Gilded Edge, The (10 page)

There was the crunch of bone. There was blood. There was a bark of pain. Then there was Lightly crying out: ‘I’ll kill you!’

‘Not from where I’m looking, you won’t! And it was your idea, Tyrell, after all.’

‘You pig!’ Lightly spat in his face, and he wasn’t done yet. The wiry gangster began to wriggle, with great effect, in an attempt to get out from under. So Vince went for him again. Tyrell Lightly vigorously moved his head from side to side to avoid what was surely coming his way. Vince moved with him, this way then that, until Lightly’s head slowed with exhaustion. And then Vince dummied him, took aim, cocked his head back like the hammer of a gun, and fired off another head shot. Say cheese! Again his forehead hit the target; again it was Lightly’s rather finely sculpted nose that took the brunt – but harder this time, much harder. But there was no noise this time, either from the shattered bone in his nose or from the tongue in his mouth. The damage had been done, and Tyrell Lightly’s face was mostly blood. Vince finally hauled himself off the supine gangster.

By the time Vince was on his feet, the white noise of violence had stopped, and so had the music from downstairs. He heard fast-approaching, heavy footsteps outside. As he put his hand inside his jacket pocket to pull out his ID, the door flew off its holdings. But still Vince was in darkness, as a wall of blackness blocked out any light from the hallway beyond. A scrimmage of Brothers X was jammed in the doorway. In the front of the pack stood Michael X. The great leader flicked a switch on the wall and the room lit up. As he quickly took in the scene, his face turned from scowling anger to a slow contemplative neutrality that eventually segued into a lavishly satisfied grin, as he remarked, ‘Detective Vincent Treadwell of Scotland Yard, and the Metropolitan police force, what in the sweet mother of goats have we got here?’

What we had here, and what Michael X was smiling about, was Vince standing with the knife in his bloodied hand, Tyrell Lightly on the floor with his lights well and truly out, and the big girl . . .

‘Little piece of skinny white . . .’

Vince turned round just in time to catch the cannon ball that was coming his way, as the big girl’s balled fist connected to his chin and sent him swiftly to the floor. Lights out all round.

Vince stood before Chief Superintendent Ian Markham. He’d not been invited to sit down because, when he entered, Markham was himself standing up, looking cantankerously out of the window. With hands clasped behind his back, his inky-blue uniform appeared iridescent in the midday winter sun. Vince could see how, where Markham tipped his head back to address the gods, the oil from his brilliantine-black hair was seeping into the rim of his starched white collar. Markham clearly needed a haircut. A trim. A little tidy-up. This was noticeable because his hair was usually kept just so, a good two inches above the collar. It was now only an inch and a half, Vince reckoned. This was the kind of detail you pick up on when you’re forced to stand and receive what seemed to Vince his annual reaming from his Chief Superintendent. Vince found himself glazing over, switching off and drifting around the room in some out-of-body experience. He desperately looked for points of interest around the room and eventually settled on a fly that was shifting its body irritably around on one wall. The fly took off, buzzed around for a bit, hovered over a light fitting, got hot, buzzed off again, and landed on the back of Markham’s shoulder. This location, annoyingly, brought the Chief Superintendent back into view. Even though he was five floors up, Markham still managed to elongate himself to maximum height in order to look down his nose at
them
gathered below.

Chief Superintendent Markham was watching the protesters who were gathered outside Scotland Yard, led by Michael X and his Black Power Coalition. There, a troop of about twenty of them stood at attention in a well-ordered line, arms behind their backs, chests out, shoulders square (even Markham could appreciate the well-drilled military aspect and discipline). Michael X himself, equipped with loudspeaker, started to read out extracts of American black political writings and the works of his hero Malcolm X, whose assassination in Harlem three days earlier had added an urgency to the whole proceedings. They were soon joined by other protesters from the CND, TUC, LSE, SWP, NUS and BCP and, as soon as the TV cameras rolled up, the whole thing became a ‘happening’ as much as a protest. Showbiz luminaries, TV-friendly intellectuals and writers soon put in an appearance, along with some Angry Young Men actors and some kitchen-sink playwrights from the Royal Court Theatre, who delivered monologues for the cameras and, with their full and fruity voices, projected across the square the slogan: ‘
William Shakespeare, William Blake, We Are Doing This For Your Sake!’

