Kiss Me Quick (17 page)

Again, like the night before, Vince heard Bobbie’s scream. She pressed down on the car horn. She even tried getting out of the car to help Vince, but the two hounds beside the car wouldn’t let her.

There were just too many of them, and he knew he was going to get cut. The baying hounds could smell blood. After assessing the danger of the shiv in Vince’s hand, they were moving in again, six, seven, maybe more. Lights had been turned on in the square, so the hounds had to make their move now. The knives were coming in, and Vince felt one slash at his back. He felt a chain wrap around his leg, yanking him off balance. Then, he saw two thick, fleshy hands brace one of the hounds, lift him up by his shoulders off the ground and throw him on to the bonnet of a parked car, where he lay like a broken hood ornament. It was Long George doing the throwing.

The Long Fellow reached into his jacket pocket and pulled out a cosh, then began hammering away on the heads of the hounds like he was playing a drum kit. Vince joined in. He stuck one in the throat with the pen, and the fellow fell away, choking. A chain swung around Vince’s head, but he ducked it, and it thrashed across Long George’s back.

‘ACH! Kacka-de-hoiser!’ shouted the Long Fellow, as he grabbed the hound up in his arms and threw him down into a basement.

Vince instantly grabbed another who had a broken bottle in his hand. Two fast jabs to the face, then he twisted his arm around and made him drop the jagged bottle. A knee to the face crunched the hound’s nose, another dislodged his teeth, then Vince lifted his head by a hank of hair and dispatched him with a ferocious right hook.

Vince turned just in time to catch sight of a bottle
Catherine-wheeling
its way towards his head. He ducked it – it smashed against a wall. Vince had turned around to grab the propellant, a goofy-toothed kid with another bottle in his hand, when …

BANG! BANG!

Vince, Long George and the remaining hounds still on their feet all froze like a photograph. Then checked themselves for bullet holes. Then all looked around in unison, and saw the
heavy-set
figure of Sammy Bellman holding a small gun, a Beretta. He’d fired the gun into the air, so the
bang-bang
was actually more like the
crack-crack
of a starting pistol. But no one was about to question the authenticity of the weapon in Sammy Bellman’s hand.

‘Any more for any more?’ he asked with a dark growl.

The hounds looked at each other, wised up quickly and shook their heads.

‘Thanks,’ said Vince, nodding at Sammy B in his tux. He looked around at Bobbie, in the car, and saw that the two hounds
previously
standing over it were now running down to the seafront to make their escape.

‘Ach! What took you? And where’s that piece of shit, Machin? He’s a policeman, for the love of God!’

‘Too drunk to be of any use,’ said Sammy B.

Vince went to cuff one of the hounds.

‘Easy, copper,’ warned the shtarker bookie, now pointing the gun at Vince. Sammy looked at one of the hounds, a
swarthy-looking
kid who might have been the leader; probably because he looked like a younger version of Sammy. ‘You know who I am?’

‘Mr Sammy Bellman,’ the swarthy kid intoned respectfully.

‘Then you should know, if we ever see you around here again, you’ll get worse – a lot worse. You understand?’

Leaving nothing to chance, to a man the hounds made like nodding dogs and muttered servile yes-es.

‘Now, get out of here!’ barked Sammy, the top dog. They started to leave, but Vince grabbed the husky kid by the shoulder and said, ‘Sorry, Sammy, they’re not going anywhere.’

‘Then catch ’em yourself,’ said Sammy B. ‘Because I’m not doing it for you.’ Vince looked at the gun; it wasn’t raised in his direction, but it was held firmly enough in Sammy B’s hand to mean business. Vince gave an understanding nod to the
Beretta-toting
bookmaker, let go of the husky one, and gestured for the hounds to take off. And they did: hightailing it down to the seafront to lick their wounds.

Sammy B pocketed the gun. ‘We were just doing you a favour, and I’m not in the habit of doing the law any favours. Long George here says you were all right, so that was all right by me. But don’t push it, policeman. We’ve just saved your bacon, so some gratitude wouldn’t go amiss.’

