Gilded Edge, The (25 page)

The black-painted room was draped with Nazi flags: the black Swastika set in a white roundel against a red background. There were German military banners featuring gold eagles and wreathed skulls. Framed photos featured images of Aryan supremacy, involving massed crowds with frenzied faces and straight-arm salutes. And the main attraction was the Führer himself, captured strutting in various poses and stances. A portable record player predictably had an LP with music by Wagner on its turntable, and a hardback translation of
Mein Kampf
sat on the bedside table.

Once Vince had taken in this mise en scène, he felt a genuine chill pass through his bones. The air was thick and musty here, and the Nazi militaria – old, illegal, hated and hidden from view – carried a malodorous stench redolent of repression and evil. They say that in real life there are no genuine black hats or white hats, but, to Vince, this display seemed as pure a manifestation of evil as you could possibly get. The Hitler mob knew exactly what they were up to when they decked themselves out in these outfits and brandished these flags.

‘So what was his interest in Marcy? I’d have thought he preferred blondes.’

‘Superiority, what else? Sometimes he’d make her clean his jackboots. Other times she had to just stand there whilst he read aloud to her – educating her, as he saw it.’

‘About the superior ways of the aristocracy?’ said Vince, in a voice thick with irony.

‘Exactly! He talked all sorts of bollocks, and he was pretty deeply into it all. He even told her how he respected her race, and so did Hitler. There was a purity about them and, according to Lucky, it was only when they came off the banana boats that they started to go wrong.’

Vince stared at her, incredulous.
‘They
went wrong?’

‘Oh, yeah, you couldn’t take him seriously. Me and Marcy used to giggle about it all the time. Got to keep your sense of humour with some of the clowns who pass through here.’

‘And that’s all she had to do for her fifty quid?’ asked Vince, but considering the room with its pervading malevolence, he now thought she had more than earned her money.

With a nonchalant shrug, Sadie added, ‘He had the occasional wank, but that was about it.’

‘Classy,’ Vince said, wishing he hadn’t asked. Because then maybe he would have heard the man entering the room behind him. Vince turned just in time to see the interloper’s balled fist heading his way – he leaned back but still took a glancing blow to his temple, hard enough to throw him off balance and send him to the floor, on his hands and knees. As soon as he was down, in came an underside kick to the gut that jerked him up as if he was being yanked by his spinal cord, then sent him down again without a breath left in his body. Vince rolled over on to his back to get sight of his attacker, and saw only the tread of a large work boot zooming into view, and about to stamp its impression on his face. His hands instinctively shot up to protect his face, and grabbed the size twelve coming his way. He twisted the boot, then with his own right foot kicked away the man’s supporting leg. The attacker fell to the floor with a considerable thud.

Vince clocked him for the first time and saw he was a big lump with a big greasy pompadour, and dressed like a lumberjack in a pair of grimy-looking Levis. He had a nose that had been pummelled so many times it looked like spat-out chewing gum under shoe leather. His mouth was just as unappealing, for a severe harelip exposed an upper row of snaggled and buck-toothed decay.

Vince scrambled to his feet, still gasping for air as he desperately tried to fill his compressed lungs. The greasy lump on the floor was faster than he looked, and he too was quickly up on his feet, with a wooden chair in his grasp that he sent hurtling towards Vince. He ducked and it crashed against the wall, splintering apart. Vince grabbed one of its dislocated legs, as the greasy lump let out a roar and came towards him with arms outstretched. Vince had the man sussed: he wasn’t a fighter, he was a frightener; all pompadour and circumstance and not one precision punch in his repertoire. But Vince was also sure that, if the lump got hold of him, he could probably squeeze the life out of him. He lunged for Vince, who twisted nimbly out of the way, so the lump was left grabbing the air in front of him.

Vince cracked one sharp edge of the square chair leg on to the back of the man’s head, with enough force to feel the skull bone judder beneath. There was now blood on the chair leg, and a deep red gash in the fellow’s head, where the tight flesh had split open like a gaping mouth. Then, reckoning he didn’t need it any more, Vince let the chair leg drop to the floor. The lump turned round, his face creased in pain, his rotten teeth extending from his mouth as if he was trying to spit them out, and his arms raised to grab at the back of his split crown. Vince took this opportunity to shovel some fast two-fisted jabs into the lump’s gut, and get in some rib, liver and kidney work whilst he was at it, leaving the lump doubled up, with his arms crossed over his pummelled gut.

