Play Dead

by Bill James

  ‘This was a remarkable, eminently positive decision by Ivan,’ Veronica replied proudly.

  Hill-Brandon shrugged, as though to say anyone would have done what he did next - or, at least, anyone who frequently camped out in uncompleted houses. ‘I’m not trained in tracking,’ Hill-Brandon said.

  ‘Well, no, you wouldn’t be, would you?’ Jeanette said. ‘You were a shopkeeper, not a Mohican.’

  ‘You followed her?’ Harpur said.

  ‘This is why I called it a remarkable, positive decision by Ivan,’ Veronica said.

  ‘I had a torch of my own, naturally,’ Hill-Brandon replied.

  ‘Basic,’ Veronica said, ‘but no longer vital.’ She waved a hand, taking in the flat and its foul art work and happy jumble of furniture styles. ‘This is your haven, your continuing haven.’

  Wide, red braces were right for havens.

  ‘Thanks, Vron,’ Hill-Brandon said. ‘I had a torch, but, obviously, I didn’t use it while she was in the building. Now, with that light to help, I got quickly downstairs, selected the familiar swing-back board and was soon out into the front garden, as it will eventually be if the Coalition saves the economy. She’s a good way ahead by now, but I can still make her out. Luckily, there weren’t many people using the short-cut, so she wasn’t obscured.’ He turned towards Harpur and shrugged again. ‘But when I say I don’t know much about tracking, what I mean, Col, is the working odds.’

  ‘Working odds?’ Harpur asked.

  ‘The competing risks,’ Hill-Brandon replied.

  ‘I think I see what he means,’ Veronica said.

  ‘In this kind of situation, do I lie well back, in case she turns her head to check behind, or do I get up close so as to be sure I don’t lose her, but with the increased chance I’ll get spotted?’

  ‘I’d say there’s no formula answer to this,’ Veronica replied.

  ‘Ad hoc,’ Jeanette suggested. ‘Pragmatism.’

  ‘Right,’ Harpur said.

  ‘What your instincts tell you is best at the moment,’ Jeanette said.

  ‘Right,’ Harpur said.

  ‘I had the notion there’d be a car parked somewhere around Ritson, and if I could connect her with that I’d have something really hot for Mr Harpur.’

  ‘This is constructive, under-pressure thinking,’ Veronica said.

  ‘Certainly,’ Harpur said.

  ‘I decided on the up-close option,’ Hill-Brandon said.

  ‘Probably correct,’ Harpur said.

  ‘My reasoning is, that call at the Elms was an on-the-side element in her programme, sort of in brackets, if I can put it like that.’

  ‘There’s a famous twentieth-century work called In Parenthesis,’ Jeanette said. ‘It’s ironic.’

  ‘Definitely,’ Harpur replied.

  ‘I didn’t think she’d look back because she was urgently getting on to somewhere else,’ Hill-Brandon said. ‘Getting on, that is, to the main engagement of the evening. And she’d have no reason to think she might be followed, anyway.’

  ‘This strikes me as a very cogent appraisal,’ Veronica said.

  ‘Absolutely,’ Harpur said.

  ‘Getting on to that main engagement in the kind of clothes and shoes which would probably be appropriate for it,’ Hill-Brandon said. ‘I asked myself, might there be deception involved here, by which I mean, was this main engagement supposed to be the only engagement she was attending this evening, and she slipped the Elms visit in secretly? I’d wondered previously, hadn’t I? But a secret from whom? Husband? Partner? These seemed the most likely. And so, another “why?” What made her think the secrecy was necessary? It wasn’t as if she came to the Elms for a romantic, maybe adulterous, meeting. All she did was talk to Mrs Mallen outside, and then conduct a small survey of the house downstairs, abruptly terminated.’

  ‘Ritson,’ Harpur replied. ‘What happened when she reached there?’

  ‘If I’d lain back she’d have disappeared and I’d have failed,’ he said. ‘But as it turned out, I was just in time to see her go into a multi-storey car park.’

  ‘Excellent work, Ivan,’ Veronica said.

  ‘Very difficult for surveillance - tracking, as you call it, Ivan,’ Harpur said. ‘At least, for undisclosed surveillance - too many floors, too many lifts and vehicles cluttering the view, either moving or stationary. You have to stay very near, and, if you’re very near - say, in the same lift - the target is likely to sense there’s something wrong.’

