City of Dreadful Night

NINETEEN

K ate unbolted the door and took the chain off to let Gilchrist in.

‘Anything you can tell me?’ she said lightly as Gilchrist came through the door.

Gilchrist towered over her.

‘God you make me feel so big,’ she said, laughing. Then she turned solemn. ‘How close are you to your father?’

‘Isn’t that obvious?’ Kate said.

Gilchrist chewed her lip for a moment.

‘So how are you feeling about all this?’

‘I don’t understand it, to tell you the truth.’

‘Bob wants to nail him.’

Kate turned away.

‘That’s fine with me,’ she said. But Gilchrist didn’t believe her.

I went to see my father before I went to Simpson. Although I wasn’t as het up as Kate about the Trunk Murder, it almost seemed like family business. It wasn’t about the victim – in face of all the millions of other atrocities in the world, I couldn’t really get too worked up about that – but it was family.

Anna let me in.

‘Back again,’ my father said.

‘There’s a diary among the archive papers. Well, half of one.’

‘And you’re trying to figure out who wrote it?’

‘I’m pretty sure you wrote it.’

He didn’t say anything.

‘We think it might point in the direction of the murderer.’

‘You think? You mean you don’t know?’

‘The part of the diary we have doesn’t say anything incriminating in so many words-’

‘Not much use without the rest of it, eh?’

His smile was vulpine.

‘Why are you taunting me?’ I said.

‘I’m not, Bobby. It just amuses me to see my son, the ex-Chief Constable, doing some proper police-work for the first time in his high-flying career.’

He tilted his head.

‘But how do you propose to get the rest of this diary? Behind a cabinet? Misfiled somewhere? Didn’t you tell me that when you were having the station redecorated you found a sealed-up room in the cellar with a load of files in it? Are you hoping to do the same trick twice?’

Finding the sealed-up room was true. Material in there included all the evidence boxes connected to the unsolved murder of a schoolboy in the sixties.

‘I don’t think we can do that twice, no. Did you write the diary?’

He grimaced. I think he was trying for a smile.

‘I remember writing something. We had a lot of spare time stuck in this tiny room in the Royal Pavilion.’

‘I thought the investigation was inundated with stuff. You couldn’t keep up.’

‘Aye, well, most of it was rubbish.’

‘Even so,’ I said.

‘Even so – there’s always an even so.’

He looked at me for a long moment.

‘Do you want to know who did it? Who the Trunk Murderer was?’

I laughed – this was unexpected.

‘Well, yes.’

He grimaced again.

‘I haven’t a bloody clue.’

I shook my head.

‘Dad.’ I bit the bullet. ‘All these women in your diary.’

‘You know I’ve bin a ladies’ man all my life.’

‘Whether they wanted to or not?’

‘I didn’t get many turn me down, I’ll tell you that. And the ones who pretended they didn’t want to – well, there were no blood on the sheets when I were done, so what does that tell you about them?’

‘What about Frenchy?’

‘Frenchy – my God. Couldn’t pronounce her real name then, can’t remember it now. She got on that ferry on the end of the West Pier and floated out of my life.’

‘Where did you meet?’

‘On the prom in Brighton. February 1934. She was over for the day from France. We went to see The Gay Divorcee. Fred Astaire coming to Brighton to get a quickie divorce. Always preferred Gene Kelly myself, but, to be honest, I didn’t see much of the film.’

‘Was it unprotected sex?’

‘Aye, and she fell pregnant. We didn’t know it. She’d come over once a month and we’d get to it. She was fiery. Then in May she comes over and says she’s pregnant.’

‘So you sent her to Dr M, the abortionist.’

‘You found that part of the diary, then. Massiah. He was something. She wanted to keep it, wanted me to marry her. Daft wench. I refused, so finally she came back over fourth of June and I paid for her to have an abortion. Coppers’ rates – still wasn’t cheap, but he was a society abortionist so I reckoned she was in good hands. I phoned after and they said it had gone fine.’

