Gilded Edge, The

by Miller, Danny

  But there was something else grabbing Vince’s attention in that area. He’d spotted it three days ago in a music store on the Bayswater Road, near Notting Hill Gate. The shop girl had taken it off the shelf for him, and shown him how to apply his curled bottom lip and puckered upper lip to the beak of the instrument. After some huffing and puffing, nothing came out, so she told him to relax. He relaxed, and pretended he was Bird, Art Pepper, Trane, Sonny Stitt . . . and out it came. Just the one note. But it was enough. He was hooked. He wanted more. In his mind’s eye he was already headlining at Ronnie Scott’s. For aesthetic reasons alone, the alto saxophone was a winner, so damn cool. Bold and brassy, it hung in front of you and curled upwards like a king cobra about to bite. It wasn’t cheap, but it was necessary. Learning an instrument was on his list of things he must do before he died; along with learning another language, and a slew of other things that tuned in and out depending on his mood. But the instrument and the language were two constants.

  As Vince looked longingly at the alto sax in the window, the girl in the shop saw him and invited him to have another go. Vince explained that he was still just at the looking and longing stage, and needed more time to flirt with his potential new paramour. So he resisted going in, and just stood at the window ogling the shapely and brassy object of desire, until the girl put up the ‘closed’ sign.

  Night was closing in as Vince made his way down the Portobello Road. The market stalls were being dismantled, wooden crates were being stacked, trestle tables were being folded and vans were being loaded; and all very loudly as the stallholders got in their last bits of banter to entertain the street and passing traffic. The light from the pubs and late night shops and restaurants and chippies kept the bustling centipede of the Portobello Road alive as, one by one, its multiple legs led off sideways to Colville Terrace, Elgin Crescent, Talbot Road, and then the turning Vince wanted, Cambridge Gardens.

  At this end of Notting Hill, things got slow and slummy. The shops and the lights died out and it was now tall terraced houses in various states of disrepair and the new low-rise concrete council blocks that already looked as if they were in rehearsals for becoming urban blight. Next to a brightly painted corner shop that sold everything from booze to bath salts stood another shop. This one was painted black and had a heavy black curtain covering the window – it was about as inviting as a funeral director’s. The gold-letter writing on the window stated its intent: The Notting Hill Brothers & Sisters Letting Agency – Incorporating Your One Stop Community Shop. The letting agency/community shop stayed open till well past midnight, under the guise of serving as a local advice centre.

  Vince had heard that this was Michael de Freitas’ HQ, and not the spieler in Powis Terrace as everyone thought. Downstairs, he ran his burgeoning property empire, whilst upstairs he conducted card games, dice and dominoes. From here he also ran a book-making operation that ran unhindered by other West London villains because it catered for black punters only; and a private taxi and limousine service that delivered drugs and stunning black whores all over the city.

  Vince remembered Michael de Freitas well, a tall Trinidadian with narrow suspicious eyes that were shaded by a heavy frowning brow. On a broad chin he bore the scars picked up in chiv fights, which he covered with a goatee beard that wrapped around a wide mouth that seemed to be permanently set in a scowl. His face was worn like a frightening mask, which for his purposes – having started out as muscle for the slum landlord Peter Rachman – served him well. Faced with Mikey de Freitas banging down the door, people did as they were told, which was either pay up, sell up or shut up! Before Rachman died in ’62, he looked down favourably on the Trinidadian tearaway who had collected his rents and evicted people with such terrifying efficiency, and bequeathed him around twenty of his one hundred and fifty properties in the area. And now, with all his other rackets, Michael de Freitas was surely chewing on the fat end of a good few quid.

  Black doors on dark nights, with no one around and only the low hellish sodium glow of orange street lights, are always a little intimidating. They reminded Vince of the great void, the end, and something you don’t really want to go through. Standing at the door, Vince could hear laughter and the sound of dominoes being slammed down on a table, and sensed the rustle of money changing hands. Them bones, them bones, them crazy bones!What was traditionally seen as an old man’s game played in backstreet boozers was a different proposition in these boys’ hands. Like with mah-jong games in Chinatown, big money was played on the laying down of a tile. Vince rang the bell, then peered through the small round spy-hole in the glossily painted black door – and saw the light from inside quickly eclipsed. After the few seconds it took for the report to be carried back, the sound of laughter and dominoes stopped.

