Loose Head

by Jeff Keithly

  “It’s the greatest game in the world. You earned my respect that day. I thought you were past it but I was wrong. Ya had one more game left in ya.”

  “But then I met you in Soho Square.”

  “Ah. But you never looked at me the way he did, did you?” He gestured disdainfully at Paul’s crumpled form. “When he looked at me, there was nothing but... contempt. Disgust. And cold amusement.” He suddenly raised the piston-rod overhead, on the verge of bashing Paul’s brains in.

  “Don’t!” I cried.

  He thought the better of it, and drew a shuddering breath. Then he continued as if there had been no near-homicidal interruption. “Oh, you ragged me a bit. But when I looked in your eyes, I saw... compassion. Anyway, Paul’d a’ killed me sure, sooner or later. It was only a matter of time and convenience.”

  He disappeared below, returned with a fresh bottle of whisky. “Here. You look like you could do with a drink. Then we’ll see if we can drive this boat.”

  Chapter 2

  It was far too early the next morning when I stood before my boss, Detective Superintendent Peter Wicks, for the ass-kicking I so richly deserved. It had taken the crew at the office until 3 a.m. to take my statement and tidy up all of the loose ends, and it had taken more than half of Artemis Paul’s bottle of Bushmill’s to calm my twanging nerves. Now, a scant four hours later, I surveyed DS Wicks through the rheumy eyes of a sick ferret.

  At 5'5", 140 pounds and nearly 70 years of age, DS Wicks looked more like Mr. Burns from The Simpsons than Martin Johnson. I knew well, however, that what he lacked in brawn he made up for in brutal intellect and a God-given talent for invective. When things went wrong – and let there be no mistake, the events of last night were very wrong indeed – Peter Wicks’ venomous tongue could make an SAS drill instructor stick his fingers in his ears and run away, singing “La la la la...”.

  “Of all the Uruguayan cluster-fucks I’ve ever seen, this one takes the prize! You amateurish bungler! Is the only purpose of your life to serve as a cautionary tale to others? Have I taught you nothing of proper investigative procedure in your 21 years on the force? Is there a single rule of good policework you failed to violate like a silk-stockinged cabin-boy?”

  He was in good form today. I adopted an expression of stoic repentance.

  “Very few, sir.”

  He paused in his restless pacing and glared at me, eyes bulging, yellow teeth bared, like a bull mandrill about to charge. “Do you mock me, DI Reed?”

  “By no means, Chief Inspector.”

  “By the hairy scrotum of Satan, man, whatever possessed you? Too many blows to the head on the rugby pitch?”

  A shadowy figure detached itself from the window, where it had been gazing out over the suburban maze that was Hendon: Detective Chief Inspector George Oakhurst, recently-appointed senior investigating officer for Hendon Specialist Crime Directorate and my immediate supervisor. I hadn’t noticed him before, and kept my face carefully neutral when I saw him now. He had a handsome, pock-marked visage and a cold blue gaze; his once-flat belly now strained unpleasantly against the fine pearl-grey wool of his suit jacket as if someone had shoved an air compressor-hose up his bottom. Too much good living, I thought – and too much bad intent.

  DCI Oakhurst and I had a lengthy and unpleasant history; I could think of few members of the Metropolitan Police I would less rather have present as Wicks so eloquently catalogued my deficiencies. Still, I had only myself to blame.

  “Sir, it was a miscalculation. It was just a routine check-in – it was at least a week too early for him to try physical intimidation.” I was on shaky ground there. Paul’s volatile temperament was well-known – just ask Martin Wallace. So why had I put myself into his hands last night, against departmental policy, on a whim, if I was honest with myself, with no pre-planning, no backup, not a word to anyone? I thought I knew.

  It was the same impulse that had impelled me, on dozens of occasions on the rugby pitch, to engage in violent physical confrontations. To redress a wrong done to a helpless teammate at the bottom of a ruck, a gratuitous stamping, a deliberate attempt to injure, an off-the-ball cheap shot. It was my own grandiose sense of fair play. Because in that grimy chalet in Soho Square, Mick Ryan had become my teammate. Artemis Paul had sucker-punched him big-time. And I simply couldn’t stand by and let that happen.

