Disclosures

by Bill James

  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.

  Even without the picture and commentary, Esther could recall that pillar box. She’d wondered during her private visit to Mondial-Trave whether it would figure somehow in the coming action, that stubby, red, ordinariness recruited into havoc. She hadn’t visualized anything quite as grim as what did happen there, though. She’d gone to Mondial-Trave alone to remind herself of the solid, hard actualities of the place – to get rid of woolly, almost mystical, thoughts about it that had gripped her for a while. The pillar box had been one of the solid actualities she’d noticed. And Clive Palgrave had found it solid, too, solid enough to help him stay on his feet for possibly thirty seconds more than if it hadn’t been there for him to get his arms around and try to hang on to. Someone at the time had said Palgrave died at his post. When falling he scraped against the pillar box and his blood smeared the white plate giving collection times, as though to wipe out its orderliness.

  She turned up the gas heater. Esther loved the conservatory, even in winter. Gerald didn’t use it much. It was hexagonal and he said hexagons always seemed to him like failed octagons and this made him uneasy: he had so many commitments that he couldn’t spare pity for hexagons. She was able to think of the conservatory as her domain. She would sneak out to a lounger here and enjoy some tranquillity when not in the mood for violence with him: unwillingness did come over her occasionally. Like most couples they weren’t perfectly attuned in their tastes, and, on the whole, Gerald seemed slightly keener on brutality sessions than she was. He accepted responsibility for making sure the first aid box always had enough plasters, painkillers and bandages, and seemed to feel this entitled him to as many jousts with her as he wanted. ‘Tourniquets need tourneys,’ he used to snarl if she seemed unenthusiastic now and then.

  But people living at the back of the Davidson house could see into the glass-walled conservatory, and this put restraint on Gerald, inhibited him. Although an artist, and in some senses bohemian, he had a conventional element and might have been affected by that Girls Aloud pop group release, What will the neighbours say? Big blood deposits on the side of the conservatory would look especially unpleasant and tell-tale, whether hers or his or theirs. These might be much larger stains than Aftermath Palgrave’s blood on the pillar box plate. Gerald had mentioned to Esther that blood smudging two of the sides, rather than just one, would appear really bad, affecting a third of the available surfaces, instead of merely a quarter, if only it had been an octagon. He felt octagons had a kind of worldliness and tolerance missing in hexagons.

  An actual shattering of the glass during these erotic ructions because she or he were flung against it and out into the garden could be quite embarrassing, like a boxer hammered through the ropes and falling among ringsiders. Most probably it would be Gerald. He half-liked getting flung. He found this passage through the air what he termed ‘linnet-like’. He’d never wanted to work out a defence against it. Never mind the linnet – those ghastly bow-ties he wore looked like propellers of an old-fashioned aircraft when she threw him somewhere. All the same, he probably wouldn’t care for the flight to happen through a smithereened window pane.

  Altogether, the conservatory bothered him. It wasn’t just the congenital aversion to hexagons. He was afraid somebody nosey-parkering from one of the other houses might ring the police about a fracas, even though they’d probably know Esther was herself the police, and very well placed in it. People who hated the police on principle might like the chance to tell the emergency services that a superintendent and her husband were destroying the social tone of the area by trying to kill each other, and not with kindness, but kidney punches.

  He thought he might get arrested and charged with assaulting an officer. Maybe Esther would be summonsed to give evidence against him, even if he himself possibly had visible wounds and bruising where she had savaged him, and could plead self-defence. This kind of public humiliation would not be good for a marriage, and so the conservatory had come to be regarded as neutral ground, an acknowledged, cherished sanctuary – cherished by her.

  Of course, should Gerald feel cheated out of an episode of romantic thuggery he might try to get her to come back into the house for concealment and muffling of his shouts and screams, which he regarded as a crucial part of the carry-on, comparable with the yell and/or ecstatic groan of orgasm. But when she didn’t fancy it she wouldn’t. He could not risk attempting to frogmarch or drag her by hand or an unyielding bite into her cheek or neck because that might be observed. He wasn’t strong enough, anyway. She could terrace him if it became for the best, ‘for the best’ meaning when she felt he was trying to bully.