Just then, Bobbie joined them and stood by Vincent’s arm.

At the sight of this, Long George and Sammy B exchanged troubled looks.

Vince fixed Bobbie a large brandy. She was curled up on the sofa. The surreal Salvador Dali sofa that was shaped like Mae West’s lips, which really didn’t seem that surreal now. Vince handed her the tumbler of brandy.

She sat up and took it. ‘Thank you,’ she said, in a voice that still held a tremble.

Vince sat down on the sofa, too. The room seemed smaller now, not so grand. They sat in silence for a minute, till Vince broke it with, ‘Have you seen that mob before?’

Bobbie shrugged a shrug that, even for a shrug, was pretty indolent and evasive. He excused her. She’d popped a Valium.

‘Well,
I
have,’ said Vince vigorously, trying to up the energy levels in the room and give the situation the sense of emergency it deserved. ‘I spotted a couple of them at the Beach Bottle Club you took me to last night. They look like they might knock around with Spider … Henry Pierce’s driver.’

‘I know who he is,’ she said. Her voice was slowed-down and smeared due to the sedative she’d taken.

‘So what does that tell you, Bobbie?’ Vince stared at her, but he didn’t need an answer. He saw that she knew that the rules had changed. Without Jack around, she was in danger.

She sat up straight, took a deep breath to alert herself, then stood and said, in a clear firm voice, ‘I’ll be right back.’ She walked out the room and disappeared into the hallway.

Vince fixed himself a soda water with a dash of lime. Settling back on the sofa, he felt a twinge of pain in his shoulder where the cosh had made contact – and he was still carrying the lump on the back of his head from the previous night. He shook his head and forced out an ironic little laugh. He was sent down to assist with inquiries, but his primary purpose here had been to take in the sea air and relax!

Bobbie returned, holding a blue leather-bound photo album. She sat next to Vince, with the album resting on her lap. The volume was worn, tatty and well-thumbed, its ribbed spine
coming
away from the covers. She opened it up and starting turning the pages. Photos of the large house in the New Forest. Photos of the family in the garden, with fields and trees stretching beyond the mossy-green wooden fences. The mother, with a refined, kind face, serving the two young children lunch on a long wooden table. The father, in rolled-up shirtsleeves digging about in the
garden
, two black Labradors foraging in the background. The young girl playing on the swing with her young brother. The living room, spacious, book-lined, country-style furniture. Father at his partners’ desk in the large study, obviously going through his paperwork. Mother in her favourite armchair, reading …

And so they went on, snapshots of happy lives in a happy place. Bobbie turned over the card pages without saying a word,
leaving
Vince to fill in the story. Like she had, previously.

Eventually, Vince pointed at one photo. ‘Your mother and father? They’re a good-looking couple. What are their names?’

Bobbie ignored that, or at least seemed not to hear him, and carried on looking at the photos in silence.

Vince tried again and pointed at a picture of the little boy standing next to the little girl, in their Sunday best, heading off to church. ‘Is that you and your brother?’

Again, no answer.

Vince stopped looking at the photos and turned his attention instead to Bobbie. Her face was rapt, almost trance-like, in
studying
the subject before her. She slowly turned the pages, as if seeing what was on them for the first time. These photos were taking her somewhere almost mystical that seemed beyond memory good or bad.

‘It’s customary, when being shown family snaps, to be put in the picture a bit,’ he said, trying to make light of it. No response, still. ‘Bobbie, aren’t you going to tell me who they are?’

Without changing her facial expression, she said, ‘I don’t know who they are.’

She closed the album. The world inside it was gone. And she took a deep breath. Then told him who she was …

… She was an orphan raised in institutions until the age of seven when she was first fostered out. Even at that tender age, her sullenness and an innate sense of tragedy conspired against her. She didn’t smile, kept her head in books, and wouldn’t play cutesy with the hopeful parents looking to adopt. There were three sets of foster parents in all, but only one she really remembered. And not because of any paternal love. She was eleven when the man, her new ‘father’, first came into her room to comfort her after a night fright.

