City of Dreadful Night

SIXTEEN

G ilchrist was still waiting for word of a potential deal with Gary Parker. He had been interviewed again twice in her absence but had refused to say anything more until he got his deal. Somebody was stalling – maybe somebody was putting pressure on Acting Chief Constable Sheena Hewitt.

Gilchrist wondered if Winston Hart at the Police Authority was also putting pressure on Hewitt to make the deal for his son. But maybe he was just worrying about the scandal when the press found out about his connection to a sick killer.

She sat at her desk looking out of the window at the rain sheeting down. It was only 6.30 a.m. and she was waiting until a more civilized time to phone Philippa Franks to arrange to meet. She wouldn’t be put off this time.

She’d come into work via her flat. She’d stood on the pavement and looked at the boarded-up windows. She’d been renting so had no emotional attachment to the place but she was pissed off about her belongings. There wasn’t much there of personal significance. She was pissed off because she hated shopping and was going to have to hit the high street today to get some clothes.

Kate had offered to lend her anything she needed, but Gilchrist couldn’t see herself getting into Kate’s clothes.

Now, sipping at her too-hot coffee, she thought about the man who had been shot in the kitchen. She could believe that there was nothing sinister about his death, that a sniper had simply reacted too quickly, perhaps because he thought the object in the man’s hand was a gun. But who was he?

Could he have been the man who had actually been watching the house? Gilchrist had assumed that person had been a policeman, but perhaps the watcher was Edward’s snitch. But why was he inside the house? So he could be clear where everybody was? Was he in direct touch with Macklin, the gold commander, just before the raid, or was he in contact with Foster, the silver commander actually in charge of the operation? Were either men in on it or were they being fed false information?

So many questions. Still too few answers.

She’d been patient enough. She phoned Philippa Franks just before seven a.m.

Kate took an early train up to Victoria then the District Line to Kew. It seemed to take forever. She dozed on the first and yawned on the second. At Kew she walked down a quiet street of Victorian terraced houses to the National Archives. The building was on a kind of shopping estate so first she nipped into M amp;S on the site to buy a healthy lunch. She also bought some underwear for herself and guessed at Sarah’s size to get some knickers for her. Bras were a little more complicated.

In the archives she called up her files then went outside to sit on one of the benches by the lake. She ate her sandwich watching the ducks dipping for food. She looked up at the blue sky and the plump white clouds. It was so peaceful, so ordered.

She sighed and looked at her notes. There were only two files she hadn’t already seen. They referred to a Director of Public Prosecution’s proposed action against a policeman for leaking information to the press about the Brighton Trunk Murder. This, Kate felt sure, was her anonymous narrator.

She was wrong. When she went back in and got settled with the files she saw that the first DPP file was about a man called Bowden, a policeman for twenty-seven years, head of Hove CID for thirteen years.

He’d established a relationship with a freelance journalist called Lindon Laing. Kate knew that name from the memoir. Under duress, Laing told the Brighton Chief Constable ‘Hutch’ Hutchinson that Bowden had already leaked a story to him some years earlier about somebody called Major Bailey, so Laing thought he’d ask him about the Trunk Murder. When Laing was asked if anyone else close to the investigation had been feeding him stories, he said no.

Kate paused for a moment. So when the anonymous memoirist had been summoned to Hutchinson’s office after the Chief Constable’s lecture about leaks, it might not have been about his relationship with Laing. What, then?

She read on. Laing said he had asked Bowden about the Trunk Murder on the afternoon of 30th October 1934 – the day the CID man was retiring from the police force. Unfortunately for Bowden, he was still on his final shift when that night’s Evening News came out. Laing’s story was splashed on the front page with the headline, ‘I know the man’. Laing had quoted Bowden saying he knew who the killer was.

Bowden insisted he hadn’t told Laing anything he shouldn’t have done, that he had in fact told him he didn’t think they’d ever find the culprit.

Kate looked at another document, an opinion from a barrister, dated 12th November, about whether Bowden could be prosecuted for public mischief. According to this, Bowden had been ‘trying to curry favour with the newspaper because they had agreed to buy his memoirs after his retirement’.

