Kiss Me Quick (26 page)

The purple Rolls-Royce made its way noiselessly to Dickie Eton’s mansion. They glided through the town and up to Dyke Road, an area long described as the Beverly Hills of Brighton. The further up the hill you got, the plusher the houses got. Gated mock-Tudor mansions with sweeping gravel drives, faux-French chateaux hidden behind elaborate topiary, neo-classical Palladian parodies, 1930s-style deco with life-sized plastic pink flamingos artificially feasting on manicured lawns, and sixties modernist bunkers in steel and glass, hunkering down next to small moated castles.

Eddie Tobin sat up front with the chauffeur, who had introduced himself to Vince as Nick Soroya. He was a softly spoken young man who seemed more than happy to chat away while Eddie Tobin contented himself with just sitting there looking stupid and violent. Nick Soroya explained that he had been working for Dickie Eton for three years. He himself used to be a crooner who was once signed to Dominate Records, Dickie Eton’s label. But his career never took off (he hinted that certain indiscretions had come to light that ill qualified him for his target audience), so Dickie offered him a job as his driver. Nick Soroya proudly told Vince that Dickie Eton was paying for him to go to secretarial school, after which he would then be qualified to attend to Mr Eton’s personal affairs.

Nick Soroya was singing Dickie Eton’s praises just as
enthusiastically
as he had once sung his own bubblegum pop tunes. He said that Dickie really looked after his artists, even the ones who didn’t make the grade and reach the heady heights in the fickle world of the hit parade. Vince could tell he was doing a
preemptive
PR job on the midget music mogul.

Vince then piped up and pointed out that not all of Dickie Eton’s ‘artists’ got this treatment. Take Chas Starlight, the skiffle artist, for instance – dead in a seedy bedsit while on bad heroin. At this unpleasant little disclosure, Eddie Tobin made some ursine growling noise. Nick Soroya, however, politely ignored it, and went about his task of manoeuvring the car up the drive to Dickie Eton’s house. The car slowed to a stop, the window rolled down and Nick Soroya tapped in a code on the sidepost that opened the gates. They continued on through.

Dickie Eton’s contribution to the eclectic mix of moneyed piles lining Dyke Road was an audacious assortment within itself: Gothic Hollywood baroque with a twist of pre-eruption Pompeii could best describe it, about twice the size of its nearest
neighbour
, or rival. The front lawn contained a water feature as a centrepiece: a Trevi-esque fountain that seemed to equal its Roman counterpart in dimension. Vince thought suddenly of Bobbie.

There were about fifteen well-appointed cars parked alongside the sweep of the gravel drive. They themselves parked and piled out. Nick Soroya led the way, with Tobin tailing Vince, his paw indiscreetly hugging the butt of the gun in his waistband. They forwent the grand arch of the front door, and took the
tradesmen’s
side entrance. Through the large kitchen with shiny copper pots hanging from hooks, and along a red-carpeted hallway. Lots of oil paintings on the walls, but these were just fillers. Merely for decoration, not the private collection, and therefore they were all seemingly kosher. But, still, the themes and subject matter: naked flesh in classical settings or bloody battle scenes, all edged towards the kind of art Dickie Eton obviously preferred: sex and death.

Ahead of them, a party was in progress in one of the rooms. There was laughter that seemed both raucous and furtive. Strange music was playing: sitars, Moogs; swirling, distorted sounds. The meaty whiff of cannabis smoke filled the air. Vince peeked through a partially open door at the far end of the hallway, and spotted naked flesh – lots of it.

‘Looks like I’m a little over-dressed for the party,’ he remarked.

Nick Soroya blocked his further view and pointed to some side stairs. ‘This way,’ he said, with his easy congeniality, but one that Vince thought hid a darker purpose. He looked around at Eddie Tobin. His hand was still on the butt of the gun.

They went up the stairs and along an unlit corridor until they reached an ancient-looking dark-oak door. The seemingly medieval theme of this part of the house, or certainly this
particular
floor, was augmented by two staunch-looking suits of armour standing sentry outside the arched door. They were about the same size, though one was a little more battered and looked sorely in need of a polish. Nick Soroya knocked on the door, and a reedy voice on the other side beckoned them in.

Dickie Eton was seated at a large mahogany partners’ desk. Dressed in purple silk pyjamas with gold trim, and a pair of buckled black-velvet slippers (his feet were up on the desk), he was barking instructions down the phone. It was clearly a
business
call, a music-business call.