  I also couldn’t give DS Wicks or DCI Oakhurst the slightest inkling of that fact, or I was finished as a detective. I may have been stupid, but I wasn’t professionally suicidal. “As I say, sir, it was a miscalculation. It was meant to be a routine check-in, to reassure Paul that I was good for the cash. He overreacted.”

  “He overreacted?” Oakhurst asked, injecting himself into the conversation for the first time. “What about you?”

  “Are you suggesting I should’ve taken the beating, sir?”

  “You richly deserved one!” Wicks cried. “I daresay you’ve taken worse, and cheerfully, many times on the rugby pitch! I can’t believe you went to see him without backup! You jeopardized the entire investigation! The man’s a lunatic!”

  I managed a sickly grin. “I appreciate that now, sir.”

  “Wipe that smirk off your face, DI Reed!” Wicks bellowed. “Give me one good reason why I shouldn’t put you on suspension!”

  “Because Artemis Paul is going to prison for the rest of his life, sir. And I’d like to do whatever I can to make it two lifetimes.”

  Wicks glared at me for a full 30 seconds, parrot’s eyes gleaming with malevolent intelligence. Finally he made an inarticulate sound, half phlegm-hawk, half-whinny. “Get out of my sight.”

  “Sir?” I asked hopefully.

  “Start with the list of clients from his computer. Get me names, dates, amounts owed, persuasions inflicted, then go see them all. And his rent-boys. I want enough evidence to bury Artemis Paul for not two, but 10 lifetimes. And Reed.” His voice was almost gentle now.

  “Yes, Detective Superintendent?”

  “If you put one toe out of line from here on out, my boot will be so far up your bunghole, so quickly, you’ll think your tongue has grown laces!” DCI Oakhurst’s eyes fairly glowed in pleasure at the prospect.

  II

  The delectable Emma Kwan, Chief of the Metropolitan Police Service computer crime lab at Wellington House, was waiting, shapely ankles crossed on my desk, when I returned to my cube. She uncoiled sinuously as I entered and gave me a long, searching look. “All right, Dex?”

  “No thanks to me, as DS Wicks has just explained in vivid detail. Thought I was fish bait last night.”

  “One of Paul’s little elves just happened to be an old rugby mate?”

  “Bit more complex than that, Em. He was my informant. Gave me my intro to Paul. It was a lucky break that Paul decided to include him in the disposal party, though.” I shivered involuntarily, remembering the black void that had so nearly claimed me.

  “I’ve always thought of you as so big and indestructible.” There was a curious look in her hazel-green eyes, not unalloyed with sympathy. “Are you sure you’re OK?”

  I wasn’t, but I nodded anyway. I wanted Emma Kwan to pull me to her spectacular breasts and stroke my rugby-gnarled ears. Instead, I heaved a businesslike sigh. “Any luck with Paul’s laptop?”

  “Luck’s got nothing to do with it,” she scoffed. “You can’t hide anything from my boys. He’s got interesting taste in porn, your Mr. Paul. Ever heard of ‘bugging?’”

  “Oh, that is so yesterday. I’m into shaved Chihuahuas, myself. Find a client list?”

  “It’s on your desk. I’ll ring you if we turn up anything else of interest.” She turned to go. “And Dex?”

  “Yes?”

  “Your partner. He’s not pleased with you.”

  I sighed again. “I know. He’s sulking. He’ll come around.”

  III

  It took several hours before Brian could master his emotions sufficiently to join me in our shared cubicle. I’d just set aside Pau
l’s client list, mind boggling at the sheer numbers involved, when I heard – or felt, rather – his unmistakably ponderous tread.

  Brian Abbott makes me look small. And at 6'4" and 240 pounds, I’m not exactly Frodo Baggins. Brian is three inches taller than me and large enough to qualify for his own postal code. He’s the best partner I’ve ever had – tough, dogged, never gives up. Observant, with a near-photographic memory. A brilliant and omnivorously wide-ranging intellect, capable of prodigious leaps of intuitive logic. Speaks four languages fluently. Competent at all sorts of arcane skills, from picking locks to gourmet cooking. Excellent darts player – just leans over the line with his ape-like arm extended, until his hand is about a yard from the board. You hardly ever have to buy a pint when Brian’s around.

