Never Die in January

by Alan Scholefield

  “Oh, it’s you,” he had said.

  “Divino Mozartino,” she had replied.

  “What?” The query contained irritation and bafflement but she was not about to try to explain Benson’s Lucia to her common-law father-in-law. Shaking his head, he had gone back into the music-room and closed the door.

  Now he approached the stove. “Chicken,” he said.

  “Chicken marengo,” Zoe replied.

  “For marengo you use veal. My wife makes it so.”

  “This is chicken marengo.”

  “In Austria it is veal.”

  “In Austria, if you’ll forgive the word, it is pork. Or it was the last time I was there. Even the schnitzels were pork.”

  So that the South Australian white should not be too lonely, Zoe had opened a bottle of red, had drunk two glasses, and was floating slightly above the patterned linoleum floor.

  “Would you like a glass of wine, Mr Silver?”

  “Sure. Why not? What is it? French?”

  “Spanish. From the Upper Ebro.”

  “How do you know?”

  “It says so on the label.”

  “Oh.”

  “How is Ruth?”

  “Ruth is all right. A sore jaw, but she lives.”

  “When do you think…you know…that Mrs Silver will come back?”

  “God knows. Maybe never.” Zoe dropped a ladle with a clang. “Maybe she likes it better there.”

  She fed him chicken marengo, rice, and a green salad. He ate suspiciously.

  “Aren’t you eating?”

  He said it as though she might have poisoned the food.

  “I’ll have mine when Leo gets back.”

  “What is that?”

  He poked something in the salad.

  “Radicchio.”

  “I don’t like it.”

  “OK. Just leave it.”

  He munched on. Then he said, “Leo was a good pianist when he was a little boy. God knows why he became a policeman.”

  “It’s just as well for me he did.”

  She was referring to her persecution by a psychotic during which time Leo had been her bulwark.

  “He got stress from that last case.”

  “I know.”

  “Playing the piano is good for stress.”

  “We couldn’t get one into the flat. It’s too small.”

  “After you’re married you can move to a bigger one here in North London near us.”

  “What a good idea,” Zoe said, brightly.

  Later, Manfred went to his chess club. Zoe did the dishes, then took her wine into the sitting-room. It was now after eight o’clock.

  She was used to Leo’s erratic hours but didn’t like them.

  After you’re married.

  The phrase nagged at the edge of her mind. Did she want to get married? At one time she would have given her left arm to marry Leo. But now? Like father like son? Would marrying Leo mean marrying the Silvers? Would she, the only non-Jew among them, be swamped by this eccentric, restless, bickering family?

  She heard the lift.

  “Hi,” she said as Leo entered the room.

  He didn’t smile. His face was drawn; his eyes worried.

  She cut off a smart remark, came over and kissed him, and said, “Whatever it is it’ll seem better after a drink.”

  She gave him a glass of wine. He drained it and held out the glass. He wasn’t much of a drinker so it was uncharacteristic of him and reminded her of the stress Manfred had mentioned. During that period he had drunk quite heavily but had seemed to get over it.

  She came and sat beside him on the large sofa. “Something’s wrong. You want to talk about it?”

  “Of course. Where’s my father?”

  “Chess.”

  “OK. Well, Scales called me in to see him…that’s why I’m late…”

  Leo had been called to the deputy commander’s office about six, just as he was going off duty.

  “Sit down, Sergeant, make yourself comfortable.” He pointed to the red-and-white no-smoking sign on the wall behind his chair. “You don’t, do you?”

  “Well, not regularly, sir.”

  “Filthy habit. I’m trying to get rid of it throughout the station. Don’t see why we should breathe other people’s smoke, do you?”

  Leo did not reply but he thought briefly that he wouldn’t want to miss the encounter between Scales and Macrae when Scales asked him to stop smoking his thin cigars.

  Scales was wearing a light-grey suit and had an array of pens in one of his waistcoat pockets. He took one out now, a spring-loaded bail-point, and began to click the point in and out. He went to the window and looked at the lights on the Embankment and the solid line of traffic.

