The Mammoth Book of Best British Mysteries 6

MAKEOVER by Bill James

Of course, the murmur went around the Monty Club in Shield Terrace more or less immediately and-also, of course-reached its owner, Ralph Ember. Versions did vary in detail, but all said a club member, Cordell Maximillian Misk, known mostly as Articulate Max, somehow wangled himself into the team who did the copycat bank raid on International Corporate Diverse Securities and came away with a very delightful individual share in untraceables. So when Articulate turned up with his mother and great-aunt Edna at the club, asking to see Ralph personally, he had an idea what they wanted, even before any conversation began. Ralph was in his upstairs office at the time testing the mechanisms of a couple of Heckler & Koch automatics. A barman called on the intercom to tell Ember they would like a conference.

It was the press, not Ember, who gave the International Corporate Diverse Securities raid this “copycat” title, because it seemed so accurately modelled on that huge suction job done at the Northern Bank in Belfast, maybe by the IRA, in December 2004. Although the takings from I.C.D.S. in Kelita Street, Holborn, London, were not up to the Belfast haul of (pounds)26 million, the methodology looked similar: basically, get among the bank executives’ families and keep them hos-tage until the managers opened up the vaults and let the money go. Ralph thought the idea might have come from an American novel and film, The Friends of Eddie Coyle.

The I.C.D.S. product, as Ralph heard it, varied from (pounds)21 million to (pounds)12 million. Even the larger amount did fall short of Belfast, but both these lesser figures were clearly satisfactory millions, all the same, and so were the eight between-that is, 13, 14, 15, 16, 17, 18, 19, and 20. Ralph and most other people familiar with Misk would have considered this sortie beyond his class, even in a dogsbody role. Some accounts said he’d been lookout, others that he ran the phone link at one of the hostage homes. But the rumours putting him on the operation in some sort of job persisted. And as soon as Ralph came down to meet the three, he did notice a new jauntiness in Articulate. That was how Ralph would describe it, “jauntiness.” In his view, jauntiness in an established Monty member such as Max often meant a whack of recently obtained safe loot, “safe” indicating two factors: (a) it had been lifted from someone’s safe, for example a Holborn, London, bank’s, and (b) the notes were old and, therefore, reasonably safe to spend.

Usually, Ralph saw in Articulate the standard niggly, comical, defeated self-obsession of a small-time crook who believed unwaveringly that next week he’d be big-time, and who’d believed unwaveringly for an age he’d be big-time next week, these next weeks having slipped long ago into the past. Max’s nickname came the satirical way some blubber lump weighing three hundred pounds might be called “Slim.” More than any other quality, Articulate lacked articulateness, so, joke of jokes, label him with it. People mocked his taste for sullen silence. And, until now, in Ember’s opinion, Misk had been the feeble sort who put up with mockery, possibly even expected it, not someone formidable and esteemed enough to get asked on to an enterprise like the I.C.D.S, all expenses paid, retrospectively.

One major point about Ralph Ember was he wanted to hoist the Monty to a much higher social level very soon, and people like Articulate and his relations would obviously be the first to get permanently kicked out. Ralph hoped to polish up the Monty to something like the prestige glow of big London clubs such as the Athenaeum or the Garrick, with their memberships of powerful and distinguished people-bishops, editors, high civil servants, TV faces, company chairmen. Articulate did not really suit. In fact, most of the present Monty membership did not really suit. Ralph would have bet the Athenaeum rarely staged celebration parties for jail releases, turf-war victories, suspended sentences, parole and bail successes. These happened regularly at his club.