Bobbie had experienced the same nightmare as far back as she could remember: death climbing the stairs. The footsteps slowly making their way up the steps leading to her room. She sees it, hears it and feels it now, those heavy footfalls stopping outside the door, and the doorknob turning. But she always wakes up before he enters.

She’d read up on dreams, including the old chestnut about falling from a great height, and if you hit the ground you never wake up. For Bobbie it was something similar: if the door opened and
it
came into the room, she knew she would never wake up.

That night the dream played out as usual, the footsteps on the stairs, slowly making their way up; the turning of the doorknob and herself waking up screaming, drenched in sweat. She must have screamed aloud this time because the doorknob turned and her father came through the door. He sat on the bed, kind, gentle, comforting. Then he stripped himself naked and slipped into bed with her. Roberta, as she was then called, never suffered the nightmare again. The new one had begun. The door had opened and
it
had walked through. And this time she was awake. And this time she was dead. Once, sometimes twice a week, the father made his visits to her room. Did the mother know? Probably, but it was never spoken of. From eleven to fourteen the father would come to her. He told her to close her eyes, but she didn’t need telling. They were squeezed shut in the hope that nothing could penetrate her corpse-like body.

Then he was struck down by a stroke: a stroke of good fortune for her. At fifteen Roberta ran away. But not until
she
had crept into his room. He was lying there one morning, after sucking down
his
breakfast through a straw, silent and supine, his eyes like one of those creepy paintings that followed you around the room. He could see what was coming: she made sure he saw what was coming, as she slowly pulled back the sheets and stuck a pair of scissors into his scrotum.

She then ran away to London, and into the arms of the first boy who showed her any interest. A young man from Clapham South. A wannabe villain, a gonnabe drunk and, if they married, a probable wife beater.

They married in a registry office. Paste sandwiches at the pub for a reception. The honeymoon at a Butlin’s holiday camp in Skegness. Roberta didn’t know where Skegness was when the boy first proposed it. It didn’t sound very exotic, but it did sound very far away. In Scotland, perhaps? Far away from the dingy two rooms they’d moved into in Battersea. But Skegness really wasn’t that far away; and really nowhere near far enough away from the dingy rooms in Battersea.

It rained – and the gags poured down about that being a bonus, because you never want to leave your room on your honeymoon. But Roberta wanted to leave that room. The boy drank all day at the bar with some fellow soaks, and didn’t make love to her at night. She was so alone.

Back at the dingy two rooms in Battersea, the blows came down hard and heavy, as the boy sank into his cups. Drenching his fears and inadequacy with booze, he’d never done right by Roberta, either in the bedroom or in the bank account. He just wasn’t up to it, and Roberta even thought he might be a queer. This boy just wasn’t set up for life, and certainly not for his chosen profession as a thief. He was one of life’s patsies and maybe a pansy, yet he really wanted to be a thief, a villain. It was his ambition, but never his calling. One night in the pub, a mate gave him a shooter to look after. Instead of hiding it away, he walked around the flat with it tucked in his waistband, admiring himself in the mirror with it. He thought he looked the business, thought it put a couple of inches on him. It scared her, so she made him hide it until his mate returned for it, though he never did. He had another gun and picked up a seven for shooting someone with it.

On a warehouse job, he took his usual position as the
look-out
. Not smart enough for breaking and entering or strong enough for the lifting. Just the looking. He didn’t spot the two plain-clothes coppers coming out of the pub across the street. But they clocked him all right: furtive, nervous and looking for all the world like a look-out. He got pinched.

That was Roberta’s cue to leave. During visiting time in the Scrubs, he advised her to start a new life. She needed no
prompting
; her bags were already packed and sitting in the car outside. The car belonged to a dashing young racing driver she’d met in a nightclub. He turned out to be a getaway driver, and got nicked while speeding away from a pay-roll job in Leatherhead. He got a six-year stretch. She wasn’t going to wait for him either.

