by Bill James
There might be some difficulties with Margaret, his wife. The thought of Ralph on his own in London for a week – flashing his Charlton Heston features and his money – might make her uneasy. But Margaret had known for a long while that there were aspects of Ralph’s business it was best she stayed ignorant of. He thought Margaret probably reproached herself for this – regarded it, perhaps, as cowardice. But he didn’t see how the marriage could work otherwise, and Margaret most likely agreed. She didn’t press any inquiries about the London trip. He’d definitely bring her back something worthwhile from Bond Street. They had terrific arcades in that district, with brilliant stuff behind shatterproof window glass.
But he mustn’t overdo the expense or she’d think he had a lot to compensate for. He half wished he could be honest with her. That would mean involvement in a possible killing, though, and he felt he mustn’t do that. The marriage service asked for loyalty in sickness and in health, not complicity in a slaughter.
Although he wanted one, Ralph considered the term ‘hitman’ unpleasant. It described accurately enough what they did – hitmen hit – but he thought the label could be more tactful, less graphic. On the other hand, some vocab in the murder area was absolutely OK by Ralph. Take ‘contract’. Ember didn’t in the least mind the phrase saying a contract was out on somebody, and he dearly hoped to place one on Naunton Fazard. It meant a killer had been hired for a fee to see that somebody off, usually by shooting, but hits could also be by knife, machete, axe or strangulation. Ralph felt the word ‘contract’ made an assignment sound like any properly drawn-up commercial deal. It was as if this particular deal commissioned a killer to carry out the task and named the money terms: a non-returnable, 50 per cent down payment, the rest on completion, no stamp duty.
And, of course, Ralph’s decision to engage a paid help was a commercial move, its objective clear and precise, to safeguard the firms of himself and Mansel Shale by seeing to it that Naunton Favard was permanently stopped from making terrible allegations in public about the assistant chief.
It all went reasonably well in London and, after a couple of evenings drinking with his new colleagues, he heard a name he did know from the past, Milan Parvin. ‘Ah, yes, Mil, what’s he up to these days?’ Ralph said, with a warm ex-chummy smile.
‘Wallpaper and paint, or that’s the bit he shows. A shop out Kingsbury way,’ Frank said. ‘Jo’s And Mil’s – Jo’s his partner.’
‘Is he still … well … busy?’ Ralph replied.
‘There’s a lot of refurbishing of London properties,’ Lance Staple replied. ‘Houses getting spruced up for sale. Big money. There’s non-stop demand for decorators’ stuff.’
‘No, I meant … busy,’ Ralph said.
‘We know what you meant,’ Frank said.
‘Oh, yes, of course we do,’ Lance said.
They didn’t add to that.
As Ralph recalled, there was an Italian branch of Mil’s family and he’d been christened Milan, apparently, but not many used the full geography except, maybe, his mother. Ralph thought of Parvin as a lad, and that’s what he had been the last time Ralph had any dealing with him. Now, he would be late-twenties, possibly into good money from somewhere undeclared, and owner of the décor firm, for cover. After all, that’s what wallpaper and paint did – cover.
During Ralph’s early spell working in London there’d been whispers around following what had seemed to be a couple of execution-type killings linked to some gang turmoil. Mil’s name had come up. Several of the whispers spoke of him, spoke admiringly. One of the judgments Ralph remembered was, ‘So young, yet work so very neat.’ Ralph hoped this meant he’d be even neater now.
‘Mil’s pricey these days,’ Lance Staple said.
‘For the paint and paper?’ Ralph said.
‘Sort of,’ Frank said.
‘It’s more to do with the personal service side of things,’ Lance said. ‘He can give rare, high skill. Plus, of course, he’s using his own equipment. Insists. Has to have familiarity. It costs. Most customers are willing to pay the extra for reliability. Everything’s built in to the global invoice – an invoice in his head. Nothing’s written down, obviously. Cash preferred. He’ll take fifties. Many won’t – fear of imitations. He says it’s a risk business, and that’s one of the risks. Get yourself a gamekeeper’s jacket, Ralph – pockets big enough to take man-traps or a lot of sterling.’
