Gilded Edge, The (52 page)

Ruley put a little more conviction into getting the drop on Vince. He raised the gun so it was pointed firmly at where all his major organs were stored.

‘There’s enough other people know what I know.’

‘Your little playmate, Isabel Saxmore-Blaine? Now there’s an unreliable narrator, if ever there was one. You know, Treadwell, it may be fun for you servicing the upper crusts, but she’s bad news, take it from me. Aspers and Simon Goldsachs both blame Isabel for Johnny’s downfall. I blame her too. Not for his death, of course, but for making it all look like murder again. It was all arranged, and the whole thing should have been so simple: Johnny Beresford, a gentleman down on his luck, discredited, dishonoured, depressed with his lot, retires dignified to his study, has a stiff drink and blows his brains out. An age-old scenario. Until little Miss Saxmore-Blaine stumbled drunkenly and melodramatically on to the scene, and made it look like murder all over again.’

‘What the bloody hell is all this?’

Guy Ruley turned sharply to find Isabel Saxmore-Blaine standing in the doorway. To any man, seeing her in that get-up, she was an assault on the senses. She was car-crashingly, distractingly dangerous – so much so that she should have come equipped with her own private lighthouse. And on seeing the catsuited figure with her hands on her hips, accentuating her curves and somehow, in the half light, making her look like a pornographic egg timer, Guy Ruley did a flurry of double-takes before finally settling his wide eyes on her.

With the gun no longer trained on him, Vince made his move – he ducked down, sprang forward and tackled Guy Ruley around the waist. Ruley fell backwards, squeezing the trigger and sending a bullet rocketing up into the ceiling and hitting a metal light fitting, which in turn sent it ricocheting straight back down into the wooden floor. Close enough for Vince to see the varnished wood splinter in white shards.

Ruley was still holding the gun in his right hand. His left hand now gripped a hank of Vince’s hair and he was pulling his head back, about to stick the hot snub barrel into Vince’s mouth.

Vince still had his arms wrapped around Guy Ruley’s waist, his hands pinned to the ground under Ruley’s substantially muscled weight. He was also looking down the barrel of a gun. At the other end of the gun he saw the toothpaste grin of Guy Ruley. He watched as Ruley’s forefinger tightened around the trigger—

Then he saw the pointy toe of a patent-leather boot swing into view and kick away the hand that was about to pull the trigger. There was a mighty clap, a shocking energy and a bright white light. The gun had gone off again and the bullet just missed Vince’s cheekbone. He could feel the heat of the metal, smell the burn of powder, the eye-stinging blast of cordite.

The next thing he knew, his hands were free and working furiously at trying to rub away the blinding flash that was seared into his burning eyes – and his ears needed some attention too. The report of the gun had set off a ringing that would have sent Quasimodo reaching for the aspirins and earmuffs. Kneeling on the floor, Vince knew he couldn’t stay sequestered in this sensory torture chamber for long. That boot of Isabel’s that had kicked away the gun would now have to answer to Guy Ruley.

Vince opened his watery eyes and saw, through the webby mist, that an unearthly white light had filled the room and was shining in through the French windows. For a moment, he thought the bullet had hit its intended target – his brain – and he was on his final journey, going towards the great white light of lore. Vince ran his hands quickly around his head checking for bullet holes and blood. He didn’t find any.

The ringing in his ears had subsided enough to let in a heavy whirling sound, which also emanated from outside. He realized it was the work of the rotating propeller blades and headlights of a helicopter hovering over its mark outlined on the lawn.

Vince turned away from the windows and scanned the room. It was like seeing everything in photographic negative – monochrome, murky and unreal. He wobbled to his feet, the deafening blast having done something to his sense of balance. He felt like a ghost unable to join the real world. He saw a shape in front of him that seemed to be floating spectrally around the room. He then heard a scream, and the hazy shape separated, as part of it fell to the floor. The bigger part, about 65 per cent of it, now came towards him. Vince then felt the full force of a very human fist as it was slotted into his mouth. It wasn’t much of a punch. As Vince suspected, the bigger shape – Guy Ruley – wasn’t much of a fighter. But it was enough to send Vince back down to the ground. Once down there, he crawled over to the supine shape lying on the floor – Isabel. He held her and peppered her face with kisses; somehow hoping, in lieu of smelling salts or medication, that it would revive her, or certainly comfort her.

