In the Absence of Iles

by Bill James

  ‘And then, how do we know which of our officers has this flair? Do we talent-spot at the headquarters panto?’

  ‘Not headquarters. Detectives stationed there are likely to be known to any vigilant crooked crew, and most of them are very watchful.’

  ‘Rural station pantos, then?’

  A seemed to decide big-heartedly to take these questions as serious, not ACPO-level, feeble wind-ups. ‘Many detectives will have done a bit of impersonation in small cases, or at least disguised their own nature for a while when investigating. In a uniformed service, plain clothes themselves are a kind of masquerade. You have to check around to locate – locate! – these possible Out-location candidates and then try to assess which of them would do the undercover job best on a larger scale and, probably, for a longer period. This is a matter of personnel selection, a skill routinely exercised by ACCs and senior CID officers. Not magic, not a mystery carry-on, sir. Nous.’

  ‘And then I believe I’ve heard of another Syndrome, beside PPA.’

  ‘Ah?’

  ‘Is it to do with Stockholm? Something like that?’

  ‘The Stockholm Syndrome, yes, sir,’ A said.

  ‘Where the planted officer or a hostage grows so close to the criminals in mind as well as daily routine that eventually he/she actually, not pretendedly, becomes one of them, in some cases seduced by the prospect of wealth, but sometimes simply won over mentally by the captors. For the undercover officer it becomes no longer a pose.’

  ‘That is another danger, yes, sir,’ A said. ‘This Syndrome takes its name from a siege situation after a bank raid in Stockholm. And it’s similar to the turn-around by the American heiress, Patty Hearst, abducted by a political gang but who then adopted their cause and became one of them.’

  ‘Have you seen anything like it happen to an undercover officer, A?’

  ‘The handling senior officer must always be alert to this possibility, sir,’ A replied.

  ‘A double treachery.’

  A smiled – a smile of sparkling, extensive, sweet, de bas en haut contempt, not a face Esther had seen him use previously, but he had a lot. He was on the right side of the great gulf fixed between those who could act and those who couldn’t. ‘No, sir. If I may differ – we do not regard an officer who goes undercover to expose criminality as treacherous. Villain firms deserve no loyalty from us. We exist to wipe them out. Undercover is a means. It is true policing. It is basic detection. It is protection of the community and of the realm. What we are here for, exist for, I think you’ll agree.’

  ‘The officer, if discovered, is regarded as a rat by the criminals.’

  ‘Oh, we don’t let their twisted values and language define us, do we, sir?’ A replied with a grand, dismissive chuckle. ‘After all, what’s their term for police in general, including Assistant Chiefs? Pigs. Pigs! Do we go along with that? It would surely be inappropriate to regard an ACC in his/her fine quality dress uniform as a porker. Should we all start grunting and sniffing for truffles? In the corrupted view of villains, some pigs are also rats. It’s a merry animal pageant, but we aren’t compelled to join in.’

  The questions abruptly switched topic: ‘You’ve said undercover is not treachery, but tell me, A, is it treachery if the officer succumbs to the Stockholm Syndrome and joins the opposition, really joins it?’

  ‘Certainly.’

  ‘I see.’

  ‘No question.’

  ‘And what should be the police response?’

  ‘We hunt him/her down, sir, with the rest of the gang, and seek to arrest, charge and convict her/him and the others.’

  ‘I see.’

  ‘Oh, yes.’

  ‘And might we charge him/her then with the offences we would have blindeyed – and would have hoped the court might blindeye – if he/she had not gone over?’

  ‘Certainly,’ A said. ‘His/her right to unofficial immunity in the interests of a culminating great cause is finished. The court would be with us entirely on this.’

  ‘You think, then, that sometimes judges, the brainy simpletons, can be right?’

  ‘Admittedly, it’s a tough one, but this we have to believe, sir, don’t we, or chaos has come? A judicial system, preprogrammed to muck up? Pandemonium. Although it does look like this sometimes, we try not to despair, I think. After all, there is a rigorous selection process for judges. Several of them may well have some little aptitudes. I’ve been told that the sorting-out tests are even more rigorous than for Chief and Assistant Chief, and we all know that few bad choices are made in those areas. Few.’