Psychology, psychology – Ralph sometimes tried to figure what the personality of a hitman must be like. Of course, there would be very long periods of his life when the hitman wasn’t a hitman at all. This was especially true of the hitman type Ralph had met: they did a job and then went back to another job, their main one. They seemed able to switch on the ability and the resolve for this one commission, and then put them away until next time. They had no motivation other than money. The hitman in a film called The Day of the Jackal, which Ralph had watched on one of the movie channels, only got busy in the plot to kill de Gaulle when he knew the up-front fee had been paid into his Swiss bank account. He had no politics, no enmity towards de Gaulle. He was a target only, replacing a grapefruit the hitman used for a practice shot and which exploded into bits when the bullet hit it.
There were different kinds of execution. The kind Ralph wanted for Naunton Favard couldn’t be compared with what an official hangman used to do. He acted on behalf of the state against someone who had been tried and convicted. The hangman was a sort of civil servant. But the hitman was a private hireling who killed somebody he might know nothing about, and who’d not been found guilty by any jury. It surely required an unusual mind to adapt so easily and efficiently.
‘Why, Ralphy!’ Mil yelled as Ember walked into the shop. Mil was standing near a pyramid of multi-size water-based indoor-use paint pots. ‘Your choice is our command,’ said a board at the heap’s summit. A woman, about twenty-five, fair-haired, slight, small-featured, pretty, was alongside him.
‘Ralphy?’ she said. ‘Should I know him?’
‘Ralphy Ember,’ Parvin replied. ‘Ralph, this is Jo, my, as it were, manager.’
The egomaniac, snappy way she had put that question really angered Ralph. ‘Should I know him?’ It was as though she considered Ralph didn’t exist unless she had looked him over, found him reasonably OK, and filed him away for a future occasion such as now, but had forgotten about it because Ralph was so insignificant. That wasn’t the kind of reception he normally expected from women of all ages. He was used to them reacting with startled, gusset-damping delight at first meeting Ralph because of his indisputable resemblance to Charlton Heston, occasionally in films on TV. There would often be a sort of follow-up to that: many would show an intense curiosity about that long scar on one side of his face. Ralph never spoke about it, never disclosed how he had received it. He thought they must wonder and speculate and imagine. That old wound gave him mystery, and seemingly many women wanted to crack that mystery. Ralph didn’t mind. Women were entitled to be fascinated by him.
Jo abruptly moved away from Mil and walked fast through an avenue of varnish cans towards Ember. He felt confused. Perhaps he had been wrong to think of her as a self-obsessed and arrogant bitch after all. Was she coming as so many had in the past to cosset his wound-trace and generally make up to him, although Mil was there – and was almost certainly more than a shop colleague?
Ralph resolved to be kindly to her. He understood why he had this effect on numerous women. It definitely wasn’t something he sought or worked at. He’d regard that as crude and tiresome. On the Foundation Year course at uni he had come across the Latin phrase, sui generis, meaning one, and only one, of its kind. Didn’t that describe him well? If his home didn’t already have a name, a historic name, Low Pastures, he might have called it Sui Generis. He was Ralph Wyverne Ember. That was enough, wasn’t it?
But, no, it wasn’t. Jo stepped past Ralph and went out into the sort of porch at the shop front. She stopped a few inches short of the pavement. Guardedly,
she leaned forward just far enough to let her scrutinize the street carefully left and right without getting caught by CCTV. Ralph realized she was checking to see if he’d been followed. It was another sign that she didn’t care much about him personally, scar or not. She’d be interested, though, in any tails he’d unconsciously brought.
This slighting attitude Ralph found almost unbelievable. He wanted to yell that he hadn’t come to a rubbishy bit of London from his unmortgaged manor house, Low Pastures, once lived in by a Spanish consul, for some strutting little piece to insult him. She obviously didn’t think Ralph was sharp enough to know whether he had led someone here, or more than one. She regarded him as a liability, not an El Cid figure, as played by Heston.
She came back into the shop. ‘I look after the other side of Milan’s business,’ she said.
