Play Dead (6 page)

But Harpur, still capable of thought despite the body blows and throat threat, would give the Biro a job, a positive job, not so much symbolic as plain, up-to-the-minute, potentially life-saving, and also thuggish. He took a good grip on it. Iles's hands went prospecting around Harpur's neck once more and felt increasingly committed and tempted. Harpur reached up and rammed the nicely pointed former writing end of the pen hard into the Assistant Chief's left cheek just below the eye, jolting against bone, as was only to be expected, given the skull's construction.

The Biro seemed to stay OK, didn't snap off leaving a section poking out of Iles like a tyre valve, although not made for this kind of work. Iles gasped. It might be a reaction to sudden bad pain from getting roughly pierced, or hot admiration for Harpur's smart improvising with local rubbish. The military said time spent on reconnaissance was never wasted, and it had been close reconnaissance of that square metre or so in front of the house that led Harpur to recruit the Biro now, and bring it into bonny, offensive-defensive play.

Harpur pulled it out, causing a gurgling sound he was not keen on, and didn't repeat the move as yet. The throat danger had passed, at least temporarily: Iles needed one hand to get up to the side of his face and investigate the wound. Harpur wanted the ACC to realize there were his eyes themselves to be dug into, as well as plenty of room in that cheek or the other, for more and maybe deeper inserts, if he didn't get back to sanity. And get back also to being the true Gerald and Jane of tonight's story, not his het-up, betrayed self. He had a duty to the shoppers, a duty he'd formulated himself. This early puncture of the ACC's chops was like the bomb on Hiroshima he'd mentioned. It promised more and worse from the same source if he didn't turn sensible: someone his mother would have been willing to acknowledge as her son.

As well as the wrath froth, blood now also trickled on to Harpur's skin and clothes from the nibbed nook in Iles's flesh. The blood felt warmer and more runny. If the Biro had still contained liquid ink, and some got released into the wound, Harpur thought there would have been an interesting red and green mix in the outflow, recalling colour use in some David Hockney exhibition pictures recently featured on TV. The shaft of the Biro had green traces, but long ago dried out.

Harpur's unusual role for the Biro now did cause him some worry. Pens were certainly not made for this. It would be mad for Biro manufacturers to advertise such secondary use in an emergency, say when getting strangled. Lately, he'd begun to have a sort of expanding respect for words and writing. He'd picked up that attitude from his daughters. They did a lot of reading - actual traditional books, as well as Kindle. They could get transfixed. Their mother had been the same. Megan was dead now, murdered in the station car park, off the last train one night,
³
but her influence might still reach the children. Harpur had disliked Megan's bookishness - used to feel excluded. But he'd come to recognize it must be a kind of worthwhile art to put ideas down on a page that people would want to read - not just instructions and manuals, but tales and descriptions of scenes and so on.

As a result, it troubled him to be adapting something intended to spell out stuff pleasantly via words and paragraphs etcetera - such as the Biro - yes, adapting it into a savage little combat item that could give the ACC a very timely, fuck-you-Iles spearing, possibly turning septic, and in quite a noticeable spot on his frontage. Iles liked to think of himself as refined-looking, polished and vigorous, and this would be difficult to maintain if he had a hacked-out concavity in his cheek, or possibly several. Harpur did suffer moments when he felt barbaric for changing the pen from its usual fine, communicating role into a lance-type weapon for use on a stalled building project. His daughters would be upset if they ever found out about it.

But Harpur had decided a long time ago now that to deal with Iles it was occasionally necessary to get barbaric, as answer to his own lofty, frequent, effortless barbarism. The Assistant Chief would understand this - consider it absolutely normal, in fact, required. Iles despised non-resistance. Perhaps his mother had said something to him about it as he grew up: ‘Matador, bull, Desy. Likewise, you nobly honour your opponents.' She'd probably leave vague which of this pair - matador, bull - he was.

‘Did we learn anything, sir?' Harpur asked again.

But Iles didn't answer. He seemed to grow very tense suddenly. Harpur thought, God, is this poisoned ground? Had the pen picked up some contamination over the months, years, lying here, that could kill instantly, like cyanide? ‘You OK, sir? I mean, you as you, not Gerald or Jane.'

