Come Clean (1989) (21 page)

She looked about carefully. ‘Gone.’

‘Yes, but where was it?’

Margot led her a little way along the road. Sarah scrutinized the ground.

‘What are we searching for?’ Margot asked.

Sarah was looking for blood, or for any sign of a struggle – a bit of torn clothing, a button. ‘I don’t know.’

Not long after dawn, Harpur stood on the quay-side at Young’s Dock, wearing his fire-damage sale camel-hair coat and the round, beige, two-tier Asian cloth hat
ceremonially presented to him last year at a racial harmony gathering in the community hall on Ernest Bevin estate. Comfortable and warm, its original was maybe designed for protection against icy
blasts pounding down from the Afghan mountains into West Pakistan, and Harpur reckoned it looked decently back-street ethnic, more peasant than those flash, I’ve-been-Intourist-to-Leningrad,
curly, black fur jobs.

The divers waited in their Land Rover near him. Harpur loved the docks, even at this chilly hour, and despite what was going on. The sun, red and weak, had started coming up behind one of a
group of moored tug boats,
Destiny II
, the first bits of pale light profiling its stubby, powerful frame. So, what destiny had
Destiny I
met with? Perhaps only age and obsoleteness,
which hardly rated as destiny at all, but which were a pain and always liable to get you. Around the bridge and mast of
Destiny II
hung a few strands of morning mist, and more strands rolled
sleepily in the breeze across the black water. Once he’d seen a painting of a French port, maybe Le Havre or Fécamp, with the same misty effects, though the ships were sail. If Jack
Lamb had been here he could have given the locale and artist right away, might even have had the picture on his wall briefly for a few secret days at some time while he worked a deal.

Harpur saw no activity yet on any docked vessel and the only sounds were a couple of seagulls terrorizing another for a fillet of rubbish from a plastic sack, and, further off, a freight train
lazily shunting. Things would wake up, soon, thank God. He could tire of romantic desolation. After some tough years, the docks had revived and business seemed good. Across the dock lay a big,
well-cared-for Russian timber carrier and, a little way along the wharf, a handsome United States container ship was stacked up, ready to go. Ah, trade, so much more binding than diplomacy. Sights
like this could almost make him believe in Thatcherism, though not to the degree where he would disclose it to his children or Megan, especially his children.

The divers sat silent in the back of the vehicle, waiting for more light before they put on their dry suits and went down. Given the choice, he knew they would have left it until much later in
the day, when the sun would be higher and offer them an extra foot or two’s visibility at twenty feet. But the big American vessel could be moving around by then, as well as
Destiny II
and other tugs, all churning the water. In any case, the Chief wanted this first stage of things done when there were as few people as possible about. Why draw attention? Of course, if there
were
something important on the bottom it would be a crane operation, and that could not be kept discreet.

Iles had said he would probably visit a little later, so, in the meantime, Harpur concentrated on enjoying the scene and absence of stress, pacing the quay to keep his blood on the move. He had
nothing to do here except wait. The sergeant with the diving unit would decide when the men should enter the water and what the procedure was to be if they found anything. Harpur would get the
report, and until then was a spectator. He liked it that way, felt total non-envy of the divers. It would not be like snorkelling in the Aegean. And, after all, who knew whether they would find
anything?

Although Jack Lamb might not be present, it was a tip from him that had brought them all here this morning. At Jack’s suggestion, he and Harpur had met yesterday, not this time on the
foreshore, but at a sherry party to launch an exhibition of regional works – sculptures, oils and water-colours – in a small privately nin art gallery. Jack had brought Helen with him,
the once punk child, now moving into chicness, but sent her off to look at pictures, while Harpur and he talked.

‘About something perilous?’ she asked.

‘How would I know anything perilous?’ Jack had replied.

‘You like this sort of small-time stuff?’ Harpur had said. ‘Really, Jack?’

‘Yes, I do. I even buy. Art’s not just about great names, great prices, Col. More to it than Dalis and Brueghels and Hobbemas.’

‘That so?’

‘You think I sound phoney?’

‘I’m always listening.’

‘Yes.’ They were standing under some gaudy versions of local landscape, all spinach greens and throbbing golds.

‘Anyway, Jack, you keep safe?’

‘Never a hint of trouble.’

