Dickie Eton was seated at a large mahogany partners’ desk. Dressed in purple silk pyjamas with gold trim, and a pair of buckled black-velvet slippers (his feet were up on the desk), he was barking instructions down the phone. It was clearly a business call, a music-business call.
‘… Listen Mardell, if she can’t be bothered to rehearse, then I can’t be bothered to book recording time … Fuck her, she’s a minor talent with nice tits is all she is, Mardell. They’re ten a penny …’ Vince noted that Dickie Eton’s showbiz voice was pitched somewhere between Brighton and Brooklyn.
Nick Soroya gave Vince a smile and gestured for him to sit down in the high-backed chair that was placed in front of the desk. Vince sat down. Eddie Tobin took a seat to one side, by the window.
‘Fix our guests a drink, Nick,’ said Eton in between ‘yeah yeah yeahs’ to Mardell, his subordinate on the other end of the line.
‘I’ll take a Coke,’ said Vince to the subordinate. Nick Soroya gave him an accommodating nod.
Eddie Tobin gave a low-muttered curse at this sober request. ‘I’ll have a Scotch,’ he said, looking at Vince and shaking his head in disgust. ‘No ice, no water, straight.’ Vince smiled at Tobin and threw him a wink. Eddie Tobin, straining to contain his rage, cracked his knuckles.
The room was a wood-panelled, study-type affair, done out like a gentleman’s club, which seemed surprisingly conservative considering the house’s owner. The only tell-tale signs of Rock & Roll were some framed gold and platinum records on the walls, along with similarly framed photos of Dickie shaking hands with just about everyone. There was a fully stocked bar in one corner of the room, and a Wurlitzer jukebox in another. Nick Soroya fixed the drinks and brought them over with his easy-on-the-eye courteous smile, then wafted back over to the bar, where he perched on a stool drinking a tall cocktail.
Dickie Eton dropped the phone into its cradle. ‘Jesus Christ, these people!’ he complained, swinging his feet down off the table. ‘Sorry about that, but I get calls at the most inconvenient times. It’s the Americans usually; they never know what time it is here. They assume it’s their time all over the world. Well, why not, they’ve got the bomb!’ Eton picked up the frosted block of knobbly glass that held his whisky. It looked too big for him. In fact, as Vince studied him, he realized that everything looked too big for the man: the chair he was sitting in, the desk he sat at, the phone he had just talked into. It should all have been scaled down slightly to fit the owner.
But, as Vince was taking Dickie Eton in, the imp-like impresario was doing likewise in return. ‘Ah, Detective Treadwell, we meet at last,’ he said, with a satisfied and fatalistic sigh. ‘I heard I might be getting a visit from you’ – he clicked his fingers for recall – ‘about the Chas Stardust thing …?’
‘Starlight, I think he called himself,’ Vince corrected.
‘Quite. Do you think he was being ironic there? Because I’ll be damned if I can remember him, and I certainly know a star when I meet one.’ Eton made a dismissive flourish of his floppy little hand, which was weighed down by the chunky rings he was wearing. ‘I should never have signed them, since there was no one in the group I wanted to fuck. And I’m really not that fussy, so if I don’t want to fuck them, why should anyone else? No, Detective, a rare mistake on my part, and of course they bombed. I guessed ages ago that Skiffle was dead, and now we all know it’s for real.’ Eton smiled and raised his glass again, ‘Well, let’s toast his memory. Cheers, Detective.’
Vince took a sizeable swig of his Coke and put it down on the desk. ‘I think we both know what I’m here for. I take it you took a call from Lionel Duval, after your gun-toting sidekick here phoned him.’
‘Smart mouth,’ sneered Tobin, no longer growling, but looking surprisingly smug and self-satisfied, even verging on amused.
‘God, that man. Never a simple transaction with Lionel, always intrigue,’ said Eton. ‘Like that painting I wanted to buy off him, what could be simpler than two dear old friends trading a painting for some cash. And yet here you are.’
‘“Dear old friends”?’
‘You didn’t know that? Oh, Lionel and I go back a long time. Soho, Denmark Street, when we were both making our way in the business. Lionel used to book some of my acts for his clubs – his legit clubs.’
‘Before he got into dirty movies?’
