Thirty-Five
For Miller, walking into the Majestic Ballroom was never going to be a pleasant experience.
It was a venue that swarmed with ghosts, and, though it was somewhere he and Alex had once enjoyed happy times together, the dreadful memories it now conjured far outnumbered the good ones.
It was, after all, the last place Miller had ever seen her.
The last place they’d danced together.
The place from which Alex had been lured to her death.
He walked quickly through the lobby, taking in the peeling paint on the pillars and the stains on the carpet.
He wasn’t sure that there had ever actually been any grandeur, but whatever there was had certainly faded.
He climbed the twisting staircase that led to the main ballroom, ignoring the dozens of framed posters that ran all the way up; illustrated playbills highlighting a few of the long-and-thankfully-forgotten entertainers who had graced the stage of the Majestic in years gone by.
Jeremy Trent is … ‘Mr Ballroom’.
Laughs a-plenty with PC 69, the ‘Comedy Copper’. He’ll ‘take down your particulars’.
The stars of TV’s ‘Hi-de-Hi!’ in ‘Put it Away, Colonel!’
Two floors up, Miller turned on to a thickly carpeted corridor and hurried past the balcony from where those who’d paid to be VIPs for the night could gaze down at the dance floor. He eventually found the man he had come to see in the bar.
‘Well, hello stranger.’
He was as sure as he could be that the Majestic’s owner – well-informed as he was – could not have known what had happened to Justin Cutler or that Miller was on his way to see him.
All the same, as Miller watched the man casually mixing then pouring himself a garishly coloured cocktail, it looked as though Ralph Massey had been waiting for him.
Twenty-odd years before, performing as The Fabulous Miss Coco Popz (‘she’ll have you for breakfast!
’), Ralph Massey had enjoyed a reasonably successful career as one of the north-west’s foremost semi-professional drag artistes.
In the years since he’d hung up his fishnets and falsies, his infamy had far outperformed the limited amount of fame he’d achieved in the pubs and clubs of Morecambe and Saltcotes.
Now, he managed a gambling empire that encompassed everything from the slots and Penny Falls machines in the umpteen arcades he owned to a network of high-stakes poker games, with all income expertly laundered through the Majestic and a string of associated venues.
And he sold drugs.
He liked to pretend that he didn’t, or at least that the drugs he did sell were not the really bad ones.
It was as though he found the whole business a trifle …
vulgar. He was rightfully concerned about the damage it could do to his reputation as a local philanthropist and supporter of the arts.
That it might adversely affect the number of times he would get to appear in the ‘Lifestyle’ pages of the Gazette; opening a supermarket in Elswick or out on the town with Les Dennis.
‘I meant it, you know,’ Massey said. ‘The “stranger” thing. You don’t call, you don’t write—’
‘I just need a quick word, Ralph.’ Miller tried to hide his irritation.
For purely selfish reasons of his own, Massey had been helpful in pointing Miller towards the man who had murdered Alex.
Miller had not seen or spoken to him since that individual had been arrested and charged, but he was aware that Massey still believed he was owed something.
It was not dissimilar to the debt Jacqui Cutler seemed to think she was owed for the evidence she’d provided against her husband.
Miller found both assumptions equally nauseating.
‘Can I knock you up one of these first?’ Massey raised the cocktail he was sipping.
‘It’s delicious, even if I say so myself, because I created it.
It’s got three different sorts of alcohol, beginning with A, B and C.
A is for advocaat, B is for brandy … Rémy Martin since you’re asking …
and C is for crème de menthe. I call it the Ralphabet. Fancy one?’
‘No, thanks. Look, can we go somewhere a bit quieter?’
Both men had been shouting over the high-speed click-clack of the table-tennis match being played in the centre of the room by Massey’s pair of handsome pet skinheads.
Pixie and Dixie (Miller did not know their real names and wasn’t convinced Massey did either) were twins who always dressed identically in slim-fit jeans, desert boots and buttoned-up polo shirts.
Though Massey had initially – and rather mischievously – claimed they were his nephews, and they fit broadly into the category of ‘henchmen’, Miller had come to the conclusion a while ago that they were basically no more than set decoration.
Massey shouted for the twinheads to stop playing and beckoned them across. They moved in unison and stopped in front of the bar, one at the other’s shoulder; behind and slightly to the left.
‘Look at that.’ Miller nodded, impressed. ‘That’s pretty much textbook shadow position.’
‘Purely coincidental, I can assure you,’ Massey said. ‘I’ve tried on several occasions to interest the boys in dance, but sadly it’s just not their cup of tea.’
‘You can’t have everything,’ Miller said.
‘Never mind.’ Massey arched a neatly groomed eyebrow. ‘They’re good at other things.’ He looked to Miller for a reaction, but when there was none he told the twins to make themselves useful elsewhere and waved them away.
