Kiss Me Quick

by Miller, Danny

  In search of Jack.

  As Vince passed a lone milk float pootling along, it reassured him that his life wasn’t playing itself out in some alternate universe. Up ahead lay the harbour. At the entrance stood the red phone box. Vince slowed the car, seeing no sign of Terence. He made the turn and entered the harbour. No one about: no nightwatchmen, no barking dogs, no lights. Apart from a fence, there was no security to protect the precious cargo that Vince was convinced lay inside the warehouse. He opened the glove compartment and fished out his torch. He weighed it in his hand for potential use as a weapon. Even with the two heavy batteries tombed up inside the long aluminium casing, it still didn’t possess sufficient heft to be used for such a purpose. He thought about Bobbie’s gun – was it worth going back and fetching it? No, it was uncleaned, uncared-for and would probably explode in his face. He’d improvise, and felt sure he could pick something up along the way: something with a bit of heft, an edge or a point.

  He continued along the quayside and found Terence’s hiding place, the stack of pallets ready for the fork-lifts. No Terence in sight. Vince switched on his torch and checked for any signs of the young scribe. He didn’t even know what he expected to find, almost treating him as if he was a nesting bird or a messy pet. Maybe pencil shavings, a crisp packet or a big cartoon footprint. But nothing.

  Torch switched off, he turned around and headed back towards the warehouse. The gate through the perimeter fence was chained and padlocked. The mesh fence itself was about eight feet high, easy to scale apart from a vicious-looking roll of barbed wire festooning the top of it. Through the fence, he could see Henry Pierce’s Cadillac Deville parked in the middle of the forecourt. It looked like a big black shark, a fish out of water, incongruous and a set-up made to be noticed. Vince had the feeling it had been deliberately parked there as an obstacle or as a challenge – the first test he must pass before getting into the warehouse and facing his quarry.

  Vince accepted the challenge. He took off his jacket, gripped it between his teeth, jumped up and scaled the fence and spread the jacket across the barbed wire. He then eased himself carefully over the top, feeling the spikes beneath the cloth as his weight shifted. Levering himself safely over the fence, he dropped and landed on his feet. Reaching up, he retrieved the jacket and put it on.

  Certain he was being watched, he headed towards the car, torch held in hand like a cosh. He was about twenty feet away from the car before he turned on the torch and raked the windows with its beam. He detected no sign of movement inside.

  He reached the car, peered inside, saw the keys still in the ignition. He shone the torch beam on to the red leather back seat and saw blood.

  The boot wasn’t locked, but Vince already knew that it wasn’t an oversight by the driver. He pressed the button and slowly lifted the lid, its jaws creaking as the gap got wider and wider, letting out a yawn of death. The smell was instantly recognizable: rancid urine, faeces and the earlier stages of decomposition.

  As pungent as the air was around him, Vince still took a deep breath and held it. He held it in preparation for what he might find: Terence, the young scribe, so in awe with the intrigue and the mythology created around the real underworld.

  Inside, curled up, with his throat cut, was Spider. But no Terence. Vince breathed a sigh of relief and slammed the boot shut.

  Vince turned to the warehouse, shot a glance up at the small circular window set in the facade. There was a light burning somewhere inside; not strongly but enough to interrupt the uniformed darkness. He thought he noticed a flicker of movement behind the window itself. Vince strode to the entrance under the sign: Tartarus Storage Ltd. There was a normal-size door set within a larger door used for vehicular access. He turned the handle, found it unlocked and entered the warehouse.

  Amid the darkness within, he located four light switches just beside him on the front wall. Four metal-caged bulbs as big as footballs were suspended from wires hanging from the ceiling. They threw out an industrial-strength light, and Vince took a step backwards to get a better perspective. The three separate buildings with three separate entrances were merely a facade, for in fact it was one very big warehouse. The immediate area was a large open space with a concrete floor, stained with machine oil from the trucks and forklifts parked just inside. There were three large, gated goods lifts and three sets of wrought-iron stairs spiralling upwards. He could instantly spot some of Vogel’s antique furniture, but the other racks nearby were laden with all manner of goods. Naked and bald female shop mannequins with their heads sticking out of wooden crates, rolls of carpet, old radio sets, slot machines, new fridges, racks of clothes … Vince soon stopped looking, for the inventory was dizzying. Long aisles divided each floor into sections, with walkways and metal ladders giving access to the various floors, stretching all the way to the back of the warehouse. It looked like a maze, somewhere to get lost in or, more fittingly, somewhere to hide in.

