Hitmen I Have Known

by Bill James

  ‘You seem almost fond of him,’ Amy said.

  ‘He’s part of the constituency,’ Iles said.

  ‘The Department is not happy with the constituency,’ Amy said.

  ‘Oh, dear,’ Iles replied.

  ‘This unexplained sojourn of Ember makes us – the Department, that is – uneasy,’ Amy said.

  ‘Has the minister a down on paint shops?’ Iles said.

  ‘Oh, come on, Mr Iles,’ Olivia said.

  Harpur thought, yes, Iles did sound pretty feeble. Perhaps he was wearying of the wordage.

  ‘The minister, and several others, wonder why Ember has to travel so far for his paint,’ Amy said.

  ‘Unpredictable,’ Vince said. ‘The word comes up twice in the email from the Department. The minister believes the situation has become more unpredictable because of the paint shop episode.’

  ‘Unpredictability is not a quality the minister is happy with,’ Amy said. ‘No politician would be happy with it. He feels that for you to go ahead with the Raymond Street function would seriously increase that unpredictability.’

  ‘There are perplexing, worrying links, aren’t there,’ Olivia said. ‘There’s Ember, there’s the shop and there’s you, Mr Iles. Some believe you look after Ralph Ember,’ Olivia said. ‘“Look after” in the sense of … in the sense of looking after. There might be a reciprocal element to it. He tries to protect you, perhaps. You possibly know that some in the Department and in the Yard want you suspended while the Paul Favard/Cliff Jamieson murder investigations are given a restart. We hear of new evidence from Paul’s brother, Naunton.’

  Iles said: ‘I’ve mentioned, haven’t I, that I’m the assistant chief constable (Operations). It’s my responsibility to look after, in the sense of … well … looking after, everyone in my bailiwick. Ask Col.’

  ‘That isn’t quite the point,’ Amy replied.

  ‘I think it is,’ Iles said. ‘If you won’t ask him, I will,’ Iles said. ‘Col?’

  ‘Mr Iles has his own way of coming at things,’ Harpur replied.

  ‘Which things?’ Amy said.

  ‘Issues,’ Harpur said.

  ‘Is Raymond Street an issue?’

  ‘Raymond Street’s a plaque,’ Iles said. ‘It’s all we have left of him.’

  THIRTY

  Although The Monty could bring Ralph deep pleasure, therapy and golden hope, the club could also at times cause him terrible anxiety and confusion. Tonight, as he sat at his little desk behind the bar, protected by the Marriage of Heaven and Hell floating steel buffer, he had some accounts and invoices to check in front of him, but his mind hankered back to London at the hitman rendezvous.

  Tim (Tasteful) Barry-Longville and Mavis, his mother, were at their usual table not far away, and Ralph decided he’d join them in a while with a supply of Cointreau, and Kressmann Armagnac for himself. He remembered feeling ratty with the pair on Bastille Day in the club and he ought to compensate for that. He reckoned they’d been talking against Iles and that had angered him, maybe. Of course, there were metric tonnes to be said against Iles, the vain sod, but Ember couldn’t take it from these two. They didn’t realize how crucial Iles was to civic well-being and the prime recreational goods market. Ralph didn’t want to be harsh on them this evening, though, and expected that he and the drink would do some soothing and smoothing over. In fact Tasteful, wearing one of his glorious custom-made, double-breasted dark suits and a crimson bow-tie, beckoned to him two or three times, as if they had something especially urgent to say. But, for now, Ralph remained with the papers and his nagging thoughts.

  He felt troubled about that paint shop visit and the trick he’d pulled at the multi-storey car park. Or tried to pull. It was a bit of very low-level smartness, possibly less. He didn’t know anything about surveillance skills and how to block them, except what he’d seen in TV cop dramas. Ember did realize, though, that tails might be switched to avoid detection. This was elementary and obvious to anyone, expert or not.

  He’d come out of the café alert to a possible sighting of the summer jacket and the minor beard, waiting discreetly somewhere for him to reappear. But the summer jacket and minor beard might have signed off his spell and any of twenty people in and around the multi-storey could have taken over. At the swap moment, summer jacket and minor beard might have said to his successor something like: He’s probably aware. He was most likely going for his car but rumbled me and adjusted. He’s having a diversionary mug of something in the caff – the usual type dodge.

