Girls

by Bill James

  But perhaps she hadn’t been speaking to both the others. One of them stepped towards the car now: ‘What’s she saying, mate? You don’t understand, either? Don’t fancy her? Too bony? Or you want a bit of Brit?’ He put this accent around Leeds or York.

  ‘You’re working with them?’ Ember replied. ‘I thought Albs kept with Albs.’

  ‘Yeah, well things are all over the fucking place lately. Chaos here. Them national barriers, they’re all nothing since the trouble. Or you know, do you? You the law?’ Now, she did a stare at the dashboard, looking for the switch-on blue lamps.

  He waved the money. ‘No, no. Not police.’

  ‘Eighty’s all right,’ she replied. He found her easier to give an age to because she talked English, and decided she might be all of seventeen. ‘That’s a full hour, and everything.’ The tall girl had moved away to another car.

  ‘When you say all over the place, you mean after Tirana was killed, and the Chilton Park commotion?’ he said.

  ‘Like that. These stupid bloody turf wars.’

  He thought of Shale’s theory that Harpur’s daughter’s boyfriend might have been implicated. ‘Were you around the Park when it happened?’ he said.

  ‘Afternoon. I don’t come out till night.’

  ‘Do you hear any names?’

  ‘Names?’

  ‘People who took part.’

  ‘What, you are police?’

  ‘No, honestly.’

  ‘Do you think they’d tell us stuff like that?’

  ‘Rumour? Gossip?’

  ‘And if I did know, would I tell someone I’ve just met? Silence is safer.’

  He decided to forget the boyfriend. Ember had not come here to inquire about him. Those questions could get in the way of what he really wanted to know. And they only concerned a bit of Shale guesswork and fantasy. ‘I’m looking for the girl who was with Tirana,’ Ember said.

  ‘Yeah? Oh, that silly, lucky bitch.’

  ‘You know her?’

  ‘You won’t find that one. But me, I can do anything you like. What did she have so special, then? Or is it you want to give one to somebody who been getting it from Tirana, like racial – Britannia rules the waves?’

  ‘What do you mean, “silly”, “lucky”?’

  ‘Lucky? She’s out of it, isn’t she?’

  ‘Out of it, how?’

  ‘Remember?’ she replied.

  ‘What?’

  ‘Eighty.’

  ‘Right.’ He was going to hand her the twenties.

  ‘Not here, moron,’ she said, and climbed into the car. ‘Drive somewhere. There’s eyes about.’

  ‘What eyes?’ He did what she said and pulled out from the kerb. ‘Police eyes?’

  ‘Pimp eyes. If they see money moving and there’s no sex they’ll wonder what the pay is for, and they’ll guess it’s for talking, and they don’t like talking, not us talking, the girls.’ Ember drove on to a main road. In a while she said: ‘Get into this lay-by. It’s not busy tonight. Punters are still worried and don’t turn up. You’re brave.’

  This was a word he loved above all and knew he deserved. Sometimes in the Daily Telegraph soldier obituaries came a sentence he really dwelt on and felt he might have deserved if he’d been born at a different time and was involved at Tobruk or in the Ardennes: ‘As a result of this action he was awarded an immediate bar to his DSO.’ ‘Brave? I wouldn’t say that,’ he replied. Perhaps tarts saw the grandeur in him by instinct, and brought out the grandeur in him. They knew a lot of men, obviously, and would be quick on to their qualities. Even if they witnessed one of his most disastrous panics, they would know this was only a blip, not the jonnock Ember. He prized the girl’s judgement. Ralph wondered whether he’d make it a hundred. Then she could have at least twenty for herself and her habit.

  She smelled quite as good as the first girl, but this was scent, and something classy, possibly Red. She’d given her whole body dabs of it, he thought. Whenever she shifted in the car seat he got a waft without even a minor trace of sweat beneath. These girls had decent pride. This one was fair-haired and almost blonde, slight, middle height, over-pale from whatever she was on, gappy teeth, podge nose. He’d been dim to mistake her for foreign: not many blonde Albs. Ralph liked to be kindly and thought she could be called a jolie laide. Her short denim skirt only just got a cover on things, but this was standard gear for the game and Ralph would never have remarked on the skimpiness, even if he hadn’t wanted to keep things friendly with her so she’d spill.

  He pulled up and she said: ‘Yes, out of it. Well, she’s out of here, anyway. She might be at it again somewhere else by now. I mean, what else can she do? A foreign cow, no passport, money that will fade so quick.’

