Hitmen I Have Known

by Bill James

  Denise had run out of cigarettes and got up early to go to the corner shop. Also she wanted to see what the papers made of ‘The Forgotten Murders’ and she came back with copies of the two nationals. Their critics would have been given an advance showing of the programme.

  Denise took off her jeans and got back into bed. Hazel and Jill must have heard her go out to the shop and came into the bedroom now with mugs of tea for her and Harpur. The girls sat on each side of the foot of the bed. Denise lit up a cigarette and took a couple of deep, soul-refreshing pulls. She placed the cigarette on the bedside ashtray, drank some tea, put the mug on the floor and opened the Telegraph to the critic’s column. She read silently for a couple of minutes. Then she said: ‘There’s someone called Prunella.’

  ‘Called what?’ Jill said.

  Denise read aloud now: ‘“Last night’s drama spot offering ‘The Forgotten Murders’ raised, in her nuanced but provocative style, director Prunella Gart’s version (script by Arnold Bourne) of the occasional resounding clash between legality and so-called natural justice. It traced with admirable thoroughness and unwavering narrative force the kind of dilemma that has challenged philosophers, lawyers and theologians for centuries.”’

  ‘“Nuanced”?’ Jill said. ‘What’s that?’

  ‘Subtle changes of meaning or tone,’ Hazel replied.

  ‘Norman Mailer said newspapers crush nuances like nuts,’ Denise said.

  ‘It’s a good thing, is it?’ Jill said.

  ‘What?’ Hazel replied.

  ‘To be nuanced,’ Jill said.

  ‘But also provocative,’ Hazel said. ‘One bit nice and gentle, the next a smack in the chops.’ She unfolded The Times on the bed.

  Denise read aloud from the Telegraph again. ‘“The problem confronted so skilfully here is easy to summarize but not to solve: If the police and courts are obviously failing to safeguard the public and stamp out evil, can someone, or more than one, legitimately assume those protection and punishment duties personally? Treatments of this theme take plenty of forms.”’

  Denise reclaimed the burning cigarette and took in another stalwart helping of fume. Harpur, still lying flat in the bed, eyes closed, holding the tea mug in one hand, said: ‘We’re talking kangaroo courts and vigilantes, aren’t we?’

  ‘Kangaroo?’ Jill said.

  ‘Courts with no genuine legal status, and possibly vindictive,’ Hazel said.

  ‘It’s what The Godfather films are about,’ Denise said. ‘Italian immigrants in the United States at the start of the last century found they couldn’t trust the police to look after them and so they set up their own law-and-order structure under a gang supremo.’

  ‘The Times says there’s a novel and film called The Caine Mutiny which asks whether a warship’s officers are right to take over if the captain seems cowardly and mad,’ Hazel replied.

  ‘Bogart as the cracked captain,’ Denise said, ‘scared of almost everything and with overworked worry beads.’ She finished her cigarette and began to read again: ‘“Although ‘The Forgotten Murders’ is by no means the first to explore the topic, Prunella Gart brought a new wit, depth, pace and credibility to this chewy moral puzzle. In ‘The Forgotten Murders’, a police chief hunting for evidence to nail a tycoon drugs dealer sends one of his young detectives undercover to get more information on the crooked businessman. This operation is botched, though, with the spy exposed and slaughtered. The drugs lord and an accomplice are arrested and accused of the killing but get off. The officer who devised the operation is distraught over his detective’s death, and then at the acquittal.

  ‘“And so, he carries out a mock-judicial execution of the pair himself. Or does he? Although ‘The Forgotten Murders’ ends with heavy hints that he does, the conclusion is not totally clear.”’

  Hazel said: ‘The Times thinks some of its readers will regard this as evasive, “a cop cop-out,” but that “the careful imprecision and reasonable bafflement are in splendid harmony with the general ambience of what has gone before.” Then we get back-slapping for the actors: “Hugh Phareas as the heart-broken, vengeful officer is excellently sinuous, emotionally powerful, calculatedly defiant of rules and precepts. Trevor Lichen gives the drugs baron occasional moments of human and humane feeling, but doesn’t overdo it.”’