  Ralph had taken his car, anyway, so the pause had been almost certainly useless – weakly amateur. He should have left by a different door, if the café had one, but this would have needed an explanation to the management. Ralph couldn’t face that when he wasn’t at all sure there’d been a tail. Summer jacket, minor beard, might have walked on to wherever he was going and done no handover because there was nothing to hand over.

  Ralph had taken a quick glance at, say, half a dozen of the women and men nearby in case one of them was obviously eyeballing him. He spotted nobody. But that didn’t mean much. Experienced tails would know how to disguise their interest in a target. They’d have been trained to avoid giveaway staring. They’d get seminars in deadpan.

  Ralph made himself suppose for five minutes that there was definitely a tail, or tails. Who sent him, her, them? Why? These mysteries gave him sharp angst. Police? If so, and if the tail or tails had been with him from the shop to the car park, it must prove, mustn’t it, that the shop was under watch and some customers liable to get sticky, slipstream company. Again, why?

  Ralph felt it was degrading for a considerable, established businessman to be stalked like this, especially when he was only at the paint shop to safeguard a high-placed police officer, Assistant Chief Constable (Operations) Desmond Iles, by arranging at quite a personal cost for a loud, agitating pest to be put down – put down as humanely as possible, but, in any case, put down.

  Who else might want to check Ralph’s movements? If the tailing started from the shop, could it be Jo and Mil? What sense did that make, though? He had paid the first-phase money as required and agreed the next steps. They had no reason to doubt him and have him shadowed.

  He wondered whether he should do an emergency Sidney Engard Junior call and tell them at the shop that he’d changed his mind absolutely and altogether about the William Morris – had gone off indoor greenery, no longer wanted his stuff, thanks, had come to regard it an unforgivable insult to Nature by sticking a parody of it on urban walls. Although Sidney Engard Senior might favour that style of mock horticulture, his son, Sidney Engard Junior, now fancied a design based on Jackson Pollock.

  Being interpreted, this revised order directed at any wire tapper should mean to Mil and Jo that they’d better forget about Naunton Favard, abandon the hit – too many uncertainties. If trouble was on its threatening way to the shop, Ralph feared he might get pulled into it, charged as an accessory to murder.

  He was badly mixed up and didn’t want to reverse everything by stupid, scampering haste. Ralph was still aware that behind his back some sickeningly disrespectful people called him ‘Panicking Ralph’, even ‘Panicking Ralphy’, because of false rumours about dubious incidents in his past. He mustn’t give these disgusting slanderers any new evidence to back up that slur.

  Yet when the stress really attacked – often since the London visit – he wondered whether his plan to get Waistcoat shot and killed was extreme, was possibly almost absurd. It seemed to Ralph that two motives drove him. Perhaps both were flawed, and seriously flawed. First came The Monty. Waistcoat certainly disgraced the club. The timing made that particularly bad. This was just the period when Ralph believed The Monty’s imminent transformation into something much more refined, socially brilliant and intellectually fruitful. A woman felled and injured by a hijacked pool table while carrying drinks was bound to harm the club’s image, had possibly destroyed any prospect of advance for years. Naturally, Ralph was infur
iated and painfully saddened. He had hoped the drinks were nothing vulgar and cheapo, such as ginger-beer shandy. But wouldn’t it be manic to respond to Waistcoat’s undoubtedly poor behaviour with slaughter? Excessive? Discourteous? Barbaric? Although the cause might be noble – a reprisal punishment for bringing anarchy to a wonderful local feature, The Monty – there surely had to be proportion. Ralph regarded himself as a great fan of proportion when proportion seemed suitable.

  And then, as another motivator, there was the scheme to get rid of Naunton Favard permanently so he could no longer endanger Assistant Chief Constable (Operations) Desmond Iles, and therefore also endanger a splendid era of street peace and calm, so essential to profitable, expanding trade in the commodities. Again, there were moments when Ralph thought that to have someone killed because he menaced a certain kind of commerce in the city was perhaps marginally too severe.

  The back-and-forth thinking wearied Ralph. Despite all his quibbles, or perhaps because of them, he could not reach a definite, unvarying decision to stop the Waistcoat death crusade. It was late evening and taking a gaze around The Monty bar, he could remind himself, if that were needed, of what the repaired and refurbished club meant to him. It might help return Ralph to his original belief that anyone capable of bringing disrepute upon this marvellous, welcoming haven probably deserved obliteration soonest.