  Yes, money that would fade. This was what anguished Ember. He said: ‘Money? She had money? How? Punter money?’

  ‘She’s running down the street with it by Chilton Park. Handfuls.’

  ‘You saw her?’

  ‘This was on the night,’ she replied. ‘The night they done Tirana.’

  ‘You saw her?’

  ‘Of course. If you was in that street you couldn’t help seeing her. She’s wagging this cash around like she robbed a till. More than a hundred. Well, nearly two, I reckoned.’

  This girl could count, even at a distance. Most of the girls could count. As Ralph recalled it there had been £180.

  ‘Escape money,’ the girl said.

  ‘To where?’

  ‘You going to follow her? She must be special. And Tirana had her around for more than a week, too. What she got?’

  ‘Follow her where?’ Ember said.

  ‘Look, she goes to some guy.’

  ‘How do you mean, “goes to some guy”?’

  ‘He’s walking in the street and she goes to him. A conversation.’

  ‘Someone she knows?’

  ‘Could be. But I don’t think so. He looks surprised.’

  ‘A punter?’

  ‘She’s waving money at him, not him at her.’

  ‘She wants something from him? What?’ Ember said.

  ‘Not just conversation.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘They go around the corner and I can’t see no longer. But I think I hear a car start.’

  ‘A punter takes her off in a car, like you and me tonight?’ Ember said.

  ‘Also could be. I don’t think so. She never comes back. He does. He was like a taxi, if you ask me – shipping her somewhere. Then he’s in the crowd where the street’s blocked off because of Tirana. I’m there, too. I mean, there wasn’t going to be no more tomcats that night, not after the shooting. He asks about Tirana. Someone tells him “king of the Albs”, which was right in a way, though he didn’t get his head on their stamps.’

  ‘Who was he?’

  ‘The taxi man? Thirties. Nearly bald. Skinny. Jeans and brown leather jacket. New to me.’

  ‘The car?’

  ‘Didn’t see it. He parked out of sight both times.’

  ‘The girl?’

  ‘Perhaps she said: “Take me somewhere and I’ll pay you.” I was too far away to hear.’

  ‘ “Take me” where?’

  ‘Like I said, escape. What’s to stay for? Her man’s dead. Or the man she thinks is her man. Her man for a week. So, her man’s dead and she might get bother because of it, police bother, other bother. It could look bad, being in a car with a deceased. Goodbye then. She got money. Enough for a train ticket, coach ticket, even a few fixes at the other end, wherever. Then she works again. Anyway, you won’t find her. Not here.’

  ‘What’s her name?’

  ‘You’re really serious, are you?’

  ‘If she was with Tirana for a while her name must be around,’ Ember replied.

  ‘Sometimes Anna. Sometimes Olive. Sometimes Beatrice.’

  ‘But which?’

  ‘We all have a few names, some very fancy. There’s a black girl called Honorée, would you believe? She gets trouble from Adr
ian. Wherever Anna, Olive, Beatrice is she’ll be called something else by now.’

  ‘It’s vital that I –’

  She swung her legs around towards Ralph. His obsession with the other girl obviously still irritated her. This jealousy and the Red buffeted him. ‘So, look, do you want something now?’ she said. ‘You’ve got fifteen minutes if it’s eighty.’

  ‘Raincheck,’ he said. He gave her the hundred and began the drive back to her street spot.

  ‘I might not always be where you found us tonight. We could have some changes.’

  ‘That right?’

  ‘Different ground. For a while, anyway.’

  ‘The Valencia?’ he said.

  ‘You know, you remind me of someone,’ she replied.

  ‘That right?’

  ‘In films.’

  ‘Really?’

  She stayed quiet for a minute. ‘Do you know who I think it is?’

  ‘Donald Duck?’

  ‘So fucking modest. That big actor. He did El Cid. Moses. Yes, Charlton Heston. You’re just like Charlton Heston. When he was younger.’

  ‘I’ve never heard that before. I’m glad it’s when he was younger, though.’

  ‘Definitely. Ben Hur on TV every Easter. Great body. Listen, how did you get the mark on your jaw?’

  ‘Some trouble when I was much younger myself.’

  ‘Fighting?’

  ‘I don’t seek out fights, but sometimes one has to look after one’s self,’ he said. Yes, sometimes one had to look after one’s self, look for one’s self – not necessarily in fights, though, but through a missing, foreign, babe tart who had mysteriously given him valour.

  And now this Leeds, York, tart put her finger on the scar and traced it down to his chin. ‘I shouldn’t do this when you’re driving. A knife?’

