Kiss Me Quick (10 page)

Vince shouted, more in hope than expectation, ‘Drop the knife and let her go!’

The skinny man smirked and tightened his grip on her.

Stocky got up and started to go over towards Skinny. Vince pounced, tackling him around the legs and propelling him to the ground. Unfortunately for him, Stocky fell forward into the
bonfire
. With Vince now on top of him, his face was forced down into the burning cinders. Stocky screamed, he choked, he burned. Vince lifted the man’s face out of the glowing embers, and
registered 
that it was a mess. Red, blistered and powdered in grey ash, red-hot pebbles stuck to his face and blackened like leaches.

Bobbie screamed even louder. The blond skinny fellow
meanwhile
assumed the facial expression of a scream, but nothing came out.

‘Let her go!’ yelled Vince, with higher expectations this time around.

Skinny stood transfixed, with the knife still at Bobbie’s throat, but Vince could sense that his stomach for the fight was waning.

‘Per … per … please …’ coughed and spluttered Stocky, through lips that looked as if they’d been freshly gummed together.

Skinny finally had enough. He let go of Bobbie but kept hold of the knife. One out of two was not bad, thought Vince, standing up.

Bobbie ran over to him. She stood staring down at Stocky, who was still writhing on the hot stones in voiceless pain. She then slowly backed away.

Vince’s eyes were totally fixed on Bobbie, who couldn’t seem to look away from him. He moved towards her and she stopped retreating. Her expression gradually changed, her repulsion at the sight of the burnt man melting away. She now wore the hint of a smile, but not a smile born of gratitude. It was something more base than that. There was even something cruel about the twist of her lips …

Then came a roar, and Vince was knocked to the ground.

Armed with chains and axe handles, the leather-clad Rockers had got the better of the Mods, who clearly didn’t go in for any bulky concealed weaponry ruining the fine lines of their whistles. In the tear-up stakes, they could be assessed as style over content. But they had the numbers on their side, and now about fifty fellow Mods, armed with broken deckchair struts, were driving the marauding Rocker hordes into the sea.

As one Mod wag was heard exclaiming, ‘Greasy fuckers could use a wash!’

And there was Vince, smack bang in the middle of the mêlée. Looking more like a Mod than a Rocker, his side was picked for him as a quiff redolent of engine oil butted him in the face, with a cry of ‘’Ave some of that, you fuckin’ ponce!’

Vince went down, rolled over and prepared to take a kicking. Staying down was his plan, until the cavalry arrived. He was right in the middle of it, and didn’t fancy fighting his way out of it. Skinny, Stocky and Cosh Boy had taken it out of him. But he thought of Bobbie, found an opening in the scrimmage, and staggered to his feet. Saved by the bell, just then: the wailing of sirens and the familiar voices of coppers. As the battlefield thinned out before the boys in blue, Vince smiled, glad to see them.

Shame he didn’t see the truncheon that cracked into the back of his head.

The next morning, Vince woke up to find himself in a cell. First thing he saw, groggily, was the laughing face of Tony Machin. Ginge stood behind him, holding a mug of tea.

‘So which are you, then, a Mod or a Rocker?’ asked Machin.

‘A Mocker,’ Vince replied. ‘What time is it?’

‘Just gone nine.’

Vince tried to sit up, feeling not so much a ‘twinge’ in his ribs as a sustained ‘twang’. But he was nevertheless sure nothing was broken. He took it slowly and shifted himself sufficiently to lean against the wall, whereupon Ginge handed him the mug of tea. Vince looked around for his jacket, then remembered that the last time he saw it, it was wrapped around … ‘Bobbie? The girl?’

Machin and Ginge quickly exchanged a surreptitious look.

But Vince wasn’t that groggy, and they weren’t that quick. He could see how Ginge was taking his cue from Machin. ‘Don’t worry, guv,’ said Ginge, ‘we picked her up near the pier and took her home. Bit shaken up, but fine.’

