First Fix Your Alibi

by Bill James

‘Reality. I got to take account of it, Ralph. I feel I should bring these possible worries of yours out into the open so I can deal with them head-on, crush them, kill them, also in the open. Ralph, I would never, never use that kind of filthy trap against you, regardless of Karl Marx.’

  Ralph went beyond a smile now, and gave a large, humane, brilliantly comradely laugh. He recovered his fingers from the superior soft leather. He spoke almost off-handedly, unemphatically as if what he had to say hardly required saying at all, it was so obviously the truth: ‘No, no need to fantasize, Manse. And no need to kowtow to the gospel of dear Karl. I’m here to discuss the reality of the Waverton operation, not to take fright at alarmist dreams or worn-out political theory.’

  ‘Thank you, Ralph. Thank you, thank you.’

  ‘I believe it can be said, Manse, that over the years we have established a business relationship of abiding mutual trust and respect.’

  ‘Yes, Ralph, oh, yes.’

  Ember had, of course, thought about the possibility of being deliberately led into disaster by a shitty Shale manoeuvre. But he hated the notion that Manse might be observant enough to detect this suspicion in Ralph. All right, Ember would admit Shale was surprisingly clever, but not that surprisingly clever. He must be put in his place and made to feel deeply wrong. And so Ralph had to pretend with blazing sincerity to Manse and, more significantly, to himself, that this suspicion never, never existed. The Waverton project remained powerfully ongoing.

  This didn’t mean they should hobnob in each other’s properties, though. He had allowed Manse to enter Low Pastures once but he didn’t think it would be suitable to make this a recurring matter, despite the child’s suggestion. Manse probably would never feel OK socially in a grand, prestige dwelling like Low Pastures, with its lovely, wide staircase, exposed stone walls and undoubted Latin on a gate. In any case, if they went through with the destruction of Waverton as well as someone not yet nominated by Ralph, it wouldn’t be wise to have a lot of pre-get-togethers. Even dropping in like this tonight might bring future risks if someone saw Ralph’s car entering the drive.

  Clearly they could not be fully like the strangers on a train, because they were not strangers. But the contact between them should be minimal, otherwise the Manse swap-plot became useless. There would be evidence of a conspiracy.

  One of the things that surprised some people when considering a bit of rough like Manse was that he knew so much about art and liked so many types of painting, but especially the pre-Raphaelites. Those artists had a brotherhood, and Manse fancied belonging to something like that, fucking the models interchangeably. Plenty of pictures hung in the hall of the rectory, but Ralph thought they must be prints only. It would be mad to have the valuable stuff so near the front door and at the end of a winding drive, which meant nobody from the street could see a break-in and subsequent exit with the takings.

  When Ralph had arrived here tonight Shale and Matilda would have led on into the house immediately but Ralph paused to look at several of the works and dollop out some greasy praise about perspective, brushwork and such. It didn’t matter if they were fakes. In fact, it might be best if they were fakes. In a strange fashion this might be a plus for Manse. Ralph would hate him to feel troubled and lowly at having the owner of a country estate on his minor property and making comparisons, Low Pastures being anything but lowly. Ralph’s appreciation act in the hall had been intended to help Manse feel some temporary superiority over Ember, particularly if Ralph showed himself fooled by production-line copies. Ralph loathed snobbery and would do almost anything to save a yobbish, jumped-up jerk like Shale from it.

  SIX

  ‘Those eyes,’ she said, ‘those animal-like eyes, ferrety.’

  ‘Manse’s?’

  ‘I haven’t spoken about this before – too vague. An impression only? I thought the memory would fade. It hasn’t. More than a week and it hasn’t.’

  ‘At the Agincourt?’

  ‘You noticed?’

  ‘Like a message: “Don’t dance so close.”’

  ‘Yes, but more than that.’

  ‘Oh, yes, yes, more than that,’ Waverton said.

  ‘But you haven’t spoken about it, either.’

  ‘Didn’t want to alarm you. Like you said, it’s vague, could be just an impression, Rose.’

  ‘But enough to alarm me? Those two spotted it as well?’

  ‘Which two?’

