Kiss Me Quick

by Miller, Danny

  Vince stood up, fast. Then fell right down again, just as fast. It was the information, the shock shooting through his body which had got him up. A reaction, a spasm. But, once up, his body just didn’t know how to cope, so it sent him straight back down again. He squeezed his eyes shut, then reopened them to see Tobin’s shoes just inches from his face. Brown wingtips, cracked and over-polished, crud on the welt that smelled like dried dog shit. The shoes shuffled off out of view. Vince was grabbed by the lapels and heaved up, and dumped back into his chair. Breathless through the exertion of lifting the young detective, Tobin rested himself on the corner of the desk.

  ‘I’ll give you the whole deal, Treadwell. You like movies, don’t you? Well, now you’re starring in one. You’re on Candid Camera. The whole thing was filmed, because Duval had a hidden camera in the projection room. Security just to make sure none of those films left the room. Duval’s got them all over the gaff, because he’s a surveillance nut – and a peeping Tom. But you know that yourself, don’t you? You’ve heard about those parties he holds at his mansion. It’s him and Dickie – oh yeah, the little fella’s the same.’ Tobin leaned forward, raised a beckoning forefinger, as if to hook him in. ‘Between you and me, Treadwell, the little fella and Lionel are a couple of right heavyweight perverts. They like to watch the guests at it, all fucked up on booze, pills and dope. Men and women doing things, women and women dyking off, queer boys dressed up as birds. Duval’s got cameras all over his house, and Dickie, too, I wouldn’t be surprised. What do you think is going on downstairs now? Are you kidding? It’s like a Roman orgy!’

  Tobin was really hitting his stride now. His face was lavishly red, not at the prospect of joining in the fun and games downstairs, but at the power he now held over the young detective.

  ‘You see, for all the little fella’s big talk, Dickie doesn’t like to fuck. He likes to watch others doing the dirty work, as he says. Lionel’s the same: wouldn’t cheat on his wife, but he likes to watch. You should see the people Lionel’s got on film, doing stuff they shouldn’t be doing with people they shouldn’t be doing it with. How come you think he’s buying up all of Soho, without the good people of Westminster Council batting an eyelid? Because he’s got the dirt on the right people. And he’s got it on you, too, Treadwell.’

  Tobin stood up and walked around to the other side of the desk, to sit down again. He knitted his hands together and leaned forward, like a newsreader about to impart some very serious news. ‘Don’t you even want to know what happened to the fella you killed?’

  Vince didn’t answer, not wanting to give the whole story credence. He wasn’t yet ready to allow that. He wanted it to remain a lie. But Tobin was dying to tell him, anyway, the words brimming around his thin-lipped mouth like drool.

  ‘The projectionist was a nobody. No wife, no family. And no one really knew that he worked for Duval, or what he did. So he wouldn’t be missed: just a piece of flotsam that got washed up in Soho. Occasionally had a few drinks in the Coach and Horses with the stagehands, but no one really knew him. He was a nothing.’

  They were the only two in the room, but Tobin still pantomimed looking around to check that no one was listening. ‘I read the report on you from the psychologist, Treadwell. One of the best in the business. Wrote a book on it …’

  ‘Dr Hans Boehm,’ supplied Vince.

  ‘That’s right. The same report you weren’t allowed to read. Oh, yeah, Scotland Yard’s got a file on you. They’re monitoring you very closely. Dr Boehm said you were prone to delusions. Fantasies. Said you was a nastysiss.’

  ‘Narcissist, you moron.’

  Tobin, unfazed by the insult, carried on. ‘Yeah, like I said, a nastysiss. Bit like being a ponce, which I always thought you were, with your flash fucking suits and your oily dago good looks.’

  The Mickey Finn must have been wearing off now, because Vince was becoming aware of his body again. And of the slurry of sickness in his stomach. It wasn’t just the information spewing out of Tobin’s mouth that made Vince nauseous, it was his actual mouth. It was him. While Tobin had been doing so much talking, foamy white spittle had formed in the corners of his thin lips. Even holding all the cards, as he professed to, the ex-copper still looked rabid with resentment, ugly with hate. Vince looked away from that gaping, foaming gob and glanced around the room.

