A Necessary End

by J M Gregson

  The lank-haired, saturnine Norbury took this as his cue to take centre stage. He moved a careful pace nearer to the centre of the room. ‘We shall be able to test that in due course, no doubt. My own view is that Jamie will bring something quite different from anyone else to the group. I think we may expect what I would venture to call an informed naivety – I do not believe that is a contradiction in terms. He is well-read and anxious to test his own skill in words. But he will bring an unsullied mind to our deliberations because he has not been tainted by much previous formal instruction in the great works of our literature. In other words, he has not been told what to think, as many of us have.’

  Jamie Norris thought it high time that he spoke up for himself. ‘I don’t remember learning much about books when I was at school. That might have been because I didn’t pay much attention or because I wasn’t there most of the time – I don’t think the teaching was much good, but I wagged off quite a bit.’

  Jane Preston thought that she should give some sort of support to the person in the room who was nearest in age to her. ‘You’ll probably have much more original views than I have. I’ve been stuffed to the gills with the orthodox critical views on all the great poets and all the great novelists. I was a dutiful schoolgirl in a private school, and I sometimes think I haven’t got a really individual idea in my head. I’d love to write short stories or poems, but every time I try I find that what I’ve been taught over the years bounces into my brain and stifles creativity.’

  Jamie glanced at her gratefully. ‘Alfred says you should cast aside all preconceptions and start from scratch. Pen a few iambic pentameters of your own and just try to be original. Then you move on from there.’

  Norbury moved between them. ‘That isn’t a general precept, Jamie. What’s right for you might not be right for Ms Preston. I try to tailor my advice to the requirements of the individuals concerned. And that of course means that I have to get to know the people themselves quite well, before I feel equipped to offer any thoughts on what they might essay in the way of writing. I look forward to getting to know Jane much better in the months ahead of us.’

  He turned the full focus of his dark, deep-set eyes upon the lady in question. Beneath his wide black eyebrows, his face looked in that moment quite Mephistophelean.

  ‘If things go well, we shall all get to know each other much better in the months to come,’ said Sharon Burgess brightly. Her words sounded almost like a rebuke, but Norbury looked quite unrepentant as he held out his glass for a refill. He looked at Jane Preston as if he wished to make her his ally in defying the older woman and her conventional sentiments, but she turned away from him to talk to Jamie Norris.

  Enid Frott watched the exchanges with interest from the edge of the gathering. Then she stepped forward, holding her glass against the light and affecting to assess the colour of her red wine. ‘Alfred is good at controversy. It’s a way of life with him. That’s one reason why I suggested we include him. With Alfred Norbury around, we won’t be short of stimulating ideas about whatever books we select for our joint delectation. I’m sure that if any of us are reluctant to voice an opinion, we’ll be stimulated by something outrageous from Alfred.’

  Norbury gave her a little bow, like a matador making his preliminary pass at the bull. It was the sight of this which prompted a contribution from Dick Fosdyke. The cartoonist had been watching Norbury closely but making no comment on what he said. He now smiled and said, ‘I suppose I should welcome controversy. It’s the lifeblood of cartoonists. We thrive on the controversial and the outlandish. But it’s one thing making a sardonic comment with a few lines and quite another responding in words. I feel inadequate already. Perhaps I’m here under false pretences.’

  Norbury looked at him steadily. ‘Even Dickens needed his Phiz until he’d established himself. The sketcher has his place in literature.’

  ‘Just as the writer has his contribution to art. Even Hogarth needed some trenchant words beneath his work to provide the full and vicious irony in his depiction of the Rake’s Progress.’ Fosdyke looked hard for a moment at Norbury, then visibly relaxed as he addressed the rest of the company. ‘I read all sorts of things – a real ragbag of books. A lot of the time I’m looking for ideas for cartoons. It’s pretty demanding, thinking of a theme for every day. I can draw things and make my point quite swiftly, once I’ve decided on the point I want to make.’

