In the Absence of Iles (26 page)

‘I think the report explained: she was called to a violent husband–wife row,’ Esther said. ‘Neighbours had phoned us.’

‘Yes,’ Martlew said.

‘So sad that these frenzied fights between couples will happen, Mr Martlew,’ she said.

‘Sad, indeed.’

‘And any police officer will tell you such situations can be bad – among the most dangerous we ever meet,’ Esther said. ‘Both parties are liable to turn on the supposed peacemaker. They see him/her as an intruder on a private battle. That’s what seems to have happened here. Dill wasn’t in uniform. We don’t know whether this made things worse. She had picked up the call on her car radio while nearby. Sometimes the uniform will quieten people, scare them. Sometimes inflame them.’

‘Awful,’ Martlew said. He was solid-looking, of middle height. His long, clean, grey hair went to a pony-tail held in what seemed to be a red Post Office rubber band, and most likely changed at least weekly in case it perished and broke. He had a wide nose that looked just right for healthy breathing and unlively brown eyes behind rimless Himmler glasses: Esther had been reading a couple of illustrated books about the end of the Second World War recently. She felt massively grateful for Martlew’s switch to friendliness.

But what would he make of it if she admitted that Amy Dill might have done the Cormax Turton Out-location, if Superintendent Channing had made the selection? That is, if he had been permitted to make the selection? If, if, if: if – infinitely recurring, as they said in maths. And, of course, he
should
have been permitted to make the selection, because in some respects, or even many, he ran the job. She had picked him to run it, in some respects, or even many. Dean Martlew would be alive if she hadn’t overruled Channing.

Amy Dill, who became Mrs Patterson, might also have been alive if Esther hadn’t overruled Channing. Possibly, Dill couldn’t have responded to that domestic fracas call because she’d still have been Out-located with Cormax Turton. Yes, perhaps she would have handled the undercover role better, more cleverly, more carefully, less pushily. Had Channing diagnosed early on during the selection period such qualities in her? His approval had not been simply a managerial lust matter, then? Would she have been shrewder and safer and more cautious than Dean Martlew in CT? From the first mention of Moonscape in the Millicent car park, Esther had wondered about that fucking chatty armourer. Did he see Terry Marshall-Perkins as a sucker, as well as a snoop? Had Moonscape from his experience somehow spotted Terry’s police training in the way he handled a gun, despite Dean’s clever-clever, deliberate right-hand yaw on the range? He’d been picked by her mainly because he wasn’t Amy Dill, but also because he could shoot. Had that skill killed him? Oh, God, God, the chaos built in to choices! Did they ever fully answer to reason? The unstoppable ifs could always clobber you, in retrospect. But Esther would certainly not offer James Martlew these thoughts, nor Iles. She longed to think her silence about the choice of Dean was meant to spare Mr Martlew any more pain. Of course, though, she realized it was to spare herself.

‘And only recently married,’ Martlew said.

‘Dill? Yes,’ Esther said.

‘Tragic,’ Martlew said.

‘Immortality and weddings are different,’ Iles said.

‘Did either of you know her, I wonder?’ Martlew said.

‘That judge,’ Iles replied, ‘menopausally unhinged, poor judicial baggage? Do Lord Chancellors consider these things properly when they appoint?’

‘Yet she’s up to scratch enough to know the Americans call an unmarked police car a pastel, as in Pastel Head,’ Esther said.

‘Judges swot up underworld slang books to try to sound with it,’ Iles said.

‘The jury will convict,’ Martlew said. ‘I’m sure. I sense it.’

‘Sense?’ Iles said.

‘Yes, like . . . well, like sense it,’ Martlew said.

‘They shoot judges, don’t they,’ Iles said, ‘in Iraq? Why do we try to impose our blurred, civilized ways on that country?’

Mr Martlew said: ‘Sense it in the sense that I sense –’

‘I certainly think it was worth bringing the case,’ Iles said. ‘Well, obviously. The Crown Prosecution Service, incomprehensible as it might be, still wouldn’t have let things go forward if there’d been no chance at all of doing Ambrose.’

‘Three women are at the top now,’ Esther said.

‘Where?’ Iles said.

‘The CPS,’ Esther said.

‘There you are, then,’ Iles said.

‘What?’ Esther said.

‘Oh, yes,’ Iles said.

Mr Martlew said: ‘As I stated before lunch, the conviction of Ambrose Turton . . . the necessary, deserved, triumphant conviction of him that I sort of . . . sort of, well . . . sort of, yes,
sense
is coming to us will not bring my son, Dean, back, but nonetheless I –’

‘Yes, you did state that,’ Iles said. ‘Stuff it now, as before, will you? So, then, he’s not around.’

