Best British Crime 6 - [Anthology]

by Edited by Maxim Jakubowski

  “Great-Aunt Edna and my mother.”

  “They’re real Monty fans, I’ll say that for them,” Ember replied with an admiring chuckle.

  “Such out-and-out rubbish,” Articulate replied.

  “What?”

  “That idea—to put money into the club.”

  “I appreciated their affection for the Monty,” Ember replied.

  “Idiotic.”

  “Oh?”

  “Like throwing money down an old coal pit.”

  “Oh?”

  “You know, I know, and so does everyone else with any trace of a brain that the Monty is never going to change, Ralph. Not change as they meant, anyway. I suppose the police might shut it down one day because of your drugs link.”

  Ember thought about hitting this jerk. He could stand and lean forward quickly and reach him across the bar. Ralph had never heard him put so many words together before, and now, when he did grow verbal, it was to insult Ralph and the Monty. “I wouldn’t say your great-aunt Edna or your mother lacked brain, Articulate,” he replied.

  “The money has shoved them off-balance.”

  “The legacies?”

  “That’s it, the legacies. Yes, the legacies,” Articulate said. “As if they feel they have to compensate for something.”

  “Compensate for what—for receiving a legacy?”

  “That’s it, Ralph. For receiving a legacy.”

  “A sort of guilt?”

  “Yes, like guilt.”

  “Guilt because they and you have profited from a death? This does happen to legatees sometimes, I know. Guilt over where the money comes from.”

  “Yes, over where it comes from. So, to rid themselves of this shame, they want to find some noble project where they can put the lucre—and get a return. Some noble, mad project.”

  “I don’t see it like that,” Ember replied.

  “No, I shouldn’t think you do. Why I had to come tonight for a chinwag, on our own.”

  Ember found the Kressmann bottle and topped both of them up.

  “Look, you’re getting aggro, aren’t you, Ralph?”

  “Aggro?” Ember said, giving a real, puzzled smile.

  “You wouldn’t have stuck The Marriage of Heaven and Hell up there otherwise, would you?”

  “Much misunderstood,” Ember replied. “That baffle board is to—”

  “As I hear it, you’ve been on the end of very forceful invitations to take out a protection policy for the club, an invitation from Luke Apsley Beynon and his firm. That’s the buzz.”

  And, as so often, the buzz had things wonderfully correct. The shield might help against Luke and his cohort. The H & K automatics might help against Luke and his cohort. The increased security visits by Ralph to the Monty might help against Luke and his cohort. Or none of them might help against Luke and his cohort. “Luke is getting to fancy himself a bit, I gather,” Ember said with no tremor at all.

  “Obviously someone of your calibre, Ralph, is not going to cave in to protection threats from an apprentice lout like Luke.”

  “Hardly. That is, if there’d been any threats.”

  “You’ll turn down his invitations. And, that being so, there could be some grim events at the Monty to prove that you actually need the protection of Luke and his firm. Events such as gunfire or incendiarising or bad affrays and blood in the bar. Well, I don’t need to describe it. You know how club protection works.”

  Ralph said: “It’s kind of you to look in, Max, but I don’t really think someone like Luke Beynon could—”

  “Here’s the bargain, then, Ralph,” Articulate replied. “I’ll get rid of Beynon if you promise you won’t ever pick up on that offer from my mother and Great-Aunt Edna.” He became intense. “Listen, Ralph, all due respect to you and the Monty, but I’m not going to have my money squandered like that by two old dames suddenly gone ga-ga. You said you’d file their notion away for another consideration sometime. I want you to keep it filed away, or, even better, ditch it.”

  “Your money? It wouldn’t all be yours, would it? I thought there were three legacies.”

  “Yes, well, let’s not play about any longer, all right? My money. My earned money. Mine but ... Ralph, I’ve always let my mother and Great-Aunt Edna organise the big things in my life, you know.”

  “That so?”

  “Look at me, Ralph.”

  “Yes?”

  “I’ll tell you what you see, shall I?”

  “What I see is—”

  “You see a bloke of thirty-two in a suit that cost over two grand, physically sound, and suddenly very successful.”

  “Successful. You mean getting the legacy?”

  “Right, getting the legacy.”

  The description Articulate gave of himself was not bad, although it didn’t deal with the wide shoulders on a thin body and his longish, deadpan face, as if purposefully manufactured to defeat interrogation. He had a large but unmirthful mouth, skimpy fair eyebrows, and bleak blue eyes.

  “I respect Mum and Great-Aunt Edna, naturally. That will never alter. But I can’t be run by them anymore. I’m grown-up, Ralph.”

  The bank raid had transformed him. This was not just a matter of what Ralph thought of at first as “jauntiness.” That could come and go. Max had climbed a little late into maturity and would stay there. He could spiel. He fancied himself as a warrior now—a warrior who could still show gallant deference to his mother and great-auntie Edna, but who also knew that a true warrior’s main and perhaps only real role was to fight and kill. He’d had a makeover.

