ‘Exactly. Not abundant talk, but no venom.’

  ‘More than many couples could say, sir.’

  ‘We were at Chaff, the other night.’

  ‘Ah, Leo’s place.’

  ‘I didn’t know. He and I had quite a tête-à-tête.’

  ‘Yes, sir?’

  ‘Yes, one or two good and useful disclosures made by him.’

  ‘Yes, sir?’

  ‘Yes, one or two. Could produce something, in due course.’

  ‘Yes, sir?’

  ‘Yes, in due course.’

  ‘Good. Do I need to know about them, sir?’

  ‘Well –’

  ‘In due course?’

  ‘That’s it, Col. I’d certainly like you to be in the picture, then.’

  ‘Good.’

  As they neared Loxton’s place, Iles said: ‘I still don’t understand how we knew where to look for Paynter in the dock. Or why we should have looked for him in the dock at all.’

  ‘These pieces of information come in, sir.’

  ‘Yes?’

  ‘We’re very fortunate.’

  ‘Somebody talked, or somebody saw it happen?’

  ‘These tips, sir, they’re not just from one source.’

  ‘That’s so?’

  ‘Oh, yes,’ Harpur replied. If Iles could sit on stuff, so could he.

  When they arrived, Benny’s wife answered the bell.

  ‘Wonderful spread here, Alma,’ Iles said. ‘Your own paddock, too!’

  ‘Why, Mr Iles! Desmond! And a colleague! I don’t believe we’ve met since the charity ball. Such a pleasant affair. Theodore will be so pleased you’ve called. Do come in. I think a little business meeting may be in progress with staff, even at this time in the evening, but nothing that can’t be postponed, I’m sure.’ Iles introduced Harpur. She went ahead of them to a closed door on the right and, without knocking, opened it. ‘Theodore, dear, imagine who’s here?’ She pushed the door wide and beckoned Iles and Harpur forward.

  In the room, Harpur saw Benny, seated in a listing, bulging old armchair, and Phil Macey and a squat, burly man with fair hair cut very short, on a low-backed settee.

  ‘Theodore,’ Iles said. ‘Here’s a grand, welcoming room. A room of wit and warm fellowship.’

  ‘Isn’t it?’ Alma Loxton cried. ‘The dawn is the time when you should be here, though, Mr Iles. We face south-east and the sunlight creeps in so very gradually from the corner of the bay window and eventually floods the whole room, triumphantly.’

  Both Macey and the other man had stood, but Loxton remained in his chair. He had on a three-piece, Prince of Wales check grey suit and a very subdued blue silk tie decorated with small shields. Harpur thought of pictures of fighter aircraft in the war, with their tally of destroyed enemies painted on the fuselage.

  ‘Alma was just on her way to change, Mr Iles,’ Loxton said. ‘We’re going for drinks with friends tonight. You carry on, love,’ he said to her. ‘I’m sure Mr Iles and Mr Harpur will excuse you and we’ll take care of them.’

  ‘Well, a drink for our guests, too?’ she asked.

  ‘Yes, we’ll see to that,’ Loxton said.

  ‘If you’re sure, Theodore. I hope you’re still here when I come down, Mr Iles, Mr Harpur.’

  ‘Yes, indeed, dear lady,’ Iles replied, with a small bow, as she closed the door. ‘Delightful woman. You’re lucky, Benny. So who’s this scalped fucker then?’ he asked, nodding towards the fair man and sitting down in a red leather armchair near the big fireplace. ‘Does he know who I am, Benny? Has he got it clear?’ He faced the stranger. ‘Has he told you who I am, gusset face, and where you’re likely to be if you err?’ Harpur had seen Iles use the same rather brisk, ice-breaking technique before on a new recruit to one of the teams: it was designed to knock a hole in him before he started, and to make Benny, or some other chieftain, look negligible and cowed in the Assistant Chief’s presence.

  ‘Robert Lentle’s a good friend and associate.’

  ‘It’s a prime dossier face, and yet I can’t recall seeing it before,’ Iles went on. ‘Did someone say drinks?’

  ‘Robert’s new to this area.’

  ‘I hope you’re going to like it,’ Iles remarked. ‘That you’re settling. Is this one to replace Justin Paynter, Benny? Did you have a sort of inkling Justin might sink out of sight, as it were?’

  ‘This is a bit inconvenient, Mr Iles, you calling now,’ Loxton said.

  ‘I’ll try and
make it at dawn next time and catch the triumphant sunrise,’ he replied.

  ‘What next time?’ Lentle asked.

  Loxton seemed to realize that Iles and Harpur were not likely to leave and brought them brandies. ‘Justin?’ he said. ‘Oh, he moved on quite a while ago. Wanted to make his own way, I don’t blame him. That’s youth, isn’t it? Where he might be now, I couldn’t say. It’s easy to lose touch in this business.’