Just the same, while Articulate and folk like him remained on the Monty’s books, Ralph regarded it as a prime duty to treat them with all politeness and decency and, yes, friendliness, as if they truly counted for something. Membership of the Monty was membership of the Monty and entailed absolute recognition from its proprietor. Articulate and the two women called in the afternoon, when the club was quiet, so he could allow them some of his time. Ralph came to the Monty at these off-peak periods more often than previously, because he liked to do a thorough, undisturbed daily check on club security. Ralph naturally had enemies, and lately they had begun to look and sound a few troublesome degrees more focused. Anyone who collected (pounds)600,000 a year untaxed from drugs commerce, besides profits from the Monty and some entrepreneurial commissions, was sure to have envious enemies, well-focused envious enemies. Hence the H & K’s. Hence, also, the shield fixed on one of the internal pillars and intended to give Ralph protection from gunfire when he sat behind the bar at a little shelf-desk checking on stock and sales. He’d had the shield covered with a collage of illustrations from The Marriage of Heaven and Hell, a work by the poet William Blake, so that it would look like part of the décor and, in fact, add some class. But it was thick steel. In Shield Terrace he needed a shield. For instance, a lad called Luke Apsley Beynon had begun to get very bothersome. Something terminal might need to be done there before too long.

Mrs. Misk said as soon as Ralph joined them in the bar now: “Considerable legacies have recently come to us-to Edna, Max, and me-from my side of the family, Ralph.”

“Always I’m confused in such cases about whether to offer congratulations or commiserations, since a legacy clearly implies a death, perhaps of a greatly loved one,” Ember replied. He gave this ample solemnity, but not too much, in case the legacies mattered more to them than the loved one, who might have been hardly loved at all, just loaded. That is, supposing there had been a loved one to confer the legacies, and not simply the emptied Holborn bank. “I reconcile such opposites by thinking that the departed, although much missed, would wish his/her bequests to affect positively the future lives of those so favoured. This would be his/her motive, surely, in selecting them as beneficiaries.” Before coming down from the office, Ralph had put the guns away and washed the cordite smell from his hands. These H & K’s were necessary because of people like Beynon, but Ember hated any association of firearms with the club. Almost certainly no Athenaeum member carried a piece on the premises, unless, possibly, the head of MI5 belonged.

Articulate, his mother, and great-aunt would probably want to use Ralph and some of Ralph’s connections to launder Misk’s gains, now charmingly fictionalised as three legacies. Ralph could increase the Monty booze and cigarette orders, using their money to cover the additions. They would then resell the goods to clubs, pubs, off-licences. Plainly, they’d take an account-book loss, because Ralph required a commission, and the people they sold to would want good profit possibilities. But that was the standard way the market worked for difficult money, even untraceables. Also, as the currency for such trading had been stolen, it became crazy to speak of a loss. This amounted to a loss on treasure Articulate should never have had. Crucially, the wealth must not be spent in a style that drew attention or people would start asking how he and his family grew so rich so fast. Such people might be police people, such as Iles or Harpur. Dangerous. Or they might be villain people who’d decide that if Articulate had a lot they’d get some of it, at least some of it. Dangerous.

But drink and tobacco rated only as marginal elements in this type of business plan. Where there was real, lavish money, the lucky holders might, for instance, think about investing in properties, maybe for occupying themselves, or for renting out, or because, even in tricky economic times, most buildings kept their value or moved up. However, if Articulate and his mother and great-aunt Edna approached a normal estate agent and tried to buy four deluxe, five-bed, heated-pool, Doric-pillared, golf-village houses in the Algarve, Portugal, at 750,000 euros each, offering payment in cash, there would be some surprised, sharp intakes of professional breath and, afterwards, some sharp outgoings of professional breath in gossip about these potential customers who could cough approaching two million pounds sterling in suitcased notes. Potential customers might be as far as it went. Many-most?-normal estate agents would refuse to handle that kind of deal, despite longing for it and their cut, because they’d fear the wealth came from where it did come from, a bust, and that the culprits might one day be identified and their spending projects identified also. These potential customers could make them potential accessories, and possibly destroy the firm’s reputation as upholders of that venerable, wise, holy code of behaviour laid down for estate agents.

But it was fairly generally recognised among Monty members that Ralph Ember knew certain professional people-solicitors, food inspectors, planning officials, and, especially, estate agents-who would find a way around venerable, wise, holy codes of behaviour if those codes seemed malevolently and perversely to be operating against the interests of buoyant trading in special markets. Such services were costly, yes, and so were middleman skills like Ralph’s. Folk who collected heavy legacies could afford the best, though, and should expect to pay for it.

