by Bill James
Ralph currently, though – Ralph mature, Ralph reminiscing in the Monty bar – would regard matters differently. These days, he hardly ever carried a gun. For him, guns were the past, and not a past he felt any link to now. Any link? That so? None at all? Well, only intermittent. Very intermittent. No nostalgia. It would have been what the French called nostalgie de la boue – a longing to get back to degradation: to lawlessness and mayhem. That wasn’t for Ralph, thanks very much. Juvenile. Uncivilized. He was Ralph W. Ember who wrote heartfelt, constructive letters to the local Press about environmental issues, and knew quite a number of French phrases.
And he considered it would be utterly off-colour to have a loaded, shoulder-holstered pistol nestling chummily under his jacket either at home in Low Pastures or at The Monty. Anomalous. He’d come across this word lately, meaning grossly out of harmony. So, yes, anomalous. In Ralph’s opinion, a property like Low Pastures, with its notable history and Latin inscription on the main, tree-swathed gates into the grounds, deserved something finer than … indeed, something finer than an owner who went about with a secret shooter on his chest like some heavy. It was a matter of taste and tone.
He regarded both as deeply important, even vital. He had no aversion to guns in general. Obviously, a hunting rifle or shotgun would be absolutely OK and acceptable at Low Pastures, a country manor house or gentilhommière – more French! No, it was concealed, street-fight handguns he regarded as anomalous in a distinguished residence three hundred years old and more.
Similarly, he’d consider it inappropriate to go armed to The Monty, unless it became necessary, of course: that is, forced on him by extreme events and dangerous people. After all, this was a true and popular social centre, although admittedly not quite as he would have liked it, owing to present high yob, slob, slapper and villain membership levels. By introducing The Marriage of Heaven and Hell as a literary-visual, bulletproof chunk up there, he hoped to thwart an enemy’s guns; but this didn’t mean that he himself had to come armed every day to what was acknowledged as a kind of comfortable, community haven. It would be crude. It would be unforgivably naff. True, The Monty had its smelly aspects, but Ralph didn’t intend adding to them now by behaving like a gangster.
The plaque with a Latin quote on it must have been fixed to the gate by a previous occupant, who included, over the centuries, the local Spanish consul at one time, and, later, a county Lord Lieutenant. Classical languages would be right up their alley. The inscription said: ‘Mens cuiusque is est quisque.’ To his abiding regret, Ralph had never learned Latin, but he found a translation on the Internet. ‘A man’s mind is what he is.’ Ralph loved the blunt, straightforwardness of ‘is what he is.’ The repetition and simplicity really grabbed him. No weaselling. No ‘possiblys’ or ‘perhapses’ or ‘on the other hands’.
He, personally, wanted to be judged on his mind, though many unfulfilled, copiously over-juiced women thought he resembled the young Charlton Heston, and craved intimate physical not mental contact, some calling him, ‘The Last Hard Man’ or ‘Ben Hunk,’ or ‘El Stud’, after several of the star’s film roles. Some seemed fascinated by a scar down one of Ralph’s cheek bones and would finger it unhurriedly. All this could be an embarrassing pest. He put up with it and, anyway, as he grew older his mind – the Ralph mind that was Ralph, the very essence of Ralph, according to the Latin – his mind made him unhappy, even queasy, about certain species of firearms.
He remembered and loathed one sentence from a novel called The Grapes Of Wrath. He’d read it during the American literature side of the university Foundation Year – ‘a gun is an extension of themselves.’ The tale showed families forced off their land and trying to settle in California, despite resistance from the locals. Someone said the immigrants could turn difficult if it came to a fight because they’d been brought up to regard guns as ‘an extension of themselves.’ Guns took on their owners’ characters? Guns were natural to them – like a limb? Ralph W. Ember could never feel like that.
He cleaned the blue plaque every couple of weeks to keep it legible, and checked that the screws didn’t corrode and let it drop into the dirt. Although hardly any visitors entering the Low Pastures spread via these gates would get the meaning of the Latin, they’d realize from it that they must be approaching a distinguished home, strongly respectful of education and learning. For its owner to be tooled up – even if imperceptibly – would bring an unwholesome, brutish, cordite factor into things, Ralph thought. ‘Tooled up’ – hell, such an ugly bit of phrasing. No taste, no tone. The search for these qualities never left Ralph alone. He didn’t understand how others could fail to value them, too.
