smileless, letting them in. âThe arrest, the trial, the conviction. We gave our evidence then, dealt with cross-questioning, too. Does it drag on, then?â
Harpur sympathized. âAnd very valuable evidence. But some tidying is still necessary,â he said.
âTidying?â Gerald said.
âSeveral untouched elements,â Harpur said.
âTwo very senior officers sent again from another force to do âsome tidyingâ?â Gerald said. âIs it really so? Hard to understand.â
âAn aftermath is like this sometimes,â Harpur replied. âThe exact shape of an aftermath is often hard to figure. I donât know whether youâve had any experience of aftermaths, but pinning an aftermath down is tricky sometimes.â He couldnât tell him that the Home Office - or, at least, Maud Logan Clatworthy, star of the Home Office youth team - no, couldnât tell him that Maud believed the conviction reached only an edge of Larkspurâs organized villainy and corruption; was not much more than a token conviction, a fall-guy conviction. She thought it required a serious, incisive, follow-up pry by the original outside investigators, already knowledgeable about the area: Iles and him. To date, the mission was based only on rumour and loose talk. Maud possessed no hard information, and neither did he and Iles. Maud had intuitions, though, plus, probably, that Oxbridge first-class degree. It could give her intuitions a touch of credibility, solidity and oomph.
âYes, Detective Chief Superintendent Harpur has always been one for a phrase,â Iles said. ââSome tidyingâ in an âaftermathâ. And
because
itâs an aftermath we might have to go over certain old material again. A quick glance at it. Forgive us that, will you, please?â Harpur could see both Jane and Gerald were fixated on the Assistant Chiefâs face crack. Very dark bruising had gone up and down: up to his eyelid and lower region of the forehead, and down almost to the corner of his mouth. Youâd often see women marked like this in domestic violence courts. That comparison would probably please Iles. He liked to feel he had a link with all sorts across gender, religion, weight, class, education, medical state, race, as long as they didnât try to get objectionably close.
He said: âMiss Matson - Jane, if I may - you declared in your trial evidence and statements earlier that you and Mr Beatty - Gerald, if I may - yes, you two were crossing the Elms building site between Ritson mall and Guild Square on the night of the killing, when you saw the body of Detective Sergeant Mallen about forty metres to your left.â
âI didnât know it was a body immediately,â she said.
âNo, quite,â Iles said. âA good moon but still fairly dark.â
âIt was a shape, a heap, thatâs how it seemed at first.â
âYou thought possibly a pile of discarded clothes,â Iles said. âThis is in the court narrative.â
âAt first, yes. All sorts of litter on that site, the clothes possibly dumped as unwanted from a stolen suitcase,â Jane said.
âBut then you corrected?â Iles replied.
Gerald Beatty said: âJane had drawn my attention to . . . to, well, something unusual over on our left. Yes, she thought just discarded clothes. I thought so, too. I joked that it might be an out-of-season Guy Fawkes.â
Iles chuckled for several seconds - no, Harpur realized it was more than several: say ten - a thorough-going, durable, entirely uncontemptuous chuckle. Iles said: âSome jokes are all the better for avoiding too much subtlety.â
âBut then she revised this,â Gerald replied, âand said it looked like a man, sort of hunched on the ground, maybe ill, perhaps a heart attack. Possibly a vagrant. I wasnât sure, but she insisted. I suppose I felt reluctant to make the detour. We
Susan Howatch
Jamie Lake
Paige Cuccaro
Eliza DeGaulle
Charlaine Harris
Burt Neuborne
Highland Spirits
Melinda Leigh
Charles Todd
Brenda Hiatt