Hitmen I Have Known

by Bill James

  Amy Rouse Zole said: ‘I’d like, if I may, to declare from the outset that these conversations are no more than that, advisory conversations, informal though meaningful confabs. I’m here to moot a point of view, the minister’s point of view. And this is all it is, a point of view. Our visit – my colleagues’ and mine – is meant in a wholly positive spirit to invite other points of view and to juxtapose these, align these, against the minister’s and see how the various opinions compare and, possibly, contrast with one another. The minister’s contribution is, of course, significant but, to borrow a phrase from a different context, it is what we might call primus inter pares – first among equals.’

  Harpur, watching Iles during this creepy, bogus diffident, throat-clearing lyric, saw no ferocity and/or disgust in his face, but he would almost certainly be experiencing one or both. That word ‘primus’ – first – when used to describe the status and mouthings of someone other than himself was sure to tear cruelly into his soul, and the fact that this primus was only a primus among equals would not soothe or fool him. ‘Primus is fucking primus, Col, no messing,’ Iles would most likely say at now-hear-this volume. He’d suspect that this woman and her high-fly minions had calculatedly taken the long train journey from Whitehall to inflict on him outright personalized degrading – degrading on behalf of a government minister who declined to come and flaunt his fucking primusness himself.

  Iles could jemmy his features into non-expression occasionally, but this rarely lasted very long, and was sometimes only a ploy, a manoeuvre. Perhaps Street was such a raw topic for him that it briefly softened his usual authentic barbarism. There were surprising aspects to the ACC’s character, and Harpur thought this temporary drift into flagrant self-control might be one of them.

  ‘The minister wonders, Desmond, whether it might be wise and tactful not to run the service for Raymond Cordovan Street,’ Amy said. She didn’t pause after this, perhaps to prevent Iles answering at once. ‘The minister wants me to put the idea to you and to emphasize that it would be a strictly one-off suspension arising from this year’s unique circumstances, and limited to the immediate present. “Amy,” he said, “be sure, be absolutely sure, to make this point.” Of course, he is aware that the proposal could strike some as a slight to the memory of a very gifted and gallant member of your team. But he feels that today’s pressures cannot be ignored or gainsaid, and these must condition our thinking and policy now, without creating a precedent.’

  ‘Street’s family,’ Iles replied.

  ‘The minister certainly has in mind the family,’ Amy Zole replied.

  ‘They’ll think he’s forgotten,’ Iles said. ‘Reduced to an admittedly tasteful masonry tile. It would be a halo parade without one of the haloes, as though it had time-expired.’

  ‘This is why the minister says for one year only – stresses it’s for one year only, a standalone, a blip.’

  ‘Street was wiped out by crooks and now his family will think he’s been wiped out by us as well, a grotesque reciprocity,’ Iles said. He spoke wearily, as though amazed that Amy and the minister – via Amy – needed to be told any of this.

  ‘That would be entirely wrong – utterly wrong,’ Amy Zole said.

  ‘Street has become a liability, so ditch him – that’s how it will appear to them. And how it will appear to others. It’s how it appears to me, and probably to Col, here, as though the memory of Ray has become a nuisance, and his work valueless. It reminds me of the way politicians busy themselves apologizing for things that happened years ago and in which they were gloriously uninvolved so they can say “sorry” without its meaning anything.’

  ‘The minister recognizes that matters of extreme delicacy are involved,’ Amy said. ‘He has been in touch by phone with your chief constable, who said the decision for or against a ceremony this year was very much a matter for you.’

  ‘Some call him the Artful Dodger,’ Iles said. ‘He has the Queen’s Police Medal, you know. There was a ceremony when he was presented with it. He didn’t seem to object.’

  ‘Perhaps he means well,’ Amy said.

  Harpur thought she’d be about fifty, with traces of a North of England accent, possibly Tyneside, but overlaid by educated cockney and maybe Oxbridge. She had naturally auburn hair, greying at the edges over her ears, fresh-looking unpitted skin and charmingly presented teeth.

