City of Dreadful Night

FIFTEEN

‘ W ell, something is kicking off,’ I said the moment Gilchrist had got into my car. ‘What happened to your flat is the worst, but I’ve just had calls from Kate and Tingley. Kate had a scare put into her – some guy hassled her up at the cemetery.’

‘The cemetery? What was she doing there?’

‘She’s found the grave of the Trunk Murder victim.’

‘Oh, that. Clever girl. And Tingley?’

‘He’s found out who Gary Parker’s father is.’

Gilchrist snapped her head round.

‘How the hell has he done that? We don’t know yet.’

‘He has his methods. Anyway, somebody is getting really rattled or pissed off – or both.’

‘Gary Parker’s father?’

‘No, that doesn’t make sense. The timing is wrong for him to come down heavy on us if his son is wanting a deal.’

‘I want to talk to that gap-toothed bastard, Connolly, in Haywards Heath.’

‘Tingley is on to him too. We’re going to pay him a visit. But we’ve got to collect Tingley from Gatwick first.’

‘Tingley’s been away?’

‘Not unless Lewes counts. A meeting. As usual, he was enigmatic.’

Tingley was waiting for them at the South Terminal. He slid into the back seat. Gilchrist told him about her flat but was really just waiting to ask one question.

‘Who is Gary Parker’s father?’ she said.

‘Not who you’d expect,’ Tingley said.

Kate was trying hard not to freak out. The man at the cemetery had chilled her to the bone. What could he possibly want from her? Surely nothing to do with the Trunk Murder – this wasn’t one of those silly thrillers where secret societies protected a secret for centuries. Was it?

Wrapped in a rug, she was on her balcony. Tonight, the music in the square was just Amy Winehouse and something unrecognizable involving a heavy bass beat. She had a notepad on her lap and a pencil in her hand. She was trying to focus on the Trunk Murder but all she could think about was that thin man standing at the other end of the burial plot.

When he walked away she thought of following to ask what he meant, but there was no one around and she wondered if he might attack her. Then she thought he might have done something to her car. When she got back to it she got in gingerly and locked it immediately, before starting the engine and testing the brakes.

She’d entered her flat nervously too, but there was no sign of any kind of break-in. She’d phoned Watts and told him what had happened. He’d told her to stay in the flat until he got over there later in the day. Told her to keep her mobile beside her.

It rang now, playing the irritatingly perky tune she couldn’t figure out how to change. Her parents’ number flashed up on the screen.

‘Hello, Kate,’ her father said in an oddly hearty voice. ‘How are things?’

‘Things are fine, Dad, thanks.’

‘Everything going OK, is it? You’re feeling OK?’

Her father never asked anything about her except when he was checking up on her for his own peculiar reasons.

‘I’m fine, Dad. Why do you ask?’

There was silence on the line for a moment. Then:

‘Nothing unusual happened?’

It was Kate’s turn to be silent as she pondered his asking her this question after her encounter in the cemetery.

‘Not really, no.’

‘Not really – what do you mean, not really?’

‘I mean no. How’s Mum?’

‘Mum’s fine,’ he said impatiently. ‘She’s wondering when you might be coming up to London again for a visit.’ He cleared his throat. ‘In fact, we were both wondering if you might like to come and stay for a few days. We don’t see nearly enough of you.’

Stranger and stranger.

‘I’ve got work, Dad.’

‘Don’t you have leave due?’

‘I haven’t been there long enough to get leave yet.’ And if I had, she thought but didn’t say, I wouldn’t want to spend it at home.

‘Maybe next weekend, then.’

‘Maybe – it depends on my shifts.’

Another silence. Finally:

‘OK, then. Well, you take care, Kate. And phone me if you need me.’

‘Will do, Dad.’

‘Love you.’

‘Bye, Dad.’

She dropped the phone in her lap and listened to Amy Winehouse’s by now poignant views on rehab ricocheting round the square. She thought for a moment about other singers she’d liked, who’d arrived but hadn’t stayed long. Whatever happened to Macy Gray?

But really she was thinking about her dad calling. It had to be more than coincidence. The man in the cemetery was something to do with the grey areas of her father’s life. The many grey areas. In threatening her, the man was sending a message to her father. And her father had clearly received it.