Another document suggested that the man Bowden had referred to was a suspect called William Augustus Offord of 152 Fortess Road, Kentish Town. He came under suspicion very early because his handwriting was similar to that on the paper ‘and he had known immoral associations with a number of young women’.

This was clearly hokum. Not the existence of Offord – she was sure he was real enough. But she knew from her other reading that the words on the paper had not been written by the killer.

The second file was much thinner, containing only a few sheets of flimsy paper. The first sheet was a memo dated April 1935. A policeman in Reigate sent it to Pelling, Brighton’s head of CID, with a letter from an unemployed nurse attached. She was asking the police to locate the present whereabouts of a friend of hers. This friend had worked as a cook and housekeeper for a doctor in Hove who had also employed the nurse.

The nurse claimed that her friend had disappeared and was pretty much suggesting that the doctor might have done away with her. Kate guessed that the nurse had a grudge against the doctor – she assumed she was unemployed because he had fired her. But his name drew her attention. Dr Edward Seys Massiah of 8 Brunswick Square, Hove.

Dr Massiah. Kate didn’t realize she was tapping her pencil on the desk until a man nearby cleared his throat. She put the pencil down. Dr Massiah. She was remembering the start of the memoir. The writer saying that he had taken his girlfriend, Frenchy, to a doctor in Hove. Kate realized she’d been holding her breath and slowly exhaled. The writer had referred to the doctor as Dr M.

‘Hello, Lizzy.’

Lizzy Simpson, William’s wife and Kate’s mother, looked at me in a calculating way. I’d always found her chilly. When I had status I always felt she simply tolerated me. I believed she was actually a sociopath, unable to empathize with other humans, so that in order to fit in she forever had to conjure up the simulacra of emotions she didn’t know how to feel.

I could see she was trying to figure out how she was supposed to be with me. She’d known me a long time. We were, by nature of my friendship with her husband, supposedly close. But I was no longer high status, no longer potentially useful. Rather the reverse.

I wondered if her husband had briefed her against me. I smiled as the word ‘briefed’ popping into my head in relation to a husband talking to a wife. In their case, I’m sure that was exactly how they conducted business.

She mistook my smile and pasted one on her own face for just an instant. Her sourness had affected her undoubted beauty. Her mouth turned down at the edges, her skin was taut against her high cheekbones. Her pursuit of thinness had made her gaunt. The cords of her neck were hawsers, her legs were sticks.

I was two steps down from her so our eyes were at the same level.

‘Bob. How nice. Is William expecting you?’

‘I doubt it.’

She turned, throwing over her shoulder:

‘I’ll tell him you’re here.’

‘I assume I don’t need to wait on the doorstep.’

She didn’t reply.

I went into the wide hallway. I hadn’t been in this house for several years but nothing seemed to have changed. Period prints in heavy frames on the walls, stripped pine floor and staircase, waxed not varnished, of course. Opulent flowers on a table – lilies and some exotic succulents.

I went into the sitting room to my left. Marble fireplace with a log fire laid but not lit. Two deep sofas with scatter cushions in expensive fabrics laid across them. Two floor-to-ceiling windows looking over the square.

Some of their art was on the walls. Lizzy liked BritArt. They had a small, early Damian Hirst just inside the door. There was a collage made of elephant dung and discarded snake skins by an artist whose name I had forgotten.

I walked to the window. How could someone who was essentially a public relations guy afford to live in one of these multimillion-pound Holland Park villas? Had he done a Mandelson and borrowed money from one of the party’s generous friends? Well, that was a question but not one of the ones I intended to ask.

‘He’ll be down in a moment.’

Lizzy’s voice was as tight as her face. She sat on the sofa at the far side of the room, bony knees together.

‘I hear you’ve been seeing a lot of our daughter.’

I sank into the sofa opposite. She pointed at the lapel of my jacket.

‘You’ll never get that pollen off.’ I looked at the brown dust from the lilies I didn’t realize I’d brushed against.

‘We’ve been working together on something.’

‘Her men aren’t normally as old as you.’ Her smile was mocking. ‘Though her women sometimes are.’

