Play Dead (16 page)

‘Few would ever accuse you of being crushed, unbuoyant or diffident, sir.' Harpur realized at once he should have phrased this differently. His mind had momentarily gone slipshod again. Often Iles had rounded on that kind of attempted compliment, treated it as a blazing insult.

‘Which fucking few, Col?'

‘Yes, I'll do the warm-up for you,' Harpur replied. ‘You'll be able to make a really worthwhile, debonair entrance, like David Niven in old movies, despite the Biro pit.'

‘Thanks, Col.'

‘What excuse shall I give?'

‘Excuse?'

‘For your absence.'

Iles smiled a large, tolerant smile. ‘You don't understand, do you, Col?'

‘Don't I, sir?'

‘I have no need to offer an excuse. That's the kind of man I am, you see. Excuses are for serfs, subordinates and minions. Mine is an independent, cheerfully casual approach to things. It will become apparent to him when I arrive. Probably he already realizes as much from our previous visit. This will confirm. I defy adversity. I have a wound, yes, but what care I?'

‘I'll just say you'll get there as soon as you can.'

‘Not as soon as I
can.
As soon as I
wish.
Let him see that neither you nor he can corral Desmond Iles.'

‘They don't build corrals able to achieve that, sir.'

‘Who don't?'

‘In general.'

Iles gargled unostentatiously with the remaining mouthful of hot water and then spat it back into the cup. ‘A corral is a pen for animals, isn't it, Harpur?'

‘Well, yes.'

‘I've been penned but in a rather different sense.'

‘Rather.'

‘When I arrive, Col, smiling in an unapologetic way as I enter the room, I'd like you to say in a pleased, enthusiastic, spontaneous tone, “Oh, here's Mr Iles now! I'm so glad he's been able to fit you in, Chief”.'

‘Right, sir. I'll bone up on the spontaneity.'

The ACC went back to his room. Harpur wondered whether he needed some private time to polish up his free-spiritedness. Harpur had a couple of hours before the meeting at 11.30. He left the hotel and set out down the main road, past police headquarters, to the shops. He wanted to get something to send his sister as thanks for looking after Hazel and Jill. She often helped out when Harpur was away. The kids got on fairly well with her.

As he came near to the headquarters building, a man who'd been standing on the pavement outside turned towards Harpur and raised his hand in a kind of greeting. Harpur didn't recognize him. He had on a new-looking Barbour all-weathers jacket, a green and gold cravat, a Royal Enclosure brown trilby, green corduroy trousers and brown brogues. On the floor near him was a large zipped-up holdall. ‘Mr Harpur? It is Mr Harpur, isn't it?' he said. The accent seemed local. ‘I was intrigued by that conflict you had on the floor at Elms with your colleague, Mr Iles, presumably.'

‘Oh, yes?' Harpur replied.

‘Or rather more than presumably.'

‘Oh, yes?'

‘I thought you or he or both would come to this police building at some stage to, shall we say, “clock-in” on your repeat visit, much buzzed among the cognoscenti of such matters, so I waited around. You'll ask, “Waited around to what purpose?” And the reply is, I sought contact. That, though, is possibly not a satisfactory explanation, for you might well than ask, “To make contact with what purpose?”'

‘This
is
puzzling.'

‘Clarification comes! Well, you see, depending on one thing and another in the flow—'

‘Which flow?'

‘Of life, obviously. Depending on one thing and another in this flow, I sometimes move in for the night at one of those uncompleted houses on Elms. Hence I could audience your, as it were, recent contretemps. This appeared all-out savagery, correct me if I overstate. Now, you'll say to yourself, no doubt: “This man looks much too smart and clean and, in fact, fashionable, to be a dosser. His garments are of a county family mode.” It's not the first time I've run into that type of reaction. Hardly so! But my answer is - always is - spruceness and a sustained style are even more required by someone leading what could admittedly be considered a somewhat unstructured life than by those in a more, shall we call it, without prejudice, yes, we'll call it a more
normal
existence.'

