Gilded Edge, The

by Miller, Danny

  All pretence was now gone. What had been denied until now played itself back to them, and set free uncontainable smiles at the thought of that uncontrollable act. Deep down, Vince knew that Isabel wasn’t made up of that stultifying, life-denying reserve that puts a thick layer of frost over everything it touches. It was the first time he’d seen her really smile. A magnificent and heroic effort had been put into a couple of earlier efforts, but tragedy had weighed her down as inevitably as gravity. For the first time, he saw the warmth and innocence in her face, the potential for joy. But the admittance and the smile meant more than just the freeing of emotion; it was the turning away from stale ideals, from an inherent sepsis of thought that would have allowed Beresford’s killer to go free, and her brother to be found posthumously guilty of a murder he had not committed. The carapace of her class had now been thrown off, along with its burdensome expectations and stagnant immobility. So there they sat, grinning at each other like a couple of Cheshire cats on a hot tin roof.

  CHAPTER 44

  Isabel returned to the bedroom holding two mugs of Jamaican Blue Mountain coffee. Vince watched her attentively; there was a lot to watch. She was naked and, among her many attributes, his eye was instantly drawn to her vagina. It was so well groomed that it really did deserve to be on show, a travesty to cover it up. She wore her pubic hair trimmed short, shorter than most he’d seen. It gave the perfectly formed V a shiny, velvety appearance, and you could clearly see the deliciously pouty lips that were now swollen and moist, like an inviting mouth that you just wanted to kiss. Vince now fully understood why women didn’t like bushy beards on men, and, in that moment, he vowed never to grow one.

  It had been different this time. They were both fully awake, for a start. But semi-conscious though she was at the time of their last liaison, Isabel was well aware of how it had played out, and she was also well aware of her emasculating tendencies in the bedroom. She liked to take control of the proceedings, and had clearly left more than a few cocksure sack artists sprawled, spent and shamefaced on the sheets as she had her wicked way with them. So she happily yielded to Vince, and let him take the lead this time.

  Isabel handed him his coffee mug, got under the sheets, and said, ‘So, tell me, what did Billy Hill want with you?’

  ‘He didn’t want anything. I wanted him.’

  Isabel looked wide-eyed in astonishment at this revelation, as if Vince had summoned up the Prince of Darkness himself. ‘Why would you ever want him in your home?’

  ‘Because Beresford was a friend of Billy Hill’s.’

  After the initial shock of this revelation, she then nodded in meditative accord, as if it all made perfect sense to her. ‘I knew Johnny liked to play with fire, and he mixed with some very questionable characters, so I suppose seeking out the company of a real-life gangster would be considered quite a coup. I assume he’s also a killer, not that I know anything about him. Only what I’ve read in the papers. So is he a killer?’

  Vince shrugged. ‘If he is, thus far he’s got away with it. But someone will always be around to do what Billy does. And if anyone has to do it – which they do – I’d rather it was him. But, officially, he’s supposed to be retired.’

  ‘Unofficially?’

  ‘He offered me a job.’

  ‘Doing what, beating people up?’

  ‘Why do you say that? I have other attributes.’

  ‘What other attributes do you need, to be a gangster? I thought it was just bullying on a grand scale. Did you accept the job?’

  ‘What kind of a girl do you think I am?’

  ‘The kind that would probably make just as good a gangster as he would detective. Binary opposite attraction, and all that.’

  ‘You forget that, pending an inquiry, I’m no longer a detective, so might well be in the market for a job.’

  ‘My father knows your Commissioner.’

  ‘So I heard. Could he put in a good word?’

  ‘He advised my father that I should keep well away from you.’

  ‘I never knew the Commissioner cared.’

  Isabel took a sip of her coffee, and made an ‘Ahh’ sound that could have indicated she was enjoying it or she was getting bored with Vince’s cool indifference to his career as a cop. She then placed her mug on the side table and said, ‘I’m being serious, Vincent. Don’t you care?’

  Sensing her annoyance, Vince unlaced his hands from behind his head, and turned over on his side to face her. ‘The disciplinary hearing is out of my hands. There’s not a lot I can do about it, apart from turn up and tell the truth, so I don’t see the point in getting worked up about it.’

