Undercover (2 page)

Harpur considered, too, the chewy, hellishly deep and complicated dilemma of being undercover when you and your supposed colleagues went on a killing spree. Tom must have had an intense fear of getting rumbled at the shooting and conceivably of having been half rumbled well before it. He'd see the need to participate – but without, in fact, participating. ‘In fact', here, meant actually putting bullets into the target, the designated enemy, the intended victim.

Harpur tried to tune into Tom's thinking as he'd travelled in the Volvo, even trivial thinking. For instance, would Tom have chatted to himself – silently, secretly – about his companions' fashion tastes and their relation to shoulder holsters and jackets' fit? Harpur needed to get to know these people thoroughly, and one way of doing it was to create some of their notions and actions, keeping these little embellishments as near to believable as he could.

Harpur's fantasizing always had a foundation in the real. Imagination wasn't his main flair. A green cardigan worn by the Wheels, Jamie Meldon-Luce, had been described in a witness statement, its greenness pale, apparently, and edging towards turquoise. Did Meldon-Luce believe that cardigans had come back into fashion, and not just for the elderly? But Harpur realized that a heavy, generously cut cardigan of whatever colour or tint would be useful in hiding a holster and armament beneath its thick folds. And those thick folds would be easy to pull aside if the gun were required fast.

As to weaponry, papers studied by Harpur mentioned that Ivor Wolsey, one of the Volvo crew, was a gifted marksman who had emerged from a period when firearms turned him off completely. Harpur had come across people like that on previous cases. There was a jokey, mock-Latin description of the ailment:
corditus allergius
. Perhaps Wolsey mirrored some of those other converts to shoot-bang-fire and never trumpeted his pistol talent, in case this vanity got up Fate's nose and brought incapacity back.

Harpur longed to confer individuality and quirks on the main people featured in this post-event inquiry by Iles and him. Generally speaking, it was usually Iles who did the imagined and imaginary stuff. He would occasionally tell Harpur – no, oftener than that – he'd tell Harpur about ‘my soaring mind, Col, disencumbering me from the banal and workaday'.

OK. But Harpur had grown fed up with being regarded as merely the nitty-gritty and plod element in the partnership. He might not be able to soar yet, and get himself disencumbered from the banal and workaday, but he could intelligently and constructively speculate.

AFTER

B
ut some witness statements were so vivid and detailed that they made Harpur's attempts at intelligent and constructive speculation unnecessary. After all, intelligent and constructive speculation was only a puffed-up phrase for guesswork. Guesswork couldn't compete with the real and actual:

WITNESS ONE (Mrs Nora Clement):

On October twenty-fifth at about nine thirty in the evening I saw a red Volvo saloon drive into Monthermer Street and park on a double-yellow-lined bus stop where the pavement had been recessed, making a kind of lay-by. It was this blatant, possibly contemptuous disregard for road discipline that made me notice the Volvo and continue watching it for some minutes. There appeared to be four men in the car. Three of them left the vehicle. The driver remained, so some of my resentment about the parking shrank, since he could move the Volvo if the bus wanted to draw in. Nonetheless, a clearly designated bus stop should not be used for parking, no matter the circumstances, I believe. Disregard for such rules is symptomatic of a wider antisocial attitude, increasingly prevalent today, I fear.

At first I thought the driver to be a man between thirty and thirty-five. There was a street light above the bus stop which enabled me to see quite clearly the car and the four men at this stage. The driver had on a pale green, almost turquoise, cardigan. He was broad shouldered, wide-necked, with dark hair ridge-cut, which made me wonder whether he could, in fact, be as old as thirty-five, since this style of crude haircut is favoured by younger men. I cannot imagine why they should espouse this ugly style. But, then, so many of youth's tastes are incomprehensible to me, and to many of my generation. I consider the initial damage was done by a quite famous American singer-shouter, Elvis Presley, and things have got continuously worse since then.

The three men who had left the car walked away in a group together. They wore casual clothes. They seemed to me purposeful, as if they had some particular task ahead. Although they were fewer and not so well dressed, they reminded me of the group of robbers walking towards their next criminal operation at the beginning of that appallingly violent film,
Riverside Dogs
, which my son, Gregory, used to watch repeatedly on DVD.

{Correction: the witness probably means
Reservoir Dogs
.}

I think that when they reached the end of Monthermer Street the three separated from one another. That was my impression, though I could not be sure, owing to the distance and the evening darkness. I did not give the three very much attention because I had no idea they might be significant. But I'd say that two were somewhat older than the driver and one was around the same age. He and one of the other two had on denim blousons, I recall, with light-coloured trousers. The other man wore a dark leather jacket and jeans. The one I thought the youngest of the three who left the car was also the tallest – probably just over six feet – and thin. He had short fair hair. The other two were of middle height and strong build. One wore a baseball-style peaked cap. The other was dark-haired and possibly balding. The Volvo moved off the bus stop soon afterwards and drove slowly up towards Mitre Park. It went out of my sight.'

