First Fix Your Alibi

by Bill James

  Eventually, though, the hotel stopped taking visitors and hosting conferences and half the building shut down to cut costs. The last of the Hillgate dynasty kept a high-grade restaurant going for a couple more years, but when she died that closed and the whole complex was put up for sale. No suitable buyer had been found so far. No buyer at all. The Binnacle became a disintegrating shell, used sometimes by squatters and tramps, and for raves.

  It was reached by a narrow country lane off the main road and approaching at just after three fifteen a.m. Harpur had to pull over, or be pulled over for, several times as people left the scene by car and van. He thought he might have done better in a blue-lamp, marked vehicle with two-tone siren, able to force priority. There was a bullying urgency about some of the traffic coming from the hotel and meeting him head-on. Drivers and maybe their passengers, too, wanted to get away from the Binnacle fast. Normally, the fun might have gone on until at least dawn. This rave had turned out to be very non-normal, though.

  Vamoose. These were kids who’d been on a high or a super-high from the Class A material traded here and/or the music. Then, gradually, as their near-blotto minds slowly took in what had happened, they’d been compelled to realize that their untroubled, visionary, blissful highs were not what life usually offered. These were highs only because so much of the rest of their time would be lows, not untroubled but troubled, not visionary but measly, and not at all blissful. A death, a knife, could be parts of that troubled, measly, unblissful reality. Police asking awkward, nosy questions and putting you into their notebooks for possible future use could be another part. Yes, vamoose. Yes, disappear.

  The ravers wouldn’t have the inclination, nor, most probably, the cash to revisit their highs, anyway, so they needed another means of escape and if Harpur in his unmarked Vauxhall seemed to be blocking their exit route they’d try to persuade him with flashing headlights, horn blasts, screamed orders and arm waving to get his fucking wagon out of their path and into the hedge. Besides, someone of his age shouldn’t be out so late.

  During the third of these encounters, as he allowed through a Mini with at least six people aboard, he noticed that one of the women in the back had a cigarette nearly down to the end in her mouth and recognized Denise. And Denise recognized Harpur. She wore a large-peaked amber-coloured cap, a white silk top he had bought her last Christmas, and presumably jeans, though her lower half was obscured.

  She sent Harpur a very limited smile, obviously afraid that if she tried anything larger the fag might fall and deprive her of one crucial drag more. Also, she might not be in much of a smiling mood after the rave violence. But he gave her a good, wide, loving smile in return. She deserved a boost for the crafty, deft effort she’d made like that with her mouth. In any case, she’d told Harpur once that he could ‘annihilate’ her by the least sign of indifference or coldness. Annihilation of her was the opposite to what he wanted. He’d like her permanently at 126 Arthur Street, and so would Hazel and Jill, of course.

  It would be tobacco, not grass. Denise didn’t do drugs; didn’t care for their kind of what she termed ‘disabling magic’. She had a lot of shrewd expressions. Most were her own, not pinched from Shakespeare or the Financial Times. Ordinary strong ciggies, sometimes backed by alcohol – rum especially, neat or with a mixer – generally delivered contentment to her, say four times out of five. She would have taken her own supplies to the rave. The smart, positive way she’d managed that stub on her lip illustrated brilliantly, Harpur thought, how she could stay in charge of herself when – no question – decently oiled and, perhaps, very shaken. This was a girl with accomplishments. Harpur felt proud to have discovered Denise. There’d been no waste at all in the way she dealt with that cigarette, though she hadn’t burned herself.

  He enjoyed this moment. It seemed to give a favourable commentary on her and his situation. Not situations, plural. Just the one, because of the happy way they were linked. Coordination. The cargoes of the two vehicles were extremely different – a load of young revellers, perhaps chilled by a murder; a middle-aged lawman on a dutiful, emergency call-out. But that tobacco-tinged dodgy smile from her to him, and the brilliantly full-scale one from him to her, told of a gorgeous, unlikely, enduring bond between them, didn’t it? Jill and possibly Hazel would regard that as sloppy rubbish, and would tell him it was, if he mentioned this wonderfully comforting thought to them. So he wouldn’t.

