First Fix Your Alibi

by Bill James

  ‘Dismal narrowness would be a mistake. But in what sense dismal narrowness, Manse?’

  ‘One person’s difficulty, problem, might require a solution, a remedy, from someone else. This, Ralph, is that mutuality. This is opportunism, but opportunism of a sound nature.’

  ‘I’m not too clear what’s being said here, Manse,’ Ember replied. And this was true, except that Ralph felt sure something perilous and possibly sick would emerge eventually from the blabber.

  ‘Opportunity. Catch-as-catch can,’ Shale replied.

  ‘Catch what as catch can, though?’

  ‘This opportunity might present itself in totally random style. In fact, that’s the beauty of it.’

  ‘What is, Manse?’

  ‘The randomness. Or the apparent randomness.’

  ‘The randomness is not really random?’ Ralph asked. ‘This randomness is mock randomness, like gaming machines?’

  ‘Me, I don’t like the term “mock”. It seems to say “false”. I would rather say created randomness, scheduled randomness, but only those aware of the schedule would know this seemingly random activity was, in fact, planned and devised, the outcome worked for, selected, and very specific. It’s like God and the universe. Events happen that look to us, all of us, including Old Moore’s Almanac, like accidental, random, out of nowhere. And yet there might be a system to it all.’

  ‘“God moves in a mysterious way; his wonders to perform?”’ Ralph said.

  ‘You made that up, just this minute? Yes, like that, yes.’

  ‘You’ve got some difficulty you want me to handle for you, I gather, Manse,’ Ember said, kindness in his tone, not shell shock from the wordage.

  ‘I’ve had tragedy in my life, Ralph,’ Shale replied.

  ‘Certainly.’ Manse’s second wife and young son were shot dead in a mistaken attack during the school run.1 The target should have been Manse himself, but there had been a change of routine and the gunman didn’t adjust. Shale’s daughter, Matilda, survived.

  ‘Yes, of course, you’ll remember it, Ralph. There is a wonderful, caring side to you, despite the occasional very justified, though regrettable, need to do a wipeout.’

  ‘Decorum is something I hold dear,’ Ember said. He gave this a matter-of-fact quality, no booming bombast, which he felt would have been daft in someone keen on decorum.

  ‘You are a famed supporter of the slogan “live and let live”, unless, naturally, some slimy, indecorous sod should not be let live, which can be the case in our day-to-day experience. This is the point I’m trying to get at, Ralph.’ Ember, who was paying tonight, had ordered a bottle of Kressmann’s Armagnac to be put on the table with balloon glasses and they both took mouthfuls now. Shale probably wouldn’t know the difference in quality between this and sarsaparilla, but he did a small nod or two to signal recognition of something élite. Then he said, ‘Following that disaster I withdrew to religion, seeking solace and reassurance.’

  ‘Yes, I know, Manse.’

  ‘Donations.’

  ‘This I can well believe.’

  ‘To the church.’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘The roof fund. And extensive new flagstoning near the main doors. I felt fucking privileged to be a part of it, not full-out saintly, but positive.’

  ‘I know the vicar and so on were very grateful.’

  ‘I couldn’t of gone on with the trading, not at that stage, Ralph. It would of seemed what-you-call?’

  ‘Inappropriate.’

  ‘That, yes. Or worse.’

  ‘Disrespectful?’

  ‘The pews,’ Shale replied.

  ‘Well, yes, most churches have many a pew.’ This could happen to Ember if he talked with Manse for a long while: Ralph would amble almost as far into gobbledegook as Shale did.

  ‘The pews are solid wood,’ Manse replied, ‘not your three-ply sheets sandwiching bubble wrap. Mahogany, mostly, or sapele.’

  ‘Pews have to be able to take the weight,’ Ralph said.

  ‘Utterly true. At a wedding or funeral of someone popular, that could be a lot of arses on one pew. The pew got to be able to cope with this load, and some members of the congregation might be rotund or great with child and so offering extra pressure. It wouldn’t be a laughing matter if one of them pews collapsed during a solemn service, people on the floor higgledy-piggledy, the best man disturbed by the noise so he drops the ring, him and the vicar scrambling about on the floor looking for it. Well, yes, it would be a laughing matter but it shouldn’t be.

