Kiss Me Quick (38 page)

Three weeks later. A private sanatorium in the Kent countryside.

‘And then I blacked out.’

‘And that’s all you remember?’

‘That’s all I remember, Ray.’

‘Nothing else?’

Vince gave an internal groan of boredom; he’d been over this a hundred times since he had shown signs of recovery in the
private
sanatorium in the Kent countryside, where he had been lodged for the last three weeks. But he knew that Ray Dryden, like all good detectives, craved information and filling in the gaps, so Vince played along and said, ‘Nothing else.’

Ray pulled a full-beam smile. ‘Then Vince, you’re going to love this. Just gimme a second.’

Ray went about setting up the film in the portable projector he had brought with him from London. On the wall he had already pinned up a white sheet that the nurse had kindly lent him for a screen.

Vince was sitting on the bed in his private room, with its pleasant views of the lake and the ducks and swans messing about on the water. It was the same room in the same sanatorium that he’d spent a month convalescing in once before. Life plays out twice, it seemed: first as tragedy, then as comedy. Vince didn’t know about the comedy, but there was certainly irony this time around. The relatively small lump he’d taken the first time, in Soho, had left him in a coma for three weeks. His latest head trauma, which had well and truly cracked open his cranium, had involved a four-hour operation bolting in a steel plate to replace a section of his smashed skull. When the anaesthetic wore off, he felt groggy, but he was up and about in a few days. His broken nose had been reset to look as good as new. His chin had needed stitches, and it would always carry a small vertical scar. The nurses told him it looked sexy, but every time he looked in the mirror, it reminded him too much of Jack. Nevertheless, all in all, Vince felt good: no constant headaches, no feelings of nausea. And also not being fed pills and lies by that crooked quack Dr Hans Boehm had helped. And, through this uncorrupted clarity of thought, he was able to truthfully piece together most of how he’d come to be in this sanatorium in the first place:

As the three shots hit the centre of the door, Vince watched as the bullets flew past and studded the wall. He himself was leaning against the door jamb, doubled over while trying not to pass out. The next thing he remembered was being in Bobbie’s arms. He was pretty sure he remembered telling her that
everything
was OK, and that Jack was gone, and that she no longer had anything to fear. And then … then the next thing he
remembered
was waking up in the hospital three days later. The first face he saw was Ray’s. The first sentence out of his mouth was, ‘Where’s Bobbie?’

Ray shifted uncomfortably in his seat, smiled nervously, and then told him that Terence Greene-John, who had heeded Vince’s advice and scarpered after setting eyes on Jack, was now back at Cambridge and attending his studies. As happy as Vince was to hear that the young scribe was safe and staying out of trouble, he knew that Ray was stalling, and repeated his question: ‘Where’s Bobbie?’

Ray broke the news that Bobbie was gone. What happened to her was a matter of conjecture and speculation. Vince was sure that Jack had perished in the black Cadillac, but then he admitted to Ray, he hadn’t actually witnessed with his own eyes the last breath leaving the Corsican’s body. Ray confirmed to Vince that Jack
was
indeed related to a powerful Unione Corse clan that was part of an emerging world-wide heroin smuggling and distribution ring.

But it was Bobbie that Vince was worried about. Ray explained that when they found Vince unconscious inside the flat, his shirt covered in blood from the wounds he’d received, and with three bullet holes in the door, they assumed at first that he had been shot and killed. And Ray reckoned that Bobbie must have assumed the same thing, and that she had killed him, and so she had fled.

On considering this, Vince had bought the first half of the story. Bobbie might well have thought she killed him. She’d heard him limping up the stairs, his wounded foot resembling the crippled footfalls of Jack Regent, the same ones she’d heard a thousand times before. Her nightmare again climbing the stairs. But he didn’t buy the second half of the account. Or didn’t want to. That Bobbie would ever leave him …

‘OK, Vince, here goes, showtime.’ Ray closed the room’s
curtains
and switched off the light. He had the film already cued up to the last moments Vince could remember of that momentous night in Soho. After the projectionist had entered the room and closed the door. And before the big blackout …

On the screen, Vince watched as the tall figure of the
projectionist
entered the room. It is too dark for Vince to distinctly make out his face. He and Vince exchange words. The
projectionist
swings for Vince and his fist connects on the jaw. A sucker punch. Vince is sent reeling back into shelves of film. Canisters fall to the floor. The projectionist is on to Vince fast, getting him with some good shots to the body. Vince rides them, then gets back at him with a powerful left hook. The projectionist goes down like a big-branched tree, arms outstretched; he does what Vince was about to do, and takes his wretched projection machine with him to the floor. It smashes to pieces. The projectionist tries to get up, but Vince is on top of him. Vince pulls back his fist ready to—

Ray froze the film.

‘Recognize this bit?’

Vince nodded. The film was frozen at exactly the same spot as the still he had seen at Bobbie’s.

Ray starts the film moving again.

Vince brings down his fist, but the projectionist moves his head, and Vince misses. Vince goes to hit him again, and misses—

Ray freezes the film and laughs. ‘Tough guy Vince Treadwell doesn’t even manage to get a punch in!’ Ray starts up the film again.

Eddie Tobin and Lionel Duval are now standing at the door. Duval has the cosh in his hand and smashes it down on to Vince’s head. Vince struggles to stand up, Tobin cracks him again, and Vince goes down. He’s out cold. The projectionist gets up off the floor and starts kicking Vince in the ribs. Tobin pulls him off. Then Tobin, Duval and the projectionist begin what looks to be an animated conversation, that soon boils over into a full-on,
finger-jabbing
argument. The projectionist storms out of the room. Tobin and Duval exchange looks, and then go after him.