There was a quick exchange of glances between Tobin and Eton. Eton’s face then lit up as he replied, ‘Well, there’s no denying it, Detective, you’re right. What you saw that night is exactly what you saw.’
Dickie Eton gazed squarely at Vince, yet Vince didn’t flinch. He didn’t even bother to look around at Tobin and shout, ‘I knew it!’ Because he’d known it all along, there was no victory here for him. There was, in fact, a sense of loss. Because a part of him wished he had imagined it all, then the poor skinny blonde girl would still be alive. If Eton was looking for a strong reaction, he wasn’t getting one.
So the midget music mogul inspected his rings, and continued. ‘As for “dirty”, Detective, it’s all a matter of taste. Like with music, all tastes need catering for, wouldn’t you say?’
‘No, I wouldn’t.’
Dickie Eton’s pinched, almost feminine lips shaped themselves into a dry, derisive little smile. ‘I didn’t suppose you would. Well, myself and Lionel share similar tastes. The film business is a private little enterprise we run for friends with like-minded proclivities. Oh, you’d be surprised, there’s a real mixed bag of them. Some showbiz chums, naturally, while in politics there’s a couple of very upfront backbenchers. Also a lawyer, a smattering of the landed gentry or peers of the realm, a society dentist and an eminent Harley Street doctor. He’s a psychologist, in fact. I could go on.’
Vince digested this information with an audible gulp, then again looked around at Tobin. The slitty eyes still burned into him, but he hadn’t touched his drink and Eddie Tobin was usually a glass-guzzling booze hound. His ex-partner in Vice didn’t seem such a figure of fun now. Also the gun tucked in his waistband wasn’t just a prop any more; it seemed very real, stuffed with bullets and ready to be fired. Worse still, Tobin looked as if he was itching to use it.
Vince couldn’t see Nick Soroya without craning his neck, but he guessed he was still sitting at the bar, in the gloom behind him. It made him uncomfortable not being able to see the chauffeur. Failed crooner followed by secretarial school hardly marked him out as anything to fear, but behind those pretty-boy good looks lurked cold danger. So much was evident in eyes that were chillingly detached from the warm smile he habitually wore.
Vince had been freshly weighing up these two men for a good reason. He was sure one of them was going to kill him.
‘Oh,’ continued Eton, ‘one other person I haven’t mentioned in our little enterprise is your old friend, I believe, Henry Pierce. He takes care of security at this end of things, makes sure everyone does as they’re told and keeps their mouth shut.’
Vince froze over at this information, though his killer wasn’t in the room – yet. Keeping it casual, he asked, ‘Where is Pierce, then, at the party downstairs?’
Dickie Eton let out a yelp of derision that turned into a cackle of laughter. ‘That’s just off-the-scale funny! Henry wouldn’t approve of the parties I have – not unless he could make money out of it. Oh, no no no, Detective Treadwell, you don’t invite a man like Henry Pierce to an orgy. No one would get it up! No no no no, Detective, we don’t need Henry here – not yet anyway.’
The ‘yet anyway’ worried Vince, but he focused on the business at hand. ‘What happens to the girls in the films?’
Dickie Eton smiled. ‘What do you think happens?’
‘I don’t know, because I missed the very ending. I was clocked on the head. I’m assuming the one who clocked me was the projectionist.’ Vince looked around at Eddie Tobin for confirmation.
Tobin smiled, and rolled out some little nods that suggested Vince had it about right.
‘If I tol
d you those girls went home, if not happy, then certainly well paid, would you believe me?’
‘That’s not what I saw. I saw a knife.’
‘A prop?’
Vince dismissed that with a humourless laugh. ‘I wasn’t watching something by Fellini. It was real degenerate filth and the knife was no prop.’ Vince glanced again at Tobin. ‘I’ve been right about everything so far, eh, Eddie?’
Tobin smirked. ‘That’s right, champ, a real smartarse – and look where it’s got you.’ Tobin cracked some knuckles and turned to Dickie Eton. ‘Come on, let’s get it over with.’
‘Patience, Eddie, patience,’ drawled Eton, who was obviously savouring his role.
Vince heard the sound of a straw sucking up the dregs of a cocktail behind him. Knowing the answer, he asked anyway. ‘Get what over with?’