  ‘Harpur and Iles, though Iles hadn’t fully recovered from being dumped by Pinkerton. In case Iles broke down again from sorrow Harpur took him home soon afterwards, didn’t he?’ Rose said.

  ‘Harpur does manage him.’

  ‘I heard Harpur was having it off with Mrs Iles for a while. That establishes a fine bond between two men, doesn’t it?’ Rose at the wheel, they were driving to the city swimming baths to watch their daughter compete freestyle in the annual inter-schools gala.

  Frank Waverton said, ‘I think Shale believes I laid the trail to Naomi and the boy. No, no – laid the trail to Manse, but we get a changed driver and a mess up by the gunman.’

  ‘Oh, hell,’ she said, ‘that could be bloody awkward.’

  ‘And he might wonder whether there’ll be another go at him, with me offering guidance again.’

  ‘Oh, hell.’ Rose found she couldn’t ask the obvious question: Did you lay the trail? That would treat it as at least a possibility, and the idea sickened her. Horribly difficult moments in her marriage would arrive suddenly like this occasionally. Her life wasn’t simple. She went quiet, pretended to be preoccupied with the driving, but really thinking hard. As part of that she recalled the final scenes of Godfather 1. Kay Corleone asks her Mafia husband, Michael, and keeps asking, whether he ordered the murder of his own brother-in-law. Eventually, Michael agrees to answer and says, ‘No.’ She’s hugely relieved. But the audience knows he’s an out-and-out, disgusting, professional liar. We saw him organize the garotting. Rose couldn’t bear the notion that she might force Frank into lying. But she couldn’t bear the notion, either, that he wouldn’t lie, and admit he’d helped set up the ambush.

  Rose often found herself running bits of the first two Godfather films in her head. The movies displayed the grim, painful dilemmas of a law-abiding woman married into a family and business society of violent career male villains. It brought big problems. Rose knew something about them.

  But Frank wasn’t Michael Corleone and wasn’t dim either. She glanced at him in the passenger seat of the Merc. He gave what seemed to her something between a grin and a wince. Perhaps he recognized her difficulties and sympathized – so, the grin. Or was he hurt to see Rose feared she might dig out a horrifying truth – so, the wince? There were moments like these now when she couldn’t read Frank. And he didn’t seem able to read her, either. Perhaps in what had become a shadowy relationship it was always going to be like this at times of unexpected crisis – distance, incomprehension, as with Kay and Michael.

  Frank said, ‘Maybe at the Agincourt he considered I was putting on a happy show to conceal guilt and shame. That would enrage him. Turn his eyes ferrety.’

  ‘And Ember was there with him. How does Ralph come into all this?’

  ‘Not clear. But they’re sort of friends.’

  ‘Which sort?’

  ‘Exactly,’ Frank said.

  ‘What does that mean?’

  ‘They’re ordered by Iles to be friends.’

  ‘Ordered?’

  ‘Iles demands peace on the streets. As long as they provide it – no turf battles – he’ll let them run their businesses serenely and side by side.’

  ‘But has he got the authority to do that? It’s blind-eyeing king-size crookedness.’

  ‘Iles does it. Gets away with it.’

  ‘So far,’ she said.

  ‘So far. There’s a well-informed, very respectable lobby in favour of legalization. Perhaps that’s useful for him.’

  ‘The Jag deaths must have shaken that Iles–Shale–Ember
arrangement.’

  ‘Of course. But it survives.’

  ‘How?’

  ‘You don’t ask whether Shale might be right to hate and hunt me, Rose,’ Frank replied, speaking very slowly, as though forcing himself.

  ‘Hate and hunt you for helping get his wife and son killed, and for endangering that splendid commercial co-existence?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Of course I don’t ask,’ she said.

  ‘You dread the possible answer?’

  ‘I know the answer.’

  ‘How can you know?’

  ‘I know you,’ she said. Naturally, Rose recognized this was not completely true, maybe not even substantially true, but how she would have liked it to be. Wives should be able to say that kind of thing to their husbands straight off. Well, she did say it to her husband straight off, but only to smokescreen her doubts. ‘I know you couldn’t do something like that.’ Yes, that was how she would have liked it to be, the certainty, absolute, sweeping and instant. No go, though.

  ‘Thanks, Rose.’