He nodded towards the holdall. ‘In there, besides a sleeping bag and toiletries, are what could be termed more rough-and-ready clothes for when I'm in a setting such as Elms for an
in
extremis
short period. This is a turn-and-turn-about arrangement. If I'm in those rough-and-readies, my more impressive outfit will be in the bag. Then, before I come to a spot such as this and in these circumstances - conversation with a distinguished police officer - I can take this
more
presentable stuff from the holdall, where it is then replaced by the
less
presentable garments, and so, having duded up, appear bandbox fresh and tidy as I trust you'll agree I am now, as if scheduled to visit a polo match later or that type of exclusive outdoor gathering.'

‘First rate,' Harpur said.

‘The rumour was certainly around among the said cognoscenti that you and the Assistant Chief would return, or had returned, and this, obviously, helped with identification during the mud shindig, providing, as it were, a longlist of possibles.'

‘Right.'

‘My resting place, not in
the
house, not number fourteen, you understand. Of course you understand. I'm not a superstitious or over-nervy person, but there are certain limits, I think you'll confirm. So, to sleep in a house where the shots came from - this is beyond the acceptable, even for someone who, on a temporary basis, is seeking a crash-out lodging. That house might have been fine for me before, but not since. I could
see
that house - the gun lair as previously mentioned - yes, I could see it from the dwelling I'd picked, number eighteen. Well, obviously, or I wouldn't have known about those antics of you and him in battle, would I?'

‘That's a fact,' Harpur replied.

‘It was dark and a bit of a distance, but nevertheless.'

He stopped. Harpur could have helped him out and asked, ‘Nevertheless what?' But one of the most elementary rules of interviewing or interrogating was you let the subject fix his or her own pace, his or her own punctuation. He'd be about fifty, Harpur thought; thick fair hair protruding under the trilby, a round, unlined face, lively blue-grey eyes: he seemed someone who'd had plenty of good sleeps, on Elms or elsewhere. His complexion went well with the countrified clothes. You could imagine him at his ease among polo ponies and chukkas.

‘Nevertheless,' he said. ‘Yes, now what was that “nevertheless” about, though? Oh, dear! This is an adverb, but what was the verb it's adding to? Ah, I remember. “Make out” - that's the verb. Like so, then - nevertheless, I could make out it was definitely you, supine, and I guessed the other must be Mr Iles. When you were here last time, relating, eventually, to the arrest of Inspector Jaminel you both had your pictures in the local press and on TV quite a bit, and the reports said you were on an investigation into how the situation was being dealt with after the murder of the undercover man. So, most folk around here know how you look, but I admit I'm having to speculate that the one lying close to you in the rough stuff on the ground was Mr Iles. He had his back to me.

‘And Mr Iles - if it
was
Mr Iles, which I think it must have been - Mr Iles - and I say this with full appreciation of its seriousness, believe me - Mr Iles, he seemed to be trying to throttle you as you lay on your back there, like you'd had a quarrel, that kind of thing, an important quarrel if it made him want to kill you on the very place someone else got killed, name of Parry or Mallen, depending which end you're coming from, as it were. Usually, an attack as all-out as that - strangulation of a friend or colleague - is about a woman, referred to by the French, who sort of excel at this kind of crisis, as “crime passionel”. I don't know if you had been giving it to Mrs Iles and he found out, maybe caught you on the job, or
in flagrante delicto
, to hop from French to Latin. Revenge, like a vendetta, could bring on that sort of violence.'

‘Number eighteen suited you, did it?' Harpur replied.

‘Obviously, what one looks for in this kind of venue is a property with the roof definitely on and weatherproof and the flooring complete, able to give a decent, consistent surface for the sleeping bag. A sleeping bag without a floor under it would not offer a good night's rest, would it?' He had a deep laugh about this and the cravat quivered, bringing some silver spots in the design out from where they'd been hidden among its folds. They gleamed mildly in the morning sunlight. When he'd recovered, he said: ‘Access through a front window where the boarding up had been part removed. This is so with several of the properties, if we can call them properties at this non-completed stage. As a matter of fact, I was downstairs trying to re-secure the boarding from inside so there'd be no intrusions while I slept when I saw the disturbance close to the house two along, the killer house. It's grand to have a room of one's own. Someone wrote a book about it. If you think of the Elms development, it's a kind of crescent, isn't it, like those famous terraces in Bath, giving the house where I was a good angle to view the possible throttle scene to the right.

