study, Vince and the team fine-toothed the room wall to wall, floor to ceiling. They even took down the books from the shelves to see if the bullet had got lodged in any of the tomes, which mostly dealt with history, finance, military exploits, hunting and fishing and shooting and gambling, along with a twenty-four piece leather-bound encyclopedia and some signed copies of Ian Fleming’s James Bond adventures. But, fitting as that might have been, there were no bullets to be found in 007. Vince got up on a ladder to give the two mounted stags a quick autopsy, to check that neither of the poor souls had copped for yet another bullet. Every inch of the room was searched, and nothing found. Far from the case being cut and dried, Vince was determined – family money or no money, personal contact with the Queen or not – to wake up Sleeping Beauty and ask her the questions that needed to be asked.
Before Vince left the room, he was drawn again to the photograph of Beresford and his five friends at the Montcler Club. He suspected he might be needing it, so he took the photo out of its cantilevered silver frame and slipped it in his pocket.
CHAPTER 9
It was around 5 p.m. when Vince parked the Mk II in Kensington Church Street and walked towards Notting Hill Gate. For the last three days and nights, he had been hanging around the same area to pick up whatever information he could on Tyrell Lightly. Photos of him showed a snappily attired Negro with sharp good looks, a pencil moustache, and a petulant slyness in his eyes. Back home in Kingston, Jamaica, Tyrell Lightly had put his looks to good use as the lead singer in a calypso outfit called the Gayboys. He was a heartthrob crooner by night, but by day he was a guntoting rude boy aligned to the Spanish Town Posse. Like all the Jamaican gangs, the STP had politics in their blood, as well as other rackets, and they composed the muscle behind the right-wing Jamaican Labour Party, and were in charge of getting the vote out. When the JLP lost the ’57 elections to their main rival, the left-wing People’s National Party, the Spanish Town Posse – and Tyrell Lightly in particular – had left too many bodies lying on the street to be brushed under the carpet, and had made too many widows and too many enemies to be given a government pardon. So Tyrell Lightly had swapped Jamaica for England, Kingston for London and Trenchtown for Notting Hill. He’d stopped crooning by then and was now pure muscle: a bantamweight of wiry knife-wielding venom poured into an electric-blue tonic suit topped off with a red felt Homburg hat sporting a peacock feather.
Vince had been regularly visiting places like Frank Crichlow’s El Rio Café at 127 Westbourne Park Road, where West Indian and white kids hung out together and listened to the new Blue Beat and Ska craze on one of the best-stocked jukeboxes in London. Other favoured haunts, such as the Calypso and the Fiesta One Club, both on Westbourne Grove, were equally busy with hustlers and players. Then you had Johnny Edgcombe’s Dive Bar on the Talbot Road, a jazz club that seemed to never close, and was a favourite with both the artist and the junkie crowd. And not forgetting either all the shebeens in Elgin Crescent, Latimer Road and Oxford Gardens. All these were establishments that Tyrell Lightly’s boss, Michael de Freitas, either ran, had an interest in or took a ‘pension’ from. Vince even played a hand or two in a de Freitas-run spieler in a basement on the Talbot Road, so he blended in easily with the crowd.
To the rest of England, after the so-called ’58 race riots where a couple of hundred white Teddy boys gathered under the lightning-bolt symbol of British fascist banners, and started beating up as many black people as they could find, Notting Hill was seen as a no-go area for, ironically, white people. In reality the disturbance just fired everyone’s imagination and it became the place to go. At any given time, in those
Before Vince left the room, he was drawn again to the photograph of Beresford and his five friends at the Montcler Club. He suspected he might be needing it, so he took the photo out of its cantilevered silver frame and slipped it in his pocket.
CHAPTER 9
It was around 5 p.m. when Vince parked the Mk II in Kensington Church Street and walked towards Notting Hill Gate. For the last three days and nights, he had been hanging around the same area to pick up whatever information he could on Tyrell Lightly. Photos of him showed a snappily attired Negro with sharp good looks, a pencil moustache, and a petulant slyness in his eyes. Back home in Kingston, Jamaica, Tyrell Lightly had put his looks to good use as the lead singer in a calypso outfit called the Gayboys. He was a heartthrob crooner by night, but by day he was a guntoting rude boy aligned to the Spanish Town Posse. Like all the Jamaican gangs, the STP had politics in their blood, as well as other rackets, and they composed the muscle behind the right-wing Jamaican Labour Party, and were in charge of getting the vote out. When the JLP lost the ’57 elections to their main rival, the left-wing People’s National Party, the Spanish Town Posse – and Tyrell Lightly in particular – had left too many bodies lying on the street to be brushed under the carpet, and had made too many widows and too many enemies to be given a government pardon. So Tyrell Lightly had swapped Jamaica for England, Kingston for London and Trenchtown for Notting Hill. He’d stopped crooning by then and was now pure muscle: a bantamweight of wiry knife-wielding venom poured into an electric-blue tonic suit topped off with a red felt Homburg hat sporting a peacock feather.
Vince had been regularly visiting places like Frank Crichlow’s El Rio Café at 127 Westbourne Park Road, where West Indian and white kids hung out together and listened to the new Blue Beat and Ska craze on one of the best-stocked jukeboxes in London. Other favoured haunts, such as the Calypso and the Fiesta One Club, both on Westbourne Grove, were equally busy with hustlers and players. Then you had Johnny Edgcombe’s Dive Bar on the Talbot Road, a jazz club that seemed to never close, and was a favourite with both the artist and the junkie crowd. And not forgetting either all the shebeens in Elgin Crescent, Latimer Road and Oxford Gardens. All these were establishments that Tyrell Lightly’s boss, Michael de Freitas, either ran, had an interest in or took a ‘pension’ from. Vince even played a hand or two in a de Freitas-run spieler in a basement on the Talbot Road, so he blended in easily with the crowd.
To the rest of England, after the so-called ’58 race riots where a couple of hundred white Teddy boys gathered under the lightning-bolt symbol of British fascist banners, and started beating up as many black people as they could find, Notting Hill was seen as a no-go area for, ironically, white people. In reality the disturbance just fired everyone’s imagination and it became the place to go. At any given time, in those
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