First Fix Your Alibi

by Bill James

  She’d plainly been very intrigued by the long scar on one side of Ralph’s face, from his cheek up to his temple. Like many women, she’d clearly wanted to finger this and had raised the rings hand towards it but then drew back, perhaps afraid she would seem disrespectful – a hire firm clerk confronted by Charlton Mark 2. Ralph could have told her that many women had, in fact, run their hands over the old wound, as if they hoped to find a combination code that might open it up and let them get inside him. This was something else Ralph tolerated extremely well. He would never condemn such reverential contact as a grope.

  For now, anyway, he wanted her cooperation in a different fashion. He felt glad he’d made this early, very useful personal contact with her. As she prepared the car hire bill and they were alone in her office Ralph said, ‘It would interest me greatly to know whether anyone had asked for the identity of the hirer. Probably you get that kind of inquiry sometimes.’

  ‘Well, yes we do.’

  ‘And?’

  ‘Obviously, we can’t disclose such information.’

  ‘Except when it’s the police, I expect.’

  ‘Well, yes, the police would be different.’

  She was seated at a computer to prepare the account and Ralph bent forward a little so that if she wanted to she could fondle and/or stroke his scar, and at the same time he put the fifty pound note on the side of the table. ‘Could you suggest a name,’ she said, ‘so I wouldn’t actually be telling you, only confirming.’

  Ralph knew this was a regular trick in business when someone wanted to leak something confidential without actually leaking it. ‘Harpur,’ he replied.

  She didn’t speak or nod but blinked unambiguously. She picked up the fifty so as to make space for the card machine and passed Ralph the bill. He keyed in his payment. She receipted the account, and raised her right hand this time and very briefly touched up the old wound. ‘Poor Chuck,’ she said, ‘yet I’m sure an honourable, even noble injury.’ Ralph couldn’t work out where the fifty had gone but it was no longer in sight.

  ‘I’ll know where to come when I want a hiring next,’ Ralph said.

  ‘Oh, yes, do, but surely you have a car, cars, of your own.’

  ‘Here’s one of them now,’ Ralph replied. Margaret in the Lexus drew up outside.

  ‘So why?’ she asked. ‘Is it something exciting? I mean, the police involved.’

  ‘Not a Charlton Heston scale drama, I’m afraid. Routine,’ he said.

  ‘Routine, how? I don’t understand.’

  No, he couldn’t expect her to understand, assumed she wouldn’t understand, and definitely wouldn’t understand from him, although it centred on the Renault. At the swimming bath car park, Ralph had seen Harpur walk towards his own vehicle after watching the Wavertons enter the Merc. He behaved as though he hadn’t seen Ralph but Ralph knew he had undoubtedly seen and recognized him well enough; and, when he’d got around the back Harpur did a sharp, remember-it gaze at the registration, he, visible in the rear-view mirror, doing it.

  ‘Is that your wife?’ the Easy-Come, Easy-Go girl asked. ‘I expect she gets a lot of trouble with other women making approaches, wanting to be … well, to be associated in an intimate manner with a sort of star.’

  ‘I don’t think she regards me as a star, not of any sort.’

  THIRTEEN

  While waiting, waiting, waiting for Ralph Ember to act, Shale had kept an occasional watch on Waverton, mainly in case the sod gave any sign that he was helping line up another attempt on Manse – one that really got to him this time. Shale needed to be ready. He carried a Heckler and Koch 9 mm Parabellum pistol most days and nights now. And he had two of his heavies in the firm on continuous armed stand-by.

  He’d noticed the Waverton name in a newspaper list of competitors at a school swimming bath gala and had guessed the parents of the child might turn up in support. Lying low in the car park there he had watched the Wavertons come out from the building and get into the back of their S-class Mercedes for what seemed to Manse a bit of uncontrollable, married bliss nooky. He’d heard that Mercedes cars did turn some people on. Manse thought it must be to do with the bonnet symbol which looked like a pair of open legs, with a third stiff vertical line spare, so far; a saucy hint to horny couples to get things completed on the rear seat. Manse had wondered sometimes whether sex counsellors dealing with what was termed dysfunction should advise people to get a Mercedes, not necessarily new and therefore pricey, but of any age because the badge would be on all models.