  ‘My solution?’ Hill-Brandon replied. ‘Get to the way out. It should be possible to see this “target” in her vehicle as she left. That was the objective, wasn’t it - note the car reg?’

  ‘This is real single-mindedness, real focus,’ Veronica said. ‘A remarkable grip on relevance, a cutting through to the essential.’

  ‘It’s one of those car parks where the driver pays into a machine and gets a receipt ticket to insert, which lifts the barrier. It takes a little while. I could watch her for a full minute. She’s in a Mini Cooper, yellow lower body, black top.’ He brought a folded piece of paper from his shirt pocket and handed it to Harpur. ‘The reg,’ he said. ‘There’s a little kiosk office near the barrier and I’m behind that, hidden pretty well. The overhead lighting very good. To me, she looked miserable, dissatisfied, as though she felt chicken at giving up on the house inspection - maybe contemptuous of herself for being suited to whatever situation she was driving to now, but poor if she tried something else, something wholly new and strange.’

  ‘You ought to be a psychologist as well as a detective, Ivan,’ Harpur said.

  TWENTY

  ‘We hear from a number of theatre aficionados about strange happenings on Friday last at the staging of that blood-soaked and bawdy Jacobean play, The Revenger’s Tragedy, at the King’s.’

  The local paper - Alert - carried a weekly gossip column called ‘Talk of the Town’, a title borrowed, apparently, from some American magazine. Harpur read the lead story in it across the table to Iles fairly sotto. An Alert archive head and shoulders picture of the ACC, taken on the previous clean-up visit, was let into the bottom half of the column.

  ‘When we refer to strange happenings we do not mean strange happenings within the play itself,’ the writer said, ‘though there are certainly enough of those. No, this concerns the audience, or, more exactly, one member of it, Row 4, fauteuil 12.

  ‘As we understand it, there were two incidents. In the first of these, 4/12 suddenly stood, obscuring the stage for several folk behind, and started an impromptu conversation with one of the play’s characters, the Duke Vendici, or Vindici. The Duke had been complaining in bitter style about his abused heart strings getting turned into fret, the way Dukes do in some dramas.

  ‘Up pops 4/12 to say that, as a matter of fact, he knows just how the Duke feels, and to ask, very ironically, very peeved, whether anyone will write a play about his heart strings, his fret? His answer to his own question requires some tactful dots in a family newspaper, “Some so . . . ing hope!” The Duke, or, rather, the actor cast as the Duke, finds this unscripted, yelled contribution to things very unnecessary and, speaking out to the stalls and gallery, says (more dots are needed) “Sit down and shut the f . . . up, sonny boy.” Sonny boy did, apparently, and the Duke went back to being a Duke. The play proceeded.

  ‘But then comes a second moment of crisis, brought on it seems by a particular line in the play: “the insurrection of his lust.” Upon hearing this, 4/12 barges urgently out into the aisle. He is helped to the bar by staff and given some water in case he is ill. Here, though, he begins to shout about his wife, about nuances, and about an alleged conspiracy to get the actor to give a suggestive, crude mispronunciation of the word “insurrection”, so as to upset 4/12.’

  ‘Col, it has to be either that fucking manager or one of the usherettes who’s leaked this,’ Iles said. ‘Only they knew what went on in the bar as well as in the auditorium. I’m certain nuances were not even hinted at during th
at early discussion of abused heart strings suffering fret.’

  ‘I don’t know, sir. I wasn’t at the theatre then,’ Harpur said.

  ‘Use your common sense, Harpur. Am I likely to disrupt a very moving dramatic sequence in a justly esteemed play by shouting about nuances?’

  They were having breakfast in their hotel’s large, crowded dining room. Iles took only warm water again. He had on one of his brilliantly tailored navy blazers and a foul puce and turquoise striped tie, probably the colours of some elite London club, or a rugby referees’ association. Although Iles often wore this tie or another, just as bad, but featuring yellow and crimson circles, Harpur never asked about them. He knew to do so would be lunacy. He recognized that Iles wore these bits of insignia only to give instant offence. And to react with even the slightest trace of dismay and nausea would tell the ACC his ploy had worked. Maybe he’d sensed in his extraordinary way that something rough might turn up today and had put the tie on this morning to repel anyone who might try to get awkward. ‘Talk of the Town’ got awkward, but couldn’t be repelled.