‘So she wasn’t the Trunk Murder victim.’

My dad gave me a surprised look.

‘Dad, you saw the body. Was it her or not?’

He looked out of the window towards the iron bridge.

‘There were hardly any distinguishing features, were there? I mean, what was left of her was just a naked woman. I never gave her body a good look anyway.’

‘But you suspected it might be her? How?’

‘Spilsbury’s report mentioned what he called a pimple under one of her breasts. Frenchy had made a joke of having three nipples for me to suck on. That’s a mole, I said. Suck on it all the same, she said. I’d never met anyone quite like her.’

Again, I tried to mask my discomfort at my father talking about sex.

‘Do you think Massiah botched the abortion and Frenchy was the victim?’

‘I think it’s a possibility.’

‘So why didn’t you at least mention the possibility it might have been Frenchy? It could have changed the focus of the investigation.’

‘Sod ’em. By the time I was wondering whether it was her, they were giving me grief about my little arrangement with the press.’

‘But didn’t you want to see justice served for someone you’d known and been fond of?’

‘Fond of? She were nice enough, but it were just sex. I’ve had more meaningful relationships with my fist, believe me.’

‘What happened to Massiah?’

‘It went nowhere. They were going to put him under observation but Billy Simpson’s dad – ambitious bugger – jumped the gun and went and accused him. Massiah just sat at his desk and wrote a list of names of well-connected people in Sussex and high society he’d had dealings with. Implicitly threatening that he’d name names if he was put on trial. They dropped it.’

‘Then as now,’ I muttered.

Damn – maybe this old case was getting to me more than I realized. The enormity of the thought that my father had known this woman, had had sex with her, had perhaps made her pregnant – and had kept quiet about it.

‘Why did you get fired?’ I said.

‘Who says I was fired?’ he said. He brought his hands together. Separated them again. He grunted.

‘I was leaking stories to the press. That’s all. Inventing them, really. The press were ferocious back then, as now. The press corps wanted stories every day. Needed stories every day. I supplied them.’ He sniffed. ‘The stories weren’t exactly accurate but they gave the press their headlines.’

‘What kind of thing?’

‘I’d just take bits of routine work and make more of them. Claim we were following something up, looking for someone. Sometimes we were, sometimes we weren’t, but none of it really amounted to much.’

‘Meaning?’

‘I did a lot with a man called Lindon Laing – always thought it was a queer’s name but I don’t recall that he was. He was a stringer for the Daily Mail and the Evening News. He paid me good money for a story – at the end of 1934, I think – that I based on something and nothing. I told them we had a clue to the victim’s identity based on the fact her name began with the letter M.’

‘Was that a real lead?’

He was impatient at the interruption.

‘I don’t remember now. I doubt it. It was probably some link to Massiah. Other times I’d say that Captain Hutchinson is anxious to interview someone. That he’d asked all the other police forces in the country for help. Something and nothing. What you have to remember is we were inundated with accusations. Ex-wives trying to set their husbands up. Neighbours trying to set neighbours up. Then there were people who’d gone on holiday and not sent postcards so were presumed murdered. None of this stuff came to anything.’

‘You didn’t know that.’

He ignored me.

‘Tell me about the women, Dad.’

‘I’ve told you. I like women. Always have. And they’ve been kind to me. Always have. Frenchy, now – don’t know what she saw in me but she must have seen something.’

‘What did you threaten them with?’ I said. ‘The ones you didn’t bother to get to know too well?’

He rubbed one hand over the other.

‘Women are pliable, Bobby. You know that. And they want the same as us, they just don’t know how to admit it. I helped them do what they wanted to do.’

I looked down.

‘What did you say? That if they said anything you’d have them up on vice charges? Ruin their reputations?’

‘It was enough to be a policeman. But a couple did complain. Word did get round.’

‘You went to trial?’

‘Nobody would go that far. So they had no grounds for firing me or reprimanding me.’

