Gilded Edge, The (2 page)

The killer squeezed his eyes half shut as he went about his task of closing Marcy Jones’s eyes for ever. The hammer beat down on her shattered skull five more times, to complete the six of the worst. With the job now done, the killer straightened up out of his murderously hunched position of attack, and took on board some heavy panting breaths. He could feel the warmth of her moist body curled lifelessly around his ankles.

The child stood on the top of the first flight of stairs, on the landing. She was no more than ten years old, wearing a pair of brushed-cotton jimjams with daisies dotted over them. She gripped the comforter of a well-worn teddy bear in one hand. She yawned, then balled her other fist and rubbed blunt little knuckles into her eyes to dispel the gritty cobwebs of sleep. Another yawn and a sigh, and she was now wide awake. In the gloom of the landing she stared at the nightmare laid out before her. It was one she would never wake up from.

It had been the sleepy sigh that alerted the killer to someone’s presence on the stairs. He registers the much-loved teddy bear with its glass-bead eyes, its leather-button nose, its matted golden mohair fur and one padded paw clasped in the little girl’s hand; the daisies on the cotton jammies; the brown toes curled over the stair edge. The sheer heartbreaking bloody innocence of it all. But the killer can’t see her face, and he wonders if she can see his. Is she committing all this to memory, like some nightmarish negative that will be fully exposed in the cold light of the day – and then printed on to her consciousness for ever? But then, in a blink of the killer’s eye, the little girl has disappeared from view. For a moment, he questions if he even saw her at all, questions if she ever existed. Was this some ghostly and guilt-ridden presence; the innocent child witnessing an adult murder?

The killer wasn’t about to take that chance, though. With the very real hammer gripped in his gloved and pulsing hand, he took the stairs two at a time.

‘Don’t make me stand up, Philly. Don’t you make me do it!’

‘It’s a pair of threes, Kenny! You’re making a fool of yourself, but you’re not making one of me, you fuckin’ hear me?’

‘Gentlemen, gentlemen . . .’

‘Come on, Mac, I see what’s going on here!’

‘Gentlemen, let’s keep a lid on it. Let’s keep it civilized. It’s just a friendly game . . .’

Detective Vince Treadwell lowered his copy of the
Evening News
and studied the scene before him, which was a card school. The game they were playing was Kalookie, a form of rummy – and currently all the rage for achieving a quick turnover in profit and losses. It wasn’t much of a card school: two members hadn’t turned up, and two players had already dropped out. DI Bert Jennings, a detective from Vice, who headed up the squad that looked into the illegal gambling activities centred in and around Soho and Chinatown, had done all his money and gone home to the wife in sleepy Dulwich. The other player was Dr Clayton Merryman, one of the most experienced and respected white coats in criminal pathology, and a degenerate horse player and gambler to boot. Doc had been fortuitously called away earlier; he’d been losing all night, going belly up with some dreadful hands, so a trip to the morgue was probably to be viewed as some light relief.

Of the three players left, DCI Maurice McClusky was the highest in rank, and also a calming voice of reason in the room. ‘Gentlemen, gentlemen, let’s keep it civilized . . . no need for any unpleasantness . . .’

Mac, as DCI Maurice McClusky was readily, if somewhat predictably, referred to, was soothing the ire of the two other remaining players, who were shaping up over a pair of threes. They were the redoubtable double act composed of DS Philip ‘Philly’ Jacket, and DS Kenny Block. Philly was accusing Kenny of cheating. It was subtle, unpremeditated, spur-of-the-moment cheating, but cheating none the less – some dealing from the bottom and some doubling up on the laydown. Mac already knew that Kenny cheated on occasion, so he always went in low when he was dealing. And he let it pass and didn’t pull Kenny up about it, because he found it mildly amusing and it also gave him an advantage. He could tell when Kenny was cheating, because Kenny had a series of gambler’s ‘tells’: he couldn’t look anyone in the eye, sweat bubbled up on his forehead and his whole face went capillary red. He might as well have been wearing a sign. Philly, who should have known that Kenny cheated, clearly didn’t and had just found out, hence the tête-à-tête.

