“I can’t believe that, Martin.”
“Never mind what you believe,” he said irritably. “I need to get over there. Help me to dress, Rosie. This is a crisis.”
“Then ring Peter. Let him take charge. Learn to delegate.”
“It’s my responsibility. Drive me to the clubhouse.”
“But you haven’t even shaved yet.”
“Who cares?”
“At least finish your breakfast.”
“No,” he said, throwing back the bedsheets. “Food can wait. I have to be there before Neil Woodville catches wind of this. Hurry up, Rosie. There’s no time to waste.”
Sunday afternoon found a hastily assembled work party clearing up the mess at the clubhouse. The police had come, but the intruder had left no visible clues for them. Rosie Hewlett had joined the others in removing the debris. Her husband sat alone before the shattered honors board on which the names of the club captains for the past fifty years were listed, along with the various trophies won by Shelton RFC. Hewlett was torn between tears and impotent rage.
To his credit, Neil Woodville had rolled up his sleeves and taken his turn with a mop. When the bar was cleaned, and the worst of the stink had fled through the open windows, Woodville took Peter Rayment aside.
“This proves that it was Doug,” he insisted.
“That’s absurd. It was Doug who raised the alarm.”
“Yes, but what brought him here in the first place?”
“Instinct,” said Rayment. “Pure instinct. He had a strange feeling that something was amiss and he drove over here.”
“Well, I think that he wrecked the place when he arrived.”
“No!”
“It all goes back to that wage rise we turned down.”
“This isn’t to do with money, Neil. Look at the facts. The clubhouse has been attacked twice now but nothing at all has been stolen. There’s hundreds of pounds’ worth of spirits and liqueurs here, not to mention all the silver cups we’ve won over the years. If Doug was the culprit,” argued Rayment, “don’t you think he’d have made off with a tidy haul? And why would any man who’d committed a crime then report it to the police?”
“That was a cunning ploy.”
“No, this was done by someone from Crowford.”
“Or by someone from Crowford who paid Doug Lomas.”
“Don’t be stupid.”
“It’s a possibility. I mentioned it on the quiet to the coppers.”
“No wonder they were giving our barman such a grilling.”
“Security cameras,” said Woodville solemnly. “That’s what we should have installed. An isolated clubhouse like this needs protection. First thing tomorrow, I’m going to contact a security firm.”
“That’s a committee decision.”
“This is too important to be left to the committee.”
“Then let Martin take over,” said Rayment. “He’s the chairman.”
Woodville was determined. “I’m going over his head,” he said. “It’s the only way to get anything done around here. Wait for Martin to take action and we could wait forever. This club needs a chairman with real initiative — not a bloody cripple trying to relive his playing days from a wheelchair.”
In spite of the protests of Martin Hewlett, closed-circuit cameras were installed almost immediately. Since he insisted on paying for them, Neil Woodville was the first person to see them in operation. He was certain that they would act as a deterrent and, for a couple of weeks, they seemed to do just that. There were no further incidents. Shelton RFC then won the cup in a thrilling final that was in the balance until the very last minute. It was an occasion for a riotous party in the clubhouse that went on into the small hours. Doug Lomas had a lot of clearing up to do afterwards. The last thing he did before he locked up was to switch on the burglar alarm and the cameras.
The night wore on. It was almost dawn when a car pulled up in the lane at the rear of the clubhouse. A hooded figure got out and moved furtively across the field. Taking care to approach the building in a blind spot between two cameras, the intruder used a key to open the door and stepped quickly inside. The security system was switched off at once. The clubhouse was now at the mercy of its nocturnal visitor yet again. It was time to inflict some real damage.
The intruder had brought some rags that had been soaked in paraffin. Shelton RFC would not merely lose its supply of draught beer this time. Its clubhouse would go up in smoke. Before a match could be struck, however, the lights suddenly went on and Doug Lomas came charging into the bar to jump on the arsonist. They fell to the floor and rolled over. The barman was just about to throw a first punch when he realized whom he had caught.
“Mrs. Hewlett!” he cried. “What are you doing here?”
