Play Dead

by Bill James

  SIXTEEN

  Iles told Harpur he’d enjoyed The Revenger’s Tragedy so much he thought he’d ‘get along there again for the final performance’ before it moved on to another city. The Assistant Chief said he’d ‘like to give certain nuances in the drama a re-run’ because he might not have appreciated them fully on his first visit. He maintained that, when a writer or director or actor had clearly taken care over nuances, it was surely an obligation for audience members to respond gratefully and, if necessary, with a second, belt-and-braces attendance, particularly when the nuances had survived for so long. To treat them offhandedly would amount to a kind of contempt for history and for the nation’s precious cultural stock.

  ‘What kind of nuances, sir?’ Harpur said. Naturally, he wondered if they centred on revenge methods and might suggest to the Assistant Chief new, gaff-proof ways of paying back Harpur for that lovely, loving, illicit interlude with Iles’s wife, Sarah. Harpur didn’t want to get deballed or strangled by a nuance.

  ‘You ask what kind, Col, in your thorough-going, fact-obsessed style. Answer: nuances of a theatrical kind, this being, you see, a play in a theatre.’

  ‘Ah, yes. That seems to follow. I can imagine Tourneur with two U’s, or Middleton with two D’s, saying to himself as he worked on the script, “I believe there ought to be a nuance just here in Act Three,” and putting one in with his quill. He’d think: “Good box office. People will keep coming back for another chance to enjoy it.”’

  The ACC’s plan for a repeat experience at The King’s gave Harpur several worries, of course. Iles’s earlier trip there had apparently gone off peacefully enough. Harpur hadn’t heard of any disturbance, neither heckling nor assaults and/or breakages. But there would be possible trouble from renewed contact with the play and the players. Iles might come to feel a special closeness to them through this familiarity and decide he must, as a compelling esprit de corps matter, take part in some fashion - incorporate himself and his Biro gash into the violent stage action, with his own added dialogue and cuckold’s near-screams.

  It would be comparable with his famous behaviour sometimes when attending in an official role the funeral of someone killed by criminals. He could become moved to such a pitch that he’d try to take over the service, so it could benefit directly from his total personal involvement, occasionally manhandling a vicar or minister or rabbi or priest to the side, or down pulpit steps, if they resisted and attempted to keep control. He’d told Harpur once he always felt uneasy about having to duff up someone in robes but it could be unavoidable ‘should a fucking holy Joe get uppity as though he or she had a suzerainty over the realms of death.’

  This evening, while Iles was at The King’s, Harpur went alone to the headquarters room they’d been allocated by Rhys Dathan, the Chief, and on the computer screen began to scroll through the Incidents and Duties Log for the night Mallen-Parry was killed. It might help get an identification of the helmeted officers glimpsed in the distance by Hill-Brandon on the Elms short-cut path. The machine’s memory held a data file for each twenty-four hours, with names and brief notes of assignments and outcomes for all on duty. Before Iles left for the nuancing top-up he told Harpur not to dwell too long on any log entry. ‘They’ll probably have our computer linked to another and will be tuning in on your search and noting what interests us. We don’t want to forewarn them, do we?’

  ‘Which them?’

  ‘Exactly, Col. Them.’

  The sift would not be simple. Harpur couldn’t expect the log to record an order for two officers to install themselves on the Elms site’s illegal but established path between Ritson Mall and Guild Square. This ploy would be coded, disguised - supposing it had been included at all, and supposing Hill-Brandon’s memory of events accurate. Harpur figured that what he should be looking for were task descriptions notable above all for their vagueness, and their freedom from need to make traceable contact with members of the public, because there shouldn’t be any contact. The descriptions would be deliberately concocted to lead nowhere much, and to bring no awkward repercussions from any inquiry; from any post-killing investigation; from any post-killing investigator, such as Harpur.