  ‘You’re getting excited, Eddie. Wipe your mouth. I can smell your whore’s breath from here.’

  Tobin wiped the spittle off his mouth with the back of his sleeve. He rolled his shoulders, composed himself, then continued, ‘OK, nice and easy. Dr Boehm reckons you always see yourself at the centre of things – things that don’t exist. Prone to hubris and ego, he said. Most psychopaths and villains are nastysiss.’

  Tobin was wrong, thought Vince, because Vince was smack bang at the centre of things, and they did exist, and it did revolve around him. He wanted to get it back on a cop footing. Cop footing? That didn’t sound right either. As things stood, it was two ex-cops talking. One retired and one about to be permanently retired.

  ‘Let’s get this over and done with, Eddie, or else go brush your teeth.’

  ‘Don’t rush me, Treadwell. What’s your hurry? You’ve got nowhere to go,’ said Tobin, cracking his knuckles and stretching. ‘The clear-up was easy. We gutted the place, turned the projection room back into a storage room, moved the cinema to another location. You probably guessed that already, right?’

  ‘Right.’

  ‘Here’s the part that you’re interested in. The part you’ll never guess, and the part I like. Lionel called it irony. Me, I just think it’s fucking funny! Lionel contacted Dickie Eton. Dickie contacted Henry Pierce. Pierce was good at getting rid of things, as he’d been doing it for Jack Regent for years.’

  Vince felt his body gradually coming back to him, and it felt as if he had been on a weekend-long bender. Sweat prickled along his spine, his head throbbed and his chest tightened.

  ‘Pierce picked up the stiff two days later, in an ice-cream van of all things. Good call, because the stiff was getting a bit gamy by then, stinking the whole place up, needed to be put on ice. Then he was driven down to Brighton.’

  Vince was getting the joke; it was on him. And, whilst not enjoying it as much as Tobin, he was certainly appreciating the set-up and execution. It packed a hell of a punchline, a real killer.

  ‘Pierce did his usual routine, chopped off the stiff’s head and hands so he wouldn’t be identified if anything happened. Only something did happen. Pierce messed up and the body got washed ashore. And the rest you know, Detective Treadwell. You’re investigating a murder that you committed. A murder that’s even been captured on film.’

  Vince’s mind raced – backwards – as he tried to remember what happened in the projection room that night. But nothing came to him. It was just the same as it had always been: the tall man entering the room, and then the big blackout. Then he recalled what Dr Hans Boehm had told him, about the mind being the ultimate trickster. It does whatever it takes to protect itself: it shuts down, edits out, compartmentalizes, and blocks the bad memories. But, try as he might, Vince couldn’t block out Eddie Tobin.

  ‘We got a bit concerned once we heard that Markham had sent you down here, what with you being such a bright boy, and such a smart copper. But, as Duval pointed out, there was the irony, the poetic justice. We laughed. We got the joke. What were you going to find, Treadwell … the killer?’

  Vince began to laugh, and it might have turned hysterical, except the door opened and in walked Nick Soroya, with one hand behind his back. A gun? A knife? Vince stopped laughing and tried to stand up. He felt more life in his body now, and managed to haul himself out of the high-back chair. Tobin was already on his feet and moving fast from around the desk.

  Nick Soroya revealed his weapon – a spike. He held a hotshot syringe in his hand. It was brimful with bad brown liquid, just like the killer gear that had been doing the rounds.

  Eddie Tobin was at V
ince’s side now and he pushed the straining and grunting detective back into his seat. He clasped his arm and yanked up his sleeve. Nick Soroya made like a doctor and held the syringe up for a closer inspection. He then gave the glass cylinder three quick taps with his fingernail. Satisfied with the deadly concoction, the spike was driven deep into Vince’s vein.

  There was no time for Vince to say anything. Time had already slowed for him, as it inevitably does when it’s about to stop altogether. And the detective’s final thought, as the needle sank in, was just about the act itself. It was fast and professional. The malice and enmity had gone. It was like an execution.

  Nick Soroya, the lad with the pleasant face, revealed the true nature beneath his pleasant smile, and Vince recognized the darker purpose behind his eyes as he pushed death home.