  People in the Mini with her might notice the brief exchange of smirks, and some possibly knew aspects of her love life. ‘Your top cop squeeze, Denise?’ one of them might ask. ‘Is that him?’

  ‘He,’ she’d reply.

  Denise had explained some grammatical points to Harpur recently, just as he lectured Jill occasionally. His daughter had been right and grammatical when she said in their chat on the landing that chief inspectors and their teams usually looked after raves. Chief Inspector Francis Garland saw Harpur arrive and walked across the forecourt to the Vauxhall. Garland was in uniform. A fire engine, three ambulances and five marked police vehicles, including a Black Maria, and mobile command crate, were parked in front of the hotel.

  Harpur lowered the Vauxhall’s driver-side window and Garland took off his cap and bent to give a summary: ‘The doc says dead at the scene, sir. A twenty-year-old male student from Powys, Wales. Three knife wounds. Two in the chest, one abdominal. We’re holding another twenty-year-old male on suspicion, and half a dozen others as possible witnesses.’

  Harpur got out of the Vauxhall and walked with Garland to the hotel entrance. The fire engine was about to move away. Someone had most likely made a 999 call asking for the police and an ambulance and they’d send the fire and rescue crew as well, just in case; there’d have been a lot of people here, not all of them restrained and responsible for the moment, and a big, very ignitable building.

  Garland said, ‘Dead boy went into the toilets with another boy’s girlfriend for what he said when they returned was a smoke and chat. Not very clever behaviour on two counts – one, the girl’s boyfriend would be cross; and, two, the lavs don’t flush, of course, no mains water, and there were up to a hundred folk using them; so, no jolly or romantic setting. They come back to the dancing and there’s a bust-up between the boys, as would be expected. It looked as though it would turn very rough – not just the two lads, but cliques of each of them, all higher than the Himalayas – and therefore not good for business. One of Manse Shale’s middle management, Frank Waverton, – known to us, a smell about his name – he does what he can to calm things and get business nicely under way again. And it works. As to toilets Waverton could scare such kids shitless, high or not, which might have been an advantage if earlier and widespread. Scare them fightless, too. Having brought a kind of peace, he goes back to his commercial duties. Bad decision: once he’s out of sight, the boys restart the battle and it turns out the aggrieved one has a knife.’

  ‘Recovered?’

  ‘Yes. The owner a maths scholar from Berwick-on-Tweed.’

  Harpur had been for lunch or dinner to the Binnacle two or three times celebrating birthdays with Megan, his wife, when the hotel and restaurant were still brilliant. He felt enclosed in an appalling circle of events now. Megan had been knifed to death in the railway station car park not far from here.1 Tonight, as he and Garland entered what used to be the restaurant, he saw the tent over the body of the knifed-to-death youngster at a spot where Megan’s and his dinner table had been for one of those cheery festive meals. He thought he might be adjusting his memories slightly so as to get the full, awful, accidental neatness of the parallels. Only slightly, though.

  Rave organizers had brought their own generator and lights: no mains electricity as well as no mains water; and Garland’s unit had deployed more. A few groups of ex-revellers watched as Harpur and Garland went in to look at the boy. Two police photographers were doing multi-angle shots. A stretcher and body bag stood ready. Medics would remove him once Harpur had done his viewing. He did his viewing
and thought of Megan, folded around her shopping, dead in the station parking yard.

  TWENTY

  When Harpur got back at just before six a.m. almost the first thing he saw as he opened his front door was Denise’s big-peaked, amber cap sitting on top of the coat stand in the hall. He thought of the flag flying over Buckingham Palace when the Queen was in residence. This was another of those happy instances of unspoken, powerful understanding between Denise and Harpur: spot-on as a ‘welcome home’. The lurid colour and absurd, playful shape even touched with gaiety his subfusc overcoat and mac hanging below. The hat didn’t exactly proclaim, ‘I live here,’ but it said to Harpur that 126 Arthur Street was often – very often – her preferred nesting base and not Jonson Court. Although this fell a fair whack short of his wishes it still brought him glowing pleasure and, as she’d told Harpur, put him ahead of the ancient playwright, Ben Jonson, in her crew of best mates.

