Kiss Me Quick

by Miller, Danny

  No such clown clothes for Henry Pierce, though. Funereal as ever, he was enveloped in black from top to toe. With his inky-black hair, the black-on-black shirt and tie combination, a black suit, heavy black brogues, the entire ensemble was sheathed in a black Crombie overcoat with a black felt collar. The only thing that wasn’t black was the white stick; and, of course, his skin with its sickly pallor. Otherwise monochromic, but for one tiny detail of colour: the gold tie clip containing a blood-red cabochon in its centre. It was the same outfit he always wore: there was no inconsistency about Pierce; he stuck to his guns and to his garb. He wasn’t in the business of subtlety. Only in the business of scaring people. There was no guise of respectability about Henry Pierce. He was what he was, and you had to admire his honesty. He was bad. He was good at being bad. He didn’t go for redeeming features. There were no shades of grey. He wore black.

  Pierce exchanged a few words with Sammy B, who handed over a roll of notes out of his satchel. Pierce pocketed the money as he turned away.

  It was Vince’s turn to yank Terence by the arm, ‘Come on, let’s go,’ he instructed, and headed down towards the betting ring.

  They made their way over to Sammy B’s pitch. No sign of Pierce by now. But he was a man you’d have difficulty missing, and Vince recognized the head above the crowd before he heard the tapping of the heavy stick. A path opened up before Pierce like the Red Sea, and Vince felt the tide of people getting out of his path. Vince followed quickly in his slipstream while Terence followed in Vince’s.

  Pierce still leading, with Spider in his shadow, they made their way through the atrium of the grandstand, and up the stairs to the upper tier, then along the corridor to one of the private boxes. Vince and Terence still tailed them at a careful distance.

  With large windows set in the partitions of the private boxes, they were not that private, and Vince could see all he needed to. Henry Pierce was now sitting at a table, talking to a very fat man while Spider stood sentry at the door.

  The fat one was still picking over the remnants of the ‘catch of the day’ that lay before him. He’d been feasting on shellfish, and you could tell that eating was a serious business for him. His shirtsleeves were rolled up so that he could set about his work unencumbered, while his chubby fingers glistened with grease. His cherub-cheeked face was almost featureless due to the excess weight he was carrying, and the full head of golden-blond hair looked downy, almost transparent on top of it.

  ‘Who’s the big baby with the bib?’ asked Vince.

  Terence chuckled. ‘That’s Max Vogel. He’s an antique dealer with a shop in the Lanes. I gather he’s not too bothered about the provenance of items he deals in, if you get my drift. His nickname is “Treble Dutch”, partly because he’s of Dutch extraction and partly—’

  ‘Yeah, I get the picture,’ said Vince, studying the man who sat with Henry ‘Redskin’ Pierce. The way they were positioned struck him as interesting, for Pierce who, being taller, would normally tower above Vogel, sat strangely hunched up, as if making himself look smaller. It was Vogel, also, who was doing most of the talking, without bothering to give Pierce a glance as he continued picking the last vestiges of meat from a lobster claw he was holding. Without being able to hear a word, or even lip-read, Vince interpreted a lot from their conversation. Vogel clearly held the power between the two of them, and whenever Pierce did start to talk, Vogel felt free to interrupt and talk over him. Then Pierce would clam up again, listening intently as Vogel delivered instructions or counsel.

  ‘What else do you know about Vogel?’ asked Vince, still watching the two men.

  ‘Nothing really.’

  Vince frowned, and as if thinking out loud, murmured, ‘He wasn’t on any list of known Jack Regent associates. Machin never mentioned him, either, yet here he is sitting …’

  Terence gave a contemptuous little laugh. ‘Well, you know what they say about the Brighton police force.’

  Vince stared at Terence. ‘What exactly do they say?’

  ‘They’re the best money can buy.’ Terence now laughed nervously.

  When Vince didn’t respond, Terence stopped laughing. He looked down at his shoes, convinced he’d put his size-eight brown brogues right in it and overstepped the mark.

  But he hadn’t, for Vince already knew this. He also knew the rest of the saying: ‘Best police force you can buy – if you can’t afford the Met.’ He gave Terence half a smile. ‘That’s slander, Terence, outright slander.’