  “I’ve been watching you, Sergeant. And I like what I see.”

  “Thank you, sir.”

  “No need to thank me. It’s me who should be thanking you. You’re one of the new men, the men who are going to take the Met into the next century: young, educated, part of contemporary life.”

  He turned. It was as though he was addressing a Rotary meeting, Leo thought.

  “You know, Sergeant, for far too long the CID has acted like a posse in a Western. The form has been act first, ask questions later. Or I should say, justify those actions later. Know what I mean?”

  “I think so, sir.”

  Scales sat on his desk and stared down at Leo.

  “It’s been a bad couple of years for us. The worst I can remember, wrongful imprisonments, faked evidence, forensic uncertainties. The interesting thing, Sergeant, is that the men who faked the evidence are all senior officers. What does that tell you?”

  Leo opened his mouth but Scales was in full flow. “I’ll tell you what it means: that the officers involved are from the old school, men who were moulded in the sixties and seventies, men who thought they were above the law…I hope you don’t mind me speaking frankly to you like this.”

  “No, sir.”

  “Good…good…because it’s unusual for a senior officer to discuss matters like this with a young sergeant. But that’s part of how I see my job. Breaking moulds. That’s why I need people like you on my side; young, intelligent, going places.” He paused. “You are going places, aren’t you, Sergeant?”

  “I hope so, sir.”

  “Well, you help me and I help you. That’s the way it works.” He got up and strolled back to the window. “You’re Jewish, aren’t you?”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “Not many of you in the Force. Don’t think I’ve ever served with one before. I’ve always admired Jews, though. Clever people. Have you ever considered becoming a Mason? There’s no…uh…restriction, you know.”

  Leo allowed a small smile to touch his lips. “No, sir, I hadn’t.”

  “Well, I should consider it if I were you, Sergeant. It helps, you know.”

  “So I’ve heard, sir.”

  “I’m sure I could find someone to propose you.”

  “I’ll think about it, sir.”

  Leo thought of Macrae’s face if this unlikely scenario ever took place.

  “Excellent…excellent…Masonry has had a bad press recently, but it’s a great force for good. Think of it in those terms, not just as a stepping-stone within the Force — although it is a very good one.”

  Click…click…went the pen…

  Scales said, “I’ve thought about how best to use people like you. I want you to be my eyes and my ears. I’m stuck here with all this” — he waved at the paperwork on his desk — “when I should be at the sharp end, out in the street, in a hands-on situation. Know what I mean?”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “But someone’s got to mind the shop.” He smiled at this deprecating analogy. “So I’ve come to depend on my private army. You could call it a force within the Force. People like yourself. And every now and then I need to ask someone in this private army to operate for me, discreetly. Someone I can trust. I can trust you, can’t I, Leo?”
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  “Yes, sir.”

  “Because when I say I should be out there in the street gathering information, it doesn’t mean that I don’t get any. I get quite a lot…quite a bit…”

  Click went the pen.

  “Something’s come up, Leo, that needs looking into in the strictest confidence. And I particularly want you to be the one to operate. Do you think you could handle something in complete secrecy; I mean within the Force itself?”

  “I’ll do my best, sir.”

  “Good man. It concerns Detective Superintendent Macrae.” Leo felt his hands grow suddenly cold.

  “There is word from…well, never mind where it’s from…that Detective Superintendent Macrae is in financial trouble and that he has accepted money from a known criminal. Do you know whether it’s true or not?”

  “No, sir, I don’t, and I don’t believe it either!”

  “I’m not asking whether you believe it or not. Frankly, I don’t care one way or the other. Your opinion is immaterial. Am I making myself clear, Sergeant?”

  “Yes, sir, but — ”

  “Spare me your indignation. It isn’t your loyalty to Macrae that interests me, but to the Force.”

