Hotbed

by Bill James

  ‘As you say, rumour, gossip, hints. These are poor indicators.’

  ‘I know, I know. And I see you and him apparently so friendly here tonight and dealing jointly with that lout in the morning suit.’

  ‘We’ve known each other a long time, Manse and I. I’m to be his best man.’

  ‘Just the same – is there a sort of movement towards war? Joachim the first casualty?’

  ‘They say the first casualty of war is truth,’ Ember replied.

  ‘Have you thought you might be at risk yourself, Ralph?’

  ‘Life is risk.’ Ember felt proud of this answer. It could have come from a play – terse, correct, thrumming. But he sensed reproach in what Brown had said. Wasn’t he virtually asking whether his brother – one of Ember’s staff – had been killed by Mansel Shale, or on Shale’s orders, yet Ralph did nothing: continued the friendship with Shale and, in fact, extended it to bestmandom? Was he calling Ralph a poltroon, someone capable of felling a nut case in a bar with a bottle, but not much beyond that? ‘Yes, life is risk,’ Ember repeated. He wanted to sound like someone who knew danger, and knew it well, but would never retreat from it, cringe to it. Had this sod, Brown, heard among the rumours, gossip and hints, that some enemies referred to Ember as Panicking Ralph, or even Panicking Ralphy?

  He left Brown then and did a short tour of the premises. He believed the party could run itself safely now. Some people had left and the club no longer looked overcrowded. Ralph thought Unhinged would not cause any further upheavals. He went home to Low Pastures, for a meal, a talk about the day with his wife, Margaret, then a nap, and, as was routine, returned to the club at just after midnight – not via Singer Road this time – to supervise close-down for the night at two o’clock. Almost everyone had gone. A couple of men played pool, and Ralph would wait for them to finish the game before locking up. He sat at his shelf-desk behind the bar with another glass of Kressmann’s from a fresh bottle, admiring the mystical William Blake pictures on the metal screen sheltering him. Ralph thought Blake must have been a fascinating thinker. How the hell could that bitch, Edna, refer to the drawings as ‘freakish’?

  Articulate Alec, alone now, entered the club and took a high stool opposite him on the other side of the bar. He still wore the fine, made-to-measure pinstripe suit and wide silver and yellow tie he’d had on for the funeral and drink-up. Ralph poured him another armagnac. ‘They won’t abandon the idea, Ralph.’

  ‘Who?’

  ‘Great aunt Edna and my mother. I suppose you’re counting on that. You’ll play reluctant, negative, so, when you finally relent, you can ask more, and tie them to tougher terms. All that stuff about not rushing and having competing proposals to consider is to get the pair bidding. They’re bidding against no bugger, of course, but they can’t be sure of that. I don’t blame you for the tactics, Ralph. It’s how business works.’

  ‘They’re real Monty fans, I’ll say that for them,’ Ember replied with a fine warm chuckle.

  ‘Such out-and-out bollocks,’ Articulate replied.

  ‘What?’

  ‘That notion – to put good money into the club.’

  ‘“Good” in what sense – because it came from a legacy left by somebody good who had built up the wealth in a good, lawful way?’

  ‘Good because it can be used to make our lives better.’

  ‘Oh, so it’s not the money that’s good, but what might be done with it?’

  ‘Yes, what’s done with it. My mother and great aunt Edna – they’re confused.’

  ‘I appreciated their affection for the Monty,’ Ember said. ‘Constructive. You’re lucky to have such family.’

  ‘Idiotic.’

  ‘Oh?’

  ‘Like throwing money down an old coal pit.’

  ‘Oh?’

  ‘Everyone else with a bit of brain – except you and my mother and Edna – everyone knows the Monty is never going to change, Ralph. Perhaps even you know it, but have to hope – this crazy ambition, like somewhere over the rainbow in the ancient song. That might be what keeps you going. When I say it’ll never change, I mean not change as they and you would like, anyway. Your idiotic dream. I suppose the police might shut it down one day because of your drugs game etcetera. But you’ll stick to your hopes, and you’ll come round in your own time and grab the boodle from them, for the sake of this loony plan – maybe grab more boodle than they intended offering now. You’d feel stupid if you didn’t work the price up.’

