by Bill James
He didn’t regard her motives as especially important, though. What had been important, terrifyingly important, and to the point, was the possibility that the police knew about the oncoming Opal Render/Pasque Uno confrontation from somewhere, and would be present in tooled-up, gun-trained numbers, ready to blast both sides if required, and on ground nicely pre-charted via expertly placed hidden cameras, and by Esther Davidson on a ramble, a wide-awake, carefully written-up and sketch-rich ramble. That ‘from somewhere’ meant from an informant, or informants, and what seemed to be a very capable informant, or very capable informants.
Possibly, Davidson also knew from this super-crafty spy system who had been here to brush up their close, tactical knowledge of the area, for instance four men, on a day-trip in the Vauxhall: Dale (Gladhand) Hoskins at the wheel, Stayley, gob ever-open and poisonous, next to him, two others in the rear, possibly also identifiable, Greg Mace and himself. The very capable informant, or informants, had possibly provided a bundle of names, as well as the land guide. This would be four men on a round trip, one way past the promised battle site, and then past it again on the return. If they sent the registration details to the police computer and discovered the car had been taken away, interest in the four men would soar. Of course they would send the details to the computer, a more or less instant procedure.
And Davidson might learn from the latest length of nosy filming that someone astonishingly like the younger Charlton Heston had hung about in Mondial, using a unisex hairdressing premises as a hide from which to observe her and the alderman and jotter. Ralph recalled some doggerel he’d made up later in the Volvo when slightly less skew-whiffed by the afternoon’s rough surprises:
I spy,
from on high,
with my fine Leica eye
someone beginning
with C,
for Chuck.
But, fuck,
it’s not Chuck;
not C,
but E,
for Ember:
Remember.
All this, he’d realized, might be confirmed by post-battle interviews with some of the shop people and so on. Ralph had felt how wise he’d been to come and see what was what. What to do about what was what, though, was what he’d call problematical. Deeply.
SEVENTEEN
Of course, seated with his recollections near the William Blake dangling slab at The Monty, Ralph realized it could guard him from only one very simple kind of attack. Besides, the high shield had become so famous now that anyone wanting to target him would carefully, craftily, hatch an attack plan to bypass it. People all over the city, and probably beyond, would hear about some loony piss-artist who, utterly unprovoked, shot at The Monty’s ornate, aerial barrier: the result, exceptionally unpleasant staining and grave hazard from a fragmented sauce bottle. Iles wasn’t the only one who’d regard this disgraceful incident as wondrously comic, though he’d definitely be far and away the fucking noisiest, and the most likely to get sent into convulsions by his uncontrollable, profoundly antisocial and anti-cultural laughter. And he’d mouth his descriptions everywhere. Thanks, Iles.
Ralph had picked up a rumour that some members no longer referred to the club as The Monty but called it The Flak-Jacket, suggesting this was necessary kit if members and their guests wanted to stay unspeared by flying glass shards. See you at the Flak, nine-ish, OK? That seemed to Ralph appallingly disrespectful to the club, and, perhaps much more importantly, to William Blake, who must have put a terrific amount of work and imagination into his creations; for instance, a tyger spelt with a ‘y’ and glowing at night, as well as The Marriage of Heaven and Hell and other very significant items, both art and writing; so versatile! He was surely due proper deference, not stinko violence. And this stinko violence could send a suggestion to anyone wanting to open fire on Ralph at The Monty that a slightly more devious approach than would have been available before the new fitment was now essential.
Ralph had been afraid that somebody could take a couple of paces through the club’s main door and get a direct, straight-ahead view of him at his miniature accounting desk behind the bar, more or less asking to be done. The gunman would finish him with half a dozen rapid rounds – classic, double-handed, anti-recoil, stiff-arm aiming stance. Then he’d turn to disappear fast, probably into a waiting escape car, and speed off to collect the second half of his honorarium on completion, plus expenses for the ammunition and for travel, if he’d been hired in from elsewhere.