  ‘Some of those fights had weaponry of all sorts.’

  ‘God,’ she said. ‘What kind of trade are you in?’

  ‘Miscellaneous.’

  ‘I’ll look out for you. This a Saab?’

  ‘That’s it.’

  ‘I’ll remember the reg. Name’s Eva, generally,’ she said.

  ‘Nice.’

  ‘And you?’

  He put her down. ‘Cheers, Eva and so on,’ he said.

  He’d driven about half a mile towards Chilton Park when a spinning blue light came up in his mirror. He pulled over. The police car parked behind and a woman officer walked to his passenger window. He lowered it. The police car was unmarked but had those concealed blue lights the girls looked for in the Saab.

  ‘Do you know why I stopped you, sir?’ the officer said.

  ‘A rear light on the blink? Sorry. I’ll fix it tomorrow.’

  ‘You’ve been girling, sir.’

  ‘No, I –’

  ‘We watched you do the deal, rejecting one tart, taking another. A flash of money. You go off, then reappear with her. We’re trying to stop that kind of thing in this area. Antisocial. You may know there’ve been some tragedies here lately. We’re issuing cautions for a first offence. You won’t be charged tonight.’ She carried a laptop and glanced at the screen. ‘You’re Mr Ralph Ember of Low Pastures and the Monty club, yes? We speak to our computer and this is the name it comes up with for your registration number. It’s correct?’

  ‘I needed to talk to a girl, that’s all.’

  ‘We were behind you to the Easy Lay.’

  ‘To where?’

  ‘Sorry. That’s what we call it – the Easy Lay lay-by, sir.’

  ‘I –’

  ‘We‘ve got it right, have we?’

  ‘No, I –’

  ‘The name – Ralph Ember?’

  ‘Ralph W. Ember,’ he replied.

  ‘I’ve heard of you and the Monty, obviously.’

  ‘Yes?’

  ‘Oh, yes. Interesting in its way, I gather.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘The club.’

  ‘It’s changing,’ he said.

  She did a gaze. ‘People always mention two things about you, if I may say. One is the resemblance to Charlton Heston when he was younger.’

  ‘I’ve never heard that before. But I’m glad it’s when he was younger.’

  ‘Yes, I can see it, even in this light. No question. Remarkable. Ben Hur in those TV reruns. Well, anyone could spot the likeness. And then they speak of your jaw scar.’

  ‘An old rugby accident. Someone’s metal boot studs caught me at the bottom of a ruck. All’s fair in war and rugby.’

  The policewoman leaned in and touched the side of his face. A male sergeant from the police car joined her. She withdrew her hand. The sergeant said: ‘Ah, it is Mr Ember. The Monty thriving, sir? WPC Brinn has explained, has she? A caution only on this occasion. Oh, very much so, only the caution. Live and let live, up to a point. We wouldn’t like to see you trawling here again, though. If you don’t mind. It’s hazardous. And using a different car won’t serve. An incident like this – we ask the computer for the registrations of all vehicles in your name. I’d like to think you could get your relaxation in some other way, sir. You’re really a bit brave coming up here after young flesh in view of what’s happened, aren’t you.’

  There was that word again, ‘brave’. He fucking loathed it. It meant idiotic. It meant absurd risk. It meant those foolhardy second lieutenants in the Great War capering out of the trenches first and crazily foremost and getting machine-gunned to bits before they’d done five yards. It meant unprofessional. Harpur, Iles – they’d have a report on this stop. Only a caution, but they’d have a report. Iles would giggle himself sick and talk about it all round, and talk about it also when he came on one of his supposed inspection calls with Harpur at the Monty. This kind of reputation could destroy Ralph’s mission to lift the club socially. He struggled again to repel a full panic. He could imagine that fucking Iles Adam’s apple bobbing up and down when he did his cheery banter: Ralph, do you think your lay-by activities leave you time to get the Monty up from muck den to respectable?

  ‘You must have heard we were all over the area here, Mr Ember,’ the sergeant said. ‘A place like the Monty – a murky, jailbird gang like you’ve got there, they pick up all the gossip.’

  ‘You’re very out of date. The Monty’s changing, as a matter of fact,’ Ember replied.

  ‘We’ve got him as just Mr Ralph Ember, sarge. But Mr Ember says it’s Ralph W. Ember.’

  ‘Well, yes, I’ve seen letters over that name in the Press,’ the sergeant said. ‘Very good. Strong against pollution. That’s your topic, isn’t it, Mr Ember – pollution?’

