Vince looked up at Bobbie and asked, ‘How did I get here?’
‘When you didn’t come back to my place, I called the hotel. They told me that two men had delivered you to your room, said you’d been out drinking and you’d had too much. That’s when I knew something was wrong, because you don’t drink, do you?’
Vince gave a slow deliberate shake of his head, as he pieced it together.
‘Tell me what happened, Vincent.’
He lay back again in the bath and rearranged the bubbles to cover himself. ‘If I tell you what happened, you won’t love me,’ he said, not knowing if he was being serious or frivolous. He suspected it was the former, but his delivery suggested the latter. He took a big gulp of breath and ducked under the water again.
‘If you don’t, I can’t love you,’ said Bobbie as he resurfaced.
‘I guess I have to take my chances, then.’
And he did. About everything. He laid out the whole thing from top to bottom (skipping over the bits she already knew). From Soho down to Brighton. From walking into the Peek-a-Boo Club with Tobin, to walking out of the Grand Hotel with Tobin. To being driven to Dickie Eton’s party by Nick Soroya. To Dickie Eton and Lionel Duval’s involvement with the porno films. To Eddie Tobin telling him about the death of the projectionist, and him being filmed committing the murder. Then finally, he, Detective Vincent Treadwell of Scotland Yard, being sent down to Brighton to solve the crime – the crime that he himself had committed.
It was at this point that Bobbie stopped the story. She had listened carefully, patiently. She was a good listener, and her own storytelling prowess, in reinventing her past, had made sure of that. She knew the devil was in the detail, but she didn’t believe Vince had killed anyone. To her it was obvious that he had been framed. With or without the film, she reassured him that it was all a big set-up. And that, together, they would prove it. She was so strong and resolute in her beliefs that Vince believed her. The water was cold by the time Vince got out the bath, his skin the texture of coral. Bobbie wrapped a towel around him and dried him off.
‘Are you hungry?’ Bobbie asked him.
He gave a sluggish shrug.
‘Good. Let’s eat.’
The low-slung seagulls hovered over the town like marionettes in the hands of a lazy puppeteer, alerting all to a new day of fresh hunger, scavenging and survival, through their distressed, choric alarm call. Bobbie was exhausted, her body aching from the physical strain, and the desperation of seeing him slip in and out of consciousness and thinking she might lose him. But, as they walked from the Seaview Hotel and along the promenade, the sunrise’s hallucinatory presence gave everything a fresh, invigorating glow.
Vince had his arm around Bobbie’s waist, holding her close, feeling it was his turn to do the supporting. For all the new information he’d gleaned about himself and the murder case, he felt surprisingly at ease. Like he’d reached the end of something, and it was now out of his hands – the freedom of powerlessness. Whatever Nick Soroya had shot Vince through with, he was still feeling the hangover of. It was probably the same stuff he’d fixed his drink with. Either way, considering what he’d been told, Vince felt strangely at ease, almost serene. He certainly didn’t feel like a killer, and he still had enough of the copper in him to feel innocent until proven guilty. And, even though he knew he had enough motive to commit the crime, and certainly enough righteous anger within him to carry it out, he needed to see the evidence, have it laid in front of him before he could condemn himself.
The town was scarred by the weekend’s violence with the Mods and Rockers. Broken deckchairs littered the beach, smashed windows lined the high street, and there were bulging police cells. The papers were full of the weekend’s mayhem, and moral indignation and shock. Questions to be asked in Parliament, and visiting politicians sent down to inspect the ‘war zone’ damage.
None of the cafés on the front were open yet, so Bobbie and Vince walked down to the beach and sat down, and there moulded themselves into the shingle. The beach was dotted with inhabited sleeping bags, which looked like recumbent walruses. Vince and Bobbie looked out to sea. Then the inevitable moved in on them.
‘What are you going to do now?’ asked Bobbie.
‘I told you I’ve got some money stashed, and I’m owed some holiday pay, assuming I’m still a copper by the end of the week. Maybe go away, take that drive around Europe. You still want to come?’
‘I didn’t mean that. About the … the situation?’
