Gilded Edge, The

by Miller, Danny

  He went after Ruley, through the French windows and over the paved patio that looked as if it was full of people, but was in fact full of marbled classical statues, down a small sloping embankment, and on to the flat grassy lawn with its circle of landing lights. He felt the whirlwind of the helicopter blades hovering above him. Maybe it was this new sensory blast, but things before him became clearer, and his vision began to drift back into focus. He saw the helicopter wasn’t a commercial bird but a big, robust military type, maybe painted over in green camouflage or battle-ready grey. With two big rotors, one up front and one at the back, it was more than capable of carrying a platoon of men.

  Vince couldn’t see Guy Ruley, but he watched as the helicopter lowered itself, kicking up a minor tornado on the lawn, sending ants scurrying and worms tunnelling. He saw that the cast of night had now gone, dawn was happening and a carroty light was breaking through the morning mist.

  The negative in his vision was developing and a harrowing picture was emerging: the pilots in the cockpit of the helicopter were the mackintosh men. Vince stood transfixed, for they still held that power over him. Their image burned through him as he committed their faces to memory. He could now make out every feature. Kitted out as fly boys in multi-zipped jump suits they weren’t in their customary mackintoshes but Vince knew it was them; gut animal instinct told him so, and he could almost smell them. In a blink, one of the mackintosh men disappeared from view. Vince then saw what looked like a rope ladder being released from the side of the chopper.

  Guy Ruley shot out from the darkness beyond the circle of lights and ran towards the ladder, which he grabbed and began to scale. Vince, who was about twenty-five yards away, sprinted towards the ladder, and as it began to rise he also grabbed it. His hands just managed to get a grip on the second-to-last rung of the ladder before it took off out of reach, like the tail of a kite.

  The helicopter rose further and further, till they were now a good fifty feet above the ground. Vince tried to climb further up the rope ladder, or at least to get a firm footing on it. Because, somehow, he had ended up upside down, with his legs above him. He felt like one of those Olympic gymnasts doing an impossible and hernia-inducing routine on those suspended rope rings – but with the added obstacle of flying through the air, not having a mat to land on, and being totally useless at it anyway. Upside down, the blood was rushing to his head as he watched the ground and the circle of lights disappear and the broader sky loom into view. Using all his strength, and feeling every muscle and sinew in his body put in a shift, he tried to turn himself round on the rope ladder. Such was the gut- and groin-wrenching strain that he was sure his testicles had done a full retreat and were now lurking somewhere around his tonsils, steadfastly refusing to come down until their ‘master’ had sorted himself out. Vince did the boys proud, and managed to get himself facing in the right direction. With everything in place, he began to haul himself up the ladder, taking the rope rungs in scaling fistfuls.

  Vince had one objective only: to get into that helicopter, get at the mackintosh men and make the glass cockpit run red like an open bottle of ketchup in the spin cycle of a washing machine . . . then land the helicopter. Vince hadn’t thought it through properly yet; he was still too busy hanging on for dear life as the chopper pitched this way and that in a concerted attempt to ditch him. But, despite its best efforts, he held firm.

  Vince wasn’t even thinking about Guy Ruley now, who was just an obstacle that stood between him and his real quarry – the mackintosh men. But he was wrong to not think of Guy Ruley, because Guy Ruley was definitely thinking of him.

  Ruley yelled out: ‘Treadwell!’

  Vince looked up to see Ruley positioned near the top of the ladder. Again with that white toothy grin behind the barrel of a gun. The same as it was in Chuckers, but now they were well and truly off the ground, eighty feet off it and counting . . . ninety . . . ninety-five . . . one hundred . . .

  From being able to see practically nothing, Vince was now able to see everything, acutely and relentlessly. The black hole of the gun barrel was expanding, and like all black holes it was sucking everything into it. Then there was the big bang that sent the bullet on its way, and plummeting down towards its target: Vince’s head. As it took its explosive trajectory and tore into his flesh, Vince felt the initial searing pain and felt the bullet lodge in his arm. The left arm to be precise, the left bicep to be even more precise. A bullet wound is always a very precise thing, and Vince was feeling every scintilla of it: its depth, its breadth, its sheer unbelievable pain. His first reflex was to do what Guy Ruley wanted him to do, and let go of the ladder. The second reflex overrode the first though: to hang on for the ride and don’t die.

  The helicopter had settled at around two hundred feet, but it was clear that it wasn’t going anywhere until it had dropped its unwanted cargo. Vince saw one of the mackintosh men crouching in the hold.

  And then he heard the clarion call: ‘Kill him! Kill him!’

  Guy Ruley had stopped smiling. But he hadn’t stopped aiming. And with the mackintosh man’s barked instructions stiffening his resolve, this time he looked fully adjusted to his role of executioner, and fully engaged and locked on to the target dangling beneath him. And the dangling target realized, pointlessly, and far too late, that he should have jumped when he had the chance. Forty feet was always going to be better than a hundred. He tried to kick some life into the rope ladder, get some swing into it so he wasn’t any longer such a sitting target. But nothing moved: it and he remained stubbornly un-pendulum-like. He felt like a big fat fresh conker on the end of a piece of string, waiting to get smashed to pieces by the gnarled old champion that had been soaked in vinegar then stored in the airing cupboard for the last year before being brought into the school playground—

  Bang!

