"This is another entertaining, laugh-out-loud, mesmerizing, and completely original installment in an excellent series" Booklist Starred Review When a major drugs dealer seeks vengeance for the death of his family, policemen Harpur and Iles must do all they can to prevent a bloodbath Following the murder of his wife and son, tycoon drugs dealer Mansel Shale is determined to get vengeance – and he wants another drugs baron, Ralph Ember, to help him. Having heard of the movie Strangers on a Train, in which two men agree to undertake each other’s murders as a way of preventing detection, Shale suggests he and Ralph should have a similar arrangement – and Ralph is in no position to refuse. When he learns of the plan, Assistant Chief Constable Desmond Iles fears that if things go wrong, the hard-won peace he and Harpur have established in the city will be seriously threatened. The two top policemen find they have their work cut out to limit the damage and restore tranquillity. "This is another entertaining, laugh-out-loud, mesmerizing, and completely original installment in an excellent series" ― Booklist Starred Review Critically-acclaimed crime writer Bill James is a former journalist, and wrote for The Sunday Times, the Daily Mirror, the Spectator, the New Review and Punch. Married, with four children, he lives in Wales. First Fix Your Alibi By Bill James Severn House Publishers Limited Copyright © 2016 Bill James All rights reserved. ISBN: 978-1-78029-566-4 CHAPTER 1 Ralph Wyvern Ember, sole owner of the Monty social club in Shield Terrace, and chairman and chief executive of one of the most gilt-edged recreational substance firms in Britain, had watched, several times over the years, TV movie channel showings of a 1950s Alfred Hitchcock film called Strangers On A Train starring Farley Granger and Robert Walker. Although Ember had always enjoyed the film, even on his third and fourth viewing, he'd never found the plot entirely believable. It was a story – a good story – and stories could sometimes be a bit far-fetched, especially good stories. To give the audience a surprise, a thrill, they had to stretch situations and characters, sometimes too much. But now, suddenly, he'd been forced to think the tale wasn't so basically incredible after all. This shook him. One of the main points about Ralph was that, although he considered himself reasonably mild and balanced, it always got right up his fucking nose if someone he knew well asked him to snuff out someone he hardly knew at all, or possibly someone he hadn't even heard of until this rather off-colour request. Such an approach irritated Ralph for two strong reasons. First, he had never been a hitman, even in his earliest, freewheeling commercial days. Unfortunate fatal spats with enemies had taken place but only very rarely; definitely nothing to write home about, encrypted. Second, suppose he had been an apprentice hitman at this youthful, tyro stage, as part of the business initiation process, his earned eminence in local society now, as compared to then, made that type of violence by Ralph more or less unthinkable currently. Or possibly more than more or less. Good God, the local evening paper often published very constructive, vigorously sincere letters from him on environmental and pollution topics over the signature Ralph W. Ember. Industrial effluent secretly discharged into rivers was something else that got up his nose. And then, consider the proprietorship of the Monty, his club bought from fine trading profits, for which he had many substantial ambitions. Could he be expected immediately to shelve every other concern and narrow his intentions right down to a slaying? 'Untoward' was the word that came to Ralph's mind: surely, this kind of demand could be seen as nothing but untoward. Indelicacy Ralph detested. How could a friend, or friends, and/or a colleague, or colleagues – probably very familiar, long-term, with Ralph's true updated character – how could they imagine he'd jump to take on a blast job to head or chest-area despite his distinguished OBE'ish reputation now? The Strangers On A Train film, and possibly the book it came from, started with – well, started with strangers on a train, Granger and Walker. The fact that they were strangers is the key element. Walker proposes to Granger that they each do a killing on behalf of the other. Ralph considered it not the usual kind of amiable chat that springs up between train passengers. Granger wants to get rid of his wife, and Walker will carry out the job on her. As his side of the deal, Granger will see off Walker's nuisance father for him. Because the victims and the murderers would be completely unknown to each other there'd be no obvious motives to guide the police. And at the time of the killings the husband and son will make sure to have well-attested, utterly uncrackable alibis. Walker more or less hypnotizes Granger with the lovely neatness of the