  She had on a pale blue linen jacket over a darker blue silk blouse and navy trousers. Her hands were long-fingered with prominent, gleaming knuckles. She wore no rings but a double gold bracelet on her right wrist. Her replies to Iles were given quickly and tidily, as if already packaged, and brought on call from a handy store cupboard. Harpur didn’t find this surprising. It would have been easy to forecast how things were likely to go, especially if she had known in advance much about Iles. Home Office chiefs probably did know plenty about Iles and, if they had to negotiate with him, got themselves into a state of patience, alertness, and resilience. It would, in fact, be a massive failure of duty if they did not know a good deal about Iles.

  But Harpur had a feeling that, although her responses to Iles were so neatly assembled, they were also lifeless, inert, reach-me-down. She had a mission to carry out and would do this efficiently, but perhaps didn’t believe what she was saying. Civil servants, weren’t they always like that? They got briefed by someone with the power to brief and then they passed on that briefing to someone they had the power to brief. If Amy didn’t swallow what the minister had said, it could explain why those introductory words sounded so clumsy, deadbeat and phony.

  The five of them were sitting at one end of the big conference table in Iles’s suite at headquarters. Each had a couple of small bottles of spring water and a glass in front of them. Harpur wondered whether the two sidekicks with Amy – Olivia and Vince – were present on the minister’s orders, to make sure Amy said and did what she was supposed to say and do. They spoke rarely. They observed, they monitored. At some points in Amy’s comments they smiled – smiled together, like from a shared agenda. There was so much double-strength empathy floating about that Harpur felt it could curl his hair.

  Amy said: ‘In fact, the minister feels that the family might be glad to have the commemoration dropped this year.’

  ‘Has he asked them?’ Iles said.

  ‘Would it resurrect old griefs?’ Amy replied.

  ‘Did they ever die?’ Iles said.

  ‘Controversies reignited,’ Amy said.

  ‘Which?’ Iles said.

  ‘People ask – the family probably asks – why has nobody been punished for Street’s death?’ Amy said. ‘There’s been a television programme.’

  ‘Well, with or without a telly programme, people know that following Street’s murder, two villains are dead.’ This reply from Iles, if it was one, seemed to stun Amy. It stunned Harpur, also. Iles said: ‘But, of course, as Col would no doubt tell us, we should beware of the denounced fallacy, “Post hoc ergo propter hoc.”’

  ‘Definitely,’ Harpur replied.

  ‘I expect he’s dying to translate the Latin for us, but I’ll do that instead: “Because something comes later than something else, the second something must have been caused by the first.” Clearly, a fallacy, a ridiculous piece of supposed logic. It’s absurd, isn’t it, to apply this gibberish to the case of the two criminal deados?’

  Amy was silent for half a minute. Although she might have been given an outline by her Home Office superiors of what Iles was like, nobody could offer a full understanding of him, or even half an understanding. He prized evasiveness. His. Only his. Amy poured herself some water and took a sip. Then she said: ‘Two men are dead, but they are two men who were found not guilty of killing Raymond Cordovan Street.’

  ‘They were, they were,’ Iles said.

  ‘But?’ Amy said.

  ‘Oh, yes they were found not guilty,’ Iles replied.

  ‘That’s what I mean by controversy,’ she said. ‘It’s what the minister also regards as c
ontroversy.’ Olivia and Vince nodded three times each. ‘We’ve seen something of that, haven’t we?’

  ‘Something of what?’ Iles said.

  ‘Controversy. And more than controversy. Violence at a city club. The Monty, is it called, proprietor Ralph Wyverne Ember? Provocation from the TV film led to unfortunate uproar and damage.’

  ‘Ah, you’ve had intimations,’ Iles said.

  ‘Constituency members of Parliament talk to the minister, as you’d expect. He sees clippings from the local press. The proprietor of the club was deeply offended that it should be the site for such lawlessness. I’m told he is a notable local environmentalist, ardent in the fight against river pollution, and with considerable ambitions for his club – these to an almost idolatrous level. We have to look after such people.’

  ‘I try,’ Iles said. ‘Anyway, he soon had The Monty back in shape.’