Machin gave Vince a knowing look, then one of his customary winks. ‘What did I say, eh? Quite a looker, Miss LaVita? Did you get anywhere, son?’

Vince wasn’t playing along. ‘I’ll need her address. She’s got my jacket, keys, wallet, badge.’

‘No problem there. So what do you think of her?’

‘You tell me. You’ve had her under surveillance. Find anything?’

‘No, son, nothing. She just went on with her routine. Singing classes three times a week, otherwise shopping and going to her club.’

‘Did you check her bank-account records?’

‘Give us some credit, son, ’course we did. No big money
movements
in or out, and she hasn’t left town since the body showed up. Apart from the known faces that go to that club, of which there are markedly few now, she hasn’t had any contact with Jack’s associates. Unless you already knew she was with Jack, you wouldn’t guess that she had anything to do with him. Tell you the truth, son, she didn’t seem much bothered that Jack isn’t around.’

An involuntary smile flickered across Vince’s lips, which he quickly disguised as a grimace of pain. He stood up, very slowly. ‘Where’s the stocky fella?’

‘What stocky fella?’

‘I got jumped, there were three of them, not Mods, not Rockers either. They were specifically after me. Tooled up with coshes and knives. Two got away. But the stocky one, about five foot seven, mid-thirties, pumped up like a body builder, he wasn’t going anywhere apart from hospital.’

This drew blank stares. Ginge said, ‘We pulled up about thirty of them. Got them all downstairs in the other cells, if you want to take a look.’

‘How many in hospital?’

‘Four got taken in,’ said Ginge. ‘No real damage, just minor injuries.’

Machin shook his head in disappointment. ‘Shame about that, the fucking hooligans.’

Vince was getting impatient. ‘This wasn’t a minor injury. You’d know it if you saw him. His face was badly burned.’

‘
Burned
?’ Machin screwed up his own face. ‘What happened?’

‘They had a knife to Bobbie’s throat.’Vince corrected himself. ‘I mean Miss LaVita’s throat.’

It was too late. Machin’s eyebrows arched themselves accusingly, as he said, ‘So
Bobbie
, is it? What were you doing with her at that time of night, anyway?’ He winked, inevitably. ‘Spot of overtime?’

‘I went to the Blue Orchid. Then she invited me to a party. You know I was at the party, since I called it in.’

Machin gave a slow, considered nod. ‘So how come you set fire to this geezer’s face?’

Vince realized he was finding himself on the wrong end of a questioning session. ‘I didn’t set fire to his face. There was a
bonfire
on the beach, and he fell into it.’

Machin winked again in a further display of chummy
knowingness
. Violent drunks, wife beaters, kiddie fiddlers, loudmouths and shtum artists who needed their tongues loosening, they had all been known to take a ‘fall’ on Machin’s watch.

Vince could see that Machin thought he was getting the
measure
of him, a man cut from the same cloth. Vince was equally sure they weren’t. But he had no inclination to get the man’s back up by disputing the point. ‘How about Spider?’ he asked, instead.

Further shakes of the head from Ginge. ‘No good, guv. We did have an address for him, but his landlady claimed he did a bunk a month ago. Owed her three weeks’ rent.’

Vince felt the lump on the back of his head start to throb.

Vince was sitting at his desk, where they’d found him an office in the basement. Mops and buckets had been its last occupants. A small wired window partly painted over in green gloss to match the surrounding walls. He kept the door standing open, or else he’d have felt as if he was still in the cell.

He was currently thumbing his way through two hefty tomes of mugshots, on the lookout for the three thugs on the beach. Passing resemblances, so far, but nothing to hang your hat on. And, after a while, these tense-faced mugs staring out at him all looked the same anyway. So where was Burnt Face now? Vince made some calls to local hospitals throughout the Sussex area, but no one had been admitted suffering wounds of that description. Then he tried further afield: London hospitals, specialist burns units, private clinics. But, again no joy, just assurances that they’d get in touch if anyone fitting his description was admitted. By the time Vince put the phone down, he was half hoping no one would call him back, because he was half hoping that it all had never
happened
. He looked at his watch, found it was just gone 10 a.m.

