Gilded Edge, The (23 page)

‘At the prospect of killing a kid, he might.’

‘At the prospect of killing his own kid, he definitely might. Tyrell Lightly – has to be him.’

Mac didn’t dismiss this opinion out of hand, but threw Vince a look saying:
Give me more and give it to me quick.

Vince obliged. ‘Lightly’s got an alibi for robbery which is a good cover for murder. He might do six months to a year for a failed robbery attempt, but murder means life. His so-called accomplices on that robbery are all witnesses to his innocence once they get bunged a few quid to make it worth their while.’

‘The security guards were also witnesses?’

‘But they didn’t see their faces; the gang were all masked up, and they only chased them off. The whole thing’s a put-up job. Lightly doesn’t have the brains to set up a stunt like this, but Michael de Freitas does. He obviously told Lightly to keep his mouth shut until he worked something out. Maybe de Freitas knew the robbery was going down that night? Maybe the team involved were working for him? So he just puts Lightly in on the job, and gives him an alibi for when he’s killing Marcy.’

Sounds good to me, Vince. Over.

It was 2 p.m., and Tyrell Lightly was tucked up in his pod, in his crib, in his yard. By the time the doors were kicked off their hinges and truncheon-wielding and tooled-up officers, led by Vince and Mac, entered the bedroom, the big blonde and the even bigger brunette sharing the wiry gangster’s bed were trying to wake him up – Lightly being a heavy sleeper – with shrieking cries of feminine distress. On stirring eventually to find ten coppers standing at the foot of his bed, the first thing that the charm-school graduate Tyrell Lightly did was attend to his ladies’ distress and assuage their fears with the magic words: ‘Shut your big fat mouths, you bitches!’Very David Niven, everyone agreed – but effective. The wailing sirens did indeed promptly shut their big fat mouths.

Tyrell Lightly then reached over the big blonde, who was now sobbing plangently, and picked up a multi-papered joint, about the size of a traffic cone, that was docked in the ashtray on the bedside table. The thing looked as if it must have half a pine forest stuffed in it. And when the torch was lit, and the giant jazz fag was fired up, its stems and seeds crackled and popped, and the whole room swiftly smelled like a bonfire. As Tyrell Lightly looked back defiantly at the coppers, and blew big billowy smoke rings in their direction, that might as well have been sky-writing spelling out:
Fuck You Coppers!The
uniforms looked at each other, and smirked and grinned and almost giggled at the prospect, knowing that there were four flights of stairs to descend, and knowing that Tyrell Lightly was going to feel every one of them, every step of the way.

‘I ain’t saying a t’ing!’ he eventually said.

At that, Vince whipped away, not the burning bush from his mouth, but the book of matches he had lit it with out of his hand. He examined the gold cover embossed with the words
The Imperial Hotel.

‘Where did you get these?’

Tyrell Lightly gave a shrug and repeated, ‘Not a t’ing. I ain’t saying a t’ing!’

With his hand flattened like a paddle, Vince slapped the joint out of his mouth.

‘Easy, Vince!’ said Mac.

Vince got straight into the rude boy’s face and repeated, with controlled urgency, ‘Where. Did. You. Get. The. Matches?’

‘I. Ain’t. Saying. A. Fuckin’. T’ing!’

With that, Mac gave the uniforms the nod, and Tyrell Lightly was swiftly bundled out of bed, chafingly cuffed, risibly read his rights. Then enthusiastically
escorted
down the stairs.

Ouch!

Vince drove next to Gore Street, just off the Gloucester Road, not a stone’s throw from the Royal Albert Hall. The Imperial Hotel was very much in keeping with its surroundings, and very much of its time. Victorian red brick was piled up in the grand Gothicrevival style, with turreted spires and arched windows. Inside it echoed the last years of the Raj with its faded grandeur and crumbling Empire. This impression was emphasized by the large brass and wood colonial fan that hung from the paint-cracked ceiling of the foyer. The lounge/reception area was beset with sagging sofas that looked as if they’d had the life sat out of them a good thirty years ago, and tables and chairs in dark teak that were ornately carved in that dust-catching Anglo/Indian style. The walls were covered in plum silk damask that had long faded to pink, while the well-flattened nap of the carpets was scabbed with cigarette burns, and all the paintwork was richly tobacco-tanned. To the left of the reception desk there was a bar, and a large dining room lay through some glass-panelled doors. To the right, a flight of streaky faux-marble stairs led up to the bedrooms extending over four floors.

