Hitmen I Have Known

by Bill James

  Ralph thought it could reasonably be termed ‘a glancing blow’, but admittedly pool tables were lumpy objects and even a slight hit from one when off some of its stout legs could be serious. Although it was impossible to get accident insurance cover for The Monty, Ralph found that Jennifer had her own policy. There was a snag: the company queried her claim because underwriters could not visualize any ground-floor situation where a pool table might be in a position to fall on someone. This was not in the nature of pool tables. Jenny told him their argument was that normally people using the table would bend over it when playing their shots, so it was unlikely to be moving through the air like a punch or battering ram, capable of giving someone a bad knock at chest height. To ensure fairness in a pool game, the baize surface had to be absolutely steady and flat, the table firmly and evenly settled on the floor.

  Ralph had seen the incident very late on that evening, and when he went to visit Jenny in hospital she asked if he would write a witness narrative for the insurer to back up her own account. Ralph wasn’t sure now whether he had ever slept with Jenny, but he felt fond of her and wanted to help. He thought he remembered her being very fascinated by his face scar, stroking and primping it, but this was true of many women and it did not necessarily move on to something more. In any case, he felt a basic loyalty to quite a number of regular members of the club, men as well as women, particularly when something unfortunate had happened to them actually on Monty premises. Ralph would regard it as shallow and inhumane to offer sympathy only to those women members he’d unquestionably had it fully away with at least once.

  But the idea of spilling all he knew about The Monty disturbance to the insurers made Ralph anxious. This was not the kind of club evening he would be happy to sketch for others. The insurers might promise confidentiality, but Ralph knew leaks leaked.

  He had always loathed pool tables: American and vulgar, Ralph thought. But the membership wanted them. He would feel a real, undisguised contempt for the tables now. There’d be no pool in the new Monty.

  Tone. That would be the crucial factor if he did write his version. He kept the word ‘impulsive’ very strongly in mind, ready for use. Obviously, he was bound to accept there had been something of a mishap. An outline of it would be in Jenny’s original statement of claim. She was bound to see the facts from a very specialized, possibly unique, angle, though: on the end of wanton, wild violence from a pool table. But Ralph wondered whether the admittedly rough behaviour by some members could perhaps be explained as sudden flashes of temper and rage – yes, impulsive in a boisterous, maybe over-vigorous fashion, yet without any dark motive; mischievous, certainly, but not malevolent, and perhaps regretted very soon afterwards.

  It wasn’t a simple choice. He wanted the impetuous, hot-headed theme, but it would be stupid to make things sound trivial and of not much consequence. This might drastically weaken Jenny’s case, cutting the possible payment or even stopping it altogether. He wished he could have studied her claim. She said she’d mentioned ‘a considerable tension’ at the club that night following a TV broadcast about two murders and its possible ‘sly, oblique, damning’ reference to a local police officer. This seemed to suggest that the flying pool table had something to do with a deeper matte: the aftermath of murder, murders.

  Ralph regretted that she’d described the incident like that, and he’d have liked to see how she’d worded this part of her statement. She wouldn’t have been thinking of how to protect The Monty’s reputation. Her priority was to get good compensation. He didn’t blame her for that. It was possibly an awkward detail, though.

  Motive. This was the chief challenge for anyone dealing with the pool table episode. The insurers had aimed their questions at this mystery. How was it that six men decided to line themselves up along one side of the pool table then on ‘three’ in a ‘one, two, three’ preparatory jingle, crouch to take hold of the table’s lower frame and lift it through an arc of 180 degrees until it fell front first near the bar, its stubby legs now pointed at the ceiling.

  This semi-circle journey had produced the collision with Jennifer. She had been at the bar buying a couple of drinks, had turned to make her way back to her seat while carrying the glasses and was caught by the leading edge of the table as it swung towards its new upside-down anchorage, smashing her ribs and the glasses. The blow struck Jenny to the floor, but shoved her away from the table, so that she fell clear against the base of the bar on her back. This was why Ralph had thought of it as ‘a glancing blow’: the table did not fall on top of her but clipped Jenny as it passed.