He went and picked up the car he’d been allotted: a two-door Triumph Herald, remembering the smirk on Machin’s face as he handed him the keys to the ‘little run-around’ as he described it. He regretted it wasn’t a standard police vehicle, but it was all they had available in the carpool. Vince knew how unclaimed stolen or abandoned cars were kept for a while in the carpool before being either compacted or sold off at auction. And this sluggish little heap of rattling rust was clearly one of them. Still, he counted himself lucky, he wasn’t allotted the Messerschmitt bubble car that had taken a severe hit and been left wallowing in a puddle of oil.

Adelaide Crescent adjoined Palmeira Square, and faced directly on to the seafront. Tall white town houses lined its well-kept
undulating
lawns. Most of the houses had been converted into flats, but had all kept their facades of Regency grandeur. The house Vince was looking for was without a doubt the grandest in the entire crescent, like the jewel in the crown. A baluster-walled drive led up to the building that faced directly out to sea, adding to its fortified appearance. It seemed like a fitting place for Jack Regent, the Corsican, to reside.

Vince repeatedly pressed the doorbell on the glossy black front door. No response, so he was about to walk away, when suddenly he heard Bobbie’s voice. It came through a small tannoy hidden in the corner of the portico. ‘Speak into the bell,’ she instructed. Vince noticed now that the black casing housing the doorbell itself was perforated like the mouthpiece of a phone. ‘It’s me, Vince … Detective Vincent Treadwell.’ A long pause – long enough for Vince to think he was being ignored – then, ‘The door’s open. Stairs to the top floor. The lift’s not working.’

He pushed the heavy black door open, and noticed there was no lock. The lobby had a chequered marble floor and a staircase that coiled up around the redundant, old-fashioned gated lift. Vince climbed the stairs to the top floor. On each of the three levels were four doors leading, Vince assumed, to four different apartments. They looked freshly painted as if they had just been converted. On the top floor there was just one door, and his jacket was hanging on the doorknob. Vince slipped it on, checked the pockets for his wallet, badge and hotel keys – all present. He then knocked on the door. Ten seconds later, it cracked open as far as the fastened security chain would let it. A glimpse of Bobbie LaVita appeared and, from what was available to him, he could see there was no welcome on her face. He could sense that the door was ready to slam shut at any moment.

‘Thanks for the jacket.’

‘You’re welcome,’ she said tensely and, predictably enough, the door began to close.

Foot thrust in fast. ‘Hold it … can I come in?’

‘No. Move your foot.’

‘I need to ask you some quest—’

‘I said no. I’ve answered all the questions. Both to Detective Machin and to you. I don’t have to answer any more.’

With his foot still in the door, Vince stepped up the officious tone. ‘I need to talk to you, Miss LaVita. If that means getting a warrant—’

‘Then
remove
your foot.’

‘You won’t slam the door?’

‘I won’t slam the door.’

Vince did as asked, and stepped back. She slammed the door. Vince mouthed ‘Shit’ to himself, and was about to walk away when he heard, ‘Go on, then. Talk, and make it fast.’

‘Did you recognize that man last night?’

‘After what happened to him last night, I doubt even his mother would.’

‘Have you seen them hanging around Jack?’

‘No,’ she replied irritably. ‘Why are you asking
me
?’

‘Maybe you took me to that party just to set me up.’

There was no reply, just the faint sound of what might be derisive laughter.

‘You work your charm on me,’ he continued. ‘You aim to get me stoned, boozed up, then down on the beach to get the shit beaten out of me – maybe worse.’

‘You don’t drink, you don’t smoke pot and, from what I saw, you can more than handle yourself. Not much of a plan of mine, Detective. And they held a knife to
my
throat, remember. Jack wouldn’t do that, and he wouldn’t let anyone else do it.’