  Playing in an orchestra didn’t build muscle or hone fight skills. He frequently left himself very open to heavy, dazing elbow jabs in the face, though she took care not to damage his mouth: it had to be OK for the bassoon. He found works by Hindemith and Danzi very lip challenging. ‘That fucking Op Forty-Seven by Danzi,’ as Gerald sometimes complained. His skills and puff had begun to fade as he grew older, and work became less easy to get.

  He was away at present helping to coach a youth orchestra but her habit of withdrawing to the conservatory when she required uninterrupted solitariness was strong, and she’d brought the Mondial-Trave material here today more or less automatically, not because she needed to avoid him in the house. Gerald had composed a gavotte piece for the culminating performance of the youth orchestra at the weekend, and she’d promised to drive over and be in the audience. This wasn’t a decision that came easily. Apart from the foul music she’d have to sit through, an ACC called Desmond Iles operated in that region. She’d met him now and then at chief police officer conferences; and she’d had some fairly close dealings with him on a case not long ago.1 Perhaps she’d bump into him on this trip. She found she didn’t really want that, though. She’d been thinking lately about applying for Chief Constable jobs, and it was vital no complexities got in her way. Desmond Iles could be a complexity.

  The music – Gerald’s and the rest of it – would undoubtedly nauseate her, but they believed in mutual support when not trying to take each other apart physically in the interests of pepping up sex and crossing what Gerald called ‘nude frontiers’.

  But for now she read on about the past:

  Although the shooting continued around them, two paramedics answering 999 calls reached Palgrave within ten minutes, but found him already dead. Doctors said later that either of the heart wounds would have killed him instantly. Repeat, high grade marksmanship.

  Aftermath Palgrave, aged thirty-four, married with a stepson in infant school, had survived turf battles in Manchester and Liverpool previously, which brought him his nickname. However, he did not live into aftermath yesterday. He claimed to be a descendant of Francis Turner Palgrave, who produced the famous Golden Treasury poetry anthology in 1861, still published in updated forms under the Palgrave name.

  Some saw this relationship – if, in fact, it existed – as typifying Britain’s moral disintegration during the last century and a half: in Victorian times this family produced an esteemed literary scholar, familiar with the poetic works of all sorts, including William Shakespeare and Alfred Lord Tennyson; when it came to the contemporary Clive Palgrave, though, the name belonged to a convicted small-time pusher and occasional foot-soldier, ordered into the Mondial-Trave combat for Pasque Uno.
And not much of a foot-soldier, either: he had discarded his gun; was apparently incapable of maintaining cover; and, so, had presented a perfect target.

  Witnesses told The South East that the gun parties from each firm seemed to arrive in the Mondial-Trave stretch of ground at more or less the same time, as if there had been an agreement to meet and fight it out, ‘a kind of High Noon situation,’ one witness said, referring to the Gary Cooper film, often re-shown on TV. A resident in one of the apartment blocks that overlook the area, and who did not wish to be named, said: ‘I had glanced out of the window at about ten fifty-five and everything at street level was normal – people and traffic moving about as on any other day. But then when I looked out again a few minutes later there’d been a tremendous change. I saw people hurrying, even scurrying, to get off the pavement and into shelter somewhere. The traffic had speeded up, as if drivers wanted to leave Mondial Street quickly – and safely. I had been drawn back to the window by what I now know to be sounds of gunfire. Perhaps I did suspect this at the time. Mondial Street and Trave Square, plus the Gardens, are all well known as drug dealing centres and we continually expect serious trouble

  ‘I didn’t understand at first what was happening. But then I saw three men running towards the Mondial-Trave junction. Each of them was masked, each carried a pistol, openly carried a pistol. For a moment I thought it must be some kind of stunt – perhaps filming, or an advertising or publicity ploy. Then the three of them stopped, though, and got down into what I regarded as a sniper’s crouch, their pistols in two-handed grips pointing towards the post office. A robbery? However, in a little while I saw they weren’t interested in the post office, but the pillar box standing outside. There was another man there, sort of half shielding himself and pointing a handgun down the street towards the three. I think the three fired first, though. I heard a lot of shots. The man at the pillar box staggered. He dropped his gun and then fell himself.

