Kiss Me Quick (18 page)

‘Why me?’

They were only inches apart. Vince’s hands reached out to her. She took them and their fingers laced together. He could smell the sweet brandy scent of her breath, filtered through her lipstick. He’d always loved the smell of lipstick.

‘I thought you were going to kiss me after I slapped you in your hotel.’

‘Is that why you slapped me?’

She nodded. ‘Corny, uh?’

‘You’ve been watching too many movies.’

‘I’ve been wanting to kiss you since—’

He cut her dead with a kiss.

They lay in each other’s arms, under silk sheets, and under the silk canopy of an Emperor-sized four-poster bed. It was a French antique that could have been lifted from the Palace of Versailles and, knowing Jack’s dealings with the shadier side of the antiques business, it may well have been. The ambience of the room was redolent with Jack’s touch, his sense of grandeur, bombast and Napoleonic ego.

Vince, wide awake, studied Bobbie with her eyes closed, the hint of a contented smile on her face; the tears and fears
seemingly
vanished. She was as strong a contender for the definition of ‘beautiful’ as he had come across. But not all his. In this room he couldn’t forget the previous occupant of the bed, under the silk canopy and sheets. The king usurped? He wasn’t sure, not yet.

Her eyes opened, aware of his gaze. ‘Penny for your thoughts?’ she asked in a sleepy, sing-song voice.

‘What brought you down to Brighton?’

‘It’s where my mother was from, I think.’ Her hand moved across his chest, tracing his musculature.

‘She lived down here?’

‘I think so. But I’m a foundling.’

Vince lifted himself up to get a better look at the foundling, the first one he’d ever met outside the pages of
Tom Jones
. With elbow on pillow, head propped in hand, with his free one he traced her profile. She gave him a playful nip when his forefinger reached her lips.

‘Ouch. Where were you found?’

‘On the steps of a church.’

‘In a basket?’

She kissed his finger better, held his hand to her breast and said, ‘No. I was wrapped in my mother’s dress – or what I assumed was my mother’s dress.’

‘The turquoise one?’

Bobbie yawned, and repeated lazily, ‘The turquoise one.’

The full meaning of Bobbie’s sentimental attachment to the slightly worn and faded dress, with a tear hidden by a brooch, was clear to Vince now. ‘What church?’ he asked.

‘I don’t know. I was moved about a lot and the records got lost.’

‘Then how do you know your mother was from Brighton?’

‘I don’t, not really. I was like you, a detective. I was given the dress to keep, and it has a label in it, “Penelope of Brighton”. So I came down to Brighton to find her. I put in some ads in the personals of the
Evening Argus
. No luck. But I did find out there’d been a dressmaker with a shop called Penelope of Brighton. But she’d died years ago, and the shop died with her. Then it was all dead ends.’

‘So you gave up?’

Bobbie sensed the slight reproving tone in his voice. ‘Aren’t
you
giving up?’

‘But I’m not looking for my mother.’

‘She did a pretty good job of losing me. I don’t want to hunt her down. It’s not my job. I think about her, and when I do she looks just like me. I think she must have had the same luck as me, as a kid. It couldn’t have been easy for her. She wasn’t being callous. She was young, made a mistake, and did what she thought was right. She wanted the best for me, wanted me to live in a nice house in—’

‘A village in the New Forest, with two black Labradors?’

‘You’re mocking me, Vincent.’

‘No, I’m not. But you’ve been dealt your cards, so nothing you can do about it. You just have to get on with it. All this hiding in fantasy, behind movie-star names … doesn’t seem right.’

‘So what’s
your
story?

‘Nothing like yours, but it wasn’t happy families either. My old man left us when we were still crawling, and my mother worked herself to an early grave raising us.’

‘You and your brother, not exactly peas in the pod?’

‘Not exactly. But, like I said, that was the card that was dealt and I got on with it. Why did you stay in Brighton?’

‘You’re changing the subject. You don’t like talking about your family?’

‘There’s only Vaughn left, so no, I don’t. And now you’ve changed the subject. And I find the subject, meaning you,
endlessly
fascinating.’

‘I’m tired.’

‘Me too. But I’m going to keep asking it until you answer me.’

‘You’re being a policeman.’

‘A compromised one.’

She smiled. ‘Does your authority extend to my bed, Detective Treadwell?’

He pulled the silk sheets over both their heads and said, ‘Only if I’m working undercover.’

She laughed and then pulled the sheets back down. ‘That’s corny.’

‘Then tell me, why did you stay in Brighton?’

‘The sea.’

‘Not Jack?’