‘You'll ask, why didn't I do anything to stop this dangerous tussle, such as shout or even get back out through the window and try to pull the two apart before terrible damage was done, namely wipe-out of you by him. Well, this is two big-time police gladiatoring. Do I stick my nose into that? Or maybe not my nose, but at least my voice. I don't think so. Mr Iles - if it
was
Mr Iles - has got some grievance and he's not going to feel sweet about it if someone from outside, such as self, interferes in a private brutality. What often happens in that kind of imbroglio is the two stop trying to hurt each other and turn on the third party, peacemonger, together. They - that's to say, you, plus Mr Iles - didn't know they - you and Mr Iles - were being watched by self and I decided it was better like that, safer like that. I was in my other, low-class, non-polo-match clothes. You and Mr Iles might think I must be some kind of tramp, and wouldn't care to have your behaviour questioned by such a one. I didn't exactly pass by on the other side, as the Bible says. I stayed put. But by staying put that's what I was doing - passing by on the other side. Or turning a blind eye.'

‘You seem to be saying there'd been previous
“in
extremis
short periods” when you looked for shelter on Elms,' Harpur replied.

‘You're wanting to ask whether I was in one of the houses for a kip-down the night Mr Undercover got the bullets.'

‘Were you?'

‘No. That's what I wanted to discuss.'

‘What's to discuss?' Harpur said. ‘You weren't there.'

‘I can understand why you turn abrupt, Mr Harpur.'

‘Sorry. But if you weren't there you weren't there. You're no witness.'

‘That's too simple. What's the
reason
I wasn't there? Have you pondered that, Mr Harpur? It's like in the Sherlock Holmes story, the dog that didn't bark. This negative was the clue nobody spotted except Sherlock himself. Similarly in this case. My name, though, is Hill-Brandon. Ivan Gladstone Hill-Brandon.

‘
Why
weren't you there?'

‘Exactly.'

‘In what sense?' Harpur said.

‘Because of one thing and the other, such as getting here to outside the nick at the start of the day, in case you and Mr Iles showed as a politeness matter towards this Chief, I seem to have missed breakfast,' he replied.

Harpur looked about. ‘There's a caff open up the road.'

‘Ah, so there is.' They walked towards it, Hill-Brandon carrying the holdall. ‘This is the kind of situation where it's important to have on a becoming outfit, or they don't let you in, won't serve you. They're afraid of odours and/or lice. Their priority is their other customers, the regulars. I can sympathize.'

‘Mr Iles doesn't have breakfast so it wouldn't affect him even if he was in scruffy clothes,' Harpur replied. More interrogation technique: to soothe the target you tried to follow up topics raised by him/her, even if it made you sound inane. They took a table. Harpur ordered two full Englishs although he'd had eggs and bacon at the hotel. It was necessary to achieve a kind of bonding: knife and fork comradeship.

Hill-Brandon said: ‘I don't think I've got this wrong, despite the dark, but my impression was you stabbed Mr Iles in the upper-left cheek with what seemed to me a small, dirk-type weapon, small, yet able to cause quite a wound. I didn't know where on your person you'd been carrying this blade, but your arm came around in an arc as if you'd pulled it from a hidden sheath and administered a very corrective blow, corrective of his attempt to strangle you, possibly owing to a woman who'd put herself amiably - too amiably? - in your direction. If you'd been fishing in his pool it would be understandable you'd carry a knife in case he found out about it and went for you in extremely conducive circumstances, such as an unpeopled building site at night, unpeopled except for me, which neither of you would be aware of. Conducive, also, in that you were flat on the ground, helpless, apparently, as part of a re-enactment of the Jaminel pot-shot night. But only apparently. Somewhere about you was that defensive dirk.'

The food came. Hill-Brandon ate very systematically, no gobbling and no splutter of particles here and there as with Iles's father's beans. Hill-Brandon got more or less equal amounts of mushrooms or bacon or black pudding on to his fork every time, and gave each load a matching long chew. Harpur kept pace. There could not be bonding and comradeship otherwise. To peck at the meal would suggest superiority, as though Harpur had reserves of nourishment aboard and never fell into troublesome hunger, as Hill-Brandon might, owing to an unstructured existence lately.