by Bill James
Denise didn’t believe anything was unthinkable. Perhaps the French philosophers taught her this. Apparently one of them had said, ‘I think therefore I am,’ but she reshaped it to ‘I am, therefore I think’ – and think about anything I fancy. If he took his troubles to her she’d give them a close eyeballing and might come to suspect there really had been some dozy slackness, because she would see a reason for it – a lawless, wrong, lynch-mob-type reason, but still a reason. Harpur feared that if she began to think like this it would do her opinion of him damage. That’s what made him nervous. He needed her absolute, unwavering approval and love.
Denise was twenty and at university, Harpur thirty-seven, a widower with two teenage daughters. This wasn’t a vast and unbridgeable difference, but it made Harpur feel very lucky and very vulnerable. He would like to stay lucky. His children adored Denise and they wanted him to stay lucky, too, so they wouldn’t lose her.
Perhaps tonight, when he got back from the Lamb meeting and they’d had supper, she sensed that he had a private fret or two. She didn’t quiz him about it then, though; she had her own way of dealing with it. In bed she drew back the duvet and went over him toe to temple with her mouth in something more than a kiss but less than a suck – a sort of gentle brushing of her lips, moving eventually up to his mouth and lips, and this was a true kiss, true kisses. He didn’t mind the smell of Marlboros on her breath, as long as the breath was hers, and as long as he was the only man getting it. Almost everything about Denise delighted him. It had been a long time since Harpur had had any other woman’s ciggie smoke in his face.
He didn’t try to remember when or whose now, though. He already suffered that shame and guilt for hiding his possible rough news. He wouldn’t add to these. Denise played in the college lacrosse team and she mounted him now in a swift, powerfully athletic swivel that probably owed a bit to sports training. Harpur believed though it owed more to her project to give him, and get for herself, a right beautiful and cheery fuck.
FOUR
Ralph Ember – sometimes called ‘Panicking Ralph’ or ‘Panicking Ralphy’, but not to his face – owned a popular drinking club, The Monty, at 11 Shield Terrace in the southeast of the city, and he heard quite a lot of rumour and gossip from members there. Most of this rumour and gossip turned out to be only rumour and gossip, like rumour and gossip anywhere, and time killed it off, generally, quite soon. But lately there’d seemed something much more enduring and consistent in this talk. It centred on one person: assistant chief constable (Operations) Desmond Iles.
Ember always tried to be moderate and measured in how he spoke, so he never actually said he detested Iles. He detested Iles, though. If arrogance was a feasible characteristic for arseholes, Ralph reckoned Iles was an arrogant arsehole. Some nights the assistant chief constable (Operations) would come to The Monty in uniform, silver braided cap on, generally accompanied by his sidekick in plain clothes, Detective Chief Superintendent Colin Harpur. Between them, they could turn the atmosphere of the club more or less instantly sepulchral. The pair probably knew what good fellowship was but enjoyed kicking it to death at The Monty.
Some people always left immediately after those two appeared at the club, not even bothering to finish their drinks or conversations. Iles might yodel genuinely heartfelt farewells after them – ‘pederasts’, ‘knicker-sniffers’, ‘Adam’s apples’, ‘charity workers’, ‘coprophiliacs’, ‘fraudsters’, ‘poets’, ‘muggers’ – and would stare about at the others who remained in the bar, Iles grinning like an open wound, as though they all ought to be in jail and soon would be following one of his operations.
Ralph thought Iles loved creating this chill in The Monty. Ember had heard of a bar in Stockholm where everything was made of ice. Most likely, Iles regarded it as a competitor. Officially, he and Harpur came to check the club still met its licence conditions, but Ralph reckoned they were actually there only to mess him about. He liked to imagine while fixing their drinks that if he asked Iles, ‘What’s your poison, sir?’ the assistant chief constable (Operations) would reply, ‘I am.’
A dream. Ralph had to put up with the real Iles, three dimensional – and thank God not more than three – fiendish, and effortlessly clever. Ember naturally wanted to discover, if he could, whatever there was to know about him so he could shape up his hit-backs.