‘What the fuck's this, Col?'

‘What, sir?'

‘Listen.'

Iles pulled back a bit to clear the way to Harpur's ears. Now, he could hear a police car siren, perhaps more than one.

‘Some bugger saw what looked like a scrap or worse here and dialled nine-nine-nine,' Iles said. ‘People will be sensitive about this spot after the murder.' He stood. Now, he did offer Harpur a hand and pulled him up, too. ‘We disappear, Col. “There's blood upon thy face.”'

‘It's yours, then.'

‘Don't get sentimental and possessive about that. Wipe it off.' He gave Harpur a handkerchief from his coat pocket. ‘They'll come in as if from Riston. We withdraw the other way.'

‘What'll we do with the shopping - leave it?'

‘Stop pissing about, Col, will you?'

They ran. Harpur had some difficulty with that after the kicking.

‘Y
es, as to your questions, Col, we learned something, didn't we, or half a something, anyway?' Iles said as they drove back to their hotel, Harpur at the wheel. The Assistant Chief sounded perky enough: able to distinguish between a something and half a something. A
Reader's Digest
article Harpur had come across not long ago said a person's intelligence level could be judged by his/her ability to see similarities and differences. The ACC's mental state must be OK or even OK-plus.

The Biro face incision was on the far side from Harpur and out of sight. Speaking generally, Harpur felt glad of that. Although he thought the damage had been necessary as a playful deterrent in case Iles went totally and murderously berserk from sex jealousy, he didn't want to spend much time looking at it, any more than he'd enjoyed hearing that wound lovingly try to hang on to the pen by flesh grip when Harpur pulled it out. Blood had rivuletted down the ACC's face, soaking his shirt collar and jacket lapel. He looked like a fencing slip-up - sabre fencing as a sport, not the building site, Keep Out kind of fencing. In the sport, someone on the end of a hit would cry ‘touché' to acknowledge token contact from the other's foil. The delve into Iles's face by Biro went several millimetres beyond a surface touch, though. The Assistant Chief's mucked-up clothes could go with Harpur's suit to the cleaners in the morning, unless Iles objected to having his gear treated as a unit with Harpur's. He'd probably regard that as disgusting impudence, like being asked to use Harpur's comb. The front passenger seat would need some scrubbing.

‘What actual
type
of thing did we learn, or half-learn, sir - its ballpark category?' Harpur asked. ‘Just for clarification.'

‘Fuck ballparks. That's not our lingo.'

‘What actual type of thing did we learn, sir - its broad British category?' Harpur asked. ‘Just for clarification.'

‘I knew you'd get there eventually, Col.'

‘Thank you, sir.'

‘Off the beaten track, Harpur.'

‘In which respect, sir?'

‘Yes, off the beaten track.'

‘New methods of looking at things, do you mean, sir - methods off the beaten track, so to speak? What's referred to, I gather, as “
lateral
thinking”? Escape the narrowness and clichéd response of the usual approach?'

‘Off the beaten track,' Iles replied. ‘This comes out of our little sojourn on the Elms Estate housing project tonight. You might ask, “Who is or was off the beaten track, and which beaten track?” That's an entirely reasonable question in the present circs, and a sign of your not by any means negligible acumen.'

‘Which, sir?'

‘Which what?'

‘Well, circs,' Harpur said.

‘These.'

‘Who is or was off the beaten track, sir? I think that's an entirely reasonable question in the present circs.'

‘Interesting, isn't it?'

‘Which?' Harpur replied.

‘Which what?'

‘Which beaten track?'

‘That's the heart of it, in my view,' Iles said. ‘Certainly worth some consideration. You've put your finger on it, Col. I was convinced you would. People say all those things about you, but I think they're hasty.'

‘Which things?'

‘Malign.'

‘In which respect, sir?'

‘Don't let them depress you, Col. You have your positive aspects. They're not on palpable show but they're there somewhere in you. I tell these critics it's impossible and unfair to judge a man entirely by his slouch appearance and casual attention to hygiene.'

‘Thank you, sir.'

