Play Dead (28 page)

‘Well, he's certainly put some of the fluence on
you
, Veronica,' Jeanette replied. But she grinned as she said it, seemed almost amiable, after all. Maybe she had come to recognize a bit late that something authentic and good existed between Veronica and Hill-Brandon and that nothing Jeanette said or spat would alter it. An intelligent woman. She knew when she was beaten. Strategic withdrawal.

‘My only regret is I was rather slow responding,' Veronica said.

‘That's natural,' Hill-Brandon said. ‘I was just a tramp, though with two sets of clothes, including a Barbour.'

‘W.H. Davies wrote a well-received book called
Autobiography of a Super-Tramp
,'
Jeanette said.

‘I've never thought of you as a tramp, Ivan, ordinary or super,' Veronica said.

‘Thanks, Vron, but, really, that's what I was,' Hill-Brandon said.

‘If so, no more,' she replied. ‘You have come home.' Harpur thought she got a kind of solemnity and grandeur into the last two words. He knew his daughters would have giggled and given Bronx cheers to the phrase, just as they did when a dog film they found disgustingly mawkish, called
Lassie Come Home
, invaded the movie channel.

‘Thanks, Vron,' he said.

‘So, were you able to make your introduction to the woman, Ivan?' Harpur said.

‘Ill-met by torchlight,' Jeanette said.

Harpur guessed this had a witty reference to something.

‘Col, I think I might have moved very slightly, just to vary the way I was standing, to ease some muscle strain,' Hill-Brandon said. ‘Or possibly I breathed too loudly once or twice.'

‘She heard?' Harpur asked.

‘The house is very quiet - far from the traffic,' Hill-Brandon replied.

‘Did she speak - ask who was there?' Harpur said. ‘That's what I'd expect.'

‘The torch beam seemed to get pulled away,' Hill-Brandon replied. ‘I could still make out a small glow of light up the stairwell, but it seemed to me she'd turned it and herself back towards the entrance/exit boards.'

‘She wanted out,' Veronica said.

‘That's how it looked,' Hill-Brandon said.

‘She'd taken fright?' Harpur said.

‘She's in a scary situation,' Veronica said.

‘I reckon she'd worked herself up to the quite brave act of coming into the property alone during darkness, but that was as far as this bravery would go,' he said. ‘She's a woman with limits.'

‘Credible enough,' Harpur said. ‘She hears something, yet nobody speaks - it's a very chilling moment. She doesn't know who's up there, nor how many.'

‘This is a house with overtones, extremely unpleasant overtones,' Veronica said.

‘What the devil is she doing there, in any case?' Jeanette said, but mildly, genuinely puzzled. ‘She's plainly not a vagrant, even less so than you, Ivan. As a scene, this is totally wrong for her. Yet it obviously has some sort of compelling fascination.'

‘I think she might have been nervy about finding her way out,' Hill-Brandon replied. ‘I'd guessed from the way the board thumped back when she let it go after entering that she hadn't propped the gateway open a little, making it simpler to find, an elementary ploy. The torch beam had been redirected to locate the movable boards, and hardly any of the light would reach other parts of the house now.'

‘And she was successful?' Harpur asked.

‘Successful in retreating, if that's success,' Hill-Brandon said.

Strategic withdrawal.

‘I heard one of the boards get yanked aside. I lost the light altogether then. I assumed she must have done more or less the same with the torch as when coming in, but reversed - leaned out now, and put it on the ground in front of the house. It was probably switched off. I'd have been able to see the light through the spy hole up there if it was still burning. Then, the same sounds of effort as she got clear of the house while holding back a board with one hand. Soon, that bumped shut. In a couple of seconds I could see her outside. She had the torch unlit in one hand and with the other brushed herself down and straightened her clothes, a dark tailored suit, a business suit, I'd say.

‘She began to walk quite swiftly in the opposite direction to Iris Mallen's route. It seemed like she had to keep up with a timetable. As I said, she'd probably given the Elms house visit a set duration in her programme. She appeared to be making for Ritson Mall. I expect you can imagine, Col, that all this intrigued me. It was like seeing half a mystery solved, but not the other half. I felt I had to get things complete, or as complete as I could.'

‘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.

‘W
e 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 that 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.