Gilded Edge, The (19 page)

‘You’re not wasting my time, Mr Ruley. In fact, I was going to talk to you anyway.’

‘If I can help in any way, Detective. But, from what I’ve already read and heard, it all seems rather fait accompli, no?’

‘Really?’

‘Isabel.’ He shook his head, as if implying both sadness and disgust, but it was the disgust that really shone through. ‘It’s the sort of thing one hears about, reads about. It happens to other people, never to yourself. But at the same time, it comes as no great surprise, as they were such a volatile couple. Blowing his brains out though,
Jesus.
That said, Isabel’s a crack shot. She used to go shooting with Johnny and could more than hold her own.’

‘I didn’t know that.’

‘Her father taught her. Not the usual thing you teach girls, but what with her younger brother being, well . . .’

‘Well what, Mr Ruley?’

‘Young Dominic, he’s a bit of a queer, isn’t he?’

‘I just thought he was public school.’

‘I went to a public school, the best,’ said an indignant Guy Ruley.

Vince let that one hang amid the hot vapour.

‘I’m not judging, Detective, just making a point.’

‘Tell you the truth, Mr Ruley, I’m more interested in your business dealings with Johnny Beresford.’

‘What’s she been saying?’

‘Who?’

‘Lizzie bloody Borden, who else? I read that she was smearing Johnny’s name. She’ll do anything to get herself off the hook.’

A loud sizzle echoed around the large room, a noise met with helpless groans of joy from those gathered on the terraces. Someone had just ladled some more water on to the white-hot sulphur coals. The effect was felt immediately, as the steam puffed and panted in clouds, and wrapped itself around Vince like a scorching cloak.

Once he’d acclimatized, he asked: ‘So you’re saying you didn’t have business dealings with him?’

‘You know I did. Okay, Detective Treadwell, I’ll come clean. Aspers told me.’

‘James Asprey?’

‘That’s right. He said you’d visited him, made enquiries. Said you’re smart. Good for you, I say, because you’re just doing your job.’

‘Glad you appreciate it, Mr Ruley. I heard you had a falling out with Mr Beresford.’

Guy Ruley gave a nonchalant shrug of his broad shoulders and said, ‘Not much of one, lasted only a few weeks. More of a spat. You want to know what it was about, right?’

‘As quickly as you can. I’m beginning to wilt.’

‘It was a reasonably sophisticated financial deal involving a series of smallish high-risk ventures that went pear-shaped due to Johnny’s greed. Not huge amounts involved, but it all adds up. I won’t bore you with the details, because I don’t know them all myself. I’m not a number cruncher, myself. I studied physics and engineering at London. I’m a bigger-picture man, so I have a crack team of accountants to look after that side of my business.’

‘But it was big enough to fall out with him, though not enough to kill him over, would you say?’

‘I’d laugh, but I don’t find it a laughing matter,’ said Guy Ruley. Then he laughed.

‘What changed your mind there?’

‘I’ve just remembered something. Good old Johnny the Joker!’

‘Johnny the Joker?’

‘That’s what we all called him at school. Loved practical jokes and funny stories. He was the consummate raconteur. And it looks like he’s saved his best joke till the last. With Johnny dead, I stand to lose even more money. He held all his money for our deal in offshore accounts, with all the accounts in his head. That’s what made him so good at the tables, that ability to commit to memory complex equations and figures. I gamble for fun, just the sociability of it. People like Johnny do it for the numbers, to beat the odds, beat the house, to come out on top. And, in a way, I guess he did this time.’

It seemed to cheer Guy Ruley that Beresford had gone out of the world owing him. But Vince couldn’t tell whether he viewed this as a victory or a failing.

‘How much was he into you for?’

Guy Ruley shrugged. ‘Losing money in such ventures is all par for the course. High risk, big profits, and sometimes losses. Swings and roundabouts. What I lost with Johnny this time around, I was sure he’d make up the next time . . .’

Guy Ruley’s brusque baritone trailed off, and he wiped his eyes. Vince was sure it was sweat, not tears. It would seem that Guy Ruley didn’t kill Beresford, not solely because of the physical impossibility of it – being out of the country at the time – but, and the real clincher, was because he was at the end of a losing deal with him. Even though the mercury was rising to treble figures in this underground sweat hole they were in, Vince saw that Guy Ruley remained cool and calculating, operating with all the heart of a humming refrigerator.