Vince had a new thought. ‘Maybe it wasn’t me they were after. Maybe I just happened to be in the way …’

There was silence after that. A chord had been struck. Just the one he wanted. Now she was scared.

He called out, ‘Miss LaVita,’ but there was no reply. He was about to bang on the door, when he heard the chain sliding across. The door opened and there she was, wearing a white towelling robe that was too big. The J.R. monogram on the breast pocket explained that. She wasn’t wearing any make-up, her skin looked fresh and young. She looked good, even better than he
remembered
, and he prided himself on having a good memory.

‘Come in,’ she said.

Vince gave her a small appreciative smile, and stepped over the threshold. The class evident in the lobby extended itself up into her flat, or ‘apartment’, as she called it. And the word
apartment
seemed more appropriate. It was huge, and the main room had the hand of an interior designer about it: exquisite opulence, Regency flamboyance, art on the walls that ranged from the old masters to the moderns. Pride of place, above the white marble fireplace, was an abstract oil on canvas, in muddied grey and swirling red mist, but not abstract enough to disguise the foreground figure of a sinewy but powerful wolf at the head of a baying pack. And not too abstract to see that the pack leader represented Jack Regent himself.

A Louis XIV couch and chairs. A walnut and tortoiseshell armoire, a weighty-looking ebonised bureau with ornate ormolu decorations depicting exotic birds and dragonflies from the
aesthetic
period. There wasn’t a flat surface in the place that missed the opportunity to contain something exquisite and expensive, like those Meissen and Sèvre figures in fine porcelain and Lalique frosted-glass bowls. A glass-domed skeleton clock – obviously a horological masterpiece – sat on the marble mantelpiece. The sun streamed in through the tall mullioned windows, throwing light over walls covered in red-striped Regency-style wallpaper. On every wall, huge baroque gilt-framed mirrors, adorned with swags and cherubs, stretched up to the lofty ceiling. It was a room of mirrors that gave the already large room infinite space, but ultimately trapped you, since you couldn’t escape the sight of yourself.

Vince waded across a thick blue carpet and sat himself down on a red velvet sofa, which was shaped like a woman’s pouting lips ready to plant a big kiss. It was the only real piece of kitsch in the room and, to the untrained eye, the only item looking as if it didn’t belong in the Victoria and Albert Museum.

‘Can I get you a drink, Detective Treadwell?’ she asked
haughtily
, obviously feeling in her element now, sensing how impressed her guest was with the living arrangements. Her arched eyebrows seemed to point him out as a parochial plod sitting
uncomfortably
on a Dali-designed sofa, amongst antiques and art and an opulence altogether out of reach of his puny public-sector pay packet. ‘A nice cup of tea, perhaps?’

‘No, thank you,’ he said politely. He needed answers, not
arguments
. Last night he had got caught up in her act, letting her play him for a mug. This time he would play it differently.

She sat down on the chaise longue opposite, her feet curling up beside her.

‘Nice place,’ he remarked.

Bobbie took a cigarette from the large Asprey’s silver cigarette box resting on a marble coffee table. She lit up with a silver table lighter shaped and detailed like a pineapple, but, about the size of an apple, it looked as though it weighed a ton. She glanced around the huge room as if taking it in for the first time, blasé because it all came so effortlessly to her, as if she was to the manor born. She took a long drag of her cigarette, then, with a pinkie finger cocked high, pinched a piece of imaginary tobacco off the tip of her tongue. An unnecessary gesture she must have seen in a movie, because the cigarette was filter-tipped, but it looked very damn sexy, thought Vince. She then plumed out the smoke with a bored sigh, and wearily asked, ‘Why would those men want to hurt me?’

Vince waited until she did him the honour of actually looking at him, then said, ‘Maybe they work for Jack. And he thinks you made the call that set him up?’