  ‘If you’re solo, though, in one of them pews, it being no special day in the church, you can feel sort of safe with that intensely genuine wood all around you, like a mahogany den, and that curved bit on the end as if cutting you off from the aisle and the rest of the church. Meditation a possible. Sometimes when I was boxed in and secure, with a nice little cushion for your knees, if wanted, I’d have precious, uninterrupted holy-silent minutes to wonder what mangy fucker put the word somewhere about which streets was used for the school run. All right, that tip was wrong re the driver and passengers because I wasn’t on the trip, but the geography was right, dead right. Dead.

  ‘In my private little timber cell nun-like I would think that if one more detail had been correct in the information I would not be in my little timber cell that day enjoying the consolation of a blessed church. I would already of been in a different kind of timber cell. Rest In Pieces.’

  ‘You believe you were betrayed?’

  ‘As many most probably know, including you, Ralph, religion have got an item called a revelation.’

  ‘The last book in the bible – Revelation.’

  ‘Being part of religion at that period of my life, Ralph, I had a revelation. A name come into my head. Obviously, this is why I spoke of the mahogany.’

  ‘Quite.’

  ‘That kind of closed-off, solid capsule in the pew was a first-class site for one deeply personal revelation to yours truly. Privileged. Divine-sourced? Who can tell? But, anyway, it arrived.’

  ‘Which name, Manse?’

  ‘Besmirched, Ralph,’ Shale replied.

  ‘A strong word, Manse. In which particular? You feel, felt, besmirched? How was that?’

  ‘Not so much self, Ralph.’

  ‘I’m glad. You deserve no such suffering.’

  ‘That name, suddenly brought to me in a sanctified setting – I felt it besmirched the very structure, fabric, atmosphere of a blameless church.’

  ‘You were obviously in a profound religious state at that time. I think of Cardinal Newman and “lead kindly light”, when an epiphany came to him to do with leaving the Protestant church.’

  ‘There are some first-rate epiphanies about, Ralph. Yes, profound is right. I believe if I had not been in that profound state I might not of received the name and how to deal with it.’

  ‘Ah, I didn’t realize you’d been advised how to deal with it.’

  ‘That’s the beauty of religion, Ralph. If you ever come across it you’ll discover that it recognizes there is rubbish in the world but it also tells you how to get rid of it. I saw during this specially delivered revelation in the church, like coming from my sub-conscious, that there’s an old film called Stranglers On A Train.’

  ‘I think it’s “Strangers”.’

  ‘Whatever. To do with death, anyway. To do with death and with that recently referred to mutuality and interweaving.’

  ‘It’s a crazy plot, couldn’t possibly be to do with real life.’

  ‘When I gets a vision in a church, Ralph, I think of it as being full of accuracy.’

  ‘But it had the name of the film wrong.’

  ‘Neither here nor there. Merely I made an error in the label. We know what its message is, don’t we? Its message is mutuality, interweaving and interdependence. The name is Frank Waverton, Ralph.’

  Ember spelled it out audibly but not loudly: ‘W-A-V-E-R-T-O-N? No, not a name I know. Should I? Never met him, I’m sure.’

>   ‘Dark hair worn short. Six foot two, 190 pounds. Mid-thirties. White. Long face. Off-and-on moustache, better off. Fitness freak. Does remote hill-path jogging early mornings like a boxer, all weathers. Swank dresser. Nothing off-the-peg. Specially crafted Charles Laity shoes.’

  ‘No. Haven’t come across him. He’s here tonight?’

  ‘Of course. But it’s best like that.’

  ‘Best like what, Manse?’

  ‘Best you didn’t know him.’

  ‘Why?’ Ember could see the answer to this, if Shale were thinking of the Stranglers On A Train. But Ralph longed for some clarity after all the verbiage and mahogany.

  Shale said, ‘Obviously, you’ve got to get to know him, but only in that one certain sense.’

  ‘Which?’

  ‘To recognize him. How could you help with the removal if you didn’t know who was to be removed?’ Shale had a good old chuckle at that total craziness. He drank a drop more Kressmann’s, maybe to numb himself a little and forestall hysterics. In a while he said, ‘But to identify someone is not the same as knowing them, is it, Ralph? Identity’s an outside thing but knowing is something else. Knowing got depth. Knowing is a connection, maybe a long-term connection. And that’s the kind of connection murder-squad detectives would be looking for if Waverton got discovered somewhere of your choice, Ralph, and at a time of your choice, dead, by the method of your choice, a totally free hand re that.