  Vince’s compass had already been set for him: the top floor, towards the light he had noticed in the window. He approached the lift in the central section, but saw that the gate was padlocked – as were the other two lifts. So he took the stairs, trying to be as quiet as possible, but his footfalls on the metal seemed to ring out like a sharply struck xylophone.

  Reaching the first floor, he glanced along the aisles that seemed to stretch forever until they disappeared into darkness. Nothing to be seen. He carried on up to the fourth level. Once he reached the top, as if on cue, the main overhead lights went out. He could just make out a dim light at the end of the aisle in front of him. This was clearly no accident: he was being guided. Vince no longer felt like the hunter and that made him nervous. He persevered nevertheless and followed the source of light along the walkway. Its sides were lined with metal shelves, all of them crammed with disparate objects like a junk shop or a prop store. The only theme here was that it was theme-less. Books, bicycle wheels, cricket balls, wooden sledges, cartons of light bulbs, bowler hats, yet more mannequins, a horse’s saddle and all the musical instruments suitable to kit out an entire orchestra.

  Reaching the end of the walkway, he found himself standing in a lit-up space, looking back at himself. It was a room full of mirrors, gilt-framed like the ones adorning the walls of the flat in Adelaide Crescent. They hung on the walls or were stacked up in piles. Everywhere he looked he could see himself. Then the lights here went out.

  Swallowed in blackness suddenly, he shuddered and dropped his torch. He heard it roll away, then begin a clanging descent down metal stairs to the ground floor. The noise echoed around the warehouse. But it wasn’t the noise that bothered Vince; it was the enveloping dark. He had never quite overcome his fear of the dark, and his terror of something deadly hiding in its layers. He stood rooted to the spot, as if waiting for further instruction.

  As his eyes adjusted, Vince found himself looking into a face that was twisted, ugly and surreally grotesque. It looked as if it was melting. Then he remembered the old adage: never look into a mirror in the dark.

  A light went on, illuminating another walkway leading off to the right side of the mirrored space. The shelves on either side of the aisle were stacked high with antiques: silverware, old clocks and small items of furniture. The type of wares sold in Vogel’s shop, therefore he was getting warmer.

  It was another twenty yards until he reached the end of the walkway and found himself standing on a balcony. About thirty foot in diameter, with waist-high railings running all the way round, it was a viewing gallery that looked down into a black abyss. A pit!

  It was official, thought Vince: Jack Regent was the Devil, and he himself was now standing at the gates of Hell!

  On closer inspection, he realized that the pit, about fifteen foot deep, was merely a room on the level lower down. Not quite the entrance to Hades, but certainly unusual enough, the black room below was covered floor to wall in black plastic sheets. In the centre of the plastic-clad floor stood about fifty pieces of black-toned furni
ture. Heavy bureaus, bookcases and tables, it was the same ebonized furniture he’d seen in Jack’s flat and in Vogel’s container. To one side of the gallery there was a ladder that led down into the same room. Above his head extended a huge black plastic canopy secured by ropes attached to a winch. It was now clear the canopy could be lowered to form a kind of tent. Whatever its purpose, it was undeniably a room that could be sealed off. Vince sniffed the air, detected a sharpness about it; the tang of chemicals of some description, though Vince couldn’t place them.

  The final instruction. A flicker of flame guided Vince’s eyes up and away from the black pit and over to the gallery opposite, where a man now stood. Vince couldn’t see his face, because it was obscured by the wide brim of a hat. A grey fedora with a black band encircling it. It matched the long grey gabardine trench coat that was knotted at the waist and worn with the collar turned up, over an open-neck black shirt. Vince realized he couldn’t see his feet. The light was weak, and the man’s movements were playing to it perfectly; he wanted to be obscured, half lit and half in the shadows. The wide-brimmed fedora dipped down to meet the flame of the slim gold lighter that was igniting a cigarette. Even before Vince smelled the smoke from the pungent French cigarette, he knew this was Jack Regent.

