Kiss Me Quick (35 page)

She pointed to the pile of evidence on the table – the torn-up photos and said, ‘Those are just the stills. Pierce said they have the whole thing on film—’

Vince cut in, ‘I know what they say, Bobbie!’

‘You’ve done your job, Vincent. It’s over. You came down to find a killer, and you found him. It’s you.’

Vince’s head dropped and he couldn’t meet her gaze.

She went over to him and clasped his face in her hands. ‘I’m sorry I’m sorry I’m sorry. It’s not true, it’s not true, Vincent. You’re a good man …’ she crooned, peppering his face with kisses. She felt guilty, knowing that Vince had given up all his secrets, while she still held on to her own. She had no right to throw it all back in his face. If Vince knew what she knew about Jack, then he’d have righteous justification in destroying him. She’d even expect Vince to do so. And that’s one reason she didn’t tell him. The other reason was clear to her: she felt ashamed at once having loved the man who had slain her parents and destroyed her childhood.

Vince broke away from her and went over to the coffee table, collected the torn-up photos and headed into the kitchen. He put them all in the sink, took some matches and set them alight, watching his torn-up past turn brown, blacken, then curl up and die.

A large case sat in the back of the Triumph Herald. Vince had helped Bobbie pack, knowing that, even in these circumstances, to ask anyone to pack a bag for a lifetime, especially a woman with a wardrobe so full and fancy as Bobbie’s, would be futile and time-consuming. He misjudged her, however, because she was fast and ruthless with her possessions. She packed only her own clothes. All the really expensive outfits were courtesy of Jack, and now she didn’t want them. She was ridding herself of the past, shedding the skin that signified Jack. The turquoise silk dress, her mother’s dress, was taken into the kitchen and placed on the funeral pyre that Vince had started with the photos, then unceremoniously lit. Vince noted that the phoenix brooch wasn’t pinned on the dress. He also noted how the burning of the
garment
, that last vestige of her mother, was not a problem for her. It rather surprised him, but he didn’t question it. And the photo album? Bobbie left it behind on the sofa. Before they turned out the lights and left the flat, Vince asked her if she was sure she had everything? Bobbie glanced at the photo album for a moment, then gave him a firm ‘Yes’ and they left.

The rain beat down on the windscreen in a steady thrum as they made their way to the Seaview Hotel. It was the middle of the night and the coast road was empty of traffic. The street lights, distorted by the rain, lit up the long straight empty road in a bright orange hue, like an aeroplane runway.

Vince glanced around at Bobbie, who was smiling. But it was a vacant smile; it had little joy about it and wasn’t pleasing to see. It was the same faraway and lost look she had carried on her face when he’d found her in the bath. She had been slipping
intermittently
in and out of it, ever since.

‘Bobbie? Bobbie?’ he called softly. Her head leaned against the window, but her eyes were closed and she was mumbling the
lullaby
again. It unnerved him seeing her like this. The bruising on her back, the destruction of the flat, he didn’t know exactly what had passed between her and Pierce, but a nightmare made flesh he imagined.

They passed the West Pier, where some tramps were gathered under the available shelter, sharing a bottle. Standing by the
railings
, Vince thought he saw a man clasping what looked like grey sludge in his outstretched hands. He was yelling out to the almighty sea that was battering and tearing at the beach before him. Vince realized it was Billy ‘the Schnozz’ Riley, the tormented town crier, the ghost from his past. The rain had washed the curse from his forehead, and pulped the newspaper held in his hand, but he was still calling out the names of the town’s dead.

Vince felt exhausted too. He felt as if he was out in the middle of that pitching sea, flailing around and trying to get ashore. Above him hovered the seabirds, big web-footed scavengers, waiting to pick his bones. And in front of him was Billy the Schnozz,
calling
out his name from his book of the dead.

This brought his thoughts back around to Terence. Vince shook his head and rapped his knuckles against the steering wheel in frustration.

Bobbie sat up from her reverie, suddenly alert. ‘What’s wrong?’

‘Terence,’ he said solemnly. ‘He didn’t call me back.’

‘Maybe he didn’t have change.’

‘He had change, believe me. Terence is an ex-boy scout,’ said Vince with a wry smile – though he didn’t know that for sure. ‘Terence is the kind of kid that always has spare change, stamps, maps, a compass, and his gloves sewn into the sleeves of his jacket.’

They reached the Seaview Hotel and parked.

‘You told him to go home. I heard you.’

