by Bill James
D: ‘There could be many harmless explanations why Davidson went there.’
‘Many,’ Quent said. ‘Mondial-Trave is part of her patch. Familiarization could be routine. Perhaps tomorrow she’ll be doing an inspection somewhere else – jottering.’ (Satirical.) ‘Hands on.’
Me: ‘But the camera?’ I knew it was a fat and flaring mistake as soon as I said it – a gift opening to Quent. Does the bugger have that effect on me – the rabbit in headlights, asking for doom?
Q: ‘What camera?’
Me: ‘The camera in—’
Q: ‘But you hadn’t seen a camera – you’ve told us that.’
Me: ‘I felt that for sure there was—’
Q: ‘Policy can’t be changed because you had a feeling, a feeling born from a figment, Ralphy.’
Most probably they had courses in alliteration at Oxford and Stayley got a First Class Honours in it. I was surprised he didn’t say ‘a feeling formed from a fucking figment, friend.’
D: ‘Naturally, we’ll keep alert, Ralph.’ Gladhand seemed to know how much I hated the Ralphy label, and he deliberately corrected that disrespectful swine, Quent. ‘And we’ll have the possibilities you’ve raised continuously in our minds.’
Q: ‘Oh, Certainly.’
Page iii.
Dale came out then with the bluntest inquiry, the most obvious inquiry. He asked, did I expect a trap, an ambush?
Me: That’s what we’d been talking about, wasn’t it, for God’s sake? If a big-wheel detective is examining the landscape it’s not because she’s thinking of where to site traffic lights. It’s about suitable attack spots. ‘I wondered, Dale, if she was looking for locations where she could hide her assault crew.’
Q: ‘Is there evidence for that?’
Me: ‘The note taking. The research.’
Q: ‘The jotter?’ (Sarcasm.)
Me: ‘Well, yes, the jotter.’
Q: ‘We don’t know what was in the jotter.’
Me: ‘We can make a reasonable guess. This kind of situation – there has to be some guessing, some speculation.’
Q: ‘Dale doesn’t act on guesswork, however reasonable it might seem.’ (Pious. Bum-sucking.)
Of course Dale acted sometimes on guesswork. Every leader did. But it would be called something else – ‘assessment’, ‘anticipation’, ‘vision’, ‘investment boldness’.
D: ‘It might seem reasonable from one point of view, such as yours, Ralph, but we have to consider other possibilities. This is good business rigmarole, nothing more than that, but it has to be followed.’ (Polite.)
Q: ‘Superintendents don’t go on ambushes.’ (Fuck politeness.)
Me: ‘But she could be in charge. She’d do it from one of those Control Unit vehicles, in touch by radio or phone; one-way windows and screens to take film.’
Q: ‘You see this woman dawdling around and from that you deduce a battlefield.’ (Satirical.)
I said she wasn’t just ‘this woman’, was she?
Q: ‘Isn’t she?’
I reminded him that she was a high-rank, powerful cop. And he replied I must be a feminist. ‘Well, well, I do believe you’re a feminist, Ralphy,’ was how he phrased it. Maximum offensiveness. But then he did a rewording, made a kind of apology – his kind, which didn’t add up to much.
Q: ‘All right, all right, let’s amend: you see a woman cop dawdling around and from that you deduce a battlefield.’
So, obviously, I could get back at him again. I said, ‘No, I didn’t have to deduce a battlefield, did I? It existed, had been selected. Very much so. Hadn’t we Vauxhalled there and back to chart it? The plan is to clash with Opal Render on that stretch of ground. I didn’t invent the battle site. It’s already invented.’
Q: ‘Fair point: let’s amend once more.’ (Appeasing, bogus-considerate.)