Isabel groaned, and groggily uttered: ‘He hit me, Vincent. He hit me . . .’

‘I know, but you’re okay. And I’m gonna hit him right back. Wait here.’

Vince climbed to his feet and staggered over to the white light pouring in through the French windows. He was still locked in the sensory straitjacket, and feeling the effect of Guy Ruley’s sucker punch – one that he suspected could be repeated at any moment. All things being equal, he knew he could take Guy Ruley apart; one good shot to the jaw would send his pumped and bulked-out body to the ground. But all things weren’t equal, since he could hardly see his hand in front of his face, and was pretty sure he couldn’t hit the backside of a behemoth with a banjo.

He went after Ruley, through the French windows and over the paved patio that looked as if it was full of people, but was in fact full of marbled classical statues, down a small sloping embankment, and on to the flat grassy lawn with its circle of landing lights. He felt the whirlwind of the helicopter blades hovering above him. Maybe it was this new sensory blast, but things before him became clearer, and his vision began to drift back into focus. He saw the helicopter wasn’t a commercial bird but a big, robust military type, maybe painted over in green camouflage or battle-ready grey. With two big rotors, one up front and one at the back, it was more than capable of carrying a platoon of men.

Vince couldn’t see Guy Ruley, but he watched as the helicopter lowered itself, kicking up a minor tornado on the lawn, sending ants scurrying and worms tunnelling. He saw that the cast of night had now gone, dawn was happening and a carroty light was breaking through the morning mist.

The negative in his vision was developing and a harrowing picture was emerging: the pilots in the cockpit of the helicopter were the mackintosh men. Vince stood transfixed, for they still held that power over him. Their image burned through him as he committed their faces to memory. He could now make out every feature. Kitted out as fly boys in multi-zipped jump suits they weren’t in their customary mackintoshes but Vince knew it was them; gut animal instinct told him so, and he could almost smell them. In a blink, one of the mackintosh men disappeared from view. Vince then saw what looked like a rope ladder being released from the side of the chopper.

Guy Ruley shot out from the darkness beyond the circle of lights and ran towards the ladder, which he grabbed and began to scale. Vince, who was about twenty-five yards away, sprinted towards the ladder, and as it began to rise he also grabbed it. His hands just managed to get a grip on the second-to-last rung of the ladder before it took off out of reach, like the tail of a kite.

The helicopter rose further and further, till they were now a good fifty feet above the ground. Vince tried to climb further up the rope ladder, or at least to get a firm footing on it. Because, somehow, he had ended up upside down, with his legs above him. He felt like one of those Olympic gymnasts doing an impossible and hernia-inducing routine on those suspended rope rings – but with the added obstacle of flying through the air, not having a mat to land on, and being totally useless at it anyway. Upside down, the blood was rushing to his head as he watched the ground and the circle of lights disappear and the broader sky loom into view. Using all his strength, and feeling every muscle and sinew in his body put in a shift, he tried to turn himself round on the rope ladder. Such was the gut- and groin-wrenching strain that he was sure his testicles had done a full retreat and were now lurking somewhere around his tonsils, steadfastly refusing to come down until their ‘master’ had sorted himself out. Vince did the boys proud, and managed to get himself facing in the right direction. With everything in place, he began to haul himself up the ladder, taking the rope rungs in scaling fistfuls.

Vince had one objective only: to get into that helicopter, get at the mackintosh men and make the glass cockpit run red like an open bottle of ketchup in the spin cycle of a washing machine . . .
then land the helicopter.
Vince hadn’t thought it through properly yet; he was still too busy hanging on for dear life as the chopper pitched this way and that in a concerted attempt to ditch him. But, despite its best efforts, he held firm.

Vince wasn’t even thinking about Guy Ruley now, who was just an obstacle that stood between him and his real quarry – the mackintosh men. But he was wrong to not think of Guy Ruley, because Guy Ruley was definitely thinking of him.

Ruley yelled out: ‘Treadwell!’

Vince looked up to see Ruley positioned near the top of the ladder. Again with that white toothy grin behind the barrel of a gun. The same as it was in Chuckers, but now they were well and truly off the ground, eighty feet off it and counting . . . ninety . . . ninety-five . . . one hundred . . .

