When Bobbie’s eyes opened, the redness had disappeared – seemingly cleansed under the blue light of the moon.
‘No, a small village in the New Forest. Before he retired, my father was the local GP, and my mother taught at the local school. We lived in a house just outside the village, surrounded by woods and fields. Father used to grow all his own vegetables. My mother kept horses, so my brother and I were riding almost as soon as we could walk. We had two dogs, a pair of black Labradors.’
Vince nodded solemnly, then commented, ‘It sounds … idyllic?’
Bobbie sat up and wrapped her arms protectively around her knees. She hadn’t noticed the question mark in his tone.
‘It really was. I was lucky to have such parents. Those were the happiest times of my life, I think.’
Vince retrieved his jacket and draped it around her shoulders. ‘Why did you come to Brighton, then? Why not London? That’s usually the first port of call.’
‘I did live in London for a few years. But there’s something about the sea, I guess. I just felt drawn to it.’
‘How do they feel about you being with Jack Regent?’
‘Who?’
‘Your parents.’
The dreamy melancholy look she had worn whilst talking about her childhood was suddenly transformed into a challenging glare. It was accompanied by a snide, pointed reply. ‘Oh dear, you really are a policeman, aren’t you? Really just can’t help yourself.’
This broke the spell of the moonlight and the music, and brought Vince sharply back into focus. ‘Well, Jack Regent isn’t exactly ideal son-in-law material. Just wondering how two such pillars of the community might feel about their daughter shacking up with a known killer.’
The clipped tones intensified, becoming positively haughty, and playing the class card for all it was worth. ‘My parents are educated people, Mr Treadwell. They were both born and bred in London, and they met at Cambridge. Just because they now reside in the provinces doesn’t mean they hold provincial viewpoints. They want me to experience life and make the most of my talent.’
‘So where does Jack Regent fit in with your talent?’
She didn’t answer.
‘I guess he knows a lot of useful people. Like Dickie Eton?’
She sounded not so much angry as petulant. ‘What have you got against Dickie? And where’s the proof that Jack kills people? You don’t know him … Those are just rumours that people put around. People can’t kill people and get away with it.’
‘Not in the land of horses munching in the stable and a pair of black Labs pissing on the vegetable patch, no.’
Now she was angry. She stood up suddenly, threw his jacket off her shoulders, and said, ‘Fuck off!’
It was the first time he’d heard her swear, and he decided she was good at it.
‘I want to go home,’ she said.
‘Where is that exactly?’ Vince asked, standing up. ‘The New Forest?’
And then the soundtrack changed. The music was drowned out by the sound of engines. Heavy engines from ton-up motorbikes making their way down the ramp towards the neat-suited and desert-booted sharpshooters listening to their sweet soul music. Not to Eddie Cochran – and that was the problem.
Vince stood up when he heard the first glass smashing. He was about to say ‘Let’s get out of here’ when already they were on him.
It was happening so fast that Vince couldn’t really get a line on them. They were indistinct danger, but he reckoned there were three of them. Not Mods, not Rockers, not even kids. The way they moved, they looked like professional muscle, looked like they knew what they were doing. The first that came at him wielded a cosh.
He swung, Vince ducked it, and threw his first punch. It connected, right in the gut, winding Cosh Boy, doubling him up. Attendant screams from Bobbie on the sidelines. Vince swung up again, and his fist smashed Cosh Boy on the jaw. He could feel teeth give way, and then Cosh Boy was down. Vince followed it through and stamped on his head. Cosh Boy was effectively done.
Then came number two, who was shorter, stockier and fireplug fast. Vince couldn’t see his face because his head was down and aimed like a bullet into his stomach. The bull-like charge put Vince on his back, and Stocky was immediately on top of him. Vince knew that one blow from the man’s balled fist would be like an anvil dropping on him, so the Queensberry Rules were quickly ditched. Vince put his right hand up to Stocky’s face and gouged his eye. Stocky grabbed at Vince’s hand and reeled backwards. Vince slid his left hand down to his attacker’s crotch and squeezed hard. On this fresh assault Stocky discharged a squeal. Stocky now had some painful choices to make, as Vince’s thumb pitilessly worked away at his eye socket. He rolled away, grabbing simultaneously at his aching balls – both pairs of them.
