Gilded Edge, The

by Miller, Danny

  Once Sadie had exhausted her luckless narrative, she glanced back at Vince, with eyes no longer moist with self-pity but narrow, tense and full of suspicion.

  ‘Anyway, you haven’t come to listen to my problems, have you?’

  ‘Dominic Saxmore-Blaine, you knew him?’ She shrugged. Vince blazed her a pair of dark eyes, put an edge in his voice, and said, ‘That wasn’t a question, Sadie. Now, tell me, was he a punter?’

  ‘Not one of mine, no.’

  ‘How about Marcy’s?’

  Sadie looked away. It could have been in thought, but she could just as easily have been lost in a junkie distraction, a junkie musing, like considering the possibilities of the world existing on another plane – on her thumb nail, for instance. Vince judged himself to have already shown her enough patience. ‘They’re both of them dead, Sadie. What is there to protect now – their reputations?’

  ‘Yeah, he was Marcy’s punter. But more than that, I’d say. He’d sort of fallen in love with her, if you get what I mean?’Vince got it, since it wasn’t so hard to get. Sadie added, ‘Occupational hazard, dearie.’

  ‘But also, with the right punter, an occupational goldmine, right?’

  ‘It was for a while. Dominic started buying her presents, giving her money. Quite a bit of money, in fact. At twenty-one, part of his trust fund had started coming through. I told Marcy she was on to a good thing here, but she had to play it right. It’s happened to me a couple of times, in my younger days. Before this shit took . . .’ Her voice trailed off and she looked wistful.

  ‘So what happened, Sadie?’

  ‘That was it, not a lot. That was the problem. Nothing happened, not in the trouser department anyway. Little Dominic couldn’t consummate the love affair. He couldn’t get it up, the poor dear.’

  An involuntary grin broadened across Vince’s face, as the pieces of Dominic Saxmore-Blaine’s shattered psyche began to piece themselves together. His deflated performance in the sack made perfect sense for the act of Grand Guignol he’d committed. The self-mutilation, the self-loathing, the sexual inadequacy – it was all so grimly obvious. An eye-wateringly dramatic gesture, so personal and private, yet it demanded an audience. It demanded further investigation.

  ‘What’s so funny?’

  Vince stopped grinning. ‘Nothing’s funny, Sadie. I was just thinking.’

  ‘Thinking? I’ve not done that in a while. It doesn’t pay, not in my line of work. Did I tell you I used to be a artist? Pretty good, too. I studied at Camberwell for two years, fine art. Sculpture was my discipline. That’s where I met Greg, and we started—’

  ‘Another time, Sadie. Tell me about Dominic and Marcy.’

  ‘She tried it every which way with him. But nothing stirred, not a thing. Poor Dominic was traumatized, distraught. And so was Marcy, as you can imagine.’

  ‘She was about to lose the goose that laid the golden egg?’

  ‘You could put it like that. The poor love had already confided in her that it had happened to him before. He’d tried it with lots of working girls: thin ones, fat ones, redheads, blondes, brunettes, even an Oriental in Hong Kong. All the same result, nothing. Marcy assumed he was queer. Nothing wrong with that, she told him; just go with it if that’s what he was. You can’t change the clay you’re made of. Dominic didn’t like that at all. Which was a surprise to me, as I thought they were all at it in public school.’

  ‘They are, but only when still at public school. So he stopped seeing Marcy, is that it?’ Sadie nodded. ‘And, of course, stopped giving her money and presents?’ Sadie looked away. Not because of a junkie distraction this time – alternate worlds, parallel universes – but something akin to guilt and shame. ‘Like you said, Sadie, you’ve been in this situation yourself. What did you do?’

  ‘I didn’t do anything.’

  ‘You had Marcy’s back. You were her girl.’

  ‘Nothing like that.’

  ‘No, nothing like that. But you did give her advice. You did show her the ropes. Come on, Sadie, she started out as a maid at the Imperial, then you told her how to earn some real money. You practically put her on the game.’

  ‘No!’ Sadie shot back loud and clear. ‘No, I never!’