There had been concern in her father’s voice as their conversation had gone on. It was a long time since she had heard that. It would have touched her had she allowed it to. There was fear too. She had never known her father to be in a situation he didn’t fully control. Maybe this was it – the first time.

Kate pulled the throw up over her shoulders and waited to hear from Watts.

‘James Tingley – you tease,’ I said. ‘Who would have thought it?’

‘I’m not teasing. I’m trying to get it clear in my head. I’d thought it would be Cuthbert – same Cro-Magnon mentality. I’d hoped it was Hathaway so we could do a deal that would explain your situation. But it’s neither.’

‘We get that,’ Sarah said. ‘So who is Gary Parker’s father?’

‘Another close friend of Mr Watts here. This whole affair is bedevilled with them.’

‘And that close friend is…?’ I said, trying to listen to the satnav instructions at the same time. I was driving down dark, winding lanes to the north of Hampstead Heath.

‘A certain Mr Winston Hart.’

‘You’re joking!’ I said, almost missing a turning.

‘Who’s Winston Hart?’ Sarah said.

Tingley looked wolfish.

‘The Chair of the Police Authority that forced Bob’s resignation,’ he said.

Kate had gone back inside her flat from the balcony, double-locked the French windows and pulled out the Trunk Murder files again. She was conscious that she was spending far too much time on this but, frankly, she didn’t have much else in her life. Her last relationship had gone south, her job was boring as hell… and so it went.

She looked again at the remaining two undated scraps of the diary.

My background is Northern. You don’t look at the mantelpiece when you’re poking the fire. I didn’t bother too much about faces – I was more interested in bodies. So that was unusual for me. Noticing the face so much, I mean. Nobody would have thought she was forty. She looked ten years younger. In fact, she looked like Carole Lombard, that movie star. Spitting image.

Who was he talking about? Just another of his many women? Kate was thinking about what Tingley had said about Spilsbury getting the age wrong. Oh, there was something here, for sure. But what exactly?

The next entry was more factual.

Come September and we’d looked at about 3,000 statements from the public. We had about 1,000 letters from Germany. But now I was out of work so far as the Trunk Murder investigation was concerned. The Scotland Yard boys, Donaldson and Sorrell, went back up to London. Unofficially they had another twelve months to solve the case. The operations room in the Royal Pavilion was wound up.

I told the local press that Scotland Yard would be investigating ‘a secret list of fifty men, selected because of their association with certain sorts of women’. Of course, that wasn’t entirely true – in fact, I’d plucked the number out of the air.

I was in trouble, though. The powers that be were giving me a hard time about my extra-curricular activities. There was talk of disciplinary action. Possibly resignation. Perhaps criminal proceedings. Ha bloody ha.

Kate assumed it was the diarist’s habit of leaking stories to the press that was the problem. But she wondered about his way with women. Wondered whether sometimes his seduction method was too forceful.

She needed to explore whatever files were available in the National Archives in Kew. That was the repository for all the old Scotland Yard files, and she hoped there would be material in there that existed nowhere else. Failing that, there might be something that would help her to identify whoever was writing this diary.

‘You’re only paranoid if people haven’t really got it in for you,’ I said triumphantly – but my mind was whirring. First, I couldn’t figure the man Sarah had described as the son of the effete Winston Hart with his stupid moustache and his middle-class pretensions. Second, did that actually mean I was right and he was somehow part of a plot against me?

‘I’m tempted to abandon Connolly and head for Hart,’ I said.

‘No,’ Sarah said. ‘We have to talk to Connolly – he’s in this up to his neck.’

‘I’ve seen Hart,’ Tingley said. ‘And we’re here. Drive past the house, Bob.’

We’d reached an imposing Elizabethan farmhouse, alone on the road, with a wide drive to one side of it. I noticed that lights were on in various parts of the house. I drove about a hundred yards past it and pulled into a passing point.

‘You’ve seen Hart? And?’

‘Not now, Bob.’

I sighed.

‘So what do we do?’

‘We go up and knock on the door,’ Gilchrist said.

‘What if he won’t see us?’ I said.

Tingley just grinned.