  Ember said: “There’s a phrase for this—’rites of passage.’”

  “Great. I could get fond of phrases.” Articulate put an arm across the bar, skirting the Kressmann bottle with its striking black label. “A handshake will do for us, I think, Ralph,” he said. It was clipped, matey, foursquare. “You keep turning down my mother’s and great-aunt Edna’s loony scheme for my funds and I see to Luke Apsley Beynon.”

  Ralph took his hand with wholehearted firmness. Sure. This agreement could only be a bonus. He would never have given Great-aunt Edna, Mrs. Misk, and Articulate the least financial footing in the Monty, anyway, and, yes, Luke Beynon was beginning to look more and more like severe peril.

  And, because Beynon looked more and more like severe peril, Ralph went again to the Monty during the afternoon next day to do his security checks. He was touring the Monty yard to satisfy himself no mysterious packages had been left against club doors when an unmarked Volvo drove in and parked. Assistant Chief Constable Desmond Iles and Detective Chief Superintendent Colin Harpur left the car and walked towards him, Iles looking as jolly as napalm. These two often arrived at the Monty, on the face of it to see that all licensing conditions were observed, but actually, in Ralph’s view, to terrorise the members and enjoy a few free drinks. “Hunting firebombs, Ralphy?” Iles said.

  Ember took them to the bar and mixed a gin and cider in a half-pint glass for Harpur and a port and lemonade for Iles, “the old whore’s quaff,” as he described it. Today, although it was only afternoon, the club had twenty or so members in, mostly at the bar or playing snooker and pool. Iles did his usual arrogant glare about, as if he couldn’t believe how some of these people, or any of them, could be out of jail.

  They sat at a table, Ember again on the armagnac. Harpur said: “I gather Articulate was here last night for quite a dialogue. Has he suddenly turned really articulate? He’s emerged somehow?”

  “I see such one-to-one conversations with long-time members as a very worthwhile and, indeed, pleasurable experience,” Ralph replied, “and an essential factor in one’s job as host.”

  “How true,” Iles replied.

  “Handshaking, also,” Harpur said.

  “We’re civilised, you know, Mr. Harpur. All the usual courtesies are practised at the Monty,” Ember replied. It always hurt him to think the club had members who watched things here and straight off reported to the police, for some measly fee,
most likely.

  “And then Articulate and his mother and great-aunt Edna in earlier,” Harpur said. He was big and thuggish-looking, some said like a fair-haired Rocky Marciano, the one-time heavyweight champion of the world. Alongside him, Iles looked dainty, but in fact lacked all daintiness.

  “This sounds like real activity,” Harpur said.

  “What does?” Ember said.

  “These visits,” Harpur said.

  “This is a club. People drop in,” Ember replied.

  Iles said: “We wondered, Colin and I, whether you could recall the gist of your talk with Articulate, or even with Articulate and his mother and great-aunt Edna.”

  “I talk to many members over any twenty-four hours, you know,” Ralph said.

  “They’re lucky to have you,” Iles said. “Everyone realises that. But don’t muck Col and me about, Ralph, there’s a chum. Just give us what Max said, what you said, what the women said, would you? Something agreed at the afternoon meeting and then Articulate comes in late to confirm? Or cancel?”

  “Casual conviviality, that’s all. You make it all sound very purposeful and businesslike, Mr. Iles,” Ralph said, “whereas—”

  “Yes, purposeful and businesslike,” Iles said. “That’s our impression.”

  “Your impression via a fink,” Ember said—”as through a grass darkly.”

  “Wow, Ralph!” Iles said.

  “It’s the later conversation that really interests us,” Harpur said.

  “Generalities, I should think,” Ember said. He did a frown to indicate he meant to try to help them and recollect. “Weather. Holidays. Cricket. The usual small talk. We try to avoid politics—too controversial. I bump into so many people in the club and have a few unimportant yet, I trust, comradely words. These little pow-wows seem to merge into one pleasant and not very significant encounter. I don’t know whether Max would recall things better than I. It might be in your interests to talk to him, if you feel something significant might have come up.”

  “The thing about Articulate is, he’s dead,” Iles replied.

  “My God,” Ralph said. The shock was real.

  “Which is why what he talked about with you might be to the point,” Harpur said.

  “Generalities,” Ralph said.

  “Shot,” Harpur replied.

  “My God,” Ralph said.

  “Our impression is that he meant to bop Luke Apsley Beynon, but got bopped himself,” Harpur said.

  “As most of us would have forecast,” Iles said. “I mean, was Articulate Max anywhere near capable as executioner?”

  “The whisper’s around, isn’t it, that he was in on the I.C.D.S. robbery with some sort of stooge function?” Harpur said. “Did that make him feel suddenly big and mature and competent—and free up his voice box?”

  “Poor deluded prat,” Iles said. “He gave himself a mission on your behalf? Luke Apsley Beynon’s been breathing untender words to you, hasn’t he, Ralph? This is our information.”

  “Luke Beynon?” Ember replied.

