Hotbed

by Bill James

  ‘It’s Ralph. Or Ember.’

  ‘I can chart his routine for you, if he’s got one, so your people would know where and when to take him. I’d do notes and sketch maps. All that kind of thing is OK with me, within my ambit. I’m pretty good at graphics, clarity one of my watchwords. This would be an exhaustive guide to his habits and itinerary.’

  ‘A thematic approach,’ Ember replied. ‘To get the as it were tone of the other, sibling operation and look at it against ours. This is what I have in mind. Yes, tone.’

  ‘And I’ll report back here,’ Brown said. ‘Phones are out. Insecure. And it wouldn’t be a good idea to be seen talking together too often around the firm’s buildings.’

  ‘Here?’

  ‘To your house.’

  That was meant as a poke in the eye, of course – to dub the domain a ‘house’. He could have said ‘Low Pastures’ or ‘your home’, or ‘the property’, but he said ‘house’ to make it sound nothing much, like a place in a street, not its own acres – sound like the kind of place he lived in himself. Or he would be in half a house, or less, most likely, a so-called flat, 15A Singer Road. Brown wanted to try to bring Ralph down, make him sound manageable and only run-of-the-mill. And Brown’s methods? To speak slightingly of Low Pastures, and to use the word ‘panic’. Obviously, Ember would admit that Low Pastures could, technically, be regarded as a ‘house’, since it did provide what a family required from a ‘house’ – shelter, heat and light, domestic fitments. That ludicrously failed to catch the full undeniable nature of Low Pastures, though. In any case, Ralph didn’t want him at the ‘house’ again. The one visit should do to let him see the Ember style. Brown might – might – be entitled to that. Anyway, he’d been allowed it. And this was enough. ‘No, we’ll fix some rendezvous points, discreet, secure,’ Ralph said.

  ‘I’d rather come here.’

  ‘Not on, Joachim.’

  ‘I’d be careful.’

  ‘How can you be careful? You’d drive. Your car’s a give-away.’

  ‘I came in my car this afternoon. You must have expected that.’

  ‘Once is all right. It could be anyone, anything. But not repeatedly.’

  ‘Taxis.’

  ‘Hardly, Joachim. Taxi drivers talk.’

  ‘Best here,’ Brown said. ‘I don’t want to be clock-tied. It might not be easy to get away for an arranged meeting at a named time. I’d prefer to just drop in.’

  ‘But I’m not always at Low Pastures.’

  ‘I know your daily routine pretty well. Everyone in the firm does. In any case, it wouldn’t matter. I could wait. It’s a comfy billet.’

  He’d ‘drop in’. Again it was a way of insulting the property. Ralph didn’t mind ‘billet’, an obvious bit of waggishness. But people did not ‘drop in’ at Low Pastures, and especially not people like Brown. Ralph’s daughters might be here when he ‘dropped in’. Venetia, the older girl, nearly fifteen, responded too enthusiastically to men, in Ember’s view – probably only a phase, but troublesome. He had sent her to finishing schools run by nuns in Poitiers and Bordeaux, hoping they would show her the value of temperateness, though, given the news about some nuns, this had risk. She was back now. Ralph didn’t feel sure she’d changed. He had the idea that Brown’s bit of moustache and the chin whiskers would get to her, also his flashiness and cheerful insolence, plus a brother an actor. ‘Yes, I’ll drop in – as and when,’ Brown said.

  ‘We’ll be flexible about times at these selected locations. I’ll wait an hour at some pre-agreed place, say, and if you haven’t come I’ll assume it’s awkward and leave it until the following day. I’ve got some reasonably anonymous places in mind – say a launderette or one of the old coastal defence blockhouses.’

  ‘Yes, I’ll drop in here – as and when,’ Brown replied. ‘I feel at ease. That plaque on the gate – the Cicero quote: “A man’s mind is the man himself.” I like this. It means fuck all, but he gets away with it because of all the nice q and s sounds in the Latin. It shows what can be done if you’re smart enough.’

  And he dropped in as and when at Low Pastures.