The screams from Bobbie grew louder. Vince looked up to see number three, a tall skinny fellow with crinkly blond hair, had grabbed hold of her and had a knife to her throat.
Vince shouted, more in hope than expectation, ‘Drop the knife and let her go!’
The skinny man smirked and tightened his grip on her.
Stocky got up and started to go over towards Skinny. Vince pounced, tackling him around the legs and propelling him to the ground. Unfortunately for him, Stocky fell forward into the bonfire. With Vince now on top of him, his face was forced down into the burning cinders. Stocky screamed, he choked, he burned. Vince lifted the man’s face out of the glowing embers, and registered that it was a mess. Red, blistered and powdered in grey ash, red-hot pebbles stuck to his face and blackened like leaches.
Bobbie screamed even louder. The blond skinny fellow meanwhile assumed the facial expression of a scream, but nothing came out.
‘Let her go!’ yelled Vince, with higher expectations this time around.
Skinny stood transfixed, with the knife still at Bobbie’s throat, but Vince could sense that his stomach for the fight was waning.
‘Per … per … please …’ coughed and spluttered Stocky, through lips that looked as if they’d been freshly gummed together.
Skinny finally had enough. He let go of Bobbie but kept hold of the knife. One out of two was not bad, thought Vince, standing up.
Bobbie ran over to him. She stood staring down at Stocky, who was still writhing on the hot stones in voiceless pain. She then slowly backed away.
Vince’s eyes were totally fixed on Bobbie, who couldn’t seem to look away from him. He moved towards her and she stopped retreating. Her expression gradually changed, her repulsion at the sight of the burnt man melting away. She now wore the hint of a smile, but not a smile born of gratitude. It was something more base than that. There was even something cruel about the twist of her lips …
Then came a roar, and Vince was knocked to the ground.
Armed with chains and axe handles, the leather-clad Rockers had got the better of the Mods, who clearly didn’t go in for any bulky concealed weaponry ruining the fine lines of their whistles. In the tear-up stakes, they could be assessed as style over content. But they had the numbers on their side, and now about fifty fellow Mods, armed with broken deckchair struts, were driving the marauding Rocker hordes into the sea.
As one Mod wag was heard exclaiming, ‘Greasy fuckers could use a wash!’
And there was Vince, smack bang in the middle of the mêlée. Looking more like a Mod than a Rocker, his side was picked for him as a quiff redolent of engine oil butted him in the face, with a cry of ‘’Ave some of that, you fuckin’ ponce!’
Vince went down, rolled over and prepared to take a kicking. Staying down was his plan, until the cavalry arrived. He was right in the middle of it, and didn’t fancy fighting his way out of it. Skinny, Stocky and Cosh Boy had taken it out of him. But he thought of Bobbie, found an opening in the scrimmage, and staggered to his feet. Saved by the bell, just then: the wailing of sirens and the familiar voices of coppers. As the battlefield thinned out before the boys in blue, Vince smiled, glad to see them.
Shame he didn�
��t see the truncheon that cracked into the back of his head.
CHAPTER 7
ART
The next morning, Vince woke up to find himself in a cell. First thing he saw, groggily, was the laughing face of Tony Machin. Ginge stood behind him, holding a mug of tea.
‘So which are you, then, a Mod or a Rocker?’ asked Machin.
‘A Mocker,’ Vince replied. ‘What time is it?’
‘Just gone nine.’
Vince tried to sit up, feeling not so much a ‘twinge’ in his ribs as a sustained ‘twang’. But he was nevertheless sure nothing was broken. He took it slowly and shifted himself sufficiently to lean against the wall, whereupon Ginge handed him the mug of tea. Vince looked around for his jacket, then remembered that the last time he saw it, it was wrapped around … ‘Bobbie? The girl?’
Machin and Ginge quickly exchanged a surreptitious look.