  Vince felt his chest tighten and his guts seize up, as if being clenched in a giant fist. A jolt of adrenalin shot through him and his hands gripped the gallery rail. He took a deep intake of breath, and slowly exhaled, steadying himself. The dark room below Vince really did feel like an abyss now. They were only a short distance apart, but it felt like a chasm was opening up. The closing of distance in the hunt meant nothing, for Vince had no control. He hadn’t tracked Jack. Jack had led him here.

  Vince wanted to see his face clearly, but the lighter’s flame was extinguished, the wide brim of the fedora pulled down further. Then Jack retreated from the gallery, moving further into the darkness.

  ‘Jack Regent?’

  No response. Just the glowing tip of the cigarette.

  Vince swallowed, then announced, ‘My name is Detective Vincent Treadwell.’

  ‘I know who you are, my boy.’

  ‘Of Scotland Yard.’

  ‘Please, Vincent, I ask that you not speak to me in the procedural patter of a policeman. The time for that has passed, has it not?’ Without giving Vince time to answer, he continued, ‘It’s not the job I object to, you understand, it’s the method of the delivery. Yet you, I hear, are an educated, intelligent young man, so don’t bore me with your “Treadwell of the Yard” affectations. Ask me whatever you like, Vincent.’

  The tone of the voice was low but strong. It could have been the acoustics that gave it strength, but Vince doubted that. It belonged to a man who didn’t have to raise his voice to be heard. The constant flow of cigarettes had also worked their magic. His accent, whilst not strong, worked to endow his voice with a cut-crystal pronunciation that gave it a natural authority which Vince never doubted.

  Vince glanced down into the pit. ‘Is this how you’re smuggling in the heroin – in Vogel’s furniture?’

  ‘That’s right. Morphine paste flown in from Indochina, with help of the French colony there. Then processed, to some degree, in Marseilles. Then shipped over here.’

  Vince made a point of not appearing too impressed. ‘How long do you think you’ll get away with it?’

  ‘Until I’m caught, I suppose, is the answer you want. If I could give another, more truthful, guess, it would be, for as long as I choose. But you know, Vincent, we two are just specks of dust in the great scheme of things. I have no more control over my fate than you do of yours. We’re all just playthings for the gods. That’s something I’ve suspected all my life, but really, really only just found out for sure tonight.’

  ‘Your turn to do me a favour, Regent – spare me your philosophical insights. You’re a low-life killer, nothing more, nothing less.’

  The fedora-wearing head remained dipped, as he took a long draw on the cigarette, before pluming a vapour trail of smoke across towards Vince, as if it held a bullet.

  ‘Very well, cards on the table. How are you going to catch me?’

  ‘Interpol already possesses a lot of information on heroin smuggling by the Unione Corse.’ Vince looked for some reaction to the mention of that crime organization, but none was forthcoming. ‘I got your present, Rinieri.’ Again, no reaction from Jack to the mention of his birth name. ‘The Moor’s head. I’ve heard all your clan wear it.’

  ‘Max Vogel told me you had a fascination with such tokens. I hoped you’d appreciate it. A gift from me to you.’

  ‘What do you wear yourself, Jack, the ring or the pendant?’

  ‘You want me to tell you if I’m a member of a secret society? If I did, I wouldn’t be much good as a member, would I? Yet again, Vincent, your imagination is at play. There’s no intrigue involved, just business. Corsicans have been smugglers all their lives. It’s in our blood.’

  ‘Smuggling the heroin in furniture isn’t exactly foolproof.’