  Norbury was watching the cartoonist closely, as if he thought he would give something away about himself as he spoke. ‘Fascinating. I’m sure writers find the same thing. Even my own modest efforts would support that. Once I know where I’m going, I can proceed quite quickly. It’s deciding on my theme that gives me trouble – selecting my target, as I’m sure a man like you with a political message would put it.’

  Sharon Burgess had a lot of experience of anticipating and suppressing spats. She waved the bottle enticingly around her five companions and said, ‘That’s an interesting idea. We’re throwing up stimulating thoughts already, when strictly speaking we haven’t started yet as a book club. Perhaps it’s time for us to sit down and think a little about books.’

  Enid Frott spoke with a surprising edge. ‘Just when it was getting interesting, Sharon? You were always good at pouring oil on troubled waters.’ She glanced round at the surprised faces, wondering which of them knew the facts of her history with Mrs Burgess. ‘We’re all civilized people here, aren’t we? This isn’t a back-street pub. We can have our little differences and enjoy them, without coming to blows.’

  It was the third woman in the room who now spoke up when people were least expecting it. Jane Preston said, ‘I find any discussion of the creative process fascinating. I’ve already said how difficult I find it to produce anything original, how inhibiting I find what I have learned about the writings of others is to my own creative efforts. I’d love to hear whether other people in this group have my problems and if so how they go about solving them.’

  ‘It’s a very private process. I’m not sure I want to start analysing it publicly.’ Jamie Norris surprised himself by asserting this. He was emboldened by Jane’s presence, he thought. He was enormously grateful not only for her being here but for what she was saying; it was surely helping him to speak and make his contribution, where he would otherwise have stood awkward and silent.

  Perhaps Alfred Norbury was startled by this initiative in his protégé. He took a step towards Norris, looking for a moment as if he was about to put a hand upon his shoulder. Then he thought better of it and said, ‘This is captivating, but as I understand it we did not gather here to discuss our own muses and our own creative processes, riveting as that might be at a later date, when we all know each other much better.’ His smile flashed around his five companions. Jane wondered if she was being vain as she wondered whether or not it dwelt for a little longer upon her than the others. Whether she was right or not, she found this saturnine attention disturbing.

  Sharon Burgess said immediately, ‘Agreed,’ though she knew that nothing had been agreed. ‘Perhaps we should all sit down and address ourselves to the matter of books.’ She glanced at Jamie Norris’s too-revealing face. ‘Other people’s books.’

  She was acting as host in Enid Frott’s flat. The real host glanced at her, then forced a smile. ‘I’m sure that’s right. That’s the object of the exercise, after all. Let’s settle a couple of things and then get back to drinking and friendly argument, if that’s what we wish to do.’ She set the example by sitting down herself and waving a wide arm towards her sofa and the armchairs she had set alongside it. She watched her visitors acquiesce with varying degrees of reluctance and then said with a smile, ‘I’m sure Sharon has given our first choice of book some thought, as she has so many other matters connected with this initial meeting.’

  If Mrs Burgess detected a barb beneath the honeyed words, she gave no sign of it. She looked a little nervously round the expectant faces and said, ‘I’m in your hands. I thought we might start
with something in a genre which we all read.’

  Alfred Norbury smiled his dangerous smile at the company, then said, ‘Start on familiar ground, find our feet, and then perhaps move out into deeper waters. That sounds an excellent strategy, although I hope whatever writers we choose will avoid the string of clichés I’ve just used.’

  Jane Preston looked deliberately away from him and into the apprehensive face of Jamie Norris sitting beside him. ‘Crime fiction, perhaps? Everyone reads that, or has done at some time, according to what I read in a review the other day.’ She waited for a response, but did not receive any. ‘There are all sorts of crime novels, so we really would have quite a wide choice, if we chose to go that way.’