  ‘Easy to lose more than that, Benny,’ Iles replied.

  ‘Last I heard, Justin was around Norwich way,’ Macey declared, ‘seeking a mortgage.’

  Harpur said: ‘I don’t know if any of you heard about a Metro being pulled out of the dock.’

  ‘Extremely nasty,’ Loxton replied. ‘We thought most likely suicide. Terminal sick, maybe.’

  ‘That’s what Benny said soon as we seen it on telly,’ Macey added. ‘He said, “Got to be some poor devil topping himself, nice new car or not.” When you see something like that, you ask what life is about – I mean, if despair can strike, regardless.’ He sat down again on the settee.

  ‘They take it out of you, thoughts, don’t they, Phil,’ Iles said.

  ‘Just a young bloke in there, that’s what we heard,’ Loxton said. ‘That a fact? It makes it all even more tragic, if he had, say, a terminal illness, and a new Metro’s not going to make a difference to that.’

  ‘Well, he did have a sort of terminal condition,’ Iles told him.

  ‘We’ve been looking for people who might have seen it happen,’ Harpur told them. ‘There’s almost always someone around the dock, even at night.’

  Loxton gave a look of puzzlement. ‘What you asking, Mr Harpur? You asking did one of us see this car go into the dock? How would that be? Didn’t the television say three in the morning or something like that? Are we going to be at the docks then?’ He chuckled.

  Iles had a good, rather uproarious laugh at the craziness of this idea, too. ‘No, of course not, Benny. But you boys, your company, you’re got contacts everywhere. Business knows no boundaries, and doesn’t stop for the clock, does it? Whispers. Pointers. That’s what we’re after.’

  Benny said: ‘I can say straight off regarding that, nothing, Mr Iles. I don’t know about Philip or Robert.’

  Macey said: ‘Benny’s right. Not a murmur.’

  ‘Nothing,’ Lentle added. He sat down, too, now.

  ‘You got an i.d. yet?’ Loxton asked. ‘Easy through the car?’

  ‘Some snags there,’ Harpur replied.

  ‘We’re still inquiring,’ Iles said.

  ‘Terrible. Some kid’s parents or maybe his wife wondering where he is,’ Loxton remarked.

  Iles smiled amiably: ‘I suppose we could usefully stop this rubbish now. How the hell does Justin Paynter end up under twenty-odd feet of dirty water in a stolen car?’

  ‘Justin?’ Loxton exclaimed.

  ‘One fears so,’ Iles intoned.

  ‘But I heard he was in Norwich, looking at properties,’ Macey protested.

  ‘What had he done to cross you, Benny?’ Iles asked.

  ‘Justin? He was a gem,’ Loxton replied. ‘Nothing at all against him, except he wanted to move on. He was extremely gifted in property matters, which, as you know, is a very large element in our business.’

  ‘Yes, I heard a lot of the takings were going into building,’ Iles replied. ‘The docks marina development, isn’t it, oddly enough? Didn’t one of those London gangs do the same?’

  ‘I see it as a crucial part of our role to help the onward progress of the area,’ Loxton said. ‘A stake in the community.’

  ‘Benny’s always talking about that,’ Macey added. ‘Onward progress. A stake in the community. These are this company’s watchwords. When Benny’s talking like this, Mr Iles, I can understand why his wife would like him to be called Theodore, instead. Benny don’t seem right, too, like, lightweight.’

  ‘So, was Justin having somebody’s missus?’ Iles asked. ‘That why he had to go? We’ve seen that before: a youngster comes on to the team, full of juice and gloss, and starts making it with somebody’s woman, maybe the boss’s. Alma’s not past it, not a bit. Faded, but some could still see her a tasty piece, even a kid like Justin. It’s quite possible she’d stop jabbering and prosing while she was actually on the job. A lot of them do. It’s documented. Kinsey?’ Iles smiled again, turning to all three in turn, as if asking for confirmation.

  Harpur heard Loxton’s breathing accelerate and Macey stood up again.

  Lentle said: ‘Who do you think you’re talking about, you bastard?’

  ‘Talking about? Oh, you know Alma, don’t you?’ Iles replied, beaming. ‘The lady who should have been a duchess, but didn’t notice Benny wasn’t a duke.’

  ‘It’s all right, Bobby,’ Loxton said. ‘This is just Iles. He stirs. Part of his charm, part of his box of tricks. To get people going, so they talk.’

  Macey said: ‘Mr Iles got trouble with his own sweet lady, putting it about very tireless, so he thinks all women are like that.’

  ‘We believe it’s Justin, so we’ve got to ask you, Benny, if you can suggest why he’d be dropped in the dock,’ Harpur told him.

