Gilded Edge, The

by Miller, Danny

  ‘Who gave you this doll, Ruby?’

  Her hand shot up and swept his finger away from her chin.

  ‘You can tell me,’ he assured her.

  After a protracted pause, she leaned forward and cupped her hand against his ear and whispered . . .

  CHAPTER 47

  Vince got into the Mk II and retrieved the Colt .38 that he’d taped under the driver’s seat, and tucked it into his waistband. The switchblade hidden in the glove compartment he slipped into his jacket pocket. Tooled up, he got out of the car again and slammed the door shut. He wanted to run but held back, taking a calming breath. He knew he’d be needing all his strength and all his restraint as he strode towards the Portobello Road.

  Midday Sunday, he was hoping to find Tyrell Lightly standing outside one of the pubs with his cohorts, shooting the shit and watching over their corners, as they were wont to do. Or even spot a Brother X, not that he expected too much from them, but the word that Vince was after Tyrell Lightly might have filtered back and flushed him out. In Finches bar it was the usual lazy Sunday afternoon crowd. But then, the place was full of the usual lazy Sunday afternoon crowd on any day of the week. Knots of men stood there nattering away about nothing in particular, while hangovers were getting the hair of the dog, darts were getting thrown and time was getting wasted until lunch was served.

  Vince headed on down Oxford Gardens to Michael X’s headquarters. The one-stop community shop that advertised itself as being open twenty-four hours a day was closed. Vince rang the bell, banged on the door, called through the letter box and got no response. He thought he saw brief movement from behind one of the curtains covering the windows, and he could have sworn he glimpsed a sudden fleeting eclipse when he peered through the spyhole in the door. But if anyone was in, they weren’t answering.

  He then did the rounds of known haunts and hangouts, just like he had done when he first went in search of Tyrell Lightly. The drinking club in Powis Square, where he’d last located Lightly, had been closed down and a For Sale sign was now attached to a pillar of the portico. Vince headed down to Westbourne Grove to the Calypso club and the Fiesta. Business there was brisk, but again no Tyrell Lightly. History repeated itself, unsurprisingly: the daily grind of criminality in most cities is all about history repeating itself. The quest for the quick and illicit pound could be as dull as the dullest nine-to-five – just with longer hours. So it wasn’t such a surprise to find the drug dealer Vivian Chalcott plotted up in the Walmer Castle, sitting in a snug, on his own, reading the papers, and minding his own damn business with a pint of Guinness patiently losing its head before him.

  Vince stood over him, casting a long and impatient shadow, till Chalcott lowered his paper and peered up with alarmed eyes, a glistening white foamy moustache covering his thin bristly moustache like a morning frost. His business today was no longer his own, and he knew it.

  ‘Tyrell Lightly. I need him, Vivian. And need him now.’

  The Cellar Door was an aptly named one-room drinker with a pool table, and was situated in the cellar of a second-hand furniture shop on the Golborne Road. Vivian Chalcott had given up Tyrell Lightly, again, without too much of a fuss. He didn’t like Lightly. He’d heard the rumours about his predilections, and Vince now confirmed them. Vivian told him the news that Tyrell Lightly was out of favour with Michael and the Brothers X. He was back in his pimp gear and no longer wearing the uniform of X. Vivian put it down to Lightly holding out on some deals, cutting up rough with the whores, trying to carve out some business of his own and generally rude-boying his way all over town and pulling cowboy stuff as if he was still back in the yards of Trenchtown.

  So here Vince was, descending the steep rickety cellar stairs leading into the Cellar Door club, while listening out for the voice of Tyrell Lightly, or at least the mention of his name, amid the bar-room chatter and West Indian patois that blended so effortlessly with the chinking of the glasses and the potting of pool balls. As Vince reached the foot of the stairs, if there had been a piano in the place it would have stopped playing. All eyes were fixed on him; Vince counted about ten pairs of them. Someone uttered a heavily question-marked ‘Pig?’. Vince was hearing that word a lot lately.