Vince took a moment to look around and see if Sadie was still in the room – but she wasn’t. No surprise there. The surprise came in turning round to see the lump steaming towards him again, head first. Vince was cannonaded backwards, until he was stopped by the wall. There was a crack from either the plasterboard or his back, and he immediately suspected the latter. That took more wind out of his sails. The lump now had firm hold of Vince and spun him around like a rag doll, and then bull-charged again. What stopped Vince from slamming into the other wall was the bed. The landing was soft, but with the lump now on top of him, it was as uncomfortable a position to be in as any. The bed sagged as the lump grabbed Vince around the throat with both hands. He felt himself sinking into the mattress as though he was drowning in quicksand.

The lump’s grip was solid, unmovable, and it was choking the life out of him. There was a grin on the man’s face, and Vince saw drool collecting and pooling up in the sack of his bottom lip. The dam it provided was about to break, and all the sewage it held was heading Vince’s way. He could see a thick cloudy rope of toxic saliva making its way over the lump’s smooth chin, and it was set to impact around about the vicinity of Vince’s mouth. Time to act, so Vince removed his hands, which were redundantly trying to loosen the man’s grip, and arched them slightly.

Bang! In a clapping motion, Vince smashed both cupped hands against the lump’s perfectly placed plug ears. He could hear a pop, like a firecracker going off, and feel the suction as he removed his hands. The lump immediately released his grip around Vince’s neck, and grabbed at his own scorched ears, whereupon Vince wrapped his legs around his bulk and with a scissor motion twisted him off the bed, ending up with Vince on top this time. Standing shakily, Vince started to rub the blood back into his throat, and gasped some more air back into his lungs. The lump rolled around on the floor, letting out only a strange hissing sound. He then staggered to his feet, with his hands still over his ears, and stared at Vince with alarmed question marks in his eyes. Vince’s hands must have felt like crashing cymbals or a couple of mallets beating against his eardrums but, either way, he was a consummate percussionist of pain. Vince put the man out of his deafened misery as, with his left hand, he grabbed the lump by his greasy quiff, drew back his right fist as assuredly as an arrow in a bow, then sent it flying at its target: the hopelessly exposed and hapless putty of his victim’s nose. The lump fell backwards, barrelling into the fake Gestapo officer, and sending the pair of them crashing into the wall beyond.

Vince hovered over him, knuckles white and blood pumping, almost willing the lump to get up again, just so he could knock him down a second time. The lump didn’t oblige, because he was out for the count. The Gestapo officer, whose head was now off and his limbs irreversibly twisted, had more chance of regaining consciousness than the lump did. Vince pulled a Swastika flag down off the wall and threw it over them, covering them up to conceal the unsightly mess they were. And for good measure, and in memory of Winston Churchill, he took the still-standing stormtrooper’s head off with a right hook.

We shall fight on the beaches, we shall fight them on the landing grounds, we shall fight in the bedroom, we shall never surrender . . .

Vince exited. He sped along the hallway and down the stairs to the reception. Halfway down the lower flight, he caught sight of two men leaving the hotel. They were of middle height and build, and both wore beige trench-coat style macs. With their backs towards him, Vince didn’t see their faces, and by the time he was down the stairs, they were out the door and gone.

And so was everyone else. The reception desk was empty. The girls previously lounging around on the sofas had vamoosed. Vince went into the bar, and found that too was empty. The barmen had absented themselves. Half-consumed drinks sat on the tables, cigars smouldered silently in ashtrays, no doubt the folding rings of their dead ash could have told Vince how long their owners had been gone, but he didn’t really give a shit about such details – they were gone. Sadie had worked fast, and the proprietors and punters knew the routine, and had evacuated the place with the discipline of a preparatory-school fire drill. But Vince didn’t expect to find them all lined up outside in the playground, awaiting a head count. He went back into the reception area, around the desk, and opened the office door beyond without so much as a knock.

Seated at his desk was the Arab in the white dinner jacket and the bad syrup. A small desk lamp lit the room. He looked up at Vince with big brown, unblinking, sad eyes. But it was the wig, of course, that held Vince’s attention.