‘So far.’

‘I’m thinking of renaming my house that, Col. So far is all any of us have.’

‘So far and no further?’

‘Who knows? Who ever knows?’ He smiled at someone and exchanged a couple of words about a London sale.

Harpur reminded himself once more that, without any doubt, Jack did legitimately buy some of the great art that came his way. It was the rest that worried Harpur, and the rest was most. Quite
often, Lamb would talk unreservedly and fascinatingly about recent great art thefts – like the Impressionists from the Paris Marmottan Museum valued at around ten million pounds. Of course,
talking about them, even in such expert detail, did not mean Jack had ever seen or handled any of these works. You could even argue the reverse: that the frank, full way he discussed them could
only mean he was not involved. Would he lay such trails? Anyway, that was how Harpur argued. But there were times when he badly failed to convince himself. At those painful moments, he listed in
his head as fast as he could all the items of unequalled information Lamb had fed him, and all the convictions that had come as a result. As to changing house names, Megan, who had begun to learn a
little about the importance of informants, once suggested they should call theirs Quid Pro Quo.

Now the girl was away, Jack had said: ‘What could be of interest, Col – this has come in roundabout fashion, I admit, and it’s taken a long while to reach me – what could
be of interest to you, recognizing your general anxieties and so on, a pimp I know, I won’t give any names, if you don’t mind, but a fortnight or so ago this pimp took a heavy beating,
trying to get cash out of a trio of clients of one of his girls, a really scientific knocking about that left him blotto near the Lister warehouse at Young’s Dock. When he came to it was very
much later at night. He didn’t feel like trying to move for quite a while, so he just lay there, piecing his components back together, as much as he could, quiet, stoical, like an injured
cat, or like a pimp shunning contact with ambulances, police and all the uniforms and questions parade. While he’s recovering in the shadows two cars arrive opposite the main doors and one
– he thinks a silver Metro, though his observation might not have been too grand, in the circumstances – this query Metro is taken very close to the edge. He’s sure there were two
people in it, men. The driver lowers all the windows a bit and gets out quickly. He opens the passenger door, unstraps the man, unbuttons an overcoat and pulls it and a scarf off him. My pimp says
it looked then as if the man – the docile passenger – was naked. Anyway, the shoulders and top of his back were bare. The driver straps him in again and closes the door. A couple more
men leave the other car, a red Sierra, and they push the Metro into the dock, not that it needed three, it was so near. The nude is still strapped, apparently not able to get out, or do anything
else. The three stand at the edge for a minute or two, presumably while it filled and sank, then hopped back into the Sierra and are away. My contact thinks – again, only thinks, he claims no
more than that – but he thinks he recognized the driver of the Metro as one of Benny Loxton’s people, Norman Vardage: rimless glasses, thin grey hair? Heard of him, though I don’t
know him myself, but apparently that’s right.’

‘Yes, sounds like Norman.’

‘So, there you are, Col. What bets the passenger is Justin Paynter? Looks a bit of an obvious, amateur job, but this was 3.30 a.m., and if they hadn’t been spotted the car could stay
there for ever undiscovered.’

‘Registration numbers?’

‘Col, my informant was hardly conscious, one eye almost closed up. You want the earth.’

‘They’ll have been stolen for the job, anyway, I suppose.’

‘Of course.’

Returning at a rush, Helen had cried: ‘Oh, you must come and see these flower pieces, both of you. Don’t you love plant portraits, Colin? When they’re good, so meticulous, yet
warm. Such a gift this man has. I do hope we can have some of them, Jack. The shining pondweed and pyramidal orchid? Yummie.’

‘Anything you say, love,’ Jack replied. ‘Feel incomplete without.’

Harpur had taken the chance to leave.

Now, the sergeant came out of the Land Rover and gazed up, assessing the light. ‘Another half an hour, sir.’

If they found someone below, the divers would not bring him up immediately, because a water-weakened body could be easily damaged, and because, if a crane lifted the car with him inside, it
would give a virtually intact scene of the crime for examination. Harpur might have preferred it different. A crane operating would bring television and the press, then pressure to say who was in
the car, and what the police meant to do about it. And, on that point, Harpur had doubts. To cling on to confidentiality for as long as possible, not even the divers had been told who might be down
there. Their orders were to look for a car and a body, nothing beyond.

