In the Absence of Iles (20 page)

BOOK: In the Absence of Iles
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So far, Martlew who was called Wally, and Terence (The Quiff), lacked that wise, all-round, non-stop, possibly life-preserving caution of the complete undercover cop. But Esther let it go. She didn’t want to sound like a fusspot mother talking to a kid. This kid remained a kid in the undercover trade and needed to learn. And needed encouragement. Therefore, she told him how important he was. He wouldn’t be if he ever got into the wrong car, though. Remember that passenger side garrotting by Clemenza in
The Godfather,
the victim’s shoes bursting through the windscreen in his death throes?

A placard outside the Millicent tonight announced an evening seminar in its Xavier Suite on ‘Inheritance Tax And How To Avoid It’. Esther agreed they’d be all right here. There were naturally some very classy cars of the loaded in other bays, but probably none belonging to Cormax Turton, or to people who associated with Cormax Turton. Possibly Cornelius did think pretty often about who would inherit what when he went, but he would not be asking for advice from finance wizards in the Xavier Suite, nor telling anyone what he added up to and how he came to add up to it. He would be expert in avoiding experts on Inheritance Tax And How To Avoid It. Tax? He’d have his own way of dealing with that, dead or alive. Of
not
dealing with it, more likely.

‘So what’s up among your new friends, Wally?’ Channing said. ‘Mrs Davidson and I – we’re very much the listeners. Bang on our door, will you?’

‘What does that mean?’ Martlew said.

Chapter Fourteen

Esther decided she had better be present on Monday for the last session of the judge’s summing-up in the Ambrose Tutte Turton trial. Diplomacy, humanity, ordinary decency demanded this. Occasionally they overlapped. For now, she’d drop the visits to East Stead and the Dill situation.

At home, Gerald obviously picked up the signs of big nerviness nibbling Esther and said he would come with her to the court and give his personal backing. Some grandeur thickened his voice and he brought resolve into his eyes. Often his first reactions to Esther’s troubles were astonishingly warm sympathy and good support. Wreckage bits of what in the past had been a fair relationship would bob to the surface now and then, like stuff from a sunk freighter.

But a tricky one, this – a sensitive one. Obviously, she did not want him there.
Want
him there? In the court? God, some brutal joke! Admittedly – reversing things – it was probably true that, if Gerald ever managed to return to concert performing, in a principal or even backbench role, she would make sure she went with him and sat in the audience for at least one session, smiling her congratulations from a spot where he could see her. Yes, she’d attend, despite detesting most of the fly-in-a-bottle eighteenth-century works he especially liked to blow. Never mind, he needed her to be there signalling groupie-style admiration, and she’d go.

But Gerald trying to prop her morale at a trial was different. Although he had enough control not to heckle or hiss, after a short while listening to the judge he might become hurt and/or enraged – almost certainly
would
become hurt and/or enraged – by the cascade of words in public about someone, something, other than himself. He’d regard this as a filthy and calculated affront.

Naturally, in some of his calmer, saner moments, even Gerald realized that most of the world’s business happened without in the least noticing him. He knew the name G. Davidson did definitely mean something, but not to very many. His complete and obvious irrelevance to what went on in the court would affect him like a sickness. Gerald was not made for spectatordom. And he would fiendishly hate this trial because, although he rated as nothing, Esther
could
claim to have real involvement here. Clearly. Flagrantly. In fact, he’d spot that what Esther had decided months ago to do with undercover actually
caused
this summing-up; actually caused the entire fucking trial. This was bound to torment Gerald with envy. He shone at envy. Exclusion brought him vast pain. He was that famous starving kid, nose pressed against the restaurant window, watching the polished clientele gorge. After not very long in court, Gerald would probably become unmanageably restless and start grunting and whispering to Esther, and twitching his body about as if it was worth looking at or giving the kiss of life to. This would insult the court and, much more important in Esther’s opinion, insult Dean and the Martlew family. If Gerald were thrown out by attendants she couldn’t pretend she didn’t know the barmy sod.

So, she must put him off. Must. But, unless she got the timbre and phrasing right, he’d begin to overheat and start one of his riffs about her only wishing to attend solo because she had, or had had, a wondrously satisfying carnal connection with the dead undercover officer, or some of his family, or with the judge, or Channing, or one or more of the Press reporters, or Ambrose Tutte Turton, or Iles: she’d spoken to Gerald now and then about Iles and his quirks and dandyism, and mentioned that, for his particular reasons, he attended some sessions of the trial. On this key day, she felt it would be bad to appear at court showing sucked wounds. It could seem self-indulgent, and lacking decorum. Nor would she have time, let alone wish, to fuck following a full donnybrook rough-house, as Gerald would undoubtedly demand under established
après scrap
custom and practice.

