Play Dead

by Bill James

  ‘Yes,’ the ACC replied, ‘a police officer or officers on the path, possibly coming from the Square towards Ritson and therefore about to meet Tom face-to-face.’

  ‘These are bought police, on the take? They belong to the firm?’ Jane asked.

  ‘Certainly,’ Iles said. ‘But Tom wouldn’t know whether they were or not. He’s inside the firm by now, yes, but not familiar with all the intricacies of its workings, all the low-level contacts and contracts. That’s his job as undercover man - to discover the whole extent of the corruption. He’s only just started. And, of course, the firm would be aware which bent cops he did know of. They pick one or two that are strangers to him and tell them to get on the path at the right time and uniformed, walking in the opposite direction to Parry/Mallen.’

  ‘To scare him?’ Jane said.

  ‘To make him switch. Tom’s en route to the killing of the maverick trader, Justin Paul Scray, or believes he is. He probably wouldn’t be keen on this. OK, an undercover cop might have to take part in some criminal doings of the host firm, to preserve cover, but involvement in a murder is too much. Perhaps he’s glad to be delayed. The supposed killing could take place before he arrives, and he’d have a quotable excuse for his lateness on the scene. In any case, he doesn’t want to get spotted by what might be straight cops. He’d be remembered. If Scray is killed in the Square, or near, there’ll be a trawl for anyone seen close to the scene at the right time that night. Tom might get traced and pulled in. Of course, he could explain his way out of that - he tells them he’s an undercover detective, and they can verify it. But there are crooked officers in this police force. What should be secret information regularly leaks from headquarters to Leo Percival Young’s firm. Tom’s mission would be critically weakened, perhaps sunk.

  ‘He is a responsible, conscientious officer and sees he must prevent that. In case the police he spots ahead of him are not part of the conspiracy, Tom realizes he must get off the path, avoid this oncomer, or these oncomers, and take another approach to the Square - an approach brushing against the nascent fourteen Davant. The firm would have calculated he’d behave like that if he felt threatened. Therefore, they supply the threat, and supply the sniper for fourteen’s bedroom window.’

  ‘Yes,’ Jane said. ‘It might be.’

  ‘And only might be,’ Gerald said. ‘Speculative. Strained?’

  ‘“Might be” is the best we can do,’ Iles replied. ‘As in so much of our work. What we do know, and what’s no “might be” is that Parry/Mallen was killed and the shots came from the future fourteen Davant.

  Harpur said: ‘If we can identify this “oncomer”, these “oncomers”, we have a way into the whole Larkspur racket.’

  ‘Good yet again, Col,’ Iles said.

  Harpur naturally recognized this as semi-slur done up as praise. Perhaps two-thirds slur. It was Iles treating him like a dim pupil whose tiny achievement in seeing the obvious had to be extolled to keep his morale up. Occasionally, Harpur wondered how and why he stuck with loyalty to Iles. But he did. There was compensation to be offered, of course, for what had happened between Harpur and Sarah Iles, the ACC’s wife. Maybe it went further than that, though, and further than Harpur could understand. For instance, he found his behaviour with the Biro after that Elms encounter more or less inexplicable. Harpur hadn’t thrown it away. This was not because he thought the pen might help with self-defence again some time. That would be an absurd idea. Its uses as a weapon were limited. For instance, you wouldn’t have one of those warriors in the Japanese combat film The Seven Samurai armed with a Biro, even if they’d been around then. No, he’d decided it would be disrespectful to Iles, flippant, even callous, to leave the pen in the muck with his blood and possibly bone fragments on - a kind of betrayal, another kind of betrayal. The incident on Elms was private between Harpur and the ACC. It must be kept like that. No part of it should be casually ditched where it could get trampled, maybe crushed, in the indeterminate soil of the stymied property site.

  Harpur felt no need to say he still had the Biro. No need? It went further than that. In Harpur’s view to admit he’d kept it would be a kind of gloating/crowing. And he’d avoid iconizing it: no reverencing the small plastic tube like a holy relic. Harpur had washed the Biro and placed it in one of the sealable cellophane envelopes he carried for items of evidence. It was in his suitcase back at the hotel. He thought there might come moments ahead when he felt down, depressed, and would bring out the Biro to restore his spirits by recollecting its special, adapted service. Ultimately, though, the pen was just something that figured in an episode, a sort of theatrical prop. But it should not simply get discarded at the end of the performance.