They were out of the vehicle now in their ‘woolly bear’ thermals, ready to put on the dry suits and aqualungs. It would be cold below and they might have to stay under for anything
up to a couple of hours. ‘Will he be still recognizable?’ Harpur asked the sergeant.

‘Oh, yes, sir, unless he took a bang in the face before, or going in – and the belt should prevent that. The water’s pretty chill and it’s only two weeks, isn’t it?
Yes, not too much damage from bacteria. Of course, the windows are open, as I understand it, sir. That means fish and crabs inside. They make for the eyes first.’

‘Yes?’

‘But I’d bet he’ll be reasonably presentable still – cold water, a shortish period.’ Possibly feeling he deserved some reward for this assurance, he asked:
‘Anyone we know, sir?’

‘What we’re trying to ascertain, sergeant.’

‘Of course, sir.’ He went back to the Land Rover to prepare.

In a few minutes, two of the divers waddled over to the steps leading to the water. Each had a big, underwater flashlight at his belt and a heavy sheath knife strapped to the right calf, the
blade to free the diver from entanglements, and the handle for use as a hammer if he needed to break windows. They entered the water and immediately went down, both trailing ropes to the other two
divers, who stood on the edge of the dock and waited for pull signals. The sergeant, also all kitted up now, stayed near the steps, ready to go down if there was any trouble. Harpur watched the
early rush of large bubbles change to smaller ones as the men went deeper.

Iles arrived in one of the new Granadas. Lately, he had seemed dismally low and brooding, in anguish over Sarah, Harpur guessed, though the ACC had not spoken about her for a while. To butter
him up now, Harpur mentioned the half-recalled, misty painting, confident Iles would identify it instantly and so feel warm and superior: it was not that he lived by pictures, like Lamb, but Iles
simply knew more or less everything worth knowing and a lot that wasn’t. ‘Do you remember it, sir?’ Harpur asked, and sensed at once that his welfare effort was doomed. To fool
Iles took some doing.

‘You joking?’ he grunted. ‘No, you’re trying to make me feel good, aren’t you, Harpur, doing a bit of therapy, you patronizing fart?’

‘Sir?’

‘Giving me doddle questions, for my morale. Christ, even a gold card jerk as ignorant as you has to know it’s
Sunrise
, Le Havre, Monet, 1872 – the picture that began
Impressionism. The Volvo estate mob bound for the Dordogne talk of nothing else as they come in there on the car ferry.’

‘Yes, I thought Le Havre.’

‘Gee. Ever considered taking over the Tate? What the fuck’s that on your head?’ Iles went to the edge and gazed for a long while at the bubbles. A wedge of grey hair fell
forward and he brushed it back langorously with his hand. Harpur had once heard him apologize for that narcissistic gesture, denouncing it as being copied subconsciously from the ex-Cabinet
Minister, Michael Heseltine, but here it was again. Iles wore a magnificently cut beige suit, in gamekeeper’s tweed, and weighty brown brogues. The whole grand, ageing,
Country Life
profile seemed to proclaim him prime for cuckolding. He came back and stood close to Harpur.

As if picking up his thought Iles asked: ‘No chance this could be that charming longcock, Ian Aston, is there, Col?’

‘I don’t believe so, sir.’

‘No I should be so lucky. One would very much like to think of that decent, grimy, workaday water sluicing all trace of Sarah from his lover-boy flesh. Eel raids on a dead Aston appeal to
me.’

‘We ought to prepare a strategy in case this does turn out to be Justin Paynter, sir,’ Harpur replied, labouring back towards normality. Once before, a long time ago, he had watched
Iles driven to appalling frenzy and violence by pain over a woman: not Sarah then, and not a matter of betrayal, but of death. Harpur dreaded seeing anything like that again.

‘He’s been up the house,’ Iles murmured, almost inaudibly.

‘Sir?’

‘Aston. Did you know that?’ Now, Iles seemed to be trying to make his voice conversational, even offhand, like, Did you know the vicar had called?

‘Well, no, sir. I wouldn’t.’

‘Oh, a neighbour informed me. The description’s right. Generously told me of seeing him from a window leave our kitchen and go down the lawn and over the fence. Then Sarah, obviously
upset and searching for him.’