by Bill James
‘Leo!’ she screamed. ‘Sit properly. Please!’
The Laguna and the lorry were alongside Emily’s car, their fronts shattered and locked together, the Laguna gushing steam from under the sprung bonnet. She had just enough room to get out. She pulled at the passenger door of the Laguna. It was buckled and wouldn’t open, but then did, a fraction. ‘Leo,’ she whispered. ‘Oh, God.’ He managed to lift his head from the driving wheel. He turned towards her and said absolutely clearly: ‘Howie will see you and the boys are all right.’ It might have been the reference to the children that made her think now that she’d never seen him look more like a hamster called Stanley once owned by their younger son, Grenville.
‘Howie?’ she said.
‘Yes, Howie.’ She could tell there’d be nothing more from him.
TWENTY-SEVEN
Harpur was back home with the children and Denise when verdicts in what had become known as ‘The Howie’ case figured in the television news. Howard Lambert and three other police officers including a Constable Silver and Sergeant Quick were sent down for their part in a corrupt business arrangement with the Leo Young drugs firm.
‘That was you and Ilesy done it, wasn’t it, Dad?’ Jill said.
‘Did it,’ Harpur said.
‘Yes, you two did it,’ she said.
‘We were there. I’m not sure we did much. It was Mrs Young,’ Harpur said.
‘Ilesy wouldn’t admit something like that,’ Jill said.
‘He’d want the gloire, wouldn’t he?’ Hazel said. ‘That’s what the French call it - the glory. Or “We must have distinctions” as one of the Napoleons said. Desy Iles would go for any distinction available, wouldn’t he?’
‘Not always,’ Harpur said.
‘US cops in movies call it the collar,’ Jill said.
‘Little gloire or glory about,’ Harpur said.
‘Your dad’s doing his modesty act,’ Denise said.
‘That’s what I mean,’ Jill replied.
‘What?’ Harpur said.
‘Des Iles doesn’t do modesty,’ Jill said.
‘It’s that poor woman, widow, Mrs Young, I think of,’ Denise said. ‘I’ve been reading about her in the papers. As I see it, she was a woman with quite a bit going for her - in the career and social sense, I mean. And then she obviously comes to wonder what her husband does for a living, and fears it might be something horrible, so she starts her own inquiries.’
‘Yes, like that,’ Harpur said.
‘Respectability is a very powerful quality,’ Denise said. ‘Reputation. Shakespeare is on about it in Othello, isn’t he?’
‘Is he? Harpur said.
‘“Reputation, reputation, reputation,” Cassio says. Without it he’s a beast, he reckons. Social standing. It sounds bourgeois and prim, but is a great motivator and deeply democratic, because it values the opinions of others. She wanted it. She was on some museum committee, wasn’t she? That would be full of worthies, I bet.’
‘You’ll be like it one day, I expect, Denise,’ Jill said. ‘A degree. Or maybe more than one degree. Full of learning and conversation.’
‘Emily Young would imagine those snide museum colleagues guessing what her husband’s life must really be like,’ Denise replied. ‘And it wouldn’t be a very difficult guess.’
‘Yes, I think she had some guilt,’ Harpur said. He bought the Epoch next morning to see what they made of it all. There was a full court report but also a piece by the journalist Philip White under the heading ‘An Unsatisfactory End’.
This article comes to you today in the style of a post script - a post script to our previous tribute to David Lee Cass which we, as well as many other newspapers, published at the time of his death; and a post script, also, to the court case involving corrupt police officers which is reported on pages one and seven. I was David’s editor and went not long ago to the police area coded as Larkspur to see if I could establish that David’s death had helped rid the city of this vile debasement of a police force. I talked to many people there, some of whom had been in contact with David and remembered him favourably. I talked, also, to the two officers who had been sent to investigate, or re-investigate, the force, Assistant Chief Constable Iles and Detective Chief Superintendent Colin Harpur. They assured me it was the killing of David on the assignment that horrified Mrs Young and made her determined to discover whether her husband had any part in the crime. We cannot know the answer to that, because he died. But it was as a result of what Mrs Young told them, and later told the court about her husband’s last words - ‘Howie will see you and the children all right’ - that the two officers decided to revisit Lambert and begin an interrogation that led to his and his associates’ conviction. It comforted me to hear that in a roundabout fashion David had contributed to this outcome, and I’m sure many readers of this paper will feel the same.
He took the paper home in the evening. Denise had driven the children to their judo club and would pick them up in half an hour. She read the news report and the White article. She said: ‘In a way Leo Young was a gallant figure.’
‘Yes, in a way.’
‘In a couple of ways,’ she said.
‘Yes?’
‘He pulls out to avoid crashing into the Mini and Emily.’
‘Crashes into a lorry, instead,’ Harpur said.
‘That’s what I mean,’ Denise said. ‘A sort of self-sacrifice.’
‘He could have killed the lorry driver.’
‘Less likely than killing Emily in a small car. And, anyway, the lorry driver is OK. Young must have had time to calculate which was best to do.’
‘You’re a romantic,’ Harpur said.
‘And then, as he’s dying in the Laguna, he thinks of Emily and the kids: “Howie will see you and the boys are all right.”’
‘Howie was Mallen’s handler.’
‘I realize that,’ Denise said.
‘It’s a kind of almost holy relationship,’ Harpur said. ‘We have to assume Mallen told him stuff that Howie Lambert saw would scupper the business, if Mallen were allowed to continue. He must have found out a dangerous amount about “the arrangement” but, obviously, not enough for Mallen to know Lambert was the main man on the police side in the dark alliance. But Lambert feared this might be the next Mallen discovery. So, silence him - or get someone to silence him: Jaminel, another member of the corrupt police group, a trained marksman. Success!
‘Everything goes quiet after the Jaminel conviction. Dathan, the Chief, is content to let matters rest. He doesn’t want any more hostile interest in his team. But then, suddenly, there’s a new snooping bugger about, this time David Lee Cass, plus the return of those two other snooping buggers, Iles and Harpur. Dathan tries to get rid of Iles following a quaint disturbance at the theatre. And Lambert believes Cass has begun to unearth too much, just like Mallen. Lambert fixes a remote rendezvous with him, supposedly to spill secrets, and Cass walks into it, the way Mallen walked into the other trap on Elms. This time, Lambert didn’t depute the killing, though.’
Denise looked shaken. ‘What happens to Mrs Young and their children, then, Col?’
‘You mean Howie won’t be around to see them right? The firm’s extinguished.’
‘Yes.’
‘Not our concern, Denise.’
‘But she helped you.’
‘I’ve said thank you to her several times,’ Harpur replied.
‘What about Iles?’
‘He might have, too. He can occasionally turn quite soft.’
Chapter One
1 See Undercover
Chapter Two
2 See Halo Parade
Chapter Three
3 See Roses, Roses
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