Vince considered the two men, who were now standing up, with Mac pointing firmly at both. The reproving gesture was enough to stop them in their tracks. Philly and Kenny were both medium height, medium build, and medium-talent detectives. They were in it for the duration, but unlikely to rise much above their present positions. Both in their mid-thirties, both solid-looking fellows with the blunted features and the cautious eyes of coppers who mixed easily in the pubs and clubs and environs of villains, they’d been partnering each other for as long as anyone could remember, and worked well together. They were so similar in appearance, dress and demeanour that, when they were questioning a suspect, the potential perpetrator soon realized there was no good cop or bad cop in the room: just Block and Jacket. An insurmountable brick wall of sameness, as the two coppers shot off their questions, the suspect’s head would swivel from one to the other like the observer of an especially fast rally in a tennis match, soon realizing there was no way out. It became a blur, and it was the inevitability and monotony of it all that wore the offenders down to confess their sins.

And that’s exactly what Block and Jacket had been doing about three hours earlier. In a salacious case that had made all the papers, a schoolteacher had murdered his wife and her lesbian lover, who just happened to be the school’s lollipop lady – the alliteration alone was enough to crack everyone up. The schoolteacher himself was out of the country at the time – a keen philatelist attending a convention in Germany – when the killer broke into the home of his wife’s lollipop lady lesbian lover and splattered both of their brains all over the hire-purchase furniture with a twelve-bore shotgun. Salacious soon became farcical. The schoolteacher was discovered to be enjoying underage relations with one of his pupils. The girl’s father had found out about the affair and confronted the teacher with a twelve-bore shotgun. And, somewhere in the calming-down process, the teacher and the factory-worker father had come up with the idea of killing the teacher’s wife and collecting on the insurance and on her not insubstantial savings.

Vince and Mac had successfully joined the dots and brought the case in, whereupon Block and Jacket had extracted the confessions. For Mr Chips it had seemed like a good idea at the time, rather like in the film
Strangers on a Train
– but without the train, of course, or even the strangers.

After their case had been put to bed, still too jagged on strong coffee and victory to go home to bed, the coppers had decided to hang on until morning and thus cop for some more overtime, while playing a few hands down in the Inferno.

‘Unbelievable,’ spluttered Philly Jacket.

‘Sit down, Philly,’ said Kenny Block, ‘it was a mistake. You’re just overtired, you’ve had too much coffee, and now you’re overreacting and making a prick of yourself!’

Every feature on Philly Block’s face widened as incredulity took hold. ‘A mistake? Coffee? Tired? Prick? You were
cheating!’

‘The cards are gummy, must have got stuck together, you prick!’

‘Again with the prick! Who you calling a prick?’

‘Easy, take it easy,’ said Mac, standing between them and jabbing his index fingers in both their chests in turn. ‘Let’s play nice now, or not at all.’

‘What did
you
see, Mac?’ asked Philly.

‘What are you asking me for?’ Mac replied, wisely wishing to stay out of it. ‘Ask Vince,’ he suggested, sitting back down at the table before gathering up the cards and shuffling them.

‘He’s not even playing.’

‘Exactly, therefore he hasn’t got a stake in this game. Both you mugs owe me, and I’m not siding with anyone.’

In unison, Kenny Block and Philly Jacket looked at Vince. ‘You been watching the game?’ asked Kenny.

‘Uh-uh.’

‘Then why d’you come down here?’

‘The scintillating conversation.’

Philly and Kenny looked at each other, then back over at Vince. They wanted to take their frustrations out on the young detective.

‘Don’t drink, don’t gamble. What
do
you do, Treadwell?’

Vince glanced over at them and winked.

‘I bet he does,’ said Kenny, ‘the little bastard! And lots of it. A face for the ladies has Treadwell.’

Vince considered winking again, but realized the two men were very tightly wound up and looking for an excuse to hit someone – anyone – and were happier for it not to be each other. So he just smiled and carried on reading his paper.

‘Don’t worry,’ said Philly Jacket to Kenny Block. ‘Those looks won’t last, not in this job. Someone will knock that smile off his face.’

‘Until that day comes, gentlemen, until that day comes . . .’ said Vince in a distracted sing-song voice.

‘Oh, it’ll come, and sooner than you think,’ muttered Kenny Block to Philly Jacket.

‘Don’t take it out on me because you can’t win a hand,’ said Vince. ‘Which, by the way, I was listening to and believe me, Kenneth and Philip, you can learn as much about a game by listening as you can from watching. Just by hearing how the betting goes.’