“These legacies we wish to be used positively,” Mrs. Misk said.

“If I may say, this is what I would expect of your family,” Ralph answered. “Positivism.”

“Not frittered,” she said.

This did sound to Ralph like property. Purchase of sizable villas in Portugal could not in any fashion be termed frittering.

“Or to put it briefly, Ralph, we want to share in your vision,” Edna said. Fervour touched her voice.

“In which respect?” Ralph replied. So, not property. He thought he could guess what she might mean instead, but prayed he had this wrong.

“Yes, to be a part of it,” Mrs. Misk said.

“In which respect?” Ralph replied.

Articulate had always seemed a bit passive as well as tongue-tied. His mother, and especially Great-Aunt Edna, handled family policy. Mrs. Rose Misk would be over sixty and Edna well over seventy. Their combined life experience left Articulate trailing. Even now, although Articulate somehow gave off the impression of a new confidence and bounce, he did not speak very much. The women dominated, maybe domineered. Edna almost always wore flashy red or green leather-trousers and tasselled jacket-including to major, formal Monty events such as celebrations of a christening or acquittal on a technicality. Today, red. She said: “We know you have wonderful ambitions for the Monty, Ralph-makeover ambitions.”

“These inspire us,” Rose Misk said.

“Yes,” Articulate said. “Oh, definitely.”

“This is why, as Rose remarked, we wish to be part of it, Ralph,” Edna said.

Hell, he’d been right.

“The money-the legacies, that is-could be so vital here,” Rose Misk said.

“Definitely,” Articulate added.

“Your plan, your brilliant plan, will cost you a bit, Ralph,” Edna said. “I hope you won’t regard this as presumptuous, but we could help bankroll the transformation-would be proud to help bankroll the transformation.”

“Exactly what I meant by not frittering,” Rose said. “A worthwhile and, in our view-Edna’s, Max’s, and mine-a magnificently promising commitment.”

“Definitely,” Articulate said.

Edna said: “Without, I hope, being cruel, Ralph, we look at the club as it is now-the type of member, the need for a bulletproof slab up there to guard you-we look at all this and cannot believe the Monty today satisfies someone of your taste and refinement.”

“No, no, not a shield,” Ember said, with a fair show of amusement. “It’s a board to maximise ventilation by helping control air currents. But please don’t ask me how!”

“All right, all right, we can understand why you don’t want the Monty thought of as a pot-shot range,” Rose said.

“We’re talking of an infusion to the Monty development funds of at least hundreds of thousands, Ralph,” Edna said. “As starters.”

“That’s it,” Articulate said. New self-belief still brightened his features, but a kind of misery clothed these words.

“Your first move has to be expulsion of nearly all the present Monty membership, hasn’t it, Ralph?” Edna said. “You won’t draw the type of people you want while the club still looks like Lowlife Inc. Initially you’ll have to take some mighty losses-ending of membership fees and, obviously, a collapse of bar profits. This could be where our funds became useful.”

Edna’s survey of the problems was spot-on, and Ralph vastly resented it. To him there seemed something indelicate about describing his cull plans with such disgusting accuracy. This was exactly the kind of crude approach to sensitive things that ensured Edna in her damn gear would be an early victim of a Monty clear-out, along with Articulate and his mother. Did Edna, this pushy, leathery, and leather-garbed old intruder, imagine she and the other two were “the type of people” he wanted? Did she think they could buy their way into not just assured membership of the new Monty with their bank loot, but perhaps take a share of the ownership and the profits through the size of their investment? She had her scheming eye on a partnership. Ralph regarded that as farcical, but it infuriated him.

He said with a happy lilt to his tone: “Many people come to me with ideas of development of the Monty, and I’m heartily grateful to them. And I’m heartily grateful to you now, Edna. These approaches-so positive and well-meant-show how fondly some members regard the club.”

“The Monty’s underachieving on its possibilities, Ralph,” Rose Misk said.