‘It’s so kind of you to offer to come with me, Gerald, my love!’

‘Darling, what else could I do? I mean, if you have trouble don’t I also have trouble – share that trouble?’

‘What else could you do? What else!’ She smiled, a lingering, soulmate to soulmate construction. ‘But you see, it’s only because you are you that you ask that question! I can tell you, Gerald – and I probably
need
to tell you, since, in your kindliness, you’d never suspect this yourself – but I can tell you some men would feel not the least obligation. Zilch obligation.’ She thought this would probably get to him – the word ‘obligation’, and used twice tickled up by the slangy ‘zilch’. He was an artist and didn’t do obligations, despised obligations, would want no truck with obligations, in the usual social-fabric, family sense. Ultimately, his only obligation was to his art, his bassoon, his work, although he didn’t have any just now. He might ask, ‘Did Picasso let “obligations” stop him painting women with eyes where their tits should be?’ Esther said: ‘People there will admire you so much for knowing your duty.’

‘People where?’

‘At the court. And generally. Television news pictures of you arriving with me – me as recognizable in this context, of course.’

‘Duty? I see it as a natural, spousely impulse to be with you at this time, only that,’ he said.

‘Yes, and I’m sure it is. But then,
I
know your character. To them,
not
knowing it, you would appear to have accepted a mere satellite role – very much a second-string role as compared with mine on this occasion – and they’ll esteem you for that willing and willed self-effacement. This will put you into a lowly, yet not utterly insignificant, position, say like Thatcher’s husband, or footballers’ wives.’

‘I’ve played solo in many a fucking concerto, you know, including at the Drapers’ Hall,’ he replied. ‘“Unmatchable”, my Mozart Rondo K.191 was called by a reviewer.’

‘Yes, yes, I do know. And perhaps some of them will know also, and feel it truly humble of you to step down from K.191, and recognize that this might be the life-stage when you take on instead – ungrudgingly and devotedly – the sidekick identity, as if subsumed by me. Mind, they will not suppose the bassoon, or the thrill of performance, are completely forgotten, but they’ll assume you have decided these are no longer supreme priorities.’

‘They fucking
are,’
he replied.

‘We
realize this, not them.’

‘I hate people like that.’

‘Like what?’

‘Trite, formula minds.’

‘Not many of them would have any real hope of understanding someone of your temperament, Gerald.’

‘Always the bassoon will call me, call me, call me, the way a battlefield flag called to troops in old wars.’

‘And you are the greater man for that, though it is too much for them to take in. They will see at this point a self-sacrificial, gifted, contentedly bypassed, former celebrity.’

He didn’t go with her. ‘Have you been messing me about – all that worthy aide-de-camp wool, Esther?’ He said he didn’t know why
she
had to go to the summing-up again, with him or alone. ‘You can’t affect anything.’

No, she couldn’t. More zilch. But it was what Gerald would call an impulse. She did have impulses. She got out of the house before he could turn imaginative, dirty and physical. Maybe Iles would show. Dean’s father certainly would: a main reason for Esther to be there. She didn’t want him to think her indifferent. He might in his mind reasonably accuse her of all sorts, but not indifference. Now and then she wished she
could
manage a spell of indifference, of numbness.

She’d missed a few hours of the summing-up here and there, including while she was at East Stead on Friday morning, and thought that if necessary she could read the missing bits in transcript sometime. Probably it
wasn’t
necessary. Things would go as they were going, regardless. Gerald had that right. She might come to the transcript as more or less an historical document, weeks on, months on. But Esther wanted the closing words of the judge’s performance live. They should be heard raw, not read for retrospect. Why? They should, that’s all. On the chief issues that would figure today, Esther needed to savour the seeming reasonableness of the judge’s manner, and the mild, precise way she presented logical options for the jury to think about. The tone would be crucial – not necessarily favourable or comforting but crucial. Tone you couldn’t always get from a transcript.

