Brothers Keepers by Donald E. Westlake (M. Evans and Company, Inc 1975)

“Have I kept you waiting? I’m so sorry,” Brother Oliver said. “I was painting, in the courtyard. This winter light is so perfect for—”

Dwarfmann gestured that away with an impatient flick of his numerical wrist; I couldn’t see the numbers. “My days,” he said, “are swifter than a weaver’s shuttle. Let’s get down to business.”

I’m sure Brother Oliver was as taken aback as I was. The imagery, in Dwarfmann’s rattly style of speech, seemed wildly inappropriate. Then Brother Oliver said, in distinct astonishment, “Was that from Job?”

“Chapter seven, verse six,” Dwarfmann snapped. “Come, come, if you have something to say to me, say it. Our time is a very shadow that passeth away.”

“I don’t know the Apocrypha,” Brother Oliver said.

Dwarfmann gave him a thin smile. “You know it well enough to recognize it. Wisdom of Solomon, chapter two, verse five.”

“Then I can only cite One Thessalonians,” Brother Oliver said. “Chapter five, verse fourteen. Be patient toward all men.”

“Let us run with patience,” Dwarfmann or somebody said, “the race that is set before us.”

“I don’t believe,” Brother Oliver told him, “that was quite the implication of that verse in its original context.”

“Hebrews, twelve, one.” Dwarfmann shrugged. “Then how about Paul to Timothy, with its meaning intact? Be instant in season, out of season.” Again he tapped those little red numbers, and now I saw them: 2:51. I don’t know why I felt so relieved to know the exact time— something about Dwarfmann’s presence, I suppose. And he was saying, “I’m a busy man.” That couldn’t be Biblical. “My man Snopes told you all you needed to know, we’ll give you every assistance in relocation, given the circumstances we’ll go farther than the law requires. Much farther. But that wasn’t enough for you, you have to hear it from me direct. All right, you’re hearing it from me direct. We’re building on this site.”

“There is a building on this site,” Brother Oliver said.

“Not for long.”

“Why not look at it?” Brother Oliver made hospitable gestures, urging our guest to come look the place over. “Now that you’re here, why not see the place you intend to destroy?”

“Beauty is vain,” Dwarfmann said. “Proverbs, thirty-one, thirty.”

Brother Oliver began to look somewhat put out. He said, “Wot ye not what the Scripture saith? Romans, eleven.”

With that sudden thin smile again, Dwarfmann answered, “What saith the Scripture? Galatians,  four.”

“Pride goeth before destruction,” Brother Oliver told him, “and an haughty spirit before a fall. Proverbs, sixteen.”

Dwarfmann shrugged, saying, “Let us do evil, that good may come. Romans, three.”

“Woe unto them that call evil good, and good evil. Isaiah, five.”

“Sin is not imputed when there is no law,” Dwarfmann insisted. “Romans, five.”

Brother Oliver shook his head. “He that maketh haste to be rich shall not be innocent.”

“Money answereth all things,” Dwarfmann said, with a great deal of assurance.

“He heapeth up riches,” Brother Oliver said scornfully, “and knoweth not who shall gather them.”

“Unto every one that hath shall be given, and he shall have abundance.” Dwarfmann permitted his own scornful expression to roam around our room, then finished, “But from him that hath not shall be taken away even that which he hath.” Another quick look at his watch. “I think we’ve played enough,” he said, and turned toward the door.

Brother Oliver had two pink circles on his cheeks, and his pudgy hands were more or less closed into ineffective fists. “The devil is come down unto you,” he announced, “having great wrath, because he knoweth that he hath but a short time.”

Dwarfmann’s hand was on our doorknob. He looked back at Brother Oliver, flashed that thin smile again as though to say he was glad we all understood one another now, and with another quick glance around the room said, “He shall return no more to his house, neither shall his place know him any more. Job, chapter seven, verse ten.” And he left.

Brother Oliver expelled held-in breath with a sudden long whoosh. Shaking my head, I said, “The devil can cite Scripture for his purpose.”

Brother Oliver gave me a puzzled look. “Is that New Testament? I don’t recognize that.”

“Uhh, no,” I said. “It’s Shakespeare. Merchant of Venice.” I cleared my throat. “Sorry,” I said.

Porridge by Dick Clement, Ian La Frenais and Ian Marshall (British Broadcasting Corporation 1975)

‘Would you like to read my Angling Times?' said Mr Barrowclough. He was the other screw.

Now that was an opening I couldn't refuse. I could see the headlines screaming at me from the front page. ‘And now -The 2p Lugworm!’ Full of full-frontal salmons and the price of cod inside no doubt. I reached across to take the magazine. As I did the Scottish nurk snatched it out of my hand.