  If Iles ever did grow curious about it, Harpur would be willing to let him see the Biro in peaceful conditions, such as at the hotel or back home in the ACC’s suite; and fine if Iles wanted to make something profound and emblematic of the Biro and its odd transformation, from workaday green communicator to chiv. Harpur wouldn’t ridicule or even interrupt that kind of mouthing. ACC rank meant jabber. Iles was in a great, continuing tradition. Harpur always tried not to carry over grudges against him. He accepted that Iles had good cause for his occasional husbandly rages, even to the extent of brutal violence.

  After the 14 Davant shoeing, Harpur’s balls had swollen up pretty well equally for a time, but they’d begun to subside nicely, also at level pace. He reckoned he must have a sweetly balanced metabol-ism. It no longer hurt so much to piss. He could have bicycled without saddle pain. Perhaps Iles had aimed to neuter him once and for all, as a generous aid to chastity. Harpur was more or less certain that wouldn’t work.

  FIVE

  In the London newsroom of the Epoch, one of its star investigative reporters, David Lee Cass, was talking to his boss and editor, Philip White.

  ‘Daisy says that her infant boss—’

  ‘Meaning Maud? Maud Clatworthy?’

  ‘Maud, yes. Daisy says Maud doesn’t think much of the way things ended up in that building site case - execution of the undercover lad. She’s asked the same pair of cops who did the previous dig to go back and dig some more. But deeper. Or, to put it another way, higher. They’re already there.’

  ‘You want me to send you back, too?’

  ‘If it comes to new prosecutions, everyone will have the story. We might be able to break it sooner. Potentially a very juicy exclusive, Philip - high-rank police corruption, cwtching up for gain to one of the drugs gangs.’

  ‘So, Daisy’s still leaking, is she?’

  ‘With discrimination, as ever.’

  ‘Why hasn’t she been panicked into silence?’

  ‘By what’s happening at The Sun, you mean?’

  ‘By what’s happening at The Sun and thereabouts. James Murdoch and Rebekah Brooks resign from big boardroom jobs. Staff arrested for bribery. Dawn calls at their homes by troupes of detectives. Or alleged bribery - paying police and other public officials for confidential stuff. “Entrenched criminality” and “a culture of illegal payments” - that’s a couple of the milder phrases I’ve heard to describe it. The bribed as well as the bribers are in the frame.’

  ‘We’re not The Sun, though, are we, Philip? We’re Epoch, a decent, well-behaved broadsheet national newspaper run by honourable editors such as yourself.’

  ‘And its decent and well-behaved broadsheet national newsroom houses a reporter who criminally buys Home Office secrets from a section head’s personal assistant. How d’you word the douceur on your expenses sheet, Dave? Or perhaps it would be better I don’t know.’

  ‘“Gratuity to special source.”’

  ‘Will that fool anyone, if the shit starts to fly? You’d have to cough names.’

  ‘Reporters don’t cough names of special sources. It’s why special sources are called special sources.’

  ‘Sun management handed over all sorts of information about their special sources to the police.’

  ‘Management here wouldn’t do
that, Phil, would they?’

  ‘Who knows?’

  ‘You?’

  ‘No. I can’t tell what our lawyers would say. The Sun boardroom obviously had the jitters, scared they’d get done for hiding evidence. It could happen here.’

  ‘As a last resort, we’d plead “in the public interest”. That’s genuine. Daisy wouldn’t do it otherwise. She believes disclosure is a kind of holy duty. And we have a duty to respond, don’t we? In the public interest.’

  ‘Magic phrase.’

  ‘But legit.’

  ‘Maybe. A “public interest” defence works for disobeying the Data Protection Act. I’m not sure it does for bribery. Isn’t it that dodgy proposition, the end justifies the means?’

  ‘Some of that, yes. Plus, admittedly, Daisy’s getting old. She frets about her future. Huge government cuts in civil service funding. It’s no longer “Sit on your arse for fifty years and hang your hat on a pension”. Or not such a grand pension, anyway. Hers is possibly OK, but she’d like to build a reserve, just in case. Salaries are frozen and her job’s not entirely safe. She’s on her own since hubby hopped it with the nursing sister. Daisy follows ice hockey here and abroad - Canada especially. It’s her substitute for sex. But dearer. Pucks not fucks.’

