Gilded Edge, The by Danny Miller Read Free Book Online

we’re going to do. We need to find out who Marcy Jones was out with last night . . .’
    Vince left Mac in a huddle with the two detectives, and went upstairs to look about. A crayon drawing of a teddy bear tacked on to the door alerted Vince to Ruby’s room. The teddy-bear theme carried on into the room itself, with teddy-bear wallpaper and hanging mobiles and lampshades. But there were other toys, lots of toys. In fact there was a piratic haul of goodies spilling out of a wooden toy chest in one corner of the room. Again, this all confirmed the presence of money coming into the house. In Marcy’s bedroom there was a wardrobe with a full-length mirror as its centre panel. Vince checked himself out in it: he looked frayed. He hadn’t slept in twenty-four hours, and the fuel of adrenalin and strong coffee was running its course, and exhaustion was catching up and kicking in. He sat down on the bed and could have easily sunk back on to it and caught forty winks. So he did, just to rest his eyes, until someone would call for him. As he lay back, the bed made a squeak. A squeak of surprise? A squeak of distress?
    Vince sat up again quickly. Then he stood up and examined the bed. Around the mattress was a polyester covering as frilly as a petticoat and serving much the same decorous purpose. He lifted it up to expose a box-spring frame that included two concealed storage drawers. He then slipped his fingers into the groove that worked as a handle for one of the drawers, and gave it a tug. It wouldn’t budge. He got down on his knees to get more leverage and yanked at it again. It opened a couple of inches, then quickly closed again. The bed was alive! Vince flipped the mattress off the bed, grabbed the drawer with both hands, put his back into it, and yanked it open. Inside the drawer, a stack of folded bed sheets quaked and quivered. Vince lifted the sheets gently and found the tear-streaked face of Ruby Jones.
    She lay curled up in her burrow, as small as she could make herself, and peered up at Vince as if not knowing what to expect from him – because now she knew fully what grown-ups were capable of. The little girl squeezed her eyes shut. Salted tears had dried and crystallized to leave white powdery deposits on her hot brown skin, and she had soiled herself. As Vince lifted her out of the drawer, there was no resistance, no fight in her. Yet he felt a current of fear run through her that gave a tremulous hum to her sweat-soaked little body. She gripped her companion, a teddy bear with large button eyes, who looked equally terrified. Holding the little girl close, Vince closed his eyes and intoned softly, ‘It’s okay, it’s okay, darling, you’re safe . . . no one can hurt you now . . .’
    But even as these words fell from his lips, they sounded implausibly hollow, even for impromptu words of comfort. And Vince had the feeling that such reassurances had come far too late for little Ruby Jones.
    Far too late.

CHAPTER 7
    The curtains twitched as Vince and Mac again approached Isabel Saxmore-Blaine’s flat in Pont Street. The old bird in the ground-floor flat had come up trumps and phoned Mac’s number to inform him that Dominic Saxmore-Blaine had re-entered the house. The message came just after a traumatized Ruby Jones had been taken off to hospital. It was clear she was suffering from severe shock, of a kind she might never escape from.
    Before Vince had time to press the bell, the front door swung open, and there stood a thin-faced young man. On a hunch, Vince asked if he was Dominic Saxmore-Blaine. He confirmed that he was, and that he was just on his way out. Vince and Mac badged him.
    Five minutes later, Dominic Saxmore-Blaine was perched on the scrolled arm of a long white sofa, holding a fully charged tumbler of whisky and soda, to steady his nerves, as he claimed. He’d just been given the news that Johnny Beresford was dead. It had been delivered in the solemn tone of informing the next of kin; and