‘… Listen Mardell, if she can’t be bothered to rehearse, then I can’t be bothered to book recording time … Fuck her, she’s a minor talent with nice tits is all she is, Mardell. They’re ten a penny …’ Vince noted that Dickie Eton’s showbiz voice was pitched somewhere between Brighton and Brooklyn.

Nick Soroya gave Vince a smile and gestured for him to sit down in the high-backed chair that was placed in front of the desk. Vince sat down. Eddie Tobin took a seat to one side, by the window.

‘Fix our guests a drink, Nick,’ said Eton in between ‘yeah yeah yeahs’ to Mardell, his subordinate on the other end of the line.

‘I’ll take a Coke,’ said Vince to the subordinate. Nick Soroya gave him an accommodating nod.

Eddie Tobin gave a low-muttered curse at this sober request. ‘I’ll have a Scotch,’ he said, looking at Vince and shaking his head in disgust. ‘No ice, no water,
straight
.’ Vince smiled at Tobin and threw him a wink. Eddie Tobin, straining to contain his rage, cracked his knuckles.

The room was a wood-panelled, study-type affair, done out like a gentleman’s club, which seemed surprisingly conservative
considering
the house’s owner. The only tell-tale signs of Rock & Roll were some framed gold and platinum records on the walls, along with similarly framed photos of Dickie shaking hands with just about everyone. There was a fully stocked bar in one corner of the room, and a Wurlitzer jukebox in another. Nick Soroya fixed the drinks and brought them over with his easy-on-the-eye courteous smile, then wafted back over to the bar, where he perched on a stool drinking a tall cocktail.

Dickie Eton dropped the phone into its cradle. ‘Jesus Christ, these people!’ he complained, swinging his feet down off the table. ‘Sorry about that, but I get calls at the most inconvenient times. It’s the Americans usually; they never know what time it is here. They assume it’s
their
time all over the world. Well, why not, they’ve got the bomb!’ Eton picked up the frosted block of knobbly glass that held his whisky. It looked too big for him. In fact, as Vince studied him, he realized that everything looked too big for the man: the chair he was sitting in, the desk he sat at, the phone he had just talked into. It should all have been scaled down slightly to fit the owner.

But, as Vince was taking Dickie Eton in, the imp-like
impresario
was doing likewise in return. ‘Ah, Detective Treadwell, we meet at last,’ he said, with a satisfied and fatalistic sigh. ‘I heard I might be getting a visit from you’ – he clicked his fingers for recall – ‘about the Chas Stardust thing …?’

‘Starlight, I think he called himself,’ Vince corrected.

‘Quite. Do you think he was being ironic there? Because I’ll be damned if I can remember him, and I certainly know a star when I meet one.’ Eton made a dismissive flourish of his floppy little hand, which was weighed down by the chunky rings he was wearing. ‘I should never have signed them, since there was no one in the group I wanted to fuck. And I’m really not that fussy, so if
I
don’t want to fuck them, why should anyone else? No, Detective, a rare mistake on my part, and of course they bombed. I guessed ages ago that Skiffle was dead, and now we all know it’s for real.’ Eton smiled and raised his glass again, ‘Well, let’s toast his memory. Cheers, Detective.’

Vince took a sizeable swig of his Coke and put it down on the desk. ‘I think we both know what I’m here for. I take it you took a call from Lionel Duval, after your gun-toting sidekick here phoned him.’

‘Smart mouth,’ sneered Tobin, no longer growling, but looking surprisingly smug and self-satisfied, even verging on amused.

‘God, that man. Never a simple transaction with Lionel, always intrigue,’ said Eton. ‘Like that painting I wanted to buy off him, what could be simpler than two dear old friends trading a
painting
for some cash. And yet here you are.’

‘“Dear old friends”?’

‘You didn’t know that? Oh, Lionel and I go back a long time. Soho, Denmark Street, when we were both making our way in the business. Lionel used to book some of my acts for his clubs – his legit clubs.’

‘Before he got into dirty movies?’

There was a quick exchange of glances between Tobin and Eton. Eton’s face then lit up as he replied, ‘Well, there’s no
denying
it, Detective, you’re right. What you saw that night is exactly what you saw.’