A slab of smart-arse repetition came next, which I think I can do verbatim:
Q: ‘You deduce she knows it’s to be a battlefield and is therefore getting ready to take part, and take part in a winning, overwhelming style. From that deduction you deduce Dale should abandon the confrontation plan. That’s why you said “in case” the fight took place. “In case” is doubt. “In case” suggests a possibility, not a likelihood, and definitely not a certainty. There’s no “in case” about it, Ralph. It will happen. You don’t believe it will or should, do you, Ralphy? But where’s the real evidence to back your deductions? It’s all so thin. It’s a theory built on nothing. “My God! A woman near the memorial alderman. Catastrophe!” Possibly you were already in an anti-view as to the PU-OR settlement, and this could make you see things that appear to back your standpoint. That kind of thing can happen. Someone’s mind is already made up, possibly without the someone being aware of it, and automatically, subconsciously translates subsequent events into confirmations of what’s already a fixed idea. Nothing to feel guilt about, Ralph. It’s a commonplace psychological condition.’
‘Condition’ made it sound like the pox or lunacy.
D: ‘Yes, your argument is slightly thin, Ralph.’ I could tell he wanted to be kindly, though – not like Stayley. All Quent aimed to do was knock, mock and belittle. If you were his age, educated up to your eyebrows and still in only a middling job, paying just enough to buy new double-strength rubber bands for your pigtail, you were almost sure to be bitter.
Dale said he and Quent appreciated greatly that I had come so swiftly to tell them what I had seen during the skilled tracking of Davidson. That shite, Quent, added with total, thoroughbred phoniness, ‘Oh, absolutely.’ But he could gush it because Dale was obviously going to tell me that what I’d seen would not change the confrontation plans. He’d already said it, more or less. Hadn’t he latched on to that slimy put-down from Quent – ‘thin’? Now, I could feel the full rejection on the way and of course, Stayley could as well – so he’d make a show of thanks and matey warmth, the false, graduate git. ‘We’ll proceed, regardless,’ Dale said. I wondered, regardless of what – sanity? Was Gladhand afraid to show caution and wisdom – so necessary in a leader – afraid because Quent would see them as timorousness, as cue for a top job grab?
That was the end of the notes on page iii. Ralph had used page iv to expand on his reactions to the response from Quent and Gladhand. He read from there now:
Listening to them I felt it was as if the Pasque Uno/Opal Render culminating battle had been pre-scheduled by Fate and was therefore bound to happen, was destined to happen. Nothing could stop it, not even my certainty that the police knew of the plan and intended to be present, armed, numerous and delighted by the chance to massacre members of both firms legally, for the sake of peace and safety on the streets. I considered Davidson’s little comradely smile to the camera crew as the equivalent of licking her lips at the prospect of such delicious, judicial slaughter.
OR and PU had agreed the location. Of course they had: the location was the conflict. Each company wanted permanently to clear the other out of Mondial Street, Trave Square and Dorothea Gardens district. The winner would hold complete commercial control of the ground. But that was only the banal, materialistic reason behind the war. Their approaching gunfight was as much to do with vague, almost mystical, factors: self-respect and pride. Neither honcho would back down. Neither honcho could back down. They were dragooned by their power.
The terrible dishonour and loss of face would be worse than defeat in battle. Both businesses probably contained lurking wannabes, like Quent, eager to get rid of the potentate and replace him. They’d watch for evidence of dithering and general weakness, ready to move and try their takeover; a customary business putsch; one of those so-called palace revolutions. Dale Hoskins, as chief of Pasque Uno would have realized this, and so would Piers Elroy Stanton, his opposite at the head of Opal Render. They lived non-stop with that sort of menace. Now, their dispute has become dangerously, idiotically, perhaps, a contest of gladiators.
Ralph had hated that determinism, found it incomprehensible, des
pised it. Madness had taken over. The two leaders had allowed themselves to become captives of their own stupid vanity, and for ever nervous about scheming, bolshy subordinates. The chiefs promoted people like Quent to make them grateful and contented and manageable, but it didn’t always work. Because they’d been given a top job they thought they could and should get the top job. They became more ambitious, more ruthless. ‘I’m the king of the castle, get down you dirty rascal.’ But some dirty rascals kept trying, pushing, scheming. Were your ears burning, Stayley? Someone was talking about you.
Ralph was only young then, though, and a new boy in the PU firm, a yucker, and not ready to question Gladhand hard, not capable of questioning Gladhand hard, advising him to be on guard against Quent. But he hadn’t been prepared to share that eyes-shut, mind-shut craziness, either. A yucker, yes. A sucker, no, a lemming no: not willing to join a daft, corporate rush to disaster. He put the foolscap notes back in the safe, but didn’t re-lock it yet.
