Gilded Edge, The (3 page)

But, of course, he was partnering DCI Maurice McClusky, an officer with an outstanding record. And, over the three months they’d been working together, he’d not only learned an immeasurable amount but had grown fond of the older detective.

Mac was a tall slim man, who, though only in his late forties, looked well north of his late fifties. He had a slow burn about him: professorial, methodical, walking with meandering stooped gait. He reminded Vince of the actor Jimmy Stewart, who, with his willowy frame and cautious demeanour, always managed to look older than his years. Mac had a long, gaunt face with deep lines running down it, like the folds in a theatrical curtain, all of which just accentuated his serious expression. His skin had an ashen pallor, perhaps accounted for by the constant haul of smoke he took on board through his beloved Chesterfields or his trusty pipe. Smoking aside, he wasn’t the type to get flustered and red-faced, and Vince had never seen him break into anything resembling a run, never mind a sweat. He took everything in his stride, seeming the most measured man Vince had ever met. Mac had a full head of thick wavy hair that was now salt and pepper in colour but impressively white at the temples; like a dove had perched on the back of his neck and was hugging his head. And he always wore the same grey flannel suits, always a crisp white shirt and a black tie. With this monochrome appearance, he looked as if he’d stepped out of a black-and-white film into a Technicolor world. Or from Kansas into Oz, if you will.

Vince wheeled his shimmering petrol-blue Mk II Jaguar out of the car park and headed west. Hands planted at ten to two on the knotted wood of the steering wheel, looking down at the burr-walnut dashboard that framed the polished binnacles housing the various dials with their jolting needles, Vince gunned the engine to a steady purr as he made his way around Oxford Circus, along Park Lane, down to Victoria then finally Belgravia. He kept the Mk II at a sedate pace, allowing them to take in London’s pomp – its history, its vanity, its palaces, its arches, its grand roadside gestures memorializing bloody battles – while roundabouting its stalled one-way traffic systems. Bronze eighteenth-century warriors sat proudly astride their mounts, looking down at First World War troops crawling all around an insurmountable stone block that marked their mass grave. They, in turn, were looking up at the Second World War Tommies standing aloft on their plinths, too occupied to appreciate their luck in being born a generation later because they were busily eyeing up a couple of scantily clad older birds: Britannia and Boudicca, rendered in marble and sitting safely in their squares.

Two uniformed coppers stood sentry before the columns supporting the portico of number 57 Eaton Square. Marked and unmarked police cars were double-parked immediately outside. Getting out of his car, Mac stretched and took in a deep and sonorous sniff of the crisp morning air, then said: ‘You smell that, Vincent?’

Vince sniffed the air too, but nothing came to mind.

‘Money,’ Mac said. ‘Unmistakable.’

Vince laughed. ‘Any idea how much a place like this might cost?’

‘More than our public-sector pay packet could ever spring for.’

‘Maybe I’ll marry well.’

‘Wouldn’t surprise me. If you’re in need of a butler, keep me in mind.’

Vince couldn’t actually smell it, but he could see it. There was something coolly aloof about this square: the ordered affluence perhaps. No kids playing out in the street – for that matter, no one on the street at all. Even the litter seemed to have picked itself up and put itself in the bins. And, for all the police presence and the potential for excitement and scandal, there were no gawpers, no rubber-neckers. Doubtless the neighbours were concerned, but they were metropolitan enough not to appear openly surprised. This was London – this was the middle of it – and it wasn’t always a box of chocolates. And even if it was, no matter how rich and creamy the centre, there was always a hard carapace surrounding it. So the local residents stayed secure inside their alarm-belled and white-walled castles.