  The thing about Brian, though – despite his mountainous physical presence, he’s also the most tender-hearted bloke I’ve ever known. He’s not always capable of the emotional detachment that armors the souls of most policemen. Cries at the drop of a hat. And he looked close to tears now as he leaned on the door-frame of our shared cubicle, arms like baulks of timber crossed over his chest.

  I held up a placating hand. “I know, I know, I’m an ass.”

  “What were you thinking, you stupid, stupid twat? How could you go see Paul without me?”

  “I know. Look – it was just a spur-of-the-moment thing. I should’ve called you.”

  He eyed me shrewdly. “It was Ryan, wasn’t it? You wanted to get back at Paul. For renting him out.”

  Prodigious leaps of intuitive logic indeed. Brian knew me too well. I could’ve lied, but it would have been a waste of breath. “Yes. Maybe. I don’t know. I wasn’t planning a confrontation. It just happened.”

  “Look – we’re partners! We’re mates! If you had a feeling... I should have been there, all right?”

  “No argument. I was wrong.”

  Brian seemed mollified, but I wasn’t fooled. He was hurt, and it was going to take time. He hid it well, though. He squeezed past me and sat down at his desk, managing a sour grin. “So you’re a wanker, as if we didn’t know that already. Tell me about the client list.”

  “I’m just amazed at the sums involved. We’ll contact everyone, of course, but there is one name sticks out. Timothy Bernard Plantagenet.”

  “What, Lord Delvemere? Don’t you play rugby with him?”

  “That’s right. Old Bernie. Plays hooker. He was on our recent tour to Vegas. I’ll see him tonight, in fact. The Ian Chalmers memorial bash.”

  “Ah. Perhaps the opportunity will arise for a quiet chat.”

  “Perhaps.” I felt a prickling of unease, as if a tarantula was crawling up my leg. “Hate to mix business and rugby, though.”

  “I thought he was rich – thought all of the Hastewicke Gentlemen were, except for you.”

  “So did I – it’s a mystery.”

  Chapter 3

  In the end, curiosity got the better of me, and I left work early so that I could dart home, slip into my lone dinner jacket, and head over to Bernie’s Belgrave Square abode for a private chat before the festivities. Why had Lord Delvemere, whose Devonshire estates yielded a startlingly large annual income, needed to borrow £100,000 from the most vicious loan-shark in England?

  As anyone who has ever played – or even watched – a match will tell you, the game of rugby is governed by a most intricate set of laws. However, one of rugby’s most sacred rules isn’t set down in any manual. This unwritten law is simple and inviolable: what goes on on tour, stays on tour.

  Even at the amateur level, touring is central to the life of any rugby team, a blissful, intoxicating, much-anticipated interlude of sport, beer and travel, in the company of two dozen or so congenial mates, to exotic locales, where you will meet – and often, appall – people you will most likely never encounter again. It’s a sort of turbocharged holiday, a delirious, testosterone-drenched escape from the harrowing banality of the everyday, filled with merry companionship, pranks, laughs and the sort of behaviour you’d never get away with at home.

  Populated as it was with, myself excepted, the scions of wealthy and privileged English society, the Hastewicke Gentlemen Rugby Club toured more than most. During my tenure alone, the club had been to Italy, South Africa, Canada, Australia and New Zealand twice, Argentina, Texas, and, most recently, Las Vegas. On those tours, I had witnessed all sorts of reprehensible behaviour – drunken buffoonery, sexual misadventures, cattle tipping, the frequent theft of small boats and electric golf carts, and one particularly repulsive incident involving a marsupial. Any especially grotesque infringements were dealt with by the team, primarily via the kangaroo court held at the close of each tour. But because protecting the guilty is one of the most sacred tenets of rugby life, such events were never, on pain of excommunication, revealed to those outside the team – wives, girlfriends, co-workers. We all knew one another’s darkest secrets – and held them in sacred trust.

  It was with a certain heaviness of heart, then, that I approached Bernie’s house in Belgrave Square. I didn’t know that his sudden and clandestine need for funds had anything to do with what had happened on our recent Las Vegas tour, though the timing, at least, was suggestive. What I did know was that, if my professional duties compelled me to shine the bright light of official inquiry into the tour activities of any of my teammates, it would be an unforgivable violation of the sacred bond that is rugby touring. I fervently hoped that wouldn’t be necessary.