  Harpur spent most of the rest of the day in his office at headquarters. The Press Bureau sent a clipping up to him from the Evening Bulletin.

  A woman was rushed to hospital last night following an outbreak of fighting and vandalism at one of the city’s best-known social clubs, The Monty in Shield Terrace. Furniture, shelving, glassware and a large-screen television set were wrecked during a fifteen-minute period of turmoil. The smashing of the television screen was believed to have a special significance.

  Jennifer Steppe-Lewis, aged 32 of Mildmay Avenue, was struck in an exceptional accident with an ungrounded pool table and suffered serious injuries to her chest. Rioters grabbed spirits and wine bottles from behind the bar and swigged the contents, causing the spread of drunkenness and increased violence. The proprietor of the club was present, but unable to control the outburst.

  Police arrived at the club later. They included Assistant Chief Constable Desmond Iles and Detective Chief Superintendent Colin Harpur. The presence of such senior officers would suggest the disturbance had some special, so-far-undisclosed, significance.

  The violence apparently began after a showing of the TV programme, ‘The Forgotten Murders’. Different parts of this ‘faction’ item – a mixture of documentary and drama – appeared to raise anger and resentment in varying groups of the members and caused them to attack each other.

  Mr Ralph W. Ember, owner of The Monty said: ‘This violence was disgraceful and entirely untypical of the club.’ He said that ‘outside elements’ appeared to be among the attackers. He seemed to think that the trouble had been pre-planned by people who regarded The Monty as a suitable site for their display of ‘arrant power’.

  ‘I do not know what led to the terrible behaviour but people may rest assured that I will not let it happen again. The club is temporarily closed while repairs are carried out but we expect to reopen with everything back to normal by 6 p.m. We all hope that Jennifer Steppe-Lewis, one of our most valued members, will make a good and quick recovery.’

  Asked whether the involvement of two very high-rank police officers indicated some unusually grave concern about the incident, Mr Ember said he was grateful for their visit but did not know of any unusual interest in the very regrettable occurrence. Mr Ember said he would vigorously continue a scheme already under way to enhance the existing strong appeal of The Monty and would not be deterred by ‘this or any other unfortunate blips.’

  Iles came in while Harpur was reading the Bulletin’s report. He was in shirt sleeves and looked frail and boyish. He wasn’t. ‘Brilliant, isn’t it, Col?’ he said. A beautiful smile had taken over his face.

  ‘What, sir?’

  ‘I adore the way they pair our names – Assistant Chief Constable Desmond Iles (Operations) and Detective Chief Superintendent Colin Harpur.’

  ‘Journalists like to get names correct.’

  ‘The reporter says for us to be at The Monty must indicate something “special” and “grave”. It needed someone of high rank to deal with it – myself. But they mention you as well, a kind of linkage. It helps give me the common touch, the very common touch. That can be important in police work.’

  ‘But what makes it special and grave, sir?’

  ‘Have you ever heard of a pool table assaulting a woman before?’ Iles replied.

  ‘That’s a point, sir.’

  TWENTY

  Mansel Shale appeared at The Monty for a talk with Ralph not long after repairs and replacements had been completed. The club was running normally again and Ember felt joyful relief. The appalling damage done in that spell of havoc had brought him deep suffering as though he’d been injured himself, although, in fact, he was unhurt
. His hopes for The Monty had seemed shattered. But those hopes were too powerful to fade. They’d soon resumed.

  Mansel wore navy Lycra long shorts and a silver top, red striped training shoes and a turquoise chin-strapped helmet. Ralph had never seen him in this kind of outfit before and would have preferred not to see him in it now, but he couldn’t say so to Mansel: it would be cruel. Shale had a 1930s-style bicycle with Sturmey-Archer hub gears and completely encased chain. He had ridden over from his home in the ex-St James’s rectory on the other side of the city. It was just after midday. Ralph usually came in around eleven a.m. to make sure the club was ready for business. He believed in being very ‘hands-on’, especially now following the flare-up. Shale took off the helmet and hung it on the bike’s handlebars. He put the machine into the club cloakroom and Ralph led him to his office on the first floor.