  Even so, it grieved Ralph that she could be savaged like that actually in a club owned by him, and of such rich, assured promise. Appalling. After the hospital visit he still had some of his uncertainties but eventually decided he must support her insurance claim. He’d do everything he could to apply maximum influence, and the influence of Ralph W. Ember was sometimes magical. He felt one way of fixing his problems might be to write out in full on the computer screen everything that had happened, including run-up and background, so it came over as absolutely authentic, convincing and strong, like the voice of Ralph W. Ember in person.

  Then he’d methodically edit out all the bit, or bits, he thought potentially embarrassing and of no help to The Monty. Cutting was easy on the computer. He’d let the insurer have this nicely shortened scenario which would still contain some of the authenticity, convincingness and strength, but not foolishly too much.

  EIGHTEEN

  I am Ralph Wyverne Ember of Low Pastures, age forty-eight, proprietor of The Monty club at 11 Shield Terrace. I believe it necessary in the circumstances to give something of my background and civic standing. Of course, I do this not out of vanity, but so that you may know the status of someone ready to vouch for the integrity and truthfulness of Ms Jennifer Stippe-Lewis.

  The club is renowned – not, I believe, too strong a term – as a community hub offering entertainment, social activities and constructive, vibrant local companionship. I think it fair to say that the club is already a prized asset in the city and, indeed, county; but it is also in a constant state of progressive development to keep pace with the changing requirements of our members.

  I consider it a paramount duty to enhance The Monty’s reputation and appeal by a sensitive programme of improvements, while at the same time maintaining the club’s famed traditional appearance, personality and values. Some notion of the excellent relationship between the club and myself is an affectionate, amusing title awarded to me ‘tongue in cheek’ by members. It is ‘M’Lord Monty’. This I must stress has no element of class distinction. I certainly don’t regard myself as superior to quite a few members of The Monty. The nickname is simply a humorous expression of approval and respect. I am happy that Ms Jennifer Stippe-Lewis obviously feels that approval and respect and finds it natural and wise to seek my aid in this matter. I am delighted, indeed honoured, to provide it.

  As with any worthwhile, stimulating club, a great range of opinion is represented in the membership, about the condition of the country, politics, cultural topics, education, crime prevention, fashion, soccer. Occasionally, this can lead to forceful arguments and sometimes even to violence, though violence of an unplanned, impulsive, short-lived kind. It was as an intensely regrettable incident during one of these outbursts that Ms Jennifer Stippe-Lewis, an esteemed, long-term Monty member, received injuries from an abnormally displaced club pool table. This was one of those deplorable, irresponsible acts in no regard aimed at Ms Jennifer Stippe-Lewis because of inflammatory views she’d expressed, but which by total mischance involved her receiving serious physical damage. This damage has been fully described, I know, in a report by doctors to you as insurers.

  Let us ask, then, what was it that sparked the anger and disgraceful violence? My understanding is that a television broadcast shown on The Monty’s large screen in the club bar started the unrest. How could this be in a club with such a fine reputation? The answer is not si
mple, but there is an answer, an answer with a considerable bearing on Ms Stippe-Lewis’s claim.

  The programme dealt with the murder of two criminals in an unsolved police case. This drama was presented as fiction, a piece of theatre rather than a documentary, but some groups in The Monty that night chose to take it as disguised fact, based on a strikingly similar local situation – and not very well disguised. Attitudes among Monty members to the programme, and to its apparently real basis, varied greatly, and this led to outright conflict and vandalism.

  What then were the main, fiercely opposed reactions to the broadcast that caused such appalling disorder?

  (a) Some in the audience who thought they recognized an actual case behind the story-telling made it obvious they believed the two murdered criminals deserved their execution and thought the murderer a clever, God-given hero.

