Come Clean (1989) (30 page)

‘But you think he took the job, anyway?’

‘Like I said, at a price, Col. That’s my information, not from Tommy direct, I have to say, but reputable, very reputable.’ Almost everyone who whispered to Jack was that:
reputable as a grass, which might not be the same league as saying reputable as a banker or a broker, but something, just the same, and look at the bankers and brokers around, anyway. Lamb’s
voice faded a little, then came back. ‘I’m being summoned. Mother gets masterful at airports. My pimp acquaintance is taking a holiday, too, I hear, since the Metro emerged. The one who
saw it go in and spoke to me.’

‘I’d have liked to talk to him.’

‘What he thought. Why he’s going. He says a court appearance would totally destroy his credibility and he sees that as the central asset of his business, after pussy, of course. What
you might call
exeunt omnes
. People are growing stressed. Any idea what’s behind it all yet? So much activity, but where’s it pointing?’

‘Yes, where?’

‘I thought I’d better talk to you soonest, rather than send a card from Italy, in the circumstances. Tommy Vit can turn nasty, can’t he, so you’d want to know where
he’s operating. I mean, he’s not like Macey, nothing so feral, but he’s very keen on self-protection and has over-reacted now and then.’

‘A long time ago.’

‘As far as you know. Just don’t run at him or get him in a corner. Well, I leave it with you. Before I go, I’d like to say this: I worry about you, Col. Are you going to be
able to manage without me? What will you do for information? Am I leaving you in the lurch?’ But Lamb did not wait for an answer and the phone began to whine. To his disgust Harpur found that
he did, in fact, feel deserted and weaker.

He was due to pick up Iles for the trip to Benny’s and, after what Lamb had said, decided he would go up to Rougement Place early for a careful look around. He used the old Viva and took
things very gently as he approached Iles’s house, Idylls, whatever that was supposed to mean. It sounded like super-happiness in the plural, but Iles did not seem to be managing that, poor
sod. One of Harpur’s daughters said there was a big poem called
Idylls of the King
, but possibly even Iles had been too modest to use the whole title.

Harpur noticed several parked cars, including one quite close to Iles’s big drive and standing under trees. It was dark but he had the idea that a man might be sitting alone in the back,
folded down low into a corner as Harpur passed, perhaps avoiding the headlights. If he had not been on the look-out Harpur would never have noticed him. The glimpse was so fleeting and indistinct
that he had no chance of making even a guess at identification, and he could not say, either, whether observation of Iles’s place was under way through the car’s rear window. For all
Harpur knew it might be a couple of lovers, the woman lower still on the seat, and out of sight. All the same, this could be a watch, with someone working a fairly sophisticated surveillance trick,
the kind of skill that would be second nature to Tommy Vit. People expected that if somebody did an observation from a car he sat behind the wheel with the vehicle facing towards the target, ready
to move off fast in pursuit if necessary. A thousand films in the cinema and on television played it like that. But, because it was expected, it was also obvious. On the other hand, if the car had
its back to the target, and the watcher kept out of the front seat and used the rear window, the chance of staying undetected was vastly higher. He drove on up Rougement Place and looked into
Iles’s drive as he passed. Both their cars were there – Iles’s plain, blue police Orion and Sarah’s white Fiat Panda – so it looked as if she might be at home, and the
tail in the right place, if it was a tail. Keeping the Viva at a respectable thirty, he tried to see some more of the Golf and its occupant in the mirror, but there was not enough light. He reached
a junction and turned left, out of sight of the Golf, then slowly circled the block.

Eventually, he came around to near the start of Rougement Place again but parked in a side street and decided to walk from there. This took time and made him anxious, but if it was Tommy in the
Golf, a reappearance of the Viva would immediately alert him. As he recalled it, the Golf had stood pretty much on its own under the trees, between an Escort estate and a Datsun, each of them a
long distance from it. When he had gone a few hundred yards on foot now, he realized suddenly that the Golf was no longer there. The estate car and the Datsun stood as before, but the long space
between was empty. He tried to convince himself he had mistaken the bearings and kept on walking. But when he reached the gateway to Iles’s drive without seeing the Golf he knew his first
notion had been right. This time when he looked into the drive he saw that Sarah’s Panda had gone, too.

Harpur ran hard back to the Viva and for the next half-hour toured the area looking for either car, without success. By now they could be anywhere. He felt alarmed but gave up the search and at
8.30, as arranged, he knocked on Iles’s door and the Assistant Chief himself let Harpur in.

‘Perhaps we should ring Benny and say we’re coming,’ he suggested to Iles.

