In the Absence of Iles (12 page)

‘Of course, there is a very legitimate question to be asked about my commentary on possible Out-location in the Cormax Turton Guild,’ Tesler said.

Well, let me ask it, you gabby bastard. Don’t try to kill objections by pre-empting them. Esther did not say this either. ‘There is?’ she replied, as if startled that anyone might challenge a mind like his.

‘Undoubtedly. Vain to deny it. Obviously, the question is: if our undercover officer is in such a lowly position and so far from the sources of family power – the main or, as it were,
mains!
power – how is he/she going to discover much of use to us? Information about the Guild’s major activities will not seep down to our officer, driving a lorry-load of nicked cargo, or pushing packets in a shop doorway. This is a firm that’s been in operation since 1986. Since 1986! Survival-wise, it’s getting close to the Church of England, Murdoch media and the Great Wall of China. Cormax Turton didn’t get to where it is today by carelessness on security. The Out-loc officer’s range will be small, and he/she would be unable to give us even these chicken-feed tip-offs, because if some of their minor projects get jumped on by police the Guild will know it’s got a spy guest, and will set out to find him/her and silence him/her before he/she can get on to the bigger topics.’

‘Why it’s crucial to select as our undercover lad or lass someone who understands how a firm like Cormax Turton works, and so might be able gradually to move him/herself up the hierarchy.’

‘Right.’

Again she thought the response too quick, the agreement too easy. No matter how talented the undercover detective, it would be appallingly difficult to move him/herself up the hierarchy. And exactly which talents would help with that? Bravery? Yes. Plausibility? Yes. Determination? Yes. Business skills? Yes . . . and about fifty other qualities. Tricky to find them all in one detective? Probably. Very probably. ‘Selection is the key,’ Esther said.

‘Cormax Turton has solidity, no question. It also has splits, famous splits, splits that might widen. Surely, these can be exploited by us as an aid to placing our Out-loc man/woman, and possibly getting him/her advanced. The Turton–Crabtree alliance
looks
stable, in some respects possibly
is
stable, but behind it always is that 17 November 2004 episode and the repercussions for Palliative Crabtree and Ambrose Turton. These are rivals for the eventual leadership. Yes, yes, I know they combined together well enough after that Preston Park incident to do Seraph Bayfield, but things between the two are still fundamentally troubled. It can be argued that the new shape and purpose of the Guild dates from the November 2004 business, so it’s inherently, fundamentally shaky. Also, there’s Cornelius’s deep-grain envy of Palliative’s dead dad, Brent Holywell Crabtree. That fine, touching tale about the
Times
obituary! Turton, Crabtree. This link is only through marriage, not blood, and perhaps flawed.’

‘You mean we and our Out-loc girl/guy should side with one of the families against the other – the Turtons or the Crabtrees?’

‘We have to feel our way. In one scenario – admittedly the most ambitious – Ambrose or Palliative might even get to rumble our girl/guy but agree to say/do nothing about it as long as there’s an understanding that any prosecution based on the Out-loc evidence is directed only against the rival – that is, against Palliative if it’s Ambrose cooperating with our officer, Ambrose if it’s Palliative. Immaterial to us which. We could help one or other of them towards the succession, by getting rid of an obstruction – Ambrose or Palliative. My enemy’s enemy is my friend.

‘Agreed this is not the most ethical bargain I’ve ever heard of, but it might be a goer. And it wouldn’t preclude us from later – not very much later – doing the job on whichever of them survives our first prosecution, Ambrose or Palliative, and is by then probably head of Turton–Crabtree. We’d pick them off in stages, as it suited. Ultimately, we set up the new leader, then nick him – decapitate the firm. Dealing with an internally troubled Guild, we have a thousand opportunities, a thousand! They’ve always been there, but it’s you who intuited this and brought them into the reckoning.’ He turned full on to Esther and gave her a disciplined but very appreciative smile. ‘If I may, ma’am, I’d like to congratulate you on going for Out-loc, even though I know it is, or very much
was,
against some of your instincts. You have done what should always be a feature of leadership – developed your views in accordance with the developing scale of the problem. Yes, I know you’ve had guidance at Fieldfare, but the culminating decision is yours, utterly yours. This is the ability to act on an overview, so vital and good in a staff rank officer.’

