Gilded Edge, The

by Miller, Danny

  By the time Vince was on his feet, the white noise of violence had stopped, and so had the music from downstairs. He heard fast-approaching, heavy footsteps outside. As he put his hand inside his jacket pocket to pull out his ID, the door flew off its holdings. But still Vince was in darkness, as a wall of blackness blocked out any light from the hallway beyond. A scrimmage of Brothers X was jammed in the doorway. In the front of the pack stood Michael X. The great leader flicked a switch on the wall and the room lit up. As he quickly took in the scene, his face turned from scowling anger to a slow contemplative neutrality that eventually segued into a lavishly satisfied grin, as he remarked, ‘Detective Vincent Treadwell of Scotland Yard, and the Metropolitan police force, what in the sweet mother of goats have we got here?’

  What we had here, and what Michael X was smiling about, was Vince standing with the knife in his bloodied hand, Tyrell Lightly on the floor with his lights well and truly out, and the big girl . . .

  ‘Little piece of skinny white . . .’

  Vince turned round just in time to catch the cannon ball that was coming his way, as the big girl’s balled fist connected to his chin and sent him swiftly to the floor. Lights out all round.

  CHAPTER 11

  Vince stood before Chief Superintendent Ian Markham. He’d not been invited to sit down because, when he entered, Markham was himself standing up, looking cantankerously out of the window. With hands clasped behind his back, his inky-blue uniform appeared iridescent in the midday winter sun. Vince could see how, where Markham tipped his head back to address the gods, the oil from his brilliantine-black hair was seeping into the rim of his starched white collar. Markham clearly needed a haircut. A trim. A little tidy-up. This was noticeable because his hair was usually kept just so, a good two inches above the collar. It was now only an inch and a half, Vince reckoned. This was the kind of detail you pick up on when you’re forced to stand and receive what seemed to Vince his annual reaming from his Chief Superintendent. Vince found himself glazing over, switching off and drifting around the room in some out-of-body experience. He desperately looked for points of interest around the room and eventually settled on a fly that was shifting its body irritably around on one wall. The fly took off, buzzed around for a bit, hovered over a light fitting, got hot, buzzed off again, and landed on the back of Markham’s shoulder. This location, annoyingly, brought the Chief Superintendent back into view. Even though he was five floors up, Markham still managed to elongate himself to maximum height in order to look down his nose at them gathered below.

  Chief Superintendent Markham was watching the protesters who were gathered outside Scotland Yard, led by Michael X and his Black Power Coalition. There, a troop of about twenty of them stood at attention in a well-ordered line, arms behind their backs, chests out, shoulders square (even Markham could appreciate the well-drilled military aspect and discipline). Michael X himself, equipped with loudspeaker, started to read out extracts of American black political writings and the works of his hero Malcolm X, whose assassination in Harlem three days earlier had added an urgency to the whole proceedings. They were soon joined by other protesters from the CND, TUC, LSE, SWP, NUS and BCP and, as soon as the TV cameras rolled up, the whole thing became a ‘happening’ as much as a protest. Showbiz luminaries, TV-friendly intellectuals and writers soon put in an appearance, along with some Angry Young Men actors and some kitchen-sink playwrights from the Royal Court Theatre, who delivered monologues for the cameras and, with their full and fruity voices, projected across the square the slogan: ‘William Shakespeare, William Blake, We Are Doing This For Your Sake!’

  Apart from the charges of police brutality, their main gripe was that Tyrell Lightly was an innocent man being held and set up by the man. And the man at the centre of this shit storm in a teacup was Detective Vincent Treadwell. He had now become the unacceptable face of policing, and Michael X was stirring it up for all it was worth. He had as canny an eye for publicity and a photo opportunity as the most tawdry of door-stepping, baby-kissing, Westminster whores on the hustings hustle. The minute Michael X had opened the bedroom door and reviewed the scenario before him he’d known it was too good an opportunity not to grab. He drove a groggy Vince and a bloody Tyrell Lightly straight to Scotland Yard. Vince didn’t protest. Tyrell Lightly wasn’t too happy about it, but Michael X assured him that to be seen to be giving himself up was good for the cause and good for himself. Tyrell Lightly now sat in his cell refusing to say a word; in fact he was refusing to open his mouth at all: not to eat, drink water or swallow painkillers for his broken nose. With Michael X hanging over the proceedings, and offering counsel to Lightly, Vince thought the gangster-turned-revolutionary was hoping to have his first martyr for the cause.

