Come Clean (1989)

by Bill James

  ‘Let’s put it another way,’ Iles said amiably. ‘Emptied.’

  ‘Well, I don’t know. What sort of important incident?’

  Iles sat down with his drink and spoke in very confidential fashion, as to a revered partner. ‘We’re rather interested in three people, Ralph. First, a lad called Justin Paynter?’

  Ralph thought about this. ‘No, not a name that means anything. A member?’

  ‘Possibly dis-membered.’

  ‘I don’t understand.’

  ‘About twenty-four, five, dark hair, well-dressed.’

  ‘Well, we get a lot like that. I insist on certain standards of turn-out here.’

  ‘Good,’ Iles said.

  ‘We wondered whether he’d been involved in any bother here lately – a fight, argument, anything like that,’ Harpur said.

  ‘I won’t permit fracases or squaring up of any sort, Mr Harpur. That’s another factor I’m very strict on. Have to be. A club like this, reputation is so vital.’

  ‘This is very true,’ Iles said. ‘We heard he could have stepped out of line and found trouble, as a result.’

  ‘Perhaps he did,’ Ember said, ‘but not here. Not to my knowledge at all.’

  Iles took a decorous sip of his port. ‘What sort of women do you get in here these days, Ralph?’

  Harpur watched Ember trying urgently to sort out the implications of this. Then he replied: ‘Oh, an extremely nice class of woman, Mr Iles, I’m pleased to say. What they all know very well is that I won’t have slags. Pleasant wholesome women, a full credit to any gathering, quiet dressers, no spitting or blasphemy or scrapping over men, no clawing. Out they go, anything like that, even a hint, and out they stay. Reputation. A place like this, as you said, Mr Harpur – Mr Harpur and I were discussing history while you were outside, Mr Iles – this place has a fine past to be considered, dignitaries of this whole region, makers of it, indeed, meeting in the Monty, sitting here in the old days, talking business and municipal advance, and thank God for them. I see myself as something of a guardian of that history, if that’s not vainglorious.’

  ‘Hardly,’ Iles said. ‘No, I certainly would not term it vainglorious. Would you call it vainglorious, Col?’

  ‘Never.’

  Ralph went on, ‘Am I going to let easy pieces soil this tradition, pressing their random fannies on the same redolent upholstery? Well.’ He took some beer. ‘Look, I know this is not White’s or the Cavalry Club, but I do insist on sterling standards, on members being spruce and comme il faut top to toe, and if possible good with conversation and interesting hobbies, that sort of person. We have people discussing all sorts here, not just playing pool or feeding the fruit machines. You’ll hear conversations about great music, such as Elgar and others, or politics, Dr David Owen, summitry. Many’s the extremely lively –’

  ‘Does my wife come here?’ Iles said.

  Ralph was leaning forward, with his elbows on the bar as he talked. He straightened now and pulled the dressing-gown tight again, frowning, half-smiling, while he considered this. ‘Would I know Mrs Iles?’

  ‘What I’m asking you, cunt,’ Iles replied.

  ‘Your wife?’

  Iles sat staring at him.

  ‘But what I mean, I don’t think I would recognize your wife, Mr Iles. I take it you’re asking if she comes here other than in your company. Obviously, I’d recognize her if you were together, but you mean solo?’ Harpur considered Ember was still handling this with flair.

  Iles said: ‘She’s blonde, slim, pretty, thirty-six, looks a bit pent-up, but, then, maybe when she’s here she doesn’t.’

  ‘And you’ve reason to think she comes to the Monty? With friends, perhaps?’

  ‘Who exactly was in here the night of this incident with Justin Paynter took place, Ralph?’ Iles replied.

  ‘Which incident was that? Who’s the boy?’

  ‘Was she here?’

  Ralph sighed: ‘I’m really out of my depth on this one.’

  ‘Yes?’ Iles said. ‘Ralphy, please do try not to piss me about, would you?’

  ‘Who are your regulars these days, Ralph? Who might have been in the club that evening?’ Harpur asked.

  ‘But which evening, Mr Harper?’

  ‘Five nights ago, maybe six. Say, Tuesday, Wednesday.’

  ‘That’s not easy. Well, crowds here most nights, people in and out.’

  Iles produced his wallet. ‘Here’s a picture of my wife.’ Harpur could see it cost him plenty to do this, as if delivering up the photograph to someone of Ember’s quality soiled her more and put the ACC irrecoverably into Panicking Ralph’s hands. Iles did not get up but gave the picture to Harpur, who was standing at the bar, so he could pass it over. Maybe Iles could not bring himself to make the transfer direct.

