Play Dead

by Bill James

  ‘In what regard?’ Maud said.

  ‘Mrs Young.’

  ‘Leo Young’s wife, Emily? I remember her name from the original inquiry,’ Maud said. ‘What about her?’

  ‘Some strange behaviour, perhaps promising behaviour from our point of view.’

  ‘Yes?’

  ‘Mr Iles discovered - don’t ask me how - that she had been on a night visit to the murder house on Elms.’

  Maud was silent for fifteen seconds. Then she said, ‘To what purpose, Colin? What’s the significance?’

  ‘She went solo but met Mrs Mallen there.’

  Another pause. ‘Leo Young’s wife met Tom Mallen’s widow at night on Elms?’

  ‘Right.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘At the Jaminel house,’ Harpur replied.

  ‘They both entered the Jaminel house?’

  ‘No, they talked outside. Only Mrs Young actually went in.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘Her shoes and clothes were not suitable for such a visit, but she’d brought a torch. This would seem to show intent. There’s loose boarding that provides a gateway,’ Harpur replied.

  ‘Did she meet Mrs Mallen by arrangement?’ Maud asked.

  ‘Unclear at this stage.’

  ‘Iris Mallen would have driven quite a way, wouldn’t she? From a different police patch. Doesn’t that suggest a rendezvous?’

  ‘She had a separate purpose - separate from the encounter with Mrs Young.’

  ‘Separate in which sense?

  ‘Iris Mallen was there to look for a kind of memento of her husband.’

  ‘Which kind?’

  ‘Apparently, a Biro.’ Iles remained completely still.

  ‘A Biro pen?’ Maud said.

  Was there any other kind of Biro? ‘She’d left it in the ground to show the spot where her husband died. A kind of marker, but a marker with a sentimental status, because it used to belong to Tom. She was afraid that, if construction picked up because of more quantitative easing as they call it, by the Bank of England, the Biro might get overlaid and lost.’

  ‘Mrs Mallen trekked to Elms at night to look for a pen? Did she find it?’

  ‘Apparently not.’

  ‘Did Mrs Young help her look?’

  ‘Unclear at this stage.’

  ‘Mrs Mallen expected to find a Biro left there in mud and rubble months ago?’ Maud asked.

  ‘She’s probably still in shock and not too rational after the loss of her husband.’

  ‘So you must have been told all this by Mr Iles himself,’ Maud replied.

  ‘Absolutely,’ Harpur said.

  Another pause. ‘And do you find it credible - not a further . . . a further example of Iles once more in the grip of his talent, his genius, as you describe it, this time fabricating a sequence around the Jaminel house?’

  ‘Absolutely not,’ Harpur said.

  ‘All right, suppose it’s as he says: we come back to the question, what’s the significance?’

  ‘I don’t know yet. But that’s the point, isn’t it, Maud?’

  ‘What?’

  ‘He might get an intimation, a hint, from his remarkable mind about the significance - from his subconscious mind, possibly.’

  ‘An intimation, a hint, from his subconscious?’ Maud replied. ‘As to what?’

  ‘This is the kind of exceptional, sort of instinctive, insight that your masters and mistresses up there don’t allow for. They should be told of it, Maud, and in strong form. I hope you believe enough in Mr Iles’s splendid, inspired competence to take this message effectively to them. It must be made plain that removing Mr Iles from the inquiry would be a terrible error, an act of destructive folly just when things seem about to open up, to open up under his astonishing, unique influence.’

  ‘Open up in which regard?’ Maud asked. ‘Why do you make so much of his knowledge of the Jaminel house visit? He might have been in or around the house when Mrs Young and Mrs Mallen arrived there, and merely observed them. A total fluke.’

  ‘Certainly he might have been,’ Harpur replied. ‘He hasn’t said so, but, yes, he might have been. That begs a considerable question, though, doesn’t it?’

  ‘Does it?’