WITNESS TWO (Mr Rex Marchant):

I was walking the dog near Mitre Park at about ten forty-five p.m. on October twenty-fifth – I habitually take the dog out for ‘watering' at about this time before bed if the weather suits – when I became aware of a red Volvo parked in the shadows under some trees. We have problems with car-borne lovers in this area, and I assumed that the vehicle was here for that purpose. I would not want it thought that I stare in to such cars with a prying, voyeur intent – termed, I believe, ‘dogging', though I don't know why. It seems a slander on dogs, such as mine. But as I and the dog passed it, I could see that in fact there was only one person in the car, a square-built man wearing what appeared to be a green cardigan. He was in the driver's seat. He did not look towards me, though he must have been aware of my nearness to the car. I had the idea that he did not wish to show his face properly, or to offer any greeting, in case this caused me to stop and perhaps signal that he should open the window for a conversation. He might be expecting questions as to his intentions, or even a rebuke. I did not find his behaviour reassuring. It, of course, occurred to me that he might be what is called, I believe, ‘casing' the district for future break-ins – or about to attempt a break-in there and then. I decided that on my return I must memorize the Volvo's registration number, which would be possible without having to pause and so alert the driver. I continued my walk.

Shortly afterwards, I thought I heard the running feet of more than one person. Then came angry shouting, all male, and maybe there was the sound of a struggle – shoes impacting heavily on the ground, and perhaps a degree of breathlessness in the shouting. I could make out some words. I think a man yelled, ‘He's not coming I tell you. He's not coming. Never.' After a minute or so I heard a vehicle's engine start behind me, most probably the Volvo's, and then the slamming of two car doors. I deduced from this that two or three people had entered the Volvo, depending on whether two or one used the same rear door on the pavement side to get into the car, plus one into the passenger seat. I heard the car pull away in what seemed a rush. When I and the dog came back from our stroll, the Volvo had gone. I had therefore lost the chance to note the car's registration number. I can only say that it appeared to be a quite new model and not the anti-stylish, boxy type. It appeared that the car had waited at this agreed point to pick up the people I'd heard running, and then leave. But there appeared to have been some kind of dispute, which I cannot explain.

An odd factor – or in my view, at least, an odd factor – was that as I neared the site of where the Volvo had been I could see ahead of me the man I think had been in the driver's seat originally. I recognized – think I recognized – the green cardigan. The dog barked, having also spotted this figure in the dark and perhaps wanting to alert me. The noise caused the man to look back, and then he seemed to increase his walking speed and soon disappeared.

The Volvo turned out to have been lifted from a municipal car park earlier in October. The vehicle's registration number wouldn't have disclosed anything about the driver and his companions, even if Mr Marchant had managed to get, memorize and report it. Harpur wanted to believe him when Marchant said he wasn't interested in an ogle and objected to the night use of the area for car sex. People did get upset by lovers at it in parked cars close to their homes. Harpur couldn't altogether understand this, unless it was envy. The couples in the cars would be reasonably quiet and self-focused. Iles had a framed cartoon from an ancient copy of some American magazine, showing a man and woman leaving their car and carrying the back seat into the woods. The ACC would normally keep this in a drawer out of sight, but during that longish period when he was trying to drive the previous Chief Constable, Mark Lane, off his head, he'd take down the portrait of the Home Secretary in his suite and replace it with the cartoon, if he knew Lane was about to look in on him. Iles liked the multi-use of cars himself; would speak of it to Harpur sometimes. He'd said once, ‘Col, think how this can bring humanity to what is otherwise nothing but a banal metal box with mirrors.'

‘As you'll know, that's the exact wording of the Oxford Dictionary definition of a car, sir,' Harpur had replied. ‘“A banal metal box with mirrors.” Or might it be “
extremely
” banal.'

AFTER

H
arpur went now to the police record of ‘Interview One' with a member of the Volvo team that night: Ivor Wolsey, aged thirty-seven, one previous conviction, for theft. Wolsey had turned Queen's Evidence. That is, he would talk, would betray mates – tell everything he knew to the police. In exchange he'd expect kinder treatment by the court, suppose the case came to trial, plus special safeguarding as a snitch in jail, if he was sent down. Those who turned Queen's Evidence came in for a lot of hate in the crooked world.