So, after their little charade on Elms, flitting in and out of their true selves, flitting in and out of their make-believe selves, alive and dead - Harpur and Iles went next evening to call on the real Jane and Gerald at their flat off Guild Square. It must be a weird experience for the ACC to, as it were, hand back their identities to this couple, Iles having been both of them less than twenty-four hours ago in very memorable conditions, voice bang-on for each, characters passably defined: she large-minded, bold; he cautious, sceptical. ‘But surely the case is closed,' Gerald said, smileless, letting them in. ‘The arrest, the trial, the conviction. We gave our evidence then, dealt with cross-questioning, too. Does it drag on, then?'

Harpur sympathized. ‘And very valuable evidence. But some tidying is still necessary,' he said.

‘Tidying?' Gerald said.

‘Several untouched elements,' Harpur said.

‘Two very senior officers sent again from another force to do “some tidying”?' Gerald said. ‘Is it really so? Hard to understand.'

‘An aftermath is like this sometimes,' Harpur replied. ‘The exact shape of an aftermath is often hard to figure. I don't know whether you've had any experience of aftermaths, but pinning an aftermath down is tricky sometimes.' He couldn't tell him that the Home Office - or, at least, Maud Logan Clatworthy, star of the Home Office youth team - no, couldn't tell him that Maud believed the conviction reached only an edge of Larkspur's organized villainy and corruption; was not much more than a token conviction, a fall-guy conviction. She thought it required a serious, incisive, follow-up pry by the original outside investigators, already knowledgeable about the area: Iles and him. To date, the mission was based only on rumour and loose talk. Maud possessed no hard information, and neither did he and Iles. Maud had intuitions, though, plus, probably, that Oxbridge first-class degree. It could give her intuitions a touch of credibility, solidity and oomph.

‘Yes, Detective Chief Superintendent Harpur has always been one for a phrase,' Iles said. ‘“Some tidying” in an “aftermath”. And
because
it's an aftermath we might have to go over certain old material again. A quick glance at it. Forgive us that, will you, please?' Harpur could see both Jane and Gerald were fixated on the Assistant Chief's face crack. Very dark bruising had gone up and down: up to his eyelid and lower region of the forehead, and down almost to the corner of his mouth. You'd often see women marked like this in domestic violence courts. That comparison would probably please Iles. He liked to feel he had a link with all sorts across gender, religion, weight, class, education, medical state, race, as long as they didn't try to get objectionably close.

He said: ‘Miss Matson - Jane, if I may - you declared in your trial evidence and statements earlier that you and Mr Beatty - Gerald, if I may - yes, you two were crossing the Elms building site between Ritson mall and Guild Square on the night of the killing, when you saw the body of Detective Sergeant Mallen about forty metres to your left.'

‘I didn't know it was a body immediately,' she said.

‘No, quite,' Iles said. ‘A good moon but still fairly dark.'

‘It was a shape, a heap, that's how it seemed at first.'

‘You thought possibly a pile of discarded clothes,' Iles said. ‘This is in the court narrative.'

‘At first, yes. All sorts of litter on that site, the clothes possibly dumped as unwanted from a stolen suitcase,' Jane said.

‘But then you corrected?' Iles replied.

Gerald Beatty said: ‘Jane had drawn my attention to . . . to, well, something unusual over on our left. Yes, she thought just discarded clothes. I thought so, too. I joked that it might be an out-of-season Guy Fawkes.'

Iles chuckled for several seconds - no, Harpur realized it was more than several: say ten - a thorough-going, durable, entirely uncontemptuous chuckle. Iles said: ‘Some jokes are all the better for avoiding too much subtlety.'

‘But then she revised this,' Gerald replied, ‘and said it looked like a man, sort of hunched on the ground, maybe ill, perhaps a heart attack. Possibly a vagrant. I wasn't sure, but she insisted. I suppose I felt reluctant to make the detour. We were each carrying two full carrier bags from Ritson.'

‘Yes, and I expect they could put you off balance slightly,' Iles said, ‘especially when negotiating around and over obstacles such as flattened lengths of fencing and so on.'

‘The car was in dock,' Gerald said.

‘Eggs?' Harpur asked. ‘A need to be careful with the bags when you set them down.'