  Vince focused his attention back on Vogel and Pierce. After using the finger bowl, Vogel grabbed the napkin and pulled it from his collar, revealing a red polka-dot bow tie underneath. Pierce then stood up and the two men shook hands. Whatever business they were conducting was now concluded. Pierce stepped out of the private box to rejoin Spider, leaving Vogel alone to peruse the dessert menu.

  Vince grabbed Terence, who was gazing at Pierce in awe as he moved towards them. ‘Go hang around Sammy Bellman’s pitch, see what happens.’

  ‘Where are you going?’

  ‘To play blind man’s bluff with Henry Pierce.’

  Terence looked at Vince in wide-eyed awe. ‘Be careful, Vince. He … hurts people.’ Then, as Vince walked away, he hissed to him, ‘Vince! By the way, it’s buff. Blind man’s buff!’

  Vince turned around and smiled. ‘Not the way I play it.’

  CHAPTER 10

  REDSKIN

  Henry Pierce was smiling, his head arrogantly cocked as he steamed ahead, seemingly buoyed up and confident after his confab with Max Vogel. Shouldering his way into the bar, as big as he was, he made himself seem bigger, as if he was holding a pair of medicine balls, one under each arm. His stick swung freely, beating a path before him. He took his place at the counter, which was previously three other people’s places in the packed bar. Having looked up at who had come muscling in, they wisely and swiftly got out of his way. Spider stood next to him and ordered two bottles of brown ale. Spider poured the ale into a glass for his boss, and Pierce emptied it in two gulps. Wiping the foam from his mouth with the back of a big vein-streaked hand, he put the glass back on the bar, upside down. It was a warning, a sign: a piece of bar-room semiotics that alerted anyone in the immediate vicinity that violence was pending.

  With one shoe on the brass foot rail, and one planted well back on the floor, Pierce gripped the edge of the bar as if he was either about to tear it off or push it into the wall. He looked straight ahead of him, so that if he was able to see, he would have seen himself looking straight back in the mirror, and in a booming voice announced: ‘I’ll have it with any man here!’

  Silence. The kind of pin-dropping silence that is deafening. A silence that reverberated like the beating of a bass drum. Conversations collapsed under a weight of fear, jokes dried up and nervous laughter petered out. Henry Pierce had just offered the whole bar out, and no one wanted in. Spider smirked around the room, confident of being on the winning side, even though to a betting man (and surely everyone in the bar was a betting man), the odds of one blind man against a good one hundred were stacked against him – like a hundred to one? There were no takers. No one even dared meet the blind man’s gaze. And that’s a little fact worth repeating: the blind man’s gaze. Heads were bowed, shoes were closely inspected. The racing form was being examined with a close-up, paper-rustling intensity.

  Satisfied they now held sway over everyone, and happy with the ambience of fear they had created in the room, Pierce and Spider could now enjoy their drinks.

  Then they heard the footsteps behind them. Even on the drink-sodden swamp of a carpet in the public bar, they could still be heard. That’s how quiet it was.

  And then they heard: ‘I’ll have it.’

  Under the black cover of Pierce’s tightly fitting Crombie coat, Vince detected a rippling as the knots of muscle in the man’s back contorted until his neck almost disappeared, and his head bowed under a tidal wave of indignation and rage.

  Spider’s mouth hung open
like a dumb waiter. As he stood there, accommodatingly slack-jawed, Vince thought this might be a good time to chin him. An adroit left hook would send him flying across the bar, and his jaw off its hinges.

  Spider looked up at Pierce for guidance.

  Pierce had turned slowly to gauge where the voice of this fucking liberty-taker had emanated from.

  ‘Say that again?’

  ‘Tell the blind man there what I’m holding in my hand, Spider.’

  Spider stared at the Metropolitan Police badge Vince held up, and then took a closer look at Vince himself. An excitable expression came over his gauntly spiteful features. ‘Look who it isn’t …’ Spider let that hang in the air, and slowly nodded at Vince in recognition.

  Pierce’s head slowly turned and dipped in the direction of Spider, as he spoke in a voice higher-pitched than his large frame would give credence to. ‘Speak up, boy. Half-spoken words avail a blind man of nothing.’ Pierce’s own words were not half spoken. They were fully formed and overripe and clearly pronounced. It was plain by now that he was putting on a performance, but this was what Henry Pierce was all about. From the wrestling ring to the bar room, he was a natural performer, and the act was all about erudition – a calculating intelligence that belied the mindless violence that permeated a brutal body.

