In the Absence of Iles (11 page)

Parkhouse said: ‘Superintendent, I suggest you were part of an unflagging campaign to prove what the police had decided must be proved despite a complete lack of evidence.’

‘Our purpose was to gather such evidence by proper means, as in all such investigations.’

Robot-speak. But what else could he have spoken?

Parkhouse said: ‘I suggest that when your undercover, Out-located, officer was found on the beach near Pastel Head you immediately concluded for no valid reason that he had been killed because he’d discovered something the inquiries over many months by up to fifteen officers failed to find.’

‘No.’

‘I suggest you at once decided he was eliminated to ensure he could not pass on this information.’

‘That is not true.’

‘I suggest it was on account of this totally unjustified rush to judgement that you and those above you in the police hierarchy sought to concoct a case against my client, Ambrose Tutte Turton, who appears here charged with the murder of Detective Sergeant Dean Martlew.’

‘That is false.’

‘I suggest you saw this death as tragic, but also as a splendid opportunity to do what you and your colleagues had failed to do previously – bring charges against Ambrose Tutte Turton.’

‘Tragic only.’

‘You told my learned friend during your evidence-in-chief that the reason an undercover officer might be murdered was to make sure he could not pass on information he had secretly gathered, did you not?’

‘Yes.’

‘Did you automatically think this was the motive for Detective Sergeant Dean Martlew’s death when you saw his body on the shore?’

The judge said: ‘In his evidence-in-chief the witness told us there were
two
reasons an undercover, Out-loc officer might be killed, Mr Parkhouse. One was practical – to render him silent; the other philosophical, meaning there is an in-built, traditional hatred of police spies – or what, as I pointed out earlier, the Americans call “finks” – the same word they use as for informants. “Rats” is another term.’

‘I’m very much obliged, Your Honour,’ Parkhouse said. ‘I believe the witness also mentioned that the two – the practical and the philosophical – could sometimes coalesce and act in unison.’

‘You wish to argue, Mr Parkhouse, do you, that the Superintendent, and later his superiors, might have decided these two, linked factors explained the death of Detective Sergeant Dean Martlew? Very well, you should put that to the witness.’

‘Thank you, Your Honour. I am very grateful for your help in general, and especially the advice on United States low-speak. Superintendent, I have to suggest to you that, when you saw Dean Martlew’s body on the beach, you decided at once, instinctively, that he must have been exposed as a police officer, and then killed to silence him; but also because Out-located detectives have always been regarded by criminals as contemptible traitors by criminals – in the words kindly supplied by Her Honour, “finks” or “rats”.’

‘I had no instinctive response other than accepting it as my duty as a police officer to discover how the body in that state came to have been washed up at Pastel Head.’

The judge said: ‘On the matter of American slang, it’s perhaps worth noting, though as very much an aside, I admit, that the US term for an unmarked police car happens to be a “pastel”.’

‘Thank you, Your Honour,’ Parkhouse said. ‘Yes, fascinating, indeed.’

‘I feel one should keep up to speed on these things,’ the judge said, ‘if only to correct the impression that the judiciary are out of touch with the basics of life, either here or across the pond.’

‘A worthwhile aim, if I may say,’ Parkhouse replied. ‘Superintendent, I suggest you and your colleagues at once saw – imagined – a link between the discovery of this body at the interestingly named Pastel Head, and the abortive inquiries that had taken place over many months.’

‘No.’

Yes.

‘And I suggest this link, utterly unbacked by credible evidence, consisted of, first, the wrongful long-term assumption that the Cormax Turton business network was criminal in some of its activities,’ Parkhouse said, ‘and, second, the conclusion that the Out-located officer had information to prove this assumption, but had been revealed as a police officer and executed to keep him quiet, and to punish him for the deception he’d maintained for four months.’

‘No.’

‘I suggest you decided at once to try to construct a case against my client because of this instant, pre-determined, mistaken interpretation of the death.’

‘No.’

‘I suggest your case against my client is of the same, stubborn, unwarranted nature as the inquiries into the Cormax Turton legal business interests which preceded it – that is, presume guilt first, then attempt to amass facts to prove this, rather than the proper route: to arrive at an accusation of guilt because evidence, fairly and thoroughly examined, leads to that conclusion.’

