Play Dead (19 page)

‘You go, sir,' Harpur said to Iles. ‘I'll have a prowl around.'

‘Around where?'

‘Yes, around. The purlieus, I think they're called.' His fears for Hill-Brandon remained. Harpur ought to try to find him and make sure he was all right and understood the hazards and threats. People got snuffed in this domain. Harpur and Ivan Hill-Brandon had been on dangerous show in that breakfast cafe.

‘Are you sitting on some information, Col, in your customary, festeringly stealthy mode?' the ACC said.

‘Which kind of information, sir?'

‘The informative kind.'

Harpur thought he wouldn't mention the Hill-Brandon meeting and egg and bacon conference for the present. Harpur liked to time carefully any briefing of Iles and this was not the right moment to bring him up to speed on Hill-Brandon. Often Harpur loved to confer ignorance upon the ACC. In any case, Harpur realized he might not be up to speed on Hill-Brandon himself. This was what fretted him, and when Iles had left for the theatre and it grew dark Harpur went to the Elms site again. He hoped that if the more usual and comfortable accommodation remained unavailable Hill-Brandon might have moved into one of the estate bedrooms for the night, though not the one Courtenay Jaminel had fired his two death shots from: squatting observed its own special, goofy etiquette.

Hill-Brandon had said he liked to come early to grab a favourable spot for himself and his sleeping bag. Harpur carried a torch to use in the properties and try to find outside where the boarding might have been interfered with to allow entry. This couldn't be a foolproof process because Hill-Brandon had said he actually went downstairs to re-fix boarding in number 18 so he would have a place to himself. Harpur remembered the location Hill-Brandon had given of the house he was in on Biro night and his account of the way he'd got access. It had been by loosened boarding at the front, whereas Jaminel had used a rear door and sprung a lock in the other house.

The Jaminel property was two to his right, Hill-Brandon said: Jaminel's turret, his fortress. Harpur had taken his daughters on holiday recently to the Mar Minor region of Spain south of Alicante, and they'd stayed briefly - not briefly enough - in a ghastly town called San Javier, full of big villas built to look like medieval castles with towers, battlements and loopholes, done in pink or orange. The Elms house was only that - a house, a part-completed house - but it had more warlike qualities than any of that stupendously naff Spanish architecture. Hill-Brandon had been trying to patch up the front access point from inside when he'd spotted Iles and Harpur in the mud. That suggested the boarding had not actually been removed or seriously damaged; perhaps some of the wall screws taken out, allowing the wood to swing sideways on a surviving screw like a pendulum, if you knew about it and gave a push. And Hill-Brandon would know about it: he was an
habitué
.

As he approached the houses, Harpur tried to guess at and follow the exact route taken by Tom Mallen along the established pathway, then diverting from it. According to Hill-Brandon, that was because Mallen wanted to avoid the two helmeted and obvious police officers hanging about on the path ahead of him; the same two officers who had also caused Hill-Brandon not merely to divert but go to alternative, downgrade lodgings in the Tesco recycling and stopover facility. Harpur couldn't know exactly the spot at which Parry changed direction but thought he had it reasonably right.

In a while, he crossed the small rectangle of ground where the body had been found by Jane and Gerald on their way back from shopping, and where Harpur and the ACC had fought. Harpur felt this tussle brought a flavour of farce to things now, despite the crafted tragedy of the sergeant's death. He stopped in front of the house sometimes used by Hill-Brandon and had a good gaze at the downstairs boarding. He thought he could detect something slightly adrift at one of the bay windows to what might some day be a top-of-the-range lounge. When he went closer he found it as he'd imagined: a couple of the planks had been freed from all but one wall plug and could be pushed right and left to make a gap, like opening a pair of curtains. He put his head through and called out at good, friendly volume, ‘Ivan, Ivan Hill-Brandon, are you in here? It's Col. Just a social call. I happened to be in the vicinity. Nothing serious.' No reply and no sound of any movement.

