Authors: Danny Miller
Mixed in amongst all the Disneyland on the walls was a sober black and white framed photo of her husband: a head-and-shoulders shot with Bernie in an evening suit and a matinee idol pose. The heavy features were lifted by a gregarious smile, and the inherent brutality and hardness of his visage softened by a smear of Vaseline over the lens. It was a professional job, and the professional who had done the job was Nicky DeVane. The dapper snapper’s signature was clearly wrought in an elaborately scrolled and gilded font in one corner of the portrait.
But before Vince could fully take on board the implications of this photograph, he was hit with another eyeful. In a polished burr-walnut cantilevered frame, taking pride of place on the mantelpiece, was another black and white photograph, showing Bernie Korshank smiling and shaking hands with someone. Vince recognized the setting, for the shot was taken in Al Burnett’s Stork club. Vince also recognized the man Korshank was shaking hands with. He recognized him from youthful mugshots dating from the last time he had taken a serious pinch, and from periodic newspaper headlines and articles, Pathé newsclips, book covers, and in the flesh once while under surveillance at a Lyons tea house in Piccadilly. Casting an anthropological eye over the picture, Vince thought it spoke volumes. In stature, the other man reached up to about Bernie Korshank’s breast pocket; and yet the powerfully built Korshank seemed stooped and subservient next to the older man. And that was because the man was Billy Hill.
The
Billy Hill –
Boss of Britain’s Underworld
was how his ghost-penned bestselling memoir described him. And the man’s reputation was such that no one argued with the description.
Vince had a lot of questions he needed to ask, so when she offered him a cup of tea and a slice of Battenberg, he readily accepted. Out came the best bone china and then the chat. She told Vince that her husband was off on business in Tangiers, but couldn’t – or wouldn’t – say what kind of business it was.
Vince knew that Billy Hill had interests in Tangiers, because Tangiers was a very interesting place. Situated on the North African coast by the western entrance of the Straits of Gibraltar, where the Mediterranean met the Atlantic, it was a centre for smuggling cigarettes, booze, hash, dope and other contraband. Word was that Billy Hill had been visiting there since just after the war, busy organizing shipments of this
and
that. Tangiers and the International Zone had become a Mecca for smugglers, spies, speculators, subversives, gamblers, fugitives, counterpart French criminals, Arabic cliques and the literati, with American Beats experimenting with negative morality and cut-and-paste prose. All of these could be found lurking in the twists and turns of the kasbah, where the market was always in the black and everything was negotiable – from stolen money, stolen bearer bonds and stolen documentation to counterfeit versions of all the above. All thrived in the confusion, opportunity and intrigue that the International Zone contained.
As she served Vince up another dainty cake on a doily, and poured him a second cup of copper-coloured tea, Vince wondered if Korshank had confided in his wife about the business at the Imperial. But considering the cosiness of the surrounding décor, he realized that Korshank probably left the details of the world he operated in at the doorstep. And Vince didn’t have the heart to bring it over her threshold either.
Vince wasn’t surprised to hear a girl’s voice over the intercom, but he wasn’t expecting to hear the voice that he heard. As he clanked up the metal grated stairs leading to Nicky DeVane’s studio on Beak Street, he wondered if he’d got it wrong. That seductive and smoky voice hitting all the right notes and oozing class, maybe it belonged to another brittle blonde. Another longlimbed, highly strung and combustible thoroughbred galloping through life, causing chaos and heartbreak. There must have been lots of them in the world that Nicky DeVane inhabited, in fact stables full of them. Then he wondered if he was going to walk into a crime scene: Nicky DeVane corpsed out on the floor, with Isabel Saxmore-Blaine as the killer standing over him, holding a smoking gun. Revenge for her brother? Isabel genuinely committing a murder would have given the case a kind of baroque symmetry, but not the satisfying resolution Vince was looking for.
‘Detective Treadwell.’
It was indeed Isabel who answered the door. Vince didn’t bother to tell her that the ‘Detective’ part of his life, or certainly the title, was suspended. Minus a badge, he had no more right to call himself that than an Oxford Street store dick.