‘Oh, I think Mr Tobin has some things he wants to say before …’
Vince watched Dickie Eton as he let the outcome of his sentence hang, but he already knew the end. Eton was clearly enjoying himself. He liked having Tobin at his side with a gun. It wasn’t enough for Dickie Eton to be rich and successful – he wanted the danger, the underbelly, the intrigue that came with dealing with gangsters and bent ex-coppers. His heavy glass hung limply from his hand as he inspected the rings on his fingers.
Vince weighed up his options. Tobin was sat about eight feet away. Judging by his posture, he was relaxed, at ease with himself, and certainly thought he was in control of the situation. Never a quick draw, Vince reckoned he could have the gun off the man before he knew what hit him. Then there was Nick Soroya sitting at the bar behind him. Vince couldn’t see him, and that scared him. He scoped the desk for a weapon – a letter opener, a pair of scissors, a paperweight – but there was nothing. With just a phone and some papers, it looked unnaturally uncluttered. Tobin had probably warned Dickie Eton over the phone. The only real weapon was the heavy crystal glass now held limply in the midget music mogul’s hand.
‘Remember one thing,’ said Vince, trying to sound as unmoved by his predicament as possible. ‘I still have your painting.’
‘You got nothing!’ blurted Tobin.
Vince eyeballed Eton. ‘It’s a painting which indicates that you and Duval have sick tastes. I could make a connection, easy.’
Dickie Eton’s response was one of comprehensive casualness, the kind you’d expect from a man padding about his palatial home in his pyjamas. ‘I have to concur with Mr Eddie. You have nothing. And this conversation is hopelessly pointless. I feel like a pussy cat toying with a half-dead bird he’s brought into the house. Because, you see my friend, you may have my painting … but you only have half the picture.’
Dickie Eton looked pleased with his summation of the scenario, and Vince believed what he said.
‘And this, Detective, is where I leave you. I have guests to attend to.’ On that note, Dickie Eton drained his glass and stood up. As much as he could stand up – because to get off the chair there was an element of jumping down before there was any standing up. Vince’s eyes were on the crystal glass – the weapon? Dickie Eton put it down with a thud, and padded over to the door.
Tobin went to stand up …
Vince sprang to his feet to grab the glass off the desk, then send it smashing into the side of Tobin’s head, then retrieve the shooter from the ex-copper’s expanding waistband, and make his escape. That was the plan he’d set irretrievably into action.
But instead he found himself on his knees on the floor.
As soon as Vince had stood up, his legs had just buckled under him. His head spun, and it felt as if his eyes were somersaulting around his head. He could feel himself melting as the carpet became quicksand, and a sensation of limblessness made it impossible to get up. The sound of laughter cascaded around him. Vince felt hands grip him under where his arms should be, and he was lifted up and dumped back into his seat. He felt like a baby in a high chair, all head and ineffectual body. Vince looked up to see a giggling Dickie Eton disappearing through the door, with a languidly amused Nick Soroya in tow.
Vince focused on the fizzing Mickey Finn in front of him on the desk – the drugged glass of Coca-Cola. The fear he’d been feeling had somehow overridden the effects of the drugged drink as it set about disabling him. It seemed his head was still working, but his body had retired. In fact, it felt … dead. And Vince suspected that, with Dickie Eton now out of the room, his head would soon be joining the rest of him.
Tobin now sat on a corner of the desk, with a big shit-shovelling grin on his face. He, it seemed, had no qualms about playing the big kitty toying with the little bird.
‘You’re a smart boy, Treadwell. I could tell, the minute the little fella started talking, that you started thinking: “Why’s he telling me all this? Why’s he putting himself in the frame?” Yeah, Treadwell, smart boy like you already knows the answer; because dead men don’t talk.’
‘That’s why you never made Murder Squad, Eddie. They do talk. They tell you all sorts of things, if you look close enough.’
‘I never made Murder Squad because there wasn’t any money in it. A dead loss, you could say.’
‘Oh, yeah, the envelopes.’
‘Not any more, now I’m a partner in this little caper.’
‘Going up in the world, Eddie, or down in the gutter?’
‘We’re gonna kill you, Treadwell. And we’re gonna get away with it. And I’m now gonna tell you why.’
Vince couldn’t move, felt as if he was encased in lead. His brain was ticking over and his mouth still seemed to be doing the business, even though his lips, and even his eyelids felt sluggish. He felt as though he’d been shot through with some huge dose of local anaesthetic. ‘What was in the drink?’
‘It’s the same stuff we dose the girls with.’ Tobin smiled. ‘They can see it coming, but they can’t do anything about it. It’s all in the eyes, you see. The director, he always goes for close-ups of their faces just before they get it. That’s what the perverts really like, the fear in the women’s eyes.’
Tobin took a slow smug stroll around to the other side of the desk, and sat down in the chair Dickie Eton had vacated. Physically the desk fitted him better – but it didn’t suit him. His prole face still had him pegged as the heavy sitting in the boss’s chair. ‘Smart mouth, Treadwell. You fuckin’ little know-it-all.’
‘From what I’ve just heard off the Mighty Atom, I got most of it right,’ replied Vince.
‘Ha! You know nothing!’
‘I’ve been hearing that a lot lately. Go on then, Eddie, educate me.’
Eddie Tobin sat back in the chair. ‘You remember Tommy Ribbons, dead on the floor, right?’
Vince nodded, or gave what he thought might be an approximation of a nod, with his new disembodied body.
‘You were asked to get the doorman?’
The sight of Eddie Tobin savouring the moment grated, so Vince decided to spoil it for him and speed things up. ‘I went to the front of the club. He wasn’t there. I heard a noise upstairs, a door slamming shut. So I went upstairs to check. It was dark. I heard a girl screaming from inside a room, top floor. Door was locked. I kicked it open and went inside. Shelves, stacks of film canisters. A table in the centre of the room, movie projector sitting on it, showing a movie. A private cinema. About twenty fellas sitting watching stag films. No big deal, they’re all over Soho. But this was different …’
Eddie Tobin pulled a grin when he saw the disgust on Vince’s face. ‘Yeah, I’ve seen that one,’ said Tobin. ‘Two spades togged-up like Zulus raping and beating a junkie blonde.’
Vince continued, ‘I heard something, turned around, saw a man standing in the doorway. Tall fella. Not the doorman. The projectionist I assumed. Then I wake up in the hospital with a headache, and your report in front of me – telling me I made it all up. Then I end up here and, bingo, I find out I’m right on the button.’
‘You don’t remember anything else?’
Vince shrugged, o
r at least thought he did, because he wasn’t sure his shoulders were working.
‘The man in the room, you’re right, he was the projectionist,’ said Tobin, leaning forward across the desk, as if he wanted to get a closer look at something being held under glass. Then he announced, ‘You killed him, Treadwell.’
What stopped Vince from falling to the floor, but this time in howls of incredulous laughter, rather than as a result of his spiked drink, was Tobin’s expression. There was something there that transcended a bent copper’s thin-lipped, slitty-eyed dishonesty. And if it was meant to be a joke, he was playing it straight.
‘Go on,’ said Vince.
Eddie Tobin sat back in Dickie Eton’s chair, no longer triumphant. This moment was bigger than his victory over Vince. ‘Me and Duval went looking for you when you didn’t come back,’ said Tobin. ‘We went upstairs, saw the door was open to the projection room. Blood on the floor, lots of it. The projectionist was starfished on the floor. You were kneeling over him, pounding his face to a pulp. Smashing him to pieces. I called out, told you to stop. You were killing him. Killing him. You turned around and saw us. Then you just carried on pounding the shit out of him. You wouldn’t stop. Duval had the cosh in his hand that he keeps stashed under the counter. I took it out of his hand because he was useless from shock. And, bang, got you on the top of the head, hard enough to put out an elephant. But you carried on.’
Tobin sucked at his teeth at the memory of it, then continued, ‘You knew what you were doing, Treadwell – head shots direct to the temple. All bruised and battered, brains like mush, until he was dead. Tongue lolling out his mouth, he was smashed to pieces. You killed him, Treadwell. You slaughtered him. Duval was puking. Me, I just stood there. You know, like a rabbit in the headlights. Never seen anything like it. Then you stood up, turned around. Duval was out the door, screaming like a fucking girl, with tears in his eyes. And he’s been about a bit, seen a few things. Me too. Nothing like this, though. It was your face, Treadwell … you were smiling. You stood up and then you fell over. The whacks I gave you must have got through that thick skull of yours. A delayed reaction. You had this look on you … I’ve never seen nothing like it. Twisted it was. Pure evil.’
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