Although Esther had considered giving the court another miss and returning to the Dill situation at East Stead, she sensed that people working on the case there found her a persistent, interfering nuisance during her Friday, Saturday and Sunday visits; the Saturday and Sunday ones quite long, as there was no sitting court or office meeting to compete. Actually, she’d realized from the start they would regard her as an interfering nuisance, and decided she could ignore this: Esther felt impelled to be there, and rank saw her all right, entitled her. Rank was beautiful sometimes. This morning, though, the pull of the trial grew strong again. The judge had already been talking for more than a day and a half when she adjourned on Friday lunchtime for the weekend, as judges tended to. She must be near the wrap.

‘Members of the jury, I come now to the evidence of the witnesses, Mr Charles Edenbridge Rowan and Mr Frank Claud Bates. Both told the court that they had seen the accused with Detective Sergeant Dean Martlew and another man on 8 June, the day the Prosecution say Dean Martlew was killed. This, of course, is totally at variance with the claim of the accused and others that Martlew had left the Cormax Turton companies and been paid off on 27 May, and that neither he – the accused – nor, as far as he knew, anybody in the companies, had seen Martlew or been in contact with him since then. The evidence of Mr Rowan and Mr Bates is therefore fundamental to the Prosecution case, and it will be for you to decide how you regard that evidence.’

As Esther had half expected, Desmond Iles
was
present for this final session, sitting near the front of the public gallery a few places from Mr Martlew. Just before the judge began, Iles and he shook hands standing, and talked together for a few moments. It seemed amiable. Perhaps Iles had done what he promised and won him and the family over.

The judge said: ‘There are some resemblances between Mr Rowan’s and Mr Bates’s testimony and some differences. This is to be expected. Let us take the resemblances first. Both say they saw Detective Sergeant Martlew with the accused and another man in the Dunkley Wharf area of the docks on 8 June. As you will recall, the court made a visit to the wharf during the trial so that you could be familiar at first hand with the locale. It is not in dispute that some of Cormax Turton’s waterfront business takes place at Dunkley Wharf, nor that the accused is from time to time involved in that side of Cormax Turton’s work. Both witnesses put their sightings between 7 p.m. and 8 p.m. Mr Rowan says about 7.10 p.m., Mr Bates, around 7.35 p.m. Neither of them checked the time on their watches. They had no reason to. They were not witnessing anything exceptional. It would be entirely usual to see the accused and other members of the Cormax Turton companies at the wharf, particularly when a vessel was discharging, as on the evening of 8 June. These are approximate times, then, but in the same general segment of the day. Mr Rowan and Mr Bates work at the docks and knew the accused by sight and his name. They also knew Dean Martlew by sight and name, having several times previously seen him at Dunkley Wharf in connection with Cormax Turton business; though the name by which they knew him was not Dean Martlew but Terence Marshall-Perkins, or, familiarly, The Quiff. They both also thought they recognized the third man, though neither felt totally certain about this, and they had no name for him. “Third Men” do tend to be touched by mystery, don’t they, as we know from Greene’s famous film and novel,
The Third Man?
Mr Rowan runs a mobile snack bar near Dunkley Wharf, which we saw during our visit. Mr Bates is a member of the Docks Manager’s staff responsible for allocating berths at various wharves, including Dunkley.’

Esther felt marginally strengthened by Iles’s presence. She realized this could have been otherwise: he’d failed in a comparable case and might have now seemed to her a nomadic jinx.
I sympathize, Esther, with your impending disaster because I’ve had one myself. It’s why I come. Let’s mourn dead undercover men together.

The judge said: ‘It is not disputed by the accused that he and two colleagues were at the wharf between 7 p.m. and 8.30 p.m. on 8 June. The accused told the court they were present to identify and examine certain items in the ship cargo, which had been ordered and imported for several Cormax Turton customers. The accused described this as a routine matter because inspections were always made, in case items had been damaged in transit and, if so, to record that the damage occurred before Cormax Turton became responsible for them. The three men arrived at the wharves in the accused’s silver-coloured Lexus car, which was seen and recognized by Mr Bates and Mr Rowan. None of this is in doubt, but, of course, ladies and gentlemen of the jury, what
is
in doubt is whether one of the three men at the wharf on the evening of 8 June was Terence Marshall-Perkins – Detective Sergeant Dean Martlew. The accused says he at no point knew or suspected that Terence Marshall-Perkins might be a false name and that Marshall-Perkins had left the Cormax Turton in unexceptional circumstances on 27 May.’

BOOK: In the Absence of Iles
8.27Mb size Format: txt, pdf, ePub
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