Pix (Volume Book 24) (Harpur & Iles Mysteries)

by Bill James

  ‘No. You gave me a testimonial, Jack. The chauffeur will accept it, I’m certain. He’ll see that Mansel relies on your total trustworthiness in the art game and Eldon will deduce from this that you are credible, impeccable, all through. Which is, of course, correct.’

  ‘Oh, I couldn’t let Shale buy forgeries for his afflicted son and daughter, could I?’ Because of the lack of light it was hard to be sure, but Harpur thought Jack made a movement with one hand so that his knuckles brushed the medal ribbons. It would be meant to signify that someone with that kind of glorious record would never pass off dud daubs on kids.

  Chapter Nine

  One of the things about Ralph Ember was he could never be certain when a woman came to see him, apparently on business matters, whether she’d really come for another reason – to be blunt, an appetite reason. Generally, he did not mind women noticing his similarity to the young Charlton Heston, but, occasionally, this kind of confusion might result. He felt such uncertainties now with Meryl Goss. She arrived alone today, not with the Register reporter, and, obviously, that possibly indicated her scheme. When those two called at Low Pastures during the kindly dinner given for Manse and Sybil, Goss actually mentioned the Heston resemblance and dwelt on it with a degree of rapture, though Margaret had been present and listening. Ralph knew from other encounters that his looks would provoke women into such brazenness and compulsive hunger. At times, Ralph unquestionably felt his beauty a drawback, though there could also be pluses.

  Also unquestionably, this piece, Goss, had quite a few pluses herself – a neat, lively front frame, worldly arse, teeth very white and not too big, smooth neck. The spiked hair nauseated him – Ralph used to speak of the style as ‘the new barberism’, hoping folk would get the pun – but at least the hair seemed her natural fair colour. And, on top of this very inviting appearance, she would probably be grateful for affection now her boyfriend seemed eternally gone. Ralph did not object to giving some women consolation if they had the body and face and were preferably not over thirty-five. He thought Meryl to be about thirty-two, a useful age, when women could still act young but also had the experience to see what a trophy Ralph Ember might be.

  Today, she came not to Low Pastures but to the Monty. It was just after 10 a.m., and normally he wouldn’t have been there. The staff reported at 11.30, to clear up from the night before and prepare for opening at noon. Ralph had arrived early to make an uninterrupted, unobserved, unhurried survey of the possible hazards to himself, as described by Hilaire Wilfrid Chandor recently when discussing the high shield. Although Ralph recognized that most of what Chandor said were gross, mouthy threats, he also recognized they were workable gross, mouthy threats. For long spells he contemplated something pre-emptive against Chandor – blast him first. But perhaps the threats had been meant to push him that way and into a trap. He still had cleansing elimination for him in mind, though.

  As a less risky notion, he wondered whether the shelf-desk behind the bar where he often sat might have a capsule of bullet-proof glass around it, so he could watch club activities and remain totally, 360 degrees, sheltered. This should be easy to fix and totally effective. The glass must be guaranteed big impact-proof because, featured in a transparent shell like that, he would be declaring himself prey. But such glass, he knew, did exist.

  Yet Ralph disliked this notion of a special cabin. He saw it as a cave in to, to long-term panic. He knew that some people already called him Panicking Ralph or even – disgraceful, this – Panicking Ralphy. He would acknowledge that sometimes, under abnormal stress, a panic could take over, virtually disabling him, mind and body. Ember almost always fought it with maximum force and often achieved a kind of victory – that is, the panic did not last more than, say, seven or eight minutes and never reached full, devastating intensity. The point was, if the panic did reach full intensity, Ralph would probably be unable to lift an arm to look at his watch and time the seizure. And even if he could bring his watch into view, he would certainly be incapable of seeing the figures and working out duration, because his eyes and brain stopped functioning in an authentic, uncurtailed, bowel-deep, Ralph-type panic. So if, during an attack, Ralph could gauge its length, he would regard this as en route to a triumph, meaning he still clearly had basic limb control and sight.