Somebody rapped on Kate’s door. She had a fisheye lens set in it. She looked through it but nobody was there. The chain was on but she didn’t open the door. Her heart thumping, she stayed with her eye glued to the fisheye. Still nobody there. She retreated to her sofa but couldn’t take her eyes off her door. All she could think, however, was that to knock on her door you had to get through the locked outer door to the whole house.

She phoned Watts.

‘This is not a good time,’ I said when I heard Kate’s voice. Tingley was straddling Connolly, Gilchrist was over by the window looking out, rubbing her chin. Connolly was struggling to get his breath. Tingley punched him again, very precisely. Connolly’s breath bubbled in his throat.

‘Enough now, Jimmy. You’ve made your point.’

‘Have I?’ he said, slapping Connolly across the face. ‘Do you feel I have, Billy boy?’

‘Fuck you,’ Connolly spluttered.

‘Tough guy,’ Tingley said, drawing his fist back.

‘Enough.’ Gilchrist this time, striding across from the window to grab Tingley’s arm.

Tingley kept his arm raised but didn’t try to get out of Gilchrist’s grip. Instead he reached down with his other hand and smoothed Connolly’s hair. After this oddly gentle gesture, he drew himself off Connolly and, in the same fluid movement, stood upright. In the process, with a quick twist and shake, he freed his arm from Gilchrist’s grip.

Gilchrist grasped at thin air and looked momentarily bemused as she watched Tingley go to sit on a narrow sofa. Connolly lay on the floor beside Gilchrist, his chest heaving. He gave her a malignant look.

He pulled himself to a sitting position, all his weight on his right arm. His left arm hung useless by his side. His face was engorged with blood, his eyes bulging. He looked over at Tingley, who ignored him, fixing his own eyes on the stacks of DVDs beside the rogue policeman’s giant plasma screen.

Connolly had readily let us in but then had taken offence at something Gilchrist had said and lunged at her. Tingley had intervened, and before I had even begun to react, Connolly was on the floor.

‘Someone has been trying to get into my flat,’ Kate was saying in my ear.

‘Call the police. No, wait.’ I called to Gilchrist. ‘Is Reg on shift now?’

‘How would I know?’ She saw my look, thought for a minute. ‘I think so.’

I handed her my phone.

‘Give Kate his mobile number. And tell her we’ll be over as soon as we’re finished here.’

I’d doubted the value of fronting Connolly. We weren’t going to strong-arm him into telling us anything. Tingley felt the same. He’d been monitoring Connolly and his colleague, White. But Gilchrist had been keen to confront him. And confront him she had.

‘You murdering scum,’ she’d said the minute we’d got into the house. Not the most tactful opening gambit and the reason everything had kicked off.

‘What the fuck do you all want?’ Connolly rasped, his voice hoarse. The open-handed blow to the throat does that to the voice box. The bubbling breath was the consequence of that and the punch in the diaphragm. The temporarily useless left arm was a nerve thing: Tingley’s precise attacks on the elbow and that bundle of nerve endings just below the shoulder joint. Connolly would be feeling major pins and needles soon. Then a lot of pain.

‘We want to know what happened at Milldean the night that everybody got shot. What was behind it?’

‘You’re Watts, aren’t you?’ Connolly said as he pushed himself up on one arm to his feet. He went over to a big armchair and dropped into it. ‘Mr High and Mighty.’

‘Why did you steal that phone from the kitchen?’ Gilchrist said.

Connolly bared his gappy teeth.

‘What is this – amateur hour? If I have something to disclose, don’t you think you should approach it with a bit more subtlety? Asking me straight out ain’t going to get you anywhere.’

I agreed with him. Even so, I said:

‘We’re on a clock. No time for subtlety.’ I waved my arm around the large room. ‘Nice place. Must have cost a bob or two. You must be good at handling your copper’s salary.’

‘That’s subtle. It’s Bob, isn’t it? Are you thinking you were one of the bobs who paid for it?’

Tingley snorted. I looked over at him but he still seemed to be focusing on the DVD collection, tilting his head to read spines. Connolly looked over at him.

‘Anything you fancy, feel free to borrow it.’ Connolly’s voice was getting stronger. ‘You’re handy, by the way. I’ll remember that for next time.’