  Drop-in 1

  He came by hired VW on a Sunday afternoon. Ember and all the family were at home. Brown brought the bill for the day’s use of the car and handed it to Ralph. When Ralph gave him the £5000 at the end of their meeting, he added £70 in tens. Brown said he’d do it the same way next time, but on a different day and in a different car, and not a VW. ‘As you mentioned, Ralph, “it could be anyone, anything,”’ Brown said. But it wasn’t anyone, it was Turret. He had on what Ralph took to be skateboard gear – loose, threequarter-length beige trousers, a floppy brown V-necked sweater and trainers: another sad try at proving he wasn’t stunned by the splendour of Low Pastures, and wouldn’t dress up for it. All right, all right. To Ember, Brown still looked like someone who would take £5000 for an eight or ten job, had to worry about hire car costs and who couldn’t stomach his brother’s success. Venetia was in one of the paddocks practising gymkhana jumps. Ember had been watching her from the drawing-room window when he heard the VW’s approach. Venetia obviously heard it, too, and pulled the pony around so she could watch as the car stopped and Brown got out at the front door. She’d probably think those drooping clothes brilliant, especially on someone with a bit of beard.

  Ember let Turret in and this time took him to the study. ‘We’ll be undisturbed here,’ Ralph said. Brown carried a blue canvas document case.

  ‘Welsh cob?’ he said.

  Ralph reckoned he could see right through that fucking cob reference. Brown would pretend he was more interested in the pony than in the girl on it. Well, if you picked someone sly enough for a snuggle-up-to-Manse project, you had to expect a helping of all-round slyness. He boasted of his subtlety, didn’t he? Ralph would be watching, though. And it was not merely that he didn’t want Venetia involved with a man of twenty-seven. He didn’t want Venetia involved with a man of twenty-seven who’d taken on a very dangerous ploy that might kill him, or at least get him crippled/disfigured, and for undistinguished money. Taken it on at Ralph’s invitation. Venetia could be daftly, wilfully teenage, but she also had the genuine feelings of a young girl. He knew she would be appallingly hurt if a man she’d fallen for were suddenly taken from her, or catastrophically injured. And Ralph dreaded what she might think of him should she discover he’d sent the man into such risk. He feared her hatred.

  ‘How do you manage with the hire?’ Ralph said.

  ‘Manage?’

  ‘Do you have to use your real name? You have to show them your licence?’

  ‘I’ll use a different hirer next time.’

  ‘And do you keep an eye for tails?’

  ‘There’s the good straight, narrow road past farmland, isn’t there, before the turning to Low Pastures? Not much traffic. I’d spot anyone behind me.’ He looked around the study. As studies went, it was spacious and well furnished with Victorian and Edwardian pieces and a couple of red leather armchairs, also Edwardian in style, but re-covered many times. But Brown would be sure to see it as a downgrading. Never mind: he had to learn that entrance to the drawing room came to nobody as standard. What Ralph gave he could also take away. Perhaps he’d revert Brown to the drawing room on another visit, depending on how Ember judged his behaviour and attitude. Turret should feel lucky to be in Low Pastures at all. He had rejected Ember’s suggestions for meetings outside. An advantage of the study over the drawing room was that it had no window looking out on to the paddock and Venetia, as she rode today.

  Brown opened his case and spread two sheets of unlined foolscap on the rectangular mahogany table that served as desk. They’d been hinged together at three points with adhesive tape. The pages contained a street map, hand-drawn in pencil. Brown nodded down at it. ‘This I’ve found is the best area for our operation, Ralph,’ he said. Again that comical, sidling s
uggestion of equality. ‘Our operation.’ (a) Who decided there should be an operation in the first place? He, Ralph Ember did. (b) Who selected from a barrelful of talent someone perhaps able to handle it? He, Ralph Ember, did. (c) Who finally briefed him and sent him in? He, Ralph Ember did. Ralph knew some history, and felt that for Brown to talk this way was as though a corporal on Utah beach claimed to run D-Day with Eisenhower. Brown – a hired hand, nothing more. But Ralph didn’t correct him. Instead, he smiled interestedly, encouragingly, the kind of smile a leader might offer a hired hand, whether the hired hand knew Latin or not. Ralph unhesitatingly bent and studied the sketch map with Turret. He recognized the district. It was borderland ground between his and Manse Shale’s territories in the north of the city. Brown pointed to his portrait of a big, square park, full of what he’d drawn as bushy-topped trees and an oval lake. He moved his finger down the left edge of the park. ‘This side ours, the other, Shale’s.’