  So, although the two officers would have been very specifically ordered on to the path to frighten Parry-Mallen off it, that’s not how their role would be labelled in the log. Whoever gave them the order was part of the villainy and committed to that evening’s murderous deception. The two officers would also be in the plot and aware of the awaiting, off-piste ambush.

  There’d been these two uniformed men on the path together, but this didn’t mean a single mention in the log would cover both, and a single opaque, fictitious summary of their job that night. The pair would most likely appear in the list separately, with entirely different supposed undertakings, and in locations nowhere near each other. Police who’d often cracked crooks’ conspiracies during their careers had seen where the flaws and weaknesses might lie, and knew how to guard against them. The planning had to be smart and unskimped.

  Harpur reckoned he could ignore some categories on the log. These would include any call to a domestic disturbance when a full, checkable address would have to be recorded. Arrests could also be discounted because if the entries had been real, all kinds of subsequent detail and paperwork would follow. Likewise motoring offences, pub fights, grievous bodily harm incidents, rapes and noise complaints. He excluded all entries involving women officers. Hill-Brandon had spoken of the two on the path as male, and even in the dark and at a distance, he surely wouldn’t mistake gender. Women officers didn’t wear helmets.

  The work was tedious but to some extent it heartened him: here was an anatomy of one police force’s constant guardianship of the citizens on its patch in a multitude of ways during a typical twenty-four hours. It was the whole police function in miniature. The service had developed quite a bit since the days of those early law enforcers, the Bow Street Runners. And yet a police force could still be corrupted, and the exhaustive, seemingly impressive log might hold major, disguised elements of that corruption.

  Harpur had to crack these disguises, if he could. The name was given of the sergeant or inspector or above who handed out each assignment on the night and signed it off. This would obviously provide an important lead if the two officers on the path, and their supposed job, or jobs could be identified.

  Harpur got what he regarded as the possibles down to seven. Three were security surveys on commercial and industrial estates; two ordered patrols of tarting activity in a district where, apparently, there’d been complaints from householders; two wanted examinations of vehicle licences on street-parked cars to ensure they were present and up-to-date. These were duties that would entail full reports eventually, but all of them could have been carried out before or after the Elms path stint; or even done under the assumed names of the path two by off-duty personnel who were in on the racket, and on the slaughter tactics. Because of Iles’s warning about possible electronic snooping, Harpur didn’t linger on the seven but made quick notes of the names and the listed objectives.

  Did any of the task descriptions sound phoney, made-up? Back at home a few weeks ago Denise had tried to teach him those skills in seeing what might lie hidden in a group of words. She called this ‘deconstruction’. It was the kind of thing she did on one of her university courses, apparently: the breaking up of bits of literature to discover what they really added up to behind the obvious. Harpur had never fully trusted words to do the job they seemed made for, and he’d been glad to hear from Denise that in this particular game they weren’t even called words but ‘signifiers’. That is, they were letters on a page or sounds in a voice and didn’t have much to do with meaning at all. He tried this now on some of the seven log items. Did Kerb crawling abated notably on my perceived arrival in Stapleford Road sound right? How could he know it ‘abated notably’ if he’d only just arrived? He wouldn’t have seen what it was like previously. What made him sure his arrival had been ‘per
ceived’? His evidence for this must be the alleged drop in kerb crawling. But this wasn’t a certainty. What you had here was two very dodgy statements trying to prop each other up.

  This kind of coaching in language tricks by Denise amounted to only one of her strong aspects. Obviously, the greatest of these was that she fancied Harpur. Also, (1) her snoring hardly ever reached a decibel level that kept him awake, and (2) Harpur’s children adored her, regarded her as family and took special delight when she was present in the house at Arthur Street for breakfast. They reckoned this proved she belonged. Breakfast for them was a signifier, especially when she’d cooked it herself, but even when Harpur had done it.