‘Who?’ Esther said.

‘Your husband,’ Iles said.

‘Oh, Gerald?’ Esther replied. ‘No, I imagine it was just chance that he should have appeared at lunchtime.’

‘And then at the pub window?’ Iles said.

‘Does he take an interest in your work, Mrs Davidson?’ James Martlew asked.

‘Well, yes,’ Esther said. ‘Supportive.’

‘He loathes it, I expect,’ Iles said, ‘and is half demented through envy. More than half? It’s understandable enough. Think of the crap he’s been told to treat as worthwhile and wholesome throughout his life, the cajoled mutt. Not just César Franck. Brahms. Elgar. Copland. My God, though! It’s bound to fray someone’s poise. I never believed in the
male
menopause, menopoise, but then along comes Gerald.’

‘Music encompasses him,’ Esther said. ‘Inhabits him. Possesses him. It’s so wonderful to see his spiritual yet also workaday response to this or that piece.’

‘Will the poisonous bastard behave properly later?’ Iles replied. ‘Shall I come home with you?’

Oh, the splendid possible double message here!
Shall I come home with you?
meaning, come home with her to take care that Gerald, in a pip-squeakish rage, didn’t get brutal – another dangerous domestic fracas. Or,
Shall I come home with you?
. . . meaning . . . well, meaning what
Shall I come home with you?
would generally mean – Shall I come home with you, Esther, and we’ll make our own kind of sweet music, not his, to compensate for Gerald’s sad, accelerating slide into total self-pity, panic and prize oafishness? Of course, she thought for a while this sounded fine, and more than fine, much more – that is, the second interpretation, the ‘own kind of sweet music’ interpretation. She felt willing to gamble that Gerald would be involved at the Millicent for several hours yet, if that was where he’d been going. Not long ago his name amounted to something, and the hotel would surely want to get as much as they could from his very available bassoon now.

Esther found something grossly fanciable in Iles, though not to do with any of those personal features he’d probably think irresistible himself – say his haircut or lips or finery or legs: the only times she’d noted him break his stare at the judge in court was when he looked down to check on his legs, not simply refreshing his memory, but refreshing
himself
at once by enjoying new sight of them although trousered; and, yes, of course, subsequently stocking these in his memory, like a squirrel with winter nuts. But she loved the combination in Iles of majestic pride, wise offensiveness and devotion to the cause – the cause, now, being the police cause, and specifically the Dean Martlew undercover cause, and therefore her. True, as a sort of artist, Gerald also naturally had very notable pride and offensiveness, but it could not always be called
wise
offensiveness. True, also, Gerald showed devotion to a cause, but that cause was music, and, although this certainly added up to something worthwhile, for Gerald it did ultimately only come down to wind in a hollow stick, and this never entirely grabbed Esther.

Iles could surprise. For instance, she had noticed in the pub that he went at food with remarkable refinement, almost squeamishness, as if marooned for ages on a barren spit of the Madagascar coast and ultimately forced to eat shipmates or lemurs. Iles possessed admirable, attractive delicacy, often part disguised by a degree of brassiness in his public behaviour and words, or entirely disguised.

‘I won’t come back with you to Mrs Davidson’s home,’ James Martlew said.

‘Oh, dear,’ Iles replied.

‘No,’ Martlew said.

‘Oh, dear,’ Esther replied.

‘You’ll have private police matters to discuss,’ Martlew said.

‘Very likely,’ Iles said.

‘Yes,’ Esther said.

‘Will justice be seen to be done, do you think, Mrs Davidson?’ Martlew said.

‘That depends who’s seeing it,’ Iles replied.

‘I believe in the British jury system,’ Martlew said.

‘I’ve met quite a few like you,’ Iles said.

Esther’s mobile phone rang. ‘Davidson,’ she replied.

‘Oh.’

‘Gerald?’ she said.

‘I thought it would be switched off,’ Gerald said. ‘In the court. I wanted to leave a message on voicemail.’

‘The court’s adjourned. What message?’

‘Where are you then – on those damnable steps again, with them, flaunting it?’ Gerald said.

‘Flaunting what?’ she said.

‘In that disgusting way of yours,’ he said.

‘Are you calling from the Millicent?’ she replied.

‘Fuck the Millicent,’ he said.

‘Some hitch, dear?’

‘Fuck the fucking Millicent,’ he said.