  ‘There’s a photograph,’ Harpur said.

  ‘Of course there’s a photograph. If you’re doing someone damage you want everybody to know who the someone is. Maud will hear of this publicity. Maud’s bosses will hear of this publicity. Are they going to let her keep me on the investigation? They were already giving her pressure merely on that ponce Dathan’s second-hand description of what happened. Now, it’s from the rooftops.’

  ‘Bungalow rooftops. It’s only a local paper, sir. Maud and her superiors are in London. The tale probably won’t get picked up by the nationals. It’s not weighty enough.’

  Iles took the decibels up a degree or two. ‘What’s not weighty enough?’

  ‘These incidents.’ Harpur had known he was gambling: he wanted to assure Iles there probably wouldn’t be wider publicity, but the only way to do it was by suggesting he didn’t count for much. Iles might choose to accept the offered comfort. He might not: impossible to turn back now, anyway. Harpur said, ‘The London papers are concerned with very hefty topics at present - Syria, the Greek shambles, B Sky B television, the Chancellor of the Exchequer, the Afghan war, for instance.’

  Iles waited until Harpur had finished this list, then said, ‘We are talking, aren’t we, Harpur - I hope I haven’t made an error on this - we are talking, aren’t we, about Desmond Iles, an Assistant Chief Constable, top of his intake at staff college, yet made a monkey of in the backstreet theatre of a shit-hole provincial town by disguised but very present insults in a mercilessly savage play? You say this is not an adequately important topic to interest the national Press? Is that really your view, or are you only misguidedly trying to comfort me?’

  Harpur read some more of the Alert article: ‘What makes these extraordinary events even more extraordinary is the identity of 4/12. He is an Association of Chief Police Officers member here on a mission to investigate and report on the condition of our own police force, his name—’

  ‘Dathan will make super-sure Maud or Maud’s bosses are informed of this grossly disrespectful, indeed, lampooning write-up,’ Iles said. He glanced around the room to see whether anyone else was reading the Alert or eavesdropping on them. Harpur didn’t spot any special interest in the ACC. People might be scared to show it, though. Iles could produce that effect, whether he had on a stuff-the-lot-of-you tie or not.

  But now, in a pleasantly conversational style, he said, ‘I don’t imagine when you were debauching my wife, Harpur, often in degraded and degrading settings, that you realized this would lead one day to difficulties for a work such as The Revenger’s Tragedy, rightly deemed a valued item in the British literary canon.’

  ‘Regardless of doubts about authorship, sir,’ Harpur replied.

  ‘They’ll shut us down, Col,’ Iles said. ‘Or shut me down. The investigation’s dead. We fail to advance. I’ve had a go at those two officers on the path that you identified, Alan Silver and Graham Quick, and more absolute brick wall. They’ve been expertly terrorized or expertly coached in saying nowt.’ He leaned over his own plate and Harpur’s and gently took the copy of Alert from him. Now, Iles did the reading aloud, as though he knew an indictment of some sort must be coming at the conclusion of the piece, and meant to face up and speak the judgement himself: ‘His name is Assistant Chief Constable Desmond Iles (pictured) - it says that, “pictured”, like a Wanted photo - Desmond Iles, present on this ground to rectify and purify. Some will no doubt ask whether he is altogether suited to this task, given his tendency to get pushed drastically off balance by nuances and frets. Who polices the police was a traditional tricky question. Now, it’s a lot trickier - who polices the police sent to police the police?’

  A man of about fifty, well-barbered, thick grey hair, beige slacks, ginger suede jacket, approached from a breakfast table across the room and stood smiling alongside them. Harpur hadn’t noticed him earlier. Maybe he’d come from one of the rooftops. ‘Forgive, do, the interruption,’ he said, ‘but a question. I, too, have been reading the “Talk of the Town” piece, which I see in your hand, and I’m defeated by one remark therein. This crude mispronunciation of the word “insurrection”. What on earth can that be?’

  ‘Prick,’ Iles replied.