  “Did Articulate, with his new gloss, offer to knock him over for you?” Iles said. “Suddenly he thinks he’s one of Nature’s hit men? Were you and he talking some kind of deal? You’ll see why we’re concerned about his appearances here, especially the second one, without his minders, the women. Did he need to say something they shouldn’t hear?”

  “Deal?” Ember said.

  “Quid pro quoism of some sort,” Iles said.

  “Generalities,” Ralph replied.

  “We’re charging Luke,” Harpur said. “He’ll go down. His firm will break up without him.”

  “So you don’t come out of this at all too badly, Ralph, do you?” Iles said. “You won’t have to cower behind the collage anymore.”

  Ember replenished their drinks and took more armagnac himself. “I think about his mother and great-aunt Edna,” he said.

  “Those two are provided for, we believe,” Iles said.

  “I mean their grief,” Ralph said.

  “You were always one for tenderness to prized Monty members, Ralphy,” Iles replied.

  <>

  * * * *

  TRAIN, NIGHT

  Nicholas Royle

  Alex, I never said it was you. I never said the man on the Tube was you. I said he looked like you. So much like you it was like we were back together again. And since I couldn’t be with you any more, I could be with this version of you. That’s what I was saying. That’s what I said.

  I never said he was you. I made it perfectly clear that he couldn’t be you and that I understood that. His head was shaved. You would never do that. You’re too proud of your hair. You wouldn’t deny yourself the pleasure of wearing it long. He was also younger, ten, maybe fifteen years younger. But his bone structure was the same, his eyes were identical. You know what, I’m coming round to the idea that he was you, after all. Nor was it on the Central line that I saw him. It was the Hammersmith & City line. That’s what I said and that’s what it was. I got on at Shepherd’s Bush, you got that bit right. I got on at Shepherd’s Bush and he was already on, having boarded at Hammersmith or Goldhawk Road. There he was, in my carriage, and there was a seat right opposite him, so I took it. Because it was the Hammersmith & City line, I saw him in natural light, and natural light leaves no room for doubt. The Central line is underground at Shepherd’s Bush and while I’ll admit the Central line does have a peculiarly attractive light, it’s not the same. I might not have been so certain. Plus, if it had been the Central line, how would I have followed him off the train at King’s Cross?

  I didn’t say I followed him into an abandoned building either. I followed him into an art gallery, that place on Wharf Road, that big one with the exposed brick walls. I said it looked like an abandoned building. Just as the man on the train looked like you. Geddit?

  Anyway, I found out who he is. OK? Maybe this will make you happy, because it should demonstrate to you once and for all that I don’t think he’s you. I know he’s someone else. He’s an actor. I know because I saw him in something on TV. I was watching this crime drama, alone in the flat, because, you know - I live alone these days, with my unwashed towels and chipped cereal bowls dusted white with crushed paracetamol. That’s another thing about your email. You contradict yourself. One minute you say I walked out on you, then you’re saying you left me. Make your mind up. You can’t have it both ways. So I’m watching this thing. It was ITV but it was quite good. You wouldn’t have given it a chance, of course. That was how I knew you wouldn’t be watching it, because it was on ITV. I presume you don’t watch ITV with Fareda, either. I presume you’re as judgmental as you ever were. See, I don’t mind writing her name, now I know what it is. I don’t bear her any ill will. As a matter of fact I feel sorry for her. Are you going to do to her what you did to me? Poor girl.

  There he was, in the background in one scene. Little more than an extra but he did have a line of dialogue. It was him, I was certain of it, and he looked as much like you on TV as he had on the train. His name was in the credits. Let’s call him Anthony.

  I discovered something else. That film you showed me shortly after we first started seeing each other - Un soir, un train - that black and white Belgian film from the 1960s. You said I looked like Anouk Aimee. Looking back, maybe you wanted me to infer that you looked like Yves Montand. I watched it again the other day. As you know, when I say the other day, I generally mean the other week. You used to find this charming. The way the film pans out is a bit like what happened to us. That village where Mathias and his two companions end up, where they can’t understand a word the villagers are saying, that’s a bit like us at the end. It was like we were speaking different languages, and not just different languages from the same group, like two romance languages, but two completely different languages from different origins entirely. Arabic and Hungarian, Inuit and Welsh. Although, of course, only one of us had changed the language they were speaking.

  It’s scar
y, a bit creepy, that film. Maybe you shouldn’t give a copy to Fareda. Maybe you shouldn’t take her dancing, either. That’s when I fell in love with you, you know. When we were dancing at that party in Shepherd’s Bush and every five minutes a train went by on the elevated line above the market. You grabbed me and made me watch as one went past.

  “Look at them watching us,” you shouted into my ear.

  “They think we look good together.”

  I watched the figures silhouetted by the yellowish light inside the carriage, while you held me around the waist.

  How I wish now I could have been one of those passengers inside the train looking out at the people dancing. You would have been no more than a frame-grab to me and I would have got off at Hammersmith and carried on with my life. A different life.