  ‘Look at them . . . the usual agitators.’ Markham shook his head in withering disgust. ‘There’s a great unpleasantness moving through this land, Treadwell. Do you not feel it?’

  ‘Not especially, sir.’

  Markham turned away from the window and looked at Vince questioningly.

  Vince shrugged. ‘Freedom of speech, sir.’

  ‘Freedom of speech,’ Markham repeated with a slurry of contempt in his voice. ‘It’s you they want, Treadwell! You are the centre of their ire. ’Tis you they bay for. Does that not concern you?’

  ‘Regarding their opinion, sir, they’re wrong, but that’s their right. It’s what attracted me to the job in the first place, to protect their right to be wrong.’

  Vince said all this with his tongue if not firmly in his cheek, then certainly positioned around that area. But sarcasm and irony had become his natural register when talking to the pompous Chief Superintendent. Vince wasn’t looking at his superior as he said this, but straight ahead at the picture on the wall behind Markham’s desk. The official portrait of the Queen was still in place, but she had been joined by a framed portrait of Sir Winston Churchill. Vince considered the great man, deciding there was a strange parallel between the photograph of the freshly assassinated Malcolm X hanging in the office of Michael X and Markham’s portrait here of the recently deceased Churchill; and it wasn’t just sharing the year of their death that drew them together. Both men knew how to coin a phrase, both men were flawed natural-born leaders, and both men were now hanging on the walls of men who, in Vince’s opinion, weren’t fit to black their boots. And yet, looking at the familiar image on the wall, Vince felt no more at home in Markham’s Scotland Yard office than he did in Michael X’s one in Notting Hill. He still felt like the outsider, the interloper waiting to be uncovered.

  ‘Just like he fought for, sir,’ said Vince, with a nod towards Churchill. He meant it, too, but also knew it would curry him some favour.

  The Chief Superintendent was a big fan, and had taken the death of Churchill earlier in the year very badly. But he was determined to carry on the great fight, though the enemy had changed. Now they were not only on the beaches, and on the streets, but right outside his bloody window! Markham wanted them moved. Break out the white horses, baton charge them if necessary, but get them shifted on to the more traditional protesting patch of Trafalgar Square, which Markham had renamed ‘Red Square’. But cooler heads and voices from higher up the chain of command, both authoritatively and intellectually, had prevailed, and successfully warned him against such action. But talk about parking their tanks on his front lawn, the very sight of them outside his window was tantamount to someone taking a big fat steaming dump right here in his office. And for this he blamed the young detective standing in front of him.

  ‘You went rogue, Treadwell.’

  ‘I was just carrying out my duty, sir.’

  ‘If you’d have called for back-up, you wouldn’t have compromised your position.’

  ‘Like I said in my statement, sir, I didn’t have time for that. I’d received information that might or might not have been true, and I had to act on it fast.’

  Then there was the small matter of his knife, which Vince claimed he’d picked up in the mê
lée in Powis Square. It was his word against Tyrell Lightly’s and that of the Brothers X. But, with Lightly’s form as a known felon with a penchant for knives and cutting up coppers, Vince was home and dry on that one. As for the protests, whether Markham liked it or not, something was moving through the country . . . how unpleasant it might be was yet to be writ.

  There was a knock on the door. Markham barked ‘Come in,’ and Mac entered the room.

  ‘We’ve just heard from Isabel Saxmore-Blaine’s lawyer,’ said Mac, who then nodded at one of the pictures immediately behind Markham, ‘who incidentally are the same firm that represents the Queen.’

  ‘I’m well aware of Miss Saxmore-Blaine’s connections, Mac.’

  ‘Well, she’s made a statement and wants to talk to us.’

  Markham gave a solemn nod to this news. He liked the sound of it. She had not needed coercing, had not even been asked. It confirmed one of the many attributes that he ascribed to the upper classes, far too many of them to list and all fawningly positive, but here was one of them showing that, by God, they knew how to conduct themselves.