Originally, Ralph had assumed the metal bulwark would give effective protection from that category of uncomplicated, easy, attempted hit. And it might have. But, these days, a marksman who’d done just a minor bit of research about The Monty and Ralph, would factor in the disguised steel canopy. He’d pick his sniping spot a little to the right or left, and fire around the obstruction, the way German tanks notoriously outflanked the Maginot Line at the beginning of the Second World War, and took Belgium and France.
And there might be more than one marksman, able to riddle Ralph from several angles. As well as The Monty, he had that high-earning, tax-exempt, expanding, recreational commodities business, and so, very naturally, he also had envious, scheming, dog-eat-dog enemies. But, added to these routine perils of the substances profession, he knew there were still people who remembered what had happened at Mondial-Trave in London and stupidly blamed him even so long after: stupidly and outrageously and murderously.
He suspected the Mondial-Trave episode was where those insulting nicknames – Panicking Ralph and/or Panicking Ralphy – had their rotten, unjust start. So, yes, there might once have been a motive for that, though totally mistaken. But why had those odious descriptions stuck so long after? Did he detect more envy here? Oh, yes: despite Quent Stayley’s rabid insults back then, most men saw the splendid, women-wowing, desire-fanning Chuck Heston element in Ralph’s looks and decided they had to negative it, smash it, reduce him to somewhere lower than their own low selves via these vicious, destructive, belittling insignia. He had children. Wouldn’t it be awful if they found out that their father had been given extra titles that made him sound like a poltroon?
He reckoned that this dismal group who’d just come into the club would be the kind who’d call him Panicking Ralph or Panicking Ralphy when he wasn’t present, although they’d go all bum-sucking and smarmy when talking to him face to face. How we love The Monty, Ralph! The warm mahogany panelling and beautifully polished brass fittings. A living credit to you!
It was on account of such possible two-timing spiel that he tried to avoid conversation with loutish lots like these. Until The Monty was gloriously relaunched in its new, exclusive, intellectually glittering form, Ralph would accept all sorts of crud as paid-up members. Come the rebirth, though, he’d apply the old heave-ho to all who didn’t fit. He wanted people he could genuinely respond to at a select social level, and who could genuinely respond to him at that level. In Ralph’s view this was how a club should be: a comfortable meeting spot for members of similar tastes, brainpower, courteousness and sensitivity.
Sensitivity in particular: for example, would this oafish crew at the bar now understand, empathize with, the bewilderingly painful pressures that suddenly came on him at Mondial-Trave? Answer? No. And no again. They’d be too thick and self-obsessed to recognize the problems beating so hard on Ralph there, let alone have any notion how to solve them. As he’d driven back that day, thinking about the probable police cameras taking a constant, recorded peep at the area, he’d had to think also about what he should do with the new information he’d harvested – harvested by accident.
But, hang on, was there more to it than that? Might it be only seeming accident? Great artists, such as, for instance, William Blake, sometimes received inspiration they could not rationally account for. It invited itself, arrived unexplained, and unexplainable, as if from a sublime but hidden store. They were vastly privileged to receive it, and acknowledged this, felt their work take from it uniquely energizing nourishm
ent. It was what made them great. They happily, gratefully, accepted its brilliant influence. It established their genius.
Ralph wondered if, perhaps, he had been guided in the same supernatural way with his work – that Volvo visit to Mondial-Trave. Obviously, a project to shoot dead or maim as many Opal Render people as possible didn’t involve identical artistic considerations as, say, the tyger poem or The Marriage Of Heaven And Hell. But it was the machinery of the two differing kinds of inspiration that interested Ralph. An impulse had taken him there on the same morning chosen by the chief of detectives. Remarkable? He’d thought so. Amazing? Yes. Beyond remarkable and amazing? Possibly. Anyway, no matter how he’d gathered these revelations, he had to ask himself now why she’d picked that day and time and, in fact, why she was there at all, as though she and Ralph were in some totally baffling, yet obviously valid, way unbreakably linked.