Miller waited until Pixie and Dixie had left, then stepped a little closer to the bar. ‘Are you making moves against Jacqui Cutler?’
Massey’s thin lips fastened around a thick straw and he slurped at his Ralphabet. ‘No, but are you saying that somebody is?’
‘I’m not saying anything. I’m just asking you a question.’
‘Indeed you are, DS Miller, and I just answered it.’
‘Look, I’m not going to tell you why I’m asking, but you can understand why you’d be the first person I’d talk to. The ideal candidate when it comes to muscling in on the Cutlers. If there were to be any muscling in.’
‘Well, of course.’ Massey leaned down and rested his elbows on the polished chrome bar-top.
‘And I shan’t deny that was once my fondest ambition.
To be the only game in town, as it were.
With poor, dear Wayne out of the way, I’d thought it would be relatively easy to dance my way into the number one spot. However …’
‘You underestimated Jacqui Cutler.’
‘I most certainly did. If anything, Madame Cutler’s even fiercer than her husband was, so I decided to settle for what I’d got. To let things remain as they are. I’m not talking about drugs, of course. I’ll leave all that beastliness to the Cutlers, because—’
‘Pull the other one, Ralph. You’re knocking out more pills than Boots and you always have done.’
Massey smirked and went back to his puke-coloured cocktail.
‘So, I take it you’ve not heard about anyone else who fancies taking a pop,’ Miller said. ‘No gossip on the Blackpool Gangsters WhatsApp?’
‘Not even the faintest of dicky-birds,’ Massey said.
‘Because somebody is.’
‘Yes, I’m definitely getting a sense of that.’
‘Somebody’s made a very bold move.’
‘Well, they’re somebody very brave or somebody very stupid, because the Cutlers always tend to come out on top. Historically, at any rate.’
Miller did not need reminding. Things had most definitely failed to pan out for a Preston-based processed-meat mogul named Frank Bardsley after he’d taken steps into Cutler territory three months earlier.
Arguably, they’d gone rather worse for a man named Dudley Driscoll, who’d found himself on the business end of a nail gun before being welded to a fridge.
Massey’s decision to back off had been understandable, all things considered. That said, his wolfish grin as Miller had talked about the ‘bold move’ being made against the Cutlers suggested that he hadn’t completely abandoned his aspirations in that direction.
‘This would suit you, wouldn’t it?’
Massey clapped a hand to his chest, as though profoundly shocked. ‘I have not the first idea what you’re referring to.’
‘Jacqui Cutler out of the picture … if that’s how things turn out. Another chance for you to step up and claim a bigger slice of the action. The pie or whatever. The … action pie.’
‘If you’re trying to suggest, in your typically clumsy yet endearing manner, that I would not look a gift horse in the mouth, then you’re spot on, of course.
I’m not an idiot, DS Miller. Though I do want to stress once again that I would be doing things very differently when it came to …
drugs.’ His voice dropped to a theatrical whisper for that last word.
‘I would only ever deal in the happy ones. The party pills, you understand? The ones that make people feel good; that make them want to dance. As someone to whom dance is important … as indeed it was to your lovely wife, God rest her soul—’
‘Steady,’ Miller said.
‘I’m just saying you must understand that.’
‘You haven’t changed, have you?’
Massey noisily sucked up the last of his cocktail. ‘No?’
‘Well, apart from that.’ Miller pointed to Massey’s hair. There had previously been an unforgivable silvery man-bun, but that had gone, to be replaced by what looked suspiciously like the early stages of a hair transplant. ‘For obvious reasons, I hope it proves to be a hugely expensive disaster.’
‘Oh, dear. That’s a little beneath you, don’t you think?’ Massey produced a thin smile, but it was forced, and soggy round the edges. ‘Not only is your suggestion disparaging and quite possibly defamatory, but your comments were unnecessarily malicious and mean-spirited.’
‘There you go again. You’re no posher than I am, but you talk like you’ve got plums in your mouth.’
Massey raised that eyebrow again. ‘Chance would be a fine thing.’
‘I haven’t got time for this …’ Miller walked quickly towards the door.
He opened it, then turned back into the room, spitting out his repulsion.
‘You’re still just a bog-standard gangster, Ralph.
However much it suits you to tart it up.
You’re a run-of-the-mill villain, and for all your airs and graces and your -flamboyant outfits, you’re no different from Wayne Cutler at the end of the day.
No different at all, even if you’re done up in designer clothes and you can sing a couple of songs from Wicked. ’
He marched from the room and along the corridor, aware that Massey was pursuing him. When he was halfway down the stairs, he heard Massey shouting after him from the top; raging, borderline hysterical.
‘You’re wrong, Miller. You’re so wrong. I can sing every song from Wicked, complete with all the harmonies. I know every single word, and I know every single bloody dance step as well!’