Full of Money

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Authors: Bill James

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THE SIXTH MAN and other stories
FULL OF MONEY
Bill James
This eBook is copyright material and must not be copied, reproduced, transferred, distributed, leased, licensed or publicly performed or used in any way except as specifically permitted in writing by the publishers, as allowed under the terms and conditions under which it was purchased or as strictly permitted by applicable copyright law. Any unauthorised distribution or use of this text may be a direct infringement of the author's and publisher's rights and those responsible may be liable in law accordingly.
 
First world edition published 2009
in Great Britain and in the USA by
SEVERN HOUSE PUBLISHERS LTD of
9–15 High Street, Sutton, Surrey, England, SM1 1DF.
Copyright © 2009 by Bill James.
All rights reserved.
The moral right of the author has been asserted.
British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data
James, Bill, 1929-
Full of Money.
1. Drug traffic–Investigation–England–London–Fiction.
2. Gangs–England–London–Fiction. 3. Journalists–Crimes against–Fiction. 4. Police–England–London–Fiction.
5. London (England)–Social conditions–Fiction.
6. Detective and mystery stories.
I. Title
823.9'14-dc22
ISBN-13: 978-1-78010-092-0 (ePub)
ISBN-13: 978-0-7278-6813-8 (cased)
ISBN-13: 978-1-84751-177-5 (trade paper)
Except where actual historical events and characters are being described for the storyline of this novel, all situations in this publication are fictitious and any resemblance to living persons is purely coincidental.
This ebook produced by
Palimpsest Book Production Limited,
Falkirk, Stirlingshire, Scotland.
CONTENTS