  ‘You have a record of violence, true?’

  ‘What else did he say?’

  ‘That you’re intelligent, resourceful and just what the Met needs. But you’ve also been disciplined for being reckless and going into situations you shouldn’t.’

  ‘Wow, you memorized my record?’

  ‘No, but I was paying attention when my father told me. Do you deny it?’

  ‘Not the first bit.’

  ‘You told me that you liked kicking down doors, remember?’

  ‘I was joking. There’s a lot more to this detecting malarkey than just kicking down doors. First of all I have to find the right door before I kick it down. And I object to being described as violent.’

  ‘You may object, but is it true?’

  ‘No, your honour, it isn’t,’ he replied, sitting up and leaning over to the bedside table to retrieve his cooling coffee for a voluminous swig. ‘I won’t deny that the job can get a little rough around the edges at times, but to say I’m violent suggests I go around doling it out unnecessarily. I don’t. I just give as good as I get.’ He put his mug of coffee back on the bedside table, and drew in closer to Isabel, his hand reaching under the sheets and cupping her breast. She looked down archly at this impertinent gesture, and raised one eyebrow like a question mark. He gave her nipple a circular rub with his thumb until it was fully extended and chafing with ticklish friction. She expelled a high-pitched yelp, and her face creased with laughter until it got too much for her and she rolled away from him.

  ‘You see, you really would make a good gangster. You’re an awful bully, Treadwell!’

  ‘I’m the number one nipple-tweaker in the London underworld.’

  She stopped laughing, demanded that he be serious, and said, ‘Did Billy Hill kill Johnny?’

  ‘He says not.’

  ‘But he would say that, wouldn’t he?’

  ‘He would, but it’s up to me whether I believe him.’

  ‘And do you?’

  ‘Yes. Knocking off someone of his social standing would bring down a lot of aggravation. And anyway, he was making too much money with Beresford in a card-cheating scam they were running.’ On releasing that little nugget, Vince searched her face for more evidence of shock. There wasn’t any, but there was a wry little smile. ‘You don’t seem surprised,’ he added.

  ‘I’m not,’ said Isabel, ‘because it makes perfect sense. With Johnny and Asprey, gambling was never just about having fun, sportsmanship or even winning. It was more than that. For them to win, others had to lose. And that’s the part they really liked – beating other people. Johnny couched it in militaristic terms, said it was about the victors and the vanquished. Rather predictably, Asprey used evolutionary and zoology analogies to put that point across: survival of the fittest, primary species dominating – it was all about the same thing.’

  ‘Still, it’s quite a risk if you get caught. And it’s not as if they had nothing to lose, themselves.’

  ‘It’s the gambler’s mindset. They thrive on risk. Believe me, if they had all the money in the world, they’d still try and work out ways to bilk a few people they secretly despised. It feeds their sense of superiority and entitlement. What else did Billy Hill say about it?’

  ‘Not a lot. No details about how the scam worked – who it was done to, or who else was in on it. And no mention o
f James Asprey or the Montcler club.’

  ‘You didn’t ask him?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘I suppose not, with two men holding guns on you.’

  ‘Nothing to do with that. I didn’t ask because I knew he wouldn’t tell me. Billy Hill’s not in the business of helping coppers solve crimes. He just wanted me off his back, and himself out of the frame. Beresford’s dead, so nothing more can happen to him, and his reputation may now be as shot to pieces as he is, so nothing to lose there. But if others were involved in the same scam, Billy’s not about to implicate them. And there’s no evidence, either way.’

  ‘So this is what Johnny’s death comes down to – cheating at cards?’

  Vince didn’t answer. Vince didn’t know.

  CHAPTER 45

  The rest of the day passed gently and pleasantly enough. Isabel said she owed him lunch, after the meagre meal Vince had sprung for after her night in Jezebel’s. They ate at a new restaurant in Chelsea that was pulling in the in-crowds. It featured pornographic chess sets. Bashing the Bishop was taken literally. All the pawns were porns, featuring every position available – or certainly sixteen of the best. The King and the Queen were hard at it, and not just with each other. There were rutting rooks, and the Knight’s sword was fully drawn.