‘Won’t do you any good,’ Tingley murmured.

‘What was that?’ Connolly said, leaning forward, belligerent again.

‘I said I can’t see your ultra-violent gay rom-coms – I’m guessing you keep them in the bedroom.’

‘Let’s go,’ Gilchrist said, heading for the door.

‘We’ve only just got here,’ I said.

‘This was a mistake. My fault. Asshole isn’t going to tell us anything. He doesn’t realize he’s next.’

‘Oh, here they are,’ Tingley said. ‘ Reservoir Ducks. Lock, Stock and Mockney Cockney. Gay Gangs of New York. The whole gay gangsters-r-us collection. You must have The Very Dirty Dozen and The Quite Wild Bunch in your bedside cupboard.’

‘What do you mean I’m next?’ Connolly said.

‘He’s not stupid,’ I said. ‘He knows what’s what.’

‘Somebody is knocking off the shooters,’ Gilchrist said. ‘And assuming it’s not you – because you’re too much of a blunt instrument – then you’re on the list. My flat was firebombed.’

‘That’s just pest control,’ Connolly said, but it was clear his heart wasn’t in it. He rubbed his dead arm, gave Tingley another look. Then he turned to me.

‘You should know more than me what’s going on, Chief Constable. Ex-Chief Constable, I mean.’

‘Why would I?’

Connolly looked at me and shook his head.

‘Don’t treat me like an idiot.’

‘That’s a tough call,’ Tingley said.

‘You’re next,’ Gilchrist repeated, standing over Connolly. ‘Being a policeman won’t protect you.’

‘Yeah?’ he said. ‘I’ll take my chances. Besides, I’m retiring on health grounds. Going into the security business.’

‘Anyone else retiring?’ I said.

Connolly shrugged.

‘Whoever is still alive,’ he said.

Kate’s bell rang again. This time it was the outer door.

‘Hello?’

‘DS Reg Williamson from the Brighton nick,’ a tinny voice said. She recognized the name from Sarah Gilchrist. She buzzed him in.

He was a lardy man, pasty-faced, but with something sympathetic in his eyes. He smelt of sweat and tobacco in about equal proportions.

‘Somebody has been trying to get into your flat,’ he said.

Kate told him what had happened.

‘Well, there’s no sign of forced entry on the front door of the house, but then another flat could have buzzed someone in. There is nobody in the common parts of the house now. I’ll check the other flats to see if they have a guest who rang your bell by mistake.’

Kate double-locked the door behind him. Her phone rang while he was out. Watts.

‘We’re on our way,’ he said.

Gilchrist was kicking herself for persuading the others to go to Connolly’s place. It hadn’t done any good. Hadn’t even made her feel better – which, if she were honest, had been the point of it. She realized she needed to wait for what Gary Parker was going to say, wait for more on Little Stevie, maybe talk to Philippa Franks. She sensed from what Connolly had said that the investigation was going to be shelved.

She watched the road ahead and cursed herself until Tingley started talking about his conversation with Hart.

‘Hart was a student here. Drunken encounter with a married woman on a hen night – this was back in the day when you did a pub crawl in your own town, not in Prague or Budapest or the south of France. Thinks no more about it. Does his degree, goes off, eventually settles back down here, gets in the papers a bit once he’s involved in local politics.

‘This woman gets in touch with him out of the blue about their son. She’s a divorcee now; life hasn’t been kind to her.’

‘She blackmails him?’ Watts said.

‘I think you mean she asks for the financial support to which she’s entitled,’ Gilchrist said.

‘Hart goes down the DNA route,’ Tingley said, ignoring them both. ‘Quietly, because he’s married with family.’

‘Then he coughs up?’ Watts says.

‘To be fair, it doesn’t sound like this woman is trying to screw him – financially, I mean – but Gary as a teenager is a handful so she has a lot on her plate. When Gary is a bit older, she asks Hart to pay for the rent on a flat for him. Hart agrees.’

‘Is that when Gary figures out who his father is?’ Gilchrist said.

‘Not immediately,’ Tingley said. ‘But, yes, the flat is in the name of one of Hart’s companies, and at some unspecified point Gary figures it out.’