  Esther liked A, liked the whole spectacle of someone of middling or low rank teaching and outmanoeuvring the brass. She loved the way he used the word ‘we’ – ‘We don’t let their twisted language define us.’ ‘Should we all start grunting?’ ‘We exist to wipe them out.’ – as if A felt he had to coach this magnifico of the police service into a correct view of what essentially ‘we’, the police service, should be. Esther was a magnifico herself, part of the brass. That did not stop her siding with A, though, in the search for triumph rather than pure purity. Esther thought it would be around about the time of this exchange from the floor with A that she decided she’d try undercover against the Guild. Immediately ahead of her in the Simpkins Suite a chair stood empty and she let herself imagine Iles might have been sitting there, had he come. No question, that did give Esther a message, but A and B, and especially A, gave a message, too, and for now she liked it better.

  What Esther learned at Fieldfare, from the platform, from the questions, from the absence of Iles, was that a very genuine and chilling case against all Out-location work existed, but that it could be more or less defeated. More? Or less? She did waver even now. But it must be significant that one didn’t say ‘less or more’. ‘More or less’ surely gave ‘more’ the precedent, didn’t it – more or less? She decided to ask Richard Channing, deputy head of CID, to run the undercover operation. His first job would be to build a shortlist and select from it a detective who might have a reasonable chance of (a) penetrating the Guild; (b) then remaining alive; and (c) being able to bring out information which in some form or another would stand up as evidence.

  Esther herself meant to stay close and influential at this selection stage and apply what she had absorbed at Fieldfare. She chose Channing to manage the Out-location because he had the most qualms about it – wise, persistent, treatable qualms. She didn’t want someone over-positive and glib, like Channing’s CID boss, Simon Tesler. Channing saw the dangers and the drawbacks big and clear and, when landed with the handling job, would struggle and struggle hard to counter them. Esther needed sharp objections so she could answer these with what she had picked up in the Simpkins Suite and other rooms at Fieldfare; and to find whether he could come back at her and show that what she had picked up in the Simpkins Suite and other rooms at Fieldfare did not necessarily wash. As to what she had picked up in the Simpkins Suite, her feeling was that Mullins, the ACC who had quizzed A so hard and long, would, in fact, adopt Out-location, most of his objections having been dismissed by A. Mullins had tested his doubts and seen them torched. He had come to Fieldfare for the same sort of reasons as Esther. They wanted their caution dismantled. It had happened.

  Richard Channing said: ‘Do you know, ma’am, I find I hate the notion of asking some young, novice detective to turn himself/herself into a rat.’

  ‘If you’re going to collapse into the language and standpoint of villains, she/he has already opted to become a pig, hasn’t he/she? That’s how we’re known to them,’ Esther said. ‘Should we start grunting and sniffing for truffles? Pig, rat, it’s all much of a muchness, isn’t it? In the corrupted view of crooks, some pigs are also rats. It’s a merry animal pageant, but we needn’t join.’

  ‘Maybe, maybe. I’ve never thought of it like that.’

  ‘I’ve always kept this at the front of my mind, Richard.’

  ‘But some very senior people will not countenance undercover i
n any circumstances, I gather,’ Channing said. ‘There’s an ACC Iles who, as I hear it, forbids Out-location, after the murder of an undercover man there. He’s a very experienced officer. Has he decided that the possible advantages of Out-location on his ground can’t justify the risk to the undercover detective? I would find that disturbing. There appears to be little quantifying data available on the effectiveness or not of Out-location.’

  ‘I can’t answer for him,’ Esther said. ‘I won’t pretend to know the mind of another ACC, and particularly Desmond Iles’s mind, rarely easy to read. I’m not slandering him behind his back. I don’t think Iles would ever claim to be unduly predictable. You ask for quantifiable returns on undercover operations. I don’t see how that would be possible. This is not the kind of work that can be measured in a profit and loss account book.’

  ‘I’m still not totally sure what I’m looking for,’ he said.