The two detectives unnecessarily badged the two uniformed coppers, who had known who they were the minute Vince and Mac had parked across the street and come striding over to the house. Not that they looked especially like coppers – Vince himself was threaded-up in a Prince of Wales check suit, worn with a pale blue shirt with faux French cuffs and a black knitted tie subtly flecked with dark blue dots. A beige three-quarter-length Aquascutum raincoat kept out the wind, which held a bitter bite, and he was shod in a pair of black Chelsea boots polished to within an inch of their life, so the puddled pavement didn’t prove too much of a problem. He was also road-testing a new haircut, for his black hair, normally worn swept back, was now worn with a side parting. It was more Steve McQueen in
The Great Escape
than Ringo Starr in
A Hard Day’s Night,
and he liked it. He liked looking in the mirror in the morning and fussing around for a few minutes, trying to re-establish his parting as he thought about his day ahead. Cutting a dash seemed compulsory these days, and everyone was at it. Vince Treadwell could thus have been anyone he wanted to be, from a fast-talking Ogilvy & Mather’s advertising man off to a pitch, or a suited and booted rock-and-roller attending a court appearance on a dope pinch. The boundaries were breaking up: this was the age of reinvention and upward mobility. Yes, in 1965 you could be anyone you wanted – or at least that’s what the man from Ogilvy & Mather was selling you, and what the rock-and-roller up on a dope pinch was singing about.

No, it wasn’t the duds that marked Vince and Mac out as a pair of detectives; it was the attitude, the way they crossed the road and walked up to the house. They were at work from the minute they got out of the car. They took in the street, their eyes subtly scoping and scouring and absorbing the scene, as they looked for people watching, curtains twitching, scaffolding erected nearby that might offer vantage points into the house itself, flower sellers, taxi stands, kiosks, tented builders digging up the road, checking on anyone who might have witnessed the ins and outs of the victim’s home; anything that might just look out of place or provide a witness. And that was why Mac, the experienced and wily copper, kept to such a meandering pace, because he was assessing and assimilating the world he was entering, and capturing mental film footage that would be stored up for future reference. And Vince was absorbing Mac’s movements and was learning to slow his pace, too.

Nice and easy does it.

In one of the downstairs reception rooms, scene-of-crime officers were deep in discussion with the white coats of forensics and pathology. Clayton Merryman had already inspected the body and was making his preliminary notes. Nearby came the flash of magnesium, as cameras popped and pictures were taken. Details of the victim had been gathered, and teams of uniforms were being sent out to ask the neighbours what they had seen, or heard, or knew. Mac went straight over to join the huddle of coppers and white coats, while Vince hung back and studied the room. It was cathedral-like in its proportions, and the ornate decoration on the ceiling looked as if it had been piped on by a master cake decorator. Two stalactite crystal chandeliers, which wouldn’t have looked out of place in an opera house, hung miraculously. Small, and not so small, expensive figurines stood in every available space on the richly hued mahogany furniture. A long-cased clock skulking in one corner of the room struck the hour with a gloomy chime. The gilt-framed paintings on the walls featured dark and serious portraits of men dressed for war, from a fey-looking Elizabethan in doublet and hose to a First World War officer encased in a greatcoat, amid warriors and soldiers from every war and imperial skirmish along the way. The women all looked the same: stiff and starched in lace and festoons, with powdered hair and alabaster doll’s skin and brightly painted pinched lips. Meet the family! The whole room looked as if it needed a red rope sectioning it off, and a uniformed guide to talk you through the contents.

It wasn’t until Vince looked more closely that he spotted the details that assured him he hadn’t time-travelled back a couple of hundred years. Tucked away in a corner was a shiny hi-fi; a record sat on the turntable and some 45s, out of their sleeves, were scattered on the floor nearby. On a marble-topped coffee table stood two fluted glasses, one bearing the distinctive lipstick print of a woman – the colour was red. Vince spotted two empty champagne bottles by the Parian marble fireplace; another sat on the floor by a red-striped, silk-covered chaise longue. They all bore the eyecatching, wallet-thinning, burnished-gold shield label of Dom Perignon. Resting on a French marble-topped commode, next to an enormous bronze figure depicting the god Atlas supporting the world, about the size of a football, on his back, was a heavy cut-crystal ashtray. It was brimming with the butts of thirty or so thoughtlessly smoked cigarettes. Vince went over to take a look. Bending down, he saw that among the biscuit-coloured filtered butts were three hand-rolled joints smoked down to the roach.

Mac meandered back over towards him, and Vince said: ‘It looks like our man had company last night. A little party? I bet it wasn’t with his wife – if he’s even married.’

Mac nodded in agreement, but wanted this deduction explained. ‘What makes you say that?’

‘When was the last time you and your wife got drunk and danced around to Lulu’s “Shout!” – just the two of you?’