‘He blackmails Winston Hart?’ Watts says.

‘Apparently not.’

Gilchrist pondered for a moment.

‘So, actually, this doesn’t take us anywhere. Gary Parker isn’t suggesting that Winston Hart had anything to do with the Milldean thing, is he?’

‘You tell us,’ Watts said, glancing towards her. ‘You’re the one who’s spoken to Gary Parker.’

‘I’m now wondering if his mention of his father and his claiming knowledge of the massacre are actually linked, as I had assumed,’ she said glumly.

‘So long as he can tell us about the massacre, we don’t necessarily need the bigger picture straight away,’ Tingley said.

‘I do if Hart was involved in setting me up.’

‘Jesus, Bob, will you forget that conspiracy stuff.’

Watts shot a look at Tingley. Tingley shot it back.

‘I pushed Hart about what might have been going on behind the massacre. He told me that he had a call from your friend Simpson the night before the meeting at which you resigned. But it was just to tell him about the package Hart could offer if you agreed to resign and that Simpson would phone during the meeting.’

‘Did he know William before then?’ Watts asked.

‘That didn’t come up.’

Gilchrist was thinking about the man who had threatened Kate. It couldn’t be to do with the Trunk Murders. It had to be linked to something in the present – but was it necessarily the Milldean massacre?

‘He was just pushing you to resign, wasn’t he?’ Gilchrist said. ‘You don’t suspect him of anything else, surely?’

Watts didn’t answer. Instead, he put his foot on the accelerator.

Heading back to Brighton, I was sticking pretty much to the outside lane, going too fast as usual. Gilchrist was sitting beside me, Tingley behind her. I’d slow to get past a cluster of cars then watch in my rear-view mirror as their headlights faded. Occasionally, I know, I tailgated when drivers were slow to move into the middle lane.

Men, once they had grudgingly given way, immediately accelerated in the middle lane to make it difficult for me to overtake. Once I’d overtaken, they’d slow to the speed they actually wanted to be doing.

I was thinking about William Simpson. I’d assumed he was the messenger from a government that wanted me to resign, but perhaps he was the one pushing for me to go for his own reasons. I was also trying to figure out how this threat to his daughter, Kate, fitted into the story.

‘Is this police driving?’ Tingley said.

‘It’s the driving of a man used to having a chauffeur,’ Gilchrist said.

‘There’s a kind of method in it,’ I said.

‘Which is?’ Tingley said.

‘We’re being followed.’

There was this one car. I’d been aware of it for some time. I assumed it was a male driver I’d passed who’d booted up to show he had a penis too. Except he was keeping back maybe half a mile and he was keeping the same pace as me.

Didn’t waiver.

I’d lose sight of him on long looping bends, but once we hit a straight there he’d be, maintaining a constant pace, keeping the same distance behind.

I drove faster. This car did too. I drove slower. It came nearer then stayed in place.

We hit a few hundred yards of overhead lights.

‘The dark Rover?’ Tingley said. I nodded. ‘You’re thinking he’s armed?’

‘Maybe,’ I said. ‘Are you?’

In the rear-view mirror I saw him shake his head.

‘I’m a police officer, for God’s sake,’ Gilchrist said. ‘We don’t need to run away.’

‘I suspect whoever this is doesn’t respect the law,’ Tingley said.

‘It may be my paranoia,’ I said.

The logical part of me was thinking: why the hell should they be following us? What benefit can they gain? They must know we’re going back to Brighton. But I was also conscious of Kate being threatened, of Gilchrist’s flat being firebombed.

Tingley was watching out of the back window.

‘No, he’s following and he wants us to know he’s following.’

‘Can you get his registration?’ I said.

‘It’s masked.’

‘Naturally.’

‘It always happens in badly scripted films,’ Gilchrist said. ‘There’s never a good reason for following someone except to inject a bit of false excitement into the story.’

‘I think in this case it’s intended to intimidate,’ Tingley said.

‘But who is it?’ Gilchrist said.

‘That’s the interesting question,’ I said. ‘Shall I try to draw them in?’

‘How?’ Tingley said.

‘I haven’t the faintest idea.’