Vince went up to the reception desk, currently manned by a young woman with an orange-bleached beehive hairdo, who was reading a movie-star magazine. She looked Arabic, in her twenties, and not unattractive – taking into account all the slap she was wearing. She had eyes like tarantulas due to the trowelled-on mascara, and pencilled brows that arched and flicked like a cracked whip. Vince flashed his badge and introduced himself. She looked at him stony-faced, not a dent in the foundation that plastered her pock-marked skin and gave her a greyish pallor. Her muted reaction spoke volumes. The natural reaction to a call from a copper was usually one of guilt, even if you were totally innocent,
especially
if totally innocent. It manifested itself in over-friendly compliance or flustered defiance. However, to the girl with the bleached beehive and too much slap it was clearly business as usual.

‘What’s it about?’ she eventually asked in a monotone voice, and in an accent more Canning Town than Cairo.

‘Someone’s been stealing your complimentary books of matches.’ Her powdered forehead crinkled and flaked in humourless confusion. ‘And I need to speak to whoever’s in charge.’

‘The manager?’

‘Is he in charge?’

She shrugged. ‘He’s the manager.’

‘Terrific.’

With that flat little exchange over, she got up and disappeared behind a frosted-glass door into what Vince took to be the manager’s office.

Vince strode over to the bar to take a little look-see. Brown leatherette booths lined the walls. Lots of palms in tall jardinières. A long, dark wooden bar with fixed swivel stools arranged in front of it. There were two girls sitting at the bar. He watched as one lit a cigarette with a gold match book.

It was the same kind of match book as Isabel had given him to dispose of, along with her empty pack of cigarettes, at their first meeting in the Salisbury Hospital. And just the same as the one Tyrell Lightly had used to spark up his joint only an hour ago. And they had both lit a path to here . . .

As Vince stood by the entrance, the girl next to the one smoking gave her friend a gentle nudge, and they both looked around and smiled at him. Nothing too unusual in that, so he reciprocated. He then turned on his heel and went back over to the reception desk. Still no manager in evidence. Vince reckoned he was taking his time to make a few phone calls. Vince was about to press down hard on the desk bell, but instead spun the reception book around to take a look. In its columns there were listed lots of Smiths and Joneses and Browns – and that was all. And each name had an initial inscribed beside it. This wasn’t a checking-in book, it was a ledger. Vince scoped the reception area again with fresh eyes, and saw there were now two new girls sitting in the reception lounge, attractive and well dressed in their little black cocktail numbers and short fur coats and heels. At four in the afternoon, that was leaning towards over-dressed.

Vince was then hit with a hunch. It was a horrible hunch. A cruel hunch. One that he didn’t want to be true, but one that couldn’t be ignored, and one that was moving forcefully into focus and fitting into place with an unavoidable obviousness and a weight of evidence to keep it there. From behind the frosted-glass door of the back office he was aware of footsteps and voices getting closer. He didn’t wait for it to open.

Vince sat patiently in the Mk II, opposite the Imperial Hotel. He’d called Mac to tell him where he was, what he was doing and about the hunch he had. Mac had given him one of his extended ‘Mmmms’, but told Vince to go with it. Mac then filled him in on the Tyrell Lightly situation. He was pulling the same shtick as last time, and wasn’t saying a ‘t’ing’. And meanwhile, to the continued consternation of Chief Superintendent Markham, Michael X and the Brothers X had again pitched up outside his front window, with their Black Power salutes and calls for revolution. But Michael X was no longer reading out the words of Malcolm X, but instead had opted for a megaphone and a selection of his own musings and poetry.

After his call to Mac, Vince had thought about calling Isabel to confirm where exactly she’d got those matches. But he didn’t, because it was obvious she had got them from Beresford. And, if what he suspected was true, that it would all come out anyway. So he waited for night to fall. And watched the traffic at the Imperial come and go, which seemed to be predominantly male; but it thankfully included the beehived receptionist, trotting down the steps in bright red patent-leather pumps and a multi-buckled black leather motorcycle jacket, then straddling the back of her boyfriend’s proudly polished Triumph and roaring off.