Apart from the charges of police brutality, their main gripe was that Tyrell Lightly was an innocent man being held and set up by
the man.
And
the man
at the centre of this shit storm in a teacup was Detective Vincent Treadwell. He had now become the unacceptable face of policing, and Michael X was stirring it up for all it was worth. He had as canny an eye for publicity and a photo opportunity as the most tawdry of door-stepping, baby-kissing, Westminster whores on the hustings hustle. The minute Michael X had opened the bedroom door and reviewed the scenario before him he’d known it was too good an opportunity not to grab. He drove a groggy Vince and a bloody Tyrell Lightly straight to Scotland Yard. Vince didn’t protest. Tyrell Lightly wasn’t too happy about it, but Michael X assured him that to be seen to be giving himself up was good for the cause and good for himself. Tyrell Lightly now sat in his cell refusing to say a word; in fact he was refusing to open his mouth at all: not to eat, drink water or swallow painkillers for his broken nose. With Michael X hanging over the proceedings, and offering counsel to Lightly, Vince thought the gangster-turned-revolutionary was hoping to have his first martyr for the cause.

‘Look at them . . . the usual agitators.’ Markham shook his head in withering disgust. ‘There’s a great unpleasantness moving through this land, Treadwell. Do you not feel it?’

‘Not especially, sir.’

Markham turned away from the window and looked at Vince questioningly.

Vince shrugged. ‘Freedom of speech, sir.’

‘Freedom of speech
,’ Markham repeated with a slurry of contempt in his voice. ‘It’s you they want, Treadwell! You are the centre of their ire. ’Tis you they bay for. Does that not concern you?’

‘Regarding their opinion, sir, they’re wrong, but that’s their right. It’s what attracted me to the job in the first place, to protect their right to be wrong.’

Vince said all this with his tongue if not firmly in his cheek, then certainly positioned around that area. But sarcasm and irony had become his natural register when talking to the pompous Chief Superintendent. Vince wasn’t looking at his superior as he said this, but straight ahead at the picture on the wall behind Markham’s desk. The official portrait of the Queen was still in place, but she had been joined by a framed portrait of Sir Winston Churchill. Vince considered the great man, deciding there was a strange parallel between the photograph of the freshly assassinated Malcolm X hanging in the office of Michael X and Markham’s portrait here of the recently deceased Churchill; and it wasn’t just sharing the year of their death that drew them together. Both men knew how to coin a phrase, both men were flawed natural-born leaders, and both men were now hanging on the walls of men who, in Vince’s opinion, weren’t fit to black their boots. And yet, looking at the familiar image on the wall, Vince felt no more at home in Markham’s Scotland Yard office than he did in Michael X’s one in Notting Hill. He still felt like the outsider, the interloper waiting to be uncovered.

‘Just like
he
fought for, sir,’ said Vince, with a nod towards Churchill. He meant it, too, but also knew it would curry him some favour.

The Chief Superintendent was a big fan, and had taken the death of Churchill earlier in the year very badly. But he was determined to carry on the great fight, though the enemy had changed. Now they were not only on the beaches, and on the streets, but right outside his bloody window! Markham wanted them moved. Break out the white horses, baton charge them if necessary, but get them shifted on to the more traditional protesting patch of Trafalgar Square, which Markham had renamed ‘Red Square’. But cooler heads and voices from higher up the chain of command, both authoritatively and intellectually, had prevailed, and successfully warned him against such action. But talk about parking their tanks on his front lawn, the very sight of them outside his window was tantamount to someone taking a big fat steaming dump right here in his office. And for this he blamed the young detective standing in front of him.

‘You went rogue, Treadwell.’

‘I was just carrying out my duty, sir.’

‘If you’d have called for back-up, you wouldn’t have compromised your position.’

‘Like I said in my statement, sir, I didn’t have time for that. I’d received information that might or might not have been true, and I had to act on it fast.’

Then there was the small matter of his knife, which Vince claimed he’d picked up in the mêlée in Powis Square. It was his word against Tyrell Lightly’s and that of the Brothers X. But, with Lightly’s form as a known felon with a penchant for knives and cutting up coppers, Vince was home and dry on that one. As for the protests, whether Markham liked it or not, something was moving through the country . . . how unpleasant it might be was yet to be writ.