  ‘They managed a conviction for the undercover murder, didn’t they?’

  ‘Not one that satisfies Maud. Small potatoes. I’ve got a download here of her report up the line to the Home Secretary. It details where the original investigation fell hopelessly short, in her view, and suggests the reopening of inquiries. It’s headed, “Larkspur: Stage Two”. You can see she’s thinking of it as a continuing operation. There might be additional stages. And she sticks to the name coding. It’s still active.’

  ‘But Daisy, her sidekick, doesn’t give a monkey’s about security and coding, does she? Crazy.’

  ‘Public interest takes precedence.’

  ‘Ah.’

  ‘That’s how she sees it. How we should see it, Philip, surely.’

  ‘I’ll try.’

  ‘We mustn’t get left behind. We might not be the only paper Daisy talks to.’

  ‘But you said exclusive.’

  ‘Of course, I hope so, but—’

  ‘That’s the trouble with sources.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘They can spout in all directions.’

  ‘We’ve had some good page-one tales from her - the double adulterous Minister of State; the MI6 woman’s suicide.’

  ‘Were those in the public interest?’

  ‘Well, the public were interested in them.’ Cass liked to get mildly jokey with White. There was a danger of some pretentiousness and pomp infecting the tone when newspaper men or women began to talk about ‘investigative’ assignments. They liked to kid themselves they were hard-edged, indomitable, relentless and, of course, incorruptible. Some of them behaved as if they were born only for such work, committed to it, destined for it, from the cradle, like Mozart with music. David Lee Cass believed in this kind of reporting, and liked it, but he didn’t kid himself that it invariably brought any good and notable changes to the world. In fact, he didn’t ever feel sure his inquiries would yield enough to get published, let alone improve prospects for the human race.

  There were obstacles: the law of libel; the editor’s taste, judgement, caution - above all, caution; the ability of those being investigated to keep their secrets secret from even the most brilliant investigative operator. Investigative didn’t mean lucky. When Cass was going off on one of these stories not long ago, his wife, Louise, a nurse, had snarled: ‘There’s investigative reporting and investigative surgery. I know which digs deeper.’ She hadn’t said anything of the kind this time. Repartee shouldn’t be re-reparteed. But she might be thinking that way again.

  White said: ‘If you trust Daisy, I have to, because I have to trust you.’

  ‘How journalism works.’

  ‘How journalism can come unstuck. Ask Rupert Murdoch.’

  On the train to Larkspur, David Cass looked again at Maud’s Stage Two notes, as forwarded by Daisy Fenton, acting (1) in the public interest, and (2) in Daisy’s private interest, keen to swell her auxiliary retirement pot and ice-hockey fandom fund. Maybe (2) should be (1) - her priority.

  The conviction of Courtenay Jaminel for the murder of Detective Sergeant Tom Mallen closed the most pressing aspect of this case but, in my opinion, must be regarded only as a minor and very limited advance.

  Courtenay Jaminel was a detective inspector in the Larkspur force and a trained marksman. It is improbable that he acted alone. However, he consistently refused under questioning by Assistant Chief Constable Desmond Iles and Detective Chief Superintendent Colin Harpur to provide information about others involved in the Mallen killing. It is assumed he feared reprisals against his family if he spoke.

  ACC Iles and DCS Harpur had been assigned as outside investigators to Larkspur following what appeared in my own and departmental colleagues’ judgement to be undue delay and an absence of commitment in dealing with the death. It was known that Mallen, under his cover name of Parry, had been lured on to the Elms building site, and to a specific area of the Elms building site, by an elaborate, well-prepared plot involving at least three members of a drug-dealing firm. Some kind of cooperative understanding therefore seemed to exist between a criminal gang and certain police officers, including Jaminel. Possibly it still exists. In any case, further investigation is required. I believe that Assistant Chief Iles and DCS Harpur are the best suited officers for this task. They made themselves familiar with Larkspur and had a success in finding the evidence to convict Jaminel, though their success went no further.