But Vince wasn’t that groggy, and they weren’t that quick. He could see how Ginge was taking his cue from Machin. ‘Don’t worry, guv,’ said Ginge, ‘we picked her up near the pier and took her home. Bit shaken up, but fine.’
Machin gave Vince a knowing look, then one of his customary winks. ‘What did I say, eh? Quite a looker, Miss LaVita? Did you get anywhere, son?’
Vince wasn’t playing along. ‘I’ll need her address. She’s got my jacket, keys, wallet, badge.’
‘No problem there. So what do you think of her?’
‘You tell me. You’ve had her under surveillance. Find anything?’
‘No, son, nothing. She just went on with her routine. Singing classes three times a week, otherwise shopping and going to her club.’
‘Did you check her bank-account records?’
‘Give us some credit, son, ’course we did. No big money movements in or out, and she hasn’t left town since the body showed up. Apart from the known faces that go to that club, of which there are markedly few now, she hasn’t had any contact with Jack’s associates. Unless you already knew she was with Jack, you wouldn’t guess that she had anything to do with him. Tell you the truth, son, she didn’t seem much bothered that Jack isn’t around.’
An involuntary smile flickered across Vince’s lips, which he quickly disguised as a grimace of pain. He stood up, very slowly. ‘Where’s the stocky fella?’
‘What stocky fella?’
‘I got jumped, there were three of them, not Mods, not Rockers either. They were specifically after me. Tooled up with coshes and knives. Two got away. But the stocky one, about five foot seven, mid-thirties, pumped up like a body builder, he wasn’t going anywhere apart from hospital.’
This drew blank stares. Ginge said, ‘We pulled up about thirty of them. Got them all downstairs in the other cells, if you want to take a look.’
‘How many in hospital?’
‘Four got taken in,’ said Ginge. ‘No real damage, just minor injuries.’
Machin shook his head in disappointment. ‘Shame about that, the fucking hooligans.’
Vince was getting impatient. ‘This wasn’t a minor injury. You’d know it if you saw him. His face was badly burned.’
‘Burned?’ Machin screwed up his own face. ‘What happened?’
‘They had a knife to Bobbie’s throat.’Vince corrected himself. ‘I mean Miss LaVita’s throat.’
It was too late. Machin’s eyebrows arched themselves accusingly, as he said, ‘So Bobbie, is it? What were you doing with her at that time of night, anyway?’ He winked, inevitably. ‘Spot of overtime?’
‘I went to the Blue Orchid. Then she invited me to a party. You know I was at the party, since I called it in.’
Machin gave a slow, considered nod. ‘So how come you set fire to this geezer’s face?’
Vince realized he was finding himself on the wrong end of a questioning session. ‘I didn’t set fire to his face. There was a bonfire on the beach, and he fell into it.’
Machin winked again in a further display of chummy knowingness. Violent drunks, wife beaters, kiddie fiddlers, loudmouths and shtum artists who needed their tongues loosening, they had all been known to take a ‘fall’ on Machin’s watch.
Vince could see that Machin thought he was getting the measure of him, a man cut from the same cloth. Vince was equally sure they weren’t. But he had no inclination to get the man’s back up by disputing the point. ‘How about Spider?’ he asked, instead.
Further shakes of the head from Ginge. ‘No good, guv. We did have an address for him, but his landlady claimed he did a bunk a month ago. Owed her three weeks’ rent.’
Vince felt the lump on the back of his head start to throb.
Vince was sitting at his desk, where they’d found him an office in the basement. Mops and buckets had been its last occupants. A small wired window partly painted over in green gloss to match the surrounding walls. He kept the door standing open, or else he’d have felt as if he was still in the cell.
He was currently thumbing his way through two hefty tomes of mugshots, on the lookout for the three thugs on the beach. Passing resemblances, so far, but nothing to hang your hat on. And, after a while, these tense-faced mugs staring out at him all looked the same anyway. So where was Burnt Face now? Vince made some calls to local hospitals throughout the Sussex area, but no one had been admitted suffering wounds of that description. Then he tried further afield: London hospitals, specialist burns units, private clinics. But, again no joy, just assurances that they’d get in touch if anyone fitting his description was admitted. By the time Vince put the phone down, he was half hoping no one would call him back, because he was half hoping that it all had never happened. He looked at his watch, found it was just gone 10 a.m.