Vince watched as three dolly birds in figure-hugging satin pencil skirts, perilously high heels and predatory furs, sallied forth from their black cab and sashayed their way into the Imperial. He immediately demobbed the motor, made his way across the street, and followed their perfumed vapour trail inside.

He headed straight for the bar, scoping the place and checking out the reception. Manning the desk was a middle-aged man. He was compactly put together, and wore a white dinner jacket with a red bow-tie and matching cummerbund. He, also, was of an Arabic hue – the beehived girl’s father perhaps? He had a severely manicured moustache that looked as if it had been pencilled on. At first Vince thought he was wearing a black beret, but it turned out to be a wig – a very bad wig.

The dining room was closed, drapes drawn across the glass doors, which were roped off. In the bar, the three dolly birds he had followed in had quickly established themselves at a booth. Other young dolly birds sat around, entertaining men. They were the kind of men who normally wouldn’t attract such birds of the dolly variety. They were of all shapes and sizes and ages, but for most of them thirty-five was a distant memory and so was hair, flat stomachs and possessing their own teeth. But they were expensively, if sinisterly, dressed, and as soft of hand as they were of belly. The stand-outs were two Arabs in full desert finery: flowing white gowns and glitzy keffiyehs. Their hands sparkled with hefty gold rings docking diamonds of at least five clean carats.

Vince sat down at the bar and ordered himself a club soda. No sooner was it put in front of him by the beefy-looking barman than the air turned fragrant. Vince glanced round to find one of the two girls he saw earlier sitting next to him. Again she had a cigarette in her hand, and she asked: ‘Have you got a light?’

Vince took one of the books of matches out of the ashtray and lit her cigarette. In the gloom of the bar, the match illuminated a face that on the surface looked as pretty as a picture: a picture that was heavy on the paint and broad on the brush strokes. Cut beneath the paintwork, though, and there were layers of disappointment and tragedy all underpinned by a brittle hardness. As every other feature on her face folded into a well-rehearsed smile, the eyes stayed cold and businesslike. She had lambent auburn hair, not her natural colour but it suited her. She quickly introduced herself as Sadie and there followed some small talk, nothing really worth recording and nothing contentious like
are you married
or
do you have a girlfriend?
She asked how Vince had heard of the Imperial, and he told her a friend called Johnny had recommended it to him. She carried on smiling, and made some acknowledgement of that name. But Vince didn’t read too much into it. Sadie was on duty, and smiling dutifully was all part of it. It took only as long as for Vince to drink a small glass of club soda before Sadie was asking him if he’d like to book a room for a few hours. And, as it so happened, he did.

They left the bar and went to the reception desk, where they were met by the Arabic fellow. Up close, it was plain to see that he was wearing, officially, the worst-looking syrup Vince had ever seen in his life,
ever.
It sat autonomously on his head, steadfastly refusing to blend into its surroundings, arrogantly refusing to assimilate. Neither wig nor an item of clothing, neither fish nor fowl, yet, looking very alive, as if it was in a constant state of flux, a constant state of take-off, always about to depart, always looking to hop on to the nearest hatstand or low-slung bough for a little exercise, a little respite from the giant pulsing brown egg it was incubating. Depending on the angle, it was either perched on top or sitting astride him, as its own private entity, if you will. Not covering his baldness, but drawing attention to it. The crowning glory was crowing it out loud and proud as it swooped and circled over the rooftops at night before returning to its perch in the morning to . . .

The bald Arab handed Sadie the key. Vince handed the rugwearer the six pounds required for the room. Sadie told him to sign in under ‘Brown’. He did so, and then she added her initial by his name. Forsaking the elevator, she walked Vince up to the first floor: a long red-carpeted hallway with rooms on either side. Their room was number 7.

Vince smiled and said, ‘My lucky number.’

She smiled back, like she’d never heard that one before. The room had been revamped so that whatever charm of faded glamour was offered downstairs had been ripped out and renovated. It was bang modern, mirror-fitted wardrobes, deep carpets, dark wallpaper. But it would have been in poor taste to go on about the décor when you had Sadie standing before you, webbed as she was in stockings and suspenders – the stock-in-trade of upfront erotica. She sat down on the plum satin-covered bed, her soft milky breasts juddering and spilling out of a half-cupped purple bra that was fringed in black taffeta. She then went through the menu. By the time she got around to the eye-watering freaky stuff, which relied heavily on costume changes and props and was all reflected in the cost, Vince had whipped out his badge.