  But, if he installed a protective pod for himself at the Monty, members might conclude he was into a non-stop, grave, continuous breakdown, and would regard the need to insulate himself as symptom of pathetic, permanent collapse. Above all, though, Ralph considered this retreat into sealed-off safety as entirely out of tune with his project for soon giving the Monty a prime social and intellectual reputation. The metal plate might not be wholly effective as protection, but it did have a discernible quality as distinguished decor, because of the tasteful pix from William Blake’s unique work. This suited the new profile Ralph sought, or must soon be seeking, for the club. A glass cockpit to preserve him could not bring anything of that aesthetic sort to the Monty. It would be merely an ugly, functional life-saver.

  Ralph felt more or less certain that none of the Athenaeum’s controlling board felt it necessary to cower away from members inside a bullet-proof carapace. True, Ralph despised the Monty membership pretty well en bloc, but thought that as long as they were members he had that continuing obligation to move among them with greetings and chummy conversation, not isolate himself in a turret, as if he considered them essentially different and lower and to be shunned. He did consider them essentially different and lower and to be shunned, but would think it inhumane and unstrategic to proclaim this yet.

  Impasse, really. He needed a good barrier but disliked the means of creating it. As a matter of fact, the deadlock in his mind now actually began to produce one of his panics and when somebody knocked hard on the Monty main door he felt this funk start to colonize him absolutely at the usual merciless canter. The Monty did take some deliveries in the morning, but not via this door. No, they came to a side entrance in the yard, and only after 11.30 when someone would be here to accept them. Ralph disliked the coincidence that on one of the very rare days he was in the club alone and out of hours, this caller seemed to know. Had he been watched?

  He felt the harbinger, generous sweat across the back of his shoulders, and those sudden difficulties in breathing that always signalled a jumbo panic. But, just the same, when he decided to try to walk to the door and use its security spy-hole to see who the hell might have trailed him here, he found his legs would do the job without any serious wobble and, obviously, without total paralysis. The fact that he could decide anything also heartened him. His mind managed sequence. He was not lost yet. He did his anti-panic breathing routine, emptying his lungs as thoroughly as he could and then pulling in a total refill, but doing that slowly and under major control, a stupendous example to anyone who suffered this kind of appalling upset.

  Seeing Meryl Goss about to bang again at the door with her fist, he felt the panic really go fast into retreat – nearly as fast as it had begun to overwhelm him – and when he opened up he had a wholly serviceable smile on and easily enough breath to say intelligibly, ‘Here’s a surprise, Meryl, if I may call you that. Can I do anything for you?’ He didn’t let the smile get too much, knowing that some people thought he looked like a silly-ass-style TV comedian years ago called ‘Cardew the Cad’, acting a schoolboy twit, and not Chuck Heston at all. Ralph realized the gap between the absurd and the grand could be small and vigilance was crucial.

  ‘I took a chance,’ she said.

  ‘Well, yes. But, anyway, here I am. Come in, do.’ Ralph stood back for her, giving plenty of space. He knew it would be an error to rush things. This was a woman in pursuit of him, not the opposite. He would certainly be civil and genial, yet measured. ‘I can do you coffee, or there’s a drink, of course. The bar’s at your disposal.’

  ‘Coffee.’

  He went back behind the bar and got the percolator going. Now, for instance, away from his shelf-desk, he
would be in an area where the shield did nothing for him. But, then, consider, he would have had to step outside his glass fortress to make coffee, so that defence would be equally useless. She said: ‘I’ve been inquiring around.’

  ‘Well, yes, I expect so. Very much a quest, as I understand it. All of us at Low Pastures were sorry we couldn’t help. And we admired your tenacity.’

  ‘I’ve come to recognize I’m not going to find Graham alive.’ She seemed to want to make it sound matter-of-fact, untragic.

  ‘Oh, that’s terribly bad and sad. What’s pushed you to this?’

  ‘Time. And a feeling I have about Chandor.’

  ‘What feeling?’ he said.

  ‘That he knows.’

  ‘Knows about your partner?’

  ‘Knows what happened to him – because he saw to it himself or ordered it.’

