In the Absence of Iles (7 page)

‘I’m still not totally sure what I’m looking for,’ he said.

‘Many detectives will have carried out small-scale impersonations for the sake of an inquiry, or at least disguised their own nature. After all, Richard, in a uniformed service plain clothes are a kind of masquerade. You have to trawl around to find these officers and assess which of them might do the Out-location job best on a larger scale and over a longer period, most likely. This is personnel selection, the kind of thing you and I are doing all the time, but in this instance concerned with undercover talent. It’s not magic. No mystery carry-on. One needs nous. But you will know that between those who can act and those who can’t there is a great gulf fixed.’

Trotting out the Fieldfare formulae Esther felt passably assured and only moderately fraudulent. She thought she had probably settled Channing’s entirely reasonable anxieties. And if she could settle his, perhaps her own would shrink a bit more. Her own started from memories of a very scary time undercover herself, and then took in tales of disaster elsewhere, and especially the disaster that could shake someone like Iles so irreparably. A and B and others from the Fieldfare alphabet had undermined these thumbs-down influences pretty well. Yes, pretty well. Was it so strange that she should re-spiel their comforting phrases at near verbatim? Churchgoers got similar comfort repeating the litany.

Her ploys worked. They consoled Esther and helped her persuade Richard Channing that the effort needed to find and install someone in the Guild would pay off. Three weeks ago they Out-located an officer who, so far, seemed safe, even happy, and who kept contact when due. Esther did her regular, around the clock visits to the on-call rescue parties, though, to check their readiness and watch the formal transfer of the vital bribe cash. She must not get careless, or even confident.

When Desmond Iles arrived unannounced at Esther’s office she naturally assumed at first he was there to crow. Although he had not turned up at Fieldfare, she’d met him several times at ACPO conferences previously, and perhaps with that coxcomb profile and dandy gear he always looked like someone who would crow if he had something to crow about, or not. Today, he might think he had. She couldn’t really argue.

He must have driven for hours from his own ground to see her, yet his clothes looked in no way tired or roughed up. In fact, his suit exulted. The three-piece, grey job he wore sweetly signalled custom-made, and custom-made by an expensive talent for someone very knowing and very set on getting trousers that did absolutely right by his legs. Iles’s legs were not especially long, but slim and immaculately tapering from thigh to ankle, the calf bulge certainly present and suggesting power reserves, yet in no way lumpy and harmful to line. His tailoring took hold of this lean shapeliness with pricey skill. Looking at the trousers, Esther found it impossible to imagine any legs covered by them suffering the usual degrading trouble with legs – gouty knees, sciatica or varicose veins. Iles had a way of walking that would conscript attention to the trousers from all in the vicinity, and therefore to his legs. Although Esther wouldn’t call it a sashay or strut, she thought this would be how Field Marshal Montgomery might have stepped into his tent to receive the surrender of the Germans at Lüneberg Heath in May 1945. Even during the very few paces Iles took across Esther’s room to shake hands before sitting down, she felt the stoked, conquistador glory of his stride. This was what made her think he had come to tell her how cruelly and predictably wrong she had been to Out-locate one of her people; and condemn her fiercely for a failure to consult him before deciding.

He wanted her to take him to what he called ‘the scene, please, as a personal necessity, I know you’ll understand’. By now, of course, that’s all it was, a scene, a bit of scenery, a bit of coastal geography, nothing exceptional, nothing tragic, washed and clue-cleansed by a lot of tides. ‘Someone I think you knew as A phoned me,’ Iles said.

‘Fieldfare A?’

‘He’d heard about the death, of course.’

‘Why would he phone
you?’

‘He was distressed.’

‘But why call
you?’

‘It wasn’t entirely friendly,’ Iles said.

‘You take calls just like that out of nowhere from people of A’s rank?’

‘Not often.’

‘What’s the thinking? A decided, did he, an undercover man is killed by the gang he infiltrated, so I’ll ring Assistant Chief Iles? Does it make sense?’

‘I believe I have to listen to all who for their own reasons seek me out, Esther,’ Iles replied. ‘It’s one of my facets.’

‘Yes, but –’

‘At Staff College I was known as Approachable Desmond. Facets are one of the things people notice in me.’

