In the Absence of Iles

  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?

  ‘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.