‘Are there people around where you’re calling from? They’ll overhear, dear.’

‘Fuck them.’

‘Did you play at the dance?’

‘They don’t want me,’ he said.

‘You played – did a rehearsal?’

‘They said, graciously, “No thanks, old son,” which being interpreted means, “You and your bloody bassoon, get lost. You don’t suit the Millicent.”’

‘Suit in what respect?’ Esther said.

‘Suit.’

‘It’s not important, Gerald,’ she replied. ‘To some extent that kind of work is beneath you.’

‘To which extent?’

‘Yes, well beneath you,’ Esther said.

‘Exactly how far beneath?’ Gerald said.

‘There’ll be other calls with work offers,’ Esther said. ‘Major orchestras. They probably don’t realize you’re available.’

‘The assistant manager – no interest in me at all,’ Gerald said.

‘They’re fools,’ she said.

‘All he can talk about is celebrities who’ve been to the hotel.’

‘You’re
a celebrity,’ Esther said.

‘And “the prestige” of the damn place.’

‘You’ve
got prestige,’ Esther said.

‘Film people, TV people, that big-time local business guy, Cabinet ministers.’

‘Which big-time local business guy?’ Esther said.

‘You know – Cornelius Max Turton.’

‘Cornelius Turton was at a tea dance?’

‘No, no, at some Inheritance Tax thing, with his team not long ago.’

‘He’s a crook,’ Esther said.

‘They don’t care about that. He’s a celeb. He’s an important name. He’s risqué but legal so far. As you know. The assistant manager says I’m a goner, a bit of yesterday. I don’t fit into the image they want for the Millicent.’

‘Tea dances are a bit of yesterday,’ Esther said. ‘The people who go to them are a bit of yesterday, or the day before.’

‘I think they’ll cut the tea dances, anyway. But, whatever, I’m out,’ Gerald said. ‘O. U. T. I’m ignored. Discarded. Treated lightly. And now you –
you’ll
get a victory and professional
gloire
at the court, but what about me? Have you thought of that? Do you ever think of it? Am I marginal to the whole way of the world?’

‘Has he got a dark green Bentley?’ Esther replied.

‘What? Who?’

‘Cornelius Max Turton.’

‘Would I know?’ he said.

‘Where are you?’ she said.

‘I suppose you’re with those people, male, the ones on the steps, in the pub, filling your damn faces, you smiling your For fuck’s sake, Gerald, fuck off smile. God, the heartlessness, the selfishness, the casual cruelty.’

‘Are you at home?’

‘Why would I be at home?’ he said.

‘After the Millicent.’

‘After the disgrace of the Millicent? After gross scorn at the Millicent? What’s at home for me?’ he said. ‘What companionship? What comfort? I’d be like that child in the old movie, home alone.’ He cough-sobbed.

‘Where, then?’

‘I suppose you want to bring one of the fuckers back there, do you – thinking I’m busy at the Millicent? Or more than one. Yes, fuckers.’

‘Say where you are, Gerald, please.’

‘Where d’you think, for God’s sake?’

‘No, I can’t tell. How would I?’

‘Somewhere meaningful,’ Gerald said.

‘Well, yes, I expect so. Where?’

‘Don’t mess about,’ he said. ‘You must know.’

‘I don’t honestly.’

‘Meaningful,’ he replied.

‘But where? Why did you want to leave voicemail?’

‘Just to tidy things,’ he said. ‘I hope I’m always considerate, kindly.’

‘Well, yes, definitely. What things?’

‘I wished to do the decencies,’ he said. ‘A proper dignified, necessary goodbye.’

‘Goodbye?’

‘Listen,’ he said.

‘What?’

‘Just listen,’ he said.

She had the idea he held his cell phone away from his ear to pick up background noise. She heard waves breaking, probably on pebbles. ‘Christ, he’s at what we were talking about,’ she said to Iles and James Martlew.

‘Which?’ Iles said.

‘Pastel Head.’

‘He’s going to top himself?’ Iles said. He began to descend the steps fast and went out of sight.

‘Get it?’ Gerald said.

‘The sea?’ she said.

‘Of course the sodding sea,’ Gerald said. ‘It’s all that concerns you, isn’t it? His body on the beach. Your obsession. You can’t ever stop asking yourself if you were responsible. You don’t care about anything else, such as me. Well, now you’ll have another body on the beach to worry yourself over, won’t you? This is my only way to reach out to you, Esther. Gone, gone are the moments when I might lick your significant wounds.’