And – crux of crux questions – he had to ask himself, also, whether he should tell Gladhand and the other Pasque Uno folk what he’d seen, and what he made of it. This dilemma could not be more severe. Such a report could end all prospects of a battle encounter with Opal Render at Mondial-Trave. The planning would have been an absolute waste. That mature and noble hope of purifying the trade scene by morgueing the bulk of Opal Render’s people, and giving complete, unrivalled, deserved dominance to Pasque Uno, would fizzle out.
EIGHTEEN
Esther, in her garden, remembered herself remembering – went back to the past and then, in the past, went back to the past of that past. She had set up those three secret filming posts at Mondial-Trave, two in apartment blocks, one in an attic over a confectionery shop: very pricey coverage, what with rent payments and the photographers’ special, long-shift subsistence allowance, and, eventually, domestic cleaners. The outlay and effort showed she’d given the informant’s forecast of a street battle high credibility. Well, he’d been brilliant earlier, and she had to believe in form. Police did. They called it ‘previous’, meaning someone had a convicted crooked history, and most likely had a similar crooked present, due another conviction.
The informant’s previous was different, though. He had a record, but a record for accurate, helpful, very confidential, clairvoyant, paid-for whispers, not lawlessness. The law, in fact, needed him (or her) and those like him (or her). Detectives detecting often depended on someone like him (or her) and dished out variable fees from an official but secret fund for insights.
She’d given the camera positions operational names, pinched from a theatre farce about someone relentlessly nosy, the way photography was relentlessly nosy: Paul Pry One, Two and Three. Paul Pry Two produced the most valuable film clips. These included the Pasque Uno (Vauxhall) and Opal Render (Mazda) reconnaissance visits that Esther had shown in her briefing of the ambush party. Sergeant Fiona Hive-Knight had charge of Two. Esther thought that perhaps the code name of her post should have been gender-aware: Pauline Pry.
She was mid-thirties, fair hair tuft-cut into a miniature field of stooks, round, cheerful, conspiratorial face, dark blue eyes, large, parade-ground voice, twice divorced. Hive-Knight and her two children – one from each former husband – lived with a widower house decorator and his two children. She revered film and photography. Fiona was the past and the bits of film she’d show were a move into that deeper past.
Fiona felt the camera could get at crux qualities hidden away not just in people but in things. She had a fancy for the term ‘innate’. When, a week ago, she’d screened the Vauxhall clip for Esther, Hive-Knight had said: ‘Here’s an interesting vehicle, ma’am.’ Then she’d explained why. Esther remembered some of Fiona’s keywords: ‘purposeful’, ‘innate’, ‘designated’, ‘environs’, ‘mull’, ‘trundle’, ‘intent’, ‘obliterated’, ‘doggedness’. Esther used this string of prompts to recall the full lecturette, more or less verbatim.
It had gone something like: ‘This is a purposeful car with an obvious, innate, designated, single task. Low speed, so time for crew to observe environs and mull prospects. The car trundles. It trundles with visualizing intent. It’s as if it has been waiting for a call to this role and has stood ready, happy to be conscripted for such a vital, scrutinizing service, willing to have its identity speculated upon and traced, because the tracing couldn’t really hurt anyone. The lines of this car betoken doggedness and responsibility.’ She’d paused. The Vauxhall disappeared as they watched and then came back, but moving in the opposite direction, and travelling just as slowly as earlier. ‘And now, here it returns. Did I speak of doggedness? Yes, oh yes, Persistence. Thoroughness. Anything that’s worth doing is worth doing twice. A second trundle. Identical intent – casing the district, possibly seeing different angles because it’s at a different angle to the surrounds itself, of course. We think four people aboard, though the back seat is problematical. It’s Gladhand and Quentin Stayley in the front, people we know, naturally. Rear, it could be Greg Mace, also known to us, and he might be obscuring someone else, not identifiable.’
‘Our tipster names someone new to PU called Ralph Ember,’ Esther had said.