But this was now. Way back, when he’d only just landed a place with the elite Pasque Uno substances firm, at the beginning of a career – rather than today, at its pinnacle, or, at least, immediately pre-pinnacle – yes, in those earlier, different times, handguns had clearly figured as a routine necessity. It would have been impossible to trade efficiently and reasonably safely without the proper, fully loaded aids. An usherette in an old-style, traditional cinema, serving ice creams and so on in the interval, couldn’t operate without a torch and that tray contraption hung around her neck. Likewise primed firearms in the pushing game.
The magazine of the P38 Walther he’d picked held eight rounds and he’d have a dozen replacements in his pockets. He could use a single or double hold, copying stances he’d seen in movies. The actual process of selecting the Walther had given his morale a nice boost. An extra boost. It was already high. Choosing, assessing, comparing, rejecting, put him in control. He was doing something to shape this coming war, shape his response to it, and, he hoped, decide its outcome. This had to be exhilarating. This had to strengthen selfhood. Several times lately he’d found himself humming that famous nineteenth-century song about the prospect of taking on Russia in a dispute: ‘We don’t want to fight, but by jingo if we do!’ They’d enlisted him for the job. They trusted him to contribute. The shoulder holster struck him as bulky, but that didn’t matter, either; on the day, his Walther wouldn’t be in it for long, would it? ‘The day’ was due in just under a week.
There was a task ahead. He had been selected to take part. And, in turn, he had selected the elegant Walther to help him. The comfortable step-by-step logic of this sequence delighted and reassured the young Ralph. He’d seen that here was the kind of life he’d been born for – to guard and improve the interests of those who’d taken him into their team. He would deliver fearlessness, flair, fealty. He owed these. Ralph had fondled the Walther for a moment and given it a quick, jovial smile. Allies. Then he fixed the harness on and holstered the pistol.
But less than a week later he’d come to feel he didn’t owe Pasque Uno anything at all.
SIX
Esther left the conservatory for a few minutes and went into the house. She unlocked the study wall safe – combination ‘Hosea’, her favourite Old Testament book, with its enraged toughness on ‘transgressors’, promising them a fall – and brought out a couple of cassettes. Of course, the prophets were on to a sure thing by promising a fall. Everyone would fall eventually or sooner. Life presumed death. Esther was fond of profound thoughts now and then. At her rank she felt entitled to them.
She took the playback machine from a shelf. In the kitchen she drank a glass of lemon squash and then returned to her lounger with the audio gear, old hat by present standards. She fitted the earpiece and began listening – re-re-listening – to the first of the cassettes. They contained the full briefing and debriefing material she’d used for the rumble on that day when Opal Render met Pasque Uno by appointment for street warfare. Esther and her armed troop had lurked hidden nearby at two locations, then suddenly intervened from both sides and cleaned up. She reckoned Hosea would have loved it: a right, tripartite smite, eliminating villains in their prime.
Esther had code-titled the operation ‘Chastisement’, a theme in quite a few O.T. books and sex guides. Incidentally, regardless
of the thump, thud and yell nuisance sometimes hesitantly mentioned to Esther by neighbours, she and her husband, Gerald, enjoyed a decent amount of intimate, erotic rough stuff, biting and, yes, chastisement. The houses were detached so the din for their next-door families shouldn’t be all that bad, surely. Afterwards, either she or Gerald or both might have visible scars, and/or plasters, but, to date, definitely not splints. They had never explicitly discussed injury limits – that would have seemed corny and legalistic – but a kind of tender, instinctive agreement existed that they would not deliberately attempt bone breaks, nor gouging.