  Harpur had emerged from the baths very soon after the Wavertons. He’d stared towards them until they disappeared into the Merc, then walked to his own, or the job’s, unmarked Ford saloon. Back home in the old rectory Manse had a record of all unmarked police cars and, as far he could remember, there were several Fords, saloons and estates, so this could certainly be one of them. Harpur had seemed to loiter behind a Renault Grand Scenic, perhaps putting the reg into his memory. Police were trained to have good memories; also how to adjust what they remembered when a case needed that. The car park seemed to contain a lot of tasty people tonight.

  Manse had not given much notice to the Renault previously. The police didn’t use Grand Scenics, and he could be sure he’d have no record of this one in that file. He also kept notes on cars used by all personnel in his own and Ralph Ember’s firms and there might be mention of a Grand Scenic, or Scenics, in one of those lists, but he couldn’t say definitely. Manse knew that some youngsters would view him as pitifully behind the times in relying on handwritten notes. If he’d gone fully electronic he would be carrying all these records around with him in a chip and there’d be no need to try to recall elementary facts like this. He’d get them instantly on the screen of his phone.

  But Manse liked paper and pen or pencil. Reading and writing had come quite late to Shale. He’d been on an adult literacy course in his late twenties and the pleasure enjoyed from earning an approved standard in both, backed by diplomas, continued its grip on him. The woman running the course, not young, was especially helpful and friendly, without ever trying to get his pants off. He loved jotting down information in a loose-leaf book and loved, too, reading stories, hardback and paperback, such as the tales about a boy brought up by wolves; and another book to do with savage kids marooned on a desert island after a plane crash. He didn’t care if these volumes had no pictures. It was the words he thrilled to, the ways they followed each other very nicely in a little procession, linking up, helping the next along towards a full stop or exclamation mark. There wouldn’t be no stories if they didn’t. Words was great even on their own, but they needed to join up in a line if they was going to tell you something. Now and then people would come up to you and say, ‘Could I have a word?’ They didn’t really mean that, though, as if they was asking you for a word, a single word. In fact, they wanted to give not take and what they wanted to give was not just a word but a string of words which could add up to what might be worth listening to. Paragraphs delighted him – their bulkiness and the way they’d sometimes finish off with only a couple of words where they got to their end showing the paragraph had said all it wanted to say.

  One of Manse’s big regrets was that he’d never felt confident enough to read to the children when they was small. It wouldn’t of been good for them to hear their dad spluttering and blundering over a page. Children had to be able to admire their dad not regard him as a joke. By the time he’d reached a fair standard Laurent and Matilda could read better than he could, so he’d become surplus. Although he had recommended the Mowgli stuff to them he didn’t believe they’d ever tried it, and it was too late for Laurent now, of course. Manse still had trouble with the spoken language occasionally or oftener, but he was gradually sprucing that up. If he caught himself saying, for instance, ‘I done it,’ he would repeat at least ten times at mutter strength, ‘I did it.’ Although most might understand what he meant even when he said ‘I done it,’ that sort of mistake could put a mark on you, l
ike not wiping snot off of the end of your nose. People noticed and made remarks to others about you. Manse Shale’s mother used to worry a lot about people making remarks. She seemed to mean the remarks could only be bad.

  Harpur’s bit of a loiter at the back of the Scenic had given Manse a message. It said that Harpur didn’t know this car but he did know who was in it and was interested in who was in it. Who was in it, Manse had discovered, looked like Ralph Ember, and for a couple of moments then Manse had wondered whether this car park was Ralph’s chosen killing ground and at last he meant to do Waverton. Manse had soon come to correct this notion, though.

  He guessed that Harpur would have expected a different vehicle for Ralph. Like Manse, the police would know Ralph’s usual cars: a Subaru, a Lexus, a couple of VW Golfs; these two were German but didn’t have the same power to sex people up as with the German Merc because a VW lacked that badge. VW meant people’s car, but people in general as drivers, not people fuck-driven.