‘And the Carole Lombard lookalike?’

He looked blank for a moment. Blank and old.

‘I’d forgotten about her. She was quite something. Must have been twice my age. Bonny lass. She was down with some older, rich bloke having a dirty at the Grand. I don’t think he was much cop in bed.’

‘But you were with the French girl-’

‘I met her on the pier and within five minutes we were underneath it.’

‘The French girl?’

‘No, the other one. She said: “I’ve always had a thing about uniforms.” I don’t remember what I said. Next thing, we’re under the pier, she’s stuffing her knickers in my mouth and we’re having a knee-trembler. Wouldn’t even let me get the johnny on. Fine by me – I’ve always hated them bloody things. It were parky too, I can tell you. Then it were “Thank you and goodbye”.’

I chewed my lip, thinking about what Tingley had said about the pathologist Spilsbury being fallible.

When I said goodbye to my father I wasn’t sure I would be seeing him again. As I waited for the overground train to central London, I wondered about him as a rapist. I also wondered about Frenchy as victim. But mostly I was wondering about the older woman he’d been with, the Carole Lombard lookalike. I didn’t think he was a murderer, but was it possible that she was the Trunk Murder victim?

A taxi took me to Millbank and the City Inn just behind the embankment. Tingley was sitting in the spacious foyer beneath a complicated map that was also art.

‘He’s here,’ he said. ‘He has a couple of minders with him.’

I was trying to figure out the map.

‘PR type minders or heavies?’ I said absently.

‘Heavies.’

I nodded and led the way up a spiral staircase to the bar above. It was a vast space with sofas and chairs running to a wall of long windows. Simpson was sitting by the windows, alone on a sofa, a tall glass in front of him. A bulky man was sitting a few yards away with a coffee, and a second, slighter man was on a stool at the bar.

Both watched as Tingley and I walked over to Simpson.

‘Forgive me for not standing,’ Simpson said as we stood on the other side of the coffee table. He looked at Tingley. ‘Don’t believe I know your friend.’

‘Tingley,’ Jimmy said, sitting in the armchair opposite Simpson. I sat in the chair beside him.

‘You’re on the brink of harassing me,’ Simpson said to me. ‘And that could get very nasty for you.’

‘What we know is pretty nasty for you,’ I said.

Tingley shifted his chair to put it at an angle to Simpson’s sofa. It also meant the man at the bar and the man behind Simpson were both in his view. Not that I could imagine for a moment anything kicking off in here.

‘Tingley – ah, yes. Our security services put quite a lot of work your way. You should bear that in mind.’

Tingley smiled, crossed one leg over the other.

‘And that means I know a lot of stuff of a very sensitive nature. You should bear that in mind.’

‘Why did you call this meeting?’ Simpson said, reaching for his glass.

‘To get the truth,’ I said.

‘The truth?’ He laughed. ‘That only exists in bad fiction, doesn’t it?’

‘Why didn’t you come to me for help?’ I said.

‘At what particular stage of your plodding career and my meteoric rise?’

‘At the stage when you were deciding to have a blackmailer killed.’

He stretched his arms out along the back of the sofa but said nothing. We looked at each other. It turned into a staring contest.

‘What is it that you think you’ve got on me?’ he finally said.

‘Didn’t know you were into rough,’ I said.

‘Oh, Robert. Surely you know – a little bit of everything does you good.’

‘But it didn’t work out with Little Stevie.’

‘Little Stevie? Sounds like a little scut. They all try it on.’

‘OK, then. But are you going to explain what happened?’

He slapped the arm of the sofa. A little puff of dust bounced into the air and slowly dispersed.

‘My dear chap – you’ve come to get a confession! How wonderful.’ He crossed his legs revealing bright red socks. ‘But this is not a crime novel and I have absolutely nothing to confess to.’

‘So why have him killed?’

He pouted.

‘Is that what this is about? The death of a rent boy.’

