Free Play Dead by Bill James Page A

Then he said, as though deferentially: ‘I believe that’s a fair summary of your thinking, isn’t it, Col?’
    â€˜Along those lines, yes,’ Harpur said. He felt a kind of buddiness with the supposed gang member who, before him, might have done what Harpur had done last night - acted as Parry/Mallen on his appointed way to destruction. And had the sniper launched some Iles-type shoot-bang-fire pop sounds to imitate the blasts due for Parry/Mallen soon? Perhaps this Parry/Mallen replica keeled over as if twice struck in key regions, the way Harpur did later. The 14 Davant corner of Elms could figure as a training base for the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art, or a commando unit.
    â€˜We’re going at matters arse-backwards,’ Iles said.
    â€˜In which respect, sir?’ Harpur replied.
    â€˜We’ve placed Jane and Gerald in front of the house, attending to Tom Mallen on or near the special location. But we haven’t worked out why Tom left the normal path - the path Jane and Gerald had been following until she saw the chucked garments that turned out to be Mallen - left the normal path and drifted over towards fourteen, a drift of forty metres.’
    â€˜You’re right, Mr Iles,’ Jane said.
    Gerald edged his way into things. Getting talked down to by cops in his own living room might badly piss him off. The conversation had gone away from him. He seemed to resent the enthusiastic way Jane agreed with the Assistant Chief. She said, ‘You’re right, Mr Iles,’ as though it meant, ‘You’re always right, Mr Iles.’ This was, though, the type of accolade the Assistant Chief might dismiss as stupidly redundant. He already knew himself to be always right, and expected others to know it, too; know this as so plainly a feature of the ACC that to hail it like a discovery was offensive, a kind of impertinence.
    Gerald said: ‘Excuse me, Mr Iles, but one is bound to notice that on the left side of your face you appear to have sustained—’
    â€˜The Assistant Chief is very hands-on,’ Harpur said. ‘Some of us try to get him to take fewer front-line risks, but he’s not made that way. For him, leadership is leadership. I heard that in a previous posting he was known as “Audacious Desmond”.’
    â€˜No mere backroom pen-pusher?’ Jane replied. ‘Though some do say the pen is mightier than the sword.’
    â€˜A pen
can
give a nasty dig when pushed,’ Iles said.
    Gerald said: ‘Your injury, Mr Iles, is one that—’
    â€˜If there’s trouble, the ACC is as likely to be personally involved as any of his people,’ Harpur said.
    â€˜But you - you’re one of his people,’ Gerald said. ‘You’re not injured.’
    â€˜I could show you,’ Harpur said.
    â€˜What happened?’ Jane replied.
    â€˜I’m very glad you asked,’ Iles said.
    â€˜Yes?’ Jane said.
    â€˜Oh, yes,’ Iles said.
    â€˜Mr Iles wouldn’t want it thought that this wound and contusion suited his face so well that they were not noticed - or at least not considered worth mentioning,’ Harpur said.
    Jane said, ‘Simple politeness might have stopped us from—’
    â€˜Mr Iles is man enough to know when he has become exceptionally unsightly, and it’s not in his frank and open nature to ban all comments on this outstanding, if not unique, ugliness,’ Harpur said.
    â€˜Thank you, Col,’ Iles replied.
    â€˜But who could have done this to him - to an Assistant Chief Constable?’ Gerald said. His tone had mellowed. ‘The injury - so near his eye.’
    â€˜Yes,’ Harpur said, ‘as if calculated.’
    â€˜How?’ Gerald asked. ‘Who?’
    â€˜So, Tom Mallen comes in at the flattened bit of fence just like Jane and Gerald,’ Iles replied, ‘and for a while, say fifty or sixty metres, follows the direct path, as almost