  The terrible error of the shooting confused things for her. In some ways helping in the slaughter of Naomi and Laurent had been an accident, only the gunman to blame. Would aiding in the intended wipeout of Manse have been comparatively reasonable; most probably commercial rivalry gone too far? But obviously – and obviously again – Shale might not think so. He would see it as treachery.

  Watching their daughter splash and trundle-crawl her way to victories in her heats and finals, Rose decided Olive had the power but seemed very short on style. Although at the moment that was to do with her swimming, the same could be said about Olive’s approach to life in general. Did it matter? Not much, in Rose’s view. Olive had the essentials. All they needed was some polish. A good, settled home life could help with this. She and Frank could – would – supply it for as long and as well as they could. This was the kind of consideration that tied Rose into the marriage, regardless. And possibly tied him in, too. Rose needed him safe, and would try to make sure he was.

  She thought about Shale’s daughter and what she had been through. How had it affected her? How did it affect her now? Appalling mischance or not, was Frank in part responsible for this, and for the deaths? Rose still longed to push that question out of sight. ‘Olive’s going to be a little while,’ she said. ‘Let’s go to the car now. I want to fuck.’

  ‘There are lights over the car park, possible CCTV.’

  ‘So they’ll get a good shot of your bum. But it’s reasonably anon, isn’t it?’

  SEVEN

  Harpur saw the Wavertons suddenly stand and leave their seats near the shallow end of the pool and make their way towards the exit, although the gala hadn’t formally finished yet. Of the two, she seemed to move more urgently. Harpur waited briefly and then went after them. It was a discussion this morning with Iles that brought Harpur to the swimming baths, watching the Wavertons now.

  Although Waverton had never been charged with anything, the Drugs Squad kept a file on him and Harpur learned his address and that he was married to Rose, aged 33, with a twelve-year-old daughter, Olive, at the same comprehensive school as Harpur’s daughters. Harpur recognized Rose as Waverton’s partner at the Agincourt dancing.

  If he wanted to stay unobserved Harpur would have to be careful. He didn’t really rate as a gumshoe. He had too much bulk and couldn’t blend neatly into his surrounds. To quite a degree, he was his surrounds. He had nothing spectral about him. Some said he looked like a fair-haired Rocky Marciano, undefeated world heavyweight boxing champion in the 1950s. The Wavertons would identify Harpur, of course. He appeared now and then on local TV news programmes giving the police account of some crime, or some conviction. In any case, it would be a basic requirement for someone in Frank Waverton’s career to know at least by sight the top local police.

  And there had been the Agincourt and the attention Iles brought to both of them by his gaudy period of international mourning for Madame Butterfly. Several pieces of music had the power to upset the ACC in this way, and Harpur always kept alert when with him at parties and so on in case Iles chose to perform one of these numbers and wring his considerable soul. Harpur felt he must be very ready immediately after the rendering to give comfort and reassurance and to wipe him down. Obviously, it was best, if possible, to persuade Iles not to sing, especially at very select occasions, such as, say, a civic reception for the Queen and Prince Philip, or the Home Secretary. Iles could be very stubborn, though, and would usually ignore these pleas. ‘I will not be censored,’ he’d shouted once at Harpur. ‘Freedom of expression is my totem.’

  The First World War song, ‘There’s a silver lining, through the dark clouds shining,’ could melt Iles, and his voice would take on the thin, sad, quivering tone of a mouth organ in the Great War trenches. Another composition that made him desolate was ‘The minstrel boy to the war is gone, In the ranks of death you’ll find him.’ The kid had his father’s sword and a harp. The second verse started ‘The Minstrel fell,’ and Iles used to topple himself over as if devastated by shrapnel when he reached this, but on the ground mimicked tearing the harp’s ‘cords asunder’, as in the song, so no enemy could play one of their own unholy, polluting tunes on it. After one of these casualty episodes, Iles had explained to Harpur, ‘Nowadays, Col, someone would tell him to take a Kalashnikov into the battle not a fucking harp.’

  Iles always recovered fairly quickly from songster laments. The morning following the Agincourt Butterfly crisis, he had said, ‘The dancing, Col.’

