Play Dead

by Bill James

  He didn’t have an address for Veronica Pastor, who sometimes gave Ivan shelter, but recalled she’d said something about living in Kitchener Street with her sister. Harpur got the electoral register and found an entry for Veronica and Jeanette Pastor at 26B, probably a flat. His local map gave Kitchener Street in the Arabella district of the city and he drove there now. It looked a quiet, keep-one’s-self-to-one’s-self area, with what appeared to be a couple of Housing Association apartment blocks among semis.

  Number 26B was on the second floor of a building with its name board outside: Ashley Court. When he rang the bell at 26B he was conscious of being examined via a one-way judas hole in the door. Then he heard a man on the other side laugh aloud and cry out, ‘It’s Mr Harpur, would you believe? In person.’ The door was flung open and Ivan Hill-Brandon in shirt sleeves and wide red braces stood there grinning. Always fresh faced, he radiated extreme good cheer now. Harpur thought Ivan could have advertised a brand of pick-me-up tonic wine, or a bracing seaside holiday resort in the Hastings area. Behind him were Veronica and another woman, older, plainer, bulkier, tighter-lipped, who must be Veronica’s sister, Jeanette.

  Hill-Brandon said: ‘Well, some surprise, Colin! I was going to get in touch, but now, here you are.’ His voice suited his hearty appearance - warm and booming; the voice of somebody who had beaten bad times and would beat any more that arrived. Harpur remembered from school the title of a poem, ‘The Song of a Man Who has Come Through’. It could have been about Hill-Brandon today. One line from the poem had stuck: ‘Oh for the wonder that bubbles into my soul.’ As a child, Harpur had liked that notion of a soul with bubbles in. He had understood bubbles and they’d made the soul a less mysterious and difficult item. Hill-Brandon might have bubbles in his soul now.

  ‘Come in, do,’ Veronica said. ‘But how did you find us?’

  ‘He’s police, isn’t he?’ Jeanette said. ‘They know the lot, but don’t always tell it, or half of it. They have their methods, some legal.’

  They went into a large, very tidy, square sitting room. ‘I’ll make tea, shall I?’ Ivan said. He seemed to bubble with confidence - yes, bubble, at ease with his new status as man of the house/apartment. Perhaps this ability to adapt fast to new surroundings came to people who spent a lot of time in unfinished houses or bins of old newspapers. They’d learned how to take command of the accommodation, like victorious troops settling into a captured town. There wouldn’t be much to challenge their authority, at least as far as the bins were concerned; and the same for houses on Elms, as long as you got there early.

  Veronica looked delighted that Ivan felt so comfortable in 26B. Harpur saw something sweet and exhilarating in their partnership. The braces and shirt sleeves proclaimed happy domesticity, especially the harsh redness and crude width of the braces: at 26B Ivan could forget about appearance and Barbour jacket smartness. He belonged. He could relax, have a laugh, make the tea. OK, so Jeanette might not like it. So, fuck Jeanette. Or not, even when Veronica was away running the cross-Channel ferry karaoke, or whatever, and Jeanette and he had the flat to themselves. Harpur found it hard to see any family similarity between Veronica and Jeanette, either in features or attitudes. He hated the cliché notion that plainness caused crabbiness. But Jeanette was crabby.

  ‘Where have you been, Ivan?’ Harpur replied. ‘We were worried.’

  ‘I met someone,’ Hill-Brandon said.

  ‘Yes?’ Harpur said.

  ‘That can happen when I’m making one of my walks across the city,’ Hill-Brandon said. ‘I’m something of a well-known sight.’

  ‘Certainly,’ Harpur said.

  ‘Ivan tells us something bizarre happened to him on return,’ Veronica said, as though he needed help with his story - might be too shy and hesitant. She wanted to care for him. Harpur thought again that they’d built a nice relationship.

  ‘You’ll ask, “Whom did you meet, Ivan?”’ Hill-Brandon said.

  ‘Yes,’ Harpur said, ‘whom did you?’

  ‘This is a guy from my shop days,’ Hill-Brandon said. ‘Someone I sold electrical stuff to and fitted for him. Now, he wanted to rewire. Could I handle it? I’d be cheaper than some of the others. He’d get all the necessaries. Of course, I couldn’t supply them now - no shop. But I can do the work. So, I go. He can put me up in the spare room for a couple of days. All meals free.’

