Gilded Edge, The (27 page)

Lucan said, ‘I swear to God, that night I described was the last time I saw her. If you must know, I caught hell from my wife for staying out that night. I was given the three-line whip. Not allowed out for a week. Not all night, anyway.’

‘And your wife can confirm that you were at home on the night of Marcy Jones’s murder?’

Lucan’s military bearing collapsed and he sank in his chair. He knew now the jig was up. His wife, the family, everyone would soon know about the contents and activities in his third-floor room in the Imperial Hotel. Lucan had role-played being on the losing side of the Second World War, and was now preparing himself for being on the wrong side in World War Three when that news hit the fan. Which he knew it would, for it was as inexorable as Hitler marching into Poland.

Lucan snapped the ebony and gold banded cigarette holder that he gripped in his hand and dropped the two pieces into the ashtray. ‘Yes, I was with my wife. And my in-laws were staying with us, too, for good measure.’ As he sat there ruminating on his future reputation, not rejoicing in the fact that, for now, the two detectives believed him, a silence hit the room. It was an unsatisfactory conclusion for all involved. Except for Julius Cundy, for whom it was just another payday. The satisfied lawyer was already recapping the expensive marblized Wyvern fountain pen that he’d been making notes with, and putting away his notepad.

By way of rounding things up, Vince asked, ‘And was that the last time you saw Johnny Beresford, too?’

‘Yes, in the bar of the Imperial along with Guy, Nicky and the other one.’

‘The other one?’

‘Yes, the boy just down from Oxford. Isabel’s brother.’

Vince and Mac looked round at each other, and a series of double-takes took place, with even Julius Cundy in on the act. But not Lucan: he appeared impervious to the statement he’d just made, and was busying himself by studying his hands with an intensity that made Vince believe he’d only just discovered them. Julius Cundy gave a sigh that grew into a despairing groan, and the expensive fountain pen was dropped on to the desk from sufficient height to produce an exclamatory clatter.

Vince: ‘Dominic Saxmore-Blaine was with you at the Imperial Hotel?’

‘Yes,’ said Lucan, looking up from his hands. ‘It was his night, really.’

‘How do you mean,
his
night?’

Lucan at last felt the sense of exigency that now surged through the room, and saw the faces opposite him looking expectant and impatient. He turned to his brief, but Julius Cundy realized it was now too late to guide his client. The pursed lips, the magnified and alert eyes, the attack-dog demeanour, all that seemed to imperceptibly collapse under the burden of the peer’s stupidity.

Vince repeated, ‘How do you mean,
his night?’

‘It was the night of his . . .’

Lucan acquired the countenance of one for whom something was slipping into place. You could almost hear the mechanics of thought turning over in that titled head of his. There was a palpable
kerr-chink
as the penny dropped. A bad penny. A terrible penny.

‘. . . his blooding.’

‘Dominic Saxmore-Blaine?’

At Isabel’s flat in Pont Street, Vince and Mac had been let in by the ever-accommodating downstairs neighbour, who’d already informed them that Dominic was in, and had been in for the last few days.

‘Dominic Saxmore-Blaine!’
Vince called out again, with his fist urgently banging on the apartment door this time. Again no answer. He sized the door up. Then stepped back, ready to kick it in.

Mac put an arresting hand on his shoulder. ‘Let me try something first. It’s an old trick I picked up.’ He turned the handle and opened the door. ‘Always worth a go. You see, not every one of them has to be kicked in, Vincent.’ But both men already knew that the door being off the latch didn’t bode well for what was inside.

The curtains were drawn. The ashtrays were full. Two bottles of Glenfiddich whisky had been drained; the same fate had befallen the brandy decanter, and on the floor it looked as if the wine rack had taken a beating too. On the coffee table was scattered a selection of pills, both uppers and downers. And on the desk, next to the pale blue Underwood 5 typewriter, was a neatly stacked pile of typed A4 paper.