On the shelf above the notes lay some cuttings from the local newspaper, The South East, meaning south-east London, but to add London to the title would have made it less universal and less snappy. He realized that to keep cuttings in the safe could appear in some ways absurd. After all, they were the opposite of secret. They had been published. But he kept them locked up because he didn’t want to reveal an interest in what they reported; a painful but obsessive interest, a kind of ritual penance.
He took one cutting out now and went back to his chair and, starting a little way down the column, scanned it – as he had scanned it and the other cuttings often before. He could manage a dozen or so sentences before horror and depression hit him, and he’d have to give up. But he felt obliged to look back periodically to events on that day, because those events might have a bearing on why the atrocious nicknames, ‘Panicking Ralph’, ‘Panicking Ralphy’, had been hatched for him. He believed in facing up to unpleasantness, no matter how dire. He felt that not to face up would indicate a sort of panic: in other words, would confirm the rightness of those insulting, wholly unwarranted stigma. Read. Digest. Regret.
What came to be called ‘the pillar-box death’ occurred at 11.05, ten metres south from the junction of Mondial Street and Trave Square, on a broad stretch of pavement outside the local post office. Its doors had been closed and locked at the first sound of gunfire. Terrified customers huddled well back against the counter, away from the windows. They were shocked at the intensity, the quantity, of the shooting. ‘The battle for Stalingrad had nothing on this,’ one elderly post office customer said afterwards.
Outside, Clive Palgrave of Pasque Uno was hit by three bullets, two in the chest, puncturing the heart, one in the neck. He had apparently become isolated from the main Pasque Uno group. Palgrave, known as ‘Aftermath’, had been holding a nine mm, fully loaded pistol. He dropped the gun now, though. He needed both hands free. He tried to support himself by clinging to the post office street pillar box in a frantic embrace. But, life and strength were leaving him. He swayed clear of the pillar box like a drunk. His fingers grabbed at air as he tried to get a grip on the metal again and stay propped upright. He lost his hold and folded down against the pillar box, though. This had been very high grade marksmanship.
There was a photograph of the pillar box – a dull picture, hardly worth the space – with the front window of the post office behind. Ralph decided that would be enough for the time being. He’d had his quota of self-punishment. He put the newsprint back into the safe, locked it and went down to the bar.
Margaret, small, blonde, confident, navy woollen greatcoat, amber scarf, desert boots, came into the club soon after. He knew she didn’t much like spending time at The Monty – ‘louche’ her word for it sometimes, and sometimes ‘a menagerie’ or ‘cesspit’ – but she’d needed a break after shopping and before she went to pick up the children from ski practice. She took off the greatcoat and scarf, and they’d settled at a table with their meal. Ralph said in an intimate, significant, now-hear-this sort of tone: ‘I’ve been thinking quite a bit about the past today, Maggie.’
‘Oh, all that,’ she said, her mouth full.
‘Yes, all that,’ Ralph said. He gave a real rasp to the final ‘t’ in ‘that’, to show he regarded this topic as serious. He wanted the emphatic ‘t’ to take the same kind of persuasive role as the dots on some roman numerals.
‘That’s the thing about the past, isn’t it?’ she said.
‘What?’
‘It’s the past. I got a very pretty Etruscan replica vase for my sister,’ Margaret replied, Double Gloucester shreds like pale bunting across a couple of her front teeth.
‘Yes, the past,’ Ralph said. ‘There were things I couldn’t talk to you about then, although I’d wanted to.’
‘We were both very busy, I suppose, me with the kids, you with trying to get yourself a place with Hoskins. But, I’d have listened, Ralph. It’s one of the marriage vows, isn’t it?’
‘What?’
‘Love, honour, obey and listen to.’
‘I know you would have listened, and I knew at the time. But it was impossible. Occasionally – this morning, as a matter of fact – I make up the kind of talk I might have had with you, though without ever actually saying it.’