  But, chess sets aside, there were other interesting characters assembled around the main room. At the bar sat two well-known and well-behaved West London ‘Faces’. There was a famous actor currently making inroads into Hollywood, accompanied by a stunning-looking redhead and surrounded by some lesser mortals in the same profession, who were all hanging on his well-rounded words. Also some bohemian-looking artist types, who wore their hearts and professions on their paint-spattered sleeves, and talked loudly about art between gulps of red wine, drags on roll-ups and forkfuls of rice from their dishes of blanquette de veau.

  It was a Johnny Beresford and Isabel Saxmore-Blaine type of place, decided Vince, simply because there were lots of Johnnys and Isabels seated around the place, or approximations and facsimiles of them. And maybe that’s why the conversation between them became stilted. Or maybe it was because Vince was tired and still too preoccupied with the unresolved case to make small talk. Either way, she had to coax some conversation out of him, and Vince could tell that it had really dried up when she came round to discussing their hobbies. It turned out that Isabel had lots of them, from country sports through the entire gamut of urbane salon culture. Vince, it turned out, had none to offer in return. Zero. She didn’t believe him, pointing out the broken artwork on his walls, the books on his bookshelf, the record collection. Vince eventually piped up that he had plans to learn a musical instrument – the alto sax. Isabel said that she played the piano, to Grade 6.

  It was dark by the time they made it back to the flat Isabel was renting just off Flood Street in Chelsea, where she tentatively invited him up for a nightcap. He made his excuses, he was tired, not at his best and needed to get home, all of which was true. They’d done a very memorable morning, an entire afternoon and the best part of an evening together, and it was now time to call it a day. There was a tacit understanding between them that they both knew how to not outstay their welcome.

  But as Isabel scraped her key in the door, there was something urgent she needed to ask him. ‘Do you think it would be possible for me to meet Marcy Jones’s family? Or is that the worst idea in the world?’

  Vince could think instantly of a hundred and one reasons why it would be impossible for her to meet them, but then his mind scrolled back to Marcy’s funeral: to her mother and her aunts, and all the bonneted Christian women out-singing and, in their own way, out-muscling Michael X and his mob with their display of Christian forgiveness. Forgiveness was a concept Vince had grappled with and lost, but wielded in those women’s hands, it was a mightily powerful weapon.

  ‘I know where they’ll be tomorrow morning, if you want to find out.’

  On the walk back to his flat in Pimlico, Vince decided to take the scenic route via the embankment. There was some genuine London fog swirling around in the damp night air, obscuring and abstracting and making everything just that little unreal, and Vince wanted to take it in. The lamps lit alongside the darkly running river glowed orange, like a landing strip for some monstrous seabird, creating a Turneresque Thames that was alive with possibilities and yet soaked in history and horrors. This was the city of his imagination. Along the embankment couples linked arms, tramps huddled around bottles and expensive cars rushed confidently past.

  Vince reached into his jacket and gripped the butt of his gun. He didn’t look round, but was aware of the tap-tap of two pairs of footsteps behind him, measured in their stride as if not wanting to catch up, not wanting to overtake, but wanting to stay right behind him. Vince stopped. Whoever they were – and he had a pretty good idea – he didn’t want to lead them directly to his home. No, he wanted to leave them here, on the embankment of the Thames. He wanted to leave them lying in the Thames, if he had the chance. Behind him, the sound of shoe leather against the stone pavement petered out, too. Before turning round to face them, Vince transferred the gun from his shoulder holster to his right-hand-side jacket pocket. He judged they could not see this manoeuvre by what light was available to him: very little beyond eight or nine feet. The fog was doing a good job in providing cover for both parties involved. The conditions were perfect to kill someone.

  There were low voices, and, somewhere wrapped in the night, he was sure he heard the words See you around, friend.

  Vince pulled the gun out of his jacket and started to move back towards them, towards that voice. He passed a seated young couple locked in a kiss. Passed three men wearing football scarves and carrying rattles. Passed a man walking a snappy terrier . . .