‘I know what I told him, Bobbie,’ said Vince, shaking his head at the dangerous impetuousness he and the young scribe shared. ‘But Terence is a stubborn little bastard, and sometimes he doesn’t really know what’s good for him.’

There was no one at the reception desk of the Seaview Hotel. There was no one in the bar either. The entire place seemed deserted, eerily quiet. No sounds of people creaking about upstairs. Vince wondered if it was just him, seeing things that weren’t there, and not hearing things that were there. It was the middle of the night, after all. He rang the bell on the desk. No response.

They went upstairs. He fished out his room key and opened the door. Vince hit the switch and saw that the room had been neatly made up. But sitting on top of the plump pillow on the bed were two small boxes, jewellery boxes. One was a
hexagon-shaped
ring box in green tooled leather, the other oblong-shaped in red leather. Vince and Bobbie, in almost comic unison, looked at each other with quizzical frowns. Then they opened the boxes. Vince found a gold pendant hanging from a gold chain, Bobbie found a gold signet ring. Realizing that the pendant was for the girl, the signet ring was for the boy, they wordlessly swapped over. Both items of jewellery carried the same engraved image: a Moor’s head. Vince picked up the two boxes and examined them, to find both were stamped, on the silk lining, with the name and address of Max Vogel’s antiques shop.

Bobbie put the pendant around her neck, and examined more closely the engraving. ‘It’s the same as the picture you drew.’

‘It’s a gift from Jack,’ said Vince.

She held the pendant in her hand, her eyes widening as the news sank in. The Moor’s head seemed to metamorphose into Jack’s head. She tore it roughly from her neck, the gold links scattered as she threw it to the floor.

‘Let’s get out of here,’ she said in a resolute voice.

Vince bent down, picked up the pendant and put it back in the box. He had not been a hundred per cent sure about Terence
seeing
Jack at the harbour – considering it was dark, there was a sea mist and it was raining. Whilst the young scribe wasn’t the type to make up stories, his writer’s imagination might lead him astray. But now Vince was sure that the Corsican was here.

‘I have to find Terence first. To make sure he’s OK.’

‘No, please, Vincent, let’s go. Let’s go now!’

‘I have to find him, Bobbie. I have to.’

‘Please—’

Vince held her tightly in his arms and whispered in her ear, ‘Do you trust me?’

‘Yes.’

‘Do you
trust
me?’ he repeated.

‘Yes.’

He sat her down on the bed, then calmly, as if he was laying out the most routine of itineraries, he continued, ‘Then, here’s what we’re going to do. Now, listen …’

Bobbie listened. It took some convincing her, but here’s what they did. Vince sat her down with her case in the bar of the hotel. She didn’t want to be left alone in the room, but the man who was tending both the bar and the desk had returned. Nothing sinister, he had just been taking a snooze. When Vince questioned him on who had been up to his room, he hadn’t seen anyone, nor had anyone asked for him. Vince believed him because he looked genuinely surprised when Vince showed him the gifts they had received. When the man offered to put the jewellery in the hotel safe for safe keeping, Vince handed over the two boxes, knowing that he would never return to collect them.

Vince assured Bobbie that he would call her in thirty minutes. He was just going out to check on Terence, nothing more. He genuinely wasn’t going after Jack. And if he found out that Jack was in town, he would call his friend Ray Dryden, at Interpol, and let him deal with it. Having reassured her with everything she wanted to hear, he kissed her gently on the forehead, then departed.

In search of Jack.

As Vince passed a lone milk float pootling along, it reassured him that his life wasn’t playing itself out in some alternate universe. Up ahead lay the harbour. At the entrance stood the red phone box. Vince slowed the car, seeing no sign of Terence. He made the turn and entered the harbour. No one about: no nightwatchmen, no barking dogs, no lights. Apart from a fence, there was no
security
to protect the precious cargo that Vince was convinced lay inside the warehouse. He opened the glove compartment and fished out his torch. He weighed it in his hand for potential use as a weapon. Even with the two heavy batteries tombed up inside the long aluminium casing, it still didn’t possess sufficient heft to be used for such a purpose. He thought about Bobbie’s gun – was it worth going back and fetching it? No, it was uncleaned, uncared-for and would probably explode in his face. He’d
improvise
, and felt sure he could pick something up along the way: something with a bit of heft, an edge or a point.