  Vince counted to ten, then questioned if pitching up here on his own was such a good idea. He decided it probably wasn’t – then had the decision taken out of his hands as the door opened. At around six foot, Vince was no midget, but he felt like one as he craned his head skywards to look up at the man in front of him. He was big and black, seven foot if he was an inch. With that height he could have been one of the Harlem Globetrotters – with that height he could have been two of them. His bigness and blackness was made to look all the more big and black because he was so unrelentingly swathed in it too: clad in a long leather trench coat and capped with a black beret. Though worn at an angle, the beret wasn’t of the jaunty French type; it was the serious military kind. Dusk had dutifully departed and it was now officially night, but the tall boy was wearing sunglasses. No light from inside the building escaped because the solid figure was fitted into the doorway as tight as a jigsaw piece in a puzzle. Vince dispensed with the introductions and badged him. The man then stepped back and closed the door. This wordless exchange seemed surreal, so Vince decided to knock again and, this time, say something. But before he could do so, the door opened again and ‘Tiny’ – for that proved to be his nickname – gestured for Vince to come in. Not wanting to be considered a mute, Vince said, ‘Thanks very much.’

  The office looked about as innocuous as any cheap letting agency or advice centre he’d ever been in. There were two desks, with chairs in front of them, and chest-high filing cabinets. Overhead, strip lighting hummed away and made everything look jaundiced. On one wall was a large cork board holding a map of the local area with multicoloured thumbtacks dotted around; these were, Vince assumed, to mark properties that Michael de Freitas owned or had an interest in. Vince scanned the map for as long as possible, whilst trying to appear as if he hadn’t even noticed it. He saw that there was an impressive number of pins spread liberally around the neighbourhood, with the largest cluster around the Tabernacle Church area of Powis Square, Powis Terrace, Talbot Road and Colville Terrace.

  Also on the walls, besides a scattering of posters advertising local community events and flats and houses for rent, were framed photos of black leaders. Included in their serried ranks were Marcus Garvey, Elijah Muhammad, Dr Martin Luther King, Muhammad Ali and, taking pride of place, Malcolm X.

  Vince looked down from the photos and towards the six men occupying the office. Like Tiny, they were all dressed in black, all wearing sunglasses. As unpleasant as the strip lighting might be, the wraparound shades really weren’t, by any means, necessary. But in these surroundings, it wasn’t they who looked incongruous. As the only white man and wearing a suit, it was Vince who looked like the enemy.

  Two ‘soldiers’ were standing directly in front of one of the two desks, with arms folded, like a Praetorian guard blocking Vince’s view of the man he was sure sat behind it.

  ‘Police officer,’ came the disembodied voice of the man sitting there, ‘explain yourself and your presence here.’

  ‘I’m Detective Vince Treadwell, Scotland Yard, and who are you?’ asked Vince, knowing full well the who.

  At that, the two men moved apart like a curtain to reveal the main player on the stage: Michael de Freitas himself. It was a
theatrical unveiling and one, Vince suspected, that might well have been specially rehearsed for just such an event. Michael de Freitas was dressed in the same garb as the other men, and wearing the same black sunglasses. Vince looked for stripes on his black leather jacket, to signify his leading General status, but there weren’t any. Nevertheless, it was clear he held the power in this room. He hadn’t changed much since Vince had seen him last, being hauled into Shepherd’s Bush station for questioning in connection with a murder. Nothing had stuck. But Michael de Freitas’ reputation on the streets had ballooned after that incident, giving the real verdict as to his guilt or innocence. He was a light-skinned black man (just like his fellow revolutionary up on the wall above him, Malcolm X), his face now a little fuller, the goatee bushier and his hair longer and more natty. But the duds had definitely changed since then: the look was now Che Guevara revolutionary, Marxist chic, rather than the rude boy gangster style of a few years back. The man looked relaxed and regally confident, sitting there in his high-backed black-padded swivel chair, his hands laced together in front of him.