  ‘There’s a clear division,’ Ember said. ‘No colonizing or trespassing. Never any trouble.’

  ‘The opposite. And that’s why it suits us, Ralph.’ His enthusiasm crackled. ‘I’m up there a lot, restocking dealers, occasionally debt netting, generally keeping an eye. And the same goes for Manse’s couriers. We see one another at work, have a chat now and then, compare problems, conditions. It’s amicable – because you and Manse have created and maintained an amicable mode at the top. Of course, the effect of that reaches everyone. It’s part of your unique joint achievement.’

  ‘What I meant when I spoke of the complicated binary nature of things.’

  Brown pointed again, now to the southernmost part of the park. ‘Occasionally, Manse Shale himself will turn up in the Jaguar here and watch his people trading and so on. He drives himself.’

  ‘He lost a chauffeur. Before your time here, probably.’

  ‘Lost?’

  ‘Denzil Lake. Query suicide. Extremely query. Manse has a new driver now, but doesn’t always use him. Eldon Something. Dane. Eldon Dane. Manse got used to doing without. Dane gets put on other work for spells.’

  ‘Days and timings vary for Shale. I said I’d get an itinerary for him. Not possible at the park. Well, obviously. He’s there to surprise check his team and doesn’t want them forewarned.’

  ‘Shale can sound more than usually retarded sometimes, but he’s wily.’

  ‘He’ll call people over, talk to them through the car window. It’s usually friendly.’

  ‘He calls you over?’

  ‘Not exactly. But this is why I said it suits us. If I’m talking to one of his people, and Manse calls him, it seems reasonably OK to go to the Jaguar together. That’s part of the general friendliness, isn’t it? Mind, I’m not pushy. I’ll say hello to Shale and we might discuss a few nothing topics – football, cricket, Iran – but if I see he’s got something private to say to his guy I’ll move on, leave them to it. So, I’m getting a start of some contact with Manse, though never anything forced at present. Nothing stupidly rushed and noticeable.’

  ‘And when you’re talking to his people – couriers and so on – do you get any indicators?’

  ‘Indicators as to what?’

  ‘They might give hints of a change, or a forthcoming change, without being aware of it.’

  ‘I’m listening all the time, Ralph, listening, listening, to them and to Manse himself.’

  ‘And?’

  ‘Maybe.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘It’s vague – imprecise at present.’

  ‘What is?’

  ‘Just an undertow. Glimpses.’

  ‘Of?’

  ‘Like a longing – a longing that if they came out and spoke about it, spoke plainly about it, which, of course, they don’t, a longing that says, “Wouldn’t it be so much simpler, so much easier, so much more convenient, if we had the whole district here, not stuck on one side of the park?”’

  ‘Monopoly?’

  ‘Ralph, I’ve got to stress this is only an impression.’

  ‘They want monopoly. Do you ever hear them use the word “rationalize”? That’s what they call it in business. It means, get rid of the competition to make things more “rational” – rational from their point of view, of course: scooping the whole bloody lot in an easy, assured, comfortable, reasonable, rational way.’

  ‘An impression only, and, of course, it’s confined to one segment of the city trade.’

  ‘For now. Perhaps it’s typical. It forewarns of a general strategy. Hitler started his assault on most of Europe by marching into a small, apparently insignificant state, Czechoslovakia.’

  Brown shrugged, as though wanting to tell Ralph that he, Turret, did not go in for perhapses, whatever Ralph did. And the shrug might also signify that Brown couldn’t see sense in the comparison with Adolf. He, Turret, had to have current evidence, even if the evidence was only – stressed – an impression. Ralph read all this insolence into the shrug but decided not to retaliate, or not yet. He said: ‘And your impression – which of them does it come from?’

  ‘Several.’

  ‘Other couriers and so on?’

  ‘Right.’

  ‘And what about from Manse himself?’

  ‘I haven’t talked to Manse all that much and then, as I said, mostly very ordinary, safe topics. But, yes, from Manse as well.’

  ‘What about his eyes at these times – these moments when you think he’s cosily dreaming of both sides of Willows Park – dreaming of taking both sides of Willows Park and regarding them as a template for – a first victory towards – a pattern for – total city-wide monopoly?’