So how did they get to this? Often she would think back:

1. Preparation

In her view, this had broken into five stages, five choices. She started with the most basic: (a) should she go for Out-loc or not? Well, Fieldfare and frustration had settled that for her, hadn’t they, though Fieldfare short of the agonized voice of Desmond Iles? She’d do it.

Next question: (b) who would day-to-day, night-to-night, take charge of things and be the Out-loc officer’s controller and contact? Not herself. As Assistant Chief, Ops, she supervised all important projects, but at policy level. Fieldfare, and what happened to her thinking there, was absolute policy, and she brought a consignment of this back with her, like IKEA assemble-yourself furniture. Now, here, she had to pick someone to put it, get it, together. Assistant Chiefs, Ops, delegated the Ops, like most modern leaders of men and women. Adolf didn’t spend much time at the siege of Stalingrad.

Of course, she had talked privately to Detective Chief Superintendent Simon Tesler, head of CID, about the job. At first, she’d more or less automatically thought him the likeliest. He would certainly want it. He exuded experience and drive. He had looks, good hair and teeth, some charm, some wit, and probably expected these to work on Esther when it came to big choices, and this was a big choice. She realized people thought her a bit susceptible to any man more up to snuff these days than her husband, Gerald, which meant virtually any man outside a Rest Home. And, yes, she’d agree, she could be susceptible, though not, as yet, slaggish, or even close.

On top of that, nobody knew better than Simon the Cormax Turton structure, financing, family links, internal politics and work patterns. Yes, most probably, he’d assume the role must come to him, and she didn’t want to turn Simon snotty and resentful. For months, he and his investigative group had been struggling to get something usable in a court on Cormax Turton, and he’d reasonably feel slighted as a failure if Esther decided she’d now try a different kind of attack, and drop him. Simon had come up the accelerated promotion way and this brought extra width and hearty fizz to his ego. He could be touchy. Well, he might be entitled to some of that.

Esther had learned from many staff rank leadership courses that you should never humiliate your senior people, unless it became necessary. As it had been put at one tutorial a few years ago, ‘Do not fuck up top lieutenants, nor fuck them.’ Easy to say, she’d thought. On the whole, she liked the way the verb to fuck had become degendered, bi-gendered, so women could now say they fucked men, as well as getting fucked by men, as per the old usage. But she saw this might also be not much more than illusory, feminist word-play. Basically, it remained the zoological case that men fucked women. Cows didn’t fuck bulls, hens didn’t fuck cocks. Cocks fucked. Men provided most of the necessary violence. Yes, extremely necessary. One of those largish US women writers on the metaphysics of shagging had declared, as if it were a revelation – and a terrible one – that the sex act inevitably entailed violence on the female. Well, of course it did, you well-meaning, trite, benighted duck.

‘Out-location?’ Simon Tesler replied with really positive positiveness when she spoke to him about it. People who came up on the accelerated promotion route did tend to be very positively positive. Esther had been chosen for that career boost herself but it would have involved a course away from home at Bramshill, Hampshire, and Gerald had objected. At the time, Esther herself hadn’t wanted that kind of separation, so she’d turned the offer down. It hadn’t mattered much: she climbed fast through the ranks. ‘Out-location is clearly an option, ma’am,’ Tesler said.

Oh, thanks, Chief Superintendent. But she actually said: ‘I’ve had some advice, Simon.’

‘Wise – I mean for a new kind of work.’

‘It’s not entirely new to me. I did some undercover myself way back.’

‘Yes, of course. But new as organizer, rather than operative.’

‘Luckily there’s good, balanced, up-to-date guidance around.’

‘Would this be at Fieldfare?’

‘It’s from experienced people,’ she replied.

‘Yes, I’ve heard they do intensive Out-loc sessions for staff rank officers at Fieldfare.’

‘All-round treatment of the topic.’

‘Of course, I’d noted you were away a while lately.’

‘Undercover’s become a kind of science.’ She resented his guesswork, especially as it was so sodding correct, the smooth, speculative git. If she went on a secret scheme, she wanted it secret, not wondered about intelligently by some very intelligent inferior. ‘Yes, a kind of science but it’s still going to be difficult to place someone in Cormax Turton. Gangs have their own science.’

‘It’s always difficult, wherever, isn’t it, Chief, but I do think we can bring it off here.’

‘Family firms are the trickiest.’

‘Yes, they can be tricky.’