  CHAPTER 25

  SAWDUST CAESAR

  Vaughn sat in a grotty pub in the parish of Portslade, which remained a stubbornly unfashionable part of town. That was the extent of his escape route. A backstreet pub he’d never visited before, therefore a pub where no one would know him. For hours he sat in the corner snug with pints and whisky chasers, draining both his glass and wallet. Not getting drunk, just more skint, and thus narrowing his options. But this pub in Portslade still wasn’t far enough away. He listened to the men idly chatting at the bar. The news filtered through that ‘the plague’ was still in the air, and threading its way through the town in needles of despair. A young girl this time.

  As Vaughn lifted the glass to take a final swig of his latest pint, the dregs at the bottom looking like organisms viewed through a microscope, his life came into sudden focus. As if surfacing through a glass drunkenly, a sudden sober clarity: he now had nothing. No girl, no money, no hope. The girl didn’t bear thinking about. She’d already slipped into the past. A past he no longer possessed. A past he hadn’t seen coming … if that made any sense?

  So he sat there thinking about how he could extricate himself from the shit he was in. Nothing came to mind, apart from what he’d done all his life, to act as a foil for others. But that wasn’t his plan. Because real patsies, suckers, mugs, gulls and foils, they never see it coming. His plan was to kill himself. Go the way of Wendy. Join her in the Big Nod. It seemed like the best plan of action, the best way ahead. It even seemed like the decent thing to do.

  In the brief moments he had thought of the girl, it was only to think how little he had thought about her, and how much he had always been thinking about himself. He’d felt sporadic spasms of guilt, only to be usurped by long underlying feelings of self-centred fear. Now he thought about topping himself, he could give his impending demise a dignity: he was doing it to be with the girl. And for the girl.

  He went to the toilet and locked himself in a cubicle, to hang himself with his belt. But then he realized he was wearing elasticised braces. It was his best suit, worn with red socks to complement his new loafers – just like his heroes, Frank, Dino, Sammy and Peter Lawford. But in a pub pisser in Portslade, even Vaughn, with his hyperactive fantasy life and lazy reality, could appreciate the sheer redundancy of that detail. He sank down on to the grimy seat of the bog, his head buried in his hands, and he cried. He cried for the girl and for the others that had died. But most of all he cried for himself. And then he pissed himself, terrified. He was sure death was going to hurt.

  There were about forty of them. They tore up deckchairs and used their wooden struts as coshes, or just sent them flying through the air. ‘We are the Mods! We are the Mods!’ they chanted. The handful of Rockers didn’t stand a chance. They jumped over the promenade railings to escape a kicking or the flying deckchairs. The drop on the other side was about thirty foot but, fortunately for them, the wall came in at an angle, and they managed to scuttle down safely to the next level and make their escape. The BBC and British Movietone News cameras caught it all. It was chaos, mayhem, anarchy and excellent copy! Moral indignation kicked in as the ‘Sawdust Caesars’ were seen to be taking over the entire town. Some cynics claimed that the filmed riots were stage-managed. Most social commentators said this drunken hooliganism wasn’t anything that hadn’t been seen before; just take a look at a Hogarth print.

  ‘We are the Mods! We are the Mods!’

  They’d gathered by the entrance to the Palace Pier. It seemed like the place to be: an epicentre, a potential flashpoint and, more importantly, yet another potential photo opportunity. Police on horses tried to disperse them but, as the cameras rolled, the publicity-astute Mods were eager for their close-ups and refused to budge. They protested. They staged a sit-down. Arguments about infringement of civil liberties were quickly gathered by the more politically minded and hurled at the mounted coppers. The not so erudite or politically minded, and generally more pissed, made do with stones. What a performance!

  ‘We are the Mods! We are the Mods!’

  Further along the seafront, by the kiddies’ paddling pool, heads were being pummelled, wrists were being cuffed, paddy wagons were being loaded. The boys in blue had contained about two hundred of them on the beach. They threw stones, beer bottles, deckchairs and finally charged the police.

  ‘We are the Mods! We are the Mods!’