  (b) But some of the murdered men’s friends and relatives were also in the bar. I know now that they suspected the two had been killed by a high-ranking police officer. Several in this group apparently thought the investigation into the murders was deliberately cack-handed and ineffective because of the possible – probable – guilt of the police officer. He could fix it that the investigation stalled and stayed stalled.

  At first, The Monty violence was shouts only. I cannot report in full what was said because of libel and slander risk. Here’s a repeated yell, but edited: ‘Nice one, ****,’ with the asterisks spelling out the name of a certain police officer. Another chant was ‘Crooked cop. Dirty double killer’, probably referring to the same officer but from the reverse point of view. I saw that two battling factions had formed.

  The bellowing died away and fist-fighting started in its place. This then worsened. Chairs and tall bar stools were turned into weapons and missiles, fire extinguishers activated and used like water cannons. I recognized club members in both parties and it sickened me to see something so contrary to the spirit of The Monty.

  Jennifer had been to the bar to collect drinks. Some of the fighting barred the way back to her table. She paused. Near her, a group from one of the contingents suddenly lined up alongside a pool table, lifted it and pushed it over. Jennifer was standing with the drinks, looking for a route across the room. She had begun to move, skirting someone who was wildly using a rum bottle as a cosh. This brought her close to the pool table, properly on its legs at this stage, but then given this team shove. The objective seemed to be isolation of enemies behind the table, cornering them between the table and the outer wall. Then they could be attacked and beaten up. But the edge of the falling table caught Jennifer and knocked her to the floor. She was in no way connected with either party. It was an utterly random accident and, obviously, subject of a totally justified personal injuries claim.

  R.W.E.

  Ralph decided there would be absolutely no need to say in his statement to the insurers that very untypically for him he’d been carrying a gun. Perhaps a mention would have shown that he’d expected difficulties at the club, and should have been ready to deal with them. But he told himself that insurers required a factual account of events, not a report on the state of Ralph’s mind. They wanted to know what happened, not what he had feared might happen. Ralph felt sure they’d regard that as flim-flam – as waffle.

  He didn’t describe, either, how, not long after the fighting and violence had ended, Harpur and Iles had arrived at the club and viewed the destruction, though by then the pool table had been righted by the same team. Jennifer was on her way to hospital. Calls for an ambulance would always be passed on to the police, and Ralph saw he wasn’t the only one to guess there could be reactions from a public showing of ‘The Forgotten Murders’.

  It was very late but Iles must have hung about the Control Room monitoring calls after watching the TV show where some would claim he starred. And if Iles hung about the Control Room he’d probably ring Harpur and get him out of bed when news about the club ruckus came through. That wouldn’t worry Iles.

  He was in uniform, the lights gleaming on his insignia, as if to register the return of nice behaviour and radiant decency. Ralph knew that to be laughable fraud, of course. After all, this was Iles.

  He did a slow, bit-by-bit stare at the damage. ‘Would you call it gratitude, Col?’ he said.

  ‘Which, sir?’ Harpur replied.

  ‘This splinterscape.’

  ‘In what sense?’ Harpur said.

  Iles gave a small nod towards Ember’s chest. ‘Ralph takes aboard a shoulder harness and pistol yet does not use that pistol, despite the people who are set on carnage in his fine club who ought to have been shot. Are these slobs thankful? Are they fuck? Ralph restrains himself in that admirable style of his, which we knew about, but which we have never seen a more graphic example of.’

  ‘It’s only a blip,’ Ralph said.

  ‘What is?’ Iles said.

  ‘The disturbance.’

  ‘A blip in which sense?’ Harpur said.

  ‘Col often asks about the sense of things, Ralph. He tries very hard to understand what’s going on and it can be quite sad to watch the struggling, awkward effort.’

  ‘I’ll be improving The Monty very considerably,’ Ralph replied.

  ‘I’ve heard about that,’ Iles said.

  ‘I hope favourably,’ Ember said.

  ‘I’ve heard about it,’ Iles said.

  ‘You need a couple of Nobel prize winners among the membership,’ Harpur said.