  ‘The minister doesn’t want circumstances that could cause a repeat of such trouble and he believes a service for Street at this time might …’ She had another pause and another sip, and then with a matey grin at Iles, she said: ‘Matters are made additionally volatile because of, if I may say so, Desmond, your own involvement.’

  ‘Yes, you may say. During your researches you’ve probably noticed that I’m the assistant chief constable (Operations).’ But it was pronounced as customary from Iles, assssissstant chief conssstable (Operationsss). ‘Three men have been done to death on my ground. How could I not be involved?’

  This seemed to Harpur quite a question, but Amy didn’t try to answer it, and she got no help from Olivia or Vince.

  TWENTY-SIX

  Psychology: this was another of Ralph’s special interests, alongside cleaner rivers. It involved a delicate but thorough tour of the human mind and not what we thought but how we thought it. Psychology was one of the subjects in a mature student degree course he’d started at the university, an easy walk from The Monty. He’d completed a Foundation Year but had lately been forced to drop out of classes for a while because of very demanding professional and business pressures; particularly the surge in sales of Impressive Bessy, affectionate slang name for a bonny brand of coke. He found, though, that he could still apply some of that early teaching to his own life.

  Shock – and the way the brain and psyche dealt with it – was a topic that intrigued him, for example his reaction to that gross behaviour the other night at the club; or, more, accurately, reactions, plural. They came in two stages. This matched exactly what a college lecture described as ‘standard pattern’ when someone tried to cope with shock. First, at The Monty there had been the rush to counter, nullify, cancel, conceal the sickening results of the violence by emergency repairs and replacements so the club could quickly restore normal service for members. It was what the lecturer, quoting some American poet, had called ‘the lust for order’ – compulsive, instinctive, automatic.

  The second response came subsequently and went very much deeper, convincing Ember, naturally, that he must immediately get in touch with one of the hitmen he remembered from his knockabout days in London at the beginning of his career. Surely Naunton (Waistcoat) Favard could not be allowed to continue or, putting it another, more straightforward way, allowed to stay alive, blurting his damn grievances. OK, they were genuine grievances, but did he imagine everyone wanted to hear about them, for God’s sake? Hadn’t he heard of stiff upper lips? His lips couldn’t be stiff because they had to frame around and produce those damn screeches of indignation and resentment. This was egomania. This was incivility. Ralph loathed incivility.

  His thoughts came in two sections, binary as they would be termed in lectures:

  (a) Favard must be got rid of because he wanted Iles charged, tried and jailed for what Favard believed to be the killing of his brother, Paul, and Cliff Jamieson. He would do everything he could to fix it. Ralph sympathized a bit. Brotherly love was traditionally noble and very powerful. But it could also be a pest. If Waistcoat succeeded and Iles was removed, how could business continue to prosper so sweetly? The trade, the vocation, needed him, and in return the trade made sure the city’s parks, discos, streets, housing estates, public libraries, arcades, squares, religious rallies, back lanes stayed peaceful and reasonably safe. This was the simple, elegant, balancing arrangement that everyone in the commercial scene understood and cherished. It must not be endangered. Iles kept the city from falling into chaos. Waistcoat ought to realize this. He did not have the right to act in restraint of trade by getting Iles taken away. Ralph thought of Mansel Shale and the fury and fear he displayed at any possibility of losing the assistant chief constable (Operations) and his fine constructive outlook.

  (b) But as with psychology there was another, more profound aspect. What enraged Ralph was the insult, even contempt, that Naunton Favard had revealed towards The Monty by choosing the club as location for that totally hate-based, vandalizing, anti-Iles demonstration. Waistcoat would regard The Monty as merely a building – a suitable venue for his venomous, bite-back pageant. He probably knew nothing about Ralph’s unwavering plans for the glorious transformation of the club into a place of quiet distinction, rating with The Athenaeum or The Reform or any other elite club in London or New York. Even if Waistcoat did appreciate some of this, he would probably still have pushed on with his foul, anarchic scheme to stir up lay-waste Hunnishness at The Monty, regardless of the club’s honour and prestige. He would not grasp that Ralph’s Monty was not so much a social facility – though that was an important, wholesome role – but an idea, a concept, a symbol. Ralph had an inescapable duty to protect it. To ignore this responsibility would be flagrant dereliction. As well as building a new personality for The Monty, he was building a new personality for himself, and there was something almost holy about that.