For one thing, Gerald needed his hands, arms and eyes OK in case job offers came. He was a professional bassoonist and was away on orchestral duties at present. Esther had done a full, systematic inspection of her body lately, with mirror use where necessary, and found herself almost totally unmarked except for two commingling, purple-edged bruises on her left inner thigh, fading very nicely. She wondered whether if she changed into short shorts to expose this area, the sun – made more powerful through the glass sides of the conservatory – would act medicinally and speed up the return to normal. But she had to wonder, also, whether glass-boosted winter sunshine would bring the affected skin location a fertilizing heat that restored the bruising to its full, foul picturesqueness. Could be the second. She instinctively pulled at her jeans, as though she had changed into the shorts and needed to cover the discoloured patch. The move reminded her of Marilyn Monroe in Some Like It Hot, tugging her skirt down to a primmer length when she discovers she’s alone on a yacht at night with Tony Curtis.
Nowadays, Gerald had to take whatever jobs he could get. Esther would hate to hinder his search for work. His morale always slid if he could find none. He hoarded a bumper stock of self-pity, which he referred to as artistic temperament. Whatever it was called, Esther would have liked to lock it up in the Hosea safe and change the combination in case he had discovered what it was. How about a switch to ‘Weepy?’ Esther did not want Gerald at home too much. He would lie on the living room carpet and intone and/or scream the names of those who had refused to employ him recently, giving each a different mix of filthy curses – the same words, but in their own, personalized, made-to-measure order. He had a musician’s sense of rhythm and memory for sonic patterns, and would repeat without notes or autocue the identical sequence of profanities for each of these targets, although there might be days between one grief-and-hate session and the next. She considered his paranoia to be top-notch, king-size, gilt-edged. She used to call the noise he made sometimes during a crisis his ‘scream of consciousness’: i.e., he had become conscious of what she had been conscious of for ages, that the best orchestras no longer wanted him. Busking next?
These Chastisement recordings were her private souvenir made covertly. She did that now and then on a case – a successful case. They provided a memoir, a safeguard, a chin-up tonic if she felt low: masturbatory, maybe; she played with herself, but her past self. They offered a change from the formula, Jack and Jill brutalities with Gerald. She believed in looking all-round for satisfaction opportunities. Carpe fucking diem. Seize the day.
Back then in London, her much shorter, formal, typed version of the ambush had been lodged in Scotland Yard’s computer data library, as was required. Esther had shaped and edited that to her advantage; a survival spin skill she’d taught herself over the years, and essential for promotion. Smart presentation was so crucial, nice packaging such a dinky art. To disclose the full, verbatim reproduction of those Chastisement meetings, though, could have started trouble. Esther had discovered that a main quality of good leadership was the ability to spot possible setbacks for her career and snuff them out early. If she ever needed a motto for her escutcheon, she felt it should be tersely, cogently, ‘Me, I pre-empt.’
The tapes showed, didn’t they, that she’d had very strong, timely evidence of exactly where and when the scrap would occur; and who’d take part; and with what weaponry? But she’d done nothing to forestall it, despite the stark, acute-carnage danger. This had menaced not just gang personnel and police, but utterly non-involved citizens, unluckily in one or other of the streets at a bad moment, to shop, or get coiffured, or buy stamps; a bad moment being a crossfire moment. In such a very limited area, that kind of disaster had been obviously possible. Some of the gunplay might be from gang crud with only sparse weapon training, and sparser accuracy: very uncool shoot-bang-fire merchants. They knew how to squeeze a trigger and that was it. Their bursts could go more or less anywhere and cut down more or less anyone. Collateral damage? Their speciality.
Why had she run the hit like that, then? Answer – obvious answer, she’d say – because Esther wanted the beautiful, holy simplicity of confronting both firms while they were clearly and undeniably on the job, in flagrante delicto. That is, openly, plainly, blatantly committing firearms crime, maybe maiming, maybe killing. Result, say: seven arrests and seven successful convictions. Stuff the bickering and pious defence QCs! Stuff identification difficulties! Bravo, Esther! Give the girl a coconut! She’d mock herself like that now and then.
