Maxim Jakubowski - The Mammoth Book of Best British Mysteries 6

“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.