He bent double and stepped over the sill into the room. He was wearing a brown leather jacket and he took this off now, folded it and placed it where it would hold the two planks slightly apart. From burglars over the years he had learned always to leave yourself a quick and obvious exit from a property. It had become for him a more or less automatic drill when entering a problem building, perhaps illicitly, perhaps illegally now and then. Although he had the torch to help him find his way back, he still felt compelled to follow the rigmarole. The ground floor was woodblock, scattered with a lot of brick and timber debris.

Harpur kept the torch on and picked his way across the room, out into the hall and stood at the foot of the stairs. He called Hill-Brandon again, but without any answer. Harpur began to climb the stairs. He took them quickly, another ingrained habit. Police training taught that you were at your most vulnerable when on stairs. Gunfire could get you from below or above, so don't loiter. True, Hill-Brandon wasn't likely to be armed, wasn't a gangster but an ex-shopkeeper, wiped out by the Coalition's ‘we're all in this together' policy, though government ministers seemed to keep their heads above water OK. Hill-Brandon might be harmless, but Harpur still moved fast on the stairs.

There were six doorways off the first-floor landing, with as yet no doors. They opened on to what in due though uncertain course would be bedrooms and bathrooms. He gave priority with the torch beam to the two front bedrooms, the biggest. In time, one or other of these might be known as ‘the master bedroom' and Harpur had the notion this would appeal to Hill-Brandon who had been used to some status as a home and shop owner, particularly as the floors of these two main bedrooms were in place and would very adequately provide a base for one's sleeping bag. It was in the nature of floors to give support.

Hill-Brandon was not in either bedroom, however. Harpur saw traces of previous use in each. Rats and mice would have seen off any food remnants but in one room the torch lit up wrapping paper that might have held bread or cold meat, and a couple of Heinz soup cans, the contents presumably taken cold, beef broth and tomato. The sight of these tins heartened Harpur. They would bring sustenance. Heinz used to boast of 57 varieties of their soup flavours, and perhaps there were more now, so anyone living on them could have a change of daily diet for at least eight weeks and then revert to the beginning.

He was also pleased to find no ciggy ends, though he didn't have any special views about smoking. Denise got through what might be half a twenty pack a day and he enjoyed seeing her jet the fumes from her nose after they had done a good, swift inner tour of her chest. But for someone like Hill-Brandon, reduced to a comparatively deprived kind of life, tobacco smoke might do extra-swift damage, especially if he'd unhygienically picked up the butts in the gutter and reclaimed the remaining half centimetre to the very last of the possibly infected tip. So far Denise had no cough and didn't gasp, except when she should be gasping. She probably had a spliff now and then, but mainly she went for tobacco. He didn't like to think of her having a fag with some male acquaintance - say another student - and their outgoing smoke mingling damn intimately in the air around them. He didn't like to think of it but he did think of it, and it niggled him. He saw this as only a step away from merging their bodily fluids.

Harpur was taking big, self-righteous pleasure from his session of sympathy and large-mindedness towards Hill-Brandon when he thought he heard movement behind him downstairs. He couldn't place it exactly. He switched off the torch. He considered calling out to Hill-Brandon again, but then reconsidered and didn't. Harpur reasoned that if Hill-Brandon came here for the night he would, as he'd said, arrive early to get his spot on reliable floorboards. This was not early by the standards of someone looking for an untroubled and secure kip. Harpur needed a minute in the dark to adjust to the possibility of meeting someone else - most probably someone he didn't know, and whose behaviour he couldn't foretell.

A woman said in a chatty, jaunty tone, ‘Ivan, Ivan, dear, what is it with your coat?'

‘How do you mean, my coat?' Harpur said, aiming his voice down the stairs and trying to keep the same genial intonation. The woman must have entered the house deftly, quietly, through the adjusted planks. She seemed to be standing at the bottom of the stairs. Harpur had the impression of someone in, maybe, her late twenties and possibly wearing a navy or black jogging suit.

‘You're not Ivan,' the woman said.

‘No.'

‘But it's your coat - the brown leather job?'

‘Yes,' Harpur replied.

