Kiss Me Quick

by Miller, Danny

  Pierce gave a burdensome shrug. ‘Madness? Weakness? Superstition mainly. In fact, you could say that superstition was my weakness, and my madness. I’ve been prey to it all my life. It stems from my wrestling days. You’ll find that most professional performers and sportsmen are superstitious. And having Red Indian blood in me probably didn’t help, them being a superstitious lot and no mistake. Not walking under ladders, or hats on the bed, or black cats crossing your path, that sort of thing. So, you see, I couldn’t stab the little mite again any more than I could walk under a ladder or put a hat on a bed. So I said to myself, I said, Henry, if it’s still alive, then maybe it was meant to live.’

  Bobbie wrapped her arms tightly around herself, as if an Arctic chill suddenly pervaded the room. She began rocking slightly on the lip of the sofa, as she pieced it together, sensed where this story was heading. She looked down at her dress, the turquoise silk dress. Her mother’s dress. Pierce leaned in and brushed his hand over her breast, and over the brooch. She didn’t flinch.

  ‘Take off the brooch, my dear.’

  ‘No,’ she said, her mind now a montage of memories, piecing together the times she had spent with Jack. Him asking about her past, her mother and father … the mother and father she never knew … the mother and father he had killed.

  ‘Take it off!’

  Bobbie, trance-like, turned the brooch over and slid the long, thick fastening pin from its catch, then withdrew the pin through the material till the brooch was off. Revealing the repaired gash where the knife had entered. Scarcely an inch long, but undeniably there.

  Pierce smiled in recognition of the slashed dress as the memories rolled back for him, too. ‘The minute I saw that dress, I knew it was you. I remember your mother. Never forget a face, and a real beauty she was. And you, my dear, are your mother’s girl. Same face – the image of her. Got a touch of your father about you, but you’re a spit of your mother. A beauty.’ A snide, knowing smile spread across his face. ‘Easy to see why Jack would fall for you.’

  Tears forced their way through her closed eyes and fell freely on to the silk dress and soaked into it like big spots. Her parents, the young couple, now became vibrant to Bobbie, almost alive to her as her imagination joined up the dots. She wondered what might have happened to incur Jack’s wrath. Her father might have owed Jack some money and couldn’t pay it back. But would Jack really kill him over that? She didn’t know, because Jack was a black mystery to her now. Maybe her father had said something out of turn, something to cause Jack offence. Bobbie at once recoiled from the thought, a wave of repulsion moving over her. Was she making excuses for Jack, her lover? If Pierce was to be believed, he had slaughtered a whole family: father, mother and, for all he knew, their baby daughter. As inconceivably evil as it seemed, and as undeniably mad as Pierce was, she unquestioningly believed it. Deep down, she knew it was true. She did believe that Jack Regent, the man she’d lain with, had butchered her own parents …

  ‘You want to know what happened next?’ Pierce asked, disrupting her thoughts.

  She didn’t want to know, but she did want to live. So she nodded.

  ‘I wrapped you up in that dress and drove you out of Brighton that night. It was dawn when I found the church where I left you on the steps.’ Pierce gave a throaty chuckle. ‘Christmas Day, I should have left you in a barn, to keep up the nativity theme. So, you could say, my dear, I saved your life.’

  Her eyes still closed, the heavy sobs has subsided into sharp little intakes of breath, and her hands still clasped the brooch. ‘You should have killed me.’

  Pierce gave a slow, harmonious nod of accord, then gripped the arms of the throne and hauled himself to his feet. He stretched himself to his full height and bulk, and issued a plangent sigh that marked the end of the conversation and his confession, and signalled that the bloodletting would commence. He moved slowly towards her, carving knife in hand.

  His words echoed in Bobbie’s mind: If it was still alive, then maybe it was meant to live. She wanted to live.

  ‘You bastard!’ she yelled. ‘Jack Regent killed my mother and father, and you … you want me to be grateful?’