‘No doubt Sadie told you who I . . .’ began Vince, before stopping, as the truth dawned on him.

The bewigged Arab didn’t utter a word or move a muscle. Then, slowly, his head began to tilt forward. And, even more slowly, the syrup began to slide down his face, until it lay in front of him on the desk. There wasn’t a hair to be seen on his burnished nut-brown head. Or a breath in his body. He was dead.

At the Moncler Club, Vince was again greeted by Leonard. But once the young detective had stepped out of the street gloom and into the light of the vestibule, Leonard’s front-of-house smile quickly dropped and he looked about as welcoming as a parking ticket.

There was blood on Vince’s shirt, which had a torn collar and the top three buttons missing; a savagely yanked tie hung tightly knotted but loose around his neck, like a hangman’s noose just before the drop. But it wasn’t just the bloody and dishevelled duds that rang alarm bells with Leonard, and sent the usually unflappable front-man into a flap. No, it was Vince himself: the sunken brow, the fierce eyes, the snarling mouth. You can’t wipe violence off your face like a smirk. It’s a stain that seeps into the flesh, torques and twists the muscle and sinew, boils the blood and looks like what it is: undisguisedly and unrepentantly ugly. It would take a good couple of hours before Vince could fully shake it off and move a couple of notches back up the evolutionary scale. Leonard might have been tempted to say something stupid like, ‘I’m sorry, sir, but you can’t come in here looking like that.’ But he didn’t, as he wasn’t that stupid. He clearly got the message written all over the determined detective’s face.

‘I need Lucan,’ growled Vince, not paying Leonard too much mind as he was already through the antechamber and into the belly of the casino, with its well-phrased chatter, expensive cigar smoke, and calls from the croupiers to place their bets on the roulette tables, as well as the constant barking of ‘Banco’ at the chemmy tables.

Leonard stood nervously at his side, and proffered, ‘I think he was playing over at—’

‘I’ve got him,’ snapped Vince as he spotted the deadbeat peer. He strode over to the blackjack table, where the feckless fascist Lord Lucan was twisting on a seven of clubs, a three of hearts, and an eight of spades. Vince dealt him the ‘game over’ card – by dropping his badge on the table in front of him.

But before giving Vince his undivided attention, Lucan cast a glance around at his fellow players at the table, and in an attempt at drollery, said, ‘I’m reminded of the good old days at Aspers’ early parties. These chaps were forever turning up uninvited and empty-handed, and leaving flusher than the lot of us, without seemingly playing a hand.’ This got some muted laughs. He then looked up more closely at Vince, and read the detective’s face, and his situation, about as badly as he had the cards. ‘I was wondering when you chaps were going to get around to me.’

Vince wiped the smile off his face by slapping on the handcuffs. Unlike Lucan’s attempt at humour, this did bring a genuine smile to the gamblers gathered at the table. Because the handcuffs weren’t standard government issue. They were made of black rubber.

Vince sat in Mac’s office drinking black instant coffee, with three sugars, out of a polystyrene cup. Always sugar with instant coffee, and always three with Scotland Yard instant coffee. Mac’s office offered a fairly unobscured view of the Thames running amok through the city. It was a rich vein of activity that morning: a rolling river working its way right through London, as little tugs and long vessels chugged up and down it, churning over the dark choppy waters. What monsters lay beneath didn’t bear thinking about. If you were to dredge the Thames thoroughly, you’d be likely to find a king’s ransom, more corpses than Highgate Cemetery, and the answers to half the crimes in London. But it was all best left alone, to mix and mingle and lie together lost in the deep. There was quite enough to deal with on the surface, with the murders of Johnny Beresford and Marcy Jones. The two murders, and the two worlds, now mixing and mingling. And lying, lots of lying – and now another murder in the mix.

At 9 a.m., in interview room one, sitting with his lawyer was Richard John Bingham, the thirty-one-year old 7th Earl of Lucan, known to all either as Lord Lucan or as Lucky by those who considered him a friend, and considered irony an essential element in sustaining that friendship. He’d spent the previous night in the cells, crying himself into a fitful sleep. When locked down in a cell, they say that the innocent never rest. Yet the guilty, lying on their concrete bunks, can sleep like tops. Lucan had slept somewhere in between and somewhere undecided, so the slumber jury was still out on that one.