  Mansel wasn’t a regular at The Monty and Ralph guessed the visit could mean something special. There were a couple of armchairs in the office and they sat facing each other. Ralph rang down to the kitchen and asked for coffees to be brought up. Mansel said: ‘As a matter of fact, Ralph, I got pictures and pictures can be all very terrific, no question, in what might be described as the realm of the visual, but they’re all the better if we can give them some reality also, which is why I said to myself, “Go to The Monty and see the shape and size of things in what we might call situ”, which means being there, solid and three-dimensional in their proper place.’

  ‘You’re always welcome at the club, Manse,’ Ember said, even when you’re in that sickening gear – but Ralph only thought the last bit, didn’t actually say it.

  ‘This I know and am grateful for. But what we need, in my opinion, Ralph, is the geography of certain incidents,’ Shale replied. ‘Geography in a so-to-speak way, not rivulets or abysses but the inside of The Monty.’

  ‘To what purpose, Manse?’ Ralph said.

  ‘Truth,’ Shale said.

  ‘Truth as to what?’

  ‘Truth. Identification. These I believe you’ll agree are important.’

  Well, yes, Ralph thought he might agree, if he knew what the fuck Manse was talking about. ‘Truth in which aspect?’ Ember asked. ‘Whose identification?’

  ‘You’re certainly entitled to ask such questions,’ Shale replied. ‘I recognize there is some lack of clarity so far.’

  ‘Thank you, Manse.’

  ‘I got pictures on my phone and they definitely tell a tale, but that tale will be so much clearer when we have got the actual setting such as chairs, the bar, the bottles, the pool table. That pool table is very, very real or it would not be able to cuff a woman’s tits to the point of hospitalization.’

  ‘We’ve got everything back to as it should be,’ Ember replied.

  ‘You have indeed, Ralph, and it’s what I would expect. This is a club with a glorious, wide reputation, and that reputation had to be worked for, and still has to be if you are to keep that reputation, and, yes, even improve on it. When I read about the rotten trouble here, such as the pool table and multi-breakages, I decided I must come to The Monty and bring support, to a good friend and trade colleague.’

  ‘Thanks, Manse.’

  ‘Of course, you were there at the time,’ Mansel said.

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Distressing.’

  ‘Yes, distressing.’ That was on the way to being the right sort of word, but nothing like strong enough. He had felt appalled and helpless. He’d had the gun aboard after Lecomte’s persuasion, and, of course, there’d been a previous gun conversation with Mansel over at the rectory, but a gun wouldn’t have been of any use at the Monty trashing. He didn’t bring it out of the holster. He couldn’t simply fire into a mob. The gun was in case he needed to protect himself, not to wound and possibly slaughter willy-nilly on Monty premises.

  ‘You’ll have a general idea of what went on,’ Mansel said.

  ‘How do you mean, Manse – “general”?’

  ‘Disruption on all sides and up the middle.’

  ‘Yes. It seemed to be about some TV programme that had been on earlier, before I arrived.’

  ‘You wouldn’t see any pattern to it all, just violence everywhere, Ralph. Disgraceful.’

  ‘Pattern?’

  ‘The photos might show us that pattern.’

  ‘What pattern?’

  ‘Which is why they are useful, maybe.’

  ‘But in what way?’

  ‘This support I think I can offer is in two forms, Ralph,’ Shale replied. ‘First, to ask around and try to find anyone who was in the club that night and might of took photos of the behaviour on their phone. This is how matters are today, isn’t it, Ralph – people don’t believe something has happened unless they can take a pic of it? Second, when I discovered, yes, there are folk with such pictures, to get a look at them pictures, copy them, and see how they fit the layout of the club interior, and match the pictures with the reality of that roughhouse time. And so we got a background or what we might call a setting.

  ‘A context?’

  ‘That sort of thing I expect,’ Shale said. ‘We know for certain.’

  ‘What, Manse?’

  ‘Oh, yes, for certain.’

  ‘You sound very confident.’

  ‘A face,’ Mansel replied.

  ‘Whose?’

  ‘It appears, reappears. But we have a background for it and a what-you-call, like you said.’

  ‘Context.’

  ‘Right. We’ve spoke before regarding the possible need to do someone, haven’t we, Ralph, the aim to protect Ilesy and therefore protect our well-being.’