  ‘Congratulations,’ Harpur said. ‘You were quick to spot a chance.’

  ‘Work over, rewiring complete, I leave his home. Veronica wasn’t here till today, so naturally I went to Elms last night,’ Ivan said.

  ‘I looked there the night before,’ Harpur said.

  ‘No, I was still at my customer’s house then.’

  ‘You had money for the work?’ Harpur asked.

  ‘Yes, of course. What is it the Bible says - “the labourer is worthy of his hire”?’

  ‘But you still slept in the Elms house?’ Harpur said.

  Ivan looked sheepish. ‘I’ve got so I don’t like paying for lodgings or bed and breakfast. I hang on to the cash for when the weather gets really bad, when I might need to pay for a room.’

  ‘You mustn’t worry about that any longer,’ Veronica said. The words came out terse and definite and affectionate. ‘You’re installed here now, Ivan, rain, sun or snow and whether I’m at home or not. Jeanette won’t mind.’

  Harpur was uncertain of that.

  Jeanette said: ‘I’m not averse. If there’s real need. If he’s genuinely in possible danger.’

  Yes, he was genuinely in possible danger. He had some information and might have been seen hobnobbing with Harpur in the caff near police headquarters. And Hill-Brandon would be spottable easily enough on Elms or climbing into a Tesco Newspapers And People Only bin. ‘Why we felt troubled,’ Harpur said.

  Unpleasant surreal prints in silver frames decorated the sitting room’s walls, blatant mauve a sort of theme colour, linking all of them. Possibly when Hill-Brandon had absolutely established himself here he could have these mistakes dumped, if possible retaining the frames for saner pictures. Harpur wondered which of the sisters chose this dud stuff. He assumed it must be only one of them. No two or more people could deliberately and jointly favour it. He hoped Jeanette picked the art and that, out of kindness and some pity, Veronica had allowed her to display them, perhaps for a very carefully defined, limited period.

  The furniture was a mix of styles, and OK. Perhaps the two of them had lived separately for a while and then decided on merger. Their beige Victorian or Edwardian chaise longue stood next to a white, assemble-yourself, chipboard book case. Harpur glanced at a few of the titles. They appeared to be mainly about self-analysis, self-improvement, self-assertion. Harpur approved of these kinds of books. They had an obviously positive purpose, not like some of the volumes his late wife had in their sitting room with off-putting names on their spines such as Urn-Burial. Did he have that correct? He had disposed of all the books a decent time after her death, except for one on boxing, The Sweet Science, and the diary of some writer called Orton. Harpur’s daughter, Jill, wanted them both kept.

  Hill-Brandon made the tea and he, Jeanette and Harpur sat in chintz easy chairs. Veronica took the chaise longue. Harpur said: ‘Veronica mentioned that something bizarre occurred when you returned, Ivan. What was that?’

  ‘Yes, very bizarre,’ he said.

  ‘People walking about on a building site in the night, I fail to comprehend it,’ Jeanette said.

  ‘I’m sure this was not arranged, planned, between the two women,’ Hill-Brandon replied. ‘Fluke.’

  ‘I don’t see how that matters,’ Jeanette said.

  ‘A fluke bringing them together at the house, and a further fluke that I should be sleeping upstairs, when for several nights I’d been elsewhere,’ Hill-Brandon said. ‘And the fluke went further, would you believe? I couldn’t get into eighteen or sixteen Davant - people already there. So, this was fourteen. I didn’t like that, but it was necessary.’r />
  ‘We were concerned,’ Harpur said.

  ‘Yes, I’m sorry I couldn’t have let you and Vron know,’ he said. ‘But it was quite an unexpected job offer. My mobile’s uncharged. I felt I had to go. These are rather constrained times in the job market. We freelances have to grab what comes. In the police, different. A career structure.’

  ‘The public purse,’ Jeanette said.

  ‘Which two women, Ivan?’ Harpur replied.

  ‘Early evening, though dark,’ Hill-Brandon said. ‘I wasn’t asleep but—’

  ‘You like to get established before any rush,’ Harpur said.

  ‘In a property, yes.’

  ‘But this time some other squatter had beaten you to eighteen and sixteen.’

  ‘I had to make the best of things. I didn’t feel like trekking across the town.’