  The gunshot cut through everything. Time slowed, the helicopter engine stopped, and the propellers froze as the dead body fell through the air and hit the ground with a wince-inducing thud.

  Vince looked down to see Guy Ruley spread out on the lawn below him.

  Illuminated by the ring of lights, he was centre-stage, cutting a tragic figure. For his body lay chest down, but his head, attached to its broken neck, was facing in the opposite direction and looking straight up at Vince. But Guy Ruley was dead before he hit the deck and got all twisted out of shape. He had a bullet through his eye.

  Vince looked around and saw Isabel Saxmore-Blaine just outside the ring of lights. She was still standing in the shooting position, the gun wrapped in both hands and extended upwards. Encased in the catsuit, she looked a powerful and lethal presence. The huntress, the crack shot. All in black, like a shapely coffin.

  Vince thought he heard her shout ‘Jump’, but couldn’t be sure. Then his view of Isabel was suddenly swiped away as the helicopter took to life again, and lunged at an alarming angle before it began a quickening ascent. Battling the sudden G force, Vince looked up and saw that the mackintosh man was no longer crouched in the hold. To Vince, the solid rope ladder now felt like a length of spindly thread as the helicopter dragged him through the firmament. It was not so much like holding a tiger by the tail as a fire-breathing dragon that was now in full flight and soaring towards the heavens. All around him was sky, pure blue sky. Then the helicopter changed direction again, and swooped and plunged towards the ground before straightening itself out.

  Vince now saw Chuckers, its hard ochreous brick getting closer and closer and closer . . . and before he knew it, he was dancing over the rooftop of the wannabe great house. The chopper had lowered itself enough for Vince to scrape along the roof of the house and, by their reckoning, be dislodged by one of the many obstacles in his path. But Vince held on, using his legs as shock absorbers to kick himself away from the bunched chimney stacks, the pointed arches, the turrets and towers with their cherubs and gargoyles and satyrs. And soon the tiles were falling freely as Vince’s feet and arse skimmed along the roof, surfed the mighty rising and
falling pediments, and twanged the spiky TV aerials and assorted rusty weathervanes.

  The helicopter, after traversing the full length of the roof – twice – dropped down towards the long terraced greenhouses at one side of the house. As the chopper slowed to a hovering stop, Vince grabbed his chance with both hands and began to scale the rope ladder. Battered and bruised though his legs now were from crashing into and kicking away the assorted roof paraphernalia, they felt as energized as Jesse Owens’ in ’36, as Vince took the ladder two rungs at a time. Reaching the top, he gripped the lip of the hold.

  He was just about to haul himself further into the belly of the chopper when he was met with the sun-mottled face of a white man from a hot climate, a pair of ruthlessly cold blue eyes, and the words: ‘Goodbye, friend.’

  Vince felt the rope ladder fall away, and the heel of a thickly treaded army boot stamp down on the crown of his head. Then his eyes closed as gravity did its thing, and he fell backwards and . . .

  down

  down

  down

  down

  down

  down

  Crash!

  EPILOGUE

  Vince opened the door to Mac. Before the older detective had stepped over the threshold, he gave Vince the once-over, looking approvingly at his suit. It was grey flannel and it belonged to Mac. He’d lent it to Vince for the disciplinary hearing. Mac had quoted: ‘In the words of Mark Twain, “Clothes make the man”.’

  ‘The rest of that bon mot is, “naked people have little or no influence in society”. I do have suits of my own, Mac.’

  The two men made their way into the living room.

  ‘Trust me, Vincent, you turn up at the hearing wearing one of your sharkskin jobs and looking better dressed than that lot, and you may as well turn up in the buff. They’ll suspect everything they’ve heard about you is true.’

  Either the suit was making him itch, or Vince was just uncomfortable with the whole premise of trying to be someone he wasn’t – namely, Mac. Vince clearly didn’t hold with Mac’s theory; he saw it as a self-defeating gesture, like donning sackcloth, a sign of humility and guilt. But he kept shtum, didn’t want to hurt Mac’s feelings. And if it made the older detective happy, then he could suffer the indignity of grey flannel for a couple of hours.

  In the living room, Mac took his seat in the high-backed chair and lit the pipe that was already plugged into his mouth. Vince remained standing, pacing the floor and kicking up imaginary divots on the Moroccan rug.

  ‘Relax, Vincent, and take a seat. You look like you’ve got ants in your pants,’ said Mac, with a wicked grin plastered across his mouth that made the pipe wobble up and down.

  ‘Very funny.’

  Vince didn’t have ants in his pants, but he did have glass in his arse. And, even though it had been a couple of weeks since he’d had it removed, he still couldn’t sit comfortably, not without a big billowy cushion planted under his backside.