  ‘Certainly.’

  ‘But no movement.’

  ‘Not yet.’

  ‘No, not yet,’ Manse replied. ‘But now comes something that could really help things along.’

  ‘Yes?’

  ‘Oh, yes indeed. I want you to look at these pics and notice a face, one face, a face that’s very, very present during that Monty disturbance. Behind the face in these photos there are always items we recognize because they belong to The Monty – the bar, chairs and tables, broken or not, the pool table legs in the air at that juncture but now properly restored. The face is there among them, all completely genuine. These pics are not faked. They can’t be faked because we have the genuine what-you-call for them.’

  ‘Context.’

  ‘Right. This is why I say a pattern, Ralph.’

  ‘How do you mean, a pattern, Manse?’

  ‘The pattern becomes obvious because we are looking at the scene not just once or twice but in a load of instances.’ Manse held out his phone and rolled about a dozen pictures of the Monty devastation for Ralph to examine. It wasn’t what Ember really wanted to see and to be reminded of, but Mansel seemed to believe something crucial was there. ‘Do you spot it?’ he asked.

  ‘What?’

  ‘The face.’

  Ember squinted hard at the pictures as Shale kept them on the move.

  ‘Well, yes, perhaps,’ Ralph said.

  ‘This is not a “perhaps”. This is a certainty. This is a face in a context. This face and this context are the truth, Ralph.’

  ‘Hold it,’ Ember replied.

  Mansel stopped scrolling the pictures.

  ‘Up here, to the left?’ Ralph said, pointing a finger. ‘That the one?’ He didn’t think he’d noticed this face during the actual outbreak. It wasn’t someone he recognized. And Mansel was probably right to say that there was too much going on for Ralph to register any ‘pattern’ in those minutes of chaos.

  Now, in Ralph’s office, Mansel gave three big, pleased nods. Ember thought they were the kind of showy nods that were just right for someone in Lycra long shorts. ‘Well done, Ralph. Yes, that’s our boy.’ Shale flicked through a couple more pictures. ‘Here he is again, you see, Ralph? He’s standing near a heap of broken glass and waving his arm about.’

  ‘Yes,’ Ember said.

  ‘Or here again,’ Shale said, as the pi
ctures shifted. ‘It’s clear in this one he’s not just waving an arm, he’s throwing a punch, and in the next one somebody on the floor near him, caught by that haymaker fist I’d say and knocked flat, such brutality so wrong for the spirit and the soul of The Monty. Who is he?’

  ‘Who? The man on the floor?’ Ember said.

  ‘No. The face.’

  ‘You don’t recognize?’

  ‘Should I? It’s why I mentioned identification,’ Manse said.

  ‘You know him?’

  ‘I didn’t. I asked around,’ Manse said. ‘Name, address. He’s got some fame. What we have here is what I would regard as an example – the destruction, the arm waving, the punch.’

  ‘An example of what, Manse?’

  ‘An example of the whole situation. It tells us what that whole situation is, like typical, like summing it all up in one go, a sort of what-you-call … not context but … like that musical instrument.’

  ‘Symbol, but with an S and an O not a C and an A, like for the instrument.’

  ‘Yes, a symbol, standing for much more than itself only.’

  As always with Manse there was a vivid, inspiring liveliness to his features. Ralph thought he looked like a very well-connected ferret. He glowed now, obviously delighted that Ralph had found his way to this possibly key face.

  ‘The name is Favard,’ Shale said.

  ‘Ah,’ Ember replied.

  ‘Yes, it’s worth an “Ah”, isn’t it, Ralph?’

  ‘Ah,’ Ralph said.

  ‘Of the two deads in the unsolved murders case, one, I think, was called Favard, wasn’t he?’

  ‘Paul Favard.’

  ‘This one – the ever-present pictured face – is Naunton (Waistcoat) Favard, a brother of Paul. It’s what I mentioned previous, Ralph.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘Identification. Among the shambles and confusion in The Monty on that bad, bad night, there is this constant, strong face on view in the middle of things, as if it wanted to tell us what it’s all about. It’s a symbol with an S and an O. But no need for him to tell us. We know, don’t we, Ralph?’