Dickie Eton gazed squarely at Vince, yet Vince didn’t flinch. He didn’t even bother to look around at Tobin and shout, ‘I knew it!’ Because he’d known it all along, there was no victory here for him. There was, in fact, a sense of loss. Because a part of him wished he had imagined it all, then the poor skinny blonde girl would still be alive. If Eton was looking for a strong reaction, he wasn’t getting one.

So the midget music mogul inspected his rings, and continued. ‘As for “dirty”, Detective, it’s all a matter of taste. Like with music, all tastes need catering for, wouldn’t you say?’

‘No, I wouldn’t.’

Dickie Eton’s pinched, almost feminine lips shaped themselves into a dry, derisive little smile. ‘I didn’t suppose you would. Well, myself and Lionel share similar tastes. The film business is a private little enterprise we run for friends with like-minded proclivities. Oh, you’d be surprised, there’s a real mixed bag of them. Some showbiz chums, naturally, while in politics there’s a couple of
very
upfront backbenchers. Also a lawyer, a smattering of the landed gentry or peers of the realm, a society dentist and an eminent Harley Street doctor. He’s a psychologist, in fact. I could go on.’

Vince digested this information with an audible gulp, then again looked around at Tobin. The slitty eyes still burned into him, but he hadn’t touched his drink and Eddie Tobin was usually a glass-guzzling booze hound. His ex-partner in Vice didn’t seem such a figure of fun now. Also the gun tucked in his waistband wasn’t just a prop any more; it seemed very real, stuffed with bullets and ready to be fired. Worse still, Tobin looked as if he was itching to use it.

Vince couldn’t see Nick Soroya without craning his neck, but he guessed he was still sitting at the bar, in the gloom behind him. It made him uncomfortable not being able to see the chauffeur. Failed crooner followed by secretarial school hardly marked him out as anything to fear, but behind those pretty-boy good looks lurked cold danger. So much was evident in eyes that were
chillingly
detached from the warm smile he habitually wore.

Vince had been freshly weighing up these two men for a good reason. He was sure one of them was going to kill him.

‘Oh,’ continued Eton, ‘one other person I haven’t mentioned in our little enterprise is your old friend, I believe, Henry Pierce. He takes care of security at this end of things, makes sure everyone does as they’re told and keeps their mouth shut.’

Vince froze over at this information, though his killer wasn’t in the room – yet. Keeping it casual, he asked, ‘Where is Pierce, then, at the party downstairs?’

Dickie Eton let out a yelp of derision that turned into a cackle of laughter. ‘That’s just off-the-scale funny! Henry wouldn’t approve of the parties I have – not unless he could make money out of it. Oh, no no no, Detective Treadwell, you don’t invite a man like Henry Pierce to an orgy. No one would get it up! No no no no, Detective, we don’t need Henry here – not yet anyway.’

The ‘yet anyway’ worried Vince, but he focused on the business at hand. ‘What happens to the girls in the films?’

Dickie Eton smiled. ‘What do you
think
happens?’

‘I don’t know, because I missed the very ending. I was clocked on the head. I’m assuming the one who clocked me was the
projectionist
.’ Vince looked around at Eddie Tobin for confirmation.

Tobin smiled, and rolled out some little nods that suggested Vince had it about right.

‘If I told you those girls went home, if not happy, then certainly well paid, would you believe me?’

‘That’s not what I saw. I saw a knife.’

‘A prop?’

Vince dismissed that with a humourless laugh. ‘I wasn’t
watching
something by Fellini. It was real degenerate filth and the knife was no prop.’ Vince glanced again at Tobin. ‘I’ve been right about everything so far, eh, Eddie?’

Tobin smirked. ‘That’s right, champ, a real smartarse – and look where it’s got you.’ Tobin cracked some knuckles and turned to Dickie Eton. ‘Come on, let’s get it over with.’

‘Patience, Eddie, patience,’ drawled Eton, who was obviously savouring his role.

Vince heard the sound of a straw sucking up the dregs of a cocktail behind him. Knowing the answer, he asked anyway. ‘Get what over with?’

‘Oh, I think Mr Tobin has some things he wants to say before …’

Vince watched Dickie Eton as he let the outcome of his sentence hang, but he already knew the end. Eton was clearly enjoying himself. He liked having Tobin at his side with a gun. It wasn’t enough for Dickie Eton to be rich and successful – he wanted the danger, the underbelly, the intrigue that came with dealing with gangsters and bent ex-coppers. His heavy glass hung limply from his hand as he inspected the rings on his fingers.