In a strange and yet very understandable, even logical, way, it was on a festival night at The Monty that Ralph heard what might be the start of something deep and serious about Iles. Before this, Ralph had picked up fragments only. He might catch a mention of the name – ‘Ralph’, ‘Ralphy’, ‘Ember’, ‘Panicking’, – when two or three people in the club were chatting, plus a few other words, but no real meaningful information. What he had noticed, though, tonight, was the constant flavour of the remarks: giggly, relaxed, unafraid, not normally the mode when someone spoke about Iles.
The more usual tone would be bewilderment and escalating dread. Ralph Ember hoped and bravely believed that one day he would see no more of the menace Iles invariably brought with him to the Monty in its present state.
Those words – ‘in its present state’ – were crucial, and Ralph had golden ambitions for The Monty and aimed to make it as distinguished, influential and refined as, say, The Athenaeum or The Carlton clubs in London.
He knew this would not happen speedily. Until then, The Monty remained a fondly esteemed local meeting spot, the natural, friendly, welcoming venue for bail or acquittal celebrations – especially acquittals that were brilliantly against the odds – wedding receptions, end-of-jail-term parties, raves, christening sprees, victory piss-ups after turf fights, post-funeral wind-downs, tribute evenings on important anniversaries, witness statement withdrawals, parole successes.
There were certain cast-iron restrictions. Pimping and drugs pushing on Monty premises Ralph absolutely banned. These could bring bitter, violent trouble. Ralph had seen it happen in other clubs. The drop in reputation might be serious and long-lasting. He believed commercial pussy simply as commercial pussy could sometimes produce problems, but commercial pussy on coke meant unstinting noisy peril, broken glass, blood-stained décor, carpets and pool tables, torn garments and flying spit. Very injurious chuck-outs had occasionally been necessary, including a dislocated shoulder and short-term concussion.
He would admit that people living in Shield Terrace might feel uneasy about some of the scrapping, screams and blasphemies near the club, but he thought that, once he’d turned The Monty into a brilliant social and intellectual hub, Shield Terrace would become wonderfully smart, fashionable and vibrant with a sparkling increase in the value of their properties. Ralph himself lived outside the city at Low Pastures near Apsley’s farm, a lovely converted manor house with wide grounds, but he could still sympathize with what the residents of Shield Terrace felt.
The Monty festive date that helped readjust Ralph’s view of Iles was Bastille Day. Ralph counted himself a terrific admirer of France and the French. He loved the way they baked twice a day so their bread was always fresh. Each 14 July he ran a colourful shindig at The Monty – tricolour flags, bunting, balloons, photographs of Edith Piaf, Charles de Gaulle, Brigitte Bardot, Maurice Chevalier, Jean Gabin and Napoleon – to commemorate the start of the Revolution in 1789, when citizens stormed the Bastille and freed prisoners locked up by a corrupt regime. The period fascinated Ralph. Central to it was a vicious, ruthlessly scheming politician, Robespierre, responsible for a time of great barbarity in France called ‘The Terror’, and who seemed to Ralph like an early, test-run version of Iles. Most probably Iles would agree.
Ralph had begun a degree course for mature students in one of the local universities – suspended at present because of intense and welcome business demands, especially coke – and in the Foundation Year had been asked to write about the effects of the Revolution. He had excelled at that. Now, he liked to act out those basic aims and demands of the French Revolution: liberty, equality, fraternity.
In honour of the triumphant attack on the Bastille, Monty drinks were free until one a.m. ‘Ralph! Pray join us,’ Tim (‘Tasteful’) Barry-Longville said. Tasteful and his mother were on Cointreau. Ralph brought a bottle of that and one of Kressmann Armagnac and a glass for himself. He sat down at their table. Tasteful was some sort of executive at the local evening paper, The Scene. He always wore a very dark double-breasted suit, white shirt and subdued tie when he came to the club. Ralph thought he might be able to let him join the new Monty when it was created. Ralph would want and need such nicely dressed members with decent jobs. Tasteful’s mother, Mavis, was in a long, light ochre and silver summer dress with a pearl necklace.
‘I’ve always loved that black label of the Kressmann brew,’ she said. ‘So understated. So in keeping with the smooth, sugarless content.’