He continued along the quayside and found Terence’s hiding place, the stack of pallets ready for the fork-lifts. No Terence in sight. Vince switched on his torch and checked for any signs of the young scribe. He didn’t even know what he expected to find, almost treating him as if he was a nesting bird or a messy pet. Maybe pencil shavings, a crisp packet or a big cartoon footprint. But nothing.

Torch switched off, he turned around and headed back towards the warehouse. The gate through the perimeter fence was chained and padlocked. The mesh fence itself was about eight feet high, easy to scale apart from a vicious-looking roll of barbed wire
festooning
the top of it. Through the fence, he could see Henry Pierce’s Cadillac Deville parked in the middle of the forecourt. It looked like a big black shark, a fish out of water, incongruous and a set-up made to be noticed. Vince had the feeling it had been deliberately parked there as an obstacle or as a challenge – the first test he must pass before getting into the warehouse and facing his quarry.

Vince accepted the challenge. He took off his jacket, gripped it between his teeth, jumped up and scaled the fence and spread the jacket across the barbed wire. He then eased himself carefully over the top, feeling the spikes beneath the cloth as his weight shifted. Levering himself safely over the fence, he dropped and landed on his feet. Reaching up, he retrieved the jacket and put it on.

Certain he was being watched, he headed towards the car, torch held in hand like a cosh. He was about twenty feet away from the car before he turned on the torch and raked the windows with its beam. He detected no sign of movement inside.

He reached the car, peered inside, saw the keys still in the
ignition
. He shone the torch beam on to the red leather back seat and saw blood.

The boot wasn’t locked, but Vince already knew that it wasn’t an oversight by the driver. He pressed the button and slowly lifted the lid, its jaws creaking as the gap got wider and wider, letting out a yawn of death. The smell was instantly recognizable: rancid urine, faeces and the earlier stages of decomposition.

As pungent as the air was around him, Vince still took a deep breath and held it. He held it in preparation for what he might find: Terence, the young scribe, so in awe with the intrigue and the mythology created around the
real
underworld.

Inside, curled up, with his throat cut, was Spider. But no Terence. Vince breathed a sigh of relief and slammed the boot shut.

Vince turned to the warehouse, shot a glance up at the small circular window set in the facade. There was a light burning
somewhere
inside; not strongly but enough to interrupt the uniformed darkness. He thought he noticed a flicker of movement behind the window itself. Vince strode to the entrance under the sign: Tartarus Storage Ltd. There was a normal-size door set within a larger door used for vehicular access. He turned the handle, found it unlocked and entered the warehouse.

Amid the darkness within, he located four light switches just beside him on the front wall. Four metal-caged bulbs as big as footballs were suspended from wires hanging from the ceiling. They threw out an industrial-strength light, and Vince took a step backwards to get a better perspective. The three separate buildings with three separate entrances were merely a facade, for in fact it was one very big warehouse. The immediate area was a large open space with a concrete floor, stained with machine oil from the trucks and forklifts parked just inside. There were three large, gated goods lifts and three sets of wrought-iron stairs spiralling upwards. He could instantly spot some of Vogel’s antique furniture, but the other racks nearby were laden with all manner of goods. Naked and bald female shop mannequins with their heads sticking out of wooden crates, rolls of carpet, old radio sets, slot machines, new fridges, racks of clothes … Vince soon stopped looking, for the inventory was dizzying. Long aisles divided each floor into
sections
, with walkways and metal ladders giving access to the various floors, stretching all the way to the back of the warehouse. It looked like a maze, somewhere to get lost in or, more fittingly, somewhere to hide in.

Vince’s compass had already been set for him: the top floor, towards the light he had noticed in the window. He approached the lift in the central section, but saw that the gate was
padlocked
– as were the other two lifts. So he took the stairs, trying to be as quiet as possible, but his footfalls on the metal seemed to ring out like a sharply struck xylophone.

Reaching the first floor, he glanced along the aisles that seemed to stretch forever until they disappeared into darkness. Nothing to be seen. He carried on up to the fourth level. Once he reached the top, as if on cue, the main overhead lights went out. He could just make out a dim light at the end of the aisle in front of him. This was clearly no accident: he was being guided. Vince no longer felt like the hunter and that made him nervous. He
persevered
nevertheless and followed the source of light along the walkway. Its sides were lined with metal shelves, all of them crammed with disparate objects like a junk shop or a prop store. The only theme here was that it was theme-less. Books, bicycle wheels, cricket balls, wooden sledges, cartons of light bulbs, bowler hats, yet more mannequins, a horse’s saddle and all the musical instruments suitable to kit out an entire orchestra.