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Maud thought some of them needed a kick up the arse. From inside Maud knew the slowness and blasé languor and indecisiveness of the place. Maybe Maud had a
super
-first-class degree, a first-class degree with bells on, and therefore her brain-bright scope outscoped theirs. The kick up the arse might help them extend and revitalize their scope.
    When Harpur and the ACC arrived at Larkspur for this second investigation and had booked into the same hotel as before, Iles decided there should be a bit of theatre. ‘Let us go then, you and I, when the evening is spread out against the sky, and defy time, Harpur.’
    â€˜Time’s always out there, sir.’
    â€˜That’s a fact, Col. Time future is contained in time past, you could say.’
    â€˜And I do, sir. It’s one of the chief things about time - it never stops. Even while we’ve been talking about time, time has moved on. Clocks can stop, but not time.’
    â€˜Don’t go fucking ruminative on me now, Harpur. Look, Col, we’ll re-create those rough, past circumstances and observe them as though afresh.’
    â€˜Which circumstances, sir?’ Harpur said.
    â€˜A death, of course.’
    â€˜How?’ Harpur said. They were in the hotel bar. Harpur had a double gin topped up with cider in a half-pint glass, his usual. Iles drank what he called ‘the old tarts’ drink’, port and lemon,
his
usual.
    â€˜How what?’
    â€˜How re-create the circumstances?’
    â€˜We’ll mimic the gunshot moments of the undercover man’s murder.’
    â€˜Mimic?’
    â€˜Reprise. Closely imitate. Carry no identification, Col, just in case.’
    â€˜In case of what, sir?’
    â€˜Yes, just in case. We’ll do it on location, where it actually happened. Authentic.’
    â€˜Play-act the killing?’
    â€˜Ah, you’ll, naturally, be thinking of
Hamlet
, I know,’ Iles said.
    â€˜Inevitably.’
    â€˜You’ll have in mind, Col, the theatrical troupe who
portray
a murder, while Hamlet is considering a
real
murder, himself. It’s eerie. I should imagine you’ve had many a shiver while watching this part of the drama from your seat in the gods.’
    â€˜Right. But what can we discover? We’ve already identified the killer and had him convicted.’
    â€˜We’ll possibly learn something we previously missed - something in addition to the simple, limited shoot-bang-fire of the assassination, Col. We must seek its context, Harpur, its place in the overall villainous pageant.’
    â€˜Most probably the Carnation officer wouldn’t have regarded the shoot-bang-fire as limited, sir. It finished him. But I suppose it
was
limited in the sense both bullets hit him, and nobody else.’
    â€˜He was just one step up from a nobody, Col, only a minor figure in a savage, wider scene. Our aim is to find the meaning of this figure among many others, some vastly more tasty and grand.’
    Harpur accepted that Iles had a right, even a duty, to think and talk in this large, billowing, bullshitting style now and then. He was an Assistant Chief, for God’s sake, and Assistant Chiefs always came with a cartload of wordage. And so, at what Harpur had called ‘the murder venue’, he took the part of the twice-shot man, and Iles became the sniper. There wouldn’t be any Oscars. It was a building site of new dwellings, but hit by the recession and uncompleted so far. They’d be comfy, hygienic, executive-style villas with three bathrooms if they ever got finished - and if there were enough solvent executives around then to afford the deposit, and tell members of the household which bathroom they’d been allocated.
    Harpur and Iles had come to look at the site previously, of course, on their earlier trip to Larkspur for Maud and the Home Office. Now, Iles wanted to sort of start from scratch -
re
start from scratch. They’d seek extra insights