‘God Almighty,' he says. 'Molly-coddling him already. You seem, Mr Barrowclough, to forget what prison is for. He’s got a debt to pay to society, and that debt doesn’t include reading informative magazines.'

With that he settles back into his seat with a last jerk of his neck. Yes, just like a turkey.

The other screw looked just as surprised as I did. I fell silent for a minute or two and gazed out of the window at North London’s back gardens. Then I thought of the long journey ahead with no reading material or television and I thought, Well, we have got to do something to pass the time, haven’t we? I looked at MacKay out of the comer of my eye and said very casually, ‘I spy with my little eye something beginning with C.' Now for some unknown reason he took that very personal. Leaning across and wagging a finger he said, ‘Watch it, Fletcher, watch it,' he says.

‘It was cuffs, handcuffs I had in mind, Mr MacKay. Oh, sorry, I should have said HC, that would have been more fair.'

Don’t come the old soldier with me,’ he says.

‘Wouldn’t dream of it, I says.’

‘Any more trouble with you and I'll . . .'

‘Let me guess,’ I says. ‘You’ll wait till we pick up speed at, say, Hemel Hempstead and chuck me out of the window. Then put it down to attempting to escape.'

This offended the other one's sense of fairness. *Oh, he wouldn't do that,’ he says.

‘I suppose you’re right,’ I says. 'Couldn’t spell Hemel Hempstead. He’d wait till we got to Rugby.'

I felt sure that MacKay and I were going to have a right old game with each other in the months to come. I could tell by the look he was giving me that I was going to be one of his favourite targets.

‘Look,’ said Barrowclough. ‘There’s a long journey ahead, let us not conduct it in a feeling of hostility and aggression. Why don’t we all have a nice cup of tea?’

‘Oh yes,1 I says. 'A cup of tea solves all nasty expertiences as my old Mother used to say. And I’ll have one of those individual fruit pies if they’ve got any.'

Rob Roy gave me a hard look, he wasn’t sure whether I was in fact having a go at him or not. Anyway, he decided that it is a good idea and off he strutted leaving us alone in our first-class compartment with the blinds pulled down so as not to offend the eyes of the gentry with a glimpse of a convicted felon.

I thought, this should give me an opportunity to find out some valuable information about old misery-guts. The number one priority in dealing with two screws is to inject a little bit of bother between them. Divide and rule. So nodding towards the door I says, ‘He's a laugh, ain’t he? Sort of casual like. He plays it careful, won’t be drawn.’

‘I expect it's with him being a Scotsman and having to miss Hogmanay,’ he says.

‘Scot is he? I’d never have guessed,’ I replied. But the sarcasm goes right over his head.

'Oh yes, and they do take it very seriously, the Scots.' 

Yeah, well they’d take any excuse for drinking seriously, wouldn’t they? Nothing social about their drinking habits, is there? With them, it’s like a religion. They don’t enjoy a few glasses of the old vino, oh, no, they drink to get drunk. And, whereas other people having reached that state get a little warm and sentimental, or as in my case, randy, your Scot, all he wants is to fight and smash a glass in someone’s boat-race. Only one thing worse than a drunken Scot and that’s a sober one, an' we’ve just seen one of them, haven’t we?’

I settled back in my seat feeling the power of having got that off my chest. He sat there blinking through his spectacles, sucking his teeth before saying unhappily, I'm Scots on my mother’s side.'

The Terrorists by Maj Sjöwall and Per Wahlöö (Harper Perennial 1975)

She looked at him. 'You look absolutely done in. Go to bed.'

Martin Beck really was done in. The day of uninterrupted telephoning and conferring had exhausted him. But for some reason he did not want to go to bed at once. He felt too comfortable in this kitchen, with its plaits of garlic bulbs and bunches of wormwood, thyme and rowanberries. After a while he said, 'Rhea?'

'Yes?'

'Do you think it was wrong of me to take on this job?'

She thought for a long time before answering, then said, 'That would require quite an involved analysis. But I more than understand that friend of yours who resigned.'

'Kollberg.'

'He's a nice man. I like his wife, too. And I think he did the right thing. He saw that the police as an organization devoted itself to terrorizing mainly two categories of people, socialists and those who can't make it in our class society. He acted according to his conscience and convictions.'

'I think he was wrong. If all good policemen got out, because they take on other people's guilt, then only the stupid ones, the dregs, would be left. We've talked about this before, anyway.'

‘You and I have talked about practically everything before. Have you ever thought about that? He nodded.