  Ember thought about hitting the brassy prat. Ralph could have stood, leant forward quickly and reached him across the bar. Although Ralph had never heard Articulate put so many words together before, when he did grow verbal now, it was to insult Ralph and the Monty. Ember could have failures of courage and decisiveness sometimes, at dangerous moments during business operations outside, but not in the Monty, and certainly not when some jumped-up jerk questioned the club’s sanctity. Should he physically squash this sod? Sometimes one had to get rough, as with Unhinged. ‘I wouldn’t say your great aunt Edna or your mother lacked brain, Articulate,’ he replied. ‘The opposite.’

  ‘The money has shoved them off balance.’

  ‘The legacies?’

  ‘That’s it, the legacies. Yes, the legacies,’ Articulate said. ‘As if they feel they have to compensate for something.’ ‘Compensate for what – for receiving a legacy?’ ‘That’s it, Ralph. For receiving a legacy.’ ‘A sort of guilt – even though the money, or what you –

  you, personally – what you personally want to do with it is good?’

  ‘Yes, like guilt.’

  ‘Guilt because they and you have profited from a death? This does happen to legatees sometimes, I know – to the sensitive ones, and I’m sure that would include your mother and Edna, not to mention yourself, Alec. They suffer guilt over where the money comes from.’

  ‘Yes, right, so right – over where it comes from, Ralphy.’

  ‘“Ralph”, not “Ralphy”.’ Cunt. ‘Or “Ember”, Alec.’

  ‘Why it’s in cash, of course.’

  ‘I don’t follow,’ Ralph said, face deadpan.

  ‘So, to rid themselves of this shame, they want to find some noble project where they can put the lucre – and get a return. They’re compensating. It’s a genuine, worthwhile wish. But what they pick – sorry to say this, Ralph – what they pick is a noble, dud, mad project.’

  ‘I don’t see it like that,’ Ember replied.

  ‘No, I shouldn’t think you do. Why I had to come back tonight for a chinwag, on our own. I thought you’d be here. Your routine. The captain’s last to leave the ship.’

  The pool players finished, settled up the bets and said goodnight to Ember.

  ‘Look, one thing my mother and Edna had right is the gutter rating of the Monty membership on the whole,’ Alec said. ‘Again, apologies for the harshness, Ralph, but that’s how it is. Gutter and troublesome. Maybe continuing troublesome. Take the ding-dong with Unhinged tonight. He’s not going to forget it, hammered in public like that, despite a hyphenated name. Anyone togged up in such a suit has pride. He could bring you more unpleasantness in the club. And he thinks he was grassed from the Monty, doesn’t he?’

  ‘It’s bollocks.’

  ‘His perception, though. So, multi-motived retaliation. It’s just what you don’t want, isn’t it? I don’t mean you don’t want it because it’s going to become a grand new place like Edna and my mother were talking about, dreaming about, in their daft fashion. But you don’t want that sort of unclassy carry-on in the Monty as it is now because . . . you’re not dim, Ralph, and you know that really the Monty is the dregs and when things happen like that with Unhinged, the more dreggy and eternally hopeless the club looks. Unhinged could be long-term pestilential.’

  Ralph said: ‘Very kind of you to look in, Alec, but I don’t really think someone like Unhing
ed could –’

  ‘He’ll come back when he’s got one of his moods going and start more p.m. gaudy behaviour.’

  ‘I think it can be handled.’