  ‘Mikey de Freitas,’ confirmed Vince, with a smile and nod of recognition.

  ‘Michael X,’ he corrected with a steady and determined shake of his head.

  ‘X?’

  ‘You heard me, policeman. X. Just like my brother.’ He gestured vaguely towards the framed photos on the wall.

  Vince, without being invited, pulled up a chair and sat opposite Michael X. He glanced up at the photos on the wall again, his eyes falling admiringly on the picture of the handsome young world heavyweight champ. The victor stood over Sonny Liston, who lay sprawled on the canvas as the Louisville Lip goaded and mocked him. Vince looked back to Michael X and asked: ‘Has Cassius Clay changed his name again?’

  There was a collective and violent sucking of teeth, indicating a chorus of disapproval from all gathered there. Michael X unclasped his hands and pointed specifically to a framed photo of the other man, the original X, a smooth-looking Malcolm X in dark glasses and a slick suit.

  Vince continued his wind-up. ‘I had tickets for the Cooper fight, but I couldn’t make it. Henry and his left hook put on quite a showing, but Clay—’

  ‘There ain’t no Cassius Clay!’

  ‘Oh yeah, I forgot.’

  ‘Cassius Clay was his slave name.’

  ‘Sorry, Mikey—’

  ‘And there is no Mikey either. Mikey de Freitas is dead – or should I say emancipated. And we will no longer be subjugated to the white colonization. We will return to the real power, the germination of mankind, the original source and a new truth . . .’

  Vince glanced around the room. Heads were nodding in a harmonious rhythm of approval and accord. The giant Tiny was still standing by the door, an ominous and immovable slab blocking his exit. Vince spotted, in the corner of the room, a cardboard box housing a stack of black berets still in their plastic covers, and at least a gross of black sunglasses. Black Power had crossed the pond and reached Notting Hill, and they were obviously in recruitment mode. It looked as though this was going to be a long hot summer. As Michael X continued talking, Vince noted that he had now lost some of the relaxed patois of his Caribbean accent. His voice was clearly focused. He was getting into his stride now, and limbering up for some rousing rhetoric.

  ‘. . . a new truth brought to us by the minister, the honourable Elijah Muhammad.’ Michael X pointed to another framed photo on the wall of an older, almost oriental-looking man in a grey suit and a white bow tie, and wearing what looked like a fez but without the fringed tassel and embroidered with a crescent moon cradling a star. He continued. ‘And we will smite those who will hold us back, the white oppressors, and the white Jewish conspiracy that has funded the world to enslave the black man and keep us down and send us chained to our graves. We will no longer be bound to the corrupt power of this evil axis, if you will. All corruption turns in on itself, festers, putrefies, and that is why we turn away from you and your mores, your corrupt white Christian and Zionist values. We will face Mecca. We shall speak of Allah. We shall speak of the truth. We shall speak of peace. We shall speak of freedom. We shall speak of revolution!’

  Vince thought he was ‘speaking’ altogether too much, and wanted to suggest that he shut the fuck up and listen for five seconds. But he was clearly in the minority with this thought, so he wisely kept it to himself, at least until the full force of Michael X’s diatribe, and the ensuing chorus of cheers exploding into the room, had subsided. For, right now, Vince was feeling incredibly white and slightly oppressed.

  ‘Tyrell Lightly. Where is he?’ he eventually asked.

  ‘He’s dead,’ said Michael X.

  ‘Yeah? Who killed him?’

  ‘You did! The white oppressor!’

  Not only did Vince roll his eyes at this, but he made an obvious play of rolling his eyes at this. With the oratory now on offer, he could have seen that one coming a mile off.

  Unabashed, Michael X continued: ‘Brother Lightly, too, is a follower of the righteous and the honourable Elijah Muhammad. He too is a Brother X. And until we find our real names, and write them in blood in Somerset House . . . until that time comes we shall all be known as X. Dig?’

  They all dug. Some deeper than others, but they all dug. And they were all cheering again. Digging and cheering.

  ‘If X marks the spot, he shouldn’t be too hard to find then,’ punned Vince, once the cheering had subsided. ‘So why don’t you just tell me where he is and we can save us all a lot of time by me not coming back here with more officers to turn the place over?’