And did they imagine he hadn’t realised this? Did they think they could advise him about his own cherished club, cherished even in its present roughhouse state? “To all these proposals I listen with full interest and, as I say, gratitude,” he replied. “It is encouraging to know there’s a groundswell of creative ideas among the Monty’s faithful. I ponder all these ideas, let me assure you, and at some stage ahead I might act on one of them, or perhaps a mixture of several. But at present those ideas have to remain as such-ideas only.” He gave a small, regretful, but determined smile.

“This is the moment for it, Ralph,” Edna said.

They were sitting at a table near the snooker alcove and Ralph had brought a bottle of Kressmann armagnac and glasses. He did some refilling. The club remained fairly quiet. A small group talked at the bar. Nobody played snooker.

Ember stood. “I have to get to my chores now,” he said. “I’ll leave the bottle. You chat on, by all means.”

“But we haven’t really got anywhere,” Rose said.

“I certainly would not say that,” Ralph said. “I’ve filed away in my head the very promising suggestions you’ve given me tonight. In due course, or even sooner, I will bring that file out and consider it properly in context.”

“What does that mean?” Edna said.

“What?”

“‘In context,’” Edna said.

“Yes, true, Edna. That has to be the way of it-in context,” Ember replied.

“Part of the context now, Ralph, is that we have the funds entirely available and entirely ready,” Edna said. “This might not be so ‘in due course.’ We wish to apply these legacies in forward-looking, rewarding fashion as an immediate priority, not ‘in due course.’ There are other openings for investment. We chose to put you and the Monty first on our schedule. If this does not attract an instant response, we might feel it right to turn elsewhere.”

“I’ve come to learn that in this kind of business, the context, a review of all options, is vital,” Ralph said. He left them and did an inspection of the snooker tables’ baize to make sure there were no snags or rips. He felt proud of his management of the meeting with those three. At no point had he allowed his rage at their gross cheek and clumsiness to show itself. Snarls had ganged up inside him ready for use, but he had suppressed them.

He went home to his manor house, Low Pastures, for a sleep and stroll around the paddocks, and, as was routine, returned to the club just after one A.M. to supervise closedown for the night at two o’clock, unless extra merrymaking broke out. He sat at his shelf-desk behind the bar with another glass of Kressmann’s, admiring the wild-looking William Blake pictures on the metal screen. Articulate Max, alone now, and in a fine, made-to-measure pinstripe suit and wide silver-and-yellow tie, came and took a high stool opposite him on the other side of the bar. He had a glass of what might be Kressmann’s in his right hand. Perhaps he thought this a way to acceptance and fellow-feeling from Ember. “They won’t give up, Ralph.”

“Who?”

“Great-Aunt Edna and my mother.”

“They’re real Monty fans, I’ll say that for them,” Ember replied with an admiring chuckle.

“Such out-and-out rubbish,” Articulate replied.

“What?”

“That idea-to put money into the club.”

“I appreciated their affection for the Monty,” Ember replied.

“Idiotic.”

“Oh?”

“Like throwing money down an old coal pit.”

“Oh?”

“You know, I know, and so does everyone else with any trace of a brain that the Monty is never going to change, Ralph. Not change as they meant, anyway. I suppose the police might shut it down one day because of your drugs link.”

Ember thought about hitting this jerk. He could stand and lean forward quickly and reach him across the bar. Ralph had never heard him put so many words together before, and now, when he did grow verbal, it was to insult Ralph and the Monty. “I wouldn’t say your great-aunt Edna or your mother lacked brain, Articulate,” he replied.

“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?”

“Yes, like guilt.”

“Guilt because they and you have profited from a death? This does happen to legatees sometimes, I know. Guilt over where the money comes from.”

“Yes, over where it comes from. So, to rid themselves of this shame, they want to find some noble project where they can put the lucre-and get a return. Some noble, mad project.”

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

“No, I shouldn’t think you do. Why I had to come tonight for a chinwag, on our own.”

Ember found the Kressmann bottle and topped both of them up.

“Look, you’re getting aggro, aren’t you, Ralph?”

“Aggro?” Ember said, giving a real, puzzled smile.

