Free Hotbed by Bill James Page A

him,’ Brown explained. ‘Therefore, a handgun each in your bras. It’s a typical business relationship – lovely cooperation and mateyness for as far as profit demands, and then, beyond this, the dread and certainty that the other one is really after the whole bloody caboodle, and has sly plans to get it.’
    He found himself worth quoting, the smug serf. ‘Manse and I have a genuine, long-lasting “mateyness”, in your term,’ Ralph replied. ‘This has very considerable ramifications. For instance, he wants me as his best man.’
    â€˜Gesture.’
    â€˜I don’t think that’s –’
    â€˜What we have to sort out, Ralph, is the difference between gesture and the real, isn’t it?’ Brown said. ‘One of life’s eternal quests.’
    Oh, a sodding philosopher now. And a cocky one: that ‘we’. Any sorting out required, Ralph would do solo, thank you, sonny boy. Ember said: ‘Admittedly, there are bound to be tensions in the kind of arrangement Manse and I –’
    â€˜You want me to get in there and see what the unholy shite is cooking up, do you, Ralph?’
    â€˜What I’d like is –’
    â€˜Sure, I can deal with that for you. You’ll worry about the nickname, I expect – Turret. Don’t. It’s no more correct about me than “Panicking Ralphy” is about you, Ralph. I can be subtle and watchful, as well as a blast.’ He leaned forward, one hand on offer. Ember shook it. Brown said: ‘There’d be due reward and progress in the firm, I take it. You’ve got quite a decent little set-up out here, haven’t you?’
    â€˜Bare stone walls and exposed beams give a kind of motif, I like to think,’ Ralph replied. ‘Everything open, strong, authentic.’
    â€˜I heard a villain of villains had Low Pastures not long ago.’
    â€˜I –’
    â€˜This is absolutely no reflection on you, Ralph.’
    â€˜Reflection? On me? How could it be a reflection on me?’
    â€˜I said no reflection.’
    â€˜Yes, but –’
    â€˜I’d need £5K a week for the kind of work you have in mind, and certain definite assurances,’ Brown replied.
    It depressed Ember infinitely deeply to hear Turret name that pay, and name it with a defiant, no-arguments flourish, especially just after Ralph had referred to the marvellous quality of the Low Pastures structure. Of course, he had been thinking of offering more for this job, say eight a week, or even ten. Did Brown realize the kind of risk? Some naivety, here, despite all the flatulent talk? Or was all the flatulent talk on account of the naivety – to camouflage it, compensate for it? His brother would be used to speaking concocted lines, many of them corny, full of attitude and not much else. Turret wanted to compete? Did he appreciate what type of difficult information he would be looking for?
    Ember never bought cheap. The bare stone walls and exposed beams of Low Pastures had not come cheap. If you bought cut-price you almost always got cut-price results, or no fucking results at all. God, run-of-the-mill people like goalkeepers, barristers, poker pros, surgeons made £5000 a week and more. Ember had imagined he was picking talent when he picked Turret. Ralph felt let down by this miserable, penny-pinching modesty. And Brown had cut across something Ralph began to say – cut across in Ralph’s own drawing room – cut across as if the demand for £5K were so bold it must come out at once. As a matter of fact, Ralph had an £8K cluster of twenties already elastic-banded in a desk drawer and another twenty in twenties alongside it in case Brown tried to bargain up.
    Ember would not say Turret had actually besmirched Low Pastures by the sad pifflingness of his demand, but Ralph wondered whether he should have let him into the drawing room, especially as his manners in conversation