Gilded Edge, The

Danny Miller
was born in Brighton, and studied English and Drama at Goldsmiths, University of London. He started his writing career as a playwright and his plays have been performed at the National Theatre Studio, Bush Theatre and the Theatre Royal Stratford East. As a scriptwriter he has worked for the BBC, ITV and Channel 4.

His first novel
Kiss Me Quick
was shortlisted for the 2011 CWA John Creasey (New Blood) Dagger award.

London, 1965

The King was in residence: a glossily white-walled Georgian town house, four storeys high and three bays wide, with a classical Ionic-pillared portico. The house sat proud in one of the grandest squares in London, and in one of the most prestigious addresses in town. Tucked away in the basement of this plum piece of Belgravia real estate, a bead of sweat had just dripped on to the King’s eye. Johnny Beresford glanced down at the smiling King, who looked up at him and, with his bulging and magnified eye, bashed him a wink. Johnny Beresford expelled a short mirthless laugh that sounded more like a snort of derision. It was, of course, merely an optical illusion, because the King in question was the King of Spades. But right now, to Johnny Beresford’s mind, there really wasn’t anything to be laughing about, never mind shooting off cocky little winks.

Johnny Beresford held him fanned out alongside four other equally worthless and mismatched cohorts. This mocking King was a redundant King, and ultimately a deadly King who was not about to grant him any pardons or favours. He gave the King – and all the King’s men – another glance, hoping they might change into something else, something to beat his opponent’s lavish line-up of a straight flush. Nothing changed. They stayed the same. They stayed a bad hand of cards.

He took the almost drained bottle of single malt that sat on the table beside him, and tipped a splashing glug of it into the crystal tumbler. He wasn’t drunk. No, that happy mindless state seemed unattainable to him these days, no matter how hard he tried – and he did try, for his industry on that front could never be faulted. But, for all he’d imbibed, he couldn’t dispel the new sobriety that was now settling in on him – and fast. Things were changing and there was no going back, and also nothing he could do about it. He seemed to be moving through time with a lacerating lucidity. The gambler’s optimism was disassembling itself before his eyes like fragmenting clouds. And there was no azure sky, no bright sunlight beyond, and no rainbows with pots of gold at the end of them. Just a dead hand. Unable to bear looking at the reality any more, he threw in his cards. After a moment, he gathered up the rest of the pack and shuffled them, hoping for the chance to deal out another dose of optimism.

But all the King’s horses and all the King’s men . . .

‘What do you say, sport, another hand? Just the one? Come on, you owe me that, no?’

Sport stayed silent. Whoever sport was, he was being very unsporting, and clearly didn’t want to play any more.

Johnny Beresford realized this, squeezed his eyes shut, balled his fists and banged them on the table in a drum roll of percussive powerlessness. More sweat fell from his brow and on to the cards, but it was tinged with red this time. The nasty-looking gash on his forehead, which had earlier dried and congealed, was now liquefying and being carried through the wound on his saline sweat.

He deserved better, he always had. He had the pedigree and the prestige. From his moment of his baronial birth, Johnny Beresford had sat at the top of the pile: fast-tracked and first in line for everything in life, due to his predecessors’ successful efforts in snaffling up great swathes of this green and pleasant land. His family, known as ‘the Battling Beresfords’, were a historically bellicose brood. Murderous loyalty, in the service of the kings and queens of England, had run rife. They had set sail and seen off armadas, shot off arrows at Agincourt, aimed muskets at Roundheads in muddy fields in Essex, gone over the top at Flanders, and taken to the skies and spat fire over the white cliffs of Dover. And, although there were no written records, it wouldn’t have surprised Johnny Beresford to learn that his ancestors had steadfastly refused to hail Caesar, cut up rough with Cnut, and said a big fat ‘No!’ to the Normans in 1066. With the Beresfords’ ability to do the business on the battlefield, at court and eventually in the boardrooms, by the time Johnny Beresford had eased his way into the world, the work had long been done.

With such prestigious lineage stacked up behind him, he had been able to live a life of opulent entitlement. He thus bowled through life working on the principle that money begat money, and good fortune begat good fortune. So when the turn of the cards came, he naturally expected them to come up good. They always had.

‘Come on, Johnny. Let’s do it!’

He registered the instruction and laid down the cards. He knew that he’d played his last hand. He also knew what came next. He’d strung it out for as long as possible, and lost four on the trot. It was official: he’d moved into
bad luck
and saw little sign of moving out of it. There are those who say that in poker luck has little to do with winning or losing; it’s all about skill. And, time and time again, they’re proved hubristically wrong. Because luck has a lot to do with everything in life. Especially when it comes to dying.