‘You’d be surprised, Vincent, what me and Betty get up to. And she much prefers The Rolling Stones.’

‘That explains it. Do you and Betty get stoned on pot, too? Because there’s some reefer butts in the ashtray.’

Mac gave a concessionary nod to this point and said: ‘His name was John Charles Samuel Beresford, but known to everyone as Johnny. And an Honourable, too. Thirty-four years old, ex-army man, officer class of course. His occupation now was City investments. He comes from a big-money family, landed gentry, so was mainly managing the family estate and its financial interests. And you’re right, he wasn’t married.’

Clayton Merryman came over and joined them, looking as if he had big news to impart. ‘I think Philly Jacket cheats at cards,’ he said.

‘That’s a hell of an accusation, Doc,’ said Mac, as dry as you like.

‘And it’s wrong, anyway,’ said Vince. ‘It’s Kenny Block that cheats at cards.’

Doc Clayton shook his head at this, as though a game of cards in the Inferno, for chump change, actually mattered. He was still shaking his nebbishy little head with its thinning crinkly red hair, a liberal sprinkling of freckles, and round wire glasses, when Vince prompted him for information about something that actually did matter.

‘Where’s the body, Doc?’

‘Downstairs,’ said the good doctor, leading the way with the sweep of a gossamer-gloved hand. On the way he filled in the two detectives, checking his just compiled notes during their progress. ‘The maids found the body at seven thirty this morning. I won’t know the exact time of death until I get to the lab and open him up but, by the freshness of the wound and the blood clotting, I’d say he was shot around midnight.’

‘Does he employ live-in servants?’ asked Mac.

‘No, but he does have a team of three cleaners who come in twice a day to tidy up.’

‘Is he that messy or just that much of a cleanliness freak?’ asked Vince.

‘He’s just that rich,’ said the doc, chuckling. ‘But he does also like everything just so, apparently. He has fresh flowers delivered every day and everything has to be precisely in its place.’

Mac sighed and shook his head in amused disapproval.

‘Don’t worry, Mac,’ said Vince. ‘When I get to marry into money, you won’t have to lift a finger on that score.’

Downstairs in the basement were to be found a surprisingly small kitchen, a utilities room, a single bedroom, and a very large private study-cum-den containing the very dead body of Johnny Beresford.

‘What’s this?’ said Vince, peering down at a nasty two-inch gash on Johnny Beresford’s forehead.

‘It’s fresh,’ said Doc Clayton. ‘Not caused by a fall, though. It looks like he’s been hit with something. There was blood on the base of one of the champagne bottles upstairs. When you’re done here, we’ll measure that up against the wound.’ The pathologist looked at the two detectives with lively eyes and then offered, ‘I bet it fits.’

There were no takers for this bet. But, nasty as the head wound was, it was clear to the three men standing over Beresford that the blow wasn’t responsible for his death.

‘As you can see, gentlemen, one shot to the right temple. It looks like the work of a 32 mil.’

Vince enquired, ‘No exit wound from a 32, right, Doc?’

‘Depends on the angle, Vince. In this case, it looks like the bullet was aimed upwards, sending it into the top of the cranium. Toughest part of the skull, so no exit wound.’

Vince considered the weapon, which was perfect for up-close work, but not powerful enough to blow the victim’s brains out or make a mess on the walls. The bullet would just ricochet around inside and bounce off the walls of his skull, making its own internal mess by tearing through tissue and turning the grey matter into mush.
Did he feel it
, Vince wondered.
Did he feel his life being torn up behind his eyes?

‘Looks like a straight execution to me,’ observed Doc Clayton, with an assured nodding of his head. ‘Judging by how relaxed he was, sitting in the chair watching TV, he probably knew the chap who did it, I’d say.’

The two detectives stared at Doc Clayton, whose wire-framed and magnified eyes were fixed firmly on the stiff sitting in the chair. He looked as if he couldn’t wait to get his hands on this cadaver: to cut it up and probe, and come up with further details of the death, and any other sinister little secrets that the body decided to give up. The white coats always thought they had all the answers, but it was Vince and Mac’s job to come up with who did it and why they did it. And you didn’t have to be a detective to come up with the notion that this victim knew his killer. Most of them did.