“You wouldn’t have stuck The Marriage of Heaven and Hell up there otherwise, would you?”

“Much misunderstood,” Ember replied. “That baffle board is to-”

“As I hear it, you’ve been on the end of very forceful invitations to take out a protection policy for the club, an invitation from Luke Apsley Beynon and his firm. That’s the buzz.”

And, as so often, the buzz had things wonderfully correct. The shield might help against Luke and his cohort. The H & K automatics might help against Luke and his cohort. The increased security visits by Ralph to the Monty might help against Luke and his cohort. Or none of them might help against Luke and his cohort. “Luke is getting to fancy himself a bit, I gather,” Ember said with no tremor at all.

“Obviously someone of your calibre, Ralph, is not going to cave in to protection threats from an apprentice lout like Luke.”

“Hardly. That is, if there’d been any threats.”

“You’ll turn down his invitations. And, that being so, there could be some grim events at the Monty to prove that you actually need the protection of Luke and his firm. Events such as gunfire or incendiarising or bad affrays and blood in the bar. Well, I don’t need to describe it. You know how club protection works.”

Ralph said: “It’s kind of you to look in, Max, but I don’t really think someone like Luke Beynon could-”

“Here’s the bargain, then, Ralph,” Articulate replied. “I’ll get rid of Beynon if you promise you won’t ever pick up on that offer from my mother and Great-Aunt Edna.” He became intense. “Listen, Ralph, all due respect to you and the Monty, but I’m not going to have my money squandered like that by two old dames suddenly gone ga-ga. You said you’d file their notion away for another consideration sometime. I want you to keep it filed away, or, even better, ditch 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. Mine but… Ralph, I’ve always let my mother and Great-Aunt Edna organise 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 defeat interrogation. He had a large but unmirthful mouth, skimpy fair eyebrows, and bleak blue eyes.

“I respect Mum and Great-Aunt Edna, naturally. That will never alter. But I can’t be run by them anymore. I’m grown-up, Ralph.”

The bank raid had transformed him. This was not just a matter of what Ralph thought of at first as “jauntiness.” That could come and go. Max had climbed a little late into maturity and would stay there. He could spiel. He fancied himself as a warrior now-a warrior who could still show gallant deference to his mother and great-auntie Edna, but who also knew that a true warrior’s main and perhaps only real role was to fight and kill. He’d had a makeover.

Ember said: “There’s a phrase for this-’rites of passage.’”

“Great. I could get fond of phrases.” Articulate put an arm across the bar, skirting the Kressmann bottle with its striking black label. “A handshake will do for us, I think, Ralph,” he said. It was clipped, matey, foursquare. “You keep turning down my mother’s and great-aunt Edna’s loony scheme for my funds and I see to Luke Apsley Beynon.”

Ralph took his hand with wholehearted firmness. Sure. This agreement could only be a bonus. He would never have given Great-aunt Edna, Mrs. Misk, and Articulate the least financial footing in the Monty, anyway, and, yes, Luke Beynon was beginning to look more and more like severe peril.

And, because Beynon looked more and more like severe peril, Ralph went again to the Monty during the afternoon next day to do his security checks. He was touring the Monty yard to satisfy himself no mysterious packages had been left against club doors when an unmarked Volvo drove in and parked. Assistant Chief Constable Desmond Iles and Detective Chief Superintendent Colin Harpur left the car and walked towards him, Iles looking as jolly as napalm. These two often arrived at the Monty, on the face of it to see that all licensing conditions were observed, but actually, in Ralph’s view, to terrorise the members and enjoy a few free drinks. “Hunting firebombs, Ralphy?” Iles said.

Ember took them to the bar and mixed a gin and cider in a half-pint glass for Harpur and a port and lemonade for Iles, “the old whore’s quaff,” as he described it. Today, although it was only afternoon, the club had twenty or so members in, mostly at the bar or playing snooker and pool. Iles did his usual arrogant glare about, as if he couldn’t believe how some of these people, or any of them, could be out of jail.

They sat at a table, Ember again on the armagnac. Harpur said: “I gather Articulate was here last night for quite a dialogue. Has he suddenly turned really articulate? He’s emerged somehow?”