  ‘Many detectives will have carried out small-scale impersonations for the sake of an inquiry, or at least disguised their own nature. After all, Richard, in a uniformed service plain clothes are a kind of masquerade. You have to trawl around to find these officers and assess which of them might do the Out-location job best on a larger scale and over a longer period, most likely. This is personnel selection, the kind of thing you and I are doing all the time, but in this instance concerned with undercover talent. It’s not magic. No mystery carry-on. One needs nous. But you will know that between those who can act and those who can’t there is a great gulf fixed.’

  Trotting out the Fieldfare formulae Esther felt passably assured and only moderately fraudulent. She thought she had probably settled Channing’s entirely reasonable anxieties. And if she could settle his, perhaps her own would shrink a bit more. Her own started from memories of a very scary time undercover herself, and then took in tales of disaster elsewhere, and especially the disaster that could shake someone like Iles so irreparably. A and B and others from the Fieldfare alphabet had undermined these thumbs-down influences pretty well. Yes, pretty well. Was it so strange that she should re-spiel their comforting phrases at near verbatim? Churchgoers got similar comfort repeating the litany.

  Her ploys worked. They consoled Esther and helped her persuade Richard Channing that the effort needed to find and install someone in the Guild would pay off. Three weeks ago they Out-located an officer who, so far, seemed safe, even happy, and who kept contact when due. Esther did her regular, around the clock visits to the on-call rescue parties, though, to check their readiness and watch the formal transfer of the vital bribe cash. She must not get careless, or even confident.

  Chapter Five

  When Desmond Iles arrived unannounced at Esther’s office she naturally assumed at first he was there to crow. Although he had not turned up at Fieldfare, she’d met him several times at ACPO conferences previously, and perhaps with that coxcomb profile and dandy gear he always looked like someone who would crow if he had something to crow about, or not. Today, he might think he had. She couldn’t really argue.

  He must have driven for hours from his own ground to see her, yet his clothes looked in no way tired or roughed up. In fact, his suit exulted. The three-piece, grey job he wore sweetly signalled custom-made, and custom-made by an expensive talent for someone very knowing and very set on getting trousers that did absolutely right by his legs. Iles’s legs were not especially long, but slim and immaculately tapering from thigh to ankle, the calf bulge certainly present and suggesting power reserves, yet in no way lumpy and harmful to line. His tailoring took hold of this lean shapeliness with pricey skill. Looking at the trousers, Esther found it impossible to imagine any legs covered by them suffering the usual degrading trouble with legs – gouty knees, sciatica or varicose veins. Iles had a way of walking that would conscript attention to the trousers from all in the vicinity, and therefore to his legs. Although Esther wouldn’t call it a sashay or strut, she thought this would be how Field Marshal Montgomery might have stepped into his tent to receive the surrender of the Germans at Lüneberg Heath in May 1945. Even during the very few paces Iles took across Esther’s room to shake hands before sitting down, she felt the stoked, conquistador glory of his stride. This was what made her think he had come to tell her how cruelly and predictably wrong she had been to Out-locate one of her people; and condemn her fiercely for a failure to consult him before deciding.

  He wanted her to take him to what he called ‘the scene, please, as a personal necessity, I know you’ll understand’. By now, of course, that’s all it was, a scene, a bit of scenery, a bit of coastal geography, nothing exceptional, nothing tragic, washed and clue-cleansed by a lot of tides. ‘Someone I think you knew as A phoned me,’ Iles said.

  ‘Fieldfare A?’

  ‘He’d heard about the death, of course.’

  ‘Why would he phone you?’

  ‘He was distressed.’

  ‘But why call you?’

  ‘It wasn’t entirely friendly,’ Iles said.

  ‘You take calls just like that out of nowhere from people of A’s rank?’

  ‘Not often.’

  ‘What’s the thinking? A decided, did he, an undercover man is killed by the gang he infiltrated, so I’ll ring Assistant Chief Iles? Does it make sense?’

  ‘I believe I have to listen to all who for their own reasons seek me out, Esther,’ Iles replied. ‘It’s one of my facets.’

  ‘Yes, but –’

  ‘At Staff College I was known as Approachable Desmond. Facets are one of the things people notice in me.’

  ‘I’m sure, but –’

  ‘A had a double motive for ringing. One, he wanted me to do something. And, two, he wished to reproach, blame me. You’ll immediately ask, one, wanted me to do what? And, two, why reproach, blame me? And I perfectly see why you should wish to quiz me on those aspects.’