  Harpur glanced at the snapshot. It showed Sarah grinning at the camera in that open, breezy way of hers, wearing what seemed to be a fairly ancient green track suit and trainers. Her fair hair was done in a pony tail and she looked young, relaxed, very beautiful and happy. Anyone could see why a husband would choose this picture of his wife to carry, and why he might be driven to frantic, dangerous rage at the thought of losing her. Harpur handed it to Ralph.

  He studied it. ‘Very lovely lady, Mr Iles, if I may say.’

  ‘Easy to remember.’

  ‘Not all are as beautiful as Mrs Iles, by no means, but we do see a lot of ladies here, mingling, milling about, dancing, that sort of thing. I find it difficult, even with somebody so grand-looking.’

  Harpur thought he could detect sweat shining on Ralph’s cheekbones and across his forehead in a thin, unostentatious line. Ember gazed at the picture. He had been holding it up in front of him, but a slight tremor started in his arm and he put the photograph down on the bar near his beer glass and bent forward intently over it. Then he raised his head and faced the ACC squarely. ‘On balance, I’d say no, Mr Iles. I don’t seem to recognize her, though I admit she could have been in the club sometime, and it’s gone from my memory. As you say, one shouldn’t forget looks like that, but faces, when you think back, they sort of merge, you know what I mean? When you’re seeing them in a changing crowd, and myself busy with running the place and so on.’

  ‘Up here night after night, is she?’ Iles asked. ‘That the bloody truth of it?’

  Ralph handed the picture back to Harpur, who passed it to Iles. ‘I’ve given my considered opinion, Mr Iles, subject to error, I readily concede.’

  ‘Aston,’ Iles replied. ‘That’s the third one we’re concerned about. He a member?’

  Ralph paused. ‘Ian Aston? Yes, I think we do have an Ian Aston.’

  ‘Yes. Regular?’

  ‘Like most of them, Mr Iles, they look in when they feel like it.’ He smiled bravely. ‘That’s the club trade. No one place can expect to keep anybody’s custom to itself, unfortunately.’

  ‘Bring women here?’

  ‘Ian? Oh, now and then. Yes, he has lots of friends, women and men. Popular sort.’

  ‘Have you seen my wife with him?’

  ‘With Ian?’

  ‘That’s it.’ Iles spoke slowly. ‘Have you seen the woman in that picture here with Aston?’

  ‘As I said, Mr Iles, I don’t –’

  ‘She come up here to find him, meet him?’

  ‘We haven’t seen Ian for some little while, as a matter of fact.’

  ‘Why would that be?’ Harpur asked, eager to turn the questions to some other topic than Sarah, before Iles went ape again.

  ‘Ian has his business interests, I believe,’ Ralph replied. ‘Quite a private person – I don’t mean stand-offish, anything like that, but discreet? He has to travel now and then. Yes, there are periods when we miss him.’

  ‘When did he disappear?’ Harpur asked.

  Ralph chuckled. ‘Oh, I wouldn’t say disappear. Sounds like a fairy tale, a puff of smoke and he was gone, and so on.’

  ‘How long since you’ve seen him?’

 
; ‘Now, that’s difficult. He didn’t say he was going, anything like that. Why should he? Am I my members’ keeper, as it were? It’s just that you notice after a while that you haven’t seen someone. Do you know what I mean? Somebody will say, “Haven’t seen Ian Aston lately” and then, when you think, you realize you haven’t seen him yourself. Like that.’

  ‘Is it about five or six days?’ Harpur asked.

  ‘Gone for that period?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Why do you suggest that?’ Then Ralph rapped the bar with his fingers and chuckled again. ‘Oh, I see, you’re still on about that, are you, Mr Harpur – the mysterious incident?’

  ‘That’s it. I thought that perhaps Ian Aston was involved, or saw something, and that would explain why he’s not about.’

  ‘Involved in what, though, Mr Harpur? Saw what?’

  ‘You tell me.’

  ‘Wouldn’t I love to, if I knew what we were talking about? I’m sorry, though, I don’t.’

  ‘So it is something like five or six days?’

  ‘I think I’ve said, I don’t know,’ Ralph replied, with dignity.

  Iles stood suddenly, stepped to the bar and grabbed Ralph by the lapels of his dressing-gown, pulling him forward and holding his face close to Iles’s own. ‘I asked you a fucking question, Ralphy,’ he shouted.