  ‘If he was around the house at that time, why was he? There would be nothing more to learn there so long after the crime. The house has been examined and re-examined exhaustively. Or, at least, there appeared to be nothing to learn there. You see, Maud, if he were there, I would identify this as another of those inexplicable, thrilling aspects of his work. A kind of amazing telepathy. When I call it inexplicable, I mean inexplicable to basic thinkers like myself, and, perhaps like your honchos up there. Oh, no doubt they have fine incisive thoroughly trained minds, but they are fine, incisive minds trained in dealing brilliantly with the tangible, the factual, the practical. At times, though, Mr Iles is far outside those categories. He is pure flair, he is consummate hunch and sharp sixth-sense.’

  ‘OK, OK, but—’

  ‘You’re still concerned about the significance of all this,’ Harpur replied.

  ‘If I’m going to convince people here that Iles is indispensable to the investigation I’ll have to—’

  ‘Because I’m so used to Mr Iles, I can make a guess at how his thoughts might develop. It will be only a guess. I emphasize that. I don’t have the kind of gifts we’ve been talking about as special to him. I won’t call them magical—’

  ‘Thanks,’ Maud replied.’

  ‘But occasionally beyond the natural.’

  She gave a short groan. ‘OK, OK, again.’

  ‘Here’s how it might seem, then, to Mr Iles. Emily Young goes to the Jaminel house. It would appear from the way she’s dressed and shoed that she didn’t want Leo to know of her intention. She’s chair of the museum committee, isn’t she, and might be in the right gear for that, but will fit in the Elms trip as an extra. Why the deception? What’s going on here? What’s the psychology? Mr Iles would confront these puzzles. Mr Iles would see connections, see links, see likelihoods. He might wonder whether she’s been asking herself lately if she knows all there is to know about her husband’s business. This is an intelligent woman, used to the world, able enough to head that museum committee. She’s not blind.

  ‘Perhaps she even wonders about the death of Tom Mallen-Parry, on the face of it an employee of her husband, really an undercover cop. She might ask herself, why had this officer targeted her husband’s companies? Did they warrant that? Where exactly did the constant, glorious profits come from? And, did Leo find out somehow what Tom really was and decide to do something about it, such as have him guided on to Elms and slaughtered? The Jaminel house possibly came to represent all this darkness and evil in her thinking, her pondering. A kind of exorcism was needed.’

  ‘The subconscious and an exorcism?’

  ‘Did she resolve to get along to Elms and confirm it was just bricks, mortar, bay windows and potential dinky front and back gardens?’

  ‘It is all those, but can still be a sharpshooter post,’ Maud said.

  ‘Of course it can. But Mr Iles, seeking to explain her behaviour to himself, might conclude that this was a woman who’d suddenly experienced great and monstrous stress - her husband a possible killer, or accessory. She might have deliberately switched off such awful speculation until now. Something had made this no longer feasible. Horrifying ideas attack her. She makes a grab for whatever can bring some stability to her mind and life. The house? It could be so, couldn’t it? Maud?’

  ‘Could it?’

  ‘This was what I meant by opening up,’ Harpur replied.

  ‘What?’

  ‘A way into things - as long as Mr Iles remains in charge.’

  ‘Mrs Young?’

  ‘She might be vulnerable. This unusual behaviour - an indication of weakness. It could be exploited by someone with that kind of extraordinary skill and perception.’

  ‘Desmond Iles’s kind of skill and perception?’


  ‘Absolutely.’

  Maud went silent once more. ‘I’ll talk to the people here,’ she said eventually.

  ‘Warn them against hastiness. Warn them against seeing only the trivial drawbacks and minor snags in Mr Iles’s personality, and not the astonishing overarching excellence.’

  ‘If you think so much of him, Colin, why were you shagging his wife? Wasn’t that what brought on the display of trivial drawbacks and minor snags at the play?’

  ‘I’m confident your colleagues in the Department will see the dangers to their reputations and careers if they do anything to obstruct the progress of this inquiry so efficiently led by Assistant Chief Iles,’ Harpur replied.

  TWENTY-TWO

  Iles drove them out towards Midhurst. He said: ‘As a matter of fact, Col, I wondered why you’d been badgering the big computer for owner’s name of a car reg that turned out to be Mrs Young’s. Now I understand.’

  ‘You’re the sort, sir.’

  ‘Which?’

  ‘The sort who have some confidential means - some very confidential means - of finding out who’s been visiting the computer with that type of very confidential question.’

  ‘Now and then I get a tip-off from one of the people running it.’