  “But, sir, I must just say one thing. I’ve worked with Mr Macrae very closely and…”

  “Sergeant! If you don’t know it already then you had better learn a basic truth — given the right circumstances, anyone can be corrupted.”

  “Then, sir, the information is faulty. If you could tell me the source I — ”

  “We all have our private pipelines. I don’t interfere with yours. Anyway, it doesn’t matter where it came from, what matters…Look, don’t get me wrong. I’m hoping you are going to prove it false”

  Leo’s body had gone rigid with cold yet he was perspiring freely. “I want you to report directly to me, Leo.” The voice was emollient once more. “So that if and when your investigation clears him — as we hope it will — no harm will be done to him. I want it kept in the family, no matter what the outcome, and that wouldn’t be the case if I called in the CIB and had a full-scale internal investigation. Are you with me?”

  “Yes, sir.”

  Leo finished telling his account of the interview to Zoe and they stared at each other in silence.

  Then Zoe said, “He’s asking you to play Judas.”

  “D’you think I don’t know that!”

  “Oh Leo, what a shitty thing to do. Did he really say “keep it in the family” and you’re one of the “new men” and phrases like that? And anyway what’s the CIB?”

  “Complaints and Investigation Branch. And yes, he did.”

  “And all this business about being a Freemason?”

  “That too.”

  “I thought Jews were barred.”

  “No. That’s not so. Apparently some Jews’ best friends are Masons.”

  “So what are you going to do?”

  “God knows.”

  “You’ll have to tell Macrae, won’t you?”

  “Jesus, no. He’d probably get drunk and go in and have a row with Scales and abuse him and say things that he regretted. That’s exactly what Scales would like. Then he’s got him.”

  “I don’t suppose you can go to anyone else?”

  “At Cannon Row? Not a chance. They’d say if Scales came to me on a job like this then I was his…his…”

  “Creature?”

  “That’s as good a word as any.”

  “So?”

  “I’m in a cleft stick. I’m damned if I do and damned if I don’t.”

  “Leo, you don’t think — ? No.”

  “What?”

  “Well, you know it could, it just might, be true.”

  She had feared he would explode at her; instead he swirled the last of the wine round and round the bottom of his glass.

  He said, “You don’t know Macrae. He’s a strange mixture. I mean I’ve seen him do things that make me wince. If he’s convinced a villain is guilty he’ll come down hard on him to get an admission. But I’ve never seen him take a bribe. I once saw someone offer him one and Macrae knocked him across a table and two chairs and if I hadn’t stopped him he might have knocked him through a wall.”

  “Didn’t Scales say if the circumstances were right no one was immune?”

  “Not Macrae. I’d bet money on it. I told you Scales talked about hands-on policing, well Macrae’s a hands-on policeman. Some detectives sit and watch computer screens all day. Not Macrae. He can’t stand computers. And he’s not keen on the new policing methods. But he brings in the villains. That’s the only reason I’ve stuck with him. He really hates them. And you wonder sometimes — or at least I do — what he’d do without them. It’s like he’s found his reason for existence. Like he’s conducting a war, and he’s found the enemy, and he’d be lost without them. He needs them.”

  “You really think you can judge Macrae?”

  She had her hand on his arm and she felt him grow tense. She gave him half a glass of wine and poured a mouthful for herself.

  She put her head against his shoulder. “Of course you do.”

  One of the problems of stress, she knew, was that people did not like to be contradicted.

  “Look,” he said softly, “I’ve told you what he’s like when he gets drunk. I mean about not wanting me to leave him and all that. And how I’ve had to carry him into his house and put him to bed. Well, sometimes he talks about things, his childhood in Scotland for instance. His father was a bastard. He used to beat up Macrae’s mother and Macrae himself when he was a kid. Macrae thinks all this came from humiliation.

  “His father used to be a gamekeeper on a sporting estate in the Highlands and during the day he’d have to take a lot of shit from the wealthy sportsmen and say yes sir, no sir, three bags full, sir. So when he got home in the evenings he’d take it out on his family.”