  ‘What?’ Ralph gasped. ‘Which question, Mr Iles? So many questions, for God’s sake. I don’t remember.’ He did not struggle. A pulse was visibly banging away at the side of his head.

  ‘That’s because Mr Oil-on-troubled-waters, here, Harpur, took you off on a long, useless saunter, a digression. What I asked you was if my wife made a habit of coming here to find Aston.’

  ‘Mr Iles –’

  ‘I trust you won’t lie to me, Ember, or this knife mark on your face will be the least of your scars.’

  ‘You’ve had a visit, have you, Ralph, people suggesting you’d better keep quiet?’ Harpur asked. ‘Darken ship for silent running.’

  ‘Silent about what, Mr Harpur?’

  Iles released him. Ralph adjusted the dressing-gown, then drew himself a large vodka and downed it like medicine. He did not offer them anything more.

  Iles said: ‘They’ll know we’ve called on you, Ralph. Thought of that? They’re going to suspect you got in touch with us. You might need some protection. You talk to me, and I’ll make sure they’re never too busy at the nick to answer your emergency call. Very nasty delays can happen, I know.’

  ‘Suspect I got in touch with you about what, Mr. Iles?’

  Chapter Seven

  Loxton said: ‘Ralphy, what I asked Phil to bring you out here for regarding, we heard you had a visit. This would be Mr Desmond Iles and Harpur, the side-kick? That kind of visit, Ralphy, I can’t really be happy about, if I’m frank.’ Christ, but Ralph looked bad. You’d think his whole world had suddenly gone right-through-rotten, yet he had to keep feeding on it because that’s all there was, like a dog locked in with a corpse. Yes, a dog: the way his head hung down, and the big brown eyes full of nothing, you could say he was a sick dog, and the only thing to have him put down.

  Loxton did not want that, not necessarily. Although Ralphy was total nothing, he was local nothing. Ralph Ember had been hanging around so long, and making a fair-to-middling go of things, you had to feel tied to him, sort of, not close, for Christ’s sake, not anything that meant much, but you didn’t want him knocked over brutal like that, except there was very special reasons. It wouldn’t be in order. There could be reasons coming to light, yes, but do nothing hasty, nothing inconsiderate. Of course, Phil Macey might feel different, and Loxton had to see to it Phil was all right. With his mouth open, Ralph could do Phil big damage. Well, with his mouth open Ralph could do them all big damage, and not just the end of the silver wedding party. Things lead to each other, no question, Phil on the police list one day, Loxton himself the next. Ralphy might be nothing – but a nothing with a singing voice.

  ‘What Benny wants to know, why you never told us them two been out to see you,’ Macey explained now. ‘That would be a simple courtesy, Ralph, you got to agree. You must of known this is the kind of visit we would be interested in. We got the feeling that if we didn’t find about that visit by our own ways you would never of told us about it.’

  Ralph raised his big, dark-haired head and cried out; ‘No, Benny, that’s not –’

  ‘What we got is some worries to do with your club, haven’t we?’ Macey continued, reasonable: no rage or evil in his words yet, but Loxton could feel them not far away. ‘I got personal worries, you must of realized that. I mean, we had a troublesome time there. Admitted, it sorted itself out, but them troubles could come alive again, any time, and they could lead to Benny himself, everyone. That’s the thing about troubles, they get all over in no time at all, like poison in the blood. When I say “come alive”, well, obvious, I don’t mean he’s ever going to – What I mean is, inquiries, Harpur, that sort of thing, bringing it all back into the forefront, waking up them problems again. People like that Harpur and the crazy one with the grey hair, they don’t leave the office for a mugging in the underpass. This got to be important. It’s obvious that a visit like that, we would expect to be kept in the picture.’

  ‘I got to say I’m disappointed in you, Ralphy,’ Loxton told him. Today he, Phil Macey, Norman and Bobby were dressed for a funeral, Loxton in a heavy, dark three-piece suit, stiff-collared white shirt, black tie and shoes. They were seated around the lounge of his ranch-style house on the Loam private estate, Loxton again occupying his big, lop-sided armchair, looking somehow wilder, less governable, because of the perfect, sombre clothes.