  He thought Iles might want to start the next move in his investigation with a face-to-face call on the Stapleford Road officer, PC Alan Silver, and with the officer who sent him, Sergeant Graham Quick. It was the kind of potentially tough interviewing the ACC liked and excelled at. However, the sergeant had initiated one of the other expeditions, too, and the result was described in words so much like standard police jargon that it might be genuine. This concerned a security tour of the Patterson-Nelmes industrial estate and the summary concluded very satisfactory enhanced outer overhead lighting units in both number and wattage since previous inspection when eleven vulnerable shadow areas were identified. So, maybe this was an authentic policing visit and Sergeant Quick and his boys authentic, too, untouched by the kill-Parry scheme, ignorant of it, intent only on kerb crawlers and enhanced security lighting numerically and wattagely.

  Harpur was into more scrolling when someone knocked gently on the door. He had locked it from the inside. Perhaps Iles had changed his mind about the theatre. Or the play might have been sold out. Harpur shouted: ‘Be with you now,’ and cleared the screen. He crossed the room, unlocked and opened the door. Rhys Dathan, the Chief, stood there, solid and grave. He had on chino-style beige trousers, blue and white training shoes, a check shirt, no tie, a navy pea jacket and rat-catcher’s flat cap. Harpur thought he looked like a debt collector or bailiff, and one hale and muscled enough to carry away an onyx table if you failed to pay up now, on the spot. Most probably he didn’t greatly like having to knock on a door in his own headquarters and wait while someone inside considered opening it; and someone not even part of his outfit - in fact, someone sent to do his outfit big, radical damage.

  ‘I heard you were here, Harpur,’ the Chief said.

  Reception could have informed him. Or, as Iles had suggested, there might be another computer somewhere in the building following Harpur’s work on the log. But, in that case, would Dathan have come on this visit and made the spying obvious? Perhaps Reception had orders to let him know whenever Harpur and/or Iles went to their headquarters room. His clothes suggested Dathan had been called from home and had picked up the cap on his way out. In his right hand he carried what looked like a sheet from a stationery pad with several lines of writing in ink on it. Harpur felt that the stress on ‘you’ - ‘I heard you were here’ - seemed to show Dathan had tabs on him, but wanted, also, to know where Iles might be, and doing what. This was a totally wrong interpretation of Dathan’s meaning, though. He already knew Iles’s whereabouts and activities: knew more about Iles’s activities than Harpur did. ‘I’ve had a bell from The King’s theatre,’ he said.

  Oh, God. ‘Yes, sir?’ Harpur said. He smiled a cooperative smile, to signal he felt happy to take part in literary chat, if necessary.

  ‘I know the manager there - run into him now and then at cultural things and so on. He has my private number since we both helped run a charity campaign last year. The phone message was to do with Mr Iles. The manager recognized him from previous media publicity.’

  ‘Yes, a lot of publicity then.’

  ‘The manager thought it best to get through to me personally and I’m damn glad of that. Damn glad.’

  Oh, God. ‘Something sensitive, sir?’

  ‘Uncomfortable.’

  A deliberately non-alarmist reply? Oh, God. ‘I believe Mr Iles was going to the play at that theatre this evening,’ Harpur said. ‘A work by Tourneur. Or possibly Middleton. Scholars squabble about the authorship. I’ve heard there’s the same kind of dispute about Shakespeare - did he do the stuff or Bacon?’ Harpur gabbled, needing time to get himself ready for whatever came next.

  Dathan stepped into the room and glanced about. There were two beige moquette-covered easy chairs and three adjustable, armless secretarial swivel perches. The computer and four telephone sets stood on a metal table that occupied the centre of the room. Two grey, lockable filing cabinets were against one wall, with a vase of artificial dahlias on top. Harpur thought they must have been provided, perhaps on Dathan’s orders, to make the room look a little less stark. Harpur considered them pretty good imitations. He detested the smell of real dahlias, anyway.