Martin Hewlett was roused early that morning. After a night of steady drinking, he usually slept for twelve hours, but his wife shook him awake. He was surprised to see Doug Lomas standing at the foot of his bed.
“Don’t tell me there’s been more trouble!” moaned Hewlett.
Lomas shifted his feet uneasily. “Your wife will explain.”
“Explain what?”
She took a deep breath and launched into her story. Hewlett was so shocked at what he heard that he felt as if he were being hit by the fatal crash tackle all over again. At the moment of impact, his whole body went numb. There was a mist before his eyes. The sense of panic and helplessness returned.
“Can this be true?” he gasped.
“I hate the game, Martin,” she confessed. “It gave me a lot at one time but it took away far more. It cost me my husband, my lover, my best friend, my chances of ever having that child we wanted.”
“Maybe I shouldn’t hear all this,” said Lomas, embarrassed.
“No, no,” she insisted. “You’ve earned the right. You stopped me from doing something I’d have been ashamed of for the rest of my life.” She bit her lip. “I was desperate, Martin. I married this wonderful man, then he disappeared in a split second one afternoon on a rugby field. Instead of being a wife, I’m nothing but an unpaid carer, feeding you, dressing and undressing you, seeing to your needs, taking you here and there, stage-managing your public appearances. And I don’t mind doing any of that,” she went on with passion, “because you’re my husband and I love you. But I simply couldn’t go on putting this helpless drunk to bed every time you went to the clubhouse. I couldn’t go on hearing the name of Shelton Rugby Football Club, morning, noon, and night. I just couldn’t take any more. It was killing me.”
Hewlett was dazed. “Was I such a monster?”
“It’s not your fault, Martin. I can see that. It was the game itself. I felt that I just had to get you away from it somehow. It’s ruining what we have of a life together. Our whole marriage has been crash-tackled.” She gave a wan smile. “At least I got what I wanted. You’ll have to resign now. Shelton RFC can’t have a chairman whose wife is serving a prison sentence.”
“That’s not going to happen,” said Lomas firmly.
“It must, Doug. I deserve my punishment.”
“They can’t prosecute without a witness, and there’s no way you’ll get me into court again. I’ve been on the wrong side of the law, yet your husband gave me a second chance. I appreciate that. One good turn deserves another. Nobody need know what happened at the clubhouse tonight,” he went on, looking Rosie in the eye. “Especially Mr. Woodville. If he knew that I’d spent the night there, he’d probably sue me for trespass. My only concern is that the place is still standing and I still have a job as barman.”
“You deserve a medal for what you did, Doug,” said Hewlett.
“Yes,” agreed Rosie. “Thank God you were there.”
“Let’s keep the police out of this,” advised Lomas. “This is between the two of you — nobody else.” He moved to the door. “Goodbye.”
They stared at each other in silence, not even hearing the front door open and shut. Rosie was contrite, but it was her husband who fe
lt most at fault. His obsession with the club had blinded him to the strain it placed on Rosie. His behavior had driven a law-abiding wife to commit a succession of crimes. It was a cry for help that had to be answered.
Reaching for the telephone, he dialed a number and waited.
“Simon?” he said as he heard the familiar voice of Simon Mifflin. “Good morning. Martin here. How would you like to be the next chairman of Shelton RFC?… No, no, don’t argue. I’m stepping down at the end of the season and want you to take over… I’m sure that a large majority will vote you in. There’s just one proviso, if you want my backing… Doug Lomas must stay on as barman. He’s been a real hero for us. At the next committee meeting, I’ll make sure that we increase his wages… And by the way, the insurance company has been bellyaching about our claims so — to hell with them! I’ll foot the bill for any damage we incurred at the clubhouse. It’s my parting shot as chairman… What’s that?… I’ll tell you when I see you, Simon. Cheerio.” Hewlett put the receiver down. “He was asking why I decided to retire.”
“What are you going to tell him?” she asked softly.
“The truth, love. You talked me into it.”
“I’m so sorry, Martin. I was at the end of my tether.”
“Not anymore. You’ll take precedence from now on, Rosie, and who am I to complain? When you’re confined to a wheelchair,” he said with a ripe chuckle, “you have to let your wife push you around.”