  ‘But it is if the fool isn’t listening. I didn’t say in the furniture.’ Jack left that hanging in the air to be processed, then continued. ‘I’ve found a secret formula, able to turn dust into gold. Better than alchemy, my dear boy, simple chemistry. The morphine paste is carried in the lacquer painted on the furniture. Therefore invisible to the naked eye. First the furniture is painted black, as befits the oriental style. The morphine paste is then painted on to the furniture, the flat surfaces, table tops and drawer panels. Then it is sealed with lacquer. As I say, invisible to the naked eye. So, you see, even if the furniture is confiscated, they can chop it to pieces but they’ll never find anything. In fact, they’ll have to pay us to replace it. Only to bring in the next shipment.’

  Vince thought he heard a small laugh from Jack – as if playing to the gallery. Vince looked back down into the pit. The sealed plastic room made sense now. The lacquer was sanded off the wood, coming off in a white powder that was collected. Being as precious as gold dust, the powder must then be protected from the elements or contamination within the sealed pit. And, coming off in a white powder, the black plastic would show it up clearly. Perfect, apart from one thing:

  ‘You must lose more of the morphine than you retrieve.’

  ‘When we first started, we lost about sixty per cent. Still enough to make a profit, but not enough considering all the effort. Through trial and error, we’re now down to a mere ten per cent loss. And there’s still room for improvement. We’re working towards and will settle for a loss of five per cent. The process of separating the morphine from the lacquer involves a new discovery. The lacquer itself is a natural gum harvested from seed, like rape seed. I won’t bore you with the science but, needless to say, like all genius solutions, it’s deceptively simple.

  ‘By the time it’s stripped off the furniture and the powder is processed, it comes out at seventy-five to eighty per cent pure. Again, there’s room for improvement, and we think we can do better, refining the process towards a purity of ninety per cent. By the time it’s been packaged for consumption, it will give us a yield of a million and a half, two million, pounds for each shipment. Enough to trade off for a year, all over this country, all over Europe. But we won’t get greedy: we’ll make sure our product is easily available and reasonably priced at first. That way you build up your market, build up an appetite, create a hunger.’

  Vince considered Jack’s plans, reckoned they were no more than he expected of him – brilliant. But the fact that he was laying them out for him made the next stage of Jack’s intentions clear. Vince was never going to leave this warehouse alive.

  ‘The trouble, is Regent, your junk kills people the minute it hits their bloodstream. That’s diminishing returns. Bad economics to kill your customers.’

  ‘I take it you’re referring to the plague, as the papers are calling it.’

  ‘I’m no poetic hack. I call it heroin. I call it your heroin.’

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nbsp; ‘That was most unfortunate. But you’re wrong, it has nothing to do with me.’

  ‘Everything has something to do with you in this town, Regent, and all of it bad. Why should the bad junk be any different?’

  Again, Vince thought he heard a low laugh, or maybe a sigh of derision.

  ‘You’re a very literal young man. What I meant was, that batch was the product of experimentation as we were refining the process. And, yes, some of it went bad, fatally bad. Very unfortunate, and indeed very bad for business. I could do without such publicity. It was never meant to be put out on the streets, and I myself certainly didn’t put it out there. I would have been a fool to do so. It was stolen from me, you see. From what I hear, your brother had a part to play in that.’

  ‘It was given to him by Henry Pierce.’

  Vince watched as Jack, his expression still obscured by the brim of the hat, took a moment to reflect.

  Then he stubbed out the cigarette. ‘Ah, Henry.’ Jack’s voice denoted the wistful disappointment you’d feel for an errant child. ‘Henry told me he gave it to your brother as a reward for getting rid of a body in Soho. But, of course, you know all about that, Vincent.’

  He was still unnerved by Jack calling him ‘Vincent’, as if Jack had known him all his life. When in fact it was the reverse: it was Vince who had known Jack all his life. From a hallowed distance, of course, like you would know about a legend, or even a movie star. Was that it, thought Vince, was he star-struck? Awed by the very presence of Jack Regent? Vince knew what a dangerous state of mind that could be, and shook the thought from his head.

  ‘By the way,’ said Jack, ‘I had nothing to do with the Soho business. I know Duval, just like I know a lot of people. But those films he and Eton and Henry were involved in, it wasn’t to my tastes.’