I let that go, though I realized I hadn’t given Kate’s sexuality a single thought – why would I?

‘How’s work, Lizzy? Got some interesting projects?’

‘I’m doing a couple of tellies, a few profiles. But I’ve been commissioned to write a novel.’

‘Sex and sleaze in Westminster?’

‘Naturally. Tres discreet, though.’

‘I didn’t think those books were supposed to be discreet.’

‘Well, you know – relatively speaking.’

‘Bob – what a surprise.’

Simpson was standing in the doorway. He didn’t come forward to greet me, I didn’t stand.

Lizzy uncoiled from the sofa.

‘Lovely to see you, Bob.’

Simpson closed the door behind his wife and replaced her on the sofa.

‘I can’t do anything for you, you know,’ he said. ‘You made your own bed.’

‘Other people tucked me in.’

Simpson’s mouth twitched in slight acknowledgement of a smile. I hadn’t really noticed until now how sinister he looked. That Prince of Darkness tag that used to be applied to spin doctors certainly applied to the way he looked now. His hair had gone grey but his eyebrows and goatee beard were black. His mouth was an ungenerous slash.

I thought about how pretty and warm his daughter was. How come?

‘You’ve been seeing a lot of my daughter,’ he said, reading my thoughts.

‘So I gather. You know she’s been threatened because of you.’

‘What?’

‘You know. Don’t pretend you don’t. What are you into? Is it linked to the Milldean mess?’

Simpson looked at me, then out of the window. He pouted a little.

‘It’s none of your business, Bob. Let me just say that it was a misunderstanding.’

‘ Was? Does that mean you’ve got it sorted.’

Simpson always had a poker face. Like most politicos, you could never tell what he was really thinking. But I thought I saw something in his eyes.

‘She’s still in danger, isn’t she?’

‘Absolutely not,’ he said.

‘But it’s not sorted.’

‘Just a little local difficulty, Bob, that’s all.’

‘Tell me about Little Stevie.’

‘Who’s Little Stevie?’ he said, looking genuinely puzzled.

‘One of the victims. The one who was shot sitting on the loo.’

‘Can’t help you there. Why would you think I’d know?’

‘He was a rent boy of some sort.’

‘I repeat my question.’

‘Was it blackmail? Are you still being blackmailed – did your account just get passed on to somebody else when Little Stevie was killed?’

‘Blackmailed about what?’ Simpson uncrossed his legs and leant forward. ‘Do you mean about my sexuality? You know I swing both ways – is that what you’re referring to?’

Although we’d never talked about it, I did know. There was an occasion years ago when Simpson and I had gone one lunchtime to hear some free jazz in the ICA.

It had been too free, even for me, but it was summer and hot and the wine had flowed freely. When the wine ran out, we’d left together and as we were walking across St James’s Park in the heat of the afternoon he said: ‘This is the kind of day to have a cool shower then spend the rest of the afternoon in bed with somebody.’

I laughed and nodded my head.

‘Shall we?’ he said.

I laughed again and gestured to the people sitting on the grass.

‘Who did you have in mind?’

He looked at me for a moment.

‘I was thinking you and me.’

It hung there as we threaded our way between the sunbathers. I remember distinctly wondering what the fuck I could say to that. I liked the guy but I wasn’t interested in sex with him. As best I recall, I pretended that we were just joking.

‘Another time, gorgeous,’ I probably said.

‘You’re on,’ he definitely said.

It was never referred to again.

Simpson laughed now without warmth.

‘I still remember your face as you attempted to fend me off without hurting my feelings. Priceless.’

‘I think you knew Little Stevie,’ I said

He gestured with his hands.

‘Prove it.’ He leant forward again. ‘Bob, let me give you some advice. Forget this obsession about the massacre. Get what remains of your life back together. Do your little radio spot about the Trunk Murders-’

‘You’re offering me career advice?’

I was pushing down the anger. I hated his imperturbability, hated the fact he’d been part of the train wreck of my recent life. My wife may have been right – I was looking for someone to blame because I wasn’t willing to take the responsibility myself. Maybe so, but I felt justified in focusing on my former friend. My anger seethed because I couldn’t see how to get him.