Vince followed her into DeVane’s studio, noting that she was dressed in what Vince took to be her favourite outfit: black ski pants and a black sweater. Against the white walls and floor of the studio, she cut a dramatic figure, as if she was about to have her picture taken. Then, again, every time he’d seen her, she had looked capable of stepping out of a glossy magazine. No one looked this good, not in the real world. He believed it was called breeding. He
knew
it was called money.
‘I heard what happened to you,’ she said.
Vince awkwardly brushed the back of his thumb over his cheek. It was a redundant gesture, as there wasn’t anything on it now.
‘Do you know who was responsible?’
‘We’re working on that.’
Isabel persevered with more questions, but Vince was still working on putting it all behind him and forgetting. And anyway, it wasn’t an episode he wanted to share, especially with her.
She finally got the message, made an assumption, and offered: ‘Nicky’s not here. He’s in the Caribbean. He’s shooting a swimwear collection, I believe.’
‘Nice work if you can get it.’
She picked up on his tone, and rather agreed with the
old rope
analogy that passed wordlessly between them. But, out of loyalty, she put up a defence of the dapper snapper’s profession. ‘I know for a fact that Nicky works very hard on these shoots.’
‘Yeah, must be a real slog to be surrounded by beautiful women, with all that sun pouring down on you, and nothing but white sands, blue seas and the finest hotels to break the monotony. May I ask what you’re doing here?’
‘Nicky’s letting me stay whilst he’s away. There’s a small flat upstairs. Just until I get myself fixed up with a new place. As I said, I never want to set foot in my old flat ever again.’
They stood in a parallelogram of light in the centre of the studio, about eight feet away from each other. It felt awkward, discombobulating. The white studio with its arc and spotlights, and painted backdrops ready to fall into place, made Vince feel as if he was on a stage in one of those modern-dress versions of
Hamlet
that were all the rage these days. The white mise en scène representing the icescapes of Denmark, or maybe the character’s inner life of emptiness, turmoil, adriftness or some such
stuff
. Either way, there they stood, like two stranded actors desperately in need of direction. Vince contented himself with a bit of stagecraft and put his hands in his pockets and shuffled some loose change. Isabel clasped her hands behind her back and moved from heel to toe like a ballet dancer, which was a natural enough manoeuvre for her.
‘I’m thinking of moving abroad for a while. Maybe back to New York. I have some pretty good work contacts in journalism. Or maybe I’ll spend the summer in Ibiza. It’s one of the Balearic Islands in the Med. I’ll just sit around smoking hash and splashing about in the sea.’
‘Why doesn’t that sound as much fun as it should do?’
‘Because you’re very perceptive, Detective. My heart’s not in it. But right now I’d rather be anywhere than in London.’
‘But why
here
?’
She frowned, as if his last utterance was a very peculiar thing to say, then went over to the far side of the studio. Against the wall was a counter set up just like a bar in a cocktail lounge, albeit a very stylized and futuristic one. The bar was all streamlined angles and sprayed silver, with red neon tubing encircling it like the rings of Saturn. It was a bar in which Robby the Robot or the Jetsons might have a drink at. It was obviously a prop for one of Nicky DeVane’s no doubt exhausting photo shoots, with the space race and beyond as its theme. Models in metallic bikinis and kinky boots with fishbowls over their heads, colonizing other planets and making them just like home. Vince saw this as a very optimistic view of the world because the way things were going, what with the Cuban missile crisis still ringing in everyone’s ears, and
Dr Strangelove
up on the movie screens, Vince didn’t see a rosy future of jetpacks, teletransportation and very attractive green women as an acceptable alternative to the more earthly hues. No, instead he saw a scorched earth, nuclear winters and maybe, one day, them all rising out the primordial sludge only to screw it all up again. But that didn’t sell toothpaste.
Once established at the bar, perched on one of the four chrome-tube stools that stood in front of it, Isabel plucked a very terrestrial-looking pack of cigarettes off the tin-foiled counter and sparked one up. By way of beckoning him closer, she asked, ‘Why
not
here?’
Vince went over and joined her at the bar and said, ‘DeVane was there with Beresford that night at the Imperial. He was part of it all.’
She took a long, loaded pull on her cigarette, and fired off a shot of disdainful smoke over his shoulder, just missing his ear. ‘Nicky explained the whole thing to me. At the time it was happening, he had already passed out in the bar.’
