Hotbed by Bill James Page B

them your licence?’
    â€˜I’ll use a different hirer next time.’
    â€˜And do you keep an eye for tails?’
    â€˜There’s the good straight, narrow road past farmland, isn’t there, before the turning to Low Pastures? Not much traffic. I’d spot anyone behind me.’ He looked around the study. As studies went, it was spacious and well furnished with Victorian and Edwardian pieces and a couple of red leather armchairs, also Edwardian in style, but re-covered many times. But Brown would be sure to see it as a downgrading. Never mind: he had to learn that entrance to the drawing room came to nobody as standard. What Ralph gave he could also take away. Perhaps he’d revert Brown to the drawing room on another visit, depending on how Ember judged his behaviour and attitude. Turret should feel lucky to be in Low Pastures at all. He had rejected Ember’s suggestions for meetings outside. An advantage of the study over the drawing room was that it had no window looking out on to the paddock and Venetia, as she rode today.
    Brown opened his case and spread two sheets of unlined foolscap on the rectangular mahogany table that served as desk. They’d been hinged together at three points with adhesive tape. The pages contained a street map, hand-drawn in pencil. Brown nodded down at it. ‘This I’ve found is the best area for our operation, Ralph,’ he said. Again that comical, sidling suggestion of equality. ‘ Our operation.’ (a) Who decided there should be an operation in the first place? He, Ralph Ember did. (b) Who selected from a barrelful of talent someone perhaps able to handle it? He, Ralph Ember, did. (c) Who finally briefed him and sent him in? He, Ralph Ember did. Ralph knew some history, and felt that for Brown to talk this way was as though a corporal on Utah beach claimed to run D-Day with Eisenhower. Brown – a hired hand, nothing more. But Ralph didn’t correct him. Instead, he smiled interestedly, encouragingly, the kind of smile a leader might offer a hired hand, whether the hired hand knew Latin or not. Ralph unhesitatingly bent and studied the sketch map with Turret. He recognized the district. It was borderland ground between his and Manse Shale’s territories in the north of the city. Brown pointed to his portrait of a big, square park, full of what he’d drawn as bushy-topped trees and an oval lake. He moved his finger down the left edge of the park. ‘This side ours, the other, Shale’s.’
    â€˜There’s a clear division,’ Ember said. ‘No colonizing or trespassing. Never any trouble.’
    â€˜The opposite. And that’s why it suits us, Ralph.’ His enthusiasm crackled. ‘I’m up there a lot, restocking dealers, occasionally debt netting, generally keeping an eye. And the same goes for Manse’s couriers. We see one another at work, have a chat now and then, compare problems, conditions. It’s amicable – because you and Manse have created and maintained an amicable mode at the top. Of course, the effect of that reaches everyone. It’s part of your unique joint achievement.’
    â€˜What I meant when I spoke of the complicated binary nature of things.’
    Brown pointed again, now to the southernmost part of the park. ‘Occasionally, Manse Shale himself will turn up in the Jaguar here and watch his people trading and so on. He drives himself.’
    â€˜He lost a chauffeur. Before your time here, probably.’
    â€˜Lost?’
    â€˜Denzil Lake. Query suicide. Extremely query. Manse has a new driver now, but doesn’t always use him. Eldon Something. Dane. Eldon Dane. Manse got used to doing without. Dane gets put on other work for spells.’
    â€˜Days and timings vary for Shale. I said I’d get an itinerary for him. Not possible at the park. Well, obviously. He’s there to surprise check his team and doesn’t want them