Makeover
by Bill James
Copyright © 2007 by Bill James
Art by Allen Davis
Shortlisted in 2006 for the U.K.’s most prestigious award for new crime fiction, the Duncan Lawrie Dagger, for Wolves of Memory (first U.S. publication W.W. Norton 6/06), Bill James is one of the most innovative writers in the genre. He also has a new nonseries novel out in the U.S. See Letters from Carthage (Severn House).
❖
Of course, the murmur went around the Monty Club in Shield Terrace more or less immediately and — also, of course — reached its owner, Ralph Ember. Versions did vary in detail, but all said a club member, Cordell Maximillian Misk, known mostly as Articulate Max, somehow wangled himself into the team who did the copycat bank raid on International Corporate Diverse Securities and came away with a very delightful individual share in untraceables. So when Articulate turned up with his mother and great-aunt Edna at the club, asking to see Ralph personally, he had an idea what they wanted, even before any conversation began. Ralph was in his upstairs office at the time testing the mechanisms of a couple of Heckler & Koch automatics. A barman called on the intercom to tell Ember they would like a conference.
It was the press, not Ember, who gave the International Corporate Diverse Securities raid this “copycat” title, because it seemed so accurately modelled on that huge suction job done at the Northern Bank in Belfast, maybe by the IRA, in December 2004. Although the takings from I.C.D.S. in Kelita Street, Holborn, London, were not up to the Belfast haul of (pounds)26 million, the methodology looked similar: basically, get among the bank executives’ families and keep them hostage until the managers opened up the vaults and let the money go. Ralph thought the idea might have come from an American novel and film, The Friends of Eddie Coyle.
The I.C.D.S. product, as Ralph heard it, varied from (pounds)21 million to (pounds)12 million. Even the larger amount did fall short of Belfast, but both these lesser figures were clearly satisfactory millions, all the same, and so were the eight between — that is, 13, 14, 15, 16, 17, 18, 19, and 20. Ralph and most other people familiar with Misk would have considered this sortie beyond his class, even in a dogsbody role. Some accounts said he’d been lookout, others that he ran the phone link at one of the hostage homes. But the rumours putting him on the operation in some sort of job persisted. And as soon as Ralph came down to meet the three, he did notice a new jauntiness in Articulate. That was how Ralph would describe it, “jauntiness.” In his view, jauntiness in an established Monty member such as Max often meant a whack of recently obtained safe loot, “safe” indicating two factors: (a) it had been lifted from someone’s safe, for example a Holborn, London, bank’s, and (b) the notes were old and, therefore, reasonably safe to spend.
Usually, Ralph saw in Articulate the standard niggly, comical, defeated self-obsession of a small-time crook who believed unwaveringly that next week he’d be big-time, and who’d believed unwaveringly for an age he’d be big-time next week, these next weeks having slipped long ago into the past. Max’s nickname came the satirical way some blubber lump weighing three hundred pounds might be called “Slim.” More than any other quality, Articulate lacked articulateness, so, joke of jokes, label him with it. People mocked his taste for sullen silence. And, until now, in Ember’s opinion, Misk had been the feeble sort who put up with mockery, possibly even expected it, not someone formidable and esteemed enough to get asked on to an enterprise like the I.C.D.S, all expenses paid, retrospectively.
One major point about Ralph Ember was he wanted to hoist the Monty to a much higher social level very soon, and people like Articulate and his relations would obviously be the first to get permanently kicked out. Ralph hoped to polish up the Monty to something like the prestige glow of big London clubs such as the Athenaeum or the Garrick, with their memberships of powerful and distinguished people — bishops, editors, high civil servants, TV faces, company chairmen. Articulate did not really suit. In fact, most of the present Monty membership did not really suit. Ralph would have bet the Athenaeum rarely staged celebration parties for jail releases, turf-war victories, suspended sentences, parole and bail successes. These happened regularly at his club.