  ‘Police would be inclined to suppose there must be a reason for this abrupt, very assisted death, and the reason could be that one of them connections turned sour and kill-prone. Of course, Ralph, they’d be right: one of his connections, such as self, would of turned sour and kill-prone. But this connection, that is, self, would be nowhere near the execution venue having arranged, very neat, to be somewhere else at the moment of life extinction, as certified by qualified doctors; this somewhere else having excellent, absolutely clean-sheet witnesses, plural. Alibi fodder.’

  ‘I fear this is hardly my type of work these days, Manse.’

  ‘Hardly is right. This is a hard situation and it got to be dealt with in a hard fashion. But there’s a nicer side to it, also. It’s not all about self, me, is it?’

  ‘Isn’t it?’

  ‘There’ll come a time when you’re in this type of bothersomeness – a destruction of someone needed, in a good cause. At that moment who gladly, commitedly, steps forward? Self once more, but self now acting for your self in reciprocity. We got a touch of the quid pro quoism here, Ralph, which is Latin for “You scratch my back, I’ll scratch yours,” as often spoken in a hot old Latin city like Rome owing to insect bites.’

  TWO

  But, of course, Ralph didn’t – couldn’t – completely fool himself, or, in fact, fool himself very much at all. He knew that he hadn’t left the rougher side of his life completely behind. Impossible. He fully realized that his stacked money, and his sweet social position, and his club, and his children’s non-state schooling and gymkhana ponies, and Low Pastures, his beautiful, historic manor house – OK, he knew the whole splendid lot depended on the commodities business: the illegal commodities in an illegal business, although locally tolerated so far by that accomplished tyrant, Iles.

  Ralph was aware that he tried to dodge around the blunt, exact, unwholesome term ‘drugs business’, and went instead for the vague, would-be-harmless phrases, ‘commodities business’, or, sometimes, ‘recreational substances business’. He didn’t want too much definition of the game. He found the word ‘drugs’ ugly, almost a rhyme with ugly, in fact: that rough ‘u’ sound, and the spiky ‘g’. Ugly and tainted. Some delicacy was surely needed. He liked to think that delicacy featured strongly in his DNA.

  The fact that he had shelved the university course so he could give his full flair to the constantly expanding substances trade – there it was, one of those nice, cover-up words! – yes, his temporary withdrawal from classes showed he understood his priorities absolutely clearly. Further education was certainly important and he hoped to return to it. But, for now, it would be a bad distraction. He’d feel irresponsible. Margaret, Ember’s wife, had always regarded Ralph’s mature-age longing for a degree as pathetic, laughable tuft-hunting, anyway.

  During that foundation year at the uni, Ralph had read a Shakespeare play where some lines really hit smack-on his present situation. They mentioned ‘a tide in the affairs of men’ which, if you caught it at high water, could carry you on to a fortune, like a bonny ship making real headway with its knots per hour. But if you missed this chance your life would be shallow and miserable. Ralph thought of the grass, coke and H sales at the moment as like that maximum, rolling tide. It would be mad to neglect the great prospects offered. Ember saw irony here: to maximize profits from the swelling flood of demands for the firm’s stuff, he would be shelving college study of the very playwright who inspired him to do it, via ‘the tide in the affairs of men’ observation.

  And, although he’d been offended, disgusted, at first by Manse Shale’s death-shuffle proposal, he recognized that behind all his shambolic, roundabout jabber there was, as ever, a bright commercial brain and sharp instincts; maybe sharper because of the hurt he had suffered. If Manse saw serial treachery and malice in Waverton there’d probably be serial treachery and malice in Waverton. Manse claimed he’d received this eye-opener by a kind of supernatural, for-addressee-only, epistle in church. That was just a bit of fancy packaging for Shale’s idea, though. His suspicions of Waverton as someone who had betrayed him, and might again, would have come to Manse no matter what the location. He didn’t need help from a pew, intensely wooden or not. The point about Manse was that, if he’d gone religious for a spell, this would be fairly genuine while it lasted – matins, litanies, responses, use of the kneel-cushion, the whole devotional apparatus – but afterwards he’d want to show some definite personal gain from the effort he’d put in trying to believe; and from what he’d lashed out for the roof and flagstoning, as well as in the general Sunday service collections. He’d settle for a revelation, one that seemed to get the spelling right: W-A-V-E-R-T-O-N.

