‘I don’t know who did it, Mac.’
Mac expelled, even for him, a ludicrously protracted ‘Mmmmmm’ before he said, ‘I wish you’d given that a little more thought before you answered. Because right now it doesn’t feel like I’m talking to a colleague. A partner. Or even a detective in the Metropolitan Police Force.’
‘Right now I don’t have a badge.’
‘You forced their hand, and you know it.’
There was a pause as Vince searched for an argument. But what was the point? He knew that Mac knew it as well as he did, so he let the silence serve its purpose.
Mac said, ‘You can get the badge back. It’s not over.’
‘So what do they want?’
‘They want Michael de Freitas. All this Malcolm X Black Power stuff getting exported from across the pond is making people nervous. To them it stinks of communism.’
‘Revolution?’ said Vince, with a snort of derision. ‘Come on, Mac, Mikey de Freitas, whatever he chooses to call himself, is no Malcolm X. And even if he was, look what happened to him. What killed Tyrell Lightly was good old-fashioned gangster stuff. I heard Lightly was going it alone. He got sick of taking orders off Michael X and dressing up like a boy scout. He wanted to wear his flash suits, deal his own drugs and cut up hookers. He paid the price.’
‘Any other rumours about him?
‘That’s all I heard.’
‘You heard a lot. What were you doing in Notting Hill last Sunday, anyway?’
‘Isabel Saxmore-Blaine wanted to contact Cecilia Jones. Her family wants to make reparations to the Jones family.’
‘Throw some money at them, eh?’
‘What’s more crass, Mac, for them to do that or for them not to do that?’
‘Why come to you? Isabel Saxmore-Blaine’s father is in good with the Commissioner. I’m sure the correct arrangements could have been made.’ But before Vince could answer, Mac expelled a protracted ‘Ahhh’ of enlightenment. He then looked Vince up and down, as if noticing him in the dinner jacket for the first time. ‘Going up in the world, Vincent. You weren’t kidding, were you?’
‘About what?’
‘Eaton Square. When you first copped an eyeful of Beresford’s house. You said you’d marry into money and—’
‘And you’d be my butler? Yeah, I remember.’
‘And now you’re all dressed up and doing the town. Maybe you’re more suited to that lifestyle than being a copper? A goodlooking, smart young feller like you gets plenty of opportunities, so be a fool not to take them, no? Maybe I’ll read all about it in the society pages.’
Vince didn’t answer. Instead he watched as Mac’s eyes narrowed on him. It was a look of reappraisal and the eyeing up of a potential new adversary. It made Vince feel sick.
‘You didn’t tell me where you’re going tonight, Vincent?’
‘No, I didn’t.’
‘I’ll see myself out.’
Once Mac was gone, Vince took his place on the Moroccan rug for some pacing. Exhausted, he then slumped down on the sofa, hands in pockets. He felt a growing sense of unease after the older detective’s visit. The easy friendship that had always passed between them had ebbed and flowed, but on the whole it was a constant. It was a back covered, a hand given, a trust upheld. It was built on solid mutual respect. And now it seemed fraught with betrayal and secrets and lies.
The phone rang.
‘Are you ready?’
‘I’m ready.’
CHAPTER 49
The Montcler Ball, held for its members and their guests, was only in its second year but had already established itself as the hottest ticket in town. And one of the most expensive. All the proceeds went to charity, a charity of James Asprey’s choosing. The charity benefiting this year, as indeed it did last year, was a wildlife fund and game reserve in Africa that was devoted to the conservation of rare breeds. The reserve was also contractually obligated to provide Asprey’s private zoo with healthy animals. For Asprey, charity began at home. When a society journalist had noted that the Montcler Ball’s charitable donations revolved around Asprey’s interest in stocking his zoo, the scribe got sent a yak turd through the post.