  Pierce continued to Spider: ‘Tell me, boy, clearly and concisely. Who do you see?’

  Spider, still smirking, said, ‘I see Vincent Treadwell – Vaughn the spawn’s brother, the London copper.’ Spider’s face then twisted into a smirk and he began to giggle. That giggle had been carefully worked on, thought Vince. It was pure Richard Widmark playing Tommy Udo, the psychopath gangster, in the film whose title temporarily escaped him. Spider was playing for the cameras right now, another little movie gangster in a flashy suit.

  Pierce’s head straightened and he faced Vince directly. Vince turned away from him and looked at Spider. Vince’s heavy dark brows knitted as he fixed him with his dark brown eyes, his dilating black pupils seeming to take up the entire expanse of his eyes. And everything else about him got darker, more threatening. ‘Tell your boy to go, Pierce.’

  The giggles dried up and the smirk slid off Spider’s face. Even standing under the protective wing of Henry Pierce, he knew he was now only a flinch, a frown or an ill-thought utterance away from a fucking good hiding.

  Pierce gave him the prompt, ‘You heard the man, boy.’

  The slighted Spider sidled off the stage, leaving the two principals alone with each other.

  Pierce leaned forward, sniffed the air around the young detective, smiled and said, ‘The prodigal has returned.’

  Vince stood stock-still, looking into the black discs of Pierce’s glasses. He couldn’t see his eyes. ‘Is this performance part of your famous Red Indian shtick, Mr Pierce?’

  ‘It’s no shtick, boy. It’s in my blood. My grandfather was a full-blooded Sioux. Warrior, tracker and buffalo hunter, he could sniff out his prey a mile away.’

  ‘Not a lot of buffalo here in Brighton.’

  Pierce pulled a grin that showed buckled rows of grey teeth. ‘You’re not wrong there, boy. You’re not wrong. He came to these shores with the Buffalo Bill show in 1897. They were playing just outside Manchester, when he made the fatal mistake that most men make at least once in their life. He fell for a slip, a Salford girl of Hungarian extraction. Funny old world, crooked old planet. Made their way down to Brighton. But you’re right, not a lot of buffalo in Brighton. He ended up working the fairgrounds and sewing fishing nets. Drank himself to death: they’re bad with the firewater, the redskins. As for me dressing up as a brave for the wrestling, that was all just a bit of sport.’

  ‘Sport?’ Vince raised a doubtful eyebrow at this. ‘I heard you killed a man in the ring. Not very sporting?’

  Pierce let out a breath carrying a satisfied ‘Ahhh,’ then recalled, with some vigour, ‘Leo “the Lion” Lomax was his name.’ He smiled at the memory, then tapped his cane on the bar twice, calling out to the terrified barman, ‘Two bottles of brown ale!’ The bottles were at his elbow in an instant, and Vince assumed the second bottle was for him.

  ‘Leo was a fine specimen of a man,’ continued Pierce. ‘Big thick mane of blond hair, billed as the housewives’ favourite. You know, when I started out in the ring, I was considered the goodie. But I had a gift, you see – showmanship. I was a natural performer. And then the promoters didn’t want me to be the goodie, because in the wrestling game the goodie is the baddie. You know why?’

  Vince shook his head, then remembered that it ‘availed a blind man nothing’ so he piped up, ‘No, I don’t.’

  ‘Because the goodie doesn’t draw the crowd. It’s the baddie they come to see.’

  Vince inquired: ‘So what was Leo, a goodie?’

  ‘Correct, but he was a bad goodie. He was bad at being good. And you’ll have to excuse my language, but he was a right cunt. And that aspect of him came across to the audience. They all knew it, and they used to call him it. They used to shout it out at him. They used to climb into the ring and tell him so. All the promoters and other wrestlers knew it, too. In fact, the only person who didn’t know it was Leo himself. Which just goes to show you what a right cunt he was.’

  He paused for a quick swallow. ‘Anyway, one night at Hoxton Baths, I was due to fight Leo Lomax. I comes out in my full regalia: headdress, warpaint, buckskins and me tomahawk tucked in me trunks. And the crowd is cheering. Even old women and kids, they’re cheering their heads off. Tomahawk in hand, I starts doing me war dance. Me squaw at the time, Rita, a real looker if you like that sort of thing, she takes my headdress off, and I’m dancing around the ring and the audience is loving it. Lapping me up they was. And I’m supposed to be the baddie!’