From being able to see practically nothing, Vince was now able to see
everything,
acutely and relentlessly. The black hole of the gun barrel was expanding, and like all black holes it was sucking everything into it. Then there was the big bang that sent the bullet on its way, and plummeting down towards its target: Vince’s head. As it took its explosive trajectory and tore into his flesh, Vince felt the initial searing pain and felt the bullet lodge in his arm. The left arm to be precise, the left bicep to be even more precise. A bullet wound is always a very precise thing, and Vince was feeling every scintilla of it: its depth, its breadth, its sheer
unbelievable
pain. His first reflex was to do what Guy Ruley wanted him to do, and let go of the ladder. The second reflex overrode the first though: to hang on for the ride and don’t die.

The helicopter had settled at around two hundred feet, but it was clear that it wasn’t going anywhere until it had dropped its unwanted cargo. Vince saw one of the mackintosh men crouching in the hold.

And then he heard the clarion call: ‘Kill him! Kill him!’

Guy Ruley had stopped smiling. But he hadn’t stopped aiming. And with the mackintosh man’s barked instructions stiffening his resolve, this time he looked fully adjusted to his role of executioner, and fully engaged and locked on to the target dangling beneath him. And the dangling target realized, pointlessly, and far too late, that he should have jumped when he had the chance. Forty feet was always going to be better than a hundred. He tried to kick some life into the rope ladder, get some swing into it so he wasn’t any longer such a sitting target. But nothing moved: it and he remained stubbornly un-pendulum-like. He felt like a big fat fresh conker on the end of a piece of string, waiting to get smashed to pieces by the gnarled old champion that had been soaked in vinegar then stored in the airing cupboard for the last year before being brought into the school playground—

Bang!

The gunshot cut through everything. Time slowed, the helicopter engine stopped, and the propellers froze as the dead body fell through the air and hit the ground with a wince-inducing thud.

Vince looked down to see Guy Ruley spread out on the lawn below him.

Illuminated by the ring of lights, he was centre-stage, cutting a tragic figure. For his body lay chest down, but his head, attached to its broken neck, was facing in the opposite direction and looking straight up at Vince. But Guy Ruley was dead before he hit the deck and got all twisted out of shape. He had a bullet through his eye.

Vince looked around and saw Isabel Saxmore-Blaine just outside the ring of lights. She was still standing in the shooting position, the gun wrapped in both hands and extended upwards. Encased in the catsuit, she looked a powerful and lethal presence. The huntress, the crack shot. All in black, like a shapely coffin.

Vince thought he heard her shout ‘Jump’, but couldn’t be sure. Then his view of Isabel was suddenly swiped away as the helicopter took to life again, and lunged at an alarming angle before it began a quickening ascent. Battling the sudden G force, Vince looked up and saw that the mackintosh man was no longer crouched in the hold. To Vince, the solid rope ladder now felt like a length of spindly thread as the helicopter dragged him through the firmament. It was not so much like holding a tiger by the tail as a fire-breathing dragon that was now in full flight and soaring towards the heavens. All around him was sky, pure blue sky. Then the helicopter changed direction again, and swooped and plunged towards the ground before straightening itself out.

Vince now saw Chuckers, its hard ochreous brick getting closer and closer and closer . . . and before he knew it, he was dancing over the rooftop of the wannabe great house. The chopper had lowered itself enough for Vince to scrape along the roof of the house and, by their reckoning, be dislodged by one of the many obstacles in his path. But Vince held on, using his legs as shock absorbers to kick himself away from the bunched chimney stacks, the pointed arches, the turrets and towers with their cherubs and gargoyles and satyrs. And soon the tiles were falling freely as Vince’s feet and arse skimmed along the roof, surfed the mighty rising and falling pediments, and twanged the spiky TV aerials and assorted rusty weathervanes.

The helicopter, after traversing the full length of the roof – twice – dropped down towards the long terraced greenhouses at one side of the house. As the chopper slowed to a hovering stop, Vince grabbed his chance with both hands and began to scale the rope ladder. Battered and bruised though his legs now were from crashing into and kicking away the assorted roof paraphernalia, they felt as energized as Jesse Owens’ in ’36, as Vince took the ladder two rungs at a time. Reaching the top, he gripped the lip of the hold.