  Manse had thought the Scenic must be either brand new or hired. But then he’d realized that the reg made it a year old at least. Hired, then. Harpur would want to know why Ralph had a rented car. To get anonymity? Manse, also, would also like to know why a rented car. To get anonymity? Why anonymity? The answer to that seemed plain: Ralph was watching the Wavertons and didn’t want them to know he was. Harpur would probably reach the same answer.

  But that answer really angered Shale then and now for two reasons. There might be more. (a) Manse reckoned Ralph had come not immediately to do the kill but to have a serious lurk, a lurk he hoped would stay secret, owing to the Grand Scenic. He’d set himself up there to spy because he would not accept an absolute statement from Manse that Waverton was the traitor they had to track down and wipe out. No, not track down. This Manse had already done. It was the whole fucking point. Manse had carried out the discovery of the filthy facts and all Ralph had to do was kill, not dawdle about there in a Renault like deep, confidential surveillance.

  In Manse Shale’s opinion, no surveillance at all by Ralphy Ember had been needed. Surveillance flung an insult to Manse because it said more or less straight out in a sort of hurtful blurt that his assessment of the Waverton situation might be bollocks and had to be checked, maybe even chucked. Ralph had decided to get his own picture of Frank Waverton by putting him under special watch. No wonder he picked a Grand Scenic. He wanted a grand scene for Waverton, a grand scene created by Ralph, the big-headed sod. All Ralph’s energy and purpose had to go to this game-playing and most likely he would never actually do anything, such as the central, prime matter of slaughtering Frank Waverton on a neat and comfortable exchange basis. He could act like he was most probably going to see to Waverton, but not quite yet, possibly not ever, because he didn’t have the degree of info that could convince his mighty, panicking brain.

  There was a phrase used in boxing: ‘he left it all on the gymnasium floor’, meaning a defeated fighter had put all his energies into preparation for the scrap, but was spent and useless when it came to the actual bout. Like Ralphy?

  (b) Harpur. Manse had tried to guess why the cop was there. It could not be a dogging arrangement with the Wavertons, no matter how fashionable dogging had become among all classes, as people grew bored by TV and DVDs. Harpur had stayed a long way from the Mercedes, although he knew Frank and Rose were in there probably satisfying each other without what was known as stint. This might be another popular element in Merc sex, it was stintless.

  Perhaps Harpur and Iles still wanted to find who had ordered the Jag ambush in Sandicott Terrace – the messed-up ambush that killed Naomi and Laurent. Although shadowing people like the Wavertons was not the kind of basic duty a Detective Chief Super would normally do, Harpur might be acting on an instinct, not proper evidence, and he’d find it tough to explain to his officers why he wanted Waverton tailed.

  Or Manse had thought it might be an Iles instinct. People said Iles was very strong on sensing things – things not always visible to others. Iles had nearly got himself killed right after the Sandicott incident, trying to arrest the gunman1, and he was the sort who’d keep searching for the master thug behind the hitman. Iles didn’t mind being regarded as laidback – a phrase Manse had heard recently – but Iles wouldn’t fancy being laid out. Possibly, he and Harpur had come to believe Frank was the one who could give a lead. Iles might have told Harpur to do some digging. The difference between them two and Manse was that he didn’t just believe Waverton might be the disgusting, disloyal link. Manse felt certain of it, and felt fearful of it

  That’s why it had so gravely pissed him off to see Ralphy there, once it had become plain that he was not in position to do Waverton. Ralph’s presence brought risk – stupid, unnecessary risk. That risk had become very obvious when Harpur had identified Ralph in the Grand Scenic and got the number plate into his memory so he could do a trace and confirm who’d done the hiring. Because of Ember’s mad and brazen decision to come to the car park, the police would see a connection between him and Frank Waverton; just what the Manse–Ralph deal aimed to conceal; in fact, to make impossible. All fucking ego, that was Ralph. He’d be determined to handle matters his way, but his way could be clumsy and jinxed.