One

Two

Three

Four

Five

Six

Seven

Eight

Nine

Ten

Eleven

Twelve

Thirteen

Fourteen

Fifteen

Sixteen

Seventeen

Eighteen

Nineteen

One
Obviously, she didn't want to be called out some day to find Gerald beaten unrecognizable, except via one of his foul bow ties. Or things might turn even darker. Already there'd been a couple of deaths, admittedly one only a trite turf war shooting, but the other a young investigative journalist who'd . . . who'd got investigative. Esther Davidson had the profile note on him in front of her now.
STRICTLY AUTHORIZED READERS ONLY
{In part personal
fn1
}
Gervaise Manciple Tasker, aged 31 (deceased).
  • Born July 1967, Grantham, Lincolnshire. Died August 1998.
  • Parents: Brian and Margaret Tasker, retired teachers.
  • Gervaise Manciple educated locally until scholarship (Classics) to Oxford University. Graduated 1988.
  • Entered journalism. Reporter on giveaway newspapers in Dagenham, London. By 1994 established as freelance specialist in ‘exposure' topics. Bylined articles
    The Times
    ,
    Daily Telegraph
    ,
    Mail on Sunday
    and
    Daily Mail
    .
  • Final project: examination of command structure and operational methods of drugs firms on Whitsun Festival and Temperate Park Acres municipal housing estates. It was rumoured Tasker persisted with inquiries although warned off by staff of Adrian Pellotte (Whitsun Festival). Of motivational relevance? But also researched Temperate Park Acres trafficking.
  • Tasker hobnobbed with a middle-class, professional group who did ‘slumming' trips to drink at Whitsun Festival and Temperate Acres pubs. (*For special attention of Detective Chief Superintendent Davidson: group sometimes included her husband, Mr Gerald Davidson.)
  • Two members of Pellotte firm arrested and released. Evidence did not support charges.
  • As income-boost sideline, possible Tasker also a small-scale dealer in illegal substances for one of the firms. But perhaps an assumed role only, for access to company leaderships and to material for intended article(s). May have been suspected of ‘skimming' from a firm's takings or ‘stretching' the product and personal revenue by undue additive quantities (procaine, boric etc). Death punitive?
Did Gerald realize how bad things might become, and how fast? As tactfully as it could, the profile mentioned the large, braying crew of acquaintances he liked drinking with these days. It was not the sort of thing Esther could raise with him, and not the sort of thing
he
would raise. Often, she watched Gerald to see whether the journo slaughter especially terrified him. However, his moods always skittered so crazily that you couldn't read anything from his face or his body angles. Or you could read
everything
, which added up to the same. There'd been those couple of formal arrests for the killing, but of people who knew how to handle interrogation, how to stymie interrogation.
Witnesses? Scarce. Scared – sceptical about protection schemes. The arrests failed. For gang crime on Whitsun and Temperate this routine was . . . routine.
The funeral. She thought Gerald possibly went. But that might be no more than formal respect for someone he did know, though not closely: a bit of a rally-round to convince his relatives he'd been grandly popular, except with the hoodlum, or hoodlums, who killed him. Esther herself didn't go. That reference in the profile to possible dealing kept her away. She did not give send-offs to pushers, even to mock-up, masquerading pushers, though, in fact, no confirmation ever came that Tasker traded drugs, neither as an earner nor a cover.
But funerals of the murdered could be tricky for police. Death had its divisions and subdivisions. Only if victims rated as wholly blameless would officers on the case attend, out of respect; not if the life snuffed had been dubious, quasi-criminal, criminal. Esther could enjoy funerals: the hit-or-miss stab at dignity, phoniness in brilliant bulk, the loud, brave, creaky expressions of hope. But she avoided this one and didn't send anybody else.
She could have wished Gerald hadn't gone either; supposing he had, that is. His role as principal bassoon with prestigious orchestras brought a certain fame. People noticed him, and he
would
wear those incandescent bow ties, possibly even to a funeral. Many knew his wife to be a big-time cop. At present, Esther's role as Detective Chief Superintendent in the Metropolitan Police put the criminal life of a large, undocile slab of London under her eye. Later, she would leave the Met and take on even bigger pieces of geography when she'd been raised to Assistant Chief Constable and worked in two out-of-London forces.
1
For now, though, this. Gerald's possible attendance at the funeral might not look as bad as if she'd appeared there herself, but it was an embarrassment. Gerald specialized in embarrassments. He regarded it as the duty of an artist, such as himself, to come up with them. Artists shocked. For instance, Van Gogh's ear.
They weren't all artists in Gerald's social group. He might be the only real one – though there'd be some amateurs and dilettantes – having a go at music, writing, painting. But she assumed they'd all be educated, male, big thinking, large talking, opinionated, stupidly and perilously blurt prone. They might well have welcomed in a freelance journalist who sold to the major papers and who'd been at Oxford on the Humanities side, not engineering, or anything useful – ‘banausic,' as Gerald would say. They liked to pub crawl by taxi and especially to pubs in dodgy areas, including on the Whitsun and the Temperate Park estates. He and his mates believed this showed they were bold, not timorous or narrow or miserably bourgeois. They
were
, of course, bourgeois, but not timorously, narrowly or miserably bourgeois, in their view.
Esther regarded that kind of carry-on as OK, but Gerald with drink in him was liable to open his gob a bit wide, and could say things in these risky bars that might not be life enhancing – for his own life, that is – or even tactful. Others in his lot might do similar. Being arty they thought they could speak their piece at full volume if they wanted to. And such people, liquored up,
would
want to, convinced that loudness helped prove they were not timorously, narrowly or miserably bourgeois.
For example, they'd most probably sound off with frank, and therefore deeply unsafe, comments on the death of one of their number in bad circumstances – Gervaise Manciple Tasker, investigative journalist. Esther wished they'd give such pubs the go-by, at least for a while. It wasn't likely, because Gerald would wish to signal he could do whatever he chose to do. Call it artistic licence. Call it senseless. Call it naive. These pubs would be listening posts, among their other roles. Wild, unedited conversations between Gerald and his chums might get mentioned upwards to people running the firms – people like Adrian Pellotte and Harold Perth Amesbury on Temperate. This could easily turn out troublesome.
It shouldn't be troublesome, easily or otherwise. Esther had to recognize that. Pellotte and Amesbury and their firms ought to have been squashed a long while ago. But, of course, Pellotte and Amesbury and their firms successfully hid their real and booming substances trade behind one or more of the usual type of respectable commercial fronts: courier services, scrapyards, builders' merchants, leisure equipment, garden furniture supplies, chandlering. Esther, new to the patch, would try to expose and destroy the true core game of these outfits. To date, though, Pellotte and Amesbury and their teams survived – survived and threatened. Gerald must know this, yet would not, could not, kowtow, due to his special, gifted, unconfinable soul, which, during piss-ups, probably became less confinable still, on whisky.
All right, she was used to Gerald's unique nature. For years he had gone through spells as an all-round, egomaniac, blustering nuisance who could play first bassoon to top concert standard. But she'd admit he definitely had many loveable aspects, as well as the rubbish:
(1) non-golf
(2) apolitical
(3) anti-soccer
(4) anti-JS Bach
(5) but fond of other eighteenth-century stuff
(6) sweet breathed
(7) skilled, imaginative and staminad at sexual violence
(8) tap-dancing flair almost to professional level, if there still were professional tap dancers
Their marriage held together because of such qualities, and all the usual banal, valid, historic and mysterious pressures, plus a few extra. Just the same, Esther recognized he would always be liable to slip into one of those spells as a deeply egomaniac, posturing nuisance who could play, or
had
played, first bassoon to top concert level, and thought he could speed through all hazards on account of his divine and divinely given talent. So, he'd probably go in for provocative, arrogant, persistent, mouthy behaviour in the wrong places. If she'd tried to warn him, he would have said there
were
no wrong places for Gerald Davidson; he owed his presence wherever he could get to.
A TV arts show wanted him to appear in a panel. This would boost his self-regard a notch or two higher. Experts on first bassoon playing assured her of Gerald's genius. ‘Fluid, guileful, dexterous, one-off, magisterial, impish,' a
Guardian
reviewer said about a Gerald performance at the Barbican. Esther found she remembered word-perfect such crap, though possibly meaningful crap if you were familiar with that sort of crap.

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