by Bill James
He smiled what could be mistaken for a genuine welcome and seemed about to put Harpur’s regular gin-and-cider tipple on the bar. Harpur stopped him. ‘Not now, Ralph,’ he said. It was a way of telling him, without actually mentioning the danger, that Harpur wanted to keep his mind clear and reactions sharp. Bluntness might have shattered Ralph’s cheery pose. It would have been callous.
Harpur’s eyes inventoried the crowd. He saw some faces he knew, and many he didn’t. Among those he did know were a few he and his department had sent to jail, and would probably send to jail again. And he also saw Mansel Shale, square-built, ferrety-eyed, with a clump of dark hair and wearing one of those old style, thick, woollen suits he fancied, perhaps hoping to be mistaken for a member of the squirearchy. He was standing not far off and by himself at present. Shale ran the other principal recreational substances firm in the city. Ralph and he had somehow worked out a successful coexistence agreement, so Iles let them function. ‘Manse!’ Harpur said. ‘Merry Christmas.’
Shale nodded towards the holster hillock. ‘Expecting trouble, Mr Harpur?’
‘Ralph certainly knows how to put on a party,’ Harpur replied.
‘Are there people gunning for him?’ Despite the voices-din and music-din, Harpur picked up a sadness bordering on despair in Shale’s words. There was a sad story centring on Manse. Not long ago, his wife and young son had been shot dead by mistake in Manse’s Jaguar.1 The real target had been Manse, and the executioner had expected him to be driving, not his wife. In his grief, Shale had withdrawn from the trade for a while and turned religious. But he’d recovered from this lapse and was back in business now, though for ever mentally scarred. ‘Who?’ Manse asked.
‘Who what?’ Harpur said.
‘Who wants Ralph dead?’ Shale went silent for ten seconds and then supplied his own answer: ‘Well, I suppose plenty want him dead. You’re here to save him? That’s princely of you, really princely.’ He paused again and lowered his head. It was as though he would like to ask why nobody princely had been there to save his wife and child.
Abruptly, Shale jerked his head up. ‘Christ, is this it?’ he said. He was staring across the bar to the club’s main entrance. A man wearing a scarf to hide his lower face and carrying stiff-armed ahead of him what looked to Harpur like a Browning automatic pistol had entered the club and scuttled to his left obviously seeking a line of fire that would skirt the The Marriage of Heaven and Hell obstruction and give a gorgeous, clear volley-route to Ember. The man yelled, ‘A traitor to glorious Gladhand and to me! Panicking Ralphy, it’s time for you to panic again.’
At once, Harpur went for the Glock but knew he was taking too bloody long to get the gun from its nest, sober or not. He glanced towards Ralph and howled ‘Get down!’ But Ralph stood there full on to the intruder, scarlet-shirted chest wide open for whatever was coming, as if he thought he deserved it. Harpur had the pistol half out and was turned towards the gunman now. The jazz still rolled on, but the crowd had gone totally silent. Harpur heard a shout above the music. It seemed to come from behind the man about to aim around the Blake at Ralph.
Iles, in a tremendous, grey, three-piece suit and striped tie, loped in from the club entrance. He bellowed again, ‘Unarmed police! Drop it! Ralph is precious to us!’ and the man glanced back, was put off his purpose for a moment. A moment would do. Iles hit him an immaculate, full-power, right-hand karate-chop to the neck and then, as he tottered and collapsed, gave him a kick in the face on the way down, deftly placed to smash at least his jaw and possibly a cheek bone. His automatic fell from his grip and Iles kicked that, too. It slid out of reach on the bar floor. The gunman lay at least unconscious, possibly broken-necked. Iles kicked him thoughtfully twice more in the head, seeming to aim especially at the man’s ponytail. For a couple of seconds things seemed to Harpur very unChristmasy.
The music had reached the end of the tape. The crowd stayed quiet. Iles said: ‘A bit damn slow unbuttoning, weren’t you, Col? I bet you were quicker getting my wife stripped in some damn grubby rooming house or lay-by or abandoned property.’ Spit-froth, always at the ready, fell from the Assistant Chief’s mouth on to his magnificent Charles Laity, kick-prone, black, lace-up shoes.
‘We weren’t expecting you, sir,’ Harpur replied.
‘I had an idea you might fuck up, Col. Decided I’d better show.’
‘You got here an exactly the right moment, Mr Iles,’ Shale said.
‘It’s a habit of mine, Manse,’ Iles said. His tie had gone a bit skew-whiff during that necessary encounter and the Assistant Chief straightened it now. Most likely those stripes signified some eternally non-Monty type, exclusive London club, or a fine rugby union side. He bent and, removing the scarf, had a close look at the man’s disfigured face. Cuckold-rage saliva fell on him, too. ‘Don’t recognize. Someone from your adventurous past, Ralph? Or perhaps a relative of someone from your adventurous past.’