She shook her head, then in a sing-song voice she intoned: ‘
The sea, the sea, the sea
…’ until her words faded and her eyes closed. The Valium she had taken earlier must have kicked in, because they stayed closed. He lay on his back, and he could hear her breathing, the steady peaceful rhythm of slumber. The pain in his shoulder was still there, but he knew he’d soon lose it in languid sleep. He closed his eyes.

… The door would be open. Never locked. Never an intruder. Who would dare? The feet adjusting on the black and white marble floor, the acoustics in the hallway unforgiving. Every piece of grit and spec of dust under leather registered. A pin drop was like a tree falling, he thought. You could do a dance … that reminded him of an act he once saw, two tap-dancing spades throwing down sand on the stage, the noise they made, a right fucking racket … the sandman … he was the sandman. Past the broken lift. Padding his way to the staircase. The hand on the ornate gilt banister, steadying himself, cherubs and satyrs smiling at you from every fucking cornice. Regulating his breathing so as not to be heard. But the noises in his head were so loud, terrible acoustics … Undeterred, he climbed until he reached the top floor. The hand on the doorknob, turning slowly, knowing it wasn’t locked, knowing it was never locked, who would dare? Who would fuckin’ dare?

* * *

She screamed. Sat bolt upright and tried to open her heavy eyes struggling against the cobwebs of sleep that had glued her lids shut, trapping her, wanting to keep her locked in the darkness of the nightmare. She suddenly felt hands on her. Her eyes opened to find Vince holding her.

‘What’s wrong?’ he asked.

Breathless, panting: ‘The door  … the man at the door!’

He gathered her up. She fought against him, with gulping sobs, but eventually yielding and resting in his arms until the sobs subsided.

‘There’s no one there,’ said Vince. ‘It’s just a bad dream.’

‘I felt … I felt him in the room.’

‘Who was in the room?’ She didn’t answer. ‘Your father?’ Again no answer. ‘Jack?’

It’s not that she didn’t know, because it was always the same man. It’s just that she felt foolish. She’d given up on her act, and now she felt the rest of her was slipping away, too. The parts of her she didn’t want anyone to see. Reporting your fears and your weaknesses is one thing, but to have people witness first-hand what you’ve reported is another matter entirely. She wasn’t ready, not yet, not with
him
. She felt too vulnerable, like a child in his arms. And being a child in a man’s arms was never a happy place for her to be. She untangled herself from him and, with a
determined
voice, said, ‘He was in the room.’

Vince threw back the sheets and went to investigate the bad dream. He grabbed a towel from a chair and wrapped it around his waist, went through the flat’s main hallway and into the living room. And there it was. The heavy, ebonized ormolu bureau was away from the door, almost ostentatiously so, sitting in the centre of the room. The front door itself was wide open.

Vince ran down the stairs, hand on the banister to steady
himself
. Within seconds he was down all four flights of stairs and in the entrance hall, the marble floor cold under his feet. The street door was wide open. He ran out into the middle of the road, looking for signs of life. Looking and listening for a heavy foot on the pavement, or the fading lights of a speeding car
disappearing
out of view. He saw nothing, heard nothing: it was strangely quiet, like a history of silence had mounted up. As if nothing had trodden the street or driven along the road in years. He felt as if he had stepped out into reality, still holding the fantasy of Bobbie’s nightmare, and under the radiance of the street lamps realized that it didn’t exist. But the reality before him couldn’t explain the heavy bureau sitting in the middle of the room.

He looked over at the crocus-lined lawn that occupied the centre of the crescent, where a woman was taking her dog out for an emergency visit. The dog was a small grey terrier, she was a large middle-aged brunette. She looked over at him, quickly grabbed up the dog and ran back into her house. Vince looked down and saw the towel had slipped from his waist while
running
down the stairs. He was naked.

Vince arrived at Edward Street police station at 8.30 a.m. Outside, well-groomed, clipped-voiced reporters were holding
microphones
, talking to the cameras. They had an energy and sense of emergency about them that told him this wasn’t about the Kemp Town junkies. This was today’s news.

He walked through to the incident room. All eyes were on him, he thought. He interpreted the looks he was getting from the coppers, right down to the tea lady making her morning rounds, as knowledge of his guilt. He
had
compromised the case by his behaviour with Bobbie.

‘Morning, guv,’ said Ginge sitting at his desk, his face darting up from the paperwork in front of him. ‘You got two calls.’ He picked up his pad. ‘Some fella called Terence, said you’d know him. And Ray Dryden rang twenty minutes ago, said it was urgent. And the guv’s been trying to contact you. We’ve got two more bodies.’

‘Heroin?’ Ginge gave a solemn nod. Vince appreciated the copper-topped copper’s customary springy self; it helped wipe away his paranoia. He looked around the office with fresh eyes, found no one was looking at him. They were engrossed in their work: making calls, pulling files, clipping mugshots on to cork boards. Vince knocked on Machin’s door. He heard a cough, a clearing of the throat, and what sounded like gob descending into a waste-paper basket, that was followed by a gruff, ‘Come in.’