  Vince looked around the lounge bar, where faces looked back at him. But they were all faces that wanted to mind their own business and didn’t want any trouble. He turned back towards Sadie. She had guilt, all right. She had it good and deep. Maybe Marcy would still be alive if Sadie hadn’t persuaded her to capitalize on Lucky Lucan’s growing interest in her and go on the game. Which in turn led her to her liaison with the fragile yet lethal Dominic Saxmore-Blaine. Vince didn’t pursue the guilt angle, as she looked as though she was paying the price for it already. Here was a heroin-ridden husk who looked as if she needed a fix ten minutes ago.

  Vince said, ‘So Marcy started blackmailing Dominic about not being able to do the business in the bedroom, right?’

  ‘Something like that. First of all he gave her some money to keep her mouth shut. But you know how it is: money has a nasty habit of getting spent. So, yeah, I said she should ask him for some more.’

  ‘How much?’

  ‘Fifty pounds, sometimes more!’

  ‘A week?’

  ‘Why not? He had plenty of it. All his crowd did, and it was his choice. He wanted to keep going to the Imperial because his friends did. If he hadn’t kept hanging around there, Marcy wouldn’t have done anything. Makes you wonder why he did.’

  ‘Like you said, because his friends did. Because he wanted to be one of them, wanted to belong. But he wasn’t like them.’

  Vince considered the six hammer blows that Dominic Saxmore-Blaine had struck against Marcy Jones’s head, and they all made sense now. He had wondered about the number and the sheer ferocity of the attack. For a cold-blooded assassination, it was too personal; there had to be more behind those blows, and now he’d discovered what. Armed with a hammer, Dominic had at last attained penetration of a sort. It was the perfect Freudian storm. Dominic Saxmore-Blaine had found his excuse for killing Marcy Jones. She had witnessed him running down the stairs, smeared in fake blood, after fleeing an assassination on behalf of the Montcler set and Merry Old England Ltd. Now he had his sanction, to rid himself of his sexual tormentor, his blackmailer, and become the man he wanted to be. For Dominic Saxmore-Blaine, killing Marcy Jones was a winning hand all round.

  Sadie knocked back the rest of her drink, and shrugged. ‘That’s the way the cookie crumbles, I reckon.’

  ‘Very philosophical.’

  She noticed the edge in his voice, and had her retort all lined up. In a tone of ruffled defiance, she said, ‘Forget it, copper, I don’t give a damn about these men. They pay to use us. If the tables get turned, then they’ve only got themselves to blame. I’ve got nothing to be ashamed of.’

  ‘No one’s saying you should be, Sadie. Like you say, everyone takes their chances in a place like the Imperial, and you and Marcy were just a couple of working girls with mouths to feed, rents to pay, and big bad habits to assuage, right?’

  She didn’t answer, and Vince could see she was too busy working out ways to cut this conversation with the copper short. She desperately wanted to make a call. She wanted to burn up some brown, fill up a spike and lose herself, off the streets into the land of nod.

  But, before that happened, Vince pulled her back to reality with:‘So Marcy’s taking a good few quid off Lucky Lucan to stand there whilst he dresses up as Hitler and listens to Wagner. And she’s also collecting the same off Dominic Saxmore-Blaine, for keeping shtum about him not getting it up. She’s doing good business with those two alone, without even really having to put out.’

  ‘That’s right. Nice work if you can get it.’

  Sadie’s hand reached down to Vince’s thigh, and began to work her magic. ‘I’ll do anything for you, handsome. Anything . . .’

  Vince removed the hand. ‘You’ve already done it, sweetheart.’

&nbs
p; CHAPTER 42

  On twirling the key in the lock of his front door and cracking it open, Vince knew that something was up. Either the mice had taken up smoking, and got scared of the dark and turned on the living room light, or he had guests. He padded into the hallway and, as silently as the hinges would allow, retrieved a cosh from the closet, and a knuckleduster hidden in a pair of plimsolls. His switchblade was already in his pocket. Why he needed this primitive artillery was simple: he’d forgotten his gun. He’d left it in the car, taped under the driving seat for security. With hands behind his back, like a visiting dignitary at a country fête, he moseyed on into the living room, clutching the cosh in his right hand whilst his left was adorned with the heavy jewellery of the knuckleduster.