This catch-’em-red-handed-at-it tactic was known as ‘over the pavement’ policing, and originally applied chiefly to bank hold-ups. Following a tip-off, bandits would be surprised and nabbed actually scurrying out to the getaway vehicle with their sacks of sterling. In the Pasque Uno/Opal Render case it would have needed to be ‘over the pavements’, plural. The action had snaked and billowed and erupted into several streets, red trails tracking the punctured. Yes, the phrase meant collaring villains while they were there, deep into the villainy, or starting their flit. This cut police dependence on witnesses, a real plus, a rare, splendid boon, because witnesses might be terrorized or bribed or both into silence and/or selective blindness, by relatives or mates of the accused. And the glaring actuality and conspicuousness of the offence compelled juries to convict, even juries likewise nobbled by bribes and/or threats to themselves, their loved ones, property and long-haired dachshund.
OK, neat and tidy. But in the Pasque Uno and Opal Render clash there were also five deaths (three PU, two OR), an amputation (OR), a de-nosing (PU), and a permanent wheelchairing (PU). Some judges, some juries, some Press commentators, and a sanctimonious troupe of politicians didn’t care for it when officers let a clearly hazardous situation build uninterrupted to such a bloody toll. The police might be accused of favouring this ploy because, from their angle, the more hazardous it was, the sweeter. All those arrested could be charged with something big and meaty. Gunfire on the streets was big and meaty, and therefore gorgeously apt for the heaviest, double-digit slammer sentences.
During several of the trials, there had, in fact, been what Esther considered nauseating, unworldly quibbles and whines about police set-ups and entrapment. Defence wigs did their usual trite, sententious, expensive bit about good ends never justifying questionable means, though they knew, of course, that sometimes they did. Anyway, as it turned out, they produced nothing strong enough to make judges stop proceedings, or to win not guilty verdicts. It helped that no officer was hurt, nor any innocent pedestrians, except very temporarily in their nervous systems. Their bowels might have suffered some loosening, but also temporary.
Esther had calculated she’d probably get away with it. As she saw things, that’s what high rank was about – guessing how near the knuckle you could go, and then going there and winning. She’d read a clever book describing the kind of leadership brain needed to estimate risk and intelligently calculate possibilities. True, Hitler, the Führer – super-supremo – had held high rank – none higher – but guessed rather poorly – calculated badly – when he decided to invade Russia, despite history and blizzards. OK, such occasional slip-ups would happen, yes, but the general principle of bold, properly informed chance-taking by top commanders stood. Best example? D-Day, when the Allies invaded France.
Although courts might get sniffy about situations that seemed deliberately allowed to reach outrage a
nd slaughter, in the sly hope of making prosecutions easier, some courts might get even more sniffy about suburban shoot-outs. This, after all, was violence and chaos brought to ordinary people’s doorsteps. The havoc reeked of civic and social breakdown; house-to-house mayhem; an Englishman’s castle turned into a rat-run. It was ominous. It had bigger implications than itself, but was itself barbaric. It should be corrected by chastisement, and Chastisement.
SEVEN
Esther’s Cassette One covered an early, standby meeting when the AREA (Advice Requiring Emergency Action) information was promising but not yet complete. The emergency action would have to be only a prospect, a promise, at this stage.
She’d had a street map of the Dorothea Gardens, Mondial Street, Baste Lane, Meadow Street, and Trave Square area projected on to the conference room screen. ‘Good morning. I’ve called you together today because we have very credible intelligence that an armed, territorial, face-to-face gun-engagement between Opal Render and Pasque Uno is imminent in the district shown. May I offer an explanation of the names in case it’s necessary? “Opal Render” means “glinting surface” but is also an anagram of “Nepal Order”, apparently a kind of Gurkha military formation that Piers Stanton, Opal’s founder, thought suggested discipline and purpose. “Pasque Uno”, a single flower, therefore unity.’
The kind of voice that came over to her on the replays always astonished Esther. It was younger, of course, and had picked up some traces of cockney during her Met postings, now more or less gone following her move to another force. But it was the casualness of her tone – bland, chatty, almost throwaway – that seemed so strange in retrospect. Detective Superintendent Esther Davidson, of those days, was announcing what would possibly rate as the most violent and lethal showdown ever seen in south-east London, although there’d be plenty of competition for this blaze-away tag. Inevitably, she’d realized at the time that this was how things might develop: she’d only have to note the weaponry listed, and consider the amounts of cash involved. Yet she spoke as if about some minor lawlessness problem, regularly dealt with and resolved, like bike theft or pissing in shop doorways by drunks.