  He poured the coffees. It irritated, hurt, Ralph that she had obviously come here, not because she realized he looked like the young Charlton Heston, and might be interesting to get private with on his own premises, but to discuss some aspect of her fucking obsessional search for another man altogether. Ralph felt a profound insult in this attitude. He’d said he and the others thought well of her tenacity, because that had to be said as politeness. It did not mean she should think of nothing else, nobody else, for God’s sake. That was a kind of self-indulgence, the kind sure to get up his nose.

  ‘Property, building work, is a handy front, isn’t it?’ she said. ‘Handy in all kinds of ways. One is that a body can be easily entombed and a semi put over it.’

  ‘Oh, that’s a frightful notion,’ Ember said. But he had thought of it a long while ago.

  ‘Look, Ralph, I’ve talked to a lot of people and picked up plenty of rumour and hints.’

  He regarded it as all right for her to use his first name, because he’d used hers. ‘As long as you realize that’s what they are, rumours and hints, if I may say.’

  ‘And now I begin to get the picture,’ she replied.

  ‘Which picture?’

  ‘You and that character in the comical suit and mauve shirt, Mansel Shale, dominate the drugs scene here, and a very favourable scene it is, because Assistant Chief Desmond Iles seems to see peace on the streets as his chief objective. He doesn’t give you trouble, as long as you can guarantee such peace on the streets – which you do, between you. Or have to date. My guess is Chandor heard of this sweet arrangement and came here wanting a very profitable slice of it, property speculation as his cover.’

  Ralph had a considerable chuckle and wished he’d gone for an armagnac not coffee so as to take on this sharp, relentless cow better. ‘There are so many vast and inaccurate assumptions in what you say, Meryl, that I –’

  ‘Graham brought home a real whack of money, you know, in London,’ she replied.

  ‘Property, even when supposedly in the doldrums, still does produce.’

  ‘I didn’t know and didn’t ask where it really came from, but I guessed it wasn’t from normal, straight property dealing, or possibly not from property dealing at all.’

  Ralph saw now why that weird word ‘worldly’ to describe her arse had come to him. She was worldly, a lot more than appeared at first. He’d sometimes thought you could tell a bit about a woman’s character from her behind, in the same way as the shape of the skull could be a giveaway. Meryl Goss had almost a moll streak that she’d concealed so damn well until this morning.

  The attempt at matter-of-factness, even of offhandedness, came back. She gave him some stare. He was facing her across the bar, the coffee cups between them. ‘I’m not going to find Graham alive, and something should be done about it,’ she said.

  ‘Well, the police –’

  ‘The police won’t act. I had two daughters of Harpur with me off and on, and from them and him I gather a missing adult is that, only that – a missing adult, entitled to be missing and of no real concern to the authorities unless the body is found, which it might never be. The reporter and I even told the girls we knew Chandor had us stalked so that, if they passed this on to their father, he’d bear down on him. It hasn’t worked.’

  ‘You shouldn’t be certain of this. Harpur is –’

  ‘I didn’t hear of Chandor in London, but I suppose he and Graham had a grey area business connection. No charges, no convictions, for either, presumably. Harpur and Iles would have discovered this on the computer, wouldn’t they? So, maybe another reason they don’t act.’

  ‘Things are not clear and –’

  ‘Of course, I did meet some friends and business mates of Graham when we were in London, of a certain type, you know,’ she said.

  ‘No, which type?’

  ‘Oh, crooked. Total unreconstructed villains. You can often read it, can’t you?’

  ‘Can you?’ he said. Was her stare intended to ‘read’ him? But she didn’t need to, did she? Hadn’t she just done an accurate account of the drugs game in this city, his game?

  ‘Oh, yes,’ she said. ‘It’s in my mind to say to one of them that Graham has been done by Chandor and there’s £15K on offer to knock him over. Knock anyone else around him over as well, if necessary, but make sure and finish him. Listen, Ralph, I can’t let the sod live after this, can I? The bank account is joint, Graham’s and mine. I insisted. I’m very solvent. I can buy help.’

  Ember chuckled again in a calm fashion, a quizzical fashion. ‘You’re saying you know hit men?’ he asked.