  Bernie was in his study when the housemaid showed me in. An aromatic fire of split oak logs crackled merrily in the Georgian fireplace, keeping the autumnal at bay. The flickering firelight burnished a room of privileged wealth and good taste. Bernie stood on the hearth, struggling to do up his tie. “Here,” I said, “let me – you were always hopeless.”

  “Dex! Yes, thanks -- never have gotten the hang of these bloody things.”

  “You never had to – you even had a valet at school.”

  “Yes, that was my mother’s doing, bless her soul. Whisky?”

  “Yes, please.”

  He handed me a heavy cut-glass tumbler half-full of nut-brown spirit. There was a wary pause. “So – to what do I owe this honour? You’ll be at John’s later?”

  “I will.” I took a warming sip; this was awkward. “I’m afraid this visit has a bit of an official tinge, and wanted to speak to you privately. Do you know a man called Artemis Paul?”

  Bernie looked away, considering. He was still the same old Bernie, physically; still a compact, strong-looking 5'10" and 15 stone. But there was more grey than I remembered in his thinning sandy hair; while he was still reasonably fit, the skin of his face suddenly looked loose, like a badly-fitted slipcover. “Rings a bell,” he said noncommittally. “Should I know him?”

  “He tried to kill me last night.”

  Bernie put down his glass. “Yes, I heard – it was on the news. Bloody maniac!”

  “The reason I’m here... look, this is awkward. But I was poking ‘round the client list on his computer, and there you were. A hundred thousand pounds is a lot of money. But not, I would’ve thought, to you.”

  “Look, Dex.” He set down his glass, then picked it up again and drained it. “When I heard what Paul had done, I thought you might be coming to see me. You and I have known each other a long time. We’ve been teammates for over 30 years. In some ways, we’re closer than brothers – you certainly know things about me my brother doesn’t, and never will. If I tell you, in confidence, why I went to Paul, can you keep it confidential?”

  I thought about that. There were plenty of other names on Paul’s client list. But I owed Bernie an honest answer, at least. “You haven’t committed a crime, I assume. Have his collectors been to see you?” He shook his head. “Then there’s a chance you’ll be asked to testify against him, but I doubt it. We’ll be more interested in the clients he’s roughed up. Certainly your reasons for borrowing the money shouldn’t be an issue in court, even if you are called to te
stify. But there’s always a chance it could come out on cross.”

  He sighed and poured himself another stiff drink. “But you’re curious?”

  “Not curious enough to get out the thumbscrews. But Bernie, if you’re in trouble with someone...”

  “Tell me, Dex. When we were on tour in Vegas, did you go to Suite 455?”

  “Suite 455?” I searched my somewhat clouded memory; after a moment, the light came on. “Ah... our anonymous benefactor.” During our stay in Vegas, a note had been slipped under each of our doors. It read: “An anonymous benefactor wishes it to be known that Suite 455 has been booked through the weekend for the discreet use of any Hastewicke Gentleman. Time is available in four-hour blocks. Please book in advance with the tour secretary.”

  I shook my head. “No, there was no need. I was rooming with The Gland – he didn’t spend a single night in our room. What about Suite 455?”

  Bernie looked up then, and in his eyes I saw infinite regret. “Ask John,” was all he would say.

  II

  A few minutes later I stood outside Bernie’s house, still pondering this enigmatic reply. A black cab approached the curb, and I absent-mindedly hailed it. Then the taxi door opened, and as the passenger stepped out, all thoughts of the mysterious Suite 455 were driven from my head.

  I thought, as I always did, that the years had been extraordinarily gentle with her – the same slim figure, the same lustrous, curly, shoulder-length honey-colored hair, the same perfect skin, the color of warm desert sand. Rarer still, the weary weight of time had failed to dim the ethereal intelligence and earthy good humor that shone from her face like the halo ‘round a Botticelli Madonna.

  I had seen her many times in the 15 years since our brief intimacy – after all, she had been Bernie’s wife all that time. But I felt the old familiar pain all the same. When she saw me, her eyes kindled with pleasure. “Dex! What brings you to darken our doorway?”