  “Didn’t Macrae’s mother kill herself?”

  “They’re not sure. She was found drowned in a salmon pool. You know, he likes to be ironic about my university background. But he also wanted to get a good education. He told me so. But his father said what the hell’s the use of a good education on the moors?”

  “Leo, what’s all this got to do with Macrae taking or not taking money?”

  “I’m trying to make you understand him. He wouldn’t take money, not because of the moral side, he doesn’t give a stuff about any morality except his own. No, he’d find it humiliating. I was on a bus with him once and the conductor hadn’t been round to take the fares by the time we were getting off and Macrae didn’t do what most of us would do, i.e., say, well, that’s a nice free ride. No, he has to go and find the conductor and make him take the money. He hates being beholden to people. It’s pride.”

  “Which comes before a fall, as you’ll remember.”

  “Anyway Scales comes all this crap about hoping it’s not true. Of course he’s hoping it’s true. But that’s not the full story. At least I don’t think it is. He’s never liked Macrae, but that business with Frenchy and Scales’ mother really did it.”

  “That was brilliant,” Zoe said.

  He filled her in about Macrae’s friendship with Artie Gorman and about Stoker and Molly and as he talked she felt him become stiffer and stiffer and saw perspiration on his brow. She wanted him to stop, to forget about it for a while, but he was talking more and more rapidly.

  “But the other side is that if someone like Macrae goes down with a lot of publicity — which he would if the newspapers got hold of any whiff of an official internal inquiry — it would reflect badly on Scales. It’s his patch. He’s paranoid about keeping his nose clean. He’s a bloody committee man. He’s just a — ”

  “What about you, Leo?” She cut brutally over his jerky flow. “What?”

  “What if someone came and said here’s fifty thousand pounds, just look the other way when I stick up yonder bank.”

  He felt a hot flush of anger then looked at her eyes — and came down fast.
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  “Why fifty thousand? I’d do it for a fiver and a Big Mac. Oh, and by the way they don’t say stick up a bank. Jesus Christ. Stick ‘em up! What have you been watching?”

  She had achieved what she wanted and put her arm round his neck. “Leo, the sea-green incorruptible.”

  Stress was not far from her mind — thanks to some music teachers she knew.

  CHAPTER X

  “You’re Mrs — ?” the receptionist said.

  “Miss Isard,” Irene said.

  “Oh yes, you’ve been here before, haven’t you?”

  “How’s my mother?”

  “Making progress.” The receptionist was a middle-aged black woman who wore a nurse’s uniform and a severe expression.

  “Dr Richards thinks she’ll soon be ready to leave. That’s if she has a place to go to.”

  Irene said quickly, “That’s wonderful. We’ll have to make plans.”

  “Plans always help.” The tone was cynical. It suggested to Irene that this was a phrase she had heard many times before; that it was a metaphor for promises unfulfilled.

  “Can I see her?”

  “There’s a singalong in the lounge but she never goes to those. Try the TV-room.”

  Irene walked along a corridor that smelled strongly of antiseptic. Elderly patients (patient was a better word, Irene told herself, than inmate), some with walking frames, were shuffling down the long bright walkways. In the distance she could hear voices singing “Abide With Me”.

  Her mother was alone among the anonymous chairs of the TV-room. She sat at the opposite end to the set, which was on but with the sound turned down. She had her back to the room and was looking out of the second-floor window onto a small car park. Smoke rose from the cigarette in her hand.

  “Hello, Mother.”

  Mrs Isard did not react. She was in her early seventies but looked a hundred. She was wizened, a stick-figure — like a Giacometti bronze, Irene thought — whose feet hardly touched the floor. She raised the cigarette to her mouth and Irene could see the yellow fingers and the tremor of her arm. Her eyes were half-closed against the smoke.

  “I’ve brought you something.”

  She gave her mother a package. It lay on her lap, unregarded.