  ‘To Tesco,’ Veronica said.

  ‘Right,’ Hill-Brandon said.

  ‘That’s very much the past now,’ Veronica said. ‘Both. Either.’

  ‘Thanks, Vron,’ Hill-Brandon said.

  ‘If it’s necessary,’ Jeanette said.

  ‘The two women?’ Harpur asked.

  ‘Talking,’ Hill-Brandon said. ‘At first. Yes, talking,’

  ‘Talking near the house? You could make out what was said?’ Harpur asked.

  ‘The situation seemed very like that time when you and Mr Iles were there, though not the scrapping, of course,’ Hill-Brandon said.

  ‘Scrapping?’ Jeanette asked. ‘Two police officers? Two high-up police officers?’

  ‘They weren’t high-up that night, were you, Col? Ground level.’ Hill-Brandon chuckled a while, fondly. ‘Like a tussle, though of possible serious intent. Not a punch or thump fight. Mr Harpur was underneath. There’s a little gap for looking out from the bedroom where someone has broken off a corner of the boarding. Of course, there was no boarding when the shooting took place.’

  ‘You’ll never have to peep from there again, Ivan,’ Veronica said.

  ‘Thanks, Vron.’

  ‘It’s undignified,’ Veronica said. ‘You’re worth so much more than that.’

  ‘They were down, fighting on the mud?’ Jeanette asked.

  ‘Yes. But, mind, I don’t mean the two women were this time,’ Hill-Brandon said.

  ‘No, I understand that,’ Jeanette said. ‘But what was Mr Harpur doing on the ground on that earlier occasion?’ Jeanette said. ‘You described it as “underneath”. What does that mean? Underneath what? Whom?’

  ‘Yes, underneath,’ Hill-Brandon replied.

  ‘Underneath Mr Iles?’ Jeanette asked.

  ‘Both fully clothed, obviously,’ Hill-Brandon said. ‘Throughout.’

  ‘Did you recognize either of the women?’ Harpur asked.

  ‘Not at first,’ Hill-Brandon said.

  ‘But later you got a better view, did you?’ Harpur said. ‘Who, then?’

  ‘Not a better view. I could see both of them OK. A moon. One quite a bit older than t’other.’

  ‘How old?’ Jeanette said. ‘We’ve only had an outline of these events previously.’

  ‘One late thirties, the other forties,’ Hill-Brandon replied.

  ‘Mature women! What are they doing there at all?’ Jeanette said.

  ‘That’s the point, isn’t it?’ Hill-Brandon replied.

  ‘What point?’ Jeanette said.

  ‘As to why they were there,’ Hill-Brandon said.

  ‘Why were they?’ Jeanette said. ‘Veronica and I have heard some of the tale, Mr Harpur, but I still can’t fathom it all.’

  ‘After a time you recognized both?’ Harpur asked.

  ‘One,’ Hill-Brandon said.

  ‘And you didn’t actually recognize her as such, did you, Ivan?’ Veronica said. ‘Not as such.’

  ‘As such?’ Harpur said.

  ‘Assisted. Very much so: she spoke her name,’ Hill-Brandon replied, ‘and then I remembered pictures of her in the Press and on TV at the time.’

  ‘What time?’ Harpur said.’

  ‘The murder on Elms,’ Hill-Brandon said.

  ‘So, what name?’ Harpur said, but he could guess.

  ‘Mallen. Iris Mallen. She told the other woman who she was, and then I recalled the pictures,’ Hill-Brandon said.

  ‘The undercover officer’s wife, widow,’ Veronica said. ‘And she was there for a purpose, wasn’t she, Ivan, a quite definite purpose?’ She obviously felt proud of his sudden, accidental connection with the case, like congratulating a child on its first swimming strokes. This was more than a bit patronizing, but Harpur still sensed, all the same, that the two had developed an exceptionally happy relationship. Good for you, Ivan!

  ‘Purpose?’ Jeanette said. ‘Well, of course there’d be a purpose if she drove all those miles. But what species of purpose? As Ivan tells it, a stupid, pointless purpose; in fact, no real purpose at all, just sentimentality and gush.’

  ‘Oh, I wouldn’t say that,’ Veronica replied.