  ‘Does A know you – on “Think I’ll give Ilesy a bell” terms?’ Esther replied. ‘But he’s not from your domain.’

  ‘Knew of me. One of my maxims is, “More folk know Tom Fool than Tom Fool knows.” Many have heard of Desmond Iles. It used to surprise me, but I’ve come to realize there is an inevitability to it. I accept this. I hope I do not seek or strive for repute, but repute arrives in my case willy-nilly and inescapable.’

  Esther drove him out to the bit of beach near Pastel Head. ‘You’ll ask, one, what A wanted me to do; and, two, why he wished to reproach me,’ he said.

  ‘Did he call on the mobile? Or you mean he came through to your switchboard and said, “Let me speak to Assistant Chief Constable Des Iles. Tell him it’s A.”?’

  ‘I have a direct, secure land line at the nick, as you have, I’m sure.’

  ‘Yes, and the point about secure numbers is that they’re secure – and private.’

  ‘A is a detective. He discovers things,’ Iles said. ‘He used that line.’

  ‘He’s obviously determined to reach you, personally.’

  ‘He was weeping,’ Iles replied.

  ‘Oh, he dodges in and out of roles. It’s referred to as protean. He could be imitating Benny Hill or The Laughing Policeman a minute later.’ She would strive not to slip into obvious grief. She still feared Iles had driven here to tell her how insanely wrong she had been – part of his campaign against undercover. She must keep up a tough front.

  ‘Yes, he was weeping,’ Iles said.

  She parked the car on the cliff and they walked down a slippery path to the pebble beach. Not long ago she’d watched as they carefully carried the body bag up that path to an undertaker’s van. It was low tide now. She pointed to a spot about halfway to the water. ‘There,’ she said. Iles walked ahead and stared for a while at the mix of mud and stones, then out at the sea. He would probably judge the sea as almost his equal in Creation. After a couple of minutes, she walked after him, careless of interrupting any communion he and it might be busy on. He turned his head to give her some profile. ‘A’s first words when he came through were, “Mr Iles, we failed her,
”’ he said.

  ‘Did you understand what he meant?’

  ‘I remained silent,’ Iles replied. ‘But I stress, it was a permissive silence, not indifference. He would have sensed this. It’s a knack I have. I’d even call it an inspiring, liberating knack. This type of silence invited him to continue, to explain. Ironically, my silences cause people to talk.’

  ‘No introduction of himself?’

  ‘Not at that point.’

  ‘So, you’d be baffled?’

  ‘Plainly, I knew it was someone suffering.’

  ‘Did you ask his name?’

  ‘In due course. If someone is suffering you let them control the pace of things. In the presence of human pain, identity doesn’t matter all that much pro tem. Pain dominates.’

  ‘But ultimately you said, “Who’s speaking?”, did you, and he replied, “A, here, Mr Iles.” But you weren’t at Fieldfare, so you wouldn’t understand what A signified. You’d reply, “A what?”’

  ‘Yes, you’ll want to ask on what grounds he blamed me. And, clearly, that is the answer,’ Iles replied.

  ‘What is clearly the answer?’

  ‘My absence from Fieldfare.’

  ‘But I remember he said he didn’t know whether you were there, because people of his rank had no sight of the list.’

  ‘He knew. That glossy, stunted jerk, Mullins, referred to me in Questions, didn’t he? Or to the void where I might have been had I turned up? I heard of this.’

  ‘So, this detective sergeant, maybe only a detective constable, reaches you on your personal phone and says, “Mr Iles, you had absolutely no right to skip Fieldfare, you negligent sod”?’

  ‘“Fatally remiss” was the term used. ‘We were “fatally remiss, Mr Iles”. A added, “B concurs and perhaps others.” I said, “I’ve no means of knowing who B is.” He replied: “You have no means of knowing who I, A, am, either.” I agreed at once with this and said: “Therefore, you wish me to accept a hearsay report about B, whom I don’t know, from yourself, A, whom I have spoken to but also don’t know. That is cryptic by any standards.” He said: “Much police work of this kind is cryptic.” I replied: “Surely, my absence from Fieldfare itself spoke.”’