‘Possibly,’ Ralph said.
‘I believe you almost sympathized with him. You let down pals back then, did you? But we have to take care of you, Ralph: a titan of the local scene,’ Iles said. He went and recovered the Browning and without much originality at all fired a shot up at the Blake. Everybody knew something similar happened before. The ricochet knocked a bauble from The Monty’s stunted-looking Christmas tree near the door. Iles said: ‘I can tell you from experience, Ralph, they don’t have fun like this at those select London clubs such as the Athenaeum, not even at Yuletide.’
Harpur, gazing at the ruined bauble on the floor, thought it said something about the fragility of peace on earth and of human merrymaking. Iles often sniggered at him for turning philosophical. Harpur reholstered his pistol and went to pick up the bauble. The bullet had knocked it shapeless, and unfit to go back on the tree. Harpur put the wreckage on the bar near where Ralph was sitting at his desk. ‘Do you know our friend?’ Harpur asked, nodding towards the flattened visitor.
‘He was the one who started all the damned obnoxiousness, Mr Harpur. He’s probably not long out of jail.’
‘Which particular obnoxiousness?’
‘The names.’
‘Which?’
‘You’re very kind, Mr Harpur.’
‘Am I? In which way?’
‘To pretend you don’t know.’
‘Don’t know what, Ralph, or which?’
‘Names,’ Ralph said.
‘Names?’
‘Spoken behind my back.’
‘Ralph Wyvern, do you mean?’ Harpur replied. ‘Surely they’re used openly.’
‘You’re very kind, Mr Harpur.’
‘Again? In which respect?’
‘“Panicking Ralph.” Or even more disgusting, “Panicking Ralphy”.’ His voice gave that ‘y’ on the end a kind of whiplash frightfulness.
‘You mean people refer to you as “Panicking Ralph” or “Ralphy”?’
‘You’re very kind, Mr Harpur.’
‘In which respect, Ralph?’
‘Pretending you didn’t know.’
Iles joined them. ‘Congratulations on a magnificent, auspicious session, Ralph,’ he said.
‘Which?’ Ember replied.
‘Tonight. The musicians and so on,’ Iles said. ‘A truly refined atmosphere, not always easy to achieve, but a skill that seems to come naturally to you, Ralph.’
‘He recognizes the previously troublesome guest,’ Harpur said.
‘Really?’ Iles replied.
‘Apparently he devised some monstrous nicknames for Ralph,’ Harpur said.
‘Really?’ Iles replied.
‘You’re very kind, Mr Iles,’ Ember said. Harpur thought this didn’t sound as if Ralph actually believed it, or came anywhere near believing it.
‘In which respect, Ralph?’ Iles said.
‘Pretending,’ Ralph said.
‘He remarked the same to me,’ Harpur said.
Iles looked outraged by this. He would detest anything that made him and Harpur sound
equal or even similar whether during a game-playing conversation like this or in more serious conditions.
‘Pretending what, Ralph?’ the ACC said.
‘That you’re ignorant of these nicknames,’ Ralph said.
‘Which?’ Iles said, with a very puzzled yet considerate smile.
‘“Panicking”?’ Ralph said.
‘“Panicking”?’ Iles replied. ‘Who’s panicking?’
Harpur said: ‘He believes people call him “Panicking Ralph” or even “Panicking Ralphy”, behind his back.’
Iles put extensive puzzlement onto his face now. ‘Why would anyone do that? Should I have kicked the bastard some more? If Harpur didn’t have such palsied hands we might not have needed to neutralize that sod by unarmed combat because he’d have had a couple of rounds in him and been dead.’ Iles began to slaver. ‘Mind you, Ralph, I’m quite sure Harpur’s hands would find their appalling, efficient way around my wife’s body in one of their degrading shag crannies. Oh, yes, his fingers—’
‘I took what I considered to be a totally rational, indeed, inevitable, decision during a certain period in my life, and recommended others should do the same – to avoid disaster,’ Ralph replied. ‘And it was this entirely justified opinion of a situation that caused this man, Stayley, to misrepresent my revised thinking, in view of fundamentally altered facts, as cowardice, as panic.’
‘Ludicrous,’ Iles said. ‘Neither he nor anyone else will call you “Panicking” henceforward.’
‘As a matter of fact, the person responsible for my amended estimate of risk is here tonight with her hubbie – one of the gifted musicians,’ Ralph said.