  As the mackintosh man had hissed ‘Goodbye, friend’ and kicked him away from the helicopter, Vince had plummeted about thirty feet down and crashed through the roof of the greenhouse. His fall was finally met by the relatively soft landing of a wooden trestle table holding a thick earthy bed containing Rumohra adiantiformis, to give them their Latin botanical name – or ferns to the layman.

  The mackintosh men had made their escape (a temporary reprieve, he’d assured himself). The only men who knew about the Gilded Edge, or at least had admitted its existence to Vince, were now dead. Nicky DeVane had died that same night. His death was similar to that of both his ‘friends’. Like Beresford, he had seemingly died by his own hand. And like Guy Ruley, he took a drop from the end of a rope. But there were no bullets in the head for the dapper snapper. Nicky DeVane had hanged himself in his own studio, found dangling from one of its white beams in his gold lamé suit.

  The young bartender at the Criterion had told the police how two men wearing dinner jackets and masks, stating they were friends of DeVane’s, and obviously fresh from the Montcler Ball, had come into the bar and taken him home. No one knew who they were, or could identify them. Some said rhinos, some said hippos. Whilst the official verdict was suicide, Vince thought otherwise. The mackintosh men were certainly his prime suspects, with their dinner jackets hidden under the military jumpsuits. Vince suspected that they had been present at the Montcler masked ball, it being perfect cover for them just as it had been for him.

  Vince knew that the dapper snapper was too wasted to kill himself that night – and also too short. He wasn’t capable of throwing a rope over the high beam to hang himself. But his death was fitting, and maybe inevitable. In the fabled ‘Suicide Stakes’, Vince didn’t know what odds James ‘Aspers’ Asprey would have fixed on his old friend Nicky DeVane, but he reckoned they were short. And, after the Montcler Ball, he was probably odds-on favourite for the drop. Vince had witnessed it himself, the big cats, Aspers and Goldsachs, mauling the little man, tearing him limb from limb. Nicky DeVane was already dead in the eyes of the Montcler set, the set that held sway over London’s high society. And for Nicky DeVane, to belong was everything, to be ostracized was oblivion.

  Mac looked at his watch – time to go. He stood up and asked Vince, ‘You ready?’

  Vince shot his cuffs, gave a nod, and they headed towards the door. Before they were out of the living room, Mac’s eye caught the glinting cobra rising up in its stand by the record player, and asked: ‘Can you play that thing?’

  The alto sax had been delivered to Vince’s flat two days ago. It was a gift from Isabel Saxmore-Blaine. It was her parting gift, before upping sticks and going to New York. She was leaving London to escape her new-found notoriety, or, as the newspapers’ salacious headlines had described her: ‘The crack shot aristo-cat with the purr-fect pedigree and nine lives, who saved a Scotland Yard detective’s life.’

  Unwanted as her new fame was, it made her an intriguing party guest, and the invites poured in. She had moved from social pariah to must-have guest faster than a bullet from a gun. None of this interested Isabel, apart from one offer of a fresh opportunity to kick-start her career in journalism. A certain ‘happening’ NYC pop artist, who had previously made the mundane soup can such a prized and iconic image, wanted to do her portrait – a silk screen of her in her now trademark outfit of the catsuit. He had also offered her a job editing a new arts and celebrity magazine he planned on launching. Art and celebrity and death seemed to be becoming irreversibly entwined in this artist’s aesthetic. And, right now, Isabel Saxmore-Blaine, swathed in black like some avenging angel, seemed to encapsulate the whole vibe. The girl was IT.

  Isabel said that she’d send Vince a signed original of the screen print, to replace the broken painting he still had leaning against his wall. Vince told Isabel that the indelible image of her, in and out of the catsuit, was now as much part of him as his right hand. Was he sad to see her go? Like he’d reasoned when he first met her, there was something immensely unknowable about Isabel Saxmore-Blaine. He reckoned that the dreamtime they’d spent together was as close as he would ever get to her, and she would always remain the great unknowable. But they would meet again, he was sure. Vince knew he’d be seeing New York City one day. It was on his to-do list, because it was his kind of town, as much as it was anyone’s kind of town who possessed a pulse and a dislike for grey flannel.

  Before they left the flat, Vince answered Mac’s last question. He picked up the alto sax and blew a note. Just the one. But as brief as it was, what a sweet, sweet sound it made.

  ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

  While I consider this book to be an unalloyed work of fiction, some of the characters who make an appearance are, or were, real. And a strand of this story is based on some events that may or may not have happened – allegedly.

  These were some of the books and TV programmes I enjoyed for my extensive research, which I took extensive liberties with, and then played hard and fast with the facts: The Gamblers by John Pearson
(Arrow); Michael X by John L. Williams (Century); Billy Hill: Godfather of London by Wesley Clarkson (Pennant Books); The Real Casino Royale, a Channel 4 documentary based on The Hustlers by Douglas Thompson (Pan); The Mayfair Set, a BBC documentary by Adam Curtis.

  And finally, many thanks to Peter Lavery for his edits and encouragement.