The interview with Tesler drifted to an end soon after, and Esther chucked any consideration of him as manager of the undercover project. He could keep the windbag optimism and high-flyer buoyancy for his usual, standard role as head of CID. They’d be useful there. It was why she’d agreed with his appointment. He
knew,
did he, that she’d been at Fieldfare for guidance? He had it right, of course, and this enraged her. How could he
know,
the know-all bastard? And did he
know
that the ‘guidance’ had been crucially incomplete because Iles opted for absence? Esther read poetry now and then and had come across something by a Welsh clergyman called R. S. Thomas that seemed to fit Iles’s thinking about Fieldfare: ‘It is this great absence/that is like a presence.’ Iles might have imagined his cruel truancy would speak like a presence, but she could tell him not a fucking bit of it. Did Tesler
know
how this unforgivable failure by Iles still troubled her, still put a shadow and a shudder on her Out-loc decision? She consoled herself with the argument that, if Iles’s judgement was bad enough to get wrong the impact of his nonappearance at Fieldfare, perhaps it was also bad, misdirected, in campaigning against Out-loc. In other words, Out-loc might be fine, despite Iles.

When later on she spoke to Richard Channing about the possibility of undercover, he, of course, came up with one of those production-line objections to helping turn a colleague into a ‘rat’. And – also of course – he mentioned the refusal of people like Iles to risk an officer in such operations. She dealt with all that, and then with his fears over trying to get someone into such a tight, family-based firm as Cormax Turton. ‘The strong family element can actually be its chief weakness,’ she said.

‘Don’t get that, ma’am.’

‘They all compete with one another – are on eternal, bitter watch for disrespecting – so won’t take the floor level jobs. Families are like that. This is the opening for our man, or woman.’

‘Is it? Something menial? But how does someone so low in the firm get to see anything worth telling us about? We have to hit the main people, not nobodies.’

True, damn true. ‘First and vital stage – implant the officer. Then, movement up the structure might be possible. Differences between major members can be exploited.’

‘Oh, you mean Palliative and Ambrose?’

‘The Guild is ridden with rivalries, envies. There’s bound to be a Turton–Crabtree divide. Do you recall that mad business over the
Times
obituary for Brent Holywell Crabtree?’

‘Buying up the papers. Yes. Maybe some grudges do exist, but I don’t see how they help us.’

No. Esther didn’t either. She tried to remember Tesler’s mad, assured scenario. ‘It’s possible one of them – Palliative or Ambrose – might rumble our officer but would blind-eye her/him if we guaranteed to prosecute only the other. This would clear the way to the Guild leadership for a contender. For either contender. We don’t care. My enemy’s enemy is my friend.’

Channing thought about that. The idea had obviously never occurred to him, and
would
never have occurred to him, nor to anyone else but Tesler, if she hadn’t mentioned it. ‘Excuse me, ma’am, but you really believe that could happen?’

No. It was bloody ludicrous. The one factor that could unite any gang, firm, guild, was hatred of an Out-loc detective. ‘These are people who’ll do anything to improve their position in the Guild, Richard,’ she replied.

‘Excuse me, ma’am –
anything?
Even betrayal of a relative to the police?’

No. Never that, though they might fight each other. ‘A relative who’s in the way, and who isn’t blood,’ she replied. ‘By marriage, only. We have to try to think as these people think.’

‘Well, I do,’ Channing said. ‘I understood loyalty to the firm came top of everything – more important than anyone’s personal ambitions.’

‘Yes. But we have to ask, don’t we, what does loyalty to the firm
mean?’

‘Well . . . that. The firm’s interests are supreme.’

‘There’s short-term loyalty and long-term.’

‘I don’t get the difference.’

‘Look, Richard, long-term loyalty could mean providing the firm with the chief most likely to make it go on working well, and improving. Palliative might think he’s that man. And Ambrose might think
he
is. This is the point where personal ambition and the future health of the firm overlap – in the eyes of the people concerned. Each thinks he’s God’s gift to the firm. It’s just normal top-man arrogance and sense of misssion.’

‘Excuse me, ma’am, but are you saying they’d regard selling somebody down the river as good for the Guild?’