  The Monty had its shortcomings, of course it did. Which club didn’t? But it was its lovely potential that delighted and thrilled Ralph. He could not forgive anyone who interfered with that potential, as Waistcoat unquestionably had. Ralph left his desk, loaded a tray with some glasses and bottles and went to sit briefly with Mavis Barry-Longville and Tasteful.

  She said: ‘Ralph, Timmy has some insights for you from his world as an ace newspaperman on The Scene.’ Tonight, Mavis wore a turquoise high-necked blouse and a cream-coloured long skirt.

  ‘We had visitors, Ralph,’ Tasteful said. ‘Government people. A small party – three of them – assertive, persistent, looking for insider stuff on the situation. They’d been to the BBC newsroom as well.’

  ‘Which situation?’ Ralph said.

  ‘Well, the situation,’ Mavis said.

  ‘Tensions,’ Tasteful said.

  ‘Which?’ Ralph said.

  ‘Oh, you know, Ralph,’ Mavis replied.

  On the other side of the room a party was under way to celebrate the early release of two Monty members due to chronic jail overcrowding.

  ‘Home Office trio,’ Tasteful said. ‘On a quest. A principal, her assistant and a communications guru. This is serious stuff, Ralph.’

  ‘Like in the French Revo,’ Mavis said. ‘Deputies on Mission, out in the country from Paris to make sure things were going as Mr Robespierre ordered. There’s big worry behind these three. Tim says your name was mentioned.’

  ‘Because of here, as a matter of fact,’ Tasteful said.

  ‘Here?’ Ralph said, but knowing what ‘here’ meant.

  ‘The Monty, and the bother a while back. The minister has heard of it. He and colleagues grow anxious. So, they dispatch this gifted crew to explore for fear of a repeat, or something bigger and worse.’

  ‘It’s to do with Iles, isn’t it?’ Mavis said.

  ‘Is it?’ Ralph said.

  ‘Ultimately, all of it’s to do with Iles,’ Mavis replied.

  ‘There was a very limited incident at The Monty,’ Ralph said. ‘It has all been put right as you can see.’

  ‘Commendable,’ Mavis snarled. ‘Superficial.’

  ‘A fear of serious unrest,’ Tasteful said.

  ‘Why, I say think Iles,’ Mavis said. ‘Three deaths. Who caused them? That’s what the “incident” was about.’

  ‘It was a drunken, contemptible few minutes, wholly untypical and unworthy of the club,’ Ralph said.

  ‘Definitely untypical,’ Mavis said, ‘because it concerns an assistant chief. Not the kind of thing that often comes up in a police force.’

  The Welcome Home party for the two ex-prisoners had turned to song – ‘Goldfinger’. Ralph realized he would miss these sorts of jubilant, raucous get-togethers when he had brought about the big change in The Monty’s social rank and rating. Regrettably, they wouldn’t fit in tone-wise with Ralph’s cherished idea of how the club must be then.

  Tasteful said: ‘The focus for the moment is on one issue, isn’t it?’

  ‘Is it? What?’ Ralph replied.

  ‘Halo parade. Should the commem for Raymond Street go ahead, as it normally does every year, or is this likely to touch off more bad trouble?’ Tasteful said. ‘That’s what the visitors want to find out. That’s what the Government wants to find out. They were careful about what they said, but I got the idea that suspension of Iles and an independent inquiry is very possible.’

  ‘And what will happen to him after that?’ Mavis said. ‘Are we talking criminal trial?’

  Once again, Ralph had listened to enough. Mavis was probably right, which made Ralph’s resolve to get away from her stronger. It wasn’t that he had a fierce admiration of Iles and could not bear to hear him knocked. But somehow Iles held things together in this city, and to do it he had to be kept in place. Mavis spoke with a kind of relish about Iles possibly getting put on trial. To Ralph that sounded stupidly short-sighted and evil.

  As on Bastille Day, he left the Cointreau bottle, and put the Kressmann back on the bar. He went over to the prisoner release session. Looking ahead once more, Ralph knew he might have trouble deciding if the two liberty lads at the centre of things tonight – Cedric Q. Gowan and Ed-Martin Pone – could have their membership renewed in the transformed Monty. Distressing. Cruel. Inevitable. Of course, they might be inside again, anyway, so there’d be no embarrassment. Cedric and Ed-Martin were great in some aspects, but they wouldn’t be comfortable in this altered ambience.