  ‘Another whack with a brandy bottle? Iles and Harpur have seen that once. Think: if the Monty gets a reputation for such crudity you might have big bother renewing the licence. You’re a drugs wholesaler, Ralph, a shady middleman, and into God or the devil knows what other dicey activities. Iles lets all that go unnoticed up till now, for his own reasons. But changes in the air? Suddenly, he might want to knock you. He’s good at that. And he’s got a new Chief, who possibly starts hounding him – ordering him to behave like an Assistant Chief, not like Iles. As it were, your use of a Kressmann bottle could be used against you. You’ve got to act, Ralph, or the Monty will have sunk so far it’s past recovery. But, yes, saving it needs money. Plenty of. Not Misk money, though. Not Misk money. It will never come your way. Instead, what you must go for, Ralph, is monopoly in the drugs game, isn’t it? This sharing with Manse – no good. It’s been good, but not any longer. They say he knows it. And they say you might know it, too. That’s why you put Turret in as a spy, and that’s why Turret’s dead. You’re making things too complicated, Ralph. Move direct. This is what I’ve learned lately. No fiddling about. Go straight at the target. I hear you and Shale take more than half a million each out of the businesses every year. Well, think – he might be removed. Twice more than half a million is more than a million. With that sort of pay jump you’d be able to start on your fantasy future for the Monty – exclude people like Unhinged, once you’re rich enough to do without their membership fees. I call it a fantasy future because – because, like I said, I don’t see it ever happening. But you could have a go. Would have a go. I know it. I’m as sure of that as I’m sure none of my fucking fortune’s going into it.’

  ‘I have to lock up,’ Ember said.

  ‘Here’s the bargain, then, Ralph,’ Articulate replied in a ringing, generous voice. ‘It’s simple.’

  ‘Bargain?’

  ‘Bargain. I’ll get rid of Mansel Shale if you promise you won’t ever pick up on that offer from my mother and great aunt Edna.’

  ‘Get rid?’

  Articulate became intense. ‘Listen, Ralph, I don’t want my money flung away like that by two old dames gone ga-ga. You said you’d file their notion for another consideration sometime. That’s a bargaining ploy, and very clever, yes. What I’d expect from Ralph Ember. But I want you to keep it really filed away, or, even better, ditch it, forget it.’

  ‘Your money? It wouldn’t all be yours, would it? I thought there were three legacies.’

  ‘Yes, well let’s not play about any longer, all right? My money. My earned money. Cash, cash, cash and more cash. Mine but . . . Ralph, I’ve always let my mother and great aunt Edna organize the big things in my life, you know.’

  ‘That so?’

  ‘Look at me, Ralph.’

  ‘Yes?’

  ‘I’ll tell you what you see, shall I?’

  ‘What I see is –’

  ‘You see a bloke of thirty-two in a suit that cost over two grand, physically sound, and suddenly very successful.’ ‘Successful. You mean getting the legacy?’ ‘Right, getting the legacy.’ The description Articulate gave of himself was not bad,

  although it didn’t deal with the wide shoulders on a thin body and his longish, deadpan face, as if purposefully manufactured to thwart interrogation. He had a large but unmirthful mouth, skimpy fair eyebrows and bleak blue eyes, maybe a lookout’s eyes.

  ‘I respect mum and great aunt Edna, naturally,’ Articulate said. ‘That will never alter. There’s so much I owe them. Not these acquired fucking funds, though. I can’t be run by those dear ladies any more. I’m me, Ralph. Me. I’ve learned getting big money is a chancy game, so, once you’ve got it, don’t play about with it. Sorry, Ralph, but I consider any investment by us in this place as a total no-no, because it might be an absolute waste. Perhaps I’m wrong, and you can really bring it off. Not with our cash, though. Not with our cash. My cash.’

  Ember saw the bank raid had transfigured Articulate. This was not just what Ralph thought of at first as ‘jauntiness’. That could come and go. But Alec had climbed a little late into maturity and would stay there. He could string words – ‘perception’, ‘compensating’. He could do fruity phrases and alliteration – ‘multi-motived retaliation’, ‘fantasy future’. Some of this was disgustingly offensive, but no question he could dish it out. He knew oratory – repetition and stresses. He fancied himself as a proven warrior now – a warrior who could still show token deference to his mother and great auntie Edna, but who also knew that a true warrior’s main and perhaps only real role must be to scrap, starting, as a matter of fact, with a crafty, secretive fight against his mother and great aunt about his own money, sort of. He’d grown up – had drawn selfhood from the Holborn bank.

  Ember said: ‘There’s a term for this kind of character development – “rites of passage”.’

  ‘Fine! I could get fond of terms like that.’ Articulate put an arm across the bar, skirting the Kressmann bottle. This seemed more than just a physical movement. It reeked of overtones, symbolism. ‘A handshake will do for us, I think, Ralph,’ he said. It was clipped, matey, seasoned, foursquare, seasoned man to seasoned man. ‘You keep turning down my mother’s and great aunt Edna’s crazy scheme for my funds, and I see to Shale for you.’