She nodded, but didn’t seem keen on this kind of conversation. He felt there were things she’d prefer were not spelled out now: too much clarity could be painful. Her attitude might be self-protection. He understood her need for that. ‘Oh, yes, yes, I think I sensed you were holding back,’ she said, in her do-bears-shit-in-the-woods voice.
‘Did you?’ Ralph felt resentful. She was doing some hindsight on him. He thought he’d been quite skilled at concealment.
‘“Marketing.” You told me your work was marketing. Remember? But you never said what you marketed, so, naturally, I thought it must be something … something, well, sensitive. Not something to boast about, or be frank about. You obviously weren’t marketing breakfast cereals or mountain bikes. I considered you might be entitled to the secrecy.’
‘I didn’t want secrecy from you,’ he said. ‘No, indeed.’ Ralph regarded lies as OK when the objective was kindness. He thought of himself as always kind except, obviously, when it didn’t suit.
She put her fork down on the plate and took a gentle hold on his arm for a moment. It was affectionate, but also a signal that enough had been said about those dubious things from their history. Older, Etruscan history, either actual or imitation, might be more comfortable.
He wasn’t sure whether he liked her gripping his sleeve like that when Monty members and staff would be watching, and getting a giggle out of it later. ‘Did you see them? A pair of ageing love birds.’ But he tried to push on: ‘I longed to be frank then.’
‘Something from those days bothers you now?’ she replied.
Yes, something from those days bothered him. Major bother. Margaret had spotted this. She’d always been quick at reading him, up to a point; up to the point that he permitted. Her tone changed suddenly. Ralph thought she sounded concerned, not bored or indifferent or flippant any longer despite that inadequate word, ‘bothers’. She must know there might be dangers to him from the kind of business he ran, and possibly dangers to the family. There’d been a time when she left him briefly, because he refused to quit the substances vocation, and the stress had got too much for her.1 Perhaps she feared that kind of stress and what caused it could return.
He would have liked to answer her question: ‘Yes, something from those days does bother me. For instance, you may remember a South East report about death alongside a pillar box. I dodged out of a situation because I thought it completely nuts. Others didn’t think it nuts. They thought it an unavoidable, holy commitment. It was nuts. And doomed. But there are people who don’t forgive me. They think I helped bring their defeat by my desertion. That’s why we went to live in Portugal for a while. They might even think I leaked the fight details to a woman cop.’
To expl
ain like that would increase her fears, though; might make her consider another walkout with the children. And perhaps it wouldn’t be brief this time, but final. He couldn’t face that. So once again he stayed silent. Or, rather, he did some dutiful talk about the shopping and his recurrent Christmas tree teaser. He guessed she’d notice how he’d switched the conversation away from the past, and its influences on the present, and she’d decide this must be another of those ‘sensitive’ topics, too sensitive for Margaret to be told what it was. She reached up and with her finger unhurriedly de-smeared her Double Gloucestered teeth. Then, with the same finger, she pointed towards the bar. ‘I see you’ve got replacement Worcestershire sauce,’ she said. ‘Is that wise, Ralph?’ He drew back slightly in case she gripped his arm again and put her all-purpose finger on his jacket sleeve. Someone in his position mustn’t be seen in smeared clothing. He had a responsibility as club owner, even if the club was the unreconstructed Monty.
TWENTY-TWO
What came to be called ‘the pillar-box death’ occurred at 11.05, ten metres south from the junction of Mondial Street and Trave Square, on a broad stretch of pavement outside the local post office. Its doors had been closed and locked at the first sound of gunfire. Terrified customers huddled well back against the counter, away from the windows. They were shocked at the intensity, the quantity, of the shooting. ‘The battle for Stalingrad had nothing on this,’ one elderly post office customer said afterwards.
As well as her notes and tapes, Esther kept a scrapbook where she’d pasted some cuttings from the local newspaper, The South East, and from the Sunday national press. These reports covered the Mondial-Trave incident. In the conservatory now, she’d skipped the introductory paragraphs explaining the firms’ names and other basics and was reading from a little way down The South East’s page-one piece. A footnote said it continued on pages six and seven. Across three columns a photograph headed ‘One of the five death sites’ showed a pillar box with the post office frontage behind. She read on: