Kiss Me Quick

by Miller, Danny

  ‘There was cause, Long George. There was definitely cause …’

  Vince was about to reassure him that he was ‘a good boy’ and reveal what ‘the cause’ was, when he suddenly spotted Machin at a card table. He was sitting between two Chinamen, playing blackjack and looking for all the world as if he was going belly-up. Vince made his excuses to Long George, since he wasn’t there for the local colour. He was in a hurry, and went straight over to Machin.

  Machin threw in his cards from another bad hand. As he lifted a large Scotch to his lips, he saw Vince coming over. Machin nervously shuffled a small amount of chips in his hand then stood up and made his way over to meet Vince.

  ‘I’m doing my bollocks tonight, son, so don’t give me any grief or your holier-than-fucking-thou Scotland Yard shit either,’ began Machin, pre-empting and cutting off at the pass. ‘Look around, son. Unless being a mug punter is a crime, this is a victimless crime scene. And, another thing, it would be up and running somewhere anyway. Just smaller rooms and more of them. This way it’s more contained.’

  The Brighton copper obviously had his excuses and justifications well rehearsed for such an event as getting caught gambling in an illegal casino. Vince gave him a blank-eyed, couldn’t-give-a-fuck look and said, ‘Buy you a drink?’

  Machin nodded, and Vince sniffed the air. The Brighton copper stank of booze. A good three or four hours’ saturation of single malt had made his face and breath fume. They now made their way to the bar.

  ‘You should have said you were working undercover,’ said Vince.

  ‘Would you have believed me?’

  ‘Don’t be fucking silly. How you do your money is your business. Why you want to put it in Jack’s pocket is also your business. But, then again, it probably comes back to you with interest.’

  At the bar, Machin ordered. ‘Scotch. Large one. Dash of water. No ice. And tomato juice for the lady.’

  Vince smiled. Being teetotal, he was used to the gags. Being teetotal in the world he operated in, he might just as well have worn a tutu. Because all coppers drank, the incident rooms on any given Monday morning, in any given city, were a swamp of hung-over coppers, slowed down and slumped over desks while soaking up the weekend’s bacchanalia with bacon sarnies and golfing stories. But Machin was poisoned, polluted, pickled with the stuff. Vince wondered how he did it. Then he saw how he did it. A scab of white powder was lodged in the corner of Machin’s nose. He’d clearly been balancing out the booze by tuning up in the gents’ with a toot of amphetamine. He was now speeding, edgy, tapping his fingers on the bar as though he was playing an invisible miniature piano.

  Vince asked him: ‘How much d’you make out of this place? What’s your graft?’

  ‘Not as much as you greedy cunts in Soho.’

  ‘Not me, son.’

  Machin smiled smugly. ‘No, you’re Mr Vinnie-fucking-clean-face.’

  Vince kept shtum at that. The London-to-Brighton jungle drums had obviously been beating out his song, as ‘clean face’ was Tobin’s nickname for him.

  Machin took a slug of his drink, rubbed his nose, tap-tap-tapped his tune on the bar. The speed had made his nose run, and stalactites of white powder, carried in an aspic of snot, edged down across his sweaty top lip, only to be hoovered back up again. It was like watching some repellent sea creature retracting its antennae.

  Vince leaned against the bar, keeping his eyes off Machin and his yo-yoing amphetamine snot stream. But he could still feel the man’s hot alcohol-fuelled breath on him.

  ‘You don’t think I’ve got friends in the Met? I’ve got friends in the Met, son. I hear things. The Peek-A-Boo Club …’

  Vince tensed up.

  ‘…You didn’t have a warrant to search the place. Never mind go around kicking doors in …’

  And then it was on him, again, the searing pain in his head. Vince knew he couldn’t neck any more pills – doctor’s orders, two a day, max. He looked around the room for a distraction, hoping to hit upon something to move him out of the narrative of nausea he was trapped in. His eye fell on Long George, the smiling pit boss, checking the tables, making sure the games ran smoothly; making sure all the cash kept running uphill to his boss Sammy Bellman; who in turn kept it flowing at a good, orderly pace towards his boss, Jack Regent.

  ‘You know your problem, son? You take it too personally. That’s why I didn’t tell you about your brother being – what shall we say? – Henry’s stick man. And a junkie. But you found out for yourself, so I hear. Been causing right commotions, police brutality. I mean, Treadwell, in a public bar of all places? We all have to loosen tongues every now and again, soften them up a little. But you, you’re university educated. Your lot are supposed to be our fucking betters!’

  Vince’s headache torqued. He leaned more heavily on the bar.

  ‘You can’t go around upsetting the apple cart,’ continued Machin, straightening up and wiping his typhoid gob with the back of his fat hand. ‘So do yourself a favour, and relax, take it easy, take a couple of weeks off, then piss off back to London.’

  Vince turned sharply around to Machin and spat out the words, ‘Shut the fuck up and tell me about Max Vogel.’

  Machin did as instructed and shut the fuck up, and looked alarmed. It wasn’t being told to shut the fuck up that brought the alarm to Machin’s face; it was the name Max Vogel. It unnerved him. It meant something. Drunk, unguarded, his face gave it all away. If he were to return to the tables and play cards wearing that kind of face, he’d lose his house, his pension and his fat wife. Machin mopped his brow with a red napkin plucked from the bar, but he couldn’t wipe the big fat gambler’s ‘Tell’ off his face. He knocked back the last of his drink.

  ‘Fuck off, Vinnie,’ said Machin with a sudden smile of camaraderie. ‘It’s my night off.’ He put his drained glass down on the bar and staggered off.

  Vince watched him take his seat at the blackjack table. Machin now looked pissed off, a bad loser. Couldn’t take his luck, or his drink. Vince didn’t follow him to the table, since he’d heard all he needed.

  Vince left the Brunswick Sporting Club. He needed the fresh mid-May air that still held a chill. The headache mellowed; no longer a searing pain, it now beat at a manageable thrum. As he made his way downstairs, he thought about the pain intervals, which were getting closer and closer together. But he dismissed the problem – it wouldn’t always be like this. This was Brighton, the past. Bad memories. Bad juju. Dr Boehm had told him how the brain protects itself against bad memories, puts up a fight when they try to break through. And then there was Vaughn. Always a source of pain, but it seemed that he’d surpassed himself this visit. Vince knew that he would finally have to cut him out of his life. Back in London it would be different, with fresh cases, fresh faces. There he could again be the cool, detached, objective detective going diligently about his business. Vince smiled at the thought: it had a ring to it.

  As he reached the bottom of the stairs, he heard the car horn. He stepped outside and saw Bobbie sitting in the car. Two men stood over her, tapping on the window and telling her to open up. She looked scared. The men were in their early twenties, and they were both wearing houndstooth-check suits. Vince thought he might have recognised them from the Beach Bottle club the night before.

  Vince strode towards the car. Bobbie still looked scared, started shaking her head as if to warn him. It was a trap. Emerging from the basements behind him were about ten of them. They were tooled up, carrying coshes, bottles, switchblades and chains. Vince was going for his badge when he felt a blow to the back of his head. He swung around and saw them lined up against him, and he knew he was fucked, badge or no badge. A cosh swung towards his head, and Vince ducked it. Another quickly followed and crashed into his shoulder blade. He rode with the blow, and rode with the pain that came along with it. He knew that if he went down he was double and treble fucked; he was never getting up again.

  They moved around him, encircling him, all in their late teens and e
arly twenties. And, like the two by the car, they were dressed in houndstooth-check suits. All cut from the same cloth and sharing the same tailor as Henry Pierce’s driver, Spider. Used to hunting in a pack, they moved in unison, their eyes wide and wild. They wore vicious smiles on their expectant faces. They were getting ready to go in for the kill.

  Vince needed a tool, something more threatening than just the bluntness of fists. He reached into his jacket and pulled out a … pen. It was a slim, stainless-steel Sheaffer pen. Vince knew from experience that, wielded in the right hands, the pen could prove as mighty as the sword; and right now Vince’s hands were the right hands. He moved it fast, jabbing all around him. In the dark, it did the trick. The houndstooth mob must have thought it was a knife, a stiletto, because they gave it a respect it didn’t deserve: stepping back, widening the circle, allowing gaps for Vince to make his escape.

  Again, like the night before, Vince heard Bobbie’s scream. She pressed down on the car horn. She even tried getting out of the car to help Vince, but the two hounds beside the car wouldn’t let her.

  There were just too many of them, and he knew he was going to get cut. The baying hounds could smell blood. After assessing the danger of the shiv in Vince’s hand, they were moving in again, six, seven, maybe more. Lights had been turned on in the square, so the hounds had to make their move now. The knives were coming in, and Vince felt one slash at his back. He felt a chain wrap around his leg, yanking him off balance. Then, he saw two thick, fleshy hands brace one of the hounds, lift him up by his shoulders off the ground and throw him on to the bonnet of a parked car, where he lay like a broken hood ornament. It was Long George doing the throwing.

  The Long Fellow reached into his jacket pocket and pulled out a cosh, then began hammering away on the heads of the hounds like he was playing a drum kit. Vince joined in. He stuck one in the throat with the pen, and the fellow fell away, choking. A chain swung around Vince’s head, but he ducked it, and it thrashed across Long George’s back.

  ‘ACH! Kacka-de-hoiser!’ shouted the Long Fellow, as he grabbed the hound up in his arms and threw him down into a basement.

  Vince instantly grabbed another who had a broken bottle in his hand. Two fast jabs to the face, then he twisted his arm around and made him drop the jagged bottle. A knee to the face crunched the hound’s nose, another dislodged his teeth, then Vince lifted his head by a hank of hair and dispatched him with a ferocious right hook.

  Vince turned just in time to catch sight of a bottle Catherine-wheeling its way towards his head. He ducked it – it smashed against a wall. Vince had turned around to grab the propellant, a goofy-toothed kid with another bottle in his hand, when …

  BANG! BANG!

  Vince, Long George and the remaining hounds still on their feet all froze like a photograph. Then checked themselves for bullet holes. Then all looked around in unison, and saw the heavy-set figure of Sammy Bellman holding a small gun, a Beretta. He’d fired the gun into the air, so the bang-bang was actually more like the crack-crack of a starting pistol. But no one was about to question the authenticity of the weapon in Sammy Bellman’s hand.

  ‘Any more for any more?’ he asked with a dark growl.

  The hounds looked at each other, wised up quickly and shook their heads.

  ‘Thanks,’ said Vince, nodding at Sammy B in his tux. He looked around at Bobbie, in the car, and saw that the two hounds previously standing over it were now running down to the seafront to make their escape.

  ‘Ach! What took you? And where’s that piece of shit, Machin? He’s a policeman, for the love of God!’

  ‘Too drunk to be of any use,’ said Sammy B.

  Vince went to cuff one of the hounds.

  ‘Easy, copper,’ warned the shtarker bookie, now pointing the gun at Vince. Sammy looked at one of the hounds, a swarthy-looking kid who might have been the leader; probably because he looked like a younger version of Sammy. ‘You know who I am?’

  ‘Mr Sammy Bellman,’ the swarthy kid intoned respectfully.

  ‘Then you should know, if we ever see you around here again, you’ll get worse – a lot worse. You understand?’

  Leaving nothing to chance, to a man the hounds made like nodding dogs and muttered servile yes-es.

  ‘Now, get out of here!’ barked Sammy, the top dog. They started to leave, but Vince grabbed the husky kid by the shoulder and said, ‘Sorry, Sammy, they’re not going anywhere.’

  ‘Then catch ’em yourself,’ said Sammy B. ‘Because I’m not doing it for you.’ Vince looked at the gun; it wasn’t raised in his direction, but it was held firmly enough in Sammy B’s hand to mean business. Vince gave an understanding nod to the Beretta-toting bookmaker, let go of the husky one, and gestured for the hounds to take off. And they did: hightailing it down to the seafront to lick their wounds.

  Sammy B pocketed the gun. ‘We were just doing you a favour, and I’m not in the habit of doing the law any favours. Long George here says you were all right, so that was all right by me. But don’t push it, policeman. We’ve just saved your bacon, so some gratitude wouldn’t go amiss.’

  Just then, Bobbie joined them and stood by Vincent’s arm.

  At the sight of this, Long George and Sammy B exchanged troubled looks.

  CHAPTER 13

  LA DOLCE VITA

  Vince fixed Bobbie a large brandy. She was curled up on the sofa. The surreal Salvador Dali sofa that was shaped like Mae West’s lips, which really didn’t seem that surreal now. Vince handed her the tumbler of brandy.

  She sat up and took it. ‘Thank you,’ she said, in a voice that still held a tremble.

  Vince sat down on the sofa, too. The room seemed smaller now, not so grand. They sat in silence for a minute, till Vince broke it with, ‘Have you seen that mob before?’

  Bobbie shrugged a shrug that, even for a shrug, was pretty indolent and evasive. He excused her. She’d popped a Valium.

  ‘Well, I have,’ said Vince vigorously, trying to up the energy levels in the room and give the situation the sense of emergency it deserved. ‘I spotted a couple of them at the Beach Bottle Club you took me to last night. They look like they might knock around with Spider … Henry Pierce’s driver.’

  ‘I know who he is,’ she said. Her voice was slowed-down and smeared due to the sedative she’d taken.

  ‘So what does that tell you, Bobbie?’ Vince stared at her, but he didn’t need an answer. He saw that she knew that the rules had changed. Without Jack around, she was in danger.

  She sat up straight, took a deep breath to alert herself, then stood and said, in a clear firm voice, ‘I’ll be right back.’ She walked out the room and disappeared into the hallway.

  Vince fixed himself a soda water with a dash of lime. Settling back on the sofa, he felt a twinge of pain in his shoulder where the cosh had made contact – and he was still carrying the lump on the back of his head from the previous night. He shook his head and forced out an ironic little laugh. He was sent down to assist with inquiries, but his primary purpose here had been to take in the sea air and relax!

  Bobbie returned, holding a blue leather-bound photo album. She sat next to Vince, with the album resting on her lap. The volume was worn, tatty and well-thumbed, its ribbed spine coming away from the covers. She opened it up and starting turning the pages. Photos of the large house in the New Forest. Photos of the family in the garden, with fields and trees stretching beyond the mossy-green wooden fences. The mother, with a refined, kind face, serving the two young children lunch on a long wooden table. The father, in rolled-up shirtsleeves digging about in the garden, two black Labradors foraging in the background. The young girl playing on the swing with her young brother. The living room, spacious, book-lined, country-style furniture. Father at his partners’ desk in the large study, obviously going through his paperwork. Mother in her favourite armchair, reading …

  And so they went on, snapshots of happy lives in a happy place. Bobbie turned over the card pages without saying a word,
leaving Vince to fill in the story. Like she had, previously.

  Eventually, Vince pointed at one photo. ‘Your mother and father? They’re a good-looking couple. What are their names?’

  Bobbie ignored that, or at least seemed not to hear him, and carried on looking at the photos in silence.

  Vince tried again and pointed at a picture of the little boy standing next to the little girl, in their Sunday best, heading off to church. ‘Is that you and your brother?’

  Again, no answer.

  Vince stopped looking at the photos and turned his attention instead to Bobbie. Her face was rapt, almost trance-like, in studying the subject before her. She slowly turned the pages, as if seeing what was on them for the first time. These photos were taking her somewhere almost mystical that seemed beyond memory good or bad.

  ‘It’s customary, when being shown family snaps, to be put in the picture a bit,’ he said, trying to make light of it. No response, still. ‘Bobbie, aren’t you going to tell me who they are?’

  Without changing her facial expression, she said, ‘I don’t know who they are.’

  She closed the album. The world inside it was gone. And she took a deep breath. Then told him who she was …

  … She was an orphan raised in institutions until the age of seven when she was first fostered out. Even at that tender age, her sullenness and an innate sense of tragedy conspired against her. She didn’t smile, kept her head in books, and wouldn’t play cutesy with the hopeful parents looking to adopt. There were three sets of foster parents in all, but only one she really remembered. And not because of any paternal love. She was eleven when the man, her new ‘father’, first came into her room to comfort her after a night fright.

  Bobbie had experienced the same nightmare as far back as she could remember: death climbing the stairs. The footsteps slowly making their way up the steps leading to her room. She sees it, hears it and feels it now, those heavy footfalls stopping outside the door, and the doorknob turning. But she always wakes up before he enters.