She then answered an ad in the London
Evening News
for ‘models required’ and ended up with a job at the Raymond Revue Bar. Standing there stock-still and starkers, save for some ‘arty’ head gear. If a draught blew in and her nipples stood to attention, she had to leave the stage. But she met some
interesting
people and soon found a flat share in Earls Court with two other girls working at the Revue Bar. They were actresses
training
at the Webber Douglas Academy of Drama. They saw the gig as life experience (purely
still
life was the joke) and a quick way to make money and get an equity card. They liked young Roberta and took her under their wing, and suggested she change her name to Bobbie as a stage name, because all the world’s a stage. And, with her looks, maybe she should try her hand at acting and apply to drama school.

For the two and a half years of the flat share in Earls Court, Bobbie was the perfectly pliant Pygmalion student. She absorbed the two middle-class girls, soaked up their mannerisms, their RP accents, their affectations – of which they were legion, and all of them aspirational. They had a serious game plan: it was Hollywood or bust for these two stargazers. Each determined to be a tour de force! Not force to tour, treading the boards in half-empty reps around the country, with the indignity of shared changing rooms and damp digs. If Hollywood didn’t beckon in three years, they were determined to marry, and marry well. Bobbie read what they read, Shakespeare; Shaw; Chekhov; the Greeks – Aeschylus, Sophocles, Euripides; Ibsen; Tennessee Williams;
Tatler, Vogue, Harper’s Bazaar, Debretts
. They took her to the theatre, and to the art-house cinema they were all watching at the time. The French New Wave: Charbol’s
Le Beau Serge
; Truffaut’s
400 Blows
; Goddard’s
A bout de soufflé
. The Italian Neo-realism: Rossellini’s
Rome, Open City
; De Sica’s
Bicycle Thieves
. But it was Fellini’s
La Dolce Vita
, that was her epiphany. Anita Ekberg, shoeless, strapless, godless, dancing in the Trevi Fountain. In that moment, that image on the silver screen, all her dreams crystallized. Bobbie saw the sweet life she knew she had always wanted …

* * *

‘And the photo album?’ asked Vince.

‘I found it in a jumble sale, in an old box of stuff. I had no photos of my own, so … I was twelve at the time, just after the bastard started … ‘tucking me in’ as he called it. I used to hide it under my bed, then look at it after he left. Then I found myself looking at it all the time. I pretended they were my family. I told myself that my foster parents were just looking after me for a few days, and soon my real parents in the photo album would come and pick me up and take me back home, and the nightmare would be over. That’s how I got through it. I knew every inch of that garden, what the house looked like, what my room looked like. I imagined stables, the names of the dogs; my father’s job, GP; my mother, a teacher; my brother …’

Vince broke her reverie by taking the album and putting it on the coffee table. ‘Maybe it’s time to put it away now?’

‘It’s the only thing that kept me going. The only thing that stopped me from killing myself.’

‘But it’s the past. And it’s not real.’

She turned sharply towards him, with a defiant edge. ‘It was real to me.’

Vince didn’t argue, and he didn’t have any answers for her either. It meant reaching into a realm he knew little about. He could help her by getting practical, though. He got up and went over to a large ebonized ormolu bureau, which looked as if it weighed a ton. It didn’t, in fact, but it was heavy enough. He dragged it over to the front door.

‘What are you doing?’

‘The days of not having a lock on your door are over,’ he said, sliding it against the door. ‘You said that Pierce was always polite and courteous to you, right?’

She nodded.

‘Well, he’s not that way now, which tells me Jack’s gone and he’s not coming back. And whatever privileges you enjoyed, they’re over. And this place’ – his hand led her eye around the room, which was stuffed with art and antiques – ‘is up for grabs. And you’ve got to leave town.’

‘Where will I go?’

‘Come on, Bobbie, we’ve been through this – you’re not little Miss New Forest. You’re the babe that’s been out the woods for a long time.’

Bobbie managed a small laugh. She stood up and walked over to him.

‘It’s the first time you’ve called me by my first name.’

‘Well, it’s the first time you’ve been straight with me.’

‘The first time I’ve been straight with anyone in a long time.’

‘Not even Jack?’

‘He doesn’t know what I’ve just told you. No one does.’