And Vince told him as much: ‘James Asprey shares your philosophy, said that he wouldn’t have killed Johnny Beresford either, because he made too much money from Beresford playing for the house. Said it would be like killing the golden goose. Sentimental old lot, aren’t you?’

With an indignant edge to his voice, Guy Ruley said, ‘Look here, Detective, just because we don’t go around bawling our eyes out, or emoting like a bunch of cheap actors, doesn’t mean we don’t care. I’ve known Johnny since school – how many old schoolfriends do you have?’

‘Good point. Most of mine are in prison.’

‘You put them there?’

‘No, they found their own way there. So if it wasn’t over money, what else did you and your friends fall out about? Women?’

‘Yes, mostly. Johnny had an eye for them. But if you want to talk about women, it’s Simon you need to talk to.’

‘Simon Goldsachs?’

‘He and Simon had a hell of a spat, when he took up with Simon’s mistress, a model called Holly who was introduced to them by Nicky DeVane. You know him?’

‘I carry around a picture of all of you.’

Through the steam, Vince saw Ruley throw him a sour look.

Guy Ruley said, ‘Nicky’s a photographer, very talented too.’ There was another sour look, but not for Vince this time. ‘If you can consider pressing a button and saying cheese a talent. He assures me there’s more to it, but it’s hardly oil on canvas, is it? No wonder there are so many cockney barrow boys at it, being money for old rope. The “dapper snapper” they call Nicky now. Anyway, this Holly, stunning-looking creature, I mean, unbelievable—’

‘When was this?’ asked Vince, mopping his face with the skirt of his towelling toga.

‘About six months ago.’

‘Simon was smitten with her, but she was a real beauty.’ Ruley looked off somewhere into the middle distance, as if he could see the model herself emerging from the shimmering heat and swirling mist. ‘I mean she was stunning, gorgeous, amazing—’

‘You said that already.’

Ruley snapped out of it. ‘Anyway, Johnny slimed his way in. I’m sure he did it just because he could, only to get one over Simon. I mean, for all her faults – which have proved pretty fatal – Isabel is a real beauty herself. Very attractive, gorgeous-looking thing—’

‘So we’ve established,’ said Vince, to stem Ruley staring off into the middle distance again. ‘How did it go down with Simon Goldsachs?’

‘Well, Detective Treadwell, you should have seen Simon. He’s a man with a monumental temper on him, prone to legendary tantrums, and he was a study in apoplectic rage. Livid purple he was. It was a matter of Homeric honour, since Simon wanted her for his harem.’

‘Where’s Holly now?’

‘Took up with a film producer and lives in Hollywood.’ Guy Ruley stood up, breathed in swirling steam and announced, ‘Time to shrink the trouser snake. Coming?’

Vince just looked at him blankly.

‘I mean take a cold plunge. Bit of an initial shock, but it’s invigorating as hell, and good for the circulation.’

‘I’ll pass.’

As Guy Ruley strode off, Vince considered him, and could see how Isabel would find Ruley a bore. But what did Beresford see in him? The long and the short and the tall of such friendships seldom rang true in Vince’s experience. Men who hung together invariably – despite a few tics and traits – looked the same, dressed the same, talked the same and shared the same ideologies, values and sense of humour. Why? Because it gave them a greater sense of themselves. It was them not so much multiplied as squared. Guy Ruley dropping the revelation about this triangle of Goldsachs, Beresford and the model was no revelation, not even a surprise. They fucked each other’s women because they’d probably like to fuck each other, and they’d like to fuck each other only because they couldn’t fuck themselves. This coterie no doubt shared mistresses, shuffling them around like cards. Vince knew that the information Guy Ruley was throwing him about Simon Goldsachs was merely a chip to play with, and a very low-value one at that. But at least he now knew why Isabel didn’t know about this falling out between Beresford and Goldsachs. It also meant that if she had found out about it or he’d told her about it, she would have had even more motive for killing him.

Simon Goldsachs was at home. And home was a much publicized pile in Richmond Park. To get to Goldsachs’ place, Vince had to drive through the park itself, where the deer and the antelope play. Well, if not the antelopes, certainly the deer. It was all enough to make Vince pull the Mk II over and get out and take a look. The deer were tame enough not to run away, but smart enough to keep their distance. Vince told himself he should get out of London more; communing with nature was good for the soul. He stood there for a good three or four minutes before getting bored checking his shoes for deer shit and getting back into the motor.