  ‘Prick? But that’s nothing like the sound of “insurrection”. It could hardly be called a mispronunciation. A substitution, perhaps.’

  ‘No, I mean you are a prick,’ Iles said.

  The man’s smile fell away. ‘It was a valid query, I think. There’s surely no need for rudeness.’

  ‘Yes, there is an acute need for rudeness,’ Iles said. ‘Bugger off back to your eggs Benedict.’

  ‘Have you been pushed drastically off balance again?’ the man asked.

  ‘Do you want to get thumped drastically off balance?’ Iles said. When the man had gone, Iles said: ‘Do you pity me, Col? Do you see me as a target for lurking prats in suede like that? Am I diminished?’

  ‘Never! Believe me, I regard you, sir, exactly as I always have.’

  ‘Oh, God.’

  TWENTY-ONE

  But Iles was right about Maud and those above Maud. He and Harpur had arranged to see Leo Young at his home, Midhurst, this morning and they were in Iles’s car after breakfast and about to leave, when Harpur’s mobile phone rang. ‘It will be Maud,’ the ACC said. ‘She wants to talk to you privately. She wants to talk to you privately because it’s about me. You and she have an empathic understanding, don’t you, Col?’

  It was Maud, wanting to talk to Harpur privately. Iles, who would be doing the driving, didn’t switch on. They stayed in the hotel car park. ‘Can you speak all right, Colin?’ she said. ‘I wanted to catch you before your day really began. You’re alone for a moment?’

  ‘Absolutely.’

  ‘It’s delicate.’

  ‘Right.’

  ‘Dathan’s been talking to us again.’

  ‘Rhys?’

  ‘The Chief.’

  ‘Yes?’ Harpur replied.

  ‘The local paper. The Alert.’

  ‘Yes, I know it.’

  ‘You understand what they’re like up here about publicity, do you?’ Maud said.

  ‘They hope to what is called “manage” it, I gather. Sometimes they’re keen, aren’t they - to launch new proposals and laws, that type of thing.’

  ‘Not the Alert kind of stuff. The tone.’

  ‘It’s the gossip column you mean, is it, Maud? “Talk of the Town”? That kind of journalism is usually done in a light-hearted, perky style, surely?’

  Iles nodded perhaps to agree, perhaps to indicate he’d been right to guess the caller was Maud.

  She said, ‘Treats Iles as if he’s a complete buffoon. A cuckold right for craziness every time he hears a key word such as “fret” or “lust”. He’s like someone who’s been hypnotized and can be put back into a trance if he gets a cue. Did you ever see the original Manchurian Candidate on the movie channel?
Like that. People here - well, they feel he exposes them to attack for selecting him, exposes the Department to attack. I’m referring to people as far up as the Secretary himself. Our press office fears the nationals and even TV news will get interested in the situation. They already have Cass, the murdered reporter, to wonder about and focus on, haven’t they? There could be a Question in the House. I don’t know for how long I can support Iles - support, in fact, the investigation itself. I want to because I picked him and you for the job, but I’m aware of increasing opposition.’

  After the nod, Iles, alongside Harpur, remained utterly silent and still. Harpur couldn’t tell whether he was able to pick up some - all - of what Maud was saying. He could probably guess most of it, anyway. He’d closed his eyes, as though relaxed and dozing. It might be to maximize concentration, though, or to dream hate schemes against Dathan.

  ‘You’ll wonder why I’m ringing you about it,’ Maud said. ‘He’s your superior and I shouldn’t be discussing him in this way with a subordinate - excuse the term. It’s against protocol. Why I said “delicate”. But I feel that you and I, Col, have—’

  ‘I don’t think the people above you there appreciate properly how Mr Iles functions,’ Harpur said. ‘Even you, Maud, might not realize this in full. People of immense talent often have their little quirks and foibles. It is part of their unconventionality. I’ve called it talent. Some might say “genius”. Think of that artist who cut his own ear off.’

  ‘Van Gogh.’

  ‘The one.’

  ‘You consider Iles is in that league?’

  ‘As to the mysterious scope of his abilities, maybe.’

  ‘Mysterious?’

  ‘The way he can intuit, the way he can sense the essentials of a situation, a problem,’ Harpur said. ‘Often, it’s phenomenal.’ Iles didn’t open an eye.