  The first thing he saw was a pair of Webley Mk IV service revolvers pointing in his direction. At about gut level. Outgunned and outnumbered, the hardware he was holding and the sharp pointy thing in his pocket might as well have been made out of marzipan. One gunsel sat on the couch. The other sat in the highback armchair that was given to him by Mac when Vince had put his back out during the call of duty – kicking down a door probably. The chair looked austere, but was surprisingly comfortable.

  ‘Lose whatever’s behind your back.’

  Vince slipped off the knuckleduster and placed it on the side table nearest to him, which held a lamp that was lighting the room. He put the cosh on the table, too. For an instant he thought about sweeping the lamp off the table and pitching them into darkness. But he knew he’d be bent over with several bullets in his gut before the lamp hit the floor. These gunsels were good at what they did, and he knew this because they were the same two fellows who had taken him out of the farmhouse after taking care of the two mackintosh men. Vince knew this was no time for taking hot-headed risks. He also knew that you can catch colds by leaving your house without drying your hair properly, eating cheese at night gives you nightmares, and eating spinach gives you—

  He swept the lamp off the side table, and the room fell into darkness. He bolted for the door, but it slammed shut. He immediately saw the glint of the Webley, another Webley, that told him there was a third man in the room, who had been standing behind the door. The two gunsels were up on their feet now, with their Webleys cocked.

  Vince said, ‘Okay, fellers, my mistake,’ and stuck his hands in the air. They quickly went down again as a fist drilled into his gut. It was a sucker punch, and as good a gut shot as he’d ever taken. It knocked every puff of wind out of him. Vince doubled up, but wasn’t given the time or luxury of having a good old wallow in his discomfort, as he was grabbed by the lapels and launched head first into the wall. What cushioned the collision was a framed canvas on it: the triptych of jazz players. The most expensive purchase he’d ever made, ever, was now lying on the floor alongside him, looking crushed and winded too.

  As the overhead light was switched on, Vince looked up to see the two gunsels he already knew, and a third man, who he also recognized but couldn’t quite get a handle on. Vince was about to ask What happens next? when the distant flushing of the toilet broke the thought. Then from the bathroom came the sound of the turning of a tap, and the flow of water, accompanied by the whistling of the tune ‘Danny Boy’. When the washing and drying of hands was completed, the source of the music emerged from the bathroom. He came along the hallway, with the whistling of the tune getting louder and louder, and finally into the living room. There he stopped whistling.

  This one wasn’t carrying a shooter, however. He gripped a small plastic-faux tortoiseshell comb between thumb and forefinger, and was raking it through the thinning strands of greased black hair that lay flattened against his nut-brown scalp. A scalp that had neglectfully gone without its sunhat in the warmer climes of, say, Tangiers? Satisfied all was presentable, he glanced down at Vince and the crumpled heap of modern art on the floor. He looked reasonably contented with what he saw, but also rather nonplussed by the whole thing.

  Then, to no one in particular, he said: ‘Doctors tell me it’s the prostate. I don’t know. All I do know is that I’d give a million quid just to be able to take a good long hard piss.’

  Billy Hill then glanced around and saw the side table with the cosh and the knuckleduster on it. ‘I heard he carries a knife, too,’ he said to the tall dark-haired gunsel.

  ‘We got him covered,’ the man replied confidently.

  ‘That’s what you said last time, bright boy, and he got away – gave you the slip.’ Billy Hill then addressed the other fellow, the one who had slammed Vince into the modern art. ‘This the same feller?’

  ‘That’s him,’ he replied out of the side of his mouth.

  Vince recognized him now. He wasn’t wearing his blue uniform and peaked cap, but this was the concierge of Billy Hill’s apartment building in Moscow Road.

  ‘Go wait in the car,’ said Hill. The concierge gave Hill the nod, pocketed the shooter and left the room. Hill looked down at Vince again, and asked, ‘Can you get up?’

  ‘I’m working on it,’ said Vince as he climbed to his feet, not wanting to look any more poleaxed than he needed to.