‘One of them might. A twisted view, agreed. But not impossible.’ No? It made her half sick to know she was using Tesler’s arguments against Richard Channing when she had rejected Tesler for spouting these arguments to her. Perverse again? Yes, damn perverse. But it was the
way
Tesler had spouted them, wasn’t it, wasn’t it – so bland and dogmatic? Now, the entire conversation with Channing brought difficulties, and promised more. Simon Tesler would almost certainly hear about this interview, and realize she must be thinking of Channing, not himself, as manager for the Out-loc scheme. Dodgy. She’d considered asking Richard to come to her house for the meeting, to get away from headquarters gossip. But Gerald might be around at home, nosy, tearful, loud, opinionated, wearing one of his fucking horrible bow-ties so he’d look more pitiable. Instead, she saw Channing in her suite. Tesler would have to be told, anyway, once Esther decided Richard should do it. Occasional moments of brutality came with her rank. ‘I want you to run this for me,’ she said.

‘You’re sure?’ Channing said.

‘Absolutely.’ Well, more or less.

Channing paused again. He had to consider the politics. ‘What will be the relationship between this operation and the long-time investigation into Cormax Turton under DCS Tesler?’

‘They are interdependent. Simon will understand that. He is obviously preoccupied with his exceptionally useful work there. He couldn’t take on this as well.’

‘One rumour said the investigation – I mean the established investigation – would be shut down, because it can’t get past the silence brick wall, and that undercover will replace it.’

‘Our established, ongoing investigation and this new Out-loc project should complement each other really well, I feel, don’t you?’ Esther replied.

‘Ladies and gentlemen of the jury, you have heard from witnesses how, under an assumed name, and with his police identity concealed, Detective Sergeant Dean Martlew was placed in the Cormax Turton organization, performing a variety of duties, as if an ordinary working member of the company, but in touch secretly through telephone calls and meetings with a superior officer.’

Esther attended court for slices of the judge’s summing-up in the trial’s last days, and saw Iles had also come. Wearing a grey, single-breasted suit, he sat again in the public gallery, not far from Mr Martlew, to the left of Esther and one row ahead of her, so that off and on she could watch Iles in full or part profile. Most of the time, he stared at the judge, his head still, a gundog pointing prey. Occasionally, he switched this gaze to Ambrose Tutte Turton in the dock, gave him the same sort of hard attention, before switching back to the judge. Iles’s tie seemed to have strong silver and red stripes on a dark blue background, perhaps the colours of some rugby club he played for when young.

Esther tried to read what she could intermittently see of his face. Of course, she wondered if he’d decided this prosecution was halfway down the tubes; just as that earlier one went down the tubes on his domain after an undercover man’s murder. But she could not make out a lot from his appearance. His lips looked magnificently dry, although she understood he sometimes frothed if put to exceptional stress. This could happen, she’d been told, when quite frequently he berated two of his senior detectives in public, and presumably in private, about adulterous affairs conducted with Iles’s wife – at different times, as Esther heard it. Also, it would sometimes occur during funerals if, by invitation or not, and usually not, Iles got temporary control of the pulpit at a service for someone wiped out on his ground in a particularly unnecessary and possibly monstrous way. He’d use the chance to rage and foam against named criminals, and/or God, and/or the judiciary, and/or Fate, and/or the Home Secretary and Inspectorate of Constabulary, and/or medics. Esther felt almost certain, though, that Iles would never make such an open, fierce display in a fully fledged court of law like this, nor forcibly attempt to take over from the judge, whether male or female. His training surely made that impossible. Churches and chapels he’d have a different attitude to. He could be more brutal and competitive there. The rugby side of him might come out then. Pulpits he seemed to regard as up for grabs, like a ball fought over by players.

The judge said: ‘A police witness has explained why it was thought necessary to infiltrate – to Out-locate, in police terminology – the detective sergeant into the Cormax Turton organization. You would, no doubt, have made your own deductions about this, even without the reasons given by Superintendent Channing. Put briefly, the police wished to know more about the workings of the Cormax Turton group and had determined to seek evidence by Out-location, as well as by other methods of investigation already under way. Police witnesses have been guarded about saying why these inquiries were considered necessary, but it is plain that the Cormax Turton group was suspected of some kind, or kinds, of lawbreaking. This is an important factor in the case, members of the jury, because, according to the Prosecution, it provides the background and, indeed, the reason for the death of Detective Sergeant Martlew. I shall speak more about this later.