Come Clean (1989) by Bill James Read Free Book Online Page B

favour of morality. All right, I think Des is a policeman who’s pulled some dirty tricks in his time,
exceedingly dirty, I suspect. In fact, often I feel scared even to wonder. But, speaking generally, he’s just about on the side of what we can call good, and he’d say you can’t be
on the side of good effectively any longer without a tidy armoury of dirty tricks. He’s not into fighting with one hand behind his back and the other holding the handbook of the Civil
Liberties movement – that’s his line.’
    ‘Ian? Is he on the side of good?’
    ‘Who knows?’
    ‘Not you?’
    ‘Not any longer.’
    Again Margot paused, obviously waiting for more information. And again Sarah refused to give it. Instead, for the rest of the session she insisted upon talking about her childhood, and Margot
listened but made no credible effort to conceal her disappointment and boredom.
    At home, Sarah telephoned Ian’s flat three times, but could get no reply. She tried the Monty and Ralph answered at once. When she asked if Ian was there he said: ‘No, I’m
afraid not, madam, not at this moment, though he certainly is a member of the club. Should I say who called? Would you like to leave your number or a message?’
    He must have recognized her voice, yet chose to act as if she were a stranger. She did not understand why, though perhaps there was someone nearby in the bar who might overhear, and he wanted no
mention of Ian’s or her names. ‘I might try again,’ she said.
    ‘At your service.’

Chapter Three
    Harpur waited for Jack Lamb near a brick-built, Second World War pill box set into the long, earthwork sea wall on the foreshore, four or five miles up the coast from Valencia
Esplanade. Its concrete-lipped weapon slits looked seawards and in 1940, if the enemy had come, the troops here would have tried gloriously to knock him and his tanks back into the mucky water. At
low tide the view was wide mud flats, desolate and empty except for an occasional solitary, bent-over fisherman digging bait. Patches of frothy, orange industrial effluent were dotted about the mud
today, like a pogrom of ginger cats. Harpur understood that the flat supported uniquely interesting bird life, if you were interested. Fine but heavy rain was being carried in from the sea now, and
underfoot the soil had begun to grow sticky.
    Lamb had picked this spot. He loved atmosphere and history, possibly environmental mud as well. What he did not like and would not trust was the telephone, so, if ever he or Harpur wanted to say
something they had to meet, and to meet where they would not be observed. They used car parks and art galleries and crowded auction rooms – where they could speak an urgent word or two before
separating – and occasionally they came here, the fight-them-on-the-beaches battleground that never was. Informants as a breed felt uneasy about telephones, not just Jack; they were aware how
imaginative and crafty people could be at eavesdropping, and how technological, because they were imaginative and crafty at it themselves, and especially Lamb. Harpur had never known a tipster
anything like as productive, so if Jack wanted to rendezvous in the mire, in the mire it had to be.
    He approached now, huge and unhurried, wearing what appeared to be a Cossack cape, a black beret and wellingtons, like someone ready to play in a one-man Napoleonic war sketch and represent all
three main armies. Despite his security obsessions about telephones and meeting places, Jack did not go in for being unnoticeable. How could he at his weight and height? Gazing seawards he
murmured: ‘Will they never come?’
    ‘I love it here; the tide-mark of nappy liners and knotted french letters.’
    They stood under the overhang of the pill box roof, leaning against the brickwork. When fixing the meeting, Lamb had hinted that he was gravely worried about the safety of one of his own
occasional sources; these people lived with menace, nonstop, and