He went and picked up the car he’d been allotted: a two-door Triumph Herald, remembering the smirk on Machin’s face as he handed him the keys to the ‘little run-around’ as he described it. He regretted it wasn’t a standard police vehicle, but it was all they had available in the carpool. Vince knew how unclaimed stolen or abandoned cars were kept for a while in the carpool before being either compacted or sold off at auction. And this sluggish little heap of rattling rust was clearly one of them. Still, he counted himself lucky, he wasn’t allotted the Messerschmitt bubble car that had taken a severe hit and been left wallowing in a puddle of oil.
Adelaide Crescent adjoined Palmeira Square, and faced directly on to the seafront. Tall white town houses lined its well-kept undulating lawns. Most of the houses had been converted into flats, but had all kept their facades of Regency grandeur. The house Vince was looking for was without a doubt the grandest in the entire crescent, like the jewel in the crown. A baluster-walled drive led up to the building that faced directly out to sea, adding to its fortified appearance. It seemed like a fitting place for Jack Regent, the Corsican, to reside.
Vince repeatedly pressed the doorbell on the glossy black front door. No response, so he was about to walk away, when suddenly he heard Bobbie’s voice. It came through a small tannoy hidden in the corner of the portico. ‘Speak into the bell,’ she instructed. Vince noticed now that the black casing housing the doorbell itself was perforated like the mouthpiece of a phone. ‘It’s me, Vince … Detective Vincent Treadwell.’ A long pause – long enough for Vince to think he was being ignored – then, ‘The door’s open. Stairs to the top floor. The lift’s not working.’
He pushed the heavy black door open, and noticed there was no lock. The lobby had a chequered marble floor and a staircase that coiled up around the redundant, old-fashioned gated lift. Vince climbed the stairs to the top floor. On each of the three levels were four doors leading, Vince assumed, to four different apartments. They looked freshly painted as if they had just been converted. On the top floor there was just one door, and his jacket was hanging on the doorknob. Vince slipped it on, checked the pockets for his wallet, badge and hotel keys – all present. He then knocked on the door. Ten seconds later, it cracked open as far as the fastened security chain would let it. A glimpse of Bobbie LaVita appeared and, fr
om what was available to him, he could see there was no welcome on her face. He could sense that the door was ready to slam shut at any moment.
‘Thanks for the jacket.’
‘You’re welcome,’ she said tensely and, predictably enough, the door began to close.
Foot thrust in fast. ‘Hold it … can I come in?’
‘No. Move your foot.’
‘I need to ask you some quest—’
‘I said no. I’ve answered all the questions. Both to Detective Machin and to you. I don’t have to answer any more.’
With his foot still in the door, Vince stepped up the officious tone. ‘I need to talk to you, Miss LaVita. If that means getting a warrant—’
‘Then remove your foot.’
‘You won’t slam the door?’
‘I won’t slam the door.’
Vince did as asked, and stepped back. She slammed the door. Vince mouthed ‘Shit’ to himself, and was about to walk away when he heard, ‘Go on, then. Talk, and make it fast.’
‘Did you recognize that man last night?’
‘After what happened to him last night, I doubt even his mother would.’
‘Have you seen them hanging around Jack?’
‘No,’ she replied irritably. ‘Why are you asking me?’
‘Maybe you took me to that party just to set me up.’
There was no reply, just the faint sound of what might be derisive laughter.
‘You work your charm on me,’ he continued. ‘You aim to get me stoned, boozed up, then down on the beach to get the shit beaten out of me – maybe worse.’
‘You don’t drink, you don’t smoke pot and, from what I saw, you can more than handle yourself. Not much of a plan of mine, Detective. And they held a knife to my throat, remember. Jack wouldn’t do that, and he wouldn’t let anyone else do it.’
Vince had a new thought. ‘Maybe it wasn’t me they were after. Maybe I just happened to be in the way …’
Kiss Me Quick Page 9