Play Dead (36 page)

For a moment or two she felt pleased with this snippet of applied scholarship. This was education, and education fashioned to illuminate an actual, nowish situation: a jailbird's wife making the best of a horrible, painful predicament. It was the kind of mental trick that justified the existence and cost of museums, wasn't it? They were full of ancient exhibits and these relics showed how our modern tools, machinery, weapons had their beginnings.

But then she thought this amounted to pretentious crap. The slice of Voltaire was so well-known it hardly counted as scholarship. Clichédom more like it. God how patronizing to ask, ‘Did Mrs Jaminel realize she was following a famous French theatrical character's recommended creed?' Emily feared her smug sojourn into French literature had stupidly preoccupied her and taken some of her concentration off the road. But only some. She looked in the Mini's rear-view mirror and saw a Renault Laguna saloon not far behind. And she had a notion that she had more or less subconsciously noticed this vehicle earlier sticking close, though her main attention then had been on Mrs Jaminel in her garden and
Candide
in hers.

She did a more purposeful stare into the mirror now. She didn't recognize the car and it stayed too far back to get a proper view of the driver - a man, who seemed to be alone. She'd seen television crime dramas where one of the characters had to deal with a vehicle that seemed to be tailing him or her. The technique was to take a couple of turnings and see if the car behind followed. That would confirm, or not, if it was a tail or just a vehicle by chance doing some of the same route as the one ahead.

She took two lefts and then a right and the Laguna remained with her. In this manoeuvring the Laguna unintentionally came a little closer and twice for half a second she had a slightly better view of the driver - someone not tall, sitting low in the driver's seat. ‘My God, my God!' she yelled to herself. ‘It's Leo.' The idea that he might dog her like this, pry like this, infuriated Emily. Had he hired that Laguna to fool her? The sly sod. He wasn't at home when she left for Mrs Jaminel's. Could he have been waiting somewhere near Midhurst to see whether she would drive out in the Mini? That information he'd received from his contact at the national police computer about her car must have disturbed him, made him suspicious of her. It suggested a life he had known nothing of. Had he been behind her on the way to Mrs Jaminel's as well as after, but unnoticed?

She longed to confront him, show him her rage and contempt. The planning, the elaborateness, the car disguise appalled her. She took another left turn but stopped immediately in the new road, expecting him to pull in behind her. This was
not
something she had learned from TV cop dramas, though. It was a piece of crude, dangerous retaliation. Leo had lagged a little and, trying to make up the distance, came round the corner too fast, possibly afraid he'd lose her. He was putting his foot down when he should have been easing it back. Maybe he didn't know any more about the techniques of vehicle tailing than she did. He would have hit the rear of her car hard, perhaps injuring her or worse. Instead, he swerved out to go around the Mini and met a garden services lorry head-on. Through the driver's window she saw Leo's head jerked back by the impact and then he fell forward hard on to the wheel.

‘Leo!' she screamed. ‘Sit properly. Please!'

The Laguna and the lorry were alongside Emily's car, their fronts shattered and locked together, the Laguna gushing steam from under the sprung bonnet. She had just enough room to get out. She pulled at the passenger door of the Laguna. It was buckled and wouldn't open, but then did, a fraction. ‘Leo,' she whispered. ‘Oh, God.' He managed to lift his head from the driving wheel. He turned towards her and said absolutely clearly: ‘Howie will see you and the boys are all right.' It might have been the reference to the children that made her think now that she'd never seen him look more like a hamster called Stanley once owned by their younger son, Grenville.

‘Howie?' she said.

‘Yes, Howie.' She could tell there'd be nothing more from him.

H
arpur was back home with the children and Denise when verdicts in what had become known as ‘The Howie' case figured in the television news. Howard Lambert and three other police officers including a Constable Silver and Sergeant Quick were sent down for their part in a corrupt business arrangement with the Leo Young drugs firm.

‘That was you and Ilesy done it, wasn't it, Dad?' Jill said.

‘Did it,' Harpur said.

‘Yes, you two did it,' she said.

‘We were there. I'm not sure we did much. It was Mrs Young,' Harpur said.

‘Ilesy wouldn't admit something like that,' Jill said.

‘He'd want the
gloire
, wouldn't he?' Hazel said. ‘That's what the French call it - the glory. Or “We must have distinctions” as one of the Napoleons said. Desy Iles would go for any distinction available, wouldn't he?'

‘Not always,' Harpur said.

‘US cops in movies call it the collar,' Jill said.

‘Little
gloire
or glory about,' Harpur said.

‘Your dad's doing his modesty act,' Denise said.

‘That's what I mean,' Jill replied.

‘What?' Harpur said.

‘Des Iles doesn't do modesty,' Jill said.