  ‘My wife and I had wondered earlier in the week whether something unusual was happening, or was going to happen, in the street because we’d seen a camera crew in the corridor, a woman apparently in charge. They went into a flat two along from us. I thought they might be filming the street for some reason. We didn’t know who they were. They wore civilian clothes but we both had the impression they might be police, the woman with quite a loud voice and a jolly but clever sort of face, as if she was used to plotting things.’ Malone and Pearson, estate agents who manage the apartment block for Corbett, Fallows and Parker Ltd., owners, told The South East that they could not comment on individual tenancies.

  And how correct in their response had Malone and Pearson been! And how correct in their speculating the couple in number eight had been! Always when she read this interview Esther thought those two were exceptionally wise, and careful with it: he’d talk, but not disclose his name. They’d identified the camera crew as police, and guessed their purpose: to film the street below ahead of some expected operation. They had picked out Sergeant Fiona Hive-Knight as boss of the camera party and noted her boom-boom voice and general air of subterfuge. For several days in the projection room before the Mondial-Trave climax Esther had studied film clips with Fiona, mostly from the police camera, some from CCTV.

  Esther turned to the inside pages, six and seven, of The South East. Page six contained three more death location pictures, with short biographies of each victim. The statue of alderman Laucenston figured in two of these photographs, and there was a general view of one side of Trave Square. Piers Elroy Stanton had been killed close to the ‘Gleam And Smile’ dental practice in Trave. One of his aides, Luke Byfort, was arrested there. Piers Stanton, aged thirty, married, was the leader of the Opal Render firm, the report said. He created Opal Render and profited greatly from it. Then came a list of his properties and a mention for the two racehorses, Dombey And Some and Colonel Jackeen, plus their track triumphs.

  Gregory Mace, of Pasque Uno, also killed in Trave, was described as prominent in a gay rights movement, and an accomplished ice-skater. The fourth photograph, on the opposite page, showed a smart gift shop in Trave Square near where Mace died. It sold expensive handbags, costume jewellery, fashion belts, gloves, scarves, and was called ‘La Brouette – The Wheelbarrow’ – to suggest charming higgledy-piggledyness, though the prices were calculated enough. Gerald had occasionally bought her presents from there when they lived in London. He liked choosing stuff from a shop with a French name. He was entirely in favour of the continent and adored the French composer, Poulenc, who did some nice shorter bassoon pieces.

  He always spoke the name with explosive emphasis on the first and last consonants as if to assert his loyalty and rout anyone who said Poulenc was piss. Gerald told her he could hear Poulenc’s trio for oboe, bassoon and piano companionably in his head sometimes when trying to get her in an arm lock behind her back and up towards her shoulder for maximum pain. Gerald believed in the complex merging of musical beauty with his addiction to putting arm joints, and sometimes leg joints, to the extreme test. He found a satisfying fullness in the mixing of such different experiences, like sweet and sour sauce in a Chinese restaurant or that strange stuff, hot ice.