‘I’m sure, but –’

‘A had a double motive for ringing. One, he wanted me to do something. And, two, he wished to reproach, blame me. You’ll immediately ask, one, wanted me to do what? And, two, why reproach, blame me? And I perfectly see why you should wish to quiz me on those aspects.’

‘Does A know you – on “Think I’ll give Ilesy a bell” terms?’ Esther replied. ‘But he’s not from your domain.’

‘Knew
of
me. One of my maxims is, “More folk know Tom Fool than Tom Fool knows.” Many have heard of Desmond Iles. It used to surprise me, but I’ve come to realize there is an inevitability to it. I accept this. I hope I do not seek or strive for repute, but repute arrives in my case willy-nilly and inescapable.’

Esther drove him out to the bit of beach near Pastel Head. ‘You’ll ask, one, what A wanted me to do; and, two, why he wished to reproach me,’ he said.

‘Did he call on the mobile? Or you mean he came through to your switchboard and said, “Let me speak to Assistant Chief Constable Des Iles. Tell him it’s A.”?’

‘I have a direct, secure land line at the nick, as you have, I’m sure.’

‘Yes, and the point about secure numbers is that they’re secure – and private.’

‘A is a detective. He discovers things,’ Iles said. ‘He used that line.’

‘He’s obviously determined to reach you, personally.’

‘He was weeping,’ Iles replied.

‘Oh, he dodges in and out of roles. It’s referred to as protean. He could be imitating Benny Hill or The Laughing Policeman a minute later.’ She would strive not to slip into obvious grief. She still feared Iles had driven here to tell her how insanely wrong she had been – part of his campaign against undercover. She must keep up a tough front.

‘Yes, he was weeping,’ Iles said.

She parked the car on the cliff and they walked down a slippery path to the pebble beach. Not long ago she’d watched as they carefully carried the body bag
up
that path to an undertaker’s van. It was low tide now. She pointed to a spot about halfway to the water. ‘There,’ she said. Iles walked ahead and stared for a while at the mix of mud and stones, then out at the sea. He would probably judge the sea as almost his equal in Creation. After a couple of minutes, she walked after him, careless of interrupting any communion he and it might be busy on. He turned his head to give her some profile. ‘A’s first words when he came through were, “Mr Iles, we failed her,”’ he said.

‘Did you understand what he meant?’

‘I remained silent,’ Iles replied. ‘But I stress, it was a permissive silence, not indifference. He would have sensed this. It’s a knack I have. I’d even call it an inspiring, liberating knack. This type of silence invited him to continue, to explain. Ironically, my silences cause people to talk.’

‘No introduction of himself?’

‘Not at that point.’

‘So, you’d be baffled?’

‘Plainly, I knew it was someone suffering.’

‘Did you ask his name?’

‘In due course. If someone is suffering you let them control the pace of things. In the presence of human pain, identity doesn’t matter all that much pro tem. Pain dominates.’

‘But ultimately you said, “Who’s speaking?”, did you, and he replied, “A, here, Mr Iles.” But you weren’t at Fieldfare, so you wouldn’t understand what A signified. You’d reply, “A what?”’

‘Yes, you’ll want to ask on what grounds he blamed me. And, clearly, that is the answer,’ Iles replied.

‘What is clearly the answer?’

‘My absence from Fieldfare.’

‘But I remember he said he didn’t know whether you were there, because people of his rank had no sight of the list.’

‘He knew. That glossy, stunted jerk, Mullins, referred to me in Questions, didn’t he? Or to the void where I might have been had I turned up? I heard of this.’

‘So, this detective sergeant, maybe only a detective constable, reaches you on your personal phone and says, “Mr Iles, you had absolutely no right to skip Fieldfare, you negligent sod”?’

‘“Fatally remiss” was the term used. ‘We were “fatally remiss, Mr Iles”. A added, “B concurs and perhaps others.” I said, “I’ve no means of knowing who B is.” He replied: “You have no means of knowing who I, A, am, either.” I agreed at once with this and said: “Therefore, you wish me to accept a hearsay report about B, whom I don’t know, from yourself, A, whom I have spoken to but also don’t know. That is cryptic by any standards.” He said: “Much police work of this kind
is
cryptic.” I replied: “Surely, my absence from Fieldfare itself spoke.”’

‘It did to me,’ Esther said.

‘It did?’

‘Certainly.’

‘But not enough?’

‘Not enough, no.’