‘I come back to the original question, then: what is it with the coat? I saw it folded and carefully placed, and decided somebody must be in here. Ivan might have been in any of the houses, except that tainted one, “the bullets house”, as he titles it. When I saw the coat, it sort of narrowed things down, though, clearly, I didn't know he had a leather coat, which, in the event, turns out to be accurate, because the coat's yours.'

‘Right. It's to signal an exit. Luckily it's not cold tonight or I'd miss it, obviously.'

‘Alternatively, I took it as signalling an entrance,' she replied.

‘It's the polar opposites in the very same article. This can happen in life. Think of two sides of the same coin, or that saying, “My enemy's enemy is my friend”.'

‘I'm not certain either of those is a match,' she said.

‘This is not the kind of setting for mere verbal quibbles, surely - a half finished house in the dark.'

‘Who
are
you?' she replied. ‘I seem to remember your face - in so far as I can see it.'

‘Like you, I was looking for Ivan Hill-Brandon.'

‘Why?' she said.

‘We could each ask the other that, I suppose,' Harpur said.

‘We could, and I'm asking you,' she said. ‘Do you think he might be in some sort of danger?'

‘Is that why
you're
here?' Harpur replied.

‘I saw the folded coat there, holding the two planks apart, and this was bound to prove a kind of pointer.'

‘Which?'

‘Which what?' she replied.

‘Which kind of pointer?'

‘Some planning has gone into your visit,' she said. ‘There's a purpose to it.'

‘To find him.'

‘For all I know, that might mean to do him some harm. This whole area has a disturbing reputation.'

‘And yet Ivan liked to bivouac here.'

‘Not much choice.'

‘How about you?' Harpur said.

‘How about me in what sense?'

‘
You
might have been here to do him harm. In that case, the folded coat would have been a mistake. A big one. It would draw you into the house and if he were here you would have found him, possibly surprised him.'

‘But he isn't here, is he?' she said.

‘No. My name's Harpur, spelled with a u. It's Scottish, I think.'

‘Well, I noticed this name in the Press when that killing took place near here. And a photograph. Ah! It's why I thought I recognized you. You're police, yes? That means you think he might be in some peril.'

‘He might be.'

‘Well, not from me,' she said.

‘No, I don't imagine from you. I think you, also, fear he might be in peril and have come to try to help.'

‘Are we both here for that?'

‘Probably. Who are
you
then?'

‘It scares me,' she replied.

‘What?'

‘The fact that both of us, quite independently, feel he's got possible trouble. We've each picked up what I've referred to in connection with the folded coat as pointers. Occasionally, he'll stay with me.'

‘Yes, I understand that.'

‘He's a good person. He shouldn't get pitched into an evil situation without in any way choosing that kind of involvement.'

‘I agree.'

‘I've been away working and I come back and hear about the killing of this journalist now. We already had that other death a while ago. I think of Ivan, living the way he does, and exposed.'

‘Yes, that's how it could be.'

‘And you're here for the same matter, aren't you? This is frightening. We endorse each other.'

As if to underline that idea, the doubling of the message, this house gave an echo to the words, ‘We endorse each other.' No doors had been fitted anywhere so the echo had plenty of routes to chase itself on. He let the beam bounce off the stairwell walls and take her in. Auburn hair to just below ear level, perhaps its natural colour. About twenty-seven, twenty-eight, and in a dark jogging outfit, as he'd thought. Good, considerate/worried face, fresh skin, small, inquiring nose, rounded, nice chin which would fit very comfortably between Hill-Brandon's thighs. He would do all right here when she was available, which would be less often than he wanted, but, to his credit, he'd made himself adaptable in at least a couple of fall-back pads. He didn't get all distressed and shattered when she was absent. He had mental resources and notable creativity, which enabled him to see opportunity in a Tesco bin. She obviously valued him, and he might deserve it. Harpur kept the torch on and went downstairs. ‘I'm Veronica,' she said, though without holding her hand out to be shaken or offering her cheek to be kissed.

‘Colin, Col.'

‘I feel as if I've let him down twice,' she said. ‘Once, obviously, when the undercover man died. Ivan set out to come here because I wasn't around in Kitchener Street and couldn't give him a place to sleep and so on.'