  Two fellows playing pool moved in front of him, blocking his view. They looked as if they’d been living in the place all their lives, seldom coming up for air. Behind them, Vince heard the unnerving click of pool balls, knowing full well that three of them swung around inside a sock could do a lot of damage.

  Beyond the pair of pool players, a door creaked, and he was sure someone had slipped out of the place. There was music playing on a transistor radio, something chirpy and innocuous by the Dave Clark Five. It got turned up full pelt and soon became oppressive white noise. And, as if on cue, the pool cues that the two players wielded for sport were now gripped to inflict violence.

  The player prodded the tip of his cue into Vince’s chest and asked, ‘The fuck d’you want, white boy?’

  Vince looked down at the little round blue chalk mark on his shirt. The player prodded Vince again in the chest, and this time the chalk mark appeared on the narrow strip of his black knitted tie. It looked as though the pool player intended to make a habit of this and turn Vince’s shirt and tie into a matching polka-dot ensemble. Men were now laughing. It was clearly an appreciative audience. Encouraged, the pool player cued up again for another shot at Vince’s chest. Vince’s forearm shot up and carved the pool cue away with a circular sweep. By the time his hand had returned home he was holding the .38 snub-nosed revolver, which he stuck into the chest of the pool player. Realizing that little blue chalk marks were soon going to be replaced by big red bullet holes, the player dropped the pool cue to the floor. His partner followed suit.

  Vince pulled the gun out of the pool player’s chest, took aim and fired a shot into the radio on the bar. The white noise died and the radio toppled off the counter. At this, there was some sucking of teeth, some muttered curses, but otherwise muted resignation ruled the roost. A gun going off in a joint like this wasn’t such a shock to the system; a poetry recital going off would have produced a more startled reaction. Vince then barked out simple instructions to these occupants of planet shit-hole:‘Get the fuck out of here and close the cellar door behind you!’

  There was no immediate movement, just a bristling silence as everyone considered and weighed up the white boy (with the gun) in the room. Were they really going to stand for this in their own back yard? This moody-looking malcontent coming in for one of their own? These fleeting thoughts, these crossings of minds, didn’t last that long, and certainly not long enough for Vince to feel the need to repeat his instruction. Even with the maths stacked up against him, the .38 was always going to be the great equalizer in this equation. For those gathered in the Cellar Door, it was turning into a no-brainer. Maybe it was something in the intruder’s eyes, the bloody-minded intent evident there, but he certainly looked as though he’d take out at least three of them before they got near to him. There were no volunteers to be those first three. So the bottles and glasses that were about to be hurled at Vince were now put on the bar, pool balls were put back on the table, knives being thumbed in pockets were left safely sheathed. And up the stairs and out the cellar door they all trooped, the .38 tracking their movements every step of the way.

  Vince then darted up the stairs and shifted the heavy bolt on the door securely into place. He knew he had to work fast, for they’d be back, bigger, uglier, angrier. And he knew that a gun set firmly against Lightly’s head would be his passport out of there.

  Without its occupants, Vince got the true hellishness of the place. It was a brick cellar, with the walls painted a dull rusty red. Everything was painted this colour, including all the furniture, which looked like all the stuff they couldn’t sell in the secondhand shop upstairs. At one end of the room was the bar, and to the side of that bar was a door, which looked uncharacteristically closed. Vince had never been in this dive before but he�
��d have betted pound notes for peanuts that this door was usually left ajar. He went over and opened it with ease.

  There was a bare brick passageway beyond, and Vince moved through it with the gun extended before him. To the left was another door, half open, exposing a toxic-looking toilet for catching dysentery on, and a small handbasin for contracting leprosy in. He moved further down the passageway that seemed to be looming into the black hole of a tunnel. Never a big fan of dark enclosed spaces that hid people who potentially wanted to kill you, as he edged forward his footsteps got increasingly timid. Further in, and the solid block of blackness ahead of him beat against his eyes. He half expected to hear a whistle and then see the bright headlights of a train getting bigger and bigger as it hurtled towards him.