Vince opened the door and entered. Machin sat at his desk, a pile of paperwork in front him, knocking back a live
Pepto-Bismol
that was still fizzing away in a tall glass. Rough as guts and thoroughly poisoned, Machin looked at Vince through hooded, bloodshot eyes. They greeted each other with sheepish nods, both carrying a burden of guilt they couldn’t shake off from the previous night. Like the cold war, with its mutually assured destruction, it had a harmonious effect. Neither of them tried to scramble on to the moral high ground; they just cracked on with the business at hand.

‘You heard?’

‘Two more dead on heroin,’ confirmed Vince, closing the door behind him.

‘Terminus Road, by the station. Males about the same age. Same deal. Same gear.’

Vince thought the name of the road was apt, as he slumped into the chair opposite Machin.

Machin leaned back in his own chair. ‘I tried calling you at the hotel. Where were you?’

Vince rubbed his brow with his thumb and forefinger, as if he was soothing a hangover. His hand meanwhile formed a visor on his forehead, shading his expression from Machin’s prying gaze. ‘I was out,’ he replied in a tired voice.

‘I heard you got jumped last night,’ said Machin. ‘Long George said it was just some kids, that right?’ Vince gave a jaded nod. Machin shook his head in disgust. ‘The little bastards, they’ve been causing havoc all this bank holiday. Mods, Rockers, fucking hooligans the lot of them. We’re calling in more coppers from the surrounding counties for the rest of the weekend. That said, it’s been kicking off all over the place: Clacton, Southend, Hastings.’

Machin picked up a biro from his desk as if to start work, and stared at the blank sheets of paper that needed filling. He bit the tip of the biro, then threw it down. ‘Listen, son, about last night … about your brother, I was out of order. I get a few drinks inside me and start flapping my lip.’

‘Forget it, I’d have found out anyway, one way or another,’ said Vince.

‘Maybe I should have told you about him earlier …’

‘No one likes to be the bearer of bad news, and when it comes to Vaughn that’s all there is.’ Keen to change the subject Vince pointed to the window and said, ‘You’ve got quite a press pack outside. They baying for blood yet?’

Machin reached under his pile of papers and pulled out an edition of the
Evening Argus
, which he handed to Vince. The paper was open at page four. The rioting Mods and Rockers, with their generational moral panic, had managed to kick it off the front page. The headline read:
‘Police Helpless in the Face of the Deadly Plague Sweeping Brighton!’

Vince picked up the paper. ‘Mind if I take this?’

Machin, without looking up, replied, ‘Be my guest.’

Vince stood up, walked over to open the door, and then timed to perfection his throwaway afterthought – and the real reason he was there. ‘Oh, yeah, another thing. I mentioned him last night, but what have you got on Max Vogel?’

Machin took a cigarette out of the packet lying on the desk, picked up a box of matches and fished about for a live one amongst the dead littering the box. His hands shook, but Vince gave him the benefit of the doubt and put it down to the booze. Machin found a live match and lit up his cigarette. He sucked down the smoke, studied the tip of the cigarette, then blew the smoke on to it so that it glowed. ‘Vogel? Antique dealer. Got a shop in the Lanes. Why you so interested in him?’

Vince gave a slack shrug, carrying on the game of nonchalance they were both engaged in. ‘Nothing much but, like I said, I saw him with Pierce at the races.’

‘Lots of people go to the races, son. Who else did you see?’

‘All the usual faces. Tell me, is Murray the Head still the best fourth-floor man in the business?’

‘Was he at the races?’

Vince nodded. ‘Had a nice suntan on him.’

‘You know Murray, he likes to holiday on the Riviera, Monte Carlo, anywhere there’s rich women with big tom staying in big hotels with slack security. Word is he’s just come back from a job, south of France. That movie star Zsa Zsa Gabor had her jewellery pinched. Made all the papers.’

‘Yeah, I read about it. That was the Head?’

Machin smiled and shrugged. ‘That’s the rumour.’

‘He couldn’t have just been after her autograph?’

Machin laughed, a little too hearty for a man with his
hangover
, and also a little too hearty for Vince’s liking. Vince wasn’t going to let him off the hook. ‘The Head fence any of his stuff with Vogel, down here?’

‘I doubt it,’ said Machin, no longer laughing. ‘The Head doesn’t pull jobs here in the town – not rich enough pickings for him. But, more importantly, his old mum still lives here. And, to her, Murray’s still a good Jewish boy at heart.’

‘Vogel interests me, talking to Pierce like that.’