  She was sleeping heavily, fronds of dark hair across her face, but when Harpur switched on the light, undressed and got into the bed Denise gave a bit of a snort-snore and said, ‘Security, Col,’ as though bluntly answering a question; maybe the tail end of a dream. Her eyes stayed shut. She had on an old, moth-ravaged, round-necked, navy-blue police sweater from Harpur’s days as a constable that she must have found in the chest of drawers.

  ‘What security?’ he said.

  ‘Yours.’ She opened her left eye.

  ‘In which respect?’ Harpur replied.

  ‘I got them to drop me off at a taxi rank.’

  ‘Who?’

  ‘Those people in the Mini – I didn’t know any of them well. You could designate them eclectic.’

  ‘No, I couldn’t.’

  ‘It would have been wrong to bring them here. Your address has to be totally confidential.’

  ‘It’s in the phone book.’

  ‘I know, but I thought it necessary. A loving gesture.’

  ‘Right. I’m in favour of loving gestures.’

  ‘But only from me.’

  ‘Of course.’

  ‘I felt you looked like a symbol of goodness and proper order,’ she replied. She opened her right eye. ‘Probity.’

  ‘When?’

  ‘In the Vauxhall. I decided you had to be kept safe. Looking after you will be a mission of mine. You reminded me of Raymond Chandler’s detective, Philip Marlowe.’

  ‘Hazel mentioned him the other day.’

  ‘Marlowe?’

  ‘Chandler. She said he wrote a film script.’

  ‘He wrote several. Double Indemnity; Strangers On A Train.’

  ‘That one.’

  ‘The detetctive according to Chandler must go down mean streets but is “not himself mean”, and “is neither tarnished nor afraid”. Meaning not tightwad mean with money but meaning of low, miserable quality. The detective is “the hero. He is everything”.’

  ‘I wish you’d tell Hazel and Jill that. Especially Hazel.’

  ‘They know it really. They just put on a show as sceptics. They think it’s very grown-up.’

  ‘I’m sometimes very afraid, whatever Chandler says.’

  ‘I doubt it. You think you have to say so or seem vain. You were on your way down that narrow lane, not mean streets, but it’s just the same. You’re invaluable, meaning not that you have no value but that your value is so astronomical that it can’t be measured.’

  ‘Invaluable to you?’

  ‘Of course, but also to the general scene. I have to protect you – thus, the cloaking, fare-clocking taxi.’

  ‘Which general scene?’

  ‘Events.’

  ‘Which events?’

  ‘Events of interest to the police, the police being you and, admittedly, others, including Iles, but especially you.’

  ‘Thanks.’

  ‘The populace feels grateful to you, I’m sure.’

  ‘Some of the populace might. Not those in jail or wearing tags.’

  ‘When I glimpsed you there in the Vauxhall, Col, I thought here is someone en route to that sad mess in the Binnacle, someone who can put things right, thanks partly to his training and experience but also to an inborn goodness.’ she replied. ‘Someone on call, ready to confront whatever there is to confront, properly dressed, despite the hour. Thank God for him.’

  ‘But I was too late to put things right.’

  ‘In a way, yes, the boy was already dead – was already dead when I got the lift in the Mini. But that man, solo in the Vauxhall, he’s the one to restore order, I knew it. So much literature is about the restoration of order. Think of the history plays, or, of course, Fortinbras at the end of Hamlet.’

  ‘Good old Fortinbras!’

  ‘Young Fortinbras. His dad was a goner.’

  ‘I can imagine young Fortinbras’s father saying to his wife, who’d just given birth, “What shall we call him, dear? I was thinking of Stanley.” She replies, “What about Fortinbras, Fortinbras?” “That’s an idea,” he’d reply.’

  ‘I see, I hear, the difference between what others might do to set things OK again and what you could do, Col. There was a guy at the rave, a sort of drugs trade sales director, who managed to get things peaceful for a little while after the first fighting. Sort of constructive? That lust for order.’

  ‘Waverton?’

  ‘You know him?’

  ‘It sounds like Waverton.’