‘Yes?’ Iles replied. ‘Well, I think we’ve shown the backbiter – Stayley, you say? – I think we’ve shown Mr Stayley that it’s extremely unwise to go about trying to shovel contumely on to you, Ralph. I’m sure Harpur would agree if he knew the meaning of “contumely” – insolence, Col.’ As far as Harpur could make out, the pony-tailed Stayley lay totally still where he had fallen and might be dead. ‘When you speak of the person responsible for your rethink, Ralph, whom do you mean?’ Iles said.
‘Davidson.’
‘Oh, Esther,’ Iles said.
‘You know her, sir?’ Harpur said.
‘Must go and have a word. She’ll be surprised to see me, I expect.’
Iles left them and Harpur watched him push through the crowd towards a slightly long-faced, tall, strong-jawed woman and a man in an exceptionally offensive bow-tie. The woman smiled at Iles as he approached. She didn’t appear to introduce him to her ‘hubbie’, if that’s who he was. She and Iles talked vigorously together. The ‘hubbie’ looked on, and looked on looking furious.
THIRTY
In the morning at The Mandrake Esther went downstairs first, leaving Gerald patching himself up, while she looked for the manager to apologize and settle the account. The hotel’s name continued to bring back memories for her. She thought it a deep irony that one of the deaths at Mondial-Trave had been caused by Sergeant Martin Wilcox, who’d objected so vehemently to her ambush plan. Circumstances took away choices, didn’t they? He’d been ordered to use his appropriate skill – gunnery – and he’d used it.
Likewise, the media had sounded off for a while about police warring tactics, but had gradually come to accept that if people wanted peaceful streets they’d better realize that peace didn’t come by wishing. It might have to be fought for and won. The educated niggles in the leader columns had faded away nicely.
The Mandrake manager was about five foot six, bouncy, cheerful, his white shirt brilliantly laundered. He had a greying moustache that had width and vibrancy; his teeth not too good, but treatable, probably. ‘There are some breakages in our room, three-twelve,’ she said. ‘Obviously inadvertent, but I hope you can give me a quick estimate of the cost and I’ll do a cheque to cover our stay and the accidents with the curtains, the basin in the en suite, and the TV set. I think the sheets will wash out fine if you put them through twice, and the mattress is absolutely OK.’
‘Well now, as a matter of fact, Mrs Davidson, Assistant Chief Constable Iles is well known and much esteemed here.’
‘Yes, I’m sure.’
‘And perhaps I’m at fault in calling you Mrs while giving Mr Iles his full title. You, I understand, are at an identical rank: Assistant Chief Constable Davidson.’
‘Mrs will do. My husband remained very excited after the lovely time with the orchestra last evening, and hence the hand basin broken away from the wall. The basin itself is wholly unsplintered I think. It’s just the fixing to the wall that’s fractured.’
‘Assistant Chief Constable Iles rang, you see,’ the manager replied. They talked standing in the lounge. Other guests were seated nearby, reading newspapers or chatting. The manager lowered his voice. ‘Yes, rang particularly. Very early.’
‘Particularly what?’
‘Concerning possible damage.’
‘How do you mean?’ She spoke at normal level, didn’t see why not.
‘He said there might be some.’
She quietened. ‘He told you in advance we’d trash the room?’
‘A possibility. Only that. He has intimations, I think, and he was with the two of you last evening, I believe. He seemed to have noticed some indications.’
‘What indications, for God’s sake?’
‘He thought possibly some resentment.’
‘What resentment? Who did the resenting?’
‘I think Assistant Chief Constable Iles would answer, “Your husband”. He insists that all this be dealt with very privately and I think I sense that you would like that, too. He says you might be thinking of promotion and unfavourable matter should be avoided. He doesn’t want you incommoded in any way and certainly not bothered with the cost. I’m to bill him personally when the work has been done, the envelope marked “Strictly Confidential and Private” and sent to police headquarters, not his home. And I think we’ll forget about the accommodation charge, if you don’t mind. It is a privilege to have any friend of Assistant Chief Constable Iles staying at The Mandrake.’
‘I knew someone called Mandrake. He’s dead though.’
‘It’s not a common surname. Assistant Chief Constable Iles said not to trouble your husband with any of this.’ The manager’s voice had dropped even further. ‘Your husband is a virtuoso, I understand, and shouldn’t be exposed to banal, dismally workaday pressures. We have to cherish our stars, don’t we, Assistant Chief Constable Davidson?’
‘Well, yes.’
Footnotes
Part One: Reminiscences
Chapter Twenty-One
1 See The Girl With The Long Back
Chapter Twenty-Two
1 See In The Absence of Iles
Part Two: The Now and the Near Future
Chapter Twenty-Nine
1 See I Am Gold