‘Do it, Johnny.
Do it!
’

In another part of town, and in another world, as the large hours of Saturday night dwindled effortlessly into the small hours of Sunday morning, Marcy Jones walked up Lancaster Road towards her home in Basing Street. The surrounding streets were deserted and uncharacteristically quiet. Even the house on the corner where resided a collective of young musicians – who lived like you’d expect a collective of young musicians to live, and were constantly being told to turn it down during their weekly Saturday ‘happenings’ – was quiet. All Marcy Jones could hear was the click of her own stilettos on the frosted pavement.

Tall terraced houses lined the street, some in bare ash brick, some painted in city-soiled white. Black slate roofs like the scales of an old fish held untidy chimney stacks and spindly TV aerials that serrated the skyline. This part of Ladbroke Grove was thrown in with Notting Hill, and its once grand houses had always been a little unfashionable, a little too far away from the centralized action and affluence of Belgravia, Knightsbridge and Mayfair. And now they had met their inevitable fate, been slummed over, sectioned off, partitioned, truncated and turned into tight little flats and broom-cupboard bedsits. It was a part of town where there were not even signs hung in windows that read:
No Blacks, No Irish, No Dogs.
Everyone was welcome in this parish, and Notting Hill accommodation offered cheap rents that, once moved into, rose steeply without much rhyme or reason, and deposits that once deposited would never see the light of day again. It was an area controlled by landlords who ruled with iron fists and turned off the heating at the first sign of complaint.

This part of London sang its own song of immigration and unrest. Because when people talked about immigration, they invariably seemed to talk about unrest, and ultimately always pointed to Notting Hill as the example. The so-called 1958 ‘race riot’ had put it on the map, and fuelled all future arguments.

But this neighbourhood was home to Marcy Jones. Her family was one of the first West Indian families to settle just after the war. She’d grown up here, was schooled and churched here, but she knew it wouldn’t be her home for much longer. She had her plans, her dreams, and almost enough money to make them come true.

The taxi had dropped her off on Ladbroke Grove, and, as she walked the rest of the way to her flat on Basing Street, as she was in the habit of doing lately, she took in these streets she’d known all her life with fresh eyes, committing the images before her to memory. Collecting snapshots of the streets she had trodden all her life, in preparation for a time soon when she would be far away from them. Melancholy and memories were mixed with the joy of a fresh start and a new life.

She pulled up the fur collar of her long dark woollen winter coat. The mid-January air held enough of a chill and a bite that she could see her breath exhaling in front of her face. She wanted to be home now; she wanted to make herself a cup of tea, draw a bath, then relax and soak the night away.

Marcy Jones climbed the four steps leading to the street-entrance door of the four-storey terraced house. Her attention wasn’t on the dark green door but on her handbag, as she fished around for her key. The overburdened bag was stuffed with sundry beauty and grooming products: a hairbrush, some hairspray, a comb, a card of hair clips, two shades of lipstick, several mascaras, some nail polish – also two spare pairs of black stockings, a pack of chewing gum, bus tickets and tube tickets and sweet wrappers and a half-read paperback. She tutted and chided herself as she searched a bag badly in need of a clear-out – a good purging to lighten its load. Her slender red-tipped fingers eventually came upon the shiny brass Yale key, the new key that replaced the one she’d lost. As she turned it stiffly in the lock and opened the front door, her mind was still focused on her untidy bag, so she didn’t hear the man behind her until she
felt
him behind her. And heard his jagged, panting breath. She turned sharply, awkwardly, her hand still attached to the key which was secured in the lock. Her flawlessly pretty face creased into confusion.

‘You?’

There was no reply as a black leather-gloved hand went up to cover her face with such force that the movement slammed her head back against the open door, then pushed her through into the tatty gloom of the communal hallway. One stiletto heel caught in the exposed webbing of the cheap threadbare carpet and, with her hand still gripping the trapped key in the front door, for a moment it seemed to Marcy Jones as if the entire building was working against her. Like a conspirator in her murder.

His left hand gripped the top of her skull and tugged at her hair like he was tearing a hat off her head. The long shiny tresses, worn with a short fringe, came away with ease. Without her wig, Marcy Jones’s pig-tailed and corn-rolled hairdo made her look younger; it made her much commented-on eyes look even bigger and even more luxuriously lashed and gorgeous. But right now they were dilated and struck through with terror so as to be hideously distorted out of shape.

The first blow from the ball-peen hammer took away her voice, but not her life – not all of it anyway. The blow was dealt with such a force that the ball of the hammer lodged in her skull. And, just like Marcy Jones had forgotten to let go of the key in the door and run, somehow now she forgot to lie down and die. Instead she sat bolt upright, her back ramrod straight, her legs splayed and stretched out before her, looking as stiff as a porcelain doll propped against a plumped-up pillow. Her body began to quiver and judder, as if waves of electricity were being sent through her by the executioner’s hand.