Ray stopped the film. ‘You didn’t lay a finger on him, Vince, never mind kill him.’

‘So what happened next?’

‘What happened next is that the projectionist gets shot. Off screen, unfortunately. We did like you said, and the first person we picked up was Dr Hans Boehm. He tried to tell us that he only watched these films for research purposes. But you were right, Vince, he gave the whole case up. He was terrified. We raided Duval’s house, found his stash of films. Reels and reels of the stuff. There’s enough film footage from his parties, and from the
private
booths in his club, to keep the entire village of Westminster shit-scared for a long, long time.’

‘So who killed the projectionist?’

‘We know what happened – but not who. Tobin and Duval both blamed each other. First of all we thought Tobin did it, him being the muscle, after all. But then we found that Duval had a nice gun collection at his home. Either way, the projectionist had to go. Once he found out you were a copper, he panicked, and didn’t want anything to do with it any more. Tobin and Duval knew they couldn’t have him just walk away, knowing what he knew – so they shut him up. Shot him. Like you said, it was easy to make him disappear – no friends or family.’

‘So that just left me,’ said Vince.

‘Duval wanted to throw you down the stairs – make it look like an accident. Apparently, Tobin was a little nervous about that.’

‘Because he likes me so much? Or because he knows very well that, once murder squad start digging around with forensics, the whole thing could unravel?’

‘The latter, I fear. Tobin’s been around long enough to know you can’t rush these things; you need to work out all the angles. So they wrapped a chloroform rag around your face to keep you good and unconscious, whilst they discussed your fate down in Duval’s office over a glass of Scotch. Duval looked at the film and liked what he saw. That’s when he had his big idea. If the
projectionist
can disappear, never exist, what then if everything disappears, never existed. The cinema, the films, everything. No evidence at all.’

Vince smiled. ‘My word against theirs – a senior copper, about to retire with an unblemished record, and a rich businessman with friends in high places.’

‘And they have the film for back-up. If you did start convincing other people, they’d show you the film. Not all of it, of course, just the start of the fight, but still enough to convince you that you killed the projectionist. And the bonus is that they also get another copper in their pocket.’

‘And that’s where Dr Hans Boehm comes in?’

‘Yeah,’ said Ray, smiling. ‘They got extra lucky when you went into a coma. Boehm says that he tried everything on you, like drugs, hypnotherapy, but you still wouldn’t give up your story.’

‘It wasn’t my story to give up, Ray,’ said Vince. ‘It was the truth.’ He thought about the hypnotherapy Boehm had tried on him, the sleep-suggestion tapes he’d made him listen to at night. Boehm claimed all these things would open up his mind and then the truth would come out. Vince now realized Boehm was trying to bury the truth, and mire what Vince had witnessed in darkness, disbelief and, ultimately, madness.

‘I’m sorry I doubted you, Vince.’

‘Forget it. Not strictly true what Boehm’s said, though. That’s why I doubted myself. Because the truth is, I
did
want to kill the projectionist for putting that girl up on the screen. If my eyes had adjusted to the dark, maybe I would have succeeded.’

‘But you didn’t do that, Vince. Instead, you brought the case in. We’ve now traced some of the girls and it’s clear they were drugged and then raped. You know, when I watched some of those films, I felt like killing the projectionist, too – and Duval and the rest of them. I’ve got some more news for you.’ Vince glanced up at Ray in expectation. ‘Eddie Tobin hanged himself in his cell yesterday.’

Vince looked away in disappointment, not because of Tobin’s plight but because it wasn’t the news he’d been waiting to hear. He therefore paid it just the right amount of respect it deserved – which was not a lot. Anyway, it wasn’t much of a surprise: police time was the hardest time to do – and Eddie had just retired again for good.

‘Any news on Bobbie?’

Ray shrugged.

Vince saw more in the shrug than Ray wanted him to, so he repeated the question: ‘Come on, Ray, any news?’

‘There’s been a sighting of a girl that fitted her description – but nothing solid.’

‘Was she with anyone?’

‘A man, they say, but that’s not unheard of, Vince.’

‘An older man?’

‘We don’t know. And if you’re going to ask if he had a club foot, that wasn’t mentioned.’

‘Where was this?’

‘In Rome.’ Ray went over to the makeshift screen and started dismantling it.

Vince smiled at the thought of Rome. The scene of her last reinvention:
La Dolce Vita
. But what if Bobbie really was with Jack? He knew that the Jack Regent file was now with Interpol. International crimes. Out of his jurisdiction, so officially he had no right to go after her. That’s what he told himself, at least.

There in Bobbie’s flat, as she held him in her arms and kissed the blood from his face, her fate had seemed something from another age. Out of his hands, and his sphere of being. Almost biblical in proportion, and seemingly only punishable or
forgivable
by God. If such a being existed, and it didn’t feel like it to Vince. He saw no sign of greater order or good in the world that ferociously encircled her. And in that moment, before his eyes closed, he knew that Jack was right: to tell her the truth would be to destroy her. For the pain would never go, and she would have to live with it forever. It coursed constantly through her veins, it was embedded in her bones, it coloured her flesh and made up every fibre of her being. To survive, he knew, she would have to reinvent herself, like she had before, again, and again, and again …

On the bedside table sat Bobbie’s old photo album. Vince had asked for it, somehow knowing that she would not have taken it with her. As he glanced at it, his mind raced back to the shop in the Lanes, where he and Max Vogel had discussed the work of the artist Jacob Radlington, and the brutal crime depicted in his painting.

Vince considered the resolute answer he had made, and knew that when he gave it he was still uncertain – uncertain about so many things. He now allowed himself a small smile because, at last, the young detective knew exactly where he stood in the picture.