‘Which other side?’ Ralph said.
‘Not the paint,’ she said.
‘The paper?’ Ralph said.
‘Not the paper, either,’ Jo said.
‘You know how it is, Ralph,’ Mil said.
‘How what is?’ Ralph replied.
‘Jo approaches things in a very positive way,’ Mil said.
‘Which things?’ Ralph said.
‘You wouldn’t be in these parts, and in this shop, if it wasn’t for something a bit out of the ordinary,’ Mil said.
‘That’s why I come into it,’ Jo said.
‘Into what?’ Ralph said.
‘You’re here for something special,’ Jo replied. ‘Great! We can handle it, can’t we, Mil?’
‘We ought to go into the pav,’ Mil said.
TWENTY-SEVEN
Ralph had two words in his head. He liked to focus on issues in this way and reduce them to their manageable basics. This was how he got clarity. This was how he decided on priorities, crucial when he had so many interests and projects, such as cleansed rivers; the protection of Assistant Chief Constable (Operations) Desmond Iles; the urgent need of a hitman; his children’s schooling, with special emphasis on the golden apples and other classical tales.
One of the words preoccupying him now was ‘pav’, as used by Mil, and ‘unmortgaged’, the other. Well, pav wasn’t really a word, but a fraction of a word. Although Ralph felt baffled by it for a few moments, he discovered it meant ‘pavilion’, and referred to a kind of brick-built, tiled-roof outhouse in the back yard of Mil’s shop. The interior was luxurious – well-padded garden chairs, a china and glassware cabinet, a miniature bar, and a deep-pile dark blue carpet.
‘Away from the hustle and bustle of the shop,’ Mil said. ‘Staff can get on with that.’
A rectangle of three-ply timber, painted to look like a section of rendered wall, stood on an easel near the bar. ‘We have a stack of these boards to help customers choose a colour for the outside of their property,’ Jo said. ‘They can relax while making up their minds. They should be able to say to themselves, “This is a tint I can live with, and not just live with but live in, because these treated walls will close around me as occupant. Therefore this tint must harmonize not just with the property but with myself.”’
So fucking what? That’s how Ralph would have liked to reply. OK, he recognized that these two needed a respectable, semi-genuine business to help account for their loot, but he could do without the flowery, lunatic details. He would have liked to mention that Low Pastures, his beautiful, time-graced home, residence of so many folk of distinction through the ages, was mostly authentic old stone as well as unmortgaged – that other word – and didn’t require tarting up with any of their damn here-today-and-gone-the-year-after-next gaudy shades, thank you very much. ‘Interesting,’ was all he actually said, though. These were complicated people. He had to take things slowly and gently with them. He could remember Mil and his name from that previous time, but he had no dossier on him. He did dossiers on people now, but that was part of running a large business – part of a career that had so considerably expanded since those fledgling days.
‘And the pav can give us privacy for other kinds of business,’ Jo said, ‘meaning yours, Ralph. We are, as it were, the children of the pav as, say, some tribes might call themselves children of the tundra or of the rain forest.’
Mil brought a bottle of Krug from a fridge behind the bar. To Ralph, the popping cork seemed to signal the start of a party, innocent and cheery, or alternatively was like a single, killing shot from a silenced pistol. Jo took three flutes out of the cabinet. Mil poured. Jo lifted her glass and said: ‘Here’s to happy cooperation and an untroubled outcome.’ They drank, standing respectfully for the toast, and then sat down in the lounge chairs.
‘Forgive me if I spell out the obvious, but you want someone dead, Ralphy, right?’ Mil said. ‘I can see it in your face. I’ve come to recognize the signs after so long in this bold occupation. Around the eyes I see a mix of regret that the wipe-out should be necessary, and a certainty that it is necessary, this certainty coming over quite a bit stronger than the regret or there’d be impasse. Well, if the regret signs were stronger, you wouldn’t be here anyway, since you’d have no proper commitment to the annihilation. As we’ve said, Ralphy, why else would you have made the trip to London and our premises? I expect we’re in your filing system under “Removal Firms”.’