  ‘His eyes?’ Brown said.

  Someone knocked on the door and Ralph called, ‘Come in,’ knowing, of course, it would be Venetia. She still had on her riding clothes – jeans tucked into calf-high boots, and a yellow, fluorescent waterproof jacket. The hard hat she’d left somewhere, so her hair could be on show.

  ‘I wondered if you and your guest would like some tea or coffee, dad,’ she said at a gush. ‘My father can forget about such things,’ she told Brown. ‘Sometimes you wouldn’t think he was mine host at a social club, used to dealing with guests.’ She stood in the doorway, her face cheery and hospitable, giving Turret a more thorough examination than she’d had time for outside.

  ‘Welsh cob?’ he said.

  Venetia provided one of her large, instant smiles, which those French nuns, if they were worth any fucking thing at all, probably told her should not be aimed at men, except the helplessly sick and/or old. She’d ignore that. ‘Oh, you recognized her, did you?’

  ‘What’s her name?’ Brown said. You could more or less believe from his voice that he really longed to know. This lad had flair. Ember saw he had done well to pick him for the job, the sneaky bastard.

  ‘Jasmine.’

  ‘Lovely.’

  ‘She’s not always well behaved,’ Venetia said.

  ‘No, well perhaps we can’t say that of anyone,’ Brown replied.

  Oh, let’s play Hints. ‘This is Venetia, my elder daughter,’ Ralph said. ‘This is Mr Brown. Venetia has been living in France, in an educational sense, though with a religious element, also. We felt a broadening of the cultural base to be so long-term advantageous now things are increasingly, indeed irreversibly, global. I feel it is a kind of courtesy to familiarize oneself with at least one other language. Myself, I’m a bit old to learn, but Venetia does it as my representative, you might say!’ He laughed briefly.

  ‘Do you ride, Mr Brown?’ Venetia said.

  ‘A bike sometimes.’

  ‘Oh, moi aussi. But horses?’

  ‘I used to. Not much chance these days. No stabling at 15A Singer Road, I’m afraid.’

  ‘Oh? We have several mounts here, haven’t we, dad? Maybe you’d like to –’

  ‘Tea or coffee?’ Embe
r said. The way Brown slipped her his address infuriated Ralph. It might be just modesty – an understandable, unavoidable, admission that 15A Singer Road didn’t rate with Low Pastures, and that he had to think bike not cob. Or . . . or it might be his way of telling her where to find him, the dirty schemer.

  ‘Tea would be great,’ Brown said.

  ‘Two teas, then, Venetia. Yes, Mansel’s eyes,’ Ralph said, when she had gone. ‘Can you read a yearning there, a policy, and a determination?’

  ‘I haven’t concentrated on his eyes.’

  ‘Eyes convey, Joachim, especially with someone otherwise hard to read and whose words come out as such a mess.’

  ‘But it’s his voice I notice. Not what he actually says, of course. An impression I have. I keep coming back to that word.’

  ‘You can hear this yearning, this determination, in his voice, regardless of what he actually says?’

  ‘There’s something there. Intent is there – as if he has to fulfil a destiny, and cannot do other than aim for it.’

  ‘And this “something”. Does he try to involve you in that, Joachim?’

  ‘Perhaps too early for such an approach. As I say, I don’t push. He probably wouldn’t see me at this moment as any more than a courier for you, who happens to bump into him during market times at the park. We have to bring him on, Ralph.’

  ‘Bring him on’, like fattening up a goose to give foie gras. Ember loathed to hear these cruel, purposeful words used about Mansel, but, yes, the scheming, ruthless sod had to be brought on. ‘Does Shale speak of me?’

  ‘Now and then.’

  ‘In what terms?’

  ‘Always friendly, admiring, at this stage. And I’m sure you’d speak of him in friendly, admiring terms, at this stage.’

  ‘Which stage are we at, Joachim?’

  ‘The game-playing stage. The best-man stage. The old buddies who’d never harm each other. It’s the phoney war.’

  Venetia reappeared with the teas on a tray. She’d brought a cup for herself. Ralph would have expected this. ‘There are good rides here,’ she said. ‘Not just around the paddocks, but down towards Aspley’s farm, Mr Brown – oh, but, look, I can’t keep calling you Mr Brown, can I, if we’re to ride together?’