  ‘What do you want with Brother Lightly?’

  Like he didn’t already know. Vince dutifully filled him in. ‘We need to talk to him regarding the murder of Marcy Jones.’

  ‘Yet again the white wolf is at our door, hunting us down and baying for our blood.’

  ‘Tyrell Lightly’s no Goldilocks.’

  ‘Brother Tyrell has sinned in the past – and he is the first to admit it. We are none of us without sin, Detective Vince Treadwell. We are all fallen. But now . . . now we are engaged in a greater struggle than personal wealth. We are concerned with change. He is an innocent man, and you, the police, are determined to put him behind bars. And we, his brothers, are determined that this shall not happen. The brothers will clean up these streets and we will bring about our own justice. We will not tolerate criminality in our community; that is not the black man’s role in this world! That is a role forced upon us by the white infidels, and we shall not be subject to oppressive white law and to white corruption!’

  Getting predictable now, getting sickening, more cheers, more ‘Right on, brother’s.

  Vince thought it was his turn for some righteous indignation and tub-thumping. ‘You want to clean up the streets, be my guest. Let’s start with Marcy Jones, shall we? She had her head turned inside out with a ball-peen hammer. We counted six whacks to the head. Brains all over the hallway. How are you going to police that, Mikey?’

  The loquacious Michael X had nothing to say on the subject. He angled his head up to regard his great leader and namesake on the wall. Vince followed his gaze. He could see the attraction to the original X: his charisma, intelligence and sense of purpose, by any means necessary, shone out from the photograph. Vince felt those qualities weren’t necessarily present in all his followers – Michael X here being one of them.

  ‘Marcy Jones was a nurse, did you know that?’ said Vince. Still the great mouthpiece stayed tight-lipped. ‘I hear Tyrell is quite the ladies’ man and, the way I see it, a young, impressionable Marcy fell for the dashing gangster around town and ended up having a kid with him. No problem for Tyrell Lightly, he’s sired a few in his time, so we hear. But Lightly doesn’t like it when Marcy grows up and doesn’t want to know him any more. Then he goes away for cutting up a copper. She’s a smart girl, and she wants what’s best for her kid, so she follows her childhood ambition and trains to become a nurse. She works hard and makes so
mething of herself, makes her mother proud. She decides she wants a better life for herself and her daughter, so she decides to leave Notting Hill, make a fresh start so that her daughter won’t make the same mistakes that she made and get hooked up with a lowlife like Tyrell Lightly.’

  And still the otherwise verbose Michael X said nothing, but Vince could sense that the relaxed, controlled demeanour was tensing and tightening up. ‘Michael X’ was a new persona that Michael de Freitas was still working on, and it was a far cry from the edgy and energized gangster of a few years back; the metamorphosis from cutting-edge capitalist to conscience-ridden activist was not yet complete. The rackets he was still running were all testament to that, though he’d probably justify them as ‘any means necessary’ for funding the revolutionary coffers. But Vince had a gut feeling that Michael de Freitas, with the new beard and glasses combo, was just in fancy dress, like one of those all-in-one Groucho Marx disguises you get in joke shops. Yeah, definitely more Groucho than Karl, thought Vince, as he leaned in and put his arms on the table and knitted his fingers together. He could hear the men behind him rearranging themselves, but into what? Something violent? He didn’t know, because he was too busy eyeballing Michael X behind his wraparound shades.

  He said: ‘Marcy’s little daughter, eight years old, she witnessed the whole thing. She’s in shock and she’s not saying anything now, but she will. So, again, why don’t you save us all some time and tell me where Tyrell Lightly is?’

  ‘It’s a fit-up.’

  ‘Is this the party line?’ Silence. Vince smirked. ‘Talking about revolutions, Mikey, I wouldn’t get your hopes up. Karl Marx used to live in Soho, so he knew a thing or two about England and the English. He said the best way to stop a revolution in this country would be to put up a sign saying it had been cancelled. But you’re not kidding me, you’re just a dope-peddling pimp in a fancy-dress costume.’