'But you asked a concrete question, and now I'll answer it Yes, darling, I think you were wrong. What would have happened if you'd refused?'

'I'd have been given a direct order.'

'And if you'd refused a direct order?'

Martin Beck shrugged his shoulders. He was very tired, but the conversation interested him. 'I might possibly have been suspended. But to be honest, that's unlikely. Someone else would simply have been given the job.'

'Who?'

'Stig Malm, probably, my so-called chief and immediate superior.'

'And he'd have made a worse job of it than you? Yes, most likely, but I think you should have refused all the same. That's what I feel, I mean. Feelings are difficult to analyse. I suppose what I feel is this: Our government, which maintains it represents the people, invites a notorious reactionary to come on a visit - a man who might even have been President of the United States a few years ago. Had he been, we would probably have had a global war by now. And on top of all that, he is to be received as an honoured guest. Our ministers, with the Prime Minister in the lead, will sit politely chatting with him about the recession and the price of oil and assure him that good old neutral Sweden is still the same bulwark against communism it has always been. He'll be invited to a damned great banquet and be allowed to meet the so-called opposition, which has the same capitalist interests as the government only slightly more honestly expressed. Then he'll have lunch with our half-witted puppet king. And all the time he has to be protected so damn carefully that presumably he won't be allowed to see a single demonstrator or even hear that there is any opposition, if Säpo or the CIA don't tell him. The only thing he'll notice is that the head of the Communist Party isn't at the banquet'

'You're wrong there. All demonstrators are to be allowed within sight'

'If the government doesn't get scared and talk you out of it, yes. What can you do if the Prime Minister suddenly calls you up and says all the demonstrators are to be transported to Råsunda stadium and kept there?'

'Then I'll resign.'

Hazell and the Three-Card Trick by P.B Yuill (Penguin Books 1975)

The pub Minty chose was rough even by Hammersmith standards. Of course there's good parts and bad parts of Hammersmith. This pub was as bad as any going.

Minty was already at the slopping bar when I pushed through the dingy saloon door.

It wasn't rough meaning violent - just horrible. The paper was coming off the walls in damp patches and the decor was like an old railway waiting-room with one difference. The lighting. I've never been in such a brightly-lit boozer. It was glaring.

The staff was an Irish bloke about twenty-five. He had the beer gut of a much older man. It was straining against a grey vest that in its turn was trying to pop out where his shirt buttons were missing.

From his pained movements and sharp sighs and groans it was possible he was suffering the worst hangover since Pisa. He hadn't shaved that day, although that was hardly likely to upset the clientele.

Actually I feel sorry for the Irish who come over here to wear big letters on their backs. They generally leave the wife at home on holy soil and only see her at Xmas to father next year's crop. In between Xmases they doss down in cheap rooms and send the wife's money home by postal order and drink themselves silly to fill up the void.

Thumping each other and kicking Chinese waiters is about the height of their swinging lives. They don't seem to have much interest in the local women and they tend to stick to their own pubs. 'It's gone Irish,' you'll hear people say about a rub-a-dub that's been taken over by the big men with the pixie ears. It's not meant as a recommendation.

I say sorry but not enough to want ten of them home for a cooked meal.

A Country Doctor's Notebook by Mikhail Bulgakov (Harvill Paperbacks 1975)

'Clever people have long been aware that happiness is like good health: when you have it, you don't notice it. But as the years go by, oh, the memories, the memories of happiness past!
For myself I realise now that I was happy in that winter of 1917, that headlong, never-to-be-forgotten year of storm and blizzard.

(From the short story, 'Morphine'.)

Ragtime by E L Doctorow (Picador 1975)

In New York City the papers were full of the shooting of the famous architect Stanford White by Harry K. Thaw, eccentric scion of a coke and railroad fortune. Harry K. Thaw was the husband of Evelyn Nesbit, the celebrated beauty who had once been Stanford White's mistress. The shooting took place in the roof garden of the Madison Square Garden on 26th Street, a spectacular block-long building of yellow brick and terra cotta that White himself had designed in the Sevillian style. It was the opening night of a revue entitled Mamzelle Champagne, and as the chorus sang and danced the eccentric scion wearing on this summer night a straw boater and heavy black coat pulled out a pistol and shot the famous architect three times in the head. On the roof. There were screams. Evelyn fainted. She had been a well-known artist's model at the age of fifteen. Her underclothes were white. Her husband habitually whipped her. She happened once to meet Emma Goldman, the revolutionary. Goldman lashed her with her tongue. Apparently there were Negroes. There were immigrants. And though the newspapers called the shooting the Crime of the Century, Goldman knew it was only 1906 and there were ninety-four years to go.