‘It's that poor woman, widow, Mrs Young, I think of,' Denise said. ‘I've been reading about her in the papers. As I see it, she was a woman with quite a bit going for her - in the career and social sense, I mean. And then she obviously comes to wonder what her husband does for a living, and fears it might be something horrible, so she starts her own inquiries.'

‘Yes, like that,' Harpur said.

‘Respectability is a very powerful quality,' Denise said. ‘Reputation. Shakespeare is on about it in
Othello
, isn't he?'

‘Is he? Harpur said.

‘“Reputation, reputation, reputation,” Cassio says. Without it he's a beast, he reckons. Social standing. It sounds bourgeois and prim, but is a great motivator and deeply democratic, because it values the opinions of others. She wanted it. She was on some museum committee, wasn't she? That would be full of worthies, I bet.'

‘You'll be like it one day, I expect, Denise,' Jill said. ‘A degree. Or maybe more than one degree. Full of learning and conversation.'

‘Emily Young would imagine those snide museum colleagues guessing what her husband's life must really be like,' Denise replied. ‘And it wouldn't be a very difficult guess.'

‘Yes, I think she had some guilt,' Harpur said. He bought the
Epoch
next morning to see what they made of it all. There was a full court report but also a piece by the journalist Philip White under the heading ‘An Unsatisfactory End'.

This article comes to you today in the style of a post script - a post script to our previous tribute to David Lee Cass which we, as well as many other newspapers, published at the time of his death; and a post script, also, to the court case involving corrupt police officers which is reported on pages one and seven. I was David's editor and went not long ago to the police area coded as Larkspur to see if I could establish that David's death had helped rid the city of this vile debasement of a police force. I talked to many people there, some of whom had been in contact with David and remembered him favourably. I talked, also, to the two officers who had been sent to investigate, or re-investigate, the force, Assistant Chief Constable Iles and Detective Chief Superintendent Colin Harpur. They assured me it was the killing of David on the assignment that horrified Mrs Young and made her determined to discover whether her husband had any part in the crime. We cannot know the answer to that, because he died. But it was as a result of what Mrs Young told them, and later told the court about her husband's last words - ‘Howie will see you and the children all right' - that the two officers decided to revisit Lambert and begin an interrogation that led to his and his associates' conviction. It comforted me to hear that in a roundabout fashion David had contributed to this outcome, and I'm sure many readers of this paper will feel the same.

He took the paper home in the evening. Denise had driven the children to their judo club and would pick them up in half an hour. She read the news report and the White article. She said: ‘In a way Leo Young was a gallant figure.'

‘Yes, in a way.'

‘In a couple of ways,' she said.

‘Yes?'

‘He pulls out to avoid crashing into the Mini and Emily.'

‘Crashes into a lorry, instead,' Harpur said.

‘That's what I mean,' Denise said. ‘A sort of self-sacrifice.'

‘He could have killed the lorry driver.'

‘Less likely than killing Emily in a small car. And, anyway, the lorry driver is OK. Young must have had time to calculate which was best to do.'

‘You're a romantic,' Harpur said.

‘And then, as he's dying in the Laguna, he thinks of Emily and the kids: “Howie will see you and the boys are all right.”'

‘Howie was Mallen's handler.'

‘I realize that,' Denise said.

‘It's a kind of almost holy relationship,' Harpur said. ‘We have to assume Mallen told him stuff that Howie Lambert saw would scupper the business, if Mallen were allowed to continue. He must have found out a dangerous amount about “the arrangement” but, obviously, not enough for Mallen to know Lambert was the main man on the police side in the dark alliance. But Lambert feared this might be the next Mallen discovery. So, silence him - or get someone to silence him: Jaminel, another member of the corrupt police group, a trained marksman. Success!

‘Everything goes quiet after the Jaminel conviction. Dathan, the Chief, is content to let matters rest. He doesn't want any more hostile interest in his team. But then, suddenly, there's a new snooping bugger about, this time David Lee Cass, plus the return of those two other snooping buggers, Iles and Harpur. Dathan tries to get rid of Iles following a quaint disturbance at the theatre. And Lambert believes Cass has begun to unearth too much, just like Mallen. Lambert fixes a remote rendezvous with him, supposedly to spill secrets, and Cass walks into it, the way Mallen walked into the other trap on Elms. This time, Lambert didn't depute the killing, though.'

Denise looked shaken. ‘What happens to Mrs Young and their children, then, Col?'

‘You mean Howie won't be around to see them right? The firm's extinguished.'

‘Yes.'

‘Not our concern, Denise.'

‘But she helped you.'

‘I've said thank you to her several times,' Harpur replied.

‘What about Iles?'

‘He might have, too. He can occasionally turn quite soft.'

¹
See
Undercover

²
See
Halo Parade

³
See
Roses, Roses