‘Your daughter is a good girl.’

‘Yes. Sometimes the apple falls far from the tree. She’s tediously good. Does she ever have fun?’

‘Lizzy suggested she was bisexual too.’

‘There’s a lot of it about. Family tradition. My father swung both ways. He liked the theatricals. A lot of married actors liked to go backstage, so to speak. He had flings with Olivier and Michael Redgrave, to hear him tell it. Maybe with your father too – who knows?’

‘Does Lizzy know? That you’re bisexual? Would it upset the apple cart at home if it came out?’

He snorted.

‘You obviously haven’t met her friend Erica.’ He sighed. ‘Bob, I have no idea why you’ve come today. I’m truly sorry your career has gone down the pan. I can understand your lashing out. But lashing out at me will achieve nothing but more grief.’

‘So far as that goes, I know you’re somehow involved. Maybe you were actually the one pushing for me to be fired. What I don’t understand is that I thought we were friends. Why screw me over?’

‘Ah, yes – friendship. Forged in youth, tempered in battle and all that. But don’t you think we were pushed together by circumstances? Our fathers. Do you even know how our fathers met?’

I shook my head.

‘In Brighton in the thirties. They were in the police force together.’

‘I know that,’ I said.

‘Ask your father about it.’

I didn’t respond. He sighed.

‘You and me – we never really had much in common, except the odd girlfriend. Politics and police – they don’t mix well, you know.’

He got up in one fluid motion from the sofa.

‘Bob. I saw you as a courtesy. There’s nothing here for you. If you try to embroil me in this, I say only one thing. Hunker down.’

I walked over to him. We were of a height but I was broader. I stood closer to him than he liked. I wanted to hit him, wanted to pummel him back into his soft sofa. He saw it in my eyes and stepped back. He didn’t take his eyes off me, though.

‘You’re out of your depth, Bob. Let it go. Accept your fate.’

I moved past him, opened the door and went out into the hall. As I swung open the front door, I called back:

‘Never.’

Which was a reasonable parting line, except that I hadn’t a clue what I could do to change things.

Tingley pressed the doorbell and heard it ring somewhere in the back of the house. He looked across at the Union Jack fluttering on top of the tall flagpole stuck in the middle of the impeccable front lawn. He shook his head. Tongdean Drive.

A small, neat man opened the door and stepped aside to allow Tingley to enter. Neither man said anything. Another, bigger man was waiting in the wide hallway to lead Tingley through to the back of the house.

Hathaway was sitting in a faux-Victorian conservatory which looked out over a long stretch of garden, mostly given over to another neat lawn. Tingley presumed that the building at the bottom of the garden housed a swimming pool.

The gangster, in cashmere pullover and neatly pressed blue slacks, didn’t rise but gestured to a seat opposite him. Tingley sat, aware that the man who’d led him here was standing just behind him.

There was a sports programme playing on a massive TV screen. Hathaway pressed the remote and turned to Tingley.

‘So have you figured out what’s in it for me, Mr Tingley?’

Tingley shrugged.

‘My eternal gratitude.’

Hathaway leant forward and smiled a brilliant smile.

‘Now that’s worth something if, as I’m assuming, your gratitude is a liquid currency?’

Tingley shook his head.

‘It doesn’t change into anything more concrete, if that’s what you mean.’

‘Shame – that’s exactly what I mean.’ Hathaway eased back into his seat. ‘Then I don’t see exactly how I can help you.’

‘You’ve checked my references.’

‘But you don’t want a job.’ Hathaway grinned again. ‘Do you?’

‘You know what I mean.’

‘I know that – as best I can gather – you have been a very bad boy on your government’s behalf. Very bad. Tsk, tsk. I know that your friends and my friends in the shadow world are about equal. I don’t know that I can tell you anything you don’t already know.’

Tingley looked up and behind at the man standing guard over him.

‘Do you think I could have a glass of water?’

The man looked at Hathaway.

‘Yeah, I’ll have a beer and a bowl of chips – tell the cook.’ He looked at Tingley. ‘Beer better?’