‘You make his case, I suppose.’

‘In what way?’ Esther replied.

‘You interpreted what you
should
interpret – what all present were intended to interpret from my refusal to attend – yet went ahead with Out-location, regardless. A said, “Fucking sophistry,” when I referred to the emphatic, implied, non-clarion but definite message in my nonappearance. “Fucking senior cop’s fucking cop-out,” he added. He’d begun to recover by then. He said I
owed
you help now, in view of my refusal to be present at Fieldfare and deter you from an undercover operation. This certainly seemed odd coming from him – someone who’d helped persuade you to go with it.’

‘Do you see anything here?’ she said, nodding towards pebbles and then the sea.
‘You
were a detective, weren’t you?’ Far out, a piled-high container vessel lay at anchor maybe waiting for the tide so she could dock. Cormax Turton did a lot of business with shipped freight, some of it legal. Small, muddy waves broke almost silently a hundred metres away as if exhausted by getting in and out of lock gates.

‘“See anything”? In what sense?’ Iles said.

‘Anything that might help us take the investigation forward and get the sods who did him.’

‘I didn’t tell A to for God’s sake pull himself together when he broke down,’ Iles replied. ‘It would have been a customary reaction from someone in my rank hearing someone in
his
helplessly grizzle and sob – perhaps self-indulgently. That’s not my style, though. I believe people should let their emotions run, rank immaterial. Several times I waited for him to recover. It seemed only decent. If he was on pay-as-you-talk, this would be costing him.’

‘You mentioned B. We had the rescue unit in within minutes of his six-hour failure to make contact. Minutes. She stipulated that. I didn’t go with them. It wasn’t a job for an ACC. Later, I did visit one of the sites under search. Just watched from outside, though. As a matter of fact, the head of the firm, the prime, uncrackable villain, Cornelius Turton, came out and spoke to me, claimed not to know what we were looking for, of course.’ Esther felt her voice grow defensive, plaintive, frantic. She’d done everything she’d been told, but disaster still arrived.

‘A said that during one of his presentations that chatty, venerable ponce, Mullins, put up some standard, ancient objections to undercover – stuff about turning officers into rats, plus all the usual legalistic quibbles, such as, This cop has become a crook allegedly so as to catch crooks and is it permissible? Arguments so feeble they only strengthened the positive,’ Iles replied.

‘Well, yes.’

‘You’ll ask what A meant when he spoke of my helping you in the aftermath situation. It would be more than just viewing the scene as now,’ Iles said.

‘Did he have Mullins’ name? He wasn’t supposed to know our names.’

‘He’s a detective.’

‘We didn’t and still don’t have his.’

‘Their dainty little secrecy procedures,’ Iles said.

‘Although they might irritate you, it comforted me not to know his name.’

‘Well, it was
meant
to comfort you, wasn’t it? Salesmanship. Spin. A trick. It aimed to make you think full concealment is achievable and sustainable. Fieldfare pretends secrecy can be constructed like any other product – a car or TV set. It fancies itself as the disguise factory for undercover. I expect some sessions were in the Simpkins Suite. As you’ll know, of course, Walter Barker Simpkins
circa
1795 virtually invented one version of what ultimately came to be called the “conveyor belt” – in its day, “the Simpkins Endless Carrier Commodity Link”, abbreviated in histories of the Industrial Revolution to “Simpkins’ Link”, almost up there with “Crompton’s Mule”. And, in harmony with old Walter B., Fieldfare wishes to think the requirements of all Out-located operations can be efficiently assembled in its workshops and then distributed en masse. Sometimes they’re successful. Less often than not? I think so.’

‘A wanted you there at the Fieldfare course to say that?’ she said. ‘To undermine him and to put the rest of us off sponsoring undercover? This is crazy, isn’t it?’

‘Now
he would like me to have been there. Today. Flashback. It’s guilt. He believes he conned you, pressured you, and he could be right. He considers I might have stopped this. So, I’m “fatally remiss”. Fatally. If I
had
been there, of course, he’d have tried to destroy me and my arguments, as he did the comical relic, Mullins. It’s the death that brings A the regret and tears and hindsight wisdom.’

They returned up the beach and path towards Esther’s car.

‘A wanted me to come and apologize to you and to the family,’ Iles said. ‘He claimed he couldn’t face that himself.’