  Away from the seafront and the cameras, shop windows had been kicked in, pubs turned over and motorbikes set on fire. As most of the Rockers had gone home, the Mods now fought amongst themselves, divided by areas, football teams. All accompanied by a perennial chorus of ‘What are you screwing at?’

  ‘We are the Mods! We are the Mods!’

  They’d given the movement a name, Mods, and anyone who was up for a bit of a debacle on the bank holiday weekend had gathered under its banner. It was a truncated and punchy little moniker that seemed a million miles away from the élan of the original Modernist movement that had cut a dash through the subterranean culture of Soho’s coffee bars and jazz clubs, carrying a well-thumbed copy of Jean-Paul Sartre in the back pocket, watching Jean Paul Belmondo up on the big screen, favouring the Italianate-style clothing found in the glossy magazines, and turning away from American bubblegum culture towards a new European aesthetic.

  ‘We are the Mods! We are the Mods!’

  Vaughn wasn’t a Mod. Even though he was wearing an Italian-style mixed-fibre Montague Burton suit with three buttons and a single vent, a skinny-brimmed trilby, a pair of suede tasselled loafers, and regularly ingested pills as if they were going out of fashion, he just didn’t class himself as a Mod. That was the trouble with Mods, thought Vaughn; anyone with half a savvy about dress sense was considered a Mod. But he knew that he wasn’t one, and he stood vehemently staunch on that little fact. Because, right now, he wanted to kill them. On his trudge away from the pub in Portslade, he’d planned on robbing a chemist (a Mod trick if ever there was one – even though he wasn’t one). It was the perfect time for robbery, on a bank holiday. But the mobile alarms of the police force – on motorbikes, sitting in twos in panda cars, or mobbed up inside Black Marias – were thick in the air due to the Mods. And even though the overstretched cops, and the chaos in the town centre offered the perfect cover for such a caper, Vaughn just didn’t quite trust his luck. Getting caught would kill him, and anyway he wanted to do the job properly. No, Vaughn hated Mods.

  He had recently been avoiding Third Avenue, mainly because he’d been avoiding Henry Pierce. Now he didn’t care, and he reckoned that by now Henry Pierce would be avoiding him, too, what with the bogies sniffing after Vaughn.

  He pushed the button, pronounced his name and was buzzed up immediately. At the top of the stairs he was greeted by a tall West Indian he knew as Marcus Three. There were seven West Indians in Brighton called Marcus, and this one was number three. To Vaughn’s knowledge none of them were related, yet they were all called Marcus. In fact, most of the West Indian men Vaughn knew were call Marcus, and he just couldn’t figure out why. Marcus Three sucked his teeth, sniffed the air around him curiously, then sucked his teeth again and said, in his deep patois, ‘You stink of piss, ra
ssclatt!’

  ‘You holding?’

  ‘I don’t deal what you’re looking for, bwouy.’

  ‘Barbs? You got barbs? I’ll take barbs? Please … anything.’ And he meant anything – and enough of it to kill himself with.

  Marcus Three gave him a nod, and Vaughn stepped inside the flat. All the lights were out, so he couldn’t see a thing. He walked into a fug as clouds of reefer lazed about the airless room. He didn’t know what hit him, but something did.

  When Vaughn came round, he found himself seated on a plastic chair. He was bound with a thin cord wrapped around his waist. His feet were also secured. It was a thorough job. Even he thought it was too thorough a job for someone as ineffectual as him. It was dark because the windows were painted over in matt black. The familiar mural on the wall depicting some loose-limbed Caribbeans dancing with not a care in the world.

  He was still in Third Avenue, downstairs from the same flat, in the basement of the BBC or, to give it its full title, the Beach Bottle Club. There was the warm light of a flame flickering away behind him. As he recovered his bearings, he knew that behind him were tables with dead Jack Daniel’s bottles masquerading as candlesticks, and layered with cascading stalactites of wax. He’d often sat mindlessly at one of those tables, stoned out of his box, thoughtlessly peeling strips of warm malleable wax off the bottles, feeling it crumble under his fingernails. Vaughn heard a noise behind him, chair legs scraping on the floor. He turned his head round towards the light and saw the bulk of a large object: Henry Pierce.