‘It’s a small town, son. People run into each other and they talk. No law against that.’

‘They didn’t run into each other, because Pierce sought him out. But they did talk, for about twenty minutes. Vogel looked like he had a lot to say, and Pierce did a lot of listening.’

Machin looked up at him and announced solidly, ‘If a country house gets turned over, Brighton’s the first place they look. And we do a regular sweep of all the dealers in the town. Nothing on Vogel, but I’ll run a check for you.’

‘Thanks. But you’re right, it’s probably nothing,’ said Vince placatingly and continued through the door.

Machin stubbed out his cigarette, picked up his pen, and put his head down for some work. Vince thought of Machin in the Brunswick Sporting Club – toiling away at the tables, regularly losing, feeding Sammy Bellman’s gambling house and fattening Jack’s coffers – meant nothing; he probably had an account at one of Jack’s whorehouses for when his amphetamine jags led him astray from the fat wife. But Vogel meant something to him. And it was proof, if proof were needed, that Machin was dirty. He was protecting Max Vogel, therefore Jack’s bank.

Vince smiled and closed the door behind him.

Vince picked up the phone and dialled the number. He was seated at his desk in the basement, staring at a window that was painted over in green. Behind it he could hear the constant trickle of water. The view behind the green paint had to be a brick wall with blocked guttering and waste water cascading down it. The view summed up this case, he thought.

‘Ray Dryden,’ responded the energetic voice down the line.

‘What do you say, Ray?’

‘Vincenzo! Hold on a second.’ The rustle of papers. ‘Sitting comfortably?’

‘How could I not? This office they’ve assigned me is the lap of luxury.’

‘Remember what I told you about the Unione Corse?’

‘Yeah, the French mob. Heroin distribution.’

‘OK, now, I ran a check on your boy, Jacques Rinieri. In 1961, New York City, one Antoine Rinieri, Corsican, worked out of Marseilles. Very close with Paul Carbone, the boss of the Marseilles faction of the Unione Corse. French Interpol had been trailing Antoine Rinieri for a couple of months, because he’d been doing a lot of travelling of late. Especially out in Bangkok, Laos and Vietnam, where there are big French colonies. Anyway, they’d linked up with the FBI, because he’d made a couple of trips to the US. The FBI found him in a place called Pleasant Avenue, in East Harlem – or Italian Harlem as it’s known in New York City. He was picked up with two hundred and sixty thousand dollars on him. When the Yanks collared him, they realized the money was from a drugs deal. Pleasant Avenue is the district where the Mob distributes heroin. They interrogated Rinieri, but got
nothing
, not a word. The Corsicans are tough, don’t open their mouths, don’t cut deals. They won’t admit to anything, especially being part of the Unione Corse.’

‘What happened to him?’

‘They banged him up for six months, then they deported him back to France. The thing that really got up the Yanks’ noses, is that in the end they couldn’t actually connect the two hundred and sixty grand with a drug deal, so Uncle Sam had to pay the frog back his money – with the six months’ interest on top!’

‘You think Jack and Antoine, they’re related?

‘The Unione Corse are clannish, they work only with their close family.’

‘Like the Mafia?’

‘Very similar MO,’ said Ray Dryden, ‘but even more tightly knit. We’re talking about brothers, cousins, blood relations. I checked: Antoine Rinieri had four brothers. One served with
distinction
in the French Resistance and became a schoolteacher, one got killed in a motorcycle accident just after the war. Two other brothers we have no names for: seemed to have disappeared off the dial. When did your boy come to England?’

‘In the twenties, when he could only have been about fifteen, sixteen.’ Vince could almost hear Ray’s brain ticking over.

‘Maybe he had to leave Corsica,’ said Ray after considered thought. ‘For centuries that island has been invaded, raped and pillaged. There’re two things Corsicans know, and one is how to hold a grudge.’

‘What’s the other?’

‘Revenge. It’s in their blood. They’ve got Moorish blood
running
through them, which means they’re a warrior race. He could have got in a feud with someone, and England was as good a place as any to come to. From what I’ve read up on Jack Regent, he’s a resourceful fellow, could do what he does anywhere: Corsica, Marseilles, New York, London, Brighton. Like I say, Vince, it’s in his blood. You can’t escape your blood.’

Vince wrapped up the conversation, agreeing they’d be in touch as soon as one of them found out more. Vince thought again about the young Jack, and the bloody feud that might have brought him to these shores, and the two of them together. From the parched hills of Corsica to the damp hills of Albion. He could imagine the insult, something about his club foot; and Jack responding how he always would – with violence.
You can’t escape your blood
.

The phone rang. It was Ginge to tell him that Henry Pierce had turned up for his interview.