In the bathroom, on the floor, was another neatly stacked pile – of clothes this time. A pair of new-looking crocodile-skin loafers sat atop them. Lying in the bath full of deep crimson water was Dominic Saxmore-Blaine. From what was visibly on offer, it was clear he’d cut his wrists with the blade of a lady’s safety razor. His supine alabaster body looked completely drained of the life force that drifted around his fragile frame. He was almost floating in a diluted vat of his own blood. Vince considerd Lucan words, ‘his blooding’, but of course this isn’t what he meant. He had meant the night that Dominic Saxmore-Blaine was accepted into and gained full membership of the Montcler set. He’d been dead now a good twenty-four hours, and you didn’t need to be Doc Clayton to work that one out. Although that’s who Mac was already on the phone to.

As Vince rejoined Mac in the living room, he breathed in the stale residue of the four hundred thoughtlessly smoked cigarettes and the imbibed and sweated-out booze that had provided Dominic Saxmore-Blaine with enough bottle for the task ahead. He padded over to the desk again, and picked up the manuscript resting next to the typewriter. It was a signed and dated confession by Dominic Saxmore-Blaine.

Vince sat down at the desk and began reading. It became clear soon that Dominic Saxmore-Blaine was a graduate in English literature, for its forty-five pages weren’t just a dull list of the events; indeed, some of the prose got pretty florid and purple in patches. Maybe, like his sister, he would have taken up the pen for a living, or maybe he harboured ambitions to write a novel. But, unlike others, he knew that would never happen, so this was it. His last hurrah, his last flourish: the tap of the typewriter keys playing out his exit tune. But, writerly as the narrative got at times, there was always an urgency to it: the urgency of the deathbed confession.

The account was pretty much as Lucky Lucan had laid it out. There were a few minor discrepancies, no doubt brought on by the vast amounts of booze consumed, and some different points of view. According to Saxmore-Blaine, John Asprey was playing a hand of poker with the Earl of Derby, not backgammon. Downstairs, in Jezebel’s nightclub, Goldsachs was canoodling with a tall handsome brunette by this account, not a blonde.

Then to the meat of the matter – and off to the Imperial Hotel. Dominic Saxmore-Blaine had visited the place before. Since he came down from Oxford, and with his older sister out of the country, Johnny Beresford had taken Dominic under his wing and introduced the young man to the wilder and not so polite side of London society. Within certain circles, the Imperial was a legendary playground of bacchanalia and debauchery, and by the time they arrived Dominic and the remainder of the Montcler set – Johnny Beresford, Guy Ruley, Nicky DeVane and ‘Lucky’ Lucan – were all well oiled. At the Imperial, Dickie Lucan was the next to drop out. As Dominic Saxmore-Blaine described it, one minute Lucan was quaffing convivially at the bar with the boys, the next he was gone. Dominic didn’t know where he had gone to, and did not speculate on it in his confession.

In the bar, Johnny Beresford took Dominic to one side. His mood seemed to have changed, turning serious, if not grave. He told Dominic that, like most things in life, nothing is always as it seems, especially the world that Johnny and his friends operated in. And that it wasn’t all fun and games. There was a serious purpose in their coming to the Imperial tonight. Beresford then told the young man that he was here on business – business of national importance. For Queen and country. Tonight Beresford was to meet a man called Boris Sendoff, a KGB agent operating in London. However, years of deep cover in the hub of Western capitalism had seen Boris Sendoff enjoying a sybaritic lifestyle in London Town that had turned him, if not into a double agent, then certainly into a very pliable and corrupt Russian one.

Beresford told Dominic that he was part of a planned coup, one that was to be partially financed by himself and the rest of the Montcler set. Their silent, and very secret, partners in this coup were the British government, and their target was a small country off the west coast of Africa that was oil and mineral rich, and currently in the hands of a communist dictator. Boris Sendoff had provided the ground plans for the operation, since it was the Russians who armed the small country concerned. Beresford explained to Dominic that he would himself be in charge of all the military aspects of the operation. He and a few other well-trained men – because he had men like that at his disposal, old army colleagues – would take over the island in a matter of days, if not hours.

He grasped Dominic’s narrow shoulders in his large hands and drew him closer, drew him into his confidence, and in a conspiratorial tone of contained glee told him: ‘It’s not only the opportunity to make our fortunes several times over, but it’s our opportunity to hold power,
real
power, in our hands. The chance to run our own country.’

Still holding Dominic close, he assured the young graduate that they’d be needing intelligent and reliable men just like him. The excitement was infectious, and merely being held in the arms of Johnny Beresford, in the grip of it, as it were, gave Dominic a rush of blood. And Dominic assured the handsome ex-military man, the gambler, the bon-viveur adventurer, that he could count on him!