‘Like hell. Doorstepping is a very precise craft, Col, and shock is one of its main strengths.’ He seemed to have been attempting some elementary tidying of the room, which always
looked pretty uncared for, and he picked up a couple of newspapers and some chocolate wrappers and put them in an overflowing waste basket. ‘Sarah’s gone to bridge again,’ he
said. ‘Or something like that. Who knows? She doesn’t stay in very much.’ He sounded weary and beaten for a moment. These days he often did.

In the Viva, on the way to Benny’s place, Iles added: ‘There are certainly times when Sarah and I go out together, you know. We can get on well. There’s adequate
conversation.’

‘Of course, sir. And
The Times
crossword together.’

‘Exactly. Not abundant talk, but no venom.’

‘More than many couples could say, sir.’

‘We were at Chaff, the other night.’

‘Ah, Leo’s place.’

‘I didn’t know. He and I had quite a tête-à-tête.’

‘Yes, sir?’

‘Yes, one or two good and useful disclosures made by him.’

‘Yes, sir?’

‘Yes, one or two. Could produce something, in due course.’

‘Yes, sir?’

‘Yes, in due course.’

‘Good. Do I need to know about them, sir?’

‘Well –’

‘In due course?’

‘That’s it, Col. I’d certainly like you to be in the picture, then.’

‘Good.’

As they neared Loxton’s place, Iles said: ‘I still don’t understand how we knew where to look for Paynter in the dock. Or why we should have looked for him in the dock at
all.’

‘These pieces of information come in, sir.’

‘Yes?’

‘We’re very fortunate.’

‘Somebody talked, or somebody saw it happen?’

‘These tips, sir, they’re not just from one source.’

‘That’s so?’

‘Oh, yes,’ Harpur replied. If Iles could sit on stuff, so could he.

When they arrived, Benny’s wife answered the bell.

‘Wonderful spread here, Alma,’ Iles said. ‘Your own paddock, too!’

‘Why, Mr Iles! Desmond! And a colleague! I don’t believe we’ve met since the charity ball. Such a pleasant affair. Theodore will be so pleased you’ve called. Do come in.
I think a little business meeting may be in progress with staff, even at this time in the evening, but nothing that can’t be postponed, I’m sure.’ Iles introduced Harpur. She went
ahead of them to a closed door on the right and, without knocking, opened it. ‘Theodore, dear, imagine who’s here?’ She pushed the door wide and beckoned Iles and Harpur
forward.

In the room, Harpur saw Benny, seated in a listing, bulging old armchair, and Phil Macey and a squat, burly man with fair hair cut very short, on a low-backed settee.

‘Theodore,’ Iles said. ‘Here’s a grand, welcoming room. A room of wit and warm fellowship.’

‘Isn’t it?’ Alma Loxton cried. ‘The dawn is the time when you should be here, though, Mr Iles. We face south-east and the sunlight creeps in so very gradually from the
corner of the bay window and eventually floods the whole room, triumphantly.’

Both Macey and the other man had stood, but Loxton remained in his chair. He had on a three-piece, Prince of Wales check grey suit and a very subdued blue silk tie decorated with small shields.
Harpur thought of pictures of fighter aircraft in the war, with their tally of destroyed enemies painted on the fuselage.

‘Alma was just on her way to change, Mr Iles,’ Loxton said. ‘We’re going for drinks with friends tonight. You carry on, love,’ he said to her. ‘I’m sure
Mr Iles and Mr Harpur will excuse you and we’ll take care of them.’

‘Well, a drink for our guests, too?’ she asked.

‘Yes, we’ll see to that,’ Loxton said.

‘If you’re sure, Theodore. I hope you’re still here when I come down, Mr Iles, Mr Harpur.’

‘Yes, indeed, dear lady,’ Iles replied, with a small bow, as she closed the door. ‘Delightful woman. You’re lucky, Benny. So who’s this scalped fucker then?’
he asked, nodding towards the fair man and sitting down in a red leather armchair near the big fireplace. ‘Does he know who I am, Benny? Has he got it clear?’ He faced the stranger.
‘Has he told you who I am, gusset face, and where you’re likely to be if you err?’ Harpur had seen Iles use the same rather brisk, ice-breaking technique before on a new recruit
to one of the teams: it was designed to knock a hole in him before he started, and to make Benny, or some other chieftain, look negligible and cowed in the Assistant Chief’s presence.

‘Robert Lentle’s a good friend and associate.’

‘It’s a prime dossier face, and yet I can’t recall seeing it before,’ Iles went on. ‘Did someone say drinks?’