‘All right, most firms
are
family at the top, but clan connections in the Guild are exceptionally strong and established, as you know, Simon. Blood lines in all directions, like the Royals. We’re fighting genealogy charts.’

‘So, we don’t try to get in that way, do we, Chief? We accept there are areas of the firm beyond us, at least immediately. The good thing about family outfits is that all the members – father, sons, sons-in-law, cousins, cousins-in-law, godsons – they all think they’re lined up for a major job, and won’t take anything less. And that’s without even mentioning the women. Rivalries burn, the way film stars scrap for top credit. Family gangsters watch one another. The hates are real, unwholesome and imaginative, as in any family. People with even the faintest claims to lineage refuse to take a down-grade post because it would disrespect them, dis them – make them marginally less than some despised son-in-law or second cousin. This means there are openings. We get our man or woman in at that sort of level – courier/messenger, shop-doorway pusher, jetty lookout, protection collector, ship-to-shore loot truck driver. We recognize the family aspect – and we turn it to our favour.’

So, yes, it had been drilled into him to go for the positive – to locate someone’s strength and brilliantly adjust this into a weakness, or adjust how it
appeared
into a weakness. Think Ho Chi Minh. Ho knew the US and South Vietnam together could blow any enemy off the battlefield. So, don’t gift them battlefields. Do your Charlie hits from the jungle, then disappear. Esther had some of this buck-the-odds thinking herself. Almost everyone who got on in the police – or in any organization worth much – had a slice of it. You must believe an opponent’s main assets could be upended, and you must make it obvious you believed it, or what use soccer managers and cheerleaders? The world might be a shit heap but it had to be climbed.

Just the same, it troubled her now to hear Tesler reduce the perils of this proposed Out-location to a rosy ‘think win’ formula, even if, by deciding to go for the Out-location solution, she showed she, Esther herself, believed it could work. After all, she wouldn’t send someone into Cormax Turton expecting him/her to get exposed and annihilated, would she? But it was hearing Simon Tesler trot out his analysis with such confidence and energy that unsettled Esther – the sheer words, the style, the plonking fluency. He had made everything sound entirely simple and cut-and-dried.
So we don’t try to get in that way, do we, Chief?
Kindly, gentle, step-by-step reasoning. Teacher to pupil. Old hand to novice. Naturally, she felt not just ratty but perverse.

When she and others had interviewed Tesler for the top CID job, confidence and energy, and even style and fluency, would have been qualities she looked for. Now, they came back to piss her off big. Spiel king. Lists – he loved lists, to back up his logic and batter a listener into acceptance.
We get our man or woman in at that sort of level – courier/messenger, shop-doorway pusher, jetty lookout, protection collector, ship-to-shore loot truck driver.
Admittedly, Esther liked to tabulate when assessing a situation, but Tesler talked like some page from a tactics manual. In Esther’s view, confidence, energy, style and fluency were certainly OK when they were OK – that is, when directed right: say at a selection panel or a trial jury. But she had enough of general, all-round confidence, energy, style and fluency at home from her bow-tied, prat bassoonist, Gerald. And these days he seemed to be at home a lot, so she got a lot. He would theorize and incant and come to very downright conclusions, on a par for unshakeable tone with Tesler’s,
We recognize the family aspect – and we turn it to our favour.
No problem. No?

To stick with Gerald a minute, he used to tour with orchestras, which brought some domestic peace. She thought his bassooning must have begun to go clumsy with age, though she couldn’t ask him about this sympathetically or he might get nervy and perform even worse, attract less work, and be at home more still: he loved sympathy but would melt into paralytic self-pity when it came. Concert engagements had grown scarce. Impossible to write to orchestra chiefs, either, saying, ‘For fuck’s sake and mine give my hubby a job,’ though she’d considered it. How exactly might bassoonery become clumsy through age? A matter of lung strength and wind power? Lip tension? The spit element? – too much, too little? She would be very willing to pay a gym subscription for him if it upped his puff. And some cosmetic surgeons specialized in lips – plumping them for a more sexy pout, and that sort of thing. No treatment – lips or elsewhere – could do anything for Gerald’s sexiness, but he might be helped get a better mouthpiece grip; also benefit one way or the other from saliva control. But perhaps it was just that his fingers had grown too shaky to open the instrument case. Could he carry the bassoon in a carrier bag to concerts – one with a good name on it, like Waitrose?