‘I think if Nicky DeVane could handle his liquor better, he’d have been up in that hotel room playing along with Beresford and his so-called Russian spy. Who I’ve met, incidentally: a frightening-looking man who has no doubt done some terrible things, and is more than capable of doing more. But, for all that, has a heart of gold, by all accounts. He’s very cut up about what happened.’
‘You think I need to hear all this?’
‘Yes, I do, because I think Nicky DeVane was complicit in your brother’s death.’
‘Nicky is my dearest friend.’
‘So you told me. He was Beresford’s, too, and also a loyal follower. Then again, I think they were all complicit. The whole lot of them—’
Isabel cut in: ‘Who are
they
and
them
, Detective Treadwell? Anyone who went to public school? Anyone from my social class?’
‘So what happened to your brother and Beresford, it was all just a public-school prank that went wrong?’
Isabel crushed out her barely smoked cigarette on the tin-foiled counter. ‘It was all Johnny’s idea and his doing, and he’s dead. I did consider transferring my hatred for what he did to Dominic on to Nicky and the others, but what would be the point? I try and live my life without harbouring resentments.’
‘You know Nicky DeVane loves you, don’t you?’Vince smiled. ‘Of course you do. That gives him a motive stronger than most.’
Her head jolted back with a quick blast of derisive laughter. ‘You think Nicky killed Johnny?’
Vince shrugged a pretty unconvincing shrug.
‘Then call me a fool. Nicky might have had the motive, but he doesn’t have the guts.’
‘You’d be surprised what love can do – especially when it’s obsessive and unrequited.’
‘Maybe that’s just your obsessive and unrequited little mind working overtime, Detective,’ she replied tartly. Restless, she then dismounted the stool and moseyed over to one of the long windows. Arms folded, she leaned against its frame and looked out at the expanse of London that was available to her gaze. It was a choice stretch, a lively vein of vibrant inner-city life. Carnaby Street milled below, and you could pull up a chair and watch it for hours. Vince watched her, as she provided another easy-on-the-eye view you could waste some time on. Staring out the window, Vince was reminded of that time he first saw her in the Harley Street private hospital. Framed in the light of the window he had wondered then what it would be like to sleep with her. It had been an innocent thought, unshared with anyone. A lot had changed since then. He had slept with her, but, on reflection, nothing had changed. He felt as distant from her now as he had then; more so, in fact.
Still looking out of the window, she said: ‘Anyway, I don’t know why you’re still concerning yourself, since you’re not on the case any more, Detective Treadwell.’
Vince watched as her cheek dimpled and a medium-sized smile took possession of her lips. He sensed a victorious note in her voice, and it was like the crack of a starting pistol. A snide note, a false note, and Vince didn’t like it, not one little bit. So he gave it to her with both barrels.
‘Nicky DeVane took some photographs of Bernie Korshank: not just quick snaps but posed portrait shots. Korshank’s an actor, of sorts. Those pictures must have taken up at least an hour of Nicky’s time. You said yourself how hard he works, and yet in his statement he said that he had never met Korshank before in his life. Surrounded as he is with beautiful women, you wouldn’t easily forget a mug like Bernie Korshank’s. Nicky DeVane lied, and I want to know why.’
‘The case is closed,’ she insisted in a weary voice, her interest wandering again as she stared out of the window, seemingly spotting someone amid the platoon of ants bustling below who had taken her interest.
‘And who closed it, your father?’
She didn’t answer that. She didn’t need to, for he saw the flush of entitlement. And Vince felt his own face flush with blood as anger swelled inside him. His jaw jutted, his fists balled; he wanted to pummel the wall beside her, then shake some life into her, anything to break her out of her torpor.
He did neither, just said: ‘You’re worse than your father. I can understand him wanting some make-believe honour for his son. But I had you pegged as a twentieth-century girl. I was wrong. You’re toeing the line, flying the flag and not rocking the boat – not often you get to string so many clichés together like that, but freshness of thought wouldn’t exactly fit this occasion.’
At this, her torpor was finally toppled. Her back straightened, her head cocked challengingly, her arms stiffened by her sides as if she was holding a couple of daggers in her clenched fists and was about to lunge.