‘Robert’s new to this area.’

‘I hope you’re going to like it,’ Iles remarked. ‘That you’re settling. Is this one to replace Justin Paynter, Benny? Did you have a sort of inkling Justin might
sink out of sight, as it were?’

‘This is a bit inconvenient, Mr Iles, you calling now,’ Loxton said.

‘I’ll try and make it at dawn next time and catch the triumphant sunrise,’ he replied.

‘What next time?’ Lentle asked.

Loxton seemed to realize that Iles and Harpur were not likely to leave and brought them brandies. ‘Justin?’ he said. ‘Oh, he moved on quite a while ago. Wanted to make his own
way, I don’t blame him. That’s youth, isn’t it? Where he might be now, I couldn’t say. It’s easy to lose touch in this business.’

‘Easy to lose more than that, Benny,’ Iles replied.

‘Last I heard, Justin was around Norwich way,’ Macey declared, ‘seeking a mortgage.’

Harpur said: ‘I don’t know if any of you heard about a Metro being pulled out of the dock.’

‘Extremely nasty,’ Loxton replied. ‘We thought most likely suicide. Terminal sick, maybe.’

‘That’s what Benny said soon as we seen it on telly,’ Macey added. ‘He said, “Got to be some poor devil topping himself, nice new car or not.” When you see
something like that, you ask what life is about – I mean, if despair can strike, regardless.’ He sat down again on the settee.

‘They take it out of you, thoughts, don’t they, Phil,’ Iles said.

‘Just a young bloke in there, that’s what we heard,’ Loxton said. ‘That a fact? It makes it all even more tragic, if he had, say, a terminal illness, and a new
Metro’s not going to make a difference to that.’

‘Well, he did have a sort of terminal condition,’ Iles told him.

‘We’ve been looking for people who might have seen it happen,’ Harpur told them. ‘There’s almost always someone around the dock, even at night.’

Loxton gave a look of puzzlement. ‘What you asking, Mr Harpur? You asking did one of us see this car go into the dock? How would that be? Didn’t the television say three in the
morning or something like that? Are we going to be at the docks then?’ He chuckled.

Iles had a good, rather uproarious laugh at the craziness of this idea, too. ‘No, of course not, Benny. But you boys, your company, you’re got contacts everywhere. Business knows no
boundaries, and doesn’t stop for the clock, does it? Whispers. Pointers. That’s what we’re after.’

Benny said: ‘I can say straight off regarding that, nothing, Mr Iles. I don’t know about Philip or Robert.’

Macey said: ‘Benny’s right. Not a murmur.’

‘Nothing,’ Lentle added. He sat down, too, now.

‘You got an i.d. yet?’ Loxton asked. ‘Easy through the car?’

‘Some snags there,’ Harpur replied.

‘We’re still inquiring,’ Iles said.

‘Terrible. Some kid’s parents or maybe his wife wondering where he is,’ Loxton remarked.

Iles smiled amiably: ‘I suppose we could usefully stop this rubbish now. How the hell does Justin Paynter end up under twenty-odd feet of dirty water in a stolen car?’

‘Justin?’ Loxton exclaimed.

‘One fears so,’ Iles intoned.

‘But I heard he was in Norwich, looking at properties,’ Macey protested.

‘What had he done to cross you, Benny?’ Iles asked.

‘Justin? He was a gem,’ Loxton replied. ‘Nothing at all against him, except he wanted to move on. He was extremely gifted in property matters, which, as you know, is a very
large element in our business.’

‘Yes, I heard a lot of the takings were going into building,’ Iles replied. ‘The docks marina development, isn’t it, oddly enough? Didn’t one of those London gangs
do the same?’

‘I see it as a crucial part of our role to help the onward progress of the area,’ Loxton said. ‘A stake in the community.’

‘Benny’s always talking about that,’ Macey added. ‘Onward progress. A stake in the community. These are this company’s watchwords. When Benny’s talking like
this, Mr Iles, I can understand why his wife would like him to be called Theodore, instead. Benny don’t seem right, too, like, lightweight.’

‘So, was Justin having somebody’s missus?’ Iles asked. ‘That why he had to go? We’ve seen that before: a youngster comes on to the team, full of juice and gloss,
and starts making it with somebody’s woman, maybe the boss’s. Alma’s not past it, not a bit. Faded, but some could still see her a tasty piece, even a kid like Justin. It’s
quite possible she’d stop jabbering and prosing while she was actually on the job. A lot of them do. It’s documented. Kinsey?’ Iles smiled again, turning to all three in turn, as
if asking for confirmation.