  ‘See to?’

  ‘See to,’ Misk said.

  Ralph took his hand with wholehearted firmness. Naturally. This agreement, whether it worked or not, could be only a bonus. As to alliteration, he would never have given, never would give, great aunt Edna, Mrs Misk and Articulate the faintest fucking financial foothold in the Monty, anyway, and, yes, a trade monopoly might help Ralph do all the things he wanted for the club. In any case, as Articulate said, Manse might have monopoly thoughts himself. If Turret had survived he could have told Ralph of Manse’s intentions and plans. But Manse most likely wanted those intentions and plans kept confidential, the sickeningly calculating sod, and so he’d silenced Turret.

  Now, Ember yearned to be resolute, or, at least, to let someone else be resolute on his behalf. That hint of condemnation from Turret’s brother upset Ralph, made him feel flimsy and uncertain, not worthy of the new Monty image. Ralph had indomitable faith in this image, and in the club’s potential to become brilliant, enduring, exclusive: clearly much too exclusive for Edna, Rose and Alec. Articulate didn’t believe in that potential. Irrelevant: he could still have a try at ‘seeing to’ Mansel Shale and so possibly contribute despite himself to Ember’s grand, inspired quest.

  ‘This conversation hasn’t taken place, Ralph.’

  Oh, Lord, he’d picked up tough-guy, under-your-hat lingo, as well as basic spiel flair. ‘Nobody would believe you could be so articulate, Articulate, anyway,’ Ember said.

  Chapter Nine

  Harpur had watched Articulate go alone into the Monty at about 1.30 a.m. and then reappear half an hour later and drive off. The club car park was better lit than the Agincourt’s, and Harpur thought Articulate looked happy and resolute when he left, even triumphal. That could be a perilous combination in someone as inept as Articulate: perilous above all for himself. He might try something dangerously beyond his range. But maybe this estimate of Articulate’s range no longer fitted. Possibly he wasn’t inept any longer, if he’d really been picked for the Holborn bank coup: people risking their liberty and life for a stack of gold wanted very ept colleagues, even in the smaller jobs – and, perhaps, especially in, say, a lookout job. Whatever job he’d had, it apparently worked, and he’d probably collected a nice fee – part gratitude, part to cement his silence. How long had they all been misjudging Articulate?

  Harpur didn’t follow him, but went back to Arthur Street. ‘Surveillance,’ he said, as he joined Denise in bed agai
n.

  This time she woke up, or wasn’t asleep, and put her arms around him, held him to her with some power, even desperation. She played lacrosse for the university and did a lot of training. He valued being gripped like this. It made him feel he really mattered to her. There were times when he could hardly believe that, and not only times when he looked in the mirror. ‘You smell of mud,’ she said. ‘Like someone from the trenches.’

  ‘How often have you been in bed with someone from the trenches?’

  ‘I worry about you, Col.’

  ‘I’m old enough to be out in the dark late. But not as old as mud in the trenches.’

  ‘I never think of you as old.’ She had a little sob then, because, obviously, she did sometimes think of him as old, and would have been stupid not to. It might become a factor one day.

  ‘I didn’t say “old”. I said old enough.’

  At once she brightened. ‘Yes, “old” is a comparative term.’

  ‘A what?’

  ‘Comparative.’

  ‘Compared with what? “Young”?’

  ‘Is it dangerous, the surveillance? Why mud?’

  ‘I’m grateful that you worry about me,’ Harpur replied. ‘But, no, not dangerous at all.’

  ‘What’s the use of it?’

  ‘I don’t know yet – if anything.’

  She loosened her arms around Harpur, pushed him over on to his back and straddled him. ‘Well, I think you deserve to take it fairly easy after all that,’ she said.

  ‘How will you take it?’

  ‘This way. As starters.’

  ‘This way seems a good way. As starters.’

  ‘No ecstatic yelling, regardless of the ecstasy,’ she said. ‘The girls have been on edge a bit. They wonder about all this surveillance. You know what they’re like.’

  ‘What are they like?’