  ‘Naturally you wouldn’t,’ Jeanette said. ‘For your own reasons, Veronica, you want to squeeze every drop of drama out of this incident. It’s absurd. It’s slightly pathetic, if I may say.’

  ‘You have said,’ Hill-Brandon replied.

  ‘Surely some things can take on a significance beyond their actual, obvious self,’ Veronica said.

  ‘We’re into semiotics, are we?’ Jeanette said.

  ‘A sort of symbolism,’ Veronica said.

  ‘Oh, my!’ Jeanette said.

  ‘What was it?’ Harpur said. ‘Symbolic of what?’

  ‘This won’t sound very significant,’ Hill-Brandon said.

  ‘Because it isn’t,’ Jeanette said.

  ‘Never mind. What?’ Harpur replied.

  ‘A Biro,’ Hill-Brandon said.

  Harpur, shocked, did full-scale puzzlement while he rallied his wits. ‘A Biro?’

  ‘Symbolic because it used to be the undercover man’s, didn’t it, Ivan,’ Veronica said.

  ‘Fatuous,’ Jeanette replied.

  ‘She put it there not long after the trial, I imagine, partly to remind her of the exact spot where her husband was found by the two shoppers, as reported then,’ Hill-Brandon said. ‘Stuck it into the ground like a little flag pole, without the flag, or a surveyor’s peg. A green Biro.’

  ‘Green?’ Harpur said.

  ‘She said he liked writing in green,’ Hill-Brandon explained. ‘Some do, I know.’

  ‘Affectation,’ Jeanette said.

  ‘Apparently, he’d written a green ink birthday gift message on their son’s new mountain bike,’ Hill-Brandon said. ‘Bikes are green in that they don’t pollute.’

  ‘Oh, blimey,’ Jeanette said.

  ‘I can see why she’d want to recover and keep it,’ Veronica replied. ‘The estate won’t be in that delayed state for ever. The pen would get buried under a road covering.’

  ‘But Ivan has told us it wasn’t there, anyway,’ Jeanette said.

  ‘No, it wasn’t there,’ Hill-Brandon said. ‘Or she couldn’t find it.’

  ‘So the trip was doubly daft,’ Jeanette said. ‘It would have been ridiculous to come all that way to reclaim it - suppose she had. And the journey and time wasting are even more mad when the Biro can’t be found despite all the effort. And of course it can’t be found. People would have trampled it under: people coming to see the murder house, or just wandering around the estate in case they might want to buy a property one day, or vandals and thieves. The pen would have been in fragments, probably, even if she had found it.’

  ‘I haven’t spoken about one extra aspect to Vron and Jeanette yet, Col,’ Hill Brandon said. ‘I hope you won’t mind if I do.’

  ‘Which?’ Harpur said, knowing, and minding, and ready to shut the sod up if things got really difficult.

  ‘What interested me when she said the pen had gone was - well, in that tussle, as I’ve called it, you and Mr Iles on the ground - in that tussle you seemed to reach down for something
and give Mr Iles quite a jab with it in the cheek. This put an end to the struggle, didn’t it, and I was wondering if—’

  ‘What about the other woman, the older one?’ Harpur replied.

  ‘Jabbed, stabbed, another officer in the face?’ Jeanette said. ‘So, you had the Biro, Mr Harpur. Still have it?’

  ‘Col might have been strangled otherwise,’ Hill-Brandon said.

  ‘My God,’ Jeanette said. ‘And you’re talking about two high rankers who are supposed to be here on a clean-up mission, instead of which they’re trying to kill each other in the mud.’

  ‘This seems to have been play-acting that was carried too far,’ Veronica said. ‘A mock-up situation devised to imitate how things might have gone on the murder night, and this drifting into actuality - near actuality.’

  ‘You mean these two couldn’t tell the difference between theatre and real life?’ Jeanette asked.

  ‘Mr Iles is very keen on theatre, but he can get over-involved in the action,’ Harpur replied. ‘In some ways, it’s an endearing, childlike quality.’

  ‘This child wants to strangle you? This child gets his face gashed?’ Jeanette said.

  ‘I’m only guessing that Col used the Biro to resist Mr Iles,’ Hill-Brandon said.

  ‘Well, Mr Harpur should be able to tell us whether you guess right,’ Jeanette said.

  ‘It’s very touching to find that she wanted to mark the area of ground in that way,’ Harpur replied.