‘Well, he could be a possible,’ Fiona said. She’d sounded peeved that Esther might be ahead of her.
‘Very little known of him,’ Esther replied.
‘Right.’
Altogether, Esther could recollect three sessions in the projection room: first, when Fiona did her inane, not innate, humanizing Vauxhall character sketch – the car’s delighted, no doubt smiling, acceptance of its there-and-back trundling destiny; second, the gun-group briefing, with troublesome, almost insubordinate, jabber from Wilcox; the third had come a couple of days afterwards when Esther viewed some later Mondial-Trave film, again with Fiona. Past of the past again, but a more recent past of the past now. Parts of this clip actually featured Esther. Inevitably. And, as she’d watched, she remembered behaving as these new pictures on the screen showed her behaving.
There’d been a small, would-be secret grin and a mini-wave up towards Paul Pry Two in a hired fourth-floor flat; a touchy-feely few moments at the plinth and shoes of the historic alderman, taking reassurance and pleasure from their serious, inflexible, supremely authentic stoniness; some writing and sketching activity with a Biro and jotter.
Then: ‘Now, here, ma’am, look at this, please,’ Fiona Hive-Knight had ordered, with tremendous echoing emphasis on the ‘Now’: something vital upcoming. The camera swung away from Esther. ‘It’s the porch to a hairdresser’s salon,’ Fiona had said. They’d been filming through two sheets of glass, she explained, the front window and the side pane of the porch. These blurred focus slightly. She thought the deep entrance to the place made a kind of protected hidey-hole for anyone standing there to scan the street. And the film showed a man was standing there: mid- or late-twenties, tall, well-built, non-fleshy face, jeans, long-sleeved V-neck tan sweater, red-trimmed training shoes.
Hive-Knight said he seemed to be gazing up towards the monument, and therefore up towards Esther, and gazing very fixedly, perhaps surprised and bewildered. Esther had agreed. It couldn’t be the alderman that fascinated him, Fiona argued, no matter how splendid the alderman’s civic and charity work had been a century or so ago. Esther was unnerved. The camera had shifted away from her and on to the man, so she didn’t appear on this section of film; yet he was apparently observing her, staring at her. It shook Esther’s sense of self. It was as though she existed only in his eyes and consciousness. She’d come here today looking for the nitty-gritty, the concrete, the real. But, for a dazing moment she had seemed reduced to a figment. She thought of the two evil night visitors in a famous novel, The Turn of the Screw. You didn’t know whether they were real or the overheated imaginings of a governess. Esther had struggled to get out of that kind of limbo land and in a while managed it. She felt this tumble into sudden gibbering fantasy was as daft as Fiona’s goofy humanizing ramblings about the Vauxhall.
Then the camera went briefly on to Esther again and showed her rounding the corner
into Trave, and out of Paul Pry Two’s ambit. Abrupt change of shot once more: back to the hairdresser’s. The man left the porch at once, as if he no longer needed to hang about spying. He’d seen enough? Job done. He didn’t walk towards the junction with Trave to follow Esther, but in the opposite direction, until he, too, passed from range. Fiona said he’d possibly been making for a car parked a discreet distance away. She’d given no reason for that guess but Esther thought it could be right. Fiona didn’t offer a personality analysis of this other, supposed vehicle – its patience and knack of being in the right place while it waited for the driver.
As he’d stepped out from the doorway, and was no longer behind the two layers of glass, it had become suddenly possible for the lens to get a square-on, clear look at his face. ‘God, he reminds me of someone,’ Esther recalled saying.
She recalled Hive-Knight’s reply, too: ‘El Cid? Ben Hur?’
‘We have Ralph W. Ember’s appearance as matching the young Charlton Heston’s.’
‘Bingo, if I may say, ma’am!’ Fiona replied.
NINETEEN
The Monty began to get busy. It was the run-up to Christmas, and people were feeling festive and in a drinks-all-round spending mood. They seemed to see a joyful link between the club and the nativity story. And they came wishing to celebrate that link, something like the three kings.