Hotbed by Bill James

to step up behind Manse and put a few rounds into the back of his head, however noble and necessary the cause.’
    â€˜Ambassadorial in the sense that these would be findings from someone embedded in the other, as it were, country – the other business, in this case – embedded and yet not entirely of it, and able to apply detachment, perceptiveness, judgement,’ Ember added.
    â€˜Do you get the gap, the great gulf, I’m talking about, Ralphy? I’m a soldier, not an assassin. The trade unions would refer to this as a demarcation matter. Gunfire might be necessary in each role, but the application is different.
    â€˜It’s Ralph. Or Ember.’
    â€˜I can chart his routine for you, if he’s got one, so your people would know where and when to take him. I’d do notes and sketch maps. All that kind of thing is OK with me, within my ambit. I’m pretty good at graphics, clarity one of my watchwords. This would be an exhaustive guide to his habits and itinerary.’
    â€˜A thematic approach,’ Ember replied. ‘To get the as it were tone of the other, sibling operation and look at it against ours. This is what I have in mind. Yes, tone.’
    â€˜And I’ll report back here,’ Brown said. ‘Phones are out. Insecure. And it wouldn’t be a good idea to be seen talking together too often around the firm’s buildings.’
    â€˜Here?’
    â€˜To your house.’
    That was meant as a poke in the eye, of course – to dub the domain a ‘house’. He could have said ‘Low Pastures’ or ‘your home’, or ‘the property’, but he said ‘house’ to make it sound nothing much, like a place in a street, not its own acres – sound like the kind of place he lived in himself. Or he would be in half a house, or less, most likely, a so-called flat, 15A Singer Road. Brown wanted to try to bring Ralph down, make him sound manageable and only run-of-the-mill. And Brown’s methods? To speak slightingly of Low Pastures, and to use the word ‘panic’. Obviously, Ember would admit that Low Pastures could, technically, be regarded as a ‘house’, since it did provide what a family required from a ‘house’ – shelter, heat and light, domestic fitments. That ludicrously failed to catch the full undeniable nature of Low Pastures, though. In any case, Ralph didn’t want him at the ‘house’ again. The one visit should do to let him see the Ember style. Brown might – might – be entitled to that. Anyway, he’d been allowed it. And this was enough. ‘No, we’ll fix some rendezvous points, discreet, secure,’ Ralph said.
    â€˜I’d rather come here.’
    â€˜Not on, Joachim.’
    â€˜I’d be careful.’
    â€˜How can you be careful? You’d drive. Your car’s a give-away.’
    â€˜I came in my car this afternoon. You must have expected that.’
    â€˜Once is all right. It could be anyone, anything. But not repeatedly.’
    â€˜Taxis.’
    â€˜Hardly, Joachim. Taxi drivers talk.’
    â€˜Best here,’ Brown said. ‘I don’t want to be clock-tied. It might not be easy to get away for an arranged meeting at a named time. I’d prefer to just drop in.’
    â€˜But I’m not always at Low Pastures.’
    â€˜I know your daily routine pretty well. Everyone in the firm does. In any case, it wouldn’t matter. I could wait. It’s a comfy billet.’
    He’d ‘drop in’. Again it was a way of insulting the property. Ralph didn’t mind ‘billet’, an obvious bit of waggishness. But people did not ‘drop in’ at Low Pastures, and especially not people like Brown. Ralph’s daughters might be here when he ‘dropped in’. Venetia, the older girl, nearly fifteen, responded too enthusiastically to men, in Ember’s view – probably only a phase, but