  Ralph realized that some, looking at the Waverton–Manse situation, would say, ‘OK, if there is a problem it’s Manse Shale’s problem, his wife and kid shot, and you, Ralph, shouldn’t trouble yourself with it; definitely not to the point of destroying Waverton as first part of an interchange deal: a mutuality, mortuary deal.’ But Ralph couldn’t take that isolationist view of things. It went against his expansive nature.

  At their corner table in the Agincourt, he found himself staring over the edge of his Armagnac glass as he took a sip, and trying to fix on someone answering the description of Waverton provided by Manse. The room was crowded with people from the two firms, many with spouses or partners. Some were still at their tables chatting. Others stood now in groups, relaxed, conversational, notably unraucous so far, drinks in hand. Ember’s wife, Margaret, would only very rarely attend the firm’s social occasions – found them boring – and wasn’t here tonight. And, of course, Manse had no wife or girlfriend since the shooting.

  Ralph shortlisted three men who might be Waverton. He couldn’t get more particular than that for now. He wouldn’t ask Shale to help him with the sorting out, or let Manse see Ralph was doing an eye-trawl for likelies. Either of those reactions could indicate to Manse that Ralph might be interested. They’d be what police interrogators called ‘buy signs’, when a suspect gave hints he’d confess to get a softer sentence.

  At present, Ralph must avoid any semblance of commitment. He had to stand by that pompous bit of phrasing he’d offered Shale just now: ‘I fear this is hardly my type of work these days, Manse.’ Pompous, no question, yet also, no question, true. Ralph couldn’t allow himself to be tricked or dragged back into the area of outright trade violence, could he? Didn’t some writer say the past was a different country? Ralph would like to keep it like that, at a far-off distance, but wasn’t certain he could.

  A couple of the m
en he’d selected were only back views and he had to make his guesses based on hair colour, fine tailoring, build and probable age. They were too far off for a shoes assessment. The other possible was front on, long-faced, perhaps booze reddened for now, well-garbed, but more like forty than thirties. Perhaps regular hooch had put some extra years on his skin. At any rate, to Ralph, it did not seem the sort of very ordinary, lumpen face that deserved to be ripped apart by pistol bullets. This squeamishness wasn’t new for Ralph. Always, even including that novice, learning-curve stage in his business vocation, he had regarded it as distasteful to turn a gun on someone, although, as Manse had mentioned, there were occasionally very sound reasons to eliminate this or that, these or those, person, persons. Fine, but, until a few minutes ago, Ralph had been sure he’d moved into a sort of dignified, self-regulated life where the pressures from such ‘very sound reasons’ could no longer get at him. They used to come from that different country. But then, Manse arrives with a resurrection of this eerie, murderous, trade-off message from Stranglers On A Train via a nave or apse.

  Not everyone would understand why Ralph couldn’t regard Shale’s possible troubles as Shale’s, and only Shale’s: ‘I’m all right, Jack,’ or, in this case, ‘I’m all right, Manse.’ Ember often recalled a spiel by that snotty, clever braggart, Assistant Chief Constable (Operations), Desmond Iles. During one of his routine bullying, disruptive calls at Ember’s club, the Monty, accompanied as ever by his sidekick, Detective Chief Superintendent Colin Harpur, Iles had talked contentedly to a little group at the bar about the whole, wide, local business scene, and especially about Ralph’s and Manse’s firms. Strategy: Iles had the rank for that. He’d referred to ‘equipoise’ – just the kind of vain, big-word, mouthing Ralph would expect from this grandiose heap. But, because it was so poncey, the term had stuck in Ralph’s mind, plus, virtually verbatim, a couple of sentences where it figured. Iles had been describing what he praised as the ‘happy harmony’ that existed because the two firms operated peacefully alongside each other in armed neutrality. ‘But what if one of them gets damaged or even put entirely out of action?’ he’d asked. As was quite usual with him he replied to his own question, because the know-all prick didn’t feel anyone else would be intelligent and perceptive enough to do it; or intelligent and perceptive enough to give what he’d decided was the right answer, the only right answer.