‘You know nothing about gambling.’

‘I know everything about gambling. That’s why I choose not to do it. And I know what I heard.’

Block and Jacket’s eyes met in silent conference, both looking for verification of this fact. And, like a mirror image, both faces drew a blank. So they turned to Mac for guidance. Mac weighed it up, and seemed to nod encouragingly in Vince’s favour. Mac then sparked up another Chesterfield.

‘Go on then, enlighten us. What did you hear?’ demanded Block with a begrudging and cynical grimace.

Vince was perched on a cardboard box that was crammed full of files, with his feet up on another box which contained more of the same. The contents of a hundred or so similar boxes should have been either destroyed or filed away long ago, but no one had yet got around to it. And so the sagging containers had been turned into reasonably comfortable furniture, making up the stools the men were sitting on and the table they were playing at.

The four coppers were currently in a storage room located in the basement next to the ‘Tombs’, the old holding cells of Scotland Yard. The bright red NO SMOKING sign was habitually ignored, and the smoking was regularly accompanied by lots of drinking and gambling. Ground-out cigarette butts studded the floor. Discarded matches were tossed over shoulders with drunken abandon. All of which could be viewed as more than a little careless, considering the place was a veritable tinderbox of cardboard boxes filled with parched old files, therefore likely to ignite at any minute. Someone had once commented that this basement storage room had the smoky and hellish atmosphere of Dante’s Inferno. The name had stuck. No one, Vince suspected, had read that epic poem, but they were all pretty sure that hell must be something like it – especially when you were on the end of a losing hand of cards.

Vince considered the other men, felt the weight of expectation on him, the potential for a punch-up, and the shredding of a reputation. And the opportunity for a good wind-up. He pulled a wicked grin internally, but externally remained poker-faced. He finally put down his paper, swung his legs around and planted his feet firmly on the ground, striking a Rodin pose as he gave the enquiry some serious rumination.

‘Come on, Treadwell, what did you hear?’ barked Philly Jacket.

After a hefty sigh, Vince said, ‘Well, gentlemen, from what I heard, I reckon . . .’

Vince was saved by the bell. The fire alarm. And soon that was all that any of them could hear. Its repetitive note ricocheted around the room, almost sending ripples through the fug of smoke in the Inferno.

‘Ah, what in the sweet name of?’ cried Mac, standing up, shaking his head, and stubbing out his Chesterfield in the coffee dregs in a Styrofoam cup.

‘What’s all this about?’ demanded Kenny Block, doing the one-footed twist as he ground his Benson & Hedges into the floor.

‘Unbelievable! Un-fucking-believable!’ crowed Philly Jacket, chipping a just-lit Rothmans and putting it back in the packet.

Vince didn’t smoke – he didn’t need to with the amount of time he spent in the Inferno.

The alarm stopped as suddenly as it had started, and PC Barry Birley, the most lanky and long-limbed copper that anyone had ever seen, stretched his presence into the room.

‘What’s it all about Shirley?’ barked Mac. The Birley/Shirley joke had happened to the lanky copper’s surname a long time ago.

‘The Guv’s idea. He assumed you lot would be down here.’

‘What’s Markham doing here, Shirley?’ pressed Philly Jacket, looking at his watch, and not liking what he saw. It was 8 a.m.

Mac threw Philly Jacket a stupid-question look. He knew exactly what the Supe – a church-goer, then an avid golfer – would be doing in the office at 8 a.m. on a Sunday morning.

‘Where is it, Shirley?’

‘There’s two of them. One in Notting Hill, one in Belgravia.’

The murder of a black girl of limited means in a not too salubrious part of town, and the murder of a very well-heeled and very well-connected white male in a very salubrious part of town? No one dared say that one murder outweighed or took priority over the other but, given institutional thinking in places like the Met, Vince couldn’t help but be quietly satisfied at having been handed the Belgravia caper (every crime was described as a
caper,
from gruesome murders to frauds and thefts). All things being equal, Vince, being Vince, might rather have got the Notting Hill caper. He’d spent time in that area, while working Shepherds Bush, his first posting, and still had friends and contacts there. But being thrown the Belgravia caper did tell him one thing: that, after being in CID’s Murder Squad for all of four months, he was now trusted with a high-profile case.