‘True,’ Ralph said.
‘Your teeth – a testimony to the drink’s beneficence.’
‘I think so,’ Ralph replied.
‘These are teeth that by their bites bring distinction to what is being eaten. It’s a charming reciprocity,’ she replied.
‘Thank you,’ Ralph said.
‘We’ve been discussing the past,’ Mavis said.
‘Ah, yes,’ Ralph said.
‘Not an inert, abandoned past,’ she said.
‘No,’ Tasteful said. ‘I’d mentioned garrotting. Such a picturesque method of snuffing out someone, the ligature so apparently harmless until actually applied, and then the useless, frantic struggles of the recipient.’
‘This is a French occasion, so I tend to think of French connections, as it were,’ Mavis replied. ‘Talking of the past, perhaps you’ll recall that de Musset poem, Ralph.’
‘Ah,’ Ralph said.
‘This is not to do with the garrotting and so on, I think, is it, Mother?’ Tasteful asked.
‘Let me see now – how does it go? Yes.’ She got some plaintiveness into her voice: ‘“Regrettez-vous le temps où le ciel sur la terre / Marchait et respirait dans un peuple de dieux?” That’s one view of the past, isn’t it? The poet asks, don’t we regret not being around when the classical gods were supposedly running their lives, here below on earth? I think I do sort of regret it, though I wouldn’t want to get shagged by a swan, like Leda – all that wing-flapping and bird halitosis. De Musset envies the past, doesn’t he?’
‘Fantasy?’ Ralph said. He had the feeling that Mavis was talking around the real topic she wanted to discuss, a devious, seemingly rambling, verbose introduction. Tasteful kept trying to drag her back to the topic that fascinated him, the double murder, but she ignored him.
‘And then there’s the pic of Piaf over there,’ Mavis said. ‘Her belter of a song: “Non, je ne regrette rien”. That’s the past completely gone but cherished all the same with a double negative. The French are like that, aren’t they – super-generous with their negations? Piaf regrets nothing. I don’t know what she’d done – maybe farted in a crowded lift – but so what, it turned into a bestselling single.’
‘A brave and happy view of the past,’ Tasteful said, ‘but it isn’t always going to be like that. The garrotting, et cetera, come into it, don’t they?’ We can’t reasonably sit here, sipping away at magnificent stuff and pretend that garrotting doesn’t exist.’
‘How do you feel about this, Ralph?’ Mavis replied.
‘The past?’ Ralph said. Did she mean the past with the two murders in?
‘Would you have liked to be here in classical times?’ Mavis replied.
Ralph wasn’t sure. He’d certainly been alive at the time of the two murders, though, and the one of the undercover cop before them. He poured more of the sippable magnificent drinks. ‘Of course, someone wrote, “The past is a foreign country: they do things differently there”,’ Mavis said.
‘It isn’t, though, is it?’ Tasteful said. ‘Pathetic inaccuracy. It’s the same country but a little while ago and what happened then is still a part of now. We have to consider the garrotting and the other death on this basis, I feel.’
‘It’s a matter of mood,’ Mavis said.
‘What is?’ Ralph said.
‘The mood prevailing at the time,’ Mavis replied. ‘It might be able to justify something that happened then. But this mood may change and disappear. In these altered conditions, what could be regarded as OK not very long ago is not regarded like that any more. Oh, Timmy, dear, yes the past is a foreign country. For instance, people didn’t seem to worry much about underage groupie girls hanging around rock bands. They seemed to think it was all very jolly to see underage girls fling their knickers at male performers on stage. We’re more clued up now. The contrast gives us all those historic showbiz cases.’
‘And then there’s the current serene and impregnable Mr Iles,’ Tasteful said. He had a smirk-type chuckle, the kind Ralph had noticed lately in others when they spoke of Iles. ‘What was he up to in that foreign country – the past? People are asking, aren’t they?’ Tasteful said, ‘TV producers included – forcefully asking.’
‘Are they?’ Ralph said.
‘That’s the word around,’ Tasteful said.
‘Around where?’ Ralph said.
‘Authority. Ministers. The Prosecution Service. As I understand it.’