  At these words, Henry Pierce stopped in his tracks and stood stock-still. His mouth twitched, a smile teetering across his dry old lips, then it transformed itself into a fully fledged grin. And then he laughed. He laughed loud and he laughed hard, till he was doubled up in his mirth. Eventually, after he’d exhausted it, he stilled himself. He calmed his breath that was still wheezy from laughter. He felt this moment needed silence, because he felt a weight of responsibility for what he was about to do. It felt good to him, he felt like God, not only having her life in his hands, her future, but also her past. He was about to tear it all away from her and leave her with nothing. Henry Pierce had killed before … but not like this. Not from the inside out. This solemn moment needed time, more time than they had, but still …

  He drew closer to her.

  Bobbie, her head bowed, gripped the brooch in her hand, squeezing it tight. The end of the thick pin had sunk into the base of her thumb, boring into the flesh, the tendon, the muscle, towards the bone. The warm blood coursing down her fingers felt good to the touch. She wanted to feel more of it.

  Pierce bent down to meet her gaze, his neck seemingly extending out of the grimy collar of his shirt; an unnatural and dangerous position for him to be in, like a giraffe grazing in the long grass. But this was the real moment he had been waiting for: to study the wretched creature he’d caught and trapped under glass, as he delivered the denouement, the final part of her destruction.

  And then he could finally kill her. Everything inside out.

  ‘My dear, you don’t know the half of it. The half—’

  ‘The half of it!’

  The all-powerful, all-knowing, all-seeing Henry Pierce was now stopped, unsure and blind. The brooch pin sank into his eye. The good eye. The seeing eye.

  Bobbie had heard enough of what emerged from Pierce’s mouth, enough to last her a lifetime. She was ready. Coiled ready on the mouth-shaped sofa, she sprang. Her only warning was those hissed words, ‘The half of it!’

  At that, Pierce took his first backwards step. He’d seen something in her eyes, something fresh, something new. An expression that sent a jolt of uncertainty through his powerful body. And, in that backward step, and in a flash, she leapt up and was straddled around him. Her left arm was around the back of his head, grabbing a hank of his inky-black hair. In her bloodied right hand, the brooch was buried within her fist, its long pin sticking out from between her fore and middle fingers, a deadly protrusion like the sting on the scorpion’s tail. And, with her legs wrapped around his waist, she jabbed the pin straight into his eye, moving her balled fist around and around, digging deeper, as it shredded the jellied lens.

  Pierce gave a scream, surprisingly high and shrill for the brutish bulk of his body. But it soon faded as he worked on ridding himself of the lacerating limpet that had attached itself to him with such speed and surprise, and was now destroying his only good eye. The unfavoured eye that paled in comparison with the scary-looking eye. The eye that he’d never shown too much interest in went up in his esteem now that he realized he was losing it.

  But it was too late. The work was done.

  His arms flailed and flapped about, like some dreadful old albatross trying to take flight, as she gripped him tightly. They were thrashing around the room, engaged in a ghastly dance, clattering into furniture, smashing ornaments, knocking into gilt-framed mirrors and taking paintings off the walls. But Pierce had played the blind man for so long now that he was well rehearsed in the role, enough to get his bearings. Somehow he felt as if he still had his good eye and, working on the memory of sight, that’s what led him towards the doorway. He regained his balance, and charged for the door.

  Bobbie, her eyes still closed, still hanging on, trying to push the entire brooch into his bloody eye socket, felt a first crushing blow as her back slammed into the
heavy black bureau that stood blocking the doorway. She let out a scream of pain.

  Pierce, alerted to the doorway by her knife-like scream directly into his ear, shuddered helplessly in pain and rage. He didn’t want her attacking any more of his senses, and he knew he would be desperately needing his ears. Realizing that he’d run into the bureau, from hearing her pain, he stepped backwards, then charged at it again. Another scream, and the sound of cracking just in front of him, either bone or wood.

  Then release, her grip was gone. She was off him.

  Bobbie was now on the floor, crawling away from him. Pierce, blood coursing down his face, still wanted to finish the job he’d started. He gripped the black bureau, braced himself and, with a loin-stretching groan, heaved it up over his head. Henry ‘Redskin’ Pierce, like his grandfather before him, the supposed Sioux warrior, used his tracking senses. He listened. He sniffed the air around him, hoping to pick up her scent: Chanel No. 5. He was now doing all the things he pretended to do when he was pretending to be blind. The irony wasn’t lost on him – but it still wasn’t fucking funny.