  She wrinkled her nose. ‘Fair enough. No, I’m not sure I do know hit men, not absolute, experienced pros. That’s why I’m here this morning, isn’t it?’

  ‘It is?’

  ‘I know shady folk who were Graham’s friends and might – might – want to do something to even things out for him and for me. But, you’re right, they’re probably not proven, accomplished contractors. That’s a select and confidential calling, isn’t it? And so, yes, I hesitate over asking any of them, in case they fuck up, or take the money and don’t do it but bugger off on holiday to Mexico, or start blabbing about it, and I’m in bother.’

  Ralph thought he began to cotton the astonishing, contemptuous, outrageously unsexual purpose of this morning visit.

  ‘A lot of the talk I’ve listened to lately here is appraisal talk, Ralph.’

  ‘Appraisal of what?’

  ‘Of people here – figureheads. You come out pretty all right. Not perfect, but pretty all right. Gifted. Well, I’m not going to approach someone like Shale who picks such a suit and shirt, am I, for God’s sake?’

  Still with his face quite close to Goss’s in this empty club, Ralph felt hopelessly distanced from her. He was conscious of enormous, warranted rage growing in him. This he reckoned as a magnificent positive factor, chasing out all remnants of the panic. A woman with that fucking razor wire haircut intended offering him, him, Ralph W. Ember, £15K to kill Chandor, because she fancied a bit of vengeance for the probable death and special burial of a lover. He’d had a thought to kill Chandor, yes, still had the thought, but just as a pure and necessary kill. He didn’t take commissions, was not purchasable, as one of Trove’s gutter London pals might be. Her talk of the money sickened him.

  He’d very reasonably thought she arrived here today because she carried away from Low Pastures a recollection of him that sparked an understandable yearning she could not dowse. In fact, she came not driven by such admirable, natural desire but to buy a sniper. Just the same, he found his rage centred not so much on her as on Chandor, who had created this vile situation. Ralph would reject her foul proposal, yet his own project for Chandor grew stronger.

  ‘He’s threatened you, hasn’t he, Ralph? I’ve spoken to people who were in the club when he mocked the fine, elegantly collaged steel shield as farcical, and said you were wide open to a bullet or two. You’ll want to give him an answer to such abuse, won’t you?’

  ‘I don’t recall anything like that, not in the least,’ he replied, ‘and I can tell you it wouldn’t make any difference
if he did say something of the sort.’

  ‘You should give him an answer and get paid for it. I could probably go to twenty grand for you, taking account of your experience, as long as it’s a definite wipe-out.’

  ‘Look, I –’

  ‘And among other gobbets of chat I heard was admiration for the way you might – I say might because there’s no proof – that’s the brilliance of it – the way you might have seen off awkward fuckers in the past – Alfred Ivis, for instance? These are the kind of credentials I’m looking for if I engage someone.’

  Such an awkward fucker, Alf Ivis. ‘I don’t think it suits to engage in slander of that sort, even though you may be emotionally off balance,’ Ember replied. God, the only time she could sound really enthusiastic about him was as an executioner – nothing to do with his unquenchable glory as a man.

  ‘Up to £20K,’ she replied. ‘Old notes, obviously and no fallible fifties.’

  This genuinely grieving bitch thought she could get his services for cash, his thug skills, and not his more comforting and attentive flairs. Would she be able to comprehend the degree of affront in this, even if he explained it to her? He wouldn’t, of course. That would be so much beneath him. Did any woman ever go to the head man at the Athenaeum and offer him a bag full of notes to flatten a business rival? Good God, something like this would most probably not even happen in that London media club, the Groucho.

  However, Ralph recorded another present triumph. He was able to convert his revulsion and disappointment into a further restrained chuckle. ‘Turn assassin?’ he remarked, in one of the best wry tones he thought he had ever uttered. ‘Not quite my line of things, I fear.’ He continued to aim his reproaches and loathing at Chandor, the dirty fountainhead of all this, responsible for causing such a grotesque, soiling interview.

  She stood, as angry as himself, but showing it. ‘So, I will have to try a London mate or that fancy dress grammarian, Shale,’ she said.