  ‘But we heard he had two referees for a mortgage and a woodworm survey done, Norwich way,’ Macey said.

  ‘What identification?’ Loxton asked.

  ‘It’s pretty sound,’ Harpur replied.

  ‘So what’s it to do with Benny, with us?’ Lentle asked.

  ‘He worked for Benny,’ Harpur said.

  ‘That’s fair enough,’ Loxton replied. ‘I see you got to ask the questions if it really is Justin.’

  ‘Or was he a talker, Benny?’ Iles asked.

  ‘A talker? Well, he had schooling, yes. Nice with a phrase.’

  Iles said: ‘Was he opening his mouth about one of your projects? Who to?’

  ‘Have you thought, I mean, going back to where we started, that this could still be suicide, even Justin?’ Macey suggested. ‘This kid was a sensitive kid. Oh, sure, it looked like things was going great, but he could have all sorts of worries. He’s got a girl and an old mother, a very old mother, Wales way or the Isle of Man, somewhere that area. There could be things wrong there. He might think to come home to end it at a place he knew. People are like that, sentimental about doing theirselves in, it’s well known. Makes them feel comfortable.’

  ‘And drove there naked and with two knife wounds?’ Iles said.

  ‘Knife wounds?’ Loxton exclaimed. ‘That changes the complexion.’

  ‘It did his,’ Iles said.

  ‘This sounds very much like a private matter,’ Loxton said, ‘some enemies Justin had that we never even heard of. He never mentioned nothing like that?’ He turned to Macey.

  ‘Nothing. But he could be fiery,’ Macey recalled. ‘He was a kid, but he could cut loose. Oh, yes. He might of given offence, and this is what he collects. It’s bad, out of proportion.’

  ‘Life don’t work to proportion, Phil,’ Loxton said.

  ‘No, but where’s the, well, natural justice of it?’ Macey replied.

  ‘Where did it happen, the knifing?’ Loxton asked.

  ‘We’re not too clear on that,’ Harpur replied, ‘if we –’

  Alma Loxton returned, wearing a long check topcoat in grey, blue and red, like something bought from the wardrobe of Dr Zhivago. She waited in the doorway of the room, ready to leave. Loxton stood.

  ‘Can you excuse him, us, now, Mr Iles?’ she asked. ‘We really must be on our way.’

  ‘Of course,’ Iles said, standing, also. ‘Our talk’s about over, as it happens. A profitable exchange, I think, Theodore?’

  ‘Indeed, yes,’ he said.

  ‘You’re very kind to fit in with our plans, Mr Iles,’ Alma Loxton told him.

  ‘No, if I may say, you’re very kind, for putting up with us in your lovely house at this hour, you and Theodore,’ Iles said.

  ‘But we’re delighted,’ she cried. ‘It’s only yesterda
y that Theodore was saying what a regrettably long time it was since we had bumped into you and your charming wife. Please do give her our regards when you see her. So vivacious, so radiant.’

  ‘Yes, when I bloody well see her,’ Iles muttered, as he and Harpur walked down the drive. In the car, Iles said: ‘Do we know this boy Lentle’s special skills, Col, supposing that’s really his name? It might indicate something for the future.’

  ‘He’s new to me.’

  ‘Can we ask around?’

  ‘Of course, sir.’ But where to ask when Jack Lamb was half-way to Italy or who knew where by now?

  ‘It’s a beautiful therapy for me, going into a house like Benny’s,’ Iles said. ‘I’m reminded of why I’m a cop and why I’m willing to be stuck on this skivvy’s pay, and why I consent to work with people like the Chief and you, no offence, Col. It’s to save the world from Benny, and all the other Bennies. That task needs me. You couldn’t do it. Could Lane do it?’

  ‘The Chief has some very strong aspects, sir.’

  ‘Not dress sense, I’d venture, and not wit or farsightedness or necessary ruthlessness. Good-natured to a fault, a dangerous fault. Is he a saviour, though, Col? Can he harrow hell, defeat evil? Can he recognize it?’ He had turned in the front seat to look at Harpur.

  ‘Well, we didn’t get very far with Loxton ourselves, sir.’

  ‘We will. He felt a cold wind blowing. I’ve set my mark on him. He knows it. Those people, if they’re left alone, or if they have to deal only with your kind – someone fine and soft and passably decent – they’ll come to believe they can do anything, including make the step from being Benny to Theodore, or Theodore OBE, or Sir Theodore, or eventually, through one of his kids, to Lord Theodore of the Docklands, instead of Benny of the Drowned Metro. His wife thinks she’s half-way there already, poor, simpering drab. That would be victory for the pit, Col, and enthronement of wrong. It could easily happen. It’s happened already. Remember Henry the Fourth?’