  As a matter of fact, Ed-Martin Pone had been serving seven years for a disastrously botched hitman job. These things could go very wrong, especially when so many novices wanted a try, and to get a handgun now was easy.

  Thank God, Mil was experienced, though; famed for his ability to put two rounds into a properly nominated chest so accurately that they created what seemed at first a single wound. Ed-Martin Pone’s ability had clearly not been at that level. Ralph felt Pone wasn’t necessarily a bleak lesson for him about hitmen and hits. No, not necessarily.

  Ed-Martin came out from the cheery, singing group – ‘Stormy Weather’ now, glass in his left hand, and shook Ralph’s with his right. ‘Grand to see you, Ed,’ Ralph said. The handshake was strong and went on for a very hearty while. Ralph tried to work out which of the fingers in his had made a balls-up of the hit, not like one of Mil’s.

  Ralph wondered occasionally what hitmen’s mothers thought of the career they’d chosen. These mothers might have put a lot of energy and time into teaching their son or daughter the basics of civilized living, such as no loud belching and so on, yet the son or daughter still picked a livelihood that completely ignored the demands of civilized existence. In fact, ran counter to them. Perhaps the mothers would argue that their child was only in the hit game part time, but that didn’t seem to Ralph a very convincing get-out.

  THIRTY-ONE

  Harpur easily found the Kingsbury paint shop. A red-letters-on-white board over the door gave the name: Jo’s And Mil’s. The difficult and essential part would be not to get observed observing. He assumed Olivia had it right and the shop was under non-stop surveillance. And he also assumed the surveillance remained in place.

  This was the London borough of Brent, Metropolitan Police territory. Harpur was an outsider, an intruder. Kingsbury had a history going back to the Bronze Age. Later, its name meant ‘The King’s Manor’. It was not Harpur’s manor. Strict protocols existed for an officer operating on ground not his own, and Harpur flouted it, of course. He’d felt compelled to take a look at the shop mentioned by Olivia and the Departmental email – mentioned but not explained. Would this sly trip ex
plain? Maybe not, but he felt he must try. Harpur was like that. He needed to see the actual, not just hear about it: a detective’s core response to a mystery.

  And plenty of mystery gnawed at him. He could understand how Ralph Ember’s Monty and its recent violent troubles might be linked to the dark, pervasive rumours about Iles, but that didn’t account for Ralph’s London journey and the call on Jo’s And Mil’s. Harpur thought he did see – half see – one possibility. It was well known that several major London drugs firms wanted to expand and were brutally, often bloodily, extending into provincial towns. Suppose the paint shop was under watch as a front for a big London drugs business, might Ralph want to fix a deal? Was he thinking ahead? Was he pre-empting, or attempting to?

  Ralph had quite a brain. He probably didn’t know, though, that the paint shop was on the end of top-quality spying. For safety’s sake, and to avoid warfare back home, did he hope to create in good time a tidy alliance with one of those powerful, ruthless, colonizing London outfits? He might see this as urgent, in case Assistant Chief Constable (Operations) Iles was removed – suspended, or sacked, and/or jailed. If there was a gap where Iles used to be, one of these London gangs might decide to fill it. Did Ralph want to establish good relations with this potential newcomer? Although Harpur realized that gazing at the outside of the shop like a twerp would probably bring no answer to this, it might be the absolute limit of what he could do. But he’d made the journey, anyway.

  Olivia had said the snoop was carried out from a hired room opposite the shop or from a vehicle – car or van – frequently changed. Harpur must stay out of range, but with a reasonable sight of the shop and the shoppers. He thought the same multi-storey car park Olivia had spoken of would just about do. It was a fair distance from the shop, and on the opposite side of the road, but with nothing to block the view.

  The building had no windows but low barriers to prevent vehicles overshooting and plunging out, and he took a parking place that let him see over the barrier to the shop from behind his windscreen. Because of CCTV he wouldn’t be able to keep this up for very long: a motorist who didn’t quit his car could be waiting for a chance to do break-ins. But it would be the same if he’d tried to stay unnoticed in the porch of a neighbouring shop to Jo’s And Mil’s. Either ploy would draw suspicion and perhaps cause a confrontation. He had to avoid that.