Gilded Edge, The (53 page)

He was just about to haul himself further into the belly of the chopper when he was met with the sun-mottled face of a white man from a hot climate, a pair of ruthlessly cold blue eyes, and the words: ‘Goodbye, friend.’

Vince felt the rope ladder fall away, and the heel of a thickly treaded army boot stamp down on the crown of his head. Then his eyes closed as gravity did its thing, and he fell backwards and . . .

down

down

down

down

down

down

Crash
!

Vince opened the door to Mac. Before the older detective had stepped over the threshold, he gave Vince the once-over, looking approvingly at his suit. It was grey flannel and it belonged to Mac. He’d lent it to Vince for the disciplinary hearing. Mac had quoted: ‘In the words of Mark Twain, “Clothes make the man”.’

‘The rest of that bon mot is, “naked people have little or no influence in society”. I do have suits of my own, Mac.’

The two men made their way into the living room.

‘Trust me, Vincent, you turn up at the hearing wearing one of your sharkskin jobs and looking better dressed than that lot, and you may as well turn up in the buff. They’ll suspect everything they’ve heard about you is true.’

Either the suit was making him itch, or Vince was just uncomfortable with the whole premise of trying to be someone he wasn’t – namely, Mac. Vince clearly didn’t hold with Mac’s theory; he saw it as a self-defeating gesture, like donning sackcloth, a sign of humility and guilt. But he kept shtum, didn’t want to hurt Mac’s feelings. And if it made the older detective happy, then he could suffer the indignity of grey flannel for a couple of hours.

In the living room, Mac took his seat in the high-backed chair and lit the pipe that was already plugged into his mouth. Vince remained standing, pacing the floor and kicking up imaginary divots on the Moroccan rug.

‘Relax, Vincent, and take a seat. You look like you’ve got ants in your pants,’ said Mac, with a wicked grin plastered across his mouth that made the pipe wobble up and down.

‘Very funny.’

Vince didn’t have ants in his pants, but he did have glass in his arse. And, even though it had been a couple of weeks since he’d had it removed, he still couldn’t sit comfortably, not without a big billowy cushion planted under his backside.

As the mackintosh man had hissed ‘Goodbye, friend’ and kicked him away from the helicopter, Vince had plummeted about thirty feet down and crashed through the roof of the greenhouse. His fall was finally met by the relatively soft landing of a wooden trestle table holding a thick earthy bed containing
Rumohra adiantiformis,
to give them their Latin botanical name – or ferns to the layman.

The mackintosh men had made their escape (a temporary reprieve, he’d assured himself). The only men who knew about the Gilded Edge, or at least had admitted its existence to Vince, were now dead. Nicky DeVane had died that same night. His death was similar to that of both his ‘friends’. Like Beresford, he had seemingly died by his own hand. And like Guy Ruley, he took a drop from the end of a rope. But there were no bullets in the head for the dapper snapper. Nicky DeVane had hanged himself in his own studio, found dangling from one of its white beams in his gold lamé suit.

The young bartender at the Criterion had told the police how two men wearing dinner jackets and masks, stating they were friends of DeVane’s, and obviously fresh from the Montcler Ball, had come into the bar and taken him home. No one knew who they were, or could identify them. Some said rhinos, some said hippos. Whilst the official verdict was suicide, Vince thought otherwise. The mackintosh men were certainly his prime suspects, with their dinner jackets hidden under the military jumpsuits. Vince suspected that they had been present at the Montcler masked ball, it being perfect cover for them just as it had been for him.

Vince knew that the dapper snapper was too wasted to kill himself that night – and also too short. He wasn’t capable of throwing a rope over the high beam to hang himself. But his death was fitting, and maybe inevitable. In the fabled ‘Suicide Stakes’, Vince didn’t know what odds James ‘Aspers’ Asprey would have fixed on his old friend Nicky DeVane, but he reckoned they were short. And, after the Montcler Ball, he was probably odds-on favourite for the drop. Vince had witnessed it himself, the big cats, Aspers and Goldsachs, mauling the little man, tearing him limb from limb. Nicky DeVane was already dead in the eyes of the Montcler set, the set that held sway over London’s high society. And for Nicky DeVane, to belong was everything, to be ostracized was oblivion.

Mac looked at his watch – time to go. He stood up and asked Vince, ‘You ready?’

Vince shot his cuffs, gave a nod, and they headed towards the door. Before they were out of the living room, Mac’s eye caught the glinting cobra rising up in its stand by the record player, and asked: ‘Can you play that thing?’

The alto sax had been delivered to Vince’s flat two days ago. It was a gift from Isabel Saxmore-Blaine. It was her parting gift, before upping sticks and going to New York. She was leaving London to escape her new-found notoriety, or, as the newspapers’ salacious headlines had described her: ‘The crack shot aristo-
cat
with the
purr
-fect pedigree and nine lives, who saved a Scotland Yard detective’s life.’

Unwanted as her new fame was, it made her an intriguing party guest, and the invites poured in. She had moved from social pariah to must-have guest faster than a bullet from a gun. None of this interested Isabel, apart from one offer of a fresh opportunity to kick-start her career in journalism. A certain ‘happening’ NYC pop artist, who had previously made the mundane soup can such a prized and iconic image, wanted to do her portrait – a silk screen of her in her now trademark outfit of the catsuit. He had also offered her a job editing a new arts and celebrity magazine he planned on launching. Art and celebrity and death seemed to be becoming irreversibly entwined in this artist’s aesthetic. And, right now, Isabel Saxmore-Blaine, swathed in black like some avenging angel, seemed to encapsulate the whole vibe. The girl was
IT.

Isabel said that she’d send Vince a signed original of the screen print, to replace the broken painting he still had leaning against his wall. Vince told Isabel that the indelible image of her, in and out of the catsuit, was now as much part of him as his right hand. Was he sad to see her go? Like he’d reasoned when he first met her, there was something immensely unknowable about Isabel Saxmore-Blaine. He reckoned that the dreamtime they’d spent together was as close as he would ever get to her, and she would always remain the great unknowable. But they would meet again, he was sure. Vince knew he’d be seeing New York City one day. It was on his to-do list, because it was his kind of town, as much as it was anyone’s kind of town who possessed a pulse and a dislike for grey flannel.

Before they left the flat, Vince answered Mac’s last question. He picked up the alto sax and blew a note. Just the one. But as brief as it was, what a sweet, sweet sound it made.

While I consider this book to be an unalloyed work of fiction, some of the characters who make an appearance are, or were, real. And a strand of this story is based on some events that may or may not have happened – allegedly.

These were some of the books and TV programmes I enjoyed for my extensive research, which I took extensive liberties with, and then played hard and fast with the facts:
The Gamblers
by John Pearson (Arrow);
Michael X
by John L. Williams (Century);
Billy Hill: Godfather of London
by Wesley Clarkson (Pennant Books);
The Real Casino Royale,
a Channel 4 documentary based on
The Hustlers
by Douglas Thompson (Pan);
The Mayfair Set,
a BBC documentary by Adam Curtis.

And finally, many thanks to Peter Lavery for his edits and encouragement.