  Most of them looked at Alfred Norbury for a reaction. He did not dismiss the suggestion out of hand, as Jane had thought he might, but said instead, ‘The police procedural seems to be the most popular nowadays. You get the impression from the television versions that everything’s under control, whereas in my experience anarchy grows ever nearer to most of us. I carry a loaded pistol in my car as a protection against the attentions of the citizens of modern Britain in our splendid multi-cultural society.’ He looked round to assess the effects of his bombshell, but no one rose to the bait. Perhaps the ones here who had not met him before did not know whether to believe him or not.

  Norbury appeared satisfied with the mixture of surprise and shock his statement had created. He sat back on the couch and said, ‘You will all be pleased to hear that I propose to shut up now and leave the floor to others.’

  There was a pause before Jamie Norris said unexpectedly, ‘Historical fiction is very popular at the moment. And I believe that the quality of it is very good. I haven’t read much of it myself. Perhaps it would further my education if I did.’

  Enid Frott said, ‘I think that is an interesting suggestion. We can learn a lot from what happened in the past.’ Her eyes fixed automatically upon Sharon Burgess, then switched hastily away as her old adversary met her gaze.

  Dick Fosdyke was looking at Norbury. He said, ‘Should we go the whole hog and opt for history itself? We could read some of Pepys’ diary. I’ve always meant to do that and never got round to it. Or perhaps we should consider a biography of Pepys – there’s an excellent one by Claire Tomalin.’

  There was a lively discussion, more wine, and the last of the season’s mince pies, which Jane Preston had brought along and produced almost apologetically. They were on to the coffee by the time they agreed that their first book would be Jim Crace’s Harvest, shortlisted for the Man Booker prize and the subject of recent rave reviews.

  ‘I’ve never really understood what the Enclosure Acts did to the rural poor,’ said Enid Frott. ‘It’s high time I remedied my deficiencies.’

  ‘I’m sure you already know more than most of us,’ said Sharon Burgess loyally. ‘It will be interesting to have a literary treatment of history as well as a few facts.’

  ‘And Alfred says it isn’t overlong,’ said Jane Preston modestly. ‘I’ve always been much too slow a reader for someone with a busy life. It seems that almost every best-seller these days has to be a blockbuster; they take me far too long to read and don’t usually repay the effort.’

  This self-effacing contribution from the person in the room most highly qualified in literature cheered those who feared being eclipsed in this challenging company. The group broke up shortly afterwards, having agreed to meet next at the home of Sharon Burgess on the seventeenth of February. They left congratulating each other on the success of this first meeting and assuring themselves that it would surely be the first of many such convivial evenings.

  None of them realized at the time that they would not meet again.

  EIGHT

  ‘Low-key’, they said this operation had to be. The mysterious ‘they’ who made all the unpopular decisions. The intangible ‘they’, who couldn’t be identified and thus couldn’t be the recipients of your complaints.

  The only thing that was certain was that they were obscure bastards: so obscure that you weren’t even sure whether they were from the higher echelons of the police hierarchy or from somewhere beyond that and even more difficult to identify. MI5, perhaps. Or even the politicians who controlled – or miscontrolled – all policing and made the ultimate decisions on security.

  Low-key. Presumably that was why they put a mere detective sergeant in charge of this. An inspector or a superintendent might have drawn too much attention to it. But it was more likely that the higher ranks didn’t want any involvement in a cock-up. They’d prefer to be able to stand aside and say ‘I told you so’ when things went pear-shaped.

  Detective Sergeant Clyde Northcott didn’t consider a further possibility: that higher ranks might have opted out of this because of the physical danger involved. When you went into houses where the occupants possessed firearms, death or serious injury was always a possibility, and more so when those occupants were young and likely to panic. Northcott wasn’t stupid and he knew that. He was a big target; he didn’t carry a surplus ounce of fat, but he was six feet three and weighed 215 pounds. There was a lot of him for a bullet to hit. He was also very black: some people were even more likely to shoot first and ask questions afterwards when you were black.