  He came to think, in that second-stage result of a shock, that Naunton Favard’s actions the other night amounted to a kind of blasphemy. If churches had pool tables in the nave, would any of the congregation consider it a tolerable jape to tip the table over, seriously injuring a woman who – through no fault of her own – happened to be in the wrong spot when it fell? True, the table had been righted quickly enough in the first-stage reaction, but the effect on Ralph persisted and now cried out for a different, more fundamental response. Ralph saw blatant foolishness in Naunton Favard’s campaign. Three people had already been killed. Perhaps these deaths invited another, as deaths in the trade often did.

  Although Ralph owned a couple of Walther automatics and had been given a choice of other pistols by Mansel, he’d decided it would be better to get someone else to see off Waistcoat. Ralph hadn’t fired a gun for a long time. He thought that possibly he’d still be accurate with a weapon across a short distance, but it might not be like this with Waistcoat. In any case, this wasn’t the kind of role Ralph regarded as suitable for himself now. He was a considerable businessman and famed environmentalist – several rivers were cleaner because of him. He would not be surprised if he were offered in due course a knighthood. He would not be so foolishly big-headed as to expect this distinction immediately, but he thought he could move steadily towards it by, for instance, receiving an Order of the British Empire. Environment was definitely a goer. He loved the word ‘limpid’, as applied to rivers he’d had some part in freshening up.

  He ran a fine club which, as a matter of fact, was the main cause of his anger towards Naunton Favard. Ember believed that when you reached a certain level in life you deputed, you didn’t scramble about managing details. That would be a pathetic waste of your core strength. You observed, you put your brain to work, not your body, and said what was needed, then passed the actual labour to an expert, a specialist. It was one of the privileges of success. Kings no longer rode into battle at the head of their troops.

  There could also be an age factor, though Ralph didn’t want to think about that too much. He might have handled the whole project, including the actual Waistcoat death, if he still had a young man’s energy and darin
g. He recognized that some of these had dwindled. There’d be no joy any longer from seeing someone he’d shot tumble to the ground, even though he’d like to hear that someone else had brought about this happy result on one of Ralph’s enemies (e.g. above all, Waistcoat).

  When looking for a hitman, Ralph had to realize that, as in his own case, people he’d known and worked with in the London days might have had big changes to their lives since. During that time Ralph had moved the family out of London; established a very robust recreational substances business; started a university degree; bought Low Pastures, his manor house, cash down; and, above all, acquired and developed a prestige club, The Monty, and was soon to increase that prestige exponentially. The London colleagues and friends would probably also have had big advances in their careers, or failed and disappeared – were maybe locked up somewhere. Ralph had known hitmen might be difficult to find, or could be impossible to find. Their addresses and phone numbers would not be in the directories.

  A few regulars at The Monty had businesses that took them to London occasionally and Ralph asked if they could point him towards a couple of contacts there just to ‘give me something of an overview’ and ‘reintroduce me to the general scene.’ This was the kind of cloudy, evasive language used by almost everyone in The Monty when talking about matters that needed to be cloudy and evasive, and there were plenty of matters that needed to be cloudy and evasive. He got two names. They wouldn’t be angels: Lance Staple, Frank Quade-Hont. Ralph thought he should be able to start some useful parley with them and do a little sentimentalizing about Ralph’s past. He could wait during these chats until mentions of people he’d known came up – and known for the sort of reasons that might help him now. Ralph thought it would take at least a week to find someone available, qualified and willing. And affordable? That wouldn’t bring problems. Ralph believed in spending on good causes and this one was better than good: exemplary. It was the future. It was preservation of what had already been achieved despite resistance and obstruction, and which must not be lost by carelessness.