  ‘OK. So, he does well, or seems to. But it won’t last. Some lads there have heard of him, too. A few start asking why they should kowtow to the sod – their language. They’re talking about some rumour – not one I’ve come across. Maybe you have. It says he’s the one who did the betrayal of Manse Shale, gave the road map and route – the killing of his wife and son by mistake, big in the media at the time. So, these boys begin huffing and puffing because they think they caved in too fast and did what this treacherous creep demanded. They are part of what a few minutes later turns out to be the attack gang. The fighting re-starts and our student dies.

  ‘What I’m saying, Col, is that if you’d done the peacemaking it would have stuck. They couldn’t dig up some evil about you, because that’s not the way you are. Untarnished. Someone in the seventeenth century said it was vital that law enforcement should be in good hands.1 Like yours. And so I’ve got to cocoon you – keep you in that good state.

  ‘Thanks.’

  ‘This is the younger generation taking care of … well, taking care of those older. Like pushing the elderly in bath chairs along the promenade.’

  ‘I’m 37.’

  ‘Yes, older. This Waverton, then. Is it true what they said about him? I was standing quite close. I got it all very clearly.’ She sat up in bed to give full strength to the question and brushed the hair back from her face with her knuckles. A nipple stuck out through one of the moth holes in the sweater. Harpur considered it would be mad to believe any moth could have foreseen where to make the opening.

  ‘It’s a tricky one, Denise.’

  ‘He could be in peril himself, couldn’t he?’

  ‘People like Waverton regard acute risk as a normal part of the business.’ He put on his official, plonking, in-good-hands voice for this.

  She kissed him on the forehead, then took a cigarette and matches from a side-table and lit up. After one vast pull at it, she brutally stubbed the fag out in the ashtray, so that it bent and split apart, as if Denise wanted to show she wasn’t always as blatantly hooked as she had seemed in the Mini. ‘Col, when you heard what had happened at the Binnacle did you think I might be the girl?’ she said.

  ‘Which?’

  ‘The one who went for a smoke in the bog and started it all.’

  ‘Don’t be so bloody egomaniac and crazy,’ he said. But, yes, there had been some moments as Garland briefed him when he did wonder: Denise? He blamed Jill and her instant, elderly suspiciousness and worries for that. The pitifully simple-minded reasoning dismayed him now: smoking equals Denise, equals sidling away somewhere, equals provocation
of a murder. But she certainly was lovely enough to cause a jealousy killing by knife or napalm. He switched off the light. ‘Iles would probably regard where we now are as one of those mean streets, rather than a totally confidential one,’ he said.

  ‘I think I must go down on you in it then,’ she said.

  ‘So, you’re a private dick?’

  ‘I hope you are, Col.’

  TWENTY-ONE

  Iles said, ‘The fuckers will try to get me for this, Col.’

  ‘Which fuckers did you have in mind, sir?’

  ‘The entirety. All of them. They’ll come after me in a slavering, howling pack.’

  ‘I’d bet you can see them off.’

  ‘Who?’

  ‘Those you meant, sir. The slaverers.’

  ‘Her Majesty’s Inspectorate of Constabulary, the Home Office, the Daily Mail. I’m suddenly an obvious target.’

  ‘Get you for what, sir?’

  ‘This death.’

  ‘The boy at the Binnacle?’

  ‘Of course, the boy at the Binnacle.’

  ‘But you weren’t even present, were you? I heard you’d given up going to raves and that you get your kicks elsewhere now.’

  ‘Try to understand what occurred there, would you, please?’

  ‘A three-blow killing.’

  ‘“Three-blow”. How admirably accurate! How numerate. How forensic.’

  ‘Thank you, sir.’

  ‘That’s how people at your rank think, isn’t it, Harpur? You call it “the nitty-gritty”.’

  ‘I went to evening classes in nitty-grittyness.’

  ‘All credit to you for getting the count exactly right – not one, not seven, not twenty-four. Three.’

  ‘Thank you, sir.’

  ‘But I’m afraid I have to think more broadly, more deeply, Col. Polity – how society works, its pluses, its minuses. I have to focus on polity.’