Ralph hated to be called Ralphy. He believed it made him sound like somebody’s half-witted cousin. He thought he might have winced when Mil introduced him as Ralphy. Perhaps Jo had noticed. When she spoke next it was with a good, beefy emphasis on his y-free name. This woman had a brain and sensitivity. ‘Ralph, we wouldn’t have bothered bringing you out to the pav if Mil didn’t judge you someone worth helping and ready to meet our substantial but reasonable overhead costs.’
‘Thanks,’ Ember said.
‘More than one?’ Jo asked.
‘Just the one,’ Ralph said. ‘Why do you expect a number?’
‘We get all sorts here,’ Jo said. ‘Plurals are not rare. They’re difficult, of course they are, especially if they have to be done simultaneously, on the same day and in the same location, which is sometimes the case. Our client might want to destroy a whole family or the executive board of a substantial gang. We get this kind of request – multiples – when people want to use the togetherness of the deaths to make a special, scary sense. It will appear to be saying there are plenty more wipe-outs like this one if, say, a certain behaviour isn’t improved – usually, of course, behaviour to do with money or women, sometimes money and women. We need forewarning, not just so we can cater for ammunition quantity, but the geography and landscape when it’s multiples may be quite different from a simple solitary pop. Because the setting is likely to be more extensive, we have to expect the possible and potentially awkward presence of other people not at all involved in the hit but a possible nuisance. It’s why I always bring in a numerical query early on. We like to visualize surroundings – a setting – with as much detail as possible.’
‘Baden-Powell provided the logo for hitmen and hitwomen. “Be prepared, especially if you’re doing more than one”,’ Mil said.
‘Have we got a name for this one-off?’ Jo asked.
‘Favard. Naunton Favard.’ Ralph said.
‘We don’t need to know why you’d like him taken out,’ Jo said, ‘but we’ll be Googling the name, as you’d expect, so if there are special factors it might be useful if we’re made aware of them today. Now, Ralph, you’re obviously going to ask, what type of special factors? This is a completely reasonable response. Minders, for instance – does the target have close protection? Is it twenty-four hours? Is it more than one and, if so, how many? Do we know whether the target goes armed? If so, what with and where is it carried, at the waist, shoulder holster, in a sock?’
‘I can’t answer many of those queries,’ Ralph said. ‘But I can give you the one important basic: his brother was murdered. That’s Paul Favard.’
Mil was already Googling on his phone. ‘Paul Favard. Clifford Jamieson, both killed. I don’t
have anything to say the case was solved.’
‘No,’ Ralph said.
‘So, Naunton Favard thinks he knows who did his brother and will deal with it because the courts have failed to,’ Mil said. ‘That it? There’s a vengeance element, a strong vengeance element. There often is. People cease to believe in the legal offices and decide to do the job themselves – or, more likely, decide to brief an outfit like ours to do it for them. But I don’t see how this example affects you, Ralphy.’
‘Naunton Favard has become a nuisance,’ Ralph said.
‘In what way?’ Jo said.
‘Business,’ Ralph replied.
‘But you’d rather not say how?’ Jo replied.
So very right. Ralph would rather not say how. To say how would mean bringing Iles into the chat. This Ralph knew he must not do. The whole and absolute reason for his trip here was to keep Iles securely in place, his influence brilliant, reliable and secret.
‘The target – easy to find?’ Mil asked.
‘Probably,’ Ralph said. Mansel Shale had ‘asked around’, as he called it, and mentioned an address for Naunton Favard. Ralph gave it to Jo and Mil now to memorize, no writing down.
‘Several further standard questions if you don’t mind, Ralph,’ Jo said. ‘Have you hired, commissioned, asked anyone else to carry out this assignment?’
‘No.’
‘Have you spoken to anyone about it?’
‘No.’
‘Do you know of anyone who might, independently of you, be planning to see off Naunton Favard?’
Well, there was Mansel Shale, and Mansel Shale’s gun store. And there was Iles who’d been enraged that Waistcoat had brought pain to Hazel Harpur, and who might already have experience of executions. ‘No,’ he said.