  ‘Now rather than then, in this case.’

  ‘He calls me if he thinks I’d be interested in who’s asking.’

  ‘Me?’

  ‘This is a service that took a long time to establish, Harpur - not a doddle, you know. And people get moved on, or retire, or are promoted, so the business negotiations have to start all over.’

  ‘Effort, patience - they’re worthwhile?’

  ‘This kind of arrangement doesn’t come cheap, Col.’

  ‘Cop cross-palming cop. It’s probably rare. A long-term investment, though,’ Harpur said.

  ‘I think you’ll agree it’s necessary when I have some shitehawk on my staff carrying out, in secretive, furtive fashion his own private programme of inquiries.’

  ‘You’d see it as part of man management, I imagine.’

  ‘A yellow and black Mini Cooper,’ Iles replied. ‘Licence due for renewal in March.’

  ‘I thought it best to make out to Maud that it was you rather than myself who’d gathered all this problematical stuff about the women at the Jaminel place.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘You’ve done the same for me sometimes, haven’t you, sir? Attributed breakthroughs to me that were actually made by you.’

  ‘Have I?’

  ‘Certainly.’

  ‘I probably pitied you, thought you needed it - needed some boost. It’s not difficult to pity you, Harpur. Or, to put it another way, it’s difficult not to pity you.’

  ‘Perhaps I felt you needed a boost.’

  ‘In which respect?’

  ‘After all that sad carry-on at the theatre. People in the Home Office stalking you. So, I laid it on pretty thick with Maud, such as your “splendid, inspired competence” and “astonishing overarching excellence”. I had these phrases ready in case ever needed. I think I might have collected them from a book about D-Day and the leadership skills of General Eisenhower. Forgive the flowery extravagance of the compliments, sir. I know praise embarrasses, even sickens, you. It is necessary. We have to try and annihilate the impression of some who work with Maud - who possibly give Maud her orders - that you are a gibbering, loony wreck, a disaster who could bring disaster on them. This is not an easy aim, taking into account your behaviour and the fact that it’s been reported by the Press in chuckling mode. But above all we have to keep the investigation intact, sir. You head the investigation. Therefore, I had to build you into something formidable and gifted, regardless. High civil servants worry about their careers, gongs and pension. They dislike getting caught supporting some flagrant plonker. It taints them.’

  ‘You had to build me?’

  ‘In Maud’s estimation.’

  ‘Regardless of what?’

  ‘Essentially, she’s on our side, but needed some backing, some help in convincing others.’

  ‘And do you think she’ll really try?’

  ‘Certainly, sir. Why not?’

  ‘She might want you to lead the investigation. Get rid of Ilesy, replace him with Col. It would be her way of buttering you up. This is a woman with a fine education. She knows how to be devious. She’ll have read about Robespierre in the French Revolution - admirable in many, many ways, and hooked on plotting and ruthlessness.’

  ‘She’s one of your greatest admirers and—’

  ‘I didn’t like the way you dithered over the terms “talent” and “genius”, when discussing me,’ Iles replied. ‘I detest indecision.’

  ‘I think the vividness of the Van Gogh ear reference and the comparison of him to you will stick in her mind. That means she’ll think of you in the genius category, like the artist, and not merely talented.’

  ‘I take it we’re seeing one of your customary egocentric, smelly tricks, are we, Col?’

  ‘Which, sir?’

  ‘We’re on strange ground but you’ve already found an informant who talks only to you. He or she witnessed that night activity around the Jaminel house involving Mrs Young and Iris Mallen, did he or she?’

  ‘The house is certainly a magnet,’ Harpur replied.

  ‘If I’d been there, Harpur, I’d have gone to Mrs Mallen and said, “Do you see this injury on my cheek? That’s where your husband’s damn Biro dug in deep. This was quite a zonk, more than touché, I can tell you. Thanks so very, very much for leaving it there, available to this thug, Harpur. If you’d had a poniard about you I suppose you’d have left that, and then he could have done a real job on me.”’

  ‘The wound’s healing very well,’ Harpur said.

  ‘It would still have been visible, even in the dark.’

  ‘I don’t know what attitude she’d take to that, sir.’

  ‘“Overarching” in which sense, Col?’ Iles replied.