  Northcott chose not to entertain the possibility of physical injury because he considered such risks natural for him. He had been a murder suspect himself before being recruited unexpectedly into the police service. He had never had a criminal conviction, but he had dealt in drugs and lived on the other side of the law for several years before he had seen the light and been offered unexpected redemption. This had come in the unlikely form of Detective Inspector ‘Percy’ Peach, who had cleared him from suspicion of murder, then enlisted him first into the police service and then two years later into his own CID team.

  Peach had recognized in the massive Northcott the ‘hard bastard’ he said he needed for his team. He had noted in the big black man the experience of that darker criminal world which would be useful. He had seen also a shrewd detective brain, which Peach chose in the main not to acknowledge but which he drew upon whenever it suited him. Northcott was the man who had replaced DS Lucy Blake as Percy’s chosen assistant when marriage and police protocol had determined that the curvaceous Lucy could no longer work closely with her husband. Neither Peach nor Clyde acknowledged the fact, but both of them knew that Northcott’s swift promotion and transfer to this role were huge compliments to his skills and standing.

  As he sat in the unmarked car outside the unremarkable terraced house, Northcott knew that he hadn’t been sent here by DCI Peach. Percy would have been by his side: he never shirked physical danger himself, though he was decently prudent in the precautions he took. Very likely Percy had protested about his bagman’s presence here today, and been overruled by that mysterious higher authority. The thought that Percy might have opposed his involvement in this made Clyde even less anxious to explore what might lie behind the innocent-looking front door of number thirty-four.

  The street lights were still on. It was just after half past seven; not much past dawn on this cold, grey January morning. If you caught your victims still in bed, you had the advantage over them; if they were naked and with a partner, so much the better. It wasn’t just dignity they lost; not many men found it easy to be aggressive when they were bollock naked. Early morning snatches were police favourites for all sorts of reasons. There was one major reason on this day. An early-morning snatch probably offered the best chance of safety to the men who were making it.

  The guidance in the station said they should have a woman officer with them, if at all possible, in case there were women to be searched in the house. Clyde had decided against that when he had selected his three. The rules said all sorts of things about gender equality, but young men still tended to protect a woman, to try to ensure her safety even at the expense of their own. Chivalry overrode police regulations, even in those who had scarcely heard the word. He’d gr
abbed the only Asian officer available to him: there still weren’t anything like enough of these in multi-racial Brunton.

  He glanced at the three plain-clothes constables in the car with him. This was probably their first security exercise. They weren’t so many years younger than him, but he felt immensely older and more experienced than them, and thus very much responsible for their welfare. He wanted them alert and prepared for any sort of surprise beyond that door. Yet he wanted them to think that this was a routine, everyday exercise for him, which it emphatically was not.

  He looked up and down the street, which at this hour was still full of cars. ‘You lads would be better employed checking tax disks.’ Relax them; let them think this was all likely to be an anti-climax. Yet you needed them to be poised and ready for action, as soon as they crossed this step. The responsibilities of rank did not come easily to Northcott. He risked his own skin without a moment’s hesitation, but looking out for the safety of others gave him all sorts of problems.

  He rapped at the scratched blue front door, rang the bell beside it, heard not a sound from within. Bloody daft procedure: you warned the buggers inside, lost all the advantages of surprise. He motioned to the burly man with the heavy metal door-crasher, who stepped forward and swung the heavy implement viciously at the wood beside the lock. Two crashes saw the wood splinter and the lock shatter. They were into the house immediately, ignoring the four curious faces in the street behind them, bursting noisily into the narrow, empty hallway with Northcott at their head.

  There was no one in any of the sparsely furnished downstairs rooms. But in the rear bedroom they found three men. Between twenty and thirty, Clyde estimated: he always found beards made it more difficult for him to be certain about ages. Asian – he wouldn’t speculate beyond that vague epithet. And hostile: their fierce eyes and the hatred in their narrow faces told him that he was the infidel.