  He gingerly tapped away with his foot as if he might be at the edge of a precipice. He then felt a drop of a good . . . couple of inches, and stepped down into what he thought must be the widening expanse of another room beyond. Vince’s eyes adjusted enough for him to get some vague sense of his surroundings. His hand groped the wall alongside the entrance to this new room, and, on the black coalface it resembled, he struck gold – the light switch.

  On the throwing of the switch he was faced with a wall of furniture. Stacks of chairs and tables and cupboards and wardrobes and filing cabinets, all piled up almost to the ceiling. This was obviously a storage room, or a burial ground, for the shop upstairs: a final resting place for all the old crap they couldn’t sell. And somewhere amid its wreckage, Vince reckoned, was Tyrell Lightly. A nice little hiding place, a needle in a haystack. Vince cocked the .38.

  ‘There’s only one way out, Lightly, so let’s get it over and done with, eh?’

  Vince thought he heard the creak of wood nearby, something moving about, and it wasn’t woodworm. But he didn’t hear the words I surrender or see a white flag poking out from the top of the pile of furniture. So he took aim and sank his first slug into the centre of the heap. The shot echoed around the cavernous room.

  ‘Coming out now?’

  It wasn’t so much a creak from the pile of furniture this time, more of a groan, as though it was a big sentient creature and Vince had just shot it in the gut. And there was movement too. He detected a slight swaying at the peak. But not so much as a squeak emerged from the real living organism hidden in its bowels.

  Two more shots: one to the left of centre, one to the right. More groans from the woodpile that was now visibly shaking, and looked for all the world as if it had had enough and was about to up sticks and march on out of the place. But it wasn’t just the furniture that was making noises now. There was heavy breathing, then panting like a dog, a whinnying sound that grew and grew until it could be held no more and burst forth into a full-throttled cry of pain.

  Then the furniture pile that had taken three slugs finally collapsed and came crashing down. Vince’s first reaction was to dive to the ground and make himself as small as possible as the whole shebang came tumbling down. It sounded a lot worse than it was, and he felt the first few bumps, but nothing major. It was like diving under the weight of a crashing wave, where all the mayhem was above.

  But he did feel the footfalls of someone scampering over him. And he did feel a warm liquid drip down on to his cheek. He climbed out of the pile.

  Once the dust had settled – and there was dust, eye-clogging, choking and coughing spitfuls of the stuff – he saw that the gun was no longer in his hand and Tyrell Lightly was no longer in the room. And there was a banging noise from outside – the sound of the cellar door being kicked in.

  Vince made his way back through the darkness of the tunnel and into the light of the club itself. There were shiny studs of fresh blood against the dull red of the floor. He saw Tyrell Lightly crawling up the stairs. His eyes were wide open, his mouth was gaping, his nostrils flared, the combination forming perfectly rounded circles all over his face. His expression was that of a contortionist trying to turn his face inside out. And Vince saw why, and winced himself, for the bullet wound was located around the man’s crutch.

  Tyrell Lightly was already halfway up the stairs as Vince grabbed him by the scruff of his purple velvet collar. He was about to drag him downstairs and throw him on to the pool table when the door burst open and half a ton of Brother Xs appeared at the entrance.

  Michael X surveyed the scene, and saw Vince with his hands round the throat of Tyrell Lightly. Vince shook his head, because the scenario all seemed dreadfully familiar. He was half expecting to see the big black hooker rise up from the floor and smack him right in the mouth. It never happened.

  Instead, Michael X added a new twist, by producing a sawn-off shotgun from the inside of his black leather coat. Then, without ceremony or commentary, he took aim and fired off a shot.

  CHAPTER 48

  With a clothes brush in his hand, Vince stood before a full-length mirror in his bedroom, giving the pitch-black dinner jacket he was wearing the once-over. He looked the part, although he wasn’t certain what the part would be. But he knew it was his last roll of the dice, as far as this case was concerned, and he couldn’t think of a more apt place to roll it in than at the Montcler club.

  When the intercom buzzed, he looked at his watch and saw that his ‘date’ was an hour early. No date in the history of the world has ever been an hour early. It was Mac, though, and Vince buzzed him up. Then he paced the hallway, waiting. It wasn’t like Mac to pay social calls on a Saturday night, and he’d never even been to his flat. When they did meet up outside office hours, it was usually somewhere neutral like the pub. But Vince had to remind himself that, now he was a civilian, the normal rules didn’t apply.