The road narrowed to two lanes just after the signs for Burgess Hill. A car had pulled out in front of the car that was tagging us. I went into a couple of sharp bends faster than I should have. I accelerated up the hill on the other side of the last bend.

There was a turn-off at the top of the hill where the road again went into a couple of – more gentle – curves. If I could take the turn off before he came out of the last of the bends, our pursuer would, I hoped, think I was still on the A23 into Brighton. He would carry on and I could come back on to the road behind him.

I came off OK, went across a short bridge and took the slip-road back on to the Brighton road. I stopped on the slip-road about twenty yards short of the A23 and switched off my lights.

‘Clever boy,’ Tingley murmured.

The Rover went barrelling by a few moments later. I waited until it had gone round the next bend then pulled back on to the A23.

‘Headlights on or off?’ Tingley said.

‘On, I think – we’re going to hit overhead lights soon anyway so we can’t really hide. I’m just hoping he won’t notice us.’

It took a couple of miles to get within sight of the Rover. It had slowed, presumably because its occupants thought we’d come off the road and given them the slip. We came into the lighted area near Pyecombe service station and I dropped back. It would go dark again for the last couple of miles before hitting the outskirts of Brighton.

‘The rear registration is masked too,’ Tingley noted.

We were about a quarter of a mile behind the Rover so lost it through the next couple of bends. When we came on to the long, straight stretch just outside Brighton, I drew nearer.

‘You’re going to have to close up for the roundabout,’ Tingley said. ‘He has three options there.’

‘I know it,’ I said. This was the tricky bit – not losing them without them noticing us.

I drew to within two hundred yards of them. I’d been hoping for more traffic so there could be cars in between us. With luck he would only be aware of our headlights when the overhead lights resumed at the roundabout.

The Rover slid left into the lanes that went on to the road to Hove and Worthing. I stayed in a Brighton lane for the time being. I saw lights on full beam close in behind me, then a big four-by-four overtook me on the inside lane, heading for Hove and Worthing.

I eased in behind the four-by-four. It hid me from the Rover but it also, I realized too late, hid the Rover from me. Just when I was fully committed to taking the Worthing road, I saw that the Rover had moved back on to the Brighton road and was heading for the roundabout.

‘Shit,’ I said. ‘Watch where he’s going.’

Tingley and Gilchrist were both straining to see as my lane took me round a tight sweep of bend.

‘Couldn’t see,’ Tingley said.

‘Nor me,’ Gilchrist added.

At the small roundabout ahead I swept back on to the loop that would take me down to the main roundabout. I would have two choices there.

‘What do you think?’

‘Head straight into Brighton,’ Gilchrist said and Tingley grunted agreement. I took the left into Brighton but couldn’t see the Rover on the long road ahead of us.

‘Let’s get to Kemp Town,’ Tingley said.

Kate was alone when Watts, Tingley and Gilchrist arrived at her flat. Reg Williamson had left about half an hour earlier. Kate had liked him. She had been comforted by his shabby presence.

‘Detective Sergeant Williamson told me about your flat,’ Kate said to Gilchrist as she handed out coffees. ‘I’ve a spare room here if you’d like to stay.’

‘That might not be a bad idea, in the circumstances,’ Watts said.

‘If you’re sure?’ Gilchrist said.

‘It would be great,’ Kate said. ‘Theoretically, it’s my parents’ room but they never stay here. I’ll dig out the spare keys and show you the magic that makes the lock work later.’

‘OK, well, I’m going to go,’ Watts said. ‘Give you a lift, Jimmy?’

‘What’s the plan for tomorrow?’ Kate said. ‘I’m going to go up to the National Archive to look at police files for the Trunk Murder.’

She sensed that nobody else was particularly interested in the cold case just at the moment. To be honest, she wasn’t either but she felt she needed to persevere. And she was thinking that when in London she might call in on her father.

‘I’m getting back to Hathaway, see if he has anything for us,’ Tingley said.

‘I’m on shift but I’m going to see if I have anything of my flat left,’ Gilchrist said. ‘And I’m going to talk to Philippa Franks.’

Only when Watts and Jimmy had left did Kate realize that Watts hadn’t said anything about his own plans.