Vince picked Isabel up, and off to the ball they went. She wasn’t wearing a normal ball gown, because this wasn’t a normal ball. It was a fancy-dress and masked ball. The ladies especially were encouraged to be inventive, and the fanciest-dressed of them would receive a prize. The theme was beasts of the fields and birds of the sky. Last year the theme had been pirates. Asprey loved pirates almost as much as he loved animals. He saw an affinity with his set and the likes of Blackbeard, Captain Kidd and Henry Morgan. High-risk buccaneering business types. Vince thought the affinity was tenuous, since asset-stripping was hardly the same as swinging through the yardarm with a cutlass gripped in your teeth. And Isabel dismissed it altogether as a tiresome conceit since, compared to Vince’s profession, and his penchant for punching people and kicking down doors, they were mostly overindulged pussycats. Vince took the backhanded compliment in good grace.
And, talking of pussycats, Isabel had of course come dressed as one. In an all-in-one black satin catsuit, with thigh-high patentleather boots fitted with a spiked contortionist’s heel that elevated her to a good six foot. She wore an elaborate hooded cowl over her head with pointed pussycat ears. Her lips were painted a deep and bloody red. Her nails had been dipped in the same bloody colour, which gave the effect that she had just feasted and left the butchered carcass lying on the green of Berkeley Square.
Vince’s mask was that of a wolf. He’d wanted a monkey mask to go with the monkey suit, but it was Isabel who had picked it, since she considered Vince to be the archetypal wolf at the door. Although he could just as well have been an albatross. Either way, a masked ball was, quite literally, the perfect cover. Because there was no other way Vince and Isabel would have gained entry into the club. The only reason she had the invites tucked in her black patent-leather clutch bag was because it wasn’t her name on the card. It was the name of an acquaintance: a female acquaintance who hated Asprey (although he didn’t know it, because she had kept it secret), and had been surreptitiously looking for a way to bring scandal, or worse, to his door ever since her father had lost everything at Asprey’s gaming tables. So when Isabel explained the situation and her intentions, the woman was more than happy to give up her ticket.
Since Beresford’s funeral, the remaining Montcler set had laid low. James Asprey himself had been in Africa setting up his wildlife foundation and collecting animals for his expanding zoo. Simon Goldsachs had been spending time between his home in Paris and his newly furbished apartment in New York (Goldsachs was keen to conquer America and had been making his presence felt on Wall Street; he’d already started buying up stocks of a well-known tyre company and had consequently found himself seated before a Senate committee looking into his ‘hostile’ practices). Lord Lucan, in light of his involvement in the case, had for once warranted his nickname and been lucky enough to escape a public scandal, but privately was said to be desperately trying to keep hold of his marriage and his money, both of which meant staying away from the gaming tables. Guy Ruley was said to be relocating his engineering and other business interests abroad, and selling up his country pile in Buckinghamshire.
But, for Vince, the most important member of the set would be there tonight: Nicky DeVane. On a photo assignment for Vogue magazine on the private Caribbean island of Mustique, and still reeling from the scandal, he had decided to stay there until things had cooled down. And now he was back, lured by an invite to the Montcler masked ball. DeVane, who was still labouring under the delusion that his friendship with Isabel was a cloudless one, had called her to say that he was back in town. She had then called Vince. She didn’t view this as a betrayal of her old best friend, because she no longer considered Nicky DeVane as her old best friend. After meeting up with Cecilia Jones and the good women of the congregation of St James’s, things had changed in her wor
ld. They had offered forgiveness not only for her but also for her brother. It was a generosity of spirit that had shone an uncompromising light over her life and all those who inhabited it.
And Vince, in keeping with the wild animal theme of the party, had already identified Nicky DeVane as the runt of the Montcler litter. And in a move that James Asprey would himself have fully understood and appreciated, Vince intended to stalk him, separate him from the pack, and then pick him off.
Arriving at the Berkeley Square building, the animals came into the Montcler club two by two. They were the finest, strongest, noblest of their breed. Whilst the wolf mask completely covered the top half of his face, Vince had never held much faith in disguises. Masks might work in comic books, but Vince reckoned that Leonard, the perennially dinner-jacketed gatekeeper of the Montcler, didn’t bother to read comic books. He read cards and rolls of the dice, he read eyes, twitches, tics, demeanours and the signs on people’s faces, and he’d have seen through their disguises in a hot second. So they avoided Leonard and went down to the basement entrance of Jezebel’s, where tickets were taken with a less suspicious scrutiny.