There was a knock on the door. Markham barked ‘Come in,’ and Mac entered the room.

‘We’ve just heard from Isabel Saxmore-Blaine’s lawyer,’ said Mac, who then nodded at one of the pictures immediately behind Markham, ‘who incidentally are the same firm that represents the Queen.’

‘I’m well aware of Miss Saxmore-Blaine’s connections, Mac.’

‘Well, she’s made a statement and wants to talk to us.’

Markham gave a solemn nod to this news. He liked the sound of it. She had not needed coercing, had not even been asked. It confirmed one of the many attributes that he ascribed to the upper classes, far too many of them to list and all fawningly positive, but here was one of them showing that, by God, they knew how to conduct themselves.

‘Good,’ said Markham, gripping the hem of his jacket and giving it a tug, as though he was about to go on parade. ‘This is another delicate situation and I have no need to inform you that Lord Saxmore-Blaine is a personal friend of the Commissioner, so this goes all the way to the top. Questions have been asked at Westminster, concerns expressed at the Palace. We shall need experienced and delicate hands in dealing with Miss Isabel Saxmore-Blaine.’

Mac looked at Vince. Vince looked back at Mac. This surreptitious and silent conference went unnoticed by Markham, who was still preening himself before putting his cap on. By the time he turned back to them, Mac and Vince had both wiped the smirks off their faces. Even the thoroughly professorial Mac was reduced to schoolboy mockery when it came to dealing with Markham. It wasn’t even that Markham was all that disliked, or not respected. On the contrary, at times he was very fair-minded, gave solid orders and stood up for his men. It was just his oleaginous attitude to his perceived ‘higher-ups and betters’ that struck everyone as so humourless and self-defeating.

‘Mac, you and I shall attend to Miss Saxmore-Blaine,’ resolutely declared Markham. ‘We shall take her statement, and we shall talk to her and assure her that—’

‘Sir, she doesn’t want to talk to us,’ interrupted Mac. Stopped, and then stalled, Markham’s face was a picture. ‘She wants to talk to, and I quote, “the handsome young detective who punched me in the face”.’

From the unacceptable face of policing to the handsome face of policing. Isabel Saxmore-Blaine had just saved Vince’s neck – and he knew it. But it didn’t stop him from wincing when he heard it. He’d never before hit a woman in his life, and, what with the big girl in the brothel, that made two in the space of a week. As if to compensate, he rubbed a thumb over his chin, which bore a murky bruise from the big girl’s punch.

Markham turned slowly to Vince. His beady, bespectacled eyes narrowed in suspicion, and his whole face bore a look of grinding resentment. It was as if the young detective had just stolen his ticket to the dance. Vince’s darkly lashed hazel eyes widened in innocence, and he gave a shrug that said: ‘I can explain
everything,
sir.’

London was at its best this morning: cold and bright. Vince liked this time of year, for winter suited London; it was its natural setting. Summer in this city always felt like an intruder, creeping around the edges of the buildings, skulking in the parks, the squares and the public gathering places like it shouldn’t really be there, even though it was greeted with open arms and rolled-up shirt sleeves.

His destination that morning was the Salisbury private hospital in Harley Street. On entry, Vince saw that it was more akin to a swanky five-star hotel than a hospital. The only thing that gave away its true status was the white-coated doctors and blue-uniformed nurses – as opposed to pantomime-dressed bellboys and frilly-knickered French chambermaids. But Vince noted that even the medical staff had an unhurried and genial attractiveness about them, as though they were hand-picked extras milling around the set of
Dr Kildare.

He was shown up to Isabel Saxmore-Blaine’s room, where a uniformed copper sat reading a paperback outside the door. As Vince badged him, he went to stand up, but Vince said ‘Relax’ and knocked sharply on the door.

‘Who is it?’ came a woman’s high-impact voice, its timbre a little husky, a little low, a little rich . . .

‘The detective who punched you on the chin,’ Vince announced, smiling at the uniformed copper who had looked up from his paperback with an expression bordering on astonishment. From inside, Vince heard some arguing, albeit of the very polite and hushed variety, which then hushed completely. The door eventually opened and there stood Isabel Saxmore-Blaine.