  Pierce pulled a big grin, but it soon faded as the memory rolled on out, and he then gave a remorseful shake his head.

  ‘Then Leo comes out. Oh dear, there were boos. You’ve never heard boos like it. Deafening boos. They’re booing the goodie. Anyway, Leo doesn’t like it. He’s not happy, not happy at all. And the reason he’s not happy isn’t strictly on account of the boos, because they’d stopped booing by the time he’d got into the ring; and started spitting and throwing coins, and door keys and car keys. No, he’s not happy on account of everyone shouting out “Cunt” at him. He’s angry, he’s humiliated, he’s enraged, then he’s only gone and chinned Rita, my squaw. He’d taken umbrage at her, you see, on account that she’d already told him what she thought of him, and what everyone thought of him, in the dressing room. And she’d led the chant of calling him that as he made his way into the ring. Well, I wasn’t having that, was I? My Rita? My lovely Rita? No, I wasn’t having that. So I scalped him.’

  Vince looked around him to check it was still 1964. Then he checked to make sure he’d heard right. ‘You scalped him?’

  ‘Scalped him,’ said Pierce with a blunt nod. ‘Done him with a right-hander first. Lifted him up by his greasy pompadour, took out me tomahawk, and started chopping away at his forehead. From ear to ear. Lucky for me, Leo had such a fine head of hair on him, and he wore it long for them days. So there was plenty to get hold of. Me tomahawk was a bit blunt, so I couldn’t get a clean cut. And what with Leo still being alive when I took his scalp … well, not the best circumstances for both of us. But, when the job was done, I had enough of old Leo in me hands to hold up to the crowd. At first the crowd thought it was all part of the act. They was very encouraging of it. Then they saw the blood, lots of blood. I can’t stress just how much blood there was. Bleeding on to the canvas, comatose from the shock, the sympathies of the crowd had now shifted in his favour. In a big way, I’d have to say. Leo was quite the hero again. He really was the goodie. So, in many ways, I did him a favour. Not that he’d ever admit it, the ungrateful cunt. He died four years later. Put his head in the oven. Still, that’s show business for you.’

  Pierce picked up his glass and guzzled thirstily.

  Vince’s mind sc
rolled back through the annals of gruesome stories he’d heard over the years, to check if he’d heard of anything even comparable. Nothing came to mind. Nothing quite so gruesome, quite so public.

  Pierce put his empty glass on the bar with a thud that drew a line under the good old days.

  ‘But that’s enough about me,’ he said. ‘How about you, Vincent? Have you grown into a tall handsome man? Have you fulfilled your potential?’

  Vince looked up at Pierce and watched a long, scaly purple tongue – looking like a piece of rotten meat – slip lizard-like out of his mouth and work its way around those dry old lips. There was a predatory smile on his newly moistened mouth which made Vince’s skin crawl. And it was meant to make his skin crawl. The soft touch of a woman, the curves of a woman, the scent, the chitter, the chatter, the gentle and fairer sex, these weren’t for Henry Pierce. For Pierce to be with a woman – a slip – would just seem queer. And yet he wasn’t queer, either. He didn’t get it up any more for the boys than he did for the girls. He didn’t get it up for anyone. To get it up would be to admit that there was blood flowing through his veins. The ‘predatory’ Pierce was just more shock shtick. It fitted the outfit he was wearing, the voice he was doing: it was all part of the act. Like he said, it was showbiz, and he was above all a performer.

  ‘Cat got your tongue, boy?’

  ‘I’m going to need to ask you some questions, Mr Pierce.’

  ‘What questions?’

  ‘About the body on the beach. And Jack Regent.’

  ‘Me, I’m a blind man, retired. I know nothing about nothing, officer.’

  ‘You’re too modest, Mr Pierce. A man about town like you, who’s a friend of Jack Regent, you must know lots of things.’

  Pierce gave a knowing nod. ‘The body on the beach, you say? I heard he died with a smile on his face. When you find it, do tell.’ Pierce sniffed the air again, then said, ‘I like you, boy. Full of piss and vinegar, as the Yanks say.’