Vince exited the park and turned into the exclusive tree-lined avenue where Goldsachs lived. Stand-alone properties stood tall and proud and expensive and hidden away, with decorative ironwork gates, tall ash trees, and the occasional castellated topiary. As you approached Goldsachs’ walled-off pile, all you could see of the house was the tip of the rotunda. The property that had existed there before Goldsachs arrived was much in keeping with the rest of the houses in the area: Georgian and early Victorian. Goldsachs had knocked it down and built his own vision in its place. The result had made all the papers, the locals calling it a monstrosity. Goldsachs called them backward-looking tiresome anti-Semites, and had walled the place off.

On being let through the solid metal sliding electric gates, definitely built for security not decoration, Vince drove up the sweep of the tree-lined gravel drive and parked next to a green Mini Cooper, which was next to a muddy Ford shooting brake. Vince was expecting a Ferrari GTO, an Aston Martin DB5, and at least a spaceship or two. He got out of the car and stepped back to take in the scenery on the ‘compound’.

The main house was a modernist block of concrete clad in a burnished orange stone, with stained-glass windows. Of the many striking features, the most striking was what covered the central body of the building. A huge golden dome. The less than vibrant winter sun still managed to catch various facets of this polished metal-panelled rotunda and set it on fire, making it jawdroppingly impressive. It was a modernist Taj Mahal . . . or maybe a Martian palace. Vince couldn’t make up his mind which, and that’s what he liked about it.

‘You should see it in the summer, it’s pure gold.’

Vince turned round to see Simon Goldsachs striding towards him. Leading with his bullish chest and thrusting shoulders, he looked big and almost hulking. By the time he was within handshaking distance, which he didn’t offer, Vince gauged he was about his own height, six foot or thereabouts. The man was in his midthirties, but his heaviness – especially around the shoulders – and a certain physical authority managed to put about ten years on him. The face was round, the nose flat and fleshy, and his skin bore that patina of success: a midwinter tan. His tawny hair was cropped short, and a broad smile was fixed on a thin-lipped mouth. But it was his eyes that held your attention, cobalt blue, glacial and dissecting. They held both fire and ice in their tractorbeam intensity. Tufty blond eyebrows arched imperiously over them, and Vince soon had him pegged as the ‘Browbeating and Staring Down’ champion of the world. No wonder he was the king of the hostile takeover. The aggression and chutzpah was writ large all over him. He didn’t look like your average smooth business operator or bowler-hatted City gent; instead he looked downright pugnacious. You can take the boy out of the ghetto, but you can’t take the ghetto out of the boy, goes the saying. Simon Goldsachs might be a good few generations out of it, educated and cultured to within an inch of his life, but still the old hunger lurked just beneath the surface. He was considered the man with the Midas touch, and already rumoured to be closing in on his first billion (whatever the hell that looked like). The boardroom was his boxing ring, his battleground, and he’d leave you bloodied and bruised and beaten on its carpet. Not in his normal battledress of a pin- or chalk-stripe suit today, he was casually clad in battered bottle-green cords tucked into muddy wellington boots; an elbow-patched blue cable-knit jumper over a Tattersall check shirt, with a red bandanna knotted around his thick neck. A muddy shovel was gripped in a well-tanned hand.

He said: ‘Of course, it’s not real gold. That would be altogether too tempting. If they’d pinch the lead off a church roof, imagine what they’d do with this lot!’

‘Been digging in the allotment?’

‘No, not today, Detective. I’ve just been murdering and burying an annoying neighbour!’ Another smile shot across his thin lips, exposing perfect rows of squat calcium-rich white teeth that looked as if they could chew their way through a mountaineer’s rope. Vince returned the smile, but made a mental note to check on missing persons when he got back to the Yard.

Twenty minutes later they sat facing one another on a pair of teak sofa chairs in Goldsachs’ study. Drinks had been served by an athletically built Japanese man dressed in black, including traditional black slippers. An anomaly, he looked too relaxed to be a butler, too well dressed to be an odd-job man and too refined to be a bodyguard. Yet, as he served Vince his black coffee and then serenely genuflected away, Vince was hit with a vision of the Jap smashing his fist through three piled-up house bricks as if they were made of Styrofoam.