  The men arranged themselves around the room. Billy Hill was naturally drawn to the most throne-like seat there, the highbacked armchair, whilst his two gun-toting compadres sat side by side on the couch. Vince pulled up a chair from the small side table that operated as his desk and sat opposite them. Billy Hill shifted from cheek to cheek in his seat in a sustained effort to get comfy. He eventually gave a satisfied sigh. Then, looking squarely at Vince for the first time, he said, ‘I like this chair. Think I’ll get me one of these. Where’d you buy it?’

  ‘It’s not mine.’

  ‘It’s comfy, whoever’s it is. I like a firm seat these days. You wouldn’t think so, with my troubles, but I do. Like a park bench, for instance: I can sit on those things for hours, providing the view’s accommodating. Nice duck pond or something.’

  ‘Yeah. I guess I should give it back, though. A friend lent it to me when I did my back in—’

  ‘That’s enough, sunshine, I don’t want your fucking life story. Got my own problems. Wait till you get to my age, the fucking aggravation of it all! Prostate the size of an apple. Doctors sticking their fingers up my arsehole, and I don’t even like people pointing at me, so imagine how I feel about that!’ Billy Hill shook his head in irritation and then gestured to the painting lying on the floor. ‘What is this shit anyway?’

  ‘Modern art.’

  ‘Expensive?’

  ‘Enough.’

  Looking at the work, Hill developed a disapproving grimace on his face, as if the prostate had enflamed further and gone from apple-size to a grapefruit, or maybe a prickly pineapple. ‘Well, if you hadn’t have got cocky, it would still be hanging on the wall. Though why you’d want it up there is beyond me.’

  Billy Hill, now reaching into his sixties, looked every bit like a gangster. A movie-star, old-school gangster in a double-breasted grey-flannel suit with a faint chalk stripe running through it, and a brightly embroidered tie that verged on being a kipper, which featured, against a crimson background, a Polynesian woman in a golden grass skirt sporting a hat made of fruit, like Carmen Miranda. His shoes were black Oxfords, with mirror finishes on them, and if Billy Hill did look down and see his reflection, this is exactly what he would see: a pair of heavily hooded eyes that were blacker than the exit holes in the muzzles of the two guns now pointed at Vince. Add to that a nose that was pitted like a strawberry, and a solid fighter’s chin that looked as if it could, and had, taken a fair few punches in its time and had never let him down. It was a lined and sombre face, though you couldn’t tell where the natural lines of age ended, and the old razor scars began. But in the world where he grew up and plied his trade, such scars were considered as natural as the lines on your face.

  The sheer Humphrey Bogart-ness of Billy Hill was uncanny, and for a moment Vince felt as though he was in a film. He couldn’t make out which one though, since they we
re all winners. The Burberry trench coat currently draped over a chair, with a brown felt fedora resting on top of it, all completed the Bogart look. But this was no time for Vince to romanticize Billy Hill or confuse fact with fiction. There were enough minions and sycophants ready to bow and scrape to him, like the two gunsels seated on the couch. They were like a Dobermann and a bull terrier ready to tear into Vince at the slightest trill of their master’s voice. And it was a raspy old voice, though not through barking orders or shouting to make itself heard, for Billy Hill didn’t need to do that, since people hung on his every word, every gesture. It was raspy through the constant irritant of Player’s cigarettes, a packet of which was gripped in his hand, along with a gold Ronson lighter. He lit one of them up and took a long gratifying sip, as if swilling the smoke around his gums, then blew it out of one corner of his mouth with what seemed like weary disgust.

  After getting his much-needed nicotine hit, he looked at Vince with a slow, appraising gaze, then said: ‘You’ve been making yourself busy.’

  ‘It paid off.’

  ‘You could have seen me a long time ago. My boys offered you a lift home, but you did a runner.’

  ‘I thought I was out of the frying pan and into the fire.’

  ‘Nice way to treat two good Samaritans who saved your life and was just offering a lift to the hospital. Feelings were hurt. Right, fellers?’

  The bull terrier nodded. The Dobermann said, ‘Messed up a nice car there, brother. A Wolseley 610.’

  ‘I fancied a walk and didn’t want to get my blood on your upholstery. Sorry it got smashed up, but it wasn’t yours in the first place. It was stolen. I’m glad to hear you both got home all right.’

  ‘No problem, brother. We just stole another one.’