  Dale Hoskins, aged thirty-six, of Cheyne Walk, Chelsea, known as ‘Gladhand’ because of his ability to suggest friendliness and generosity, leader of Pasque Uno, was shot and killed by a single Thirty-Eight Smith and Wesson bullet in the head in Trave Square. This is not a type of gun normally used by police, who prefer Glocks. Hoskins was married with a teenage daughter away at boarding school and twin infant sons. The report said there had been seven arrests, including two treated in hospital for gunshot wounds. No names were given. It appears that the intention of Hoskins and Pasque Uno was to drive the Opal Render contingent down to the enclosed car park of the Red Letter public house where survivors of the initial battle phases could be eliminated. Because of the unexpected police participation, though, this objective had to be reduced in scope and only two OR personnel reached there.

  Esther turned the scrapbook page to a Sunday paper cutting that gave a more detailed analysis of what came to be called ‘The Mondial-Trave Inferno’. The Sunday press usually had the leisure to work some implied comment, some editorial slant into the bare recounting of incident. One double-page article carried a two-decker headline: ‘REVEALED – THE NEW GUN-BASED POLICE POLICY! MAY WE PLEASE JOIN IN YOUR TURF WAR?’ Didn’t the press love that ‘Revealed’ as a starter to one of their headlines? And didn’t the press love to harass the police?

  Was that jokey, impudent slice of weekend journalism a true and fair way to sum up police intervention in the half-hour of shooting and urban slaughter? Esther had wondered this when she first read the long slab of Sunday attitudinizing; and still wondered, looking back from her winter-conservatory afternoon years later. It was why she occasionally revisited those historic episodes with the help of her tapes and cuttings. History could have a big bearing on the present.

  Did the way she’d handled the Mondial-Trave situation change permanently how criminal firms were dealt with – that is, they were allowed to prepare for a battle and then get wiped out in a surprise police attack when the battle took place? And would the present scene, the today scene, also require major altered thinking? According to that sniggering press article, police tactics had been amended at Mondial-Trave to contain and counter the armed threat from two powerful, entrenched gangs scrapping for ascendancy. Well, yes, conditions in the illegal drugs business would always be developing, switching, adjusting to new pressures. Policing had to keep pace.

  And what interested Esther was the possibility that, if there’d been changes then, there would be changes here, now. No business could stand still. Which fresh, unfamiliar factors could be found in the drugs trade today? How would she defeat them? She’d moved up to a higher rank and weightier responsibilities. She was expected to get ahead of the dirty game and stay there, rightly expected to. That is, if the game continued to be regarded as dirty. There were inc
reasing, closely argued demands for legalization of recreational drugs. Or of some recreational drugs. Desmond Iles thought that way. So did that heavyweight magazine, The Economist, calling legalization ‘the least bad solution’ to the drugs problem. Several top flight medics agreed. Federal law in America declared all drugs illegal, but the states of Washington and Colorado had decriminalized cannabis and there was apparently a movement called ‘Grass For Grannies’ in Illinois, Ohio and Missouri.

  But legalization in Britain hadn’t happened so far and, although she’d been promoted out of London and the Metropolitan force, and operated far from Mondial-Trave and Dorothea Gardens, the basic aim stayed pretty much the same: to spot what kind of modernized business plans the gangs here worked to currently; to combat these; and to forecast what might come next and see those off, too.

  So, the conservatory interlude with her assisted recollections was not altogether an idling spell. Maybe the past could tell her something about what she might expect in the here and now, and – much trickier – what she might expect to follow. She read some more from a Sunday broadsheet:

  The police are certain to face accusations that they knew of the doomed drift towards gun-based street trouble but did nothing to prevent it. Rather, a decision was taken at some high level – undisclosed at this stage – a decision to permit the violence, or, at least, to let it start. Crooks eliminating crooks would do law and order a favour. Even if neither firm completely destroyed the other, an armed police squad could deal effectively with the outnumbered, outgunned fragments left. It is clear that two sizeable police units – at least fifteen officers in each by our reckoning – were in place at the site and ready to dispose of any survivors – to arrest, or quell in a firearms exchange. Almost certainly the area had been under surveillance for some while, possibly by hidden camera teams. Mondial-Trave became a sophisticated trap and a zap, prime setting for an ambush.