‘So, how do you understand it?’ Ralph said.
‘Perhaps it would be better to say how we recall it,’ Mavis replied. ‘And as we recall it, two absolute career villains were nonetheless acquitted of killing an undercover cop. I can remember the atmosphere – surprise and shock, disgust and resentment. Keats might have believed Truth was Beauty and Beauty Truth, but I`ve heard a different definition: “Truth is what a jury believes”.’
‘But then the two villains are themselves found dead,’ Tasteful said, and not just found dead – one found dead by garrotting. Naturally a major case is opened.1 This is a double murder, one by an especially horrifying method. But nobody is ever arrested or charged. Lots of activity yet no apparent progress. Is it possible that the deaths of the two crooks were a bit of tit-for-tat revenge and rough justice, not to be looked into over-vigorously? The case is apparently allowed to go out of sight and concern.
‘Even villains have families and relatives. Possibly one or more of them have seen the recent awakening interest in old crimes, old alleged offences. For them, and for the court, the two hoods are not hoods at all – or not for the cop killing, anyway – but glisteningly pure and worthy innocents who have been disgracefully treated by the blind-eyeing, not at all impartial law. So, has a widow, or a dad, or a great aunt breathed a complaining word to, say, a member of Parliament or Citizens’ Advice or the press? Well, we’ve given it some coverage in The Scene already, but that’s only local. I’m talking now about the investigative section in one of the national dailies or Sundays. They’re always nosing around looking for some state of affairs that will justify a front-page headline starting with that one self-congratulating word: “Revealed!”’
Mavis said, ‘One of those big-time London reporters, listening to the grievances, might ask, “Who was police Operations at the time of those murders?” The answer, short and blunt, is, “Same as today.”’
Mavis repeated this very slowly. It mightily pissed off Ralph. She seemed to think he wouldn’t see the significance. Ralph had come out from behind the bar to confer so generously and selflessly a spell of revo-type equality on people like Mavis, and now here she was acting not just equal but superior. God, ingratitude! God, presumption! ‘Same as today,’ she said again.
Then Mavis went into a pause, lips clamped, eyes briefly closed for concentration. These few seconds seemed to b
ring a change of direction. Eyes open, she said, ‘Is my boy Tim right after all? Although the past is a different country, there can be powerful links with now. Do we see the drawing together of present and past in a single figure – that constantly on-the-scene officer – Assistant Chief (Ops) Des Iles?
‘Obviously, a member of Parliament, or Citizens’ Advice helper, or the media would find it almost unbelievable that an assistant chief constable could be guilty of these killings. But I fancy, Ralph, you’d say this is only a blind spot because they don’t know Mr Iles.’
Yes, Ralph probably would have said this, or at least thought it, but he didn’t want to be told what he’d say by Mavis Barry-Longville. Was it a sentimental mistake to have sat with them? Was she worthy of any connection to the magnificent 14 July?
‘Perhaps Iles is going to get some trouble,’ Tasteful said, the smirk nicely in place. ‘They’re coming to get him. I believe they’re going to do a TV version of all this, names changed to protect the innocent. The pressure for a proper inquiry will become irresistible.’
Just then Walter Vores, late 70s at least and wearing a French flag like a kimono, climbed onto the bar counter carrying a microphone and opened up with the greasy Maurice Chevalier number, ‘Thank Heaven for Little Girls’.
‘See what I mean about the way time alters attitudes?’ Mavis said.
Ralph had to circulate. He left the Cointreau bottle with Mavis and Tasteful but took the Kressmann’s. By moving about among the membership he was accepting unusual risks tonight. It was to capture the liberated spirit of Bastille Day. But he must be alert. The Monty wasn’t Ralph’s only business. Some very focused people wanted him gone. They’d willingly pay to arrange it. What Mavis and Tasteful had said about a possible official move against Iles troubled Ralph. They didn’t seem to understand what that might mean to the city and, more particularly, to Ralph. Although Iles was a piece of raw evil, he did keep the area from falling into chaos. If he was displaced, the current good, municipal tranquillity could disappear. Ralph might need to tighten up on security at The Monty.