  ‘That kind of thing,’ Ralph said.

  ‘They’ll be queuing up,’ Iles said.

  ‘This is no real setback,’ Ralph said.

  ‘How could it be?’ Iles said. But his voice was full of doubt and mockery. His voice generally was full of doubt and mockery when he spoke of Ember’s hopes for The Monty. Sometimes Ralph put up with that. He and Mansel Shale had businesses that needed Iles’s cooperation, so best not rile the sod. Occasionally, though, Ralph did do a bit of retaliation, but nothing too venomous.

  ‘All that kind of unpleasantness will be eliminated then,’ Ember said. ‘And I’ll make sure there are no fights over those two revenge murders, Mr Iles, one a very saucy but authentic garrotting. You, above all, don’t want that kind of thing.’

  ‘Which kind of thing?’ Iles said.

  ‘Scrapping. Destruction.’

  ‘Why me above all?’ Iles replied.

  ‘Oh, yes,’ Ralph said.

  Ralph went behind the bar and got together some unbroken bottles and glasses on a tray. He mixed the usuals for Iles and Harpur – Iles’s port and lemon, Harpur’s gin and cider mix in a half-pint glass, and Ralph’s own Kressmann Armagnac. Harpur found a serviceable table and some chairs. They sat among the wreckage with their drinks.

  Iles took off his cap and put it on the table. ‘I think I know what you have in mind when you talk of getting rid of unpleasantnesses in the club, Ralph,’ he said.

  ‘I expect you do,’ Ember said.

  ‘You mean a roving pool table,’ Iles replied. ‘That kind of item. The pool table is squatting there now all smug and primly settled but, you know, Ralph, that only a little while ago this very pool table flipped over in a completely non-pool-table fashion.’

  ‘No, that isn’t what I was getting at,’ Ember said.

  ‘Oh?’ Iles said.

  ‘I think I can see what’s troubling Ralph,’ Harpur said.

  ‘You can, Col? You can?’ Iles replied.

  ‘It’s to do with members of the club starkly divided about who killed the two crooks on TV,’ Harpur said.

  ‘But that’s play-acting, fiction, isn’t it, for God’s sake?’ Iles said.

  ‘In a sense, sir, yes,’ Harpur replied.

  NINETEEN

  On the whole, Harpur believed Iles did the killings, of course: the motive neatly there; Iles’s turn-on rages always at the ready. Now and then Harpur found himself watching the ACC’s hands and wondering whether they looked like a garrotter’s, which Harpur thought might be lean, spidery, unforgiv
ing. In fact, Iles’s hands were stubby, a surprise on someone so slight. But he could probably adapt them to any kind of work as long as it interested him, and garrotting was the kind of work that would interest him. Iles’s interests were remarkably wide, not all of them destructive.

  Because it was Iles – was almost certainly Iles who saw off the pair – there would be a stout, sweetly constructed wall against detection. It was not a matter of deliberately messing up the investigation, obstructing it as self-security, though Harpur realized some powerful figures believed this and might get intrusive and foully painstaking.

  He could have told them, but didn’t, that attempts at detection foundered because Iles knew before he began how to make sure there was nothing for an investigation to fix on, feed on. After all, he was assistant chief constable (Operations). Almost mystical skill and ruthless drive shone in most of his operations, but several of his others lay in lovingly contrived, dense darkness. Although the doomed nature of the investigation itself offered evidence that this was an Ilesian job, it was not the kind of evidence leading to jail. ‘My lord, I present a case where the failure to convict is irresistible proof that the accused should be convicted.’

  The Times and Daily Telegraph published reviews by their television critics of ‘The Forgotten Murders’, and later in the day the giveaway local Evening Bulletin had a report of the violence at The Monty. Harpur thought that between them the three gave a convincing sketch of things, and he wished they didn’t. ‘The Forgotten Murders’ itself was almost certain to create what might turn out to be unwanted Home Office nosiness. The press involvement was likely to increase and sharpen it.