  ‘Good,’ said Markham, gripping the hem of his jacket and giving it a tug, as though he was about to go on parade. ‘This is another delicate situation and I have no need to inform you that Lord Saxmore-Blaine is a personal friend of the Commissioner, so this goes all the way to the top. Questions have been asked at Westminster, concerns expressed at the Palace. We shall need experienced and delicate hands in dealing with Miss Isabel Saxmore-Blaine.’

  Mac looked at Vince. Vince looked back at Mac. This surreptitious and silent conference went unnoticed by Markham, who was still preening himself before putting his cap on. By the time he turned back to them, Mac and Vince had both wiped the smirks off their faces. Even the thoroughly professorial Mac was reduced to schoolboy mockery when it came to dealing with Markham. It wasn’t even that Markham was all that disliked, or not respected. On the contrary, at times he was very fair-minded, gave solid orders and stood up for his men. It was just his oleaginous attitude to his perceived ‘higher-ups and betters’ that struck everyone as so humourless and self-defeating.

  ‘Mac, you and I shall attend to Miss Saxmore-Blaine,’ resolutely declared Markham. ‘We shall take her statement, and we shall talk to her and assure her that—’

  ‘Sir, she doesn’t want to talk to us,’ interrupted Mac. Stopped, and then stalled, Markham’s face was a picture. ‘She wants to talk to, and I quote, “the handsome young detective who punched me in the face”.’

  From the unacceptable face of policing to the handsome face of policing. Isabel Saxmore-Blaine had just saved Vince’s neck – and he knew it. But it didn’t stop him from wincing when he heard it. He’d never before hit a woman in his life, and, what with the big girl in the brothel, that made two in the space of a week. As if to compensate, he rubbed a thumb over his chin, which bore a murky bruise from the big girl’s punch.

  Markham turned slowly to Vince. His beady, bespectacled eyes narrowed in suspicion, and his whole face bore a look of grinding resentment. It was as if the young detective had just stolen his ticket to the dance. Vince’s darkly lashed hazel eyes widened in innocence, and he gave a shrug that said: ‘I can explain everything, sir.’

  CHAPTER 12

  London was at its best this morning: cold and bright. Vince liked this time of year, for winter suited London; it was its natural setting. Summer in this city always felt like an intruder, creeping around the edges of the buildings, skulking in the parks, the squares and the public gathering places like it shouldn’t really be there, even though it was greeted with open arms and rolled-up shirt sleeves.

  His destination that morning was the Salisbury private hospital in Harley Street. On entry, Vince saw that it was more akin to a swanky five-star hotel than a hospital. The only thing that gave away its true status was the white-coated doctors and blue-uniformed nurses – as opposed to pantomime-dressed bellboys and frilly-knickered French chambermaids. But Vince noted that even the medical staff had an unhurried and genial attractiveness about them, as though they were hand-picked extras milling around the set of Dr Kildare.

  He was shown up to Isabel Saxmore-Blaine’s room, where a uniformed copper sat reading a paperback outside the door. As Vince badged him, he went to stand up, but Vince said ‘Relax’ and knocked sharply on the door.

  ‘Who is it?’ came a woman’s high-impact voice, its timbre a little husky, a little low, a little rich . . .

  ‘The detective who punched you on the chin,’ Vince announced, smiling at the uniformed copper who had looked up from his paperback with an expression bordering on astonishment. From inside, Vince heard some arguing, albeit of the very polite and hushed variety, which then hushed completely. The door eventually opened and there stood Isabel Saxmore-Blaine.

  She took a deep breath, gave him a welcoming smile, and said: ‘Come to admire your handiwork?’

  He winced at the sight of the bruise on one side of her jaw. It had now reached its full apogee of colourfulness: a crescendo of tonic blues and purples fading into ochreous browns and yellows.

  And then it was her turn to wince, as she noticed the bruise on the side of his own jaw. ‘What happened to you?’

  Vince’s chin-shiner was nothing compared to hers, being just several different shades of black and blue. He couldn’t tell her the truth; there was just no way of putting a good slant on that one. A list of appropriate mishaps ran through his mind: fell off his horse while playing polo, helping a lady out of her carriage, clumsily doffing his cap whilst neglectfully holding a croquet mallet. He shrugged out a dismissive mutter about an incident at work, par-for-the-course stuff.