Tingley shook his head.

‘Next time,’ he said.

Hathaway gestured at the man’s retreating back.

‘He wasn’t a threat to you, you know. Or protection for me. Knowing what I know about you, if you came here to take me out, there’d be little he or I could do about it.’ Hathaway patted his chest. ‘I don’t carry a weapon. I’m no longer into chop suey or any of that Bruce Lee shit.’

‘Nor I,’ Tingley said quietly.

‘What is your martial art of choice? Just out of interest. That Brazilian thing? I hear the Hindi system is pretty effective.’

Tingley shook his head.

‘It’s an Israeli thing – a street-fighting thing.’

Hathaway smiled with his perfect teeth again.

‘The Jews have a mano a mano self-defence system?’ He laughed coarsely. ‘I assume it’s a post-World War Two thing. Back then it was grovelling and pleading, wasn’t it?’

Tingley simply looked at him. Hathaway continued to chuckle then said:

‘Tingley, I play consequences. You’re a bright guy, you’ve figured that out. That’s why I know I can send my boy out of the room and I’m going to be safe from you, despite what you did to Cuthbert – who is straining at the leash to do terrible things to you, might I note.’

‘Consequences?’

Hathaway pointed a finger at Tingley. ‘You harm me and you lose – in ways too horrendous to describe on such a sunny day – every single person related to you or close to you. Every person remotely connected to you. Every person who remotely knows you. Every person you passed in the street today.’

‘The Colombian way,’ Tingley said.

Hathaway shrugged.

‘Them and others. Colombian drug-dealers, Russian mafia, Albanian headbangers, ex-IRA psychopaths, Serb war criminals turned villains – a bloody United Nations of sick crooks have transformed the nature of violence in the UK. We home-grown boys have got to big up to keep up.’ He shrugged again. ‘Nature of the beast. Capitalism, that is. The unacceptable face of.’

Hathaway’s man returned with a tray and handed Tingley a glass of water. As Tingley took a long drink, the man put a pint glass of beer, a bowl of chips and salt and pepper on the table. Tingley drained his glass and handed it back.

‘Thanks.’

Hathaway pushed the bowl of chips towards him. Tingley shook his head. Hathaway put the salt and pepper in the ashtray and pushed them to the other side of the table.

‘You have a problem with condiments?’ Tingley said.

‘Only the word.’ A smile at the corners of Hathaway’s mouth didn’t make it any further. ‘I’m a recovering saltaholic. Don’t ever bring crisps into my presence.’

Tingley waited as Hathaway tucked in.

‘OK, I’m going to give you something,’ Hathaway said through a mouthful of chips. ‘Just so you’ll go away. You poking about is potentially bad for business. There’s a delicate balance and I don’t want you upsetting it.’ He reached for his glass of beer. ‘Never got this modern thing about drinking from the bottle. Disgusting habit. Got it from the Aussies, who are, by and large, a disgusting people. I happen to have it on good authority they shag kangaroos.’

‘Wouldn’t the tail get in the way? Even supposing they could catch up with one?’

Hathaway’s eyes glinted.

‘Maybe it’s koala bears. My point remains the same.’

‘Only the country is different,’ Tingley said. ‘Could you get to the point? I’m not getting any younger.’

Hathaway’s smile was at half-wattage.

‘There’s a close relationship – you might call it a synergy, if you were so inclined – between some local politicians, some national politicians, local criminal entrepreneurs such as myself, elements of Her Majesty’s constabulary and those government employees who live in the shadow world.’

‘I gathered that much.’

‘That terrible business at Milldean was a settling of certain scores and the removal of a threat. Threats plural, to be precise.’

‘Threats to whom?’

‘That would be telling – because that’s where that delicate balance comes in.’

Tingley made a stop sign with his hand.

‘Are you going to be specific or are we going to go round in circles again?’

‘I can’t be specific -’ Tingley started to get out of his chair – ‘but I know a man who can.’

Tingley sat back, aware the man behind him had moved nearer.

‘Multiple threats,’ Tingley said. ‘That doesn’t scan at all.’

Hathaway shrugged.