  One possible caveat to the selection of ACC Iles and DSC Harpur should be put on record. Although they are capable of working harmoniously and very fruitfully together, there is considerable animosity at times from Iles towards Harpur owing to an affair in the recent past between him and Iles’s wife, Sarah. This animosity can express itself in fits of fierce rage, bordering on what could be mistaken for foaming madness. Mr Iles is particularly vehement about what he regards as the undignified locations where their extra-marital love-making took place, such as ‘fourth-rate rooming joints’ and ‘marly fields’. He seems to feel these tacky settings degrade him, personally, and not just his wife.

  I have witnessed one of his disturbing episodes. There is, perhaps, a danger of physical violence from the ACC. And Harpur would no doubt try to defend himself. A totally innocent word in a conversation can set off one of these spasms. Mr Iles will bring his own, poisoned meaning to it. Sensitive questioning of suspects and witnesses may, it’s true, be pushed askew if the ACC starts upbraiding Harpur during interviews of others and using unusual terms like ‘marly’. Obviously, this tension between the two men could occasionally make combined, effective work difficult or temporarily impossible. However, the fit I witnessed lasted only minutes; this might be typical. And, regardless of these moments of imbalance in Mr Iles, I feel he and DCS Harpur are the best officers to handle this complex and very challenging inquiry.

  And, according to Daisy, this recommendation was accepted, despite the troublesome caveat, and Harpur and Iles had been back at work in Larkspur for at least several days.

  SIX

  For the second time, Cass took a room in the same hotel as Harpur and Iles. That could be a help. It showed harmony of choice: they were the same sort of people as to taste and should therefore get on together OK. That is, if those two didn’t feel hounded and tracked down by him, as reporters did hound and track down. He hoped he might bump into one of them or both in the bar or dining room and engineer a conversation. Cass could switch on smarm, charm, deference, croneyness, radiant integrity, or a couple of these, or three, or four, or a combination or permutations of the lot - whichever seemed most likely to further the blessed cause of an eventual page one David Lee Cass exclusive - ‘see also pages 6-7-8’. The tall headlines, prominent byline and space allocated wo
uld impress even Louise, though she’d offer no flattery. ‘God, the wordage,’ she might say, ‘and to think the discovery of DNA took only one page in a mag.’

  Cass had checked with a local reporter and found Iles and Harpur were installed as before in the Mayfield. Cass had met them then, though he wouldn’t say either had been very friendly. He recalled that chats with the pair were likely to see the apparent main topic - say, murder of an undercover cop, and detectives’ failure to investigate it properly - yes, this apparent main topic would get chucked while, as in Maud’s note, the Assistant Chief screamed and frothed about Harpur having it off with Iles’s wife in unsavoury, conspicuous settings such as a canal tow path, but pronounced ‘carnal’ by Iles. Besides, Harpur and Iles had arrived in Larkspur to take its police force to bits, and they hadn’t wanted some questing, mission-driven, snooping journo to foul things up by trying to do ditto. Those circumstances might be pretty similar now. But Cass took the room in the Mayfield just the same. ‘Well, how pleasant to run into you like this, Mr Iles, Chief Superintendent Harpur. Are we on the same kind of project?’

  He didn’t really know how he’d order his programme of inquiries, but there were two contacts he’d certainly have to make fairly early on. One was with the local reporter who’d told him about the hotel. She acted as a ‘stringer’ for the Epoch, feeding the paper with information and rumour that might turn out strong enough for national coverage. Second, he must see the Larkspur police Press officer, an inspector, to get the approved line on what was happening. This would almost certainly turn out vastly useless, but protocol had to be followed, and occasionally, by accident, one of these designated mouthpieces would say something significant that could be followed up. Very occasionally.

  Cass could anticipate the kind of responses he would get: ‘extremely happy to have the situation examined by the two distinguished officers from outside’; ‘will finally clear the air’; ‘nothing to hide’; ‘certain to draw a line in the sand and enable us to move on’; ‘full and positive cooperation with the two officers’; ‘sometimes a good thing to be given a fresh, uncluttered view of what might be overfamiliar matters to members of the host police force’; ‘assurance that if any faults are found there would be immediate and wholehearted corrective measures applied.’