Just the same, while Articulate and folk like him remained on the Monty’s books, Ralph regarded it as a prime duty to treat them with all politeness and decency and, yes, friendliness, as if they truly counted for something. Membership of the Monty was membership of the Monty and entailed absolute recognition from its proprietor. Articulate and the two women called in the afternoon, when the club was quiet, so he could allow them some of his time. Ralph came to the Monty at these off-peak periods more often than previously, because he liked to do a thorough, undisturbed daily check on club security. Ralph naturally had enemies, and lately they had begun to look and sound a few troublesome degrees more focused. Anyone who collected (pounds)600,000 a year untaxed from drugs commerce, besides profits from the Monty and some entrepreneurial commissions, was sure to have envious enemies, well-focused envious enemies. Hence the H & k’s. Hence, also, the shield fixed on one of the internal pillars and intended to give Ralph protection from gunfire when he sat behind the bar at a little shelf-desk checking on stock and sales. He’d had the shield covered with a collage of illustrations from The Marriage of Heaven and Hell, a work by the poet William Blake, so that it would look like part of the décor and, in fact, add some class. But it was thick steel. In Shield Terrace he needed a shield. For instance, a lad called Luke Apsley Beynon had begun to get very bothersome. Something terminal might need to be done there before too long.
Mrs. Misk said as soon as Ralph joined them in the bar now: “Considerable legacies have recently come to us — to Edna, Max, and me — from my side of the family, Ralph.”
“Always I’m confused in such cases about whether to offer congratulations or commiserations, since a legacy clearly implies a death, perhaps of a greatly loved one,” Ember replied. He gave this ample solemnity, but not too much, in case the legacies mattered more to them than the loved one, who might have been hardly loved at all, just loaded. That is, supposing there had been a loved one to confer the legacies, and not simply the emptied Holborn bank. “I reconcile such opposites by thinking that the departed, although much missed, would wish his/her bequests to affect positively the future lives of those so favoured. This would be his/her motive, surely, in selecting them as beneficiaries.” Before coming down from the office, Ralph had put the guns away and washed the cordite smell from his hands. These H & k’s were necessary becaus
e of people like Beynon, but Ember hated any association of firearms with the club. Almost certainly no Athenaeum member carried a piece on the premises, unless, possibly, the head of MI5 belonged.
Articulate, his mother, and great-aunt would probably want to use Ralph and some of Ralph’s connections to launder Misk’s gains, now charmingly fictionalised as three legacies. Ralph could increase the Monty booze and cigarette orders, using their money to cover the additions. They would then resell the goods to clubs, pubs, off-licences. Plainly, they’d take an account-book loss, because Ralph required a commission, and the people they sold to would want good profit possibilities. But that was the standard way the market worked for difficult money, even untraceables. Also, as the currency for such trading had been stolen, it became crazy to speak of a loss. This amounted to a loss on treasure Articulate should never have had. Crucially, the wealth must not be spent in a style that drew attention or people would start asking how he and his family grew so rich so fast. Such people might be police people, such as Iles or Harpur. Dangerous. Or they might be villain people who’d decide that if Articulate had a lot they’d get some of it, at least some of it. Dangerous.
But drink and tobacco rated only as marginal elements in this type of business plan. Where there was real, lavish money, the lucky holders might, for instance, think about investing in properties, maybe for occupying themselves, or for renting out, or because, even in tricky economic times, most buildings kept their value or moved up. However, if Articulate and his mother and great-aunt Edna approached a normal estate agent and tried to buy four deluxe, five-bed, heated-pool, Doric-pillared, golf-village houses in the Algarve, Portugal, at 750,000 euros each, offering payment in cash, there would be some surprised, sharp intakes of professional breath and, afterwards, some sharp outgoings of professional breath in gossip about these potential customers who could cough approaching two million pounds sterling in suitcased notes. Potential customers might be as far as it went. Many — most? — normal estate agents would refuse to handle that kind of deal, despite longing for it and their cut, because they’d fear the wealth came from where it did come from, a bust, and that the culprits might one day be identified and their spending projects identified also. These potential customers could make them potential accessories, and possibly destroy the firm’s reputation as upholders of that venerable, wise, holy code of behaviour laid down for estate agents.
Ellery Queen’s Mystery Magazine. Vol. 129, Nos. 3 & 4. Whole Nos. 787 & 788, March/April 2007 Page 32