  Mac looked grave. He did grave very well. With his pipe in his mouth, his penchant for grey flannel and the monochrome professorial look, he always had that air of late forties post-war austerity about him. He was definitely pre-rock and roll. There were no colourful frivolities about him, and he looked especially pre-Elvis tonight. He turned down the offer of a drink, and even of having his coat taken, and headed straight into the living room. There he did the very thing that Vince had been doing before he answered the door – he paced. Mac paced like a pro. There was a real determination in his pacing that made Vince look like a dilettante. He paced up and down on the Moroccan rug in the middle of the room. Vince feared for its voluptuous nap, which looked as if it was going to be trodden into the ground and reduced to tarmac.

  ‘What’s wrong, Mac?’

  ‘Two days ago a body was found on the sidings of the railway tracks going up to Wembley Central. Cause of death was immolation, they think.’

  ‘Wouldn’t they know for sure?’

  ‘The body was in a sack, and burned almost to a cinder. But there were puncture marks and deep cuts all over him. He was partially flayed, and he’d been castrated. Buckshot was found in his lower abdomen. Any one of those injuries could have killed him.’

  ‘Dental records?’

  ‘Very distinctive. Half his teeth had been removed. Worth their weight in gold if you get my drift?’

  Vince got his drift, but still wasn’t volunteering. He looked at Mac with a gaze open to interpretation. Sort of blank, sort of knowing, sort of goading.

  Mac got the goading part loud and clear, and said: ‘Last Sunday you were spotted in Notting Hill, running all over the place asking for Tyrell Lightly. You own a Colt .38?’

  Dry as you like, Vince responded, ‘Give me a minute and I’ll check my receipts. Why do you ask?’

  ‘Because, along with all the other possible causes of death, they found a .38 slug in him.’

  ‘You think I did that, Mac?’

  ‘I think someone did. And I think you know who.’

  Vince shot back with: ‘So I’m an accessory to torturing and murder?’

  ‘Well, let’s put it this way, I think you know a lot more about it than me and the rest of the chumps down in Scotland Yard.’

  And Vince did. A lot more.

  Michael X had tak
en aim. His target was laid out for him: the expanding mass of red oozing from Tyrell Lightly’s crutch area. And by the time Michael X had aimed the gun, Vince was pretty much using Lightly as a human shield. A cowardly act? The only other option was to put himself in front of Lightly, thus well and truly in the line of fire. You got medals for that kind of bravery, and one day Vince would like to step up on the podium and collect one. It’s what coppers dreamed of, it’s what most decent-minded people dreamed of, doing the right thing and getting a medal pinned on your chest for doing it. But not for Tyrell Lightly.

  In the split seconds he had available, Vince had weighed it up and made a judgement call; and there was no way in the wide, wide world of unlikely scenarios that he was ever going to take a bullet for that lowlife. Vince was then pushed out of the way as about ten of the Brothers X clambered down the stairs and proceeded to jump all over Tyrell Lightly. When he was sufficiently flattened, they scraped the battered bantamweight gangster off the floor and on to the pool table. A blue-baize pool table that was about to run red and become an operating table. Already Tyrell Lightly looked as if he’d just had a bucket of blood and offal dropped into his lap. It was only after Michael X had taken off his leather jacket and rolled up his sleeves and had the thin paring knife in his hand that he remembered he was in the presence of one of Her Majesty’s police officers. Michael X said something about protecting his people and dispensing justice.

  Vince looked at the butchery on the pool table (true to the rules of 8-ball, Michael X nominated the pockets they’d be going in) and realized it was too late to save Tyrell Lightly. His quick little eyes were already glazing over with death. A death Vince knew deep down he was complicit in; a death he had let them get on with. And, more importantly, a death he didn’t think would be discovered. Fuck! Just why the Morons X decided to leave the body to be discovered on a railway siding was anyone’s guess . . .