‘You have a better theory?

‘I’ve got a question. If what you say is true, who is bumping off all the police?’

Hathaway wagged a finger.

‘That would be telling.’

‘And who threatened William Simpson’s daughter, Kate?’

‘William Simpson. Now there’s a name to conjure with.’

‘Well, show me the bloody rabbit in the hat, then.’

Hathaway took another handful of chips.

‘I don’t believe you one little bit,’ Tingley said.

Hathaway chewed. He had strong jaws and ate quickly.

‘Look,’ he said. ‘I think you need to talk to a government department I know you’re familiar with. They’ll have the skinny.’ Hathaway wiped his mouth with his napkin. ‘I have a number you should call.’

Anna opened the door to my father’s house. She was slim and petite with badly bleached blonde hair and a pale face. There were dark rings under her eyes but she smiled cheerfully when she saw me and led me upstairs into the sitting room. He was by his broad bay window, feet up on a stool, half-hidden by the wings of his big chair.

My father didn’t get up as I walked over but he watched me, his head tilted, and gave a little smile. He indicated the wingback chair opposite his.

‘Is Anna getting you coffee?’

I nodded.

‘You’re becoming a regular visitor.’

I sat and got straight to it.

‘We’re investigating the Brighton Trunk Murder,’ I said.

‘Gives you something to do, I suppose,’ my father said. He dabbed his mouth with a white handkerchief. I looked at the liver spots on the big hand, the thick purple veins, the fingers bent to the side by arthritis.

‘Who was she, Dad?’

‘A tart. Violette somebody. Man who did it got off, God knows how. Mancini also known as Notyre. Went round the music halls after he got off doing a show where he sawed a woman in half. Very bad taste. Used to brag to people how he’d done it and got off. Publicly admitted it later – thirty years after – in the press.’

‘Not that murder,’ I said. ‘The first one. The one the police never solved.’

‘That lass. Found her legs in London, rest of her in Brighton. With them two murders Brighton got a new nickname: the queen of slaughtering places.’

‘That’s right. You were a policeman then, weren’t you? Alongside William Simpson’s dad.’

My father had scarcely talked about that phase of his life. I didn’t know until I was well into my twenties that he’d even been a policeman.

He turned his head to me awkwardly. It seemed like it was on a stalk, his body still facing forward. Looking both robust – the shoulders and the paunch – and puny – the bony wrists and the scrawny neck.

‘A bogie, aye. That’s a part of my past I prefer not to recall. Didn’t want that life but in those days you did what jobs you could get. The police force is just like any organization. They use you then they cast you off.’ He looked at me. ‘You know that now.’

‘Why did you leave?’

‘No advancement if you weren’t from the officer class. Lot of tedium, boredom.’

‘I thought you were forced to resign.’

He looked straight ahead. He made an odd clicking noise in the back of his throat.

‘It were thought best.’ He nodded, forming extra chins with loose folds of skin around his jowls. ‘Good thing I did. Best thing I did. It got me started writing, introduced me to a new way of life.’

‘You did well.’

‘I did well by you and your mother. Made your life possible.’

‘Why did you resign?’

‘Tuppeny ’apenny stuff. Nowt worth bothering about.’

‘You were under suspicion for the Trunk Murder?’

‘Don’t be daft. Why would you think that?’

‘Mum said you had an eye for the ladies.’

‘Seems you inherited it.’

My dad had a fierce stare and when I was younger it had freaked me out. Even these days I usually couldn’t hold it. However, my dad looked down first, at his clasped hands, mottled with age.

‘You know the secret of getting women?’ he finally said.

‘Good looks, money and power?’

‘I didn’t have any of those things. No, what you look for is someone good looking who’s obviously insecure. She’ll probably have a certain way of walking, she’ll touch herself on the hips or sometimes on her breasts. She’s both sensual and insecure. Sow that wind and you’ll reap a whirlwind right enough.’

‘Dad, I’m not sure this is a proper conversation between father and son.’

‘But you think accusing your dad of murder is proper?’

‘I was just trying to find out. Secrets and lies, Dad – they get in the way of proper relationships.’