Vince and Isabel had a quick prowl around the nightclub. The fancy-dress party was in full swing down there, too. Most of the men’s outfits were monkey suits and masks – tigers, lions, gorillas, and more tigers, more lions. All big cats and primate alpha kings. Let’s face it, no one wanted to turn up as a gazelle or a wildebeest – which was just asking for trouble. But if Isabel thought she was going to waltz off with first prize, she was in for some stiff competition – it was a jungle out there. And it provided the perfect opportunity for the ladies to get out their furs, furs of every description: the A to Z of alpaca to zebra – and not forgetting the 101 dalmatians. And if they weren’t in furs, they were in a full plumage of feathers: Day-Glo birds of paradise, petrolblue preening peacocks, black and white penguins. Isabel sniffed around the place, but couldn’t sniff out the scent of Nicky DeVane and the rest of his pack. So Vince and Isabel made their way over to the cast-iron spiral stairs situated behind the ladies’ cloakroom that linked Jezebel’s nightclub to the gambling club upstairs.
It was more of the same upstairs – lots more. The waiters were all black guys dressed up as Zulu warriors. So authentically were their costumes and so warrior-like was their demeanour that, when Vince swiped a glass of champagne for Isabel off one of them and asked where he was from, he was surprised to hear, in dulcet tones, that he hailed from Tulse Hill.
In the grand saloon, a fifteen-piece band played swing and hotsy-totsy jazz tunes, with a line of bongo players in the front row beating out a jungle rhythm. The few men who had broken ranks with the monkey suits were all wearing Safari khakis and pith helmets. Vince half expected to see a Berkeley Square beefcake in a skimpy Johnny Weissmuller chamois loincloth. Or maybe, he thought, that was to be James Asprey’s big entrance: the ape man – the great white king of the jungle, swinging in on a vine from the balcony. Nothing doing. Not even a Doctor Dolittle.
At a squeeze on his shoulder, he glanced round to see Isabel poised at his side. She was just so implausibly and off-the-scale sexy that, whatever the outcome of tonight, kitted up in that outfit, this evening was never going to be a waste of time. It would always be eminently memorable, and something to play back in his mind on those cold and lonely nights.
‘Nicky’s here,’ she purred in his ear. She directed Vince’s gaze towards the entrance, and there he was, flanked by the two models Vince had seen him with the first time he’d visited the Beak Street studio. Isabel explained how they were always on show when Nicky DeVane wanted to attend an event and impress others. The taller the better, and one on each arm, to bookend the dapper snapper. He suited the sobriquet tonight, garbed up to the nines in a gold lamé suit with black leopard spots expertly stitched on to it and trimmed with ocelot fur – as was the mask he was wearing.
His Praetorian guard of praying-mantis models, with their bulging eyes and stick-thin elongated limbs, were not however dressed as predatory insects. They too were both on the feline fancy-dress tip: one-piece catsuits, just like Isabel. Vince saw Isabel’s fur bristle at the sight of them, as if her claws were drawn. But, as far as he was concerned, it was no contest. Isabel had the curves, while they just looked like a pair of mangy moggies in desperate need of a good feed.
Vince and Isabel kept their distance and watched as DeVane launched himself into the room on a propellant of privilege and gleaming bon-vivant confidence. He went about doing the rounds of hail-fellow-well-met handshakes and noisy theatrical kisses. But Vince noted that the reception he was getting was somewhat cool, and his mask may have been slipping. A couple of feathered birds DeVane clearly knew flew right past him without offering him a peck. A pride of lions gave him a swerve when he offered his paw. Vince then saw the unmistakable white dinner jacket of Leonard approach DeVane, who was by now looking uncertain and diffident. Leonard didn’t assuage his fears. Wearing a simple and skimpy Zorro-esque black mask, and looking more like a bank robber than a masked-baller, the professional meeter and greeter glared at the little guy in the lamé suit, and crooked a finger indicating for him to follow. The blood drained from DeVane’s face. He made his excuses to the two models, and trailed off after Leonard up the grand staircase.
Vince said to Isabel, ‘Why don’t you go down to Jezebel’s, and I’ll meet you there later?’