  ‘That’s the kind of word they’re fond of in the Home Office. It’s a stupid word, anyway. Arches are always over, so “overarching” is to say the same thing twice.’

  ‘You were always a language purist, Col.’

  The Youngs lived in a large converted Victorian farmhouse with grounds. The set-up reminded Harpur of Panicking Ralph Ember’s place, Low Pastures, back on their own territory, though Ralph’s was a genuine manor house and older than Midhurst. A Spanish consul and, later, a Lord Lieutenant had lived at Low Pastures way back. One of the gates had a plaque on it from an earlier ownership with a quote in Latin meaning something like ‘a man’s mind is what he is’. Harpur had heard that Panicking cleaned it every few weeks to make sure it stayed legible. He probably thought his mind pretty good and that this plaque contained his potted biography. Drugs tycoons liked to settle stylishly in the country, though not all would have classical plaques. They wanted some distance between the city streets and dives, where they made most of their money, and the spread they bought with it, where they raised their families. Big-time industrialists now and in history did the same: lived somewhere leafy, well away from their factories or mines.

  Midhurst wasn’t the only reminder of Iles and Harpur’s own police patch. A smart housing estate known as the Elms Enclave existed there. But those properties were built, completed and quickly sold in the good times. The Elms development here languished, only part done. Harpur thought a parable about Britain’s changed financial state showed clearly in the two Elms projects. Harpur liked to get a widish idea up and running in his head occasionally. He didn’t let the notion out of his head, though. He wouldn’t speak of it to IIes because he’d piss on it, saying the thought was obvious, banal and trite. Iles didn’t care for competition in the ideas area. He’d told Harpur that at Staff College he was known as ‘Thinking-cap Desy’.

  Iles parked near some stone outbuildings to the side of the house and they walked across a gravelled forecourt to the front door of Midhurst. It was opened be
fore they reached it, though, and Leo Young came out into the porch smiling a grand welcome. He had a small, congested face, but he could find room for what was undeniably a smile on it. They’d met him, of course, on the previous investigation here: Tom Mallen-Parry had masqueraded as one of his firm. ‘Leo,’ Iles called. ‘This is a treat. You’re looking great! The porch sets you off. But you should have Labradors gambolling around you. And I trust Emily is well. You’ll remember Col Harpur. He has his own way of approaching things, but where would we be if were we all the same? Oh, deary me, yes. North Korea?’ Young shook hands with both of them.

  ‘But you got an injury, Mr Iles,’ Young said.

  ‘Par for the course in our line of work, Leo,’ Iles said. ‘Ask Harpur.’

  ‘Mr Iles is always out there in front,’ Harpur replied.

  ‘Col’s never far behind. Behind but not very far behind. Modesty prevents his saying that, Leo, but it’s so.’

  ‘Shall I tell you what I don’t think is fair in this, like, situation, Mr Iles?’ Young said.

  ‘A good deal of life is not fair, Leo,’ Iles said.

  ‘People - they don’t understand you, Mr Iles,’ Young said.

  ‘Which people, Leo?’ Iles said.

  ‘The press,’ Young said.

  ‘What about it?’ Iles said.

  ‘I wonder if you seen what’s called “Talk of the Town” in the Alert,’ Young said. ‘But why do we jabber out here? Come in. We’ll go to the drawing room, shall we?’ Panicking had a drawing room, too, and would mention it in a similar offhand, classy style.

  Young led the way. His wife was already in the room, standing near the big fireplace where half a dozen logs burned. Iles exclaimed delightedly, something about there being no smell so delicious and enlivening as smouldering larch. Emily Young, too, shook hands with Iles and Harpur. Young said: ‘I mentioned that “Talk of the Town” to Mr Iles, Em. The word I used was “unfair”.’

  Mrs Young didn’t say anything.

  ‘A mockery note - am I right?’ Young asked. ‘Was this appropriate re a senior police officer? Never! That word, “appropriate”, is around quite a lot lately meaning OK. This was not appropriate. I got to mention it. It don’t say well of a city if it treats an officer from another city in that dis way. What I believe is, people don’t understand you, Mr Iles. I don’t know if Em feels the same, but that’s my own opinion.’