  Vince stopped. He listened, and all he heard was his own breath, jagged through fear. He slid the gun back into its holster.

  See you around, friend.

  He knew that voice would never leave him.

  CHAPTER 46

  Suited and booted in his Sunday best, Vince picked up Isabel on the King’s Road and they drove off to St James’s Methodist church on Lancaster Road in Notting Hill Gate. She too was in her Sunday best: smart, demure and respectful-looking in a dark blue suit.

  God was doing good business. It was a full house, completely packed. The congregational composition was pretty much as it had been for the funeral, mainly black families with a smattering of white ones; but all unified under the one roof, and all singing from the same hymn sheet. Vince had never seen so many smiling faces. No wonder they all liked this place, he thought. He was beginning to like it himself. If he hadn’t habituated himself with a stack of newspapers and a lie-in on a Sunday morning, he could see himself pitching up here and having a good singsong, and getting to know the parishioners, volunteering himself, getting baptized, and . . . what cut the fantasy short was spotting the reason why he was here in the first place.

  The Jones family had taken up all of the first three pews: Cecilia Jones and her three sisters and their husbands, and children and various other offshoots of the family. Compared to the women in the congregation, all the men seemed second-bested in church. The sermon was delivered by a man but, even elevated in his pulpit, he clearly knew that it was the women who ruled the roost in this place. After the service, Vince left Isabel still seated and went over to the family, where he was warmly met – especially by Ruby.

  Isabel watched as Vince talked with the family. She had recognized Ruby immediately from the images she had seen of her dead mother in the newspapers: a posed photo of an angel-faced black girl in her nurse’s uniform; a vision of innocence and virtue and esteem. Isabel took several deep breaths to try and quell the debilitating anxiety that now took hold of her. Her cheeks flushed and she felt hot tears brewing behind her eyes. She edged out of the pew and along the aisle, as quietly and swiftly as a church mouse – though not even that, because they at least belonged there and she didn’t. She felt
herself an impostor, an enemy. Once out of the church, she stood by Vince’s car and wept. She soon felt an arm around her shoulder, and she drew into him. He kissed her on the forehead, then took her hand.

  In the drawing room of Cecilia Jones’s house in Chesterton Road, Isabel was sitting with the ladies, seven in all including herself. They drank piping hot tea and ate homemade cake, which was a darkly rich confection of rum and raisins. Vince ate two slices of the delicious thing, and Cecilia said she’d give him the recipe to hand on to his wife. With his mouth still full of the sticky rummy cake, he didn’t correct her and nodded to indicate his delight at this opportunity to hand it to the fictitious Mrs Treadwell.

  Apart from Vince, the only other man present was the minister, who was there to serve as a spiritual policeman to the proceedings. Although forgiveness was the aim of them all and the order of the day, faced with so much to forgive they potentially needed someone on hand to guide them through it. The minister’s presence, as it turned out, wasn’t necessary. Once the cake had been snarfed and the tea drunk, Vince made his excuses and left the women to it, as all thought it best he should. His plan was to get the newspapers, and then sit in the car and catch up on the world news and the football results. But as soon as he shut the living room door, he saw Ruby sitting on the stairs.

  ‘Do you want to see my new room, Mr Treadwell?’

  The newspapers could wait. The world could wait. Even the football results could wait.

  ‘I do, but only if you call me Vince. All my friends call me Vince.’

  She offered him her hand, he took it, and she led him up to her new room, which was much the same as the old room, since all her toys had been transported from Basing Street to Chesterton Road. Vince got on his knees with Ruby, and she went through the names and history of each doll, teddy bear and toy in the room. All apart from one, a blonde Barbie doll in a red plastic raincoat with a matching peak cap. She sat in a moulded red plastic MG sports car with a white interior. It looked brand new, untouched and expensive. When Vince asked Ruby about the Barbie, the little girl’s head dipped and Vince realized something was wrong. He put the tip of his forefinger on to her chin, and raised her head, to reveal eyes glazed over with a sheen of tears.