“I see such one-to-one conversations with long-time members as a very worthwhile and, indeed, pleasurable experience,” Ralph replied, “and an essential factor in one’s job as host.”

“How true,” Iles replied.

“Handshaking, also,” Harpur said.

“We’re civilised, you know, Mr. Harpur. All the usual courtesies are practised at the Monty,” Ember replied. It always hurt him to think the club had members who watched things here and straight off reported to the police, for some measly fee, most likely.

“And then Articulate and his mother and great-aunt Edna in earlier,” Harpur said. He was big and thuggish-looking, some said like a fair-haired Rocky Marciano, the one-time heavyweight champion of the world. Alongside him, Iles looked dainty, but in fact lacked all daintiness.

“This sounds like real activity,” Harpur said.

“What does?” Ember said.

“These visits,” Harpur said.

“This is a club. People drop in,” Ember replied.

Iles said: “We wondered, Colin and I, whether you could recall the gist of your talk with Articulate, or even with Articulate and his mother and great-aunt Edna.”

“I talk to many members over any twenty-four hours, you know,” Ralph said.

“They’re lucky to have you,” Iles said. “Everyone realises that. But don’t muck Col and me about, Ralph, there’s a chum. Just give us what Max said, what you said, what the women said, would you? Something agreed at the afternoon meeting and then Articulate comes in late to confirm? Or cancel?”

“Casual conviviality, that’s all. You make it all sound very purposeful and businesslike, Mr. Iles,” Ralph said, “whereas-”

“Yes, purposeful and businesslike,” Iles said. “That’s our impression.”

“Your impression via a fink,” Ember said-”as through a grass darkly.”

“Wow, Ralph!” Iles said.

“It’s the later conversation that really interests us,” Harpur said.

“Generalities, I should think,” Ember said. He did a frown to indicate he meant to try to help them and recollect. “Weather. Holidays. Cricket. The usual small talk. We try to avoid politics-too controversial. I bump into so many people in the club and have a few unimportant yet, I trust, comradely words. These little pow-wows seem to merge into one pleasant and not very significant encounter. I don’t know whether Max would recall things better than I. It might be in your interests to talk to him, if you feel something significant might have come up.”

“The thing about Articulate is, he’s dead,” Iles replied.

“My God,” Ralph said. The shock was real.

“Which is why what he talked about with you might be to the point,” Harpur said.

“Generalities,” Ralph said.

“Shot,” Harpur replied.

“My God,” Ralph said.

“Our impression is that he meant to bop Luke Apsley Beynon, but got bopped himself,” Harpur said.

“As most of us would have forecast,” Iles said. “I mean, was Articulate Max anywhere near capable as executioner?”

“The whisper’s around, isn’t it, that he was in on the I.C.D.S. robbery with some sort of stooge function?” Harpur said. “Did that make him feel suddenly big and mature and competent-and free up his voice box?”

“Poor deluded prat,” Iles said. “He gave himself a mission on your behalf? Luke Apsley Beynon’s been breathing untender words to you, hasn’t he, Ralph? This is our information.”

“Luke Beynon?” Ember replied.

“Did Articulate, with his new gloss, offer to knock him over for you?” Iles said. “Suddenly he thinks he’s one of Nature’s hit men? Were you and he talking some kind of deal? You’ll see why we’re concerned about his appearances here, especially the second one, without his minders, the women. Did he need to say something they shouldn’t hear?”

“Deal?” Ember said.

“Quid pro quoism of some sort,” Iles said.

“Generalities,” Ralph replied.

“We’re charging Luke,” Harpur said. “He’ll go down. His firm will break up without him.”

“So you don’t come out of this at all too badly, Ralph, do you?” Iles said. “You won’t have to cower behind the collage anymore.”

Ember replenished their drinks and took more armagnac himself. “I think about his mother and great-aunt Edna,” he said.

“Those two are provided for, we believe,” Iles said.

“I mean their grief,” Ralph said.

“You were always one for tenderness to prized Monty members, Ralphy,” Iles replied.