  Education. Ralph had some, and he used to let Manse know he had some. This didn’t mean the kind of reading and writing classes Manse went to. Higher. Manse believed the word for it might be ‘tertiary’, meaning top level. Ralph had even joined the university down the road on what was called a mature students’ degree scheme. Ralph had given it up for a while because he needed to do hands-on at his businesses. Sales had really took off lately, especially charlie. Manse’s own companies had seen the same lovely surge. He had read somewhere not long ago that human beings breathed through only one nostril at a time and the body switched automatically between the two. Manse had considered this very good news because it meant one nostril at least was always free, ready to welcome a quality snort.

  Although for now Ralph had jacked in uni, as he called it – like he was a student kid – he still talked about the lectures, and profs and books he’d read. He said the uni had begun to teach him how to think in a better way than before. And any bugger could spot the results of this in the matter of Waverton. Ralph had to mull, weigh up, dither, delay, assess, postpone; think a lot in that new educated, but-on-the-other-fucking-hand style, and do nothing.

  It worried Shale that perhaps his daughter, Matilda, would think he was feeble not to have completed a revenge response on them who had caused the murder of her step-mother and brother. She’d probably get some mockery about it at school. Although she had never reproached Manse for the apparent failure, he feared that’s what she would think. Matty might consider him weak, yellow, contemptible. Children could be polite and very considerate about what they said and what they didn’t, but they also saw situations very simply and starkly.

  That turn-and-turn-about project with Ralph had been designed to achieve necessary retaliation in the safest style possible: Waverton would get his head blown off but not by anyone blatantly motivated. However, Ralph seemed set on ignoring the pleasant, undemanding little execution scheme. Shale thought he might have to go for an alternative.

  He’d seen Rose Waverton leave the Merc and go into the baths building, her clothes in entirely decent order and no sign of knee trembling. Frank climbed out of the rear and took his place behind the wheel. Rose had come back with their daughter carrying her gear in a sports bag. Interestingly, Rose chose to get into the back of the Merc, perhaps to try re-living solo the last half hour or so there. The car moved away. After a minute the Renault left, too.

  FOURTEEN

  Shale would often do his best to imagine how Matty saw things these days. There was just the two of them in the old rectory now as long as that meandering cow, Sybil, didn’t try to come back; which she had attempted a short while ago when her love life was in a dud gap between some roofer or surgeon or snooker champion and some crooner or judge or hairdre
sser or Third World ambassador. A sly crawl back by Syb was something else Manse had to be ready for, and ready to kill.

  Trauma – that must be the word for what battered Matilda during and after Sandicott Terrace. Trauma meant injuries, but especially to the mind. Shale knew he had to be very understanding and full of support where Matty was concerned. This young girl had caught a lot of blood and fragments when Naomi and Laurent got shot. Most likely she would want to hear of other blood and fragments from the foul creep who’d caused the Sandicott Terrace blood and fragments.

  Manse fretted that his daughter might be in, say, a religious education lesson at school about the happy miracles in the Bible such as turning the water into wine, but all the same she’d be thinking of ripping some bastard apart with automatic fire. Shale realized that what he, on his own, absolutely on his own, had to care for with proper tenderness and tact was a mind that must have been assaulted terribly that day and not just by the blood and fragments. Although Manse would admit he wasn’t no qualified psychiatrist he saw that the way to make sure the trauma for Matty didn’t continue must be to reach what was referred to as ‘closure’. And most probably closure could only come with the destruction of the link man, Waverton.

  Of course, the main objective was to get whoever the linkman had been linked to. The chief. Manse reckoned that, if Waverton could be finished off, the people he’d been disgustingly informing to would have to find some other way of attacking Manse and his firm, their objective to grab it, naturally. Drugs were what was known as a growth industry and companies like Manse’s looked very desirable to greed-merchants. They believed in growth – of their loot. Manse thought that, without Waverton, the original invaders would make an even bigger mess-up of the campaign. And, now that Manse and his people were expecting the evil work, they could intercept it and, maybe, find where the plan and the orders came from.