Vince closed his eyes and lay back on the stones. ‘Last night, Tobin said they were going to kill me, and they were going to get away with it. And if what Tobin told me is true, they could get away with it. Maybe leave me on a beach with a hotshot of bad heroin. Make it look like I dosed myself, like poor Wendy.’
‘But you’re a detective, Vincent, so they know you. Your colleagues know you, your friend Ray what’s-his-name from Interpol knows you—’
Vince held up a halting hand and sat up again. ‘That counts for nothing – they didn’t believe what I saw the first time around. Even Ray thinks I’m obsessed with this case. There’s also a medical report on me from an eminent Harley Street psychologist who treated me, claiming I’m a psycho. And apparently some film of me killing a man with my bare hands. They’ll just think I’ve gone bad.’
She shook her head vehemently and said firmly, ‘It’s all lies. That’s what they say, that’s what they want you to believe. But it’s not true, any of it. Where is this film of you killing the man? Where’s the actual proof?’
Vince smiled, because her trust in him was heartbreaking. He lay back down on the stones. ‘Like I said, Bobbie, if it’s true, then last night was about showing me they’ve got me exactly where they want me. They could have killed me, could have shot me with that real bad heroin. But it seems I’m worth more to them alive than dead.’ Vince rubbed his thumb over the soft skin where the needle had perforated. ‘A corrupted copper is worth his weight in gold.’ He emitted a slow heavy sigh, closed his eyes and let the morning sun warm his face and bruised body.
Bobbie studied Vince. He seemed almost contented, resigned to whatever was going to play out. But she herself wasn’t contented. It was as if all Vince’s rage had transferred itself over to her, so that she felt a burning resentment towards Lionel Duval, Dickie Eton, Eddie Tobin and all those who wanted Vincent beaten and laid out on the beach with his eyes closed. She stood up, wiped the damp clinging pebbles off her backside and purposefully insisted, ‘Stand up, Vincent, I’m hungry.’
Vince and Bobbie were now sitting in a café. Eight tables covered in blue-check plastic tablecloths, with doors that opened out on to the esplanade, swivel racks selling cheap sunglasses, rubber rings, lilos, buckets and spades, flip-flops, postcards of the town and cheeky McGill cartoons, straw sunhats, and black-felt bowler hats with paper bands around them enticing passers-by to Kiss Me Quick, Squeeze Me Slow.
They had a full English breakfast arrayed in front of them. It was the biggest one they offered on the menu: ‘The Big Brighton Gut-Buster’. Three sausages, three rashers of bacon, three runny fried eggs, three blood-dark discs of black pudding, three tinned tomatoes, a stack of chips and a pile of toast. Vince wasn’t feeling hungry; it was Bobbie who had ordered up the breakfast. She knew Vince was running on empty, so his body needed fuelling and his mind needed firing. She watched as Vince dipped the corner of a piece of fried bread gingerly into the runny yolk of an egg, absentmindedly playing with his food.
Bobbie wanted to get him back on the case. ‘Do you still think Jack has anything to do with all this?’ she prodded. ‘The dirty films … the girls?’
Vince didn’t even acknowledge the question. He was caught up in the patterns he was making in the egg yolk, and probably more concerned with the age-old question of ‘chicken or egg?’ than Jack Regent’s activities.
‘Well?’ she demanded.
His reply was mumbled, listless. ‘Who knows.’
‘You’re the detective.’
He shrugged, and carried on staring down at his plate.
Bobbie dropped her knife and fork on her own plate with an attention-getting clatter.
They were the only ones in the café, so it was left to the two waitresses behind the counter to watch the good-looking young couple as the blonde slapped the dark-haired man around the face. The blow was struck with such power and velocity that they were surprised to see him ride it, then look almost grateful for it.
Vince raised his left hand to his face, and ran fingertips over his hot, numbed cheek; more to check that the cheek was still there than to soothe it. He looked at Bobbie. Her back was ramrod straight, her head cocked. There was a defiant, challenging look to her normally soft features. He’d already been slapped around the chops by Bobbie so many times during the night that he seemed resigned to it. Then, she’d only done it to stop him slipping into sleep and therefore the great void, the Big Nod. As for now, she’d done it to stop him slipping away from himself, slipping out of his identity as a detective. Maybe that was the thing she loved about him most, maybe not, but he wasn’t going to take the chance.