  His head tilted downwards. The bad eye and the new really bad eye were superfluously directed towards Bobbie, sprawled in a crawling position on the floor. She looked up at Pierce and, seeing she was about to be crushed by what seemed like a monolith, carefully, silently, took off her shoe and tossed it about five feet across the room. Hearing the noise, Pierce turned his attention in that direction; shifted his stance and, with a belting grunt, hurled the black block of wood in the direction of the fallen shoe. The bureau, brittle and old, exploded on to the parquet floor. Then Pierce stood in silence, listening for the last sounds of the crushed and dying girl.

  And heard … nothing.

  Pierce stared out into this new-found blackness. Was this it? he asked himself. His shoulders collapsed; it had all gone wrong. This would never have happened to Jack. For him, the girl would be dead by now. Maybe he now wanted to cry? But this was not the time for experiments. Pierce stood there wondering if anything else came after the blackness. Wondering if this was all a bad joke and the lights would come back on again. He didn’t know what to do next.

  Then he realized it was over. The lights weren’t coming on again – and this was it. That black garb he’d dressed himself in all these years, even during the most inappropriately sunny of days, was never coming off now. There was no respite from the darkness that had once defined him. The dress rehearsal for the old performer playing the blind man was over – this was opening night for the rest of his life. He was at one with the part now. And in a soft, sad, almost involuntary voice, he said ‘Goodbye’ to the girl.

  Gripping the ornate banister, operating on falls, rolls, bumps, twisted ankles and gravity, he bruisingly made his way down the unforgiving marble stairs. With arms outstretched in front of him, like Frankenstein’s sad old monster, he stumbled out into the street, groping his way into the night and into the middle of the road. He lifted his head to the sky and let the rain beat down on his face to wash the blood away and cleanse his brand-new eye. The fantastic new jewel he wore glistened in the rain and moonlight. The light from the moon and the street lamps playing on the silver and the cut-glass stones. The brooch was now firmly implanted in his eye socket. The dead diamanté eye was as much a part of him now as the dead marble eye. Neither of them pretty, but both fitting.

  ‘SPIDER!’

  … Spider had been instructed to park on the opposite side of the crescent, and that’s exactly where he was, in Pierce’s car, a black 59 Cadillac sedan Deville with red interior. Spider liked tooling around in Pierce’s Caddy – typical of Pierce to have a yank tank. Fuck-off fins, fuck-off V8 engine and fuck-off white wall tyres. Nice and conspicuous, a real eye-catcher, it was the only Cadillac in Brighton now. A local car dealer had owned one, too, different colour, white interior. Pierce had the car stolen, then compacted. The other Cadillac, now about the size of a television set, was then dumped on to the car dealer’s front lawn; along with a warning not to be such a flash cunt. The town wasn’t big enough for two of them: Cadillacs that is, not flash cunts. The town was full of flash cunts. And Spider was one of them.

  Spider had known that Pierce was planning to kill Bobbie, because Pierce had filled him in on the details. Not all the details, not what happened twenty-five years ago, because that was private between him and Bobbie. Pierce had told him that the order came from up high, and it made Spider feel good that Pierce was part of a bigger picture, and not just acting under his own psychotic volition. It made Spider feel good that he himself was part of a bigger picture. And a murder. That felt really good, really villainous. That Pierce was taking his own sweet time to do the job didn’t worry Spider unduly. He knew that Pierce, a sadist at heart, would savour his work, indulging his depravity. So, once Pierce disappeared into the house, Spider had lit up a joint and turned on the radio. Maybe that’s why he didn’t initially hear his boss, Henry Pierce, as he called out into the night.

  ‘SPIDER!’

  The black 59 Cadillac Deville with red trim pulled up. The back door was duly opened. Pierce, his hand covering his newly ornamented eye, was guided into the back seat. But there seemed to be someone next to him. Confused, he called out to his driver. ‘Spider!’

  Spider didn’t answer. Spider was next to him in the back seat. Dead.