‘What else did you think it was about?’ Tingley said. He wasn’t looking at Simpson, he was looking at the man at the bar, who had his mobile phone to his ear. I saw a curious look cross Simpson’s face. I flashed a look at Tingley.

‘William,’ I said. ‘We know you’re up to your neck with the gangster families who rule Brighton. We know you were being blackmailed by a rent boy who stole your wallet. We know your daughter was threatened because you’re in hock to the crime families. And we know Bosnian Serb gangsters had possession of your blackmailer. Your high-flying government career is well and truly over.’

Simpson looked from me to Tingley and shook his head.

‘Robert, there was a time when I thought you were politically most astute. Of late, I’ve become aware that you’re a plodder. You have no feel for nuance. These scurrilous allegations – what can you possibly do with them? If so much as a hint leaks into Private Eye or a national newspaper, so much shit will rain down on you that you will drown before you can even reach for a hat.’

He gave a nod to the man sitting at the bar.

‘If, however, you decide to do things above board and take me through the courts, I will, of course, have more respect for you.’

He stood.

‘But I will also destroy you and your family.’

That teatime I went to see Molly. She opened the door and when she saw it was me turned away and walked back into the sitting room, leaving me to follow if I chose. I closed the door and followed her into the sitting room.

She was wearing a baggy trouser suit and looked pretty good. Except that she had logs burning on the fire on a sunny summer day. She sat down in her chair but said nothing to me. I sat down in the chair opposite.

‘Thanks again for intervening the other day.’

She shrugged.

‘Do you want a cup of tea?’

Her voice was harsh.

‘How’s it going with the drink?’

‘Grand, just grand.’

‘Look,’ I said. ‘I feel like a cog has come loose and I can’t find a way to put it back on.’

She pushed her tongue behind her teeth, thrust out her lower lip.

‘How do you think I feel?’

I sensed a softening in her.

‘I know. I’m sorry.’ I shook my head. ‘Really sorry.’

She didn’t respond. I pushed my luck.

‘I want to be here to take care of you.’

Her tone didn’t change so it took me a moment to register what she said next.

‘Yeah, well, you can fuck off. You’ve fucked up this family. Family is meant to mean something. You make a commitment. You made a commitment. To our kids. To me. Our wedding day. Such a wonderful day. Remember when everybody clapped?’

I saw her grind her teeth, knew the calm was over.

‘You shit,’ she said. Then: ‘How does it feel to have ruined my life?’

‘Truly terrible,’ I said.

She had a lovely mouth. I watched as she worked it.

‘Good,’ she said, a dying fall.

Tingley met me in a bar on the Brighton boardwalk. When we’d left Simpson in London we’d talked a little but then gone our separate ways. Now, he looked at me.

‘So are you telling me this guy is going to get away with it?’ Tingley said.

‘For the moment it would appear so.’

There was an elderly couple leaning into each other, making their slow progress across the beach. The brim of the woman’s hat was blown up by the wind and she was holding it on with her left hand. His head was down, his chin tucked into his muffler. They had linked arms and she laughed, open-mouthed.

‘Terrific,’ Tingley said, swirling his drink in his glass.

‘We haven’t got the evidence – and we missed something.’

‘We did.’

‘How can you drink that shit?’ I said.

He said nothing. I sighed.

‘Do you think I’m happy about it? I lost my career over this. My life is in the toilet.’

He drained his glass and tilted his head to look at me.

‘So you’ve got nothing to lose by taking him on.’

‘There’s always something. And if we take him on, we won’t win.’

‘So? You lose either way.’

‘But I want to choose the terrain. You should understand that.’

He nodded.

‘You mean you want to live to fight another day?’

‘That’s the appropriate cliche, yes.’

He kept his eyes on me. Those pale, unblinking eyes.

‘I’m not giving up,’ I said. ‘I’ll get him some other day. Just not today.’

The couple stood facing the sea, the waves slapping slowly against the shingle. I looked back at my friend. He raised his glass.

‘To that other day.’