‘Do I have to? I’m rather enjoying this. I’m imagining we’re Nick and Nora Charles.’
‘Not in that rig, you’re not. One of the points of going undercover is not to be noticed, and you’re far too eye-catching for that.’
It was true, everyone was looking at her. All the men thought they recognized her, because all the men did recognize her. The fantasy life and sexual ideals of most men is a pretty slim volume, and Isabel Saxmore-Blaine, in a skin-tight catsuit and thigh-high boots, pretty much ticked most of the boxes most of the time. So, without complaint or question, puss-in-boots-galore high-tailed it back down the spiral staircase to Jezebel’s nightclub.
Vince followed the gold lamé suit up the stairs to the top floor, where Asprey had his office. Also located on this floor were the ‘drawing rooms’ for the more private games, away from the constant call of card and banque, and the chatter of the shoe being passed and chips being thrown in.
Vince sat down in one of the wing-backed green leather armchairs by the fireplace, where it provided him with a view of Asprey’s office. On the table in front of him was a pack of cards and an impressive-looking backgammon set inlaid with fruitwoods and ebony. Vince looked around the room, noticing every table had the same set-up. There was no such thing here as a quiet break away from the gaming tables, because every flat surface was a potential gaming table, ready to snaffle you up in adrenalin and debt.
Leonard had sat DeVane down at one of the three chairs gathered around a card table positioned in the antechamber just before Asprey’s office. DeVane was left there for a full ten minutes. As anxious and antsy as he looked, he didn’t get up to have a pace about, or even fetch himself a stiff drink. He obediently sat at the table, contrite and consumed with anxiety, like a naughty schoolboy who had been told to wait outside the headmaster’s door until a fitting punishment could be thought of and meted out.
‘Fancy a game, old boy?’
Vince realized an old silverback gorilla had just sat down opposite him. He weighed about 300 lb, was put together like a sumo, and huffed and puffed as he laid out the backgammon board in front of him.
‘Of course, no gambling tonight. Aspers is quite insistent. And if Aspers insists, we merely follow.’
Vince recognized this old silverback gorilla. The full-face furry gorilla mask he was wearing was now pulled up to his forehead, exposing the jowly countenance and whisky-river proboscis of Sir Peter Benson, the newspaper proprietor.
‘But what do you say to a pound a point, just for some interest? Sod the monkeys and lions! I puts me money on the human race when it
comes to charitable causes.’
‘Why not,’ said Vince with a wolfish grin. Not much of a backgammon player, just like he wasn’t much of a chess player. Steeped in philosophical and war-like strategic ponderings as the games were, he held them in much the same regard as he did snakes and ladders. What attracted Vince to this game was the fact that the old Fleet Street gorilla provided him with perfect cover. He just hoped that whatever happened would happen fast, for the silverback was a sedentary old beast who looked as though he could hardly put one gout-ridden foot in front of the other, but could move around a backgammon board in a fashion as swift and assured as a chimp up a tree. No sooner was the board laid out than one of the Montcler’s liveried footmen was at Sir Peter’s elbow, brimming his crystal tumbler with something aged and alcoholic from a silver-cuffed decanter. Sir Peter took it upon himself to start the game. He threw a three and a six.
Vince’s peripheral vision was taken up by what was going on in the antechamber. Two men had now come through. They weren’t wearing masks. They were wearing scowls. James Asprey and Simon Goldsachs.
The silverback threw a five and a four.
Asprey and Goldsachs sat down at the table opposite DeVane, and well and truly faced him down. Vince watched as the photographer’s slight frame got smaller and smaller in his chair, squirming, diminishing. You didn’t need to be a lip-reader to work out that DeVane was getting it in the ear, up the arse and just about in every other available orifice. And, all the time, James Asprey and Simon Goldsachs were taking turns to speak. And as one spoke, the other held DeVane gripped in a commanding glare. Vince was reminded of the interrogating double act of Philly Jacket and Kenny Block, a formidable pair who had it down cold. He was then reminded of the two mackintosh men, another cold and deadly double act. It seemed bad news was travelling in twos these days.
Gilded Edge, The Page 36