  With a heavy foot on the accelerator, the car sped off into the night.

  CHAPTER 32

  SNAP!

  The street-entrance door was ajar. It was dark inside. Vince tried the lights – dead. He walked towards the stairs and felt a stickiness underfoot. He looked down to see a tar-like substance on the marble floor. As black as it was, he soon recognized it as congealing blood. Without hesitation, he raced up the stairs.

  The door to the apartment was closed, but almost hanging off its hinges. Vince needed to lift the door to open it and enter the flat. He tried the lights; again they were dead. To his left he saw a twisted heap on the floor: it turned out to be the smashed black bureau. He called out Bobbie’s name. No answer.

  Vince went down one of the passages and noticed a soft warm light flickering from inside one of the rooms. He put his ear to the door, and heard a young girl’s voice. She was softly singing a lullaby that was carried along on the hushed, jagged breath of sobs. He opened the door into a large white-tiled bathroom, and saw that Bobbie was lying in the bath. A single candle lit the room. Her precious photo album lay on the floor.

  She didn’t seem to notice him as she stared straight ahead, her toes playing with the taps. The bathwater was pink with blood. He looked at her body, but saw no wounds.

  ‘What happened, Bobbie?’

  She carried on staring at her toes and humming her lullaby.

  Vince braced himself for the worst, but stayed calm. ‘I went to the Blue Orchid, but no one was there …’ Still she kept on with the lullaby. ‘Bobbie?’

  ‘The bad man,’ she said, pulling an exaggerated, frightened-child grimace. ‘The bad man dressed in black came.’

  Vince bent down and grabbed her under the arms and lifted her out of the tepid water and on to her feet. She was as light as a rag doll, lifeless as if all that spirit that keeps us from floating off into the ether had evaporated. Bobbie didn’t say a word to all this manhandling. She seemed stoned but he sensed she hadn’t taken anything. Then he saw the bruising, the colour spectrum of pain: black and blue and brown and yellow. It stretched from her shoulder blades down to the base of her spine, like a mottled cape. He held her close, her limp body swaying in his arms. He squeezed his eyes shut and whispered, ‘Sorry sorry sorry sorry …’

  Grabbing a white towel off the rail, he wrapped it around her. Then he picked her up in his arms and carried her down the passage, into the living room, and laid her gently on the red lips of the sofa.

  ‘My pictures …?’ she said softly.

  He went back into the bathroom and retrieved her photo album. She held it close, hugging it in her arms.


  ‘The lights, Bobbie? Do you know where the fuse box is?’

  ‘Vincent, sit down with me, just for a moment,’ she uttered in a childish voice, opening her photo album.

  Vince tried to suppress his impatience. ‘Come on, Bobbie, please, where is it? Is it downstairs? Do you know?’

  Not looking up from the album, ‘Downstairs under the table, I think,’ she replied perfectly calmly, as if nothing had happened.

  Vince went downstairs and located the fuse box. The fuses themselves were all in place, just switched off. He pressed the switch and the hallway lit up.

  Back upstairs, he found Bobbie sitting bolt upright, peering at the photo album. She was smiling at the pictures and muttering, not just to herself but to the people in the photos. She was asking them questions, giving instructions, chiding and laughing. The images had come to life and she was now absorbed in the world of her photo album, as the memories swarmed back to her. Borrowed, stolen, fake, but memories nonetheless; formed in her imagination, forged out of the darkness and nightmares of her childhood. They were hers, and right now they were better than the ones Pierce had left her with.

  Vince surveyed the damage. The bureau lying there like a stack of firewood for a bonfire about to be lit, the broken ornaments, shattered mirrors, upturned furniture, the glass-fronted clock lying smashed on the floor. And the blood, thick and dark like tar or spat tobacco. He went over and stood beside her.

  ‘Bobbie?’

  She didn’t answer, her focus still on the photo album. Vince put his forefinger under her lightly dimpled chin, and gently lifted it until her eyes finally met his – or tried to. Those brown eyes that always seemed so alive and switched on, now wore an emulsive sheen and looked vacant and lost. He wondered if this was an act to put him off asking her the questions he needed to ask. The little actress trying to escape reality?