He knew that Bobbie wanted Detective Vincent Treadwell back because he was strong, smart, resourceful and therefore could look after her now that Jack was gone. And because he could be all those things, and because he wanted her more than he’d ever wanted any woman before, he now did what he had to do.
He took two slices of toast, two sausages, two rashers of bacon, a disc of black pudding, a handful of chips, a dollop of ketchup, a dollop of brown sauce, and built himself a gut-busting sandwich. He opened his mouth as wide as he could, and took as big a bite as he could manage. Then worked his jaws for what seemed an eternity, and swallowed, before washing it down with several big glugs of black coffee. He put his plate to one side, took a toothpick and stuck it in his mouth, then folded his arms on the table. Finally, he faced her, ready for business.
‘Jack must know about the dirty films?’ Rhetorical, but Bobbie nodded anyway. ‘First off, dirty. These films are beyond dirty. They’re degenerate, OK?’
Bobbie nodded.
Vince manoeuvred the toothpick around his mouth with his tongue, and moved back into the mindset of a copper. ‘Did Jack say anything about retiring?’ he asked. ‘About getting out of the game?’
‘Jack’s guarded. It wasn’t chit-chat like with the boys.’
‘Boys?’
Bobbie let out a sigh, as if she’d been caught out. ‘Yeah, you know, Jack was an older man. He was more like a …’ Her voice trailed off.
Vince stepped in and finished it, ‘Like a father?’
She turned away from him, and thoughtlessly went about pressing her thumbnail into the plastic tablecloth, leaving a series of crescent-shaped imprints. She stopped vandalising the tablecloth after Vincent gave an admonishing cough.
‘OK, Henry Pierce runs the operation along with Duval and Eton. He provides the security,’ said Vince. ‘It’s a euphemism for dirty work – and, in a dirty business like the one they’re running, that can get pretty dirty.’
‘And your friend, Eddie Tobin.’
‘Forget Tobin.’ Vince gave a quick, dismissive shake of his head. ‘Whatever he thinks he is, he’s just a messenger. An ex-copper on the make who they’d never make a real partner. I think Henry Pierce is the answer. My guess is that Jack didn’t know about the films.’
‘That was my guess, too!’
He smiled. ‘It’s called team work. The team does the work, and the ones with the higher rank gets the credit. Team work.’
She smiled.
‘Your guess, that he didn’t know about the films, I agree with. Or, if he did know, he wasn’t happy about it, and maybe that’s Jack’s problem. He’s made his money, wanted an easier life, then found love and wanted to settle down.’
They locked eyes. She won and stared him down.
‘Or just wanted a quiet life,’ ceded Vince. ‘But you can’t have a quiet life in this game. You’re like a shark – stop moving and you’re dead.’
‘You think they killed Jack?’
Vince weighed it up. ‘Doubtful … but they might have wanted him out of the way so they could carry on the operation without hindrance.’ Vince took in a long breath, then let it out in a wistful sigh. He wasn’t satisfied with his own analysis. ‘Jack’s smart, therefore why not let Pierce have a racket for himself and keep him happy? And Jack being Jack, why would he be opposed to that if it brought money in?’
Vince watched as Bobbie chewed this over. He handed her a toothpick. She, too, stuck it in her mouth and worked it around her lips with her tongue, resting her folded arms on the table. Sitting opposite, both deep in reflection, they were now mirror images of each other.
‘And that’s the reason,’ said Vince, ‘that Jack might not have wanted anything to do with the films. He didn’t want it interfering with his new venture – his big-money venture. The one that would get him back in favour with his homeland and the Unione Corse. Heroin!’
Bobbie smiled, realizing he was back on track. ‘So, Henry Pierce set Jack up with the …?’
‘With the body of the man I killed.’
She shook her head and spat out, ‘Not true!’ jabbing a finger in his chest. ‘We don’t know that.’
Vince smiled at Bobbie. She was no longer primarily defending Jack or his reputation – she was on Vince’s side one hundred per cent. He was beginning to believe all that corny stuff he’d heard about the love of a good woman. ‘We? Are you my new partner, Detective LaVita?’