In the bar, the men were quaffing freely, as if there was no tomorrow. And there, in the hedonistic climate of the Imperial, who was to say there would be? This place had the edgiest edge in town: so easy to slip and fall. Check into one of its rooms, and never check out again. At various times, its patrons had been rumoured to have been asphyxiated in over-ambitious sex games that went awry; pooped out on cocktails of pills; and been bludgeoned to death in booze-fuelled arguments. The free-for-all debauchery, and the rotating door of debauchers who swung anonymously in and out of the place, meant the Imperial had its price, and you took your chances.

All apart from Dominic Saxmore-Blaine, who was now sitting quietly in a corner. He had been instructed to keep a clear head. Or certainly not to get it any more fucked-up than it already was. So he stealthily sipped a club soda and awaited further orders. And watched.

He watched as Nicky DeVane was the next to drop out. The pint-sized snapper eventually collapsed under the weight of all the booze distributed about his small frame and passed out at the bar, face down in a bowl of mixed nuts. Next up was Guy Ruley. According to Dominic, his exit was a little more dignified but a lot louder (and a lot more interesting to the detective reading the confession). Johnny Beresford and Guy Ruley had been sitting in a booth at the back of the bar, having a heated discussion. This quickly turned into a raised-voice argument, then almost degenerated into a full-blown stand-up fist fight. The two men were eventually separated and calmed down by the attendant hookers. Guy Ruley then stalked out of the hotel, cursing Johnny Beresford as he went. Dominic, now completely committed to the cause, had asked Beresford what was wrong. Flushed with anger and embarrassment, Beresford dismissed it as merely a childish spat, a locking of horns, a pissing contest and nothing to worry about. They could do without Guy Ruley tonight.

Johnny Beresford then went to the reception desk to take a phone call. When he returned ten minutes later to the bar, he told Dominic that Boris Sendoff had arrived and was waiting for them in one of the rooms upstairs. The bridal suite.

Beresford tried to wake Nicky DeVane, who was now snoring on the counter, peanuts, lemon slices and cocktail cherries adorning his head to the amusement of the other revellers at the bar. Annoyed with the figure of fun DeVane was cutting, Beresford doused him with a soda siphon, but still he wouldn’t stir. Beresford sneeringly summed up Nicky DeVane as ‘a useless lightweight little twerp’, then turned to Dominic and said, ‘Ruley’s gone. Nicky can’t be relied on, so it’s just me and you, old son. I’ll need a good man to watch my back with the Russian. Are you game?’

‘Yes, sir,’ replied the young plotter. He’d never called him ‘sir’ before. But then again, he’d never been part of a military coup before.

So Johnny Beresford and Dominic Saxmore-Blaine took the lift up to the bridal suite, where the meeting with the Russian was to take place. Dominic had never been up to the top floor before. The hallway carpet was deep blue panelled in red squares, and the paintwork seemed fresher than downstairs. Beresford knocked on the door three times. As if intrigue wasn’t already the name of the game, Dominic was looking for significance in everything now, including the number of knocks. But he soon realized that the only real significance of the knocking was that it was the best way to get a door answered. And answered it was, by a man of unparalleled proportions, at least in Dominic’s eyes. Filling the door frame was the Russian, and he
looked
Russian. He carried the size and bulk of that country about him. Its bloody and eminently fascinating history was written all over his face. Here was a brutal visage that had known great violence: gulags, Stalinist slaughter, Siberian terror camps and KGB questioning.

Johnny Beresford introduced Dominic to Boris Sendoff as a trusted friend. The big Russian said nothing, did nothing. He just stood there for an unnerving amount of time, weighing Dominic up with dead eyes that practically made a clicking noise, like an old adding machine, every time he blinked. Finally satisfied, he said something in what Dominic took to be Russian, and invited the two men in.

The bridal suite offered little in the way of romance, its main feature being that everything inside it was either a yellowing cream colour or a mucky magnolia. Not quite virginal white, but it certainly wasn’t the biggest slapper in the building either. Dominic had visited those rooms, with their pushy and plush red wallpaper, hot and heavy velvet drapes and sweaty black vinyl furniture.