  ‘Last night? Too funky and up-to-the-minute for me. Or is funky itself out-of-date now? I’ll ask my daughters. I prefer the veleta.’

  ‘I’d like you to think of Manse,’ Iles had replied.

  ‘Sitting with Ralph Ember, watching.’

  ‘Watching with unusual intentness, would you say?’

  ‘I’ve never seen them watching dancing before, so I don’t know if they were unusually intent. Is there an intentness norm for watching dancing?’

  ‘And their intentness developing how, Harpur?’

  ‘Developing in what sense, sir?’

  ‘In the sense of developing,’ Iles replied. ‘Attitude.’

  ‘To?’

  ‘Oh, yes, to.’

  Harpur and Iles had been talking in the ACC’s office suite at headquarters, two rooms, one occupied by a large conference table and a dozen straight-backed chairs, the other with easy chairs, a work station and a tiltable cheval mirror so he could check his appearance selectively – selectively meaning he was able to avoid any reflection of his Adam’s apple, which he considered unforgivably knotty. Iles paced. Harpur had one of the armchairs. Iles liked pacing, an unhurried, musing lope. Harpur reckoned today’s was a lope with big significance. He’d thought about loping himself, but realized they might get into an awkward congestion at some point. He stayed put. Iles had on one of his London custom-made grey, double-breasted, three-piece suits, mauve-striped shirt, plain mauve tie in what he called a ‘Windsor knot’, a plump, inverted triangle fashion set by Edward VIII when Prince of Wales. It was said to have sexual relevance. ‘Attitude towards the Wavertons, Col. They were dancing more or less into Shale’s and Ember’s laps.’

  ‘I took it as a kind of thank you,’ Harpur had said, ‘like a military march-past, to honour some admiral of the fleet.’

  ‘Did you? Did you, Col? How generous.’

  ‘Ralph or Manse paying for the night on rotation. People would want to show they’re having a lovely time and are grateful. Perhaps they’d try to express that in their own style – say, dancing. This would be so, although they’d been very genuinely moved, as we all were, by your touching remembrance of Madame Butterfly. They’d wish to prove that this spell of pain, extremely valid though it definitely was, had ended now and the jollifications, as catered for by Ralph or Manse, could resume. Dance is such a positive, isn’t it, sir? A community expression, in this case the Shale and Ember combined community. T
hink of John Travolta.’

  Iles was on his way to the far end of the conference room and had spoken over his shoulder. ‘A stratagem, Col. A ploy.’

  ‘In which particular, sir?’

  Iles turned back. ‘Manse wasn’t fooled by it. Oh no! Did you see his eyes?’

  ‘Manse has had some suffering,’ Harpur replied.

  ‘He saw what Waverton was trying to do.’

  ‘What was that, sir?’

  ‘I’d say Waverton knows that Manse has him in mind,’ Iles said.

  ‘In mind in which respect?’

  ‘Those eyes, they’re directed at Waverton and what are they telling us, Col?’

  ‘Eyes can certainly express a lot. They say TV acting is all about eyes – no need to bellow and arm-wave to reach the back row of the stalls. I notice the eyes in that soap, EastEnders. The eyes have a hell of a lot to say for themselves.’

  ‘Those eyes remark very tersely to Waverton, “I’ve got you marked, mate, and don’t imagine that if you do a ninety seconds’ jig in my and Ralph’s personal space this puts everything right; some matters have to be answered for, have to be suffered for.”’

  ‘Were Ralph Ember’s eyes tersing the same sort of message to Waverton?’

  ‘Ralph can measure a situation long-term, Col. Remember his letters to the press about our environment. He’s looking far, far ahead.’

  ‘Exactly which situation do you have in mind, sir?’

  ‘Oh, yes,’ Iles replied. ‘That accounts for their closeness.’

  ‘Sitting together at the Agincourt?’

  ‘Beyond this, Harpur. You, at your rank, are not accustomed to looking into that beyond. I don’t blame you in the least. It is the nature of things, given your qualities. If you ever got to staff college, which, obviously, you won’t, not with clothes and a haircut like that, but if you did you would be made familiar with phrases such as “think width”, “penetrate the beyond”, “be not anchored in the everyday, the immediate, the superficial, escape the merely mechanical, the banausic.”’