  Dathan had his back to Harpur for a minute or so, but then turned and put his gaze hard into Harpur’s eyes. Harpur felt very conscious of a squareness theme: Dathan’s face generally, his jaw especially, and even his neck, eye-sockets and nostrils. The stance he took reminded Harpur of nose-to-nose encounters between two boxers at a televised weigh-in, trying to outstare each other, and so suggest a grudge match, to boost ticket sales. He must have been great at interrogation when a detective. Dathan would shove that massive, ungenial phiz forward and grunt at a suspect, ‘I don’t like you.’ And the suspect would feel he’d better try to change that, and so he’d sing.

  ‘An incident. Or, more accurately, incidents,’ Dathan said, very clipped, very definite.

  Oh, God. ‘The Revenger’s Tragedy,’ Harpur replied. ‘Mr Iles is very interested in the period, regards it as remarkably fruitful. All drama is dear to him, but that century’s in particular. It’s been so since he was a boy. He had quite an education. And the theatre is often his way of unwinding after a tough day. An escape into his favourite fiction with costume and wigs and buskins.’

  ‘The manager said there’s a line early in Act One about a character’s abused heart strings being turned into fret.’ Dathan glanced at the piece of paper and read for total accuracy like consulting his notebook in the witness box: ‘“Turns my abused heart strings into fret”.’

  Oh, God. ‘Mr Iles likes these plays for their directness and force of language. He finds the drama more substantial than, say, Coronation Street on TV, successful though that might be of its own kind; and possibly generations in the future will look back on Coronation Street as someone like Mr Iles looks back on The Revenger’s Tragedy.’

  ‘He stood up, in the stalls.’ Dathan consulted the paper again. ‘Row Four, central where there’d luckily been a single unsold seat. Just stood there, unmoving.’

  ‘Spoiling the view for those behind him. I can see that might be an irritation,’ Harpur said. Oh, God, let this be the whole story.

  Dathan said: ‘But then he called out in response to the abused heart strings into fret line, “Ah, don’t I know how you feel - don’t I though? However, is anyone going to write a play about my heart strings, my fret? Some sodding hope!”’

  ‘Mr Iles can get caught up in skilled storytelling. It’s as if he’s taken over momentarily. He sees and hears nuances that might not be obvious to others. In a way, it’s a gift.’

  ‘The actor speaking the line - playing a Duke, I believe - the actor was, as you’d expect, thrown by this interruption. But, very creditably, he gathered himself and came what they call, I think, “out of character”. He addressed Mr Iles direct.’ Dathan read again: ‘“Sit down and shut the fuck up, sonny boy.”’

  ‘Some of these old plays, and the shape of the stage, actually invite participation from the audience, I gather,’ Harpur said. Denise had spoken to him about that not long ago. ‘An apron stage, it’s called, jutting out.’

  ‘Perhaps Mr Iles was himself thrown by this rejoinder,’ the Chief replied. ‘He did resume his seat and became quiet. The play proceeded.’

  ‘These moments of aberration are generally on
ly that - moments,’ Harpur said.

  ‘As you would expect, the manager and others kept a watch on him from then on. I’m not clear at which disturbance the manager recognized Iles.’

  Oh, God. There was going to be another disturbance, or other disturbances. The Chief had said ‘incidents’, plural. Incidents, the plural, were more likely than an incident, singular, from Iles. One of Harpur’s children had mentioned the word ‘exponential’ to him the other day and he’d discovered from Google that it meant increasing at a more and more rapid pace: exactly how incidents could be for Iles.

  ‘Does Maud Logan Clatworthy know about this kind of thing, Harpur?’ Dathan asked.

  ‘Home Office Maud?’

  ‘Do we have another Maud Logan Clatworthy?’

  ‘Which kind of thing are you referring to, sir?’ Harpur replied.

  ‘These aberrations. These seemingly ungovernable spasms. Is she sure this is the type of person to conduct a very complex, delicate investigation of another force - to have actual charge of such an investigation?’

  ‘I think she’d be prepared to put up with Mr Iles’s minor foibles and eccentricities as long as she and the Home Office have the use of his remarkable brain and mind.’