  So there they were, both wearing slight expectant smiles on bruised chins, as she invited him in. The luxury theme of the lobby had carried on up into the room, five-star all the way. The only thing to give it away as not being the presidential suite at the Dorchester was the high metal-framed bed with a clipboard of medical notes attached to the footboard.

  Just rising from the sofa was a portly, elderly man in a double-breasted chalk-stripe suit, an old school tie and a gold watch-chain running from his lapel into his breast pocket. A corona of white curly hair skirted a bald head, which he now covered with a dark blue fedora, plucked from the arm of the sofa, before he struggled into a fawn covert coat with a collar of well-worn olive green velvet. Finally, collecting some papers from the coffee table, he slid them into his admirably distressed and monogrammed (G D L) pigskin briefcase, and fastened the brass locks.

  ‘Detective Treadwell, this is Geoffrey Lancing, my lawyer.’

  Vince offered his hand, and the lawyer grudgingly shook it.

  ‘Pleased to meet you, Mr Lancing.’

  ‘Likewise, Detective,’ said the lawyer, not really meaning a word of it, while not taking his eyes off his client. ‘Isabel, my dear, I must ask you once more to reconsider. This is not a wise decision.’

  ‘Thank you, Geoffrey, but that really will be all.’

  The lawyer turned to Vince. ‘May I ask you for your professional opinion, sir?’

  Isabel Saxmore-Blaine said: ‘No, you may not.’

  Vince looked between the two of them and said nothing.

  She jumped in again before the lawyer could. ‘I’ll save you the time, Detective, as you know how long-winded lawyers can be. Geoffrey here is my father’s lawyer—’

  ‘Your family’s lawyer for the last thirty-five years.’

  ‘And a dear, dear friend for as long as I can remember.’

  ‘Indeed.’

  ‘Indeed,’ she repeated with a gracious smile to the anxious lawyer. ‘Geoffrey doesn’t think it wise that I talk to you on my own, as anything I say might be taken down and used in evidence against me. Is that correct?’

  ‘Yes, and I think it’s good advice he’s giving you, Miss Saxmore-Blaine.’

  ‘Isabel, please. Call me Isabel.’

  The lawyer threw her a reprimanding look, as if she was
fraternizing with the enemy. Which, at this stage, she was. But he needn’t have bothered, because Vince had no intention of calling her by her first name. The way he saw it, she’d already had more than her share of preferential treatment.

  ‘But it’s your choice whether or not you choose to have counsel present,’ he confirmed.

  ‘Come come, Detective Treadwell,’ interrupted the lawyer, ‘in circumstances as serious as these we both know it’s not just highly advisable but imperative that Isabel does have counsel present.’

  ‘Spoken like a true lawyer, Mr Lancing, and I was just about to make the same suggestion before I was interrupted. But Miss Saxmore-Blaine hasn’t been either charged or arrested in relation to this matter. I’m here just to pick up a prepared statement, I believe.’

  ‘Correct,’ said Isabel Saxmore-Blaine.

  ‘Then that’s all I shall do. And then I’m heading back to report to my superiors, who will read this statement and then decide how to proceed.’

  Isabel Saxmore-Blaine looked at the lawyer with a kindly smile that would have melted the heart of the hardest litigator. ‘Geoffrey, I thank you for your concern, but really I just want to thank the detective personally – after all, he did save my life.’

  Isabel Saxmore-Blaine linked arms with the lawyer and marched him to the door, and saw him out with noisy kisses on each cheek. It was one of the most impressive acts of disarming strong-arm tactics Vince had ever seen. He could see how her charm and beauty could pretty much get her whatever she wanted. And he was determined not to get worked over in the same fashion: the satin-covered cosh, the velvet-gloved fist.

  With the lawyer gone, she breathed a sigh of relief. Reaching into the pocket of her pearl-coloured silk robe, she pulled out a packet of cigarettes and lit one from a book of matches. She went over to the window, crumpling the cigarette pack and putting it back in her pocket. The window was locked and had bars across it. But even the bars looked five-star: they were fancily cast gilt metal, made to look like branches and foliage. She concentrated on her cigarette, sucking down a large percentage of it with each visit to her lips. Vince sensed that there had been a strained effort at normality in dealing with her lawyer, an old family friend, who was obviously under the direct employ of her father and would be promptly reporting back to him. The endeavour not to appear broken and cowed had taken it out of her.