‘I can imagine murder would too. Don’t pontificate at me, Bobby. The genre I write in is predicated on secrets and lies. Usually family ones. But then at the end the secrets are revealed, the lies exposed.’

Anna came in with my coffee. My father watched her leave the room then turned back to me.

‘Graham Greene was a suspect, you know.’

‘Graham Greene was suspected of the Trunk Murder?’

‘One of dozens, but yes. One of his fancy women shopped him.’ He saw my quizzical look. ‘He used to bring them down to Brighton at the weekend. Stayed at the Grand. That’s when the razor gangs were around on the prom and up at the racecourse.’

‘ Brighton Rock?’

‘Yes, though that didn’t come out for a few years – just before the war. I knew a maid who worked at the Grand. Told me the disgusting state he and his girlfriend of the moment left the sheets in.’ He looked at me again. ‘Apparently the famous writer was a back-door johnny. Can be a messy business.’

I felt squeamish hearing my dad talk about such things. I pushed away the thought of his sex life with my mother.

‘How did that make him a suspect?’

‘He was having nightmares about taking taxi rides with a woman’s body in a trunk. A cast-off lover telephoned us.’

‘Did you interview him?’

‘No – too delicate a task for a junior. I was on guard in the interview room, though.’

I nodded.

‘That’s the first time you met him. Did you talk about the case when you met him later?’

‘I told him at the Foyle’s lunch I’d been a policeman in Brighton in the thirties and he brought it up.’

‘What did he say?’

‘Said he’d been questioned then asked me the same thing you keep asking me – did we know who did it?’

‘And did you reply to him or were you as enigmatic as you are with me?’

My father pursed his lips but said nothing. I leant over and put my hand over his. It was impulsive but I also felt embarrassed. There had been little physical affection, or indeed contact, between the two of us over the years. My father looked down at my hand – big, long-fingered – covering his own hand. A smile twitched at the corners of his mouth.

‘Tell me, Dad, please.’

My father reached over with his other hand and patted mine on top of his.

‘I don’t think you really believe I’ve murdered anyone. So what did your mum tell you?’

‘I told you,’ I said, impatiently, defensively. ‘She didn’t. She hasn’t poisoned me against you, Dad.’ I ducked my head. ‘You did that.’

I sighed.

‘Tell me about your friendship with William Simpson’s father.’

My father shrugged.

‘We met in Brighton, on the force. He was more ambitious than me. Keen to get on – a high-flyer for those days. Like yourself. We got on well enough.’

‘Did you both investigate the Trunk Murders?’

‘That were over half a century ago, lad. How do you expect me to remember?’

‘You remembered Graham Greene.’

‘We were pals, I remember that. Pally enough that he told me once he played for both teams. Brighton opened my eyes to a lot of things, I can tell you that.’ He scratched his chin. ‘Why are you asking about him? You should be sorting out the mess that got you the sack, not bothering about some decades-old case nobody gives a toss about.’

I left some ten minutes later. I couldn’t figure out how to take the conversation any further. I remember saying to him once:

‘There’s stuff we never talk about.’

He’d shut that approach right down.

‘Too much talking these days,’ he’d said quickly. His face cracked into a kind of grimacing smile. ‘Too much sharing.’

I stepped out of his house on to the busy road and waited for a break in the traffic to cross to the river bank. I took a walk along the towpath. There were youngsters sculling on the river. Their coaches shouted instructions from little motorboats alongside them, the engines echoing across the water. I sat on a bench for ten minutes watching a long, grey heron, motionless on the thin stalks of its legs, in the shallows near the bank.

Dad had always been tough. At the age of seventy he’d still been stronger than me. Still arm-wrestled. All that macho stuff.

‘You joined the army to please your dad,’ Molly used to say. Bitterly.

True. I didn’t want to become him, but when I was growing up I wanted his respect. It was hard won. If ever I got it.

I got the train at Barnes Bridge and changed at Clapham Junction for the Brighton train. As I walked across the echoing, roofed footbridge at Clapham, I pondered the route the killer might have taken if he’d come from London. And wondered, just for a moment, whether my father might know who the killer was.