  ‘The environment generally,’ Ember said.

  ‘Well, I expect you see a lot of it,’ the sergeant said. ‘I’ll amend the records to Ralph W. What’s the W? Walter? William? Wayward?’

  ‘Which records?’ Ember replied.

  ‘I wouldn’t worry about it, Mr Ember. The thing is, no repeat and everything stays more or less confidential.’

  ‘What’s that mean?’ Ember said.

  ‘What?’ the sergeant replied.

  ‘ “More or less”.’

  ‘Oh, yes, definitely more or less confidential,’ the sergeant said. ‘And I’m sure you’d be protected. Your person, I mean. You’re one who wouldn’t expose your wife to a health peril. I’m confident of that. Wife, two children, have I got that right, Mr Ember? Many of these girls up here are unfamiliar to us, you know. Well, naturally. A new area for this kind of activity, isn’t it, and new firms – Tirana as was and other Albs, then Bobby Sprale, Adrian Cologne, Tommy the Strong? This girl you were with – one of Adrian’s, I think. Calls herself Rita and sometimes Delphine. As I say, new to us, but she’s come from somewhere, hasn’t she? There might have been a lot of previous intimacies and not always barriered. It’s important to be careful. But hark at me! I talk like a sex doctor. The man who runs the Monty doesn’t need a chinwag of that kind! Or sometimes Eva.’

  ‘Do you see the resemblance to Chuck Heston, sarge?’
<
br />   ‘This sort of duty, we meet all sorts, Mr Ember,’ he replied. ‘You’d be shocked at some of the names in the data warehouse. There ought to be a treatment centre, Kerb Crawlers Anonymous.’

  ‘And then in Earthquake. Full of boldness, but sensitive, too,’ Brinn said.

  Things were serene at the Monty when Ember returned. Quite often the club went into these civilized, unpredictable tame spells. He supposed the Athenaeum or Garrick must always be like this. Now, people talked in friendly mode at a few tables and two couples played an amiable game of pool. Ralph took a bottle of Kressmann Armagnac and went to sit and try to recover at a rectangular hinged shelf behind the bar he used as a desk. Sometimes he’d do his accounts and other paperwork here. A heavy metal plate had been bolted to a pillar. It broke the direct line of handgun fire if someone who’d been briefed on Ralph’s likely spot entered at the main door and tried to kill him from there. He had arranged for a collage of stuck-on prints from the poet William Blake’s collection, The Marriage of Heaven and Hell, to make the shield look less worrying and more ornamental and worthwhile. Artificial greenery hung from the bolts, giving a vivid jungle tendril appearance which Ralph thought a feature.

  Obviously, though, this bullet-proof screen and the need for it indicated something about the present tone of the Monty and about Ember himself. After that police intervention on the road tonight with their fucking cheek and insults, he felt even more sickened by the sight of the midair bulwark. Would he never escape from the degraded nature of the Monty, as the girl, Anna or Olive or Beatrice, might have escaped the degradations of her life? He poured and drank. He wished he had someone to talk with about his problems. Occasionally, he used to permit himself to discuss limited areas with Beau Derek, but Beau was knifed to death a while ago on what had to be regarded as a very unsuccessful commercial trip with Ralph to Barney Coss’s home in Hampshire, Barney and his women also being dead there.*

  Ember loved the taste of Kressmann’s and the rapid way it gave good gyp to his bloodstream. Twenty minutes with Kressmann’s could neutralize his angsts. This would be less than half a bottle, but more than a quarter. He knew it would take him a little while and a few glasses to get the recollection suppressed of that damn brutal blue lamp dogging him, and the recollection of his failure to get any lead to Anna, Olive, Beatrice, or to spot the intrusive trail car on his way with Eva, Rita, Delphine to Easy Lay lay-by. God, such a sickening, cheap concocted name. Police could be like that, were always like that. They went on courses in how to debase people through crude humour. Clearly, they hadn’t accompanied the Saab right into the lay-by. Although it was an unmarked patrol car, Ember would have noticed its arrival. The lay-by had been empty but for him and Eva. This absence of the police pair meant they could not know that only entirely decent, concerned conversation took place, no familiarities of any kind, absolutely no removal of garments, or even interference with garments. Police brought their assumptions. They could be like that, were always like that. They went on other courses in how to make up their minds without evidence. They reasoned that if a man chose a tart and took her to the Easy Lay it must be for sex. Reasoned? Decided. Decided how? Decided according to their previous experience of toms in cars with tarts.