‘Drinkwater. Detective Drinkwater. It sounds better … and I’d never thought I’d say that.’
‘OK, Pierce took a knife that Jack had used on a past victim. It would be easy for him because that’s what Pierce did: he cleared up Jack’s messes. So, he had a stashed knife with Jack’s prints all over it, took off the victim’s head and the hands to stop it being identified.’
Bobbie looked down at her plate, where her fork lay, skewering bacon and black pudding, and covered in ketchup.
Vince saw Bobbie’s uneasiness and, as she pushed her plate away, he rustled up a mischievous grin. ‘Not so much fun now, is it: the nitty-gritty of murder?’
She returned his challenging look and said, ‘I can handle it. Does Pierce know about you and …?’
‘Killing the projectionist?’
‘We don’t know that.’
Vince shrugged the smallest shrug available to him. ‘I don’t know.’
‘Didn’t you ask Tobin?’
Vince pulled a wry smile. ‘You’re forgetting my friend, Mickey Finn. I was groggy, not at my best, but I’m guessing Duval would have kept shtum. A copper in your pocket is a precious commodity that he can draw on any time he needs to. Duval and Tobin wouldn’t have told a nut job like Pierce how the projectionist died. Pierce was merely in the disposal business.’ Vince let out a sour little laugh. ‘The poor bastard.’
‘Who?’
‘The projectionist. They certainly got their money’s worth out of him. Duval uses him to set me up. Then Pierce uses him to set Jack up.’
All through this, Vince held on to the wry smile, till it was fixed to his face like wall cladding. But Bobbie saw through it to the anguish on the other side. She gathered up both his hands in hers, squeezed them and said, ‘Let’s stick with what we know, Vincent. And I know Henry Pierce isn’t smart enough to outfox Jack.’
‘Maybe not, but Max Vogel might be, and Pierce looked to me like he was taking his orders from him.’
Bobbie puckered her brow. ‘I’m not buying it. Henry Pierce loved Jack – that’s the only word for it. He would do anything for him. He didn’t like me, not because I’d done anything to hurt him, but just because I got close to Jack. Or maybe closer than any other woman had ever got to him. It was jealousy, and I told Jack that once. He laughed, but he admitted it was true. I’m not saying Henry was queer for Jack, but he did love him.’
Vince
gave a slow contemplative nod as he recalled Pierce’s performance in the interview room, and his belief that Jack was either god or godless, the binary opposites that held equal power for Henry Pierce.
‘Betraying Jack doesn’t seem right to me, either,’ said Vince. ‘So you flip it. If that’s the way it looks, maybe it looks that way because that’s the way they want you to see it. Jack wants us to think he’s finished. He wants us to think he’s skipped town, retired to Corsica or wherever.’
Bobbie felt a cold chill. ‘You think he’s still here?’
Vince saw the fear backing up the question.
They went arm in arm as they walked out to sea. Or at least as far as the Palace Pier would take them. Past the fortune-teller’s booth, the candyfloss concession, the fishing gear shop, the ghost train, the man setting out the deckchairs. Bobbie recognized the man who managed the arcade unlocking the doors for the day’s trade. She smiled at him in acknowledgment, but he scowled and turned away when he saw her arm in arm with Vince.
‘Who’s that?’ Vince asked.
‘His name’s Albert. He works for Jack.’
Vince glanced back at the man now walking into the arcade – lined with one-armed bandits, pinball, lucky dips and penny logs. Soon the place would be full of tourists putting their money into the machines, Jack’s machines, Jack’s pockets. You couldn’t escape this town without paying tribute to Jack.
‘Get used to it,’ he said.
‘What?’
‘People turning away from you.’
‘Doesn’t bother me.’
Vince could see that it did bother her. And more so now after Vince had suggested that Jack hadn’t left town.
‘Anyway, it’s a moot point,’ she said.
‘Why?’
Bobbie stopped walking, turned to face him and said, ‘Because after you’ve cleared your name, you’re going away from here, and I’m coming with you.’
‘It sounds like you’ve made your mind up.’
‘I have.’
‘Do I have any say in it?’
Kiss Me Quick Page 28