  Ralph was hunched forward on the sofa, moving his feet twitchily about in front of him over the carpet, as if trying to kill a very tough bug. People of Ralphy’s sort, God, yes, they were a bit of familiar scenery, but Loxton always tried all he knew to keep from getting real involved with such out-and-out, lost dribbles, and then something happens like that up at the Monty, something you could not foresee, no way, and so here he is, not just anywhere, but right into the house, them suede boots and a suit like something from a Don Ameche film, in a room Loxton really thought a lot of: pictures he chose himself, not Alma’s florals. Ralph’s sitting there, waiting to get his words going, winding up his lies and excuses, shaking and frothing and staring about, like a kid at a nude show, it was disgusting. Get the air freshener going here afterwards.

  Loxton went on: ‘It’s a grief to me, a day like this, when we’re in mourning, that I got to be doing this sort of business, Ralphy, sending for you, requesting a conference, urgent. Well, it should not be forced on me, that’s the truth, we ought to be allowed to spend time uninterrupted turning our minds to thinking about the much-admired deceased and giving proper respect. Instead of that, all this rush and stress. What it does is unsettle me, Ralphy, and others likewise. This is not just a selfish feeling.’

  Fervently, Ember replied: ‘Benny, I’m sorry. I wouldn’t have had it happen for worlds, take my word, please do, I mean, the unfortunate coincidence of this misunderstanding – and believe me, it’s only that, nothing more than a misunderstanding – this misunderstanding with a particular day of sorrow for you, and the others.’

  ‘What misunderstanding?’ Macey asked.

  ‘Well, I would certainly have informed you about the call by those two,’ Ralph said. ‘It was just that I had to make a few inquiries before I contacted you, Benny.’

  ‘That could be reasonable, Phil, a time for extra trawling.’

  ‘That’s it exactly,’ Ralph said, smiling with gratitude. It made him look so much worse, Loxton thought. What the hell been happening to Ralph, his kidneys on stop?

  ‘What we don’t know, how they come to be there at all,’ Macey asked. ‘I mean, you been in touch with them, Ralph, initiating?’

  ‘Ralph, we’re concerned about you, your condition, one way and the other,’ Loxton said.

  ‘How they came t
o be there?’ Ralph said. ‘You’re not asking, did I send for them, surely?’

  Macey left his chair and went and stood as if covering the door, a little behind Ralph and to his right. ‘What we’re asking for starters, Ralphy, is did you send for them?’ Macey said. After a moment, Bobby joined him there. Looking at them, the hard bodies behind mourning ties and gleaming shirts, Loxton thought if funeral parlours ever needed bouncers them two would be dead right, yes, dead right. Phil Macey was alongside a print portrait on the wall of a poet, Lord Byron, with great burning eyes that you could see was concerned with big thoughts about Mankind and rhymes. That was quite a contrast with Phil. It took all sorts, though.

  Ralph turned his head slowly and with great effort to look towards Macey and Bobby but made his reply to Loxton: ‘Benny, would I, for God’s sake? Would I invite a contact of that sort? Don’t we know each other better than that? Benny, we’ve seen a lot together these past years. How long would it be?’

  Again he was smiling, but in a grieved way now, and it still did not do anything for him, like somebody hearing his dear old mother had passed on and all the money left for neutering cats. ‘That’s true enough,’ Loxton said.

  ‘Yes, we do know you, Ralphy, and you gets scared, unfortunate,’ Macey replied. Ralph was still half-turned to watch him and Bobby. ‘It’s a recognized fact, in the form-book. Nobody’s saying you’re yellow, nothing extreme, but you expect the worst, like CND, and it makes you jumpy. So, you could of felt a bit frightened, that incident at the club, then myself coming to see you subsequent, all that sort of thing building up, so you’re looking for some help, you’re looking for guardians. And where do you turn, Ralphy? Well, to the law, of course.’

  Loxton said: ‘Myself, I got an open mind on this. Phil, he’s excited, natural, there could be a lot of time in it for him. Show Phil Macey a couple of high-rank pigs and he’s ready to emigrate.’

  ‘Look, pardon seeming to go off the subject a minute,’ Macey said, ‘because it’s not really. I’ll show you why, subsequent. But this funeral Benny’s attending today, it’s his old schoolteacher from way back, just some ordinary retired chalk pusher, that’s how it might look to others, but Benny thinks a lot of that very venerable teacher, and he’s going to be there to pay last respects. That’s the kind of man Benny is, ready to make the selfless effort for somebody who don’t really add up to a bar rag. Now, Ralphy, don’t you think it would of been the decent thing, a piece of normal politeness, to let a man of them qualities know fast that two top bastards had been sniffing? Don’t he deserve that kind of elementary consideration, Ralphy?’