The Thing Itself

FIFTEEN

Kate Simpson, radio journalist, daughter of former government spin doctor William Simpson, was walking home when she saw the long, skinny man coming towards her on the narrow pavement. A man who’d frightened her months earlier in the cemetery beside the grave of the Brighton Trunk Murder victim. As they drew closer, he smiled at her in that same malevolent way.

She crossed the street and he stopped and watched her go, still smiling, slightly bent in a kind of half-bow. She looked back repeatedly as she hurried home but he didn’t seem to be following her.

She checked behind her before she opened the main door to her block. Checked it had closed properly behind her. She went up the stairs at a run.

She was out of breath at her own door and fiddled with the security locks in her nervousness. She got in and slammed the door, bolting it and turning the key, then leant against it for a moment.

She let out a long breath, dropped her bag and walked into her bedroom. A different man was waiting there.

Squat, broad-shouldered. He grabbed her round the waist, swung her off her feet and in a wide arc hurled her on the bed. She hit the bed hard, face down and bounced straight off.

As she sprawled on the floor, winded, he grabbed her ankles and dragged her back to him then hooked his forearms under her armpits, lifted her and threw her on the bed again.

‘Please,’ she gasped as he tore at her clothes.

‘It’s not you, sweetheart. It’s your father. He’s not picking up his messages. So this is a special one.’

‘Please,’ she moaned as he fell on her with all his weight. ‘Don’t.’

‘No chance of that, darling.’

His accent was northern. His breath smelt of alcohol. That much she took in. He clawed at her underwear. She managed to take a breath. Got a hand under the pillows. Touched plastic.

‘OK, OK. Do what you want but please don’t hurt me. I won’t resist.’

His expression changed and for the first time she felt him really press against her. He slapped her face. Hard.

‘You won’t resist? Where’s the fucking fun in that?’

Ex-Chief Constable Bob Watts had been at his father’s house in Barnes Bridge on and off for days. His father, Donald, better known as the thriller writer Victor Tempest, had suffered a stroke.

Watts was sunk in his father’s wingback chair gazing blankly out of the long window above the Thames when his phone rang. He glanced at the name on its screen. Sarah Gilchrist.

‘Sorry, Bob, but I thought you’d want to know. Kate Simpson has been attacked. She’s in hospital.’

Watts swallowed.

‘How bad is she?’

‘Bad. Attempted rape. Badly beaten.’

Watts clenched his jaw.

‘Who did it?’

‘Nobody she knows but she does know why.’

Gilchrist seemed to take forever to continue.

‘And?’ Watts said.

‘It was a warning to your old mate, unemployed former government spin doctor, William Simpson.’

Watts walked over to the window. A fog lay over the Thames, obscuring Barnes Bridge entirely.

‘Bob?’

‘I’m here,’ he said, pressing the tip of his nose against the cold glass and closing his eyes.

‘She killed the guy who attacked her.’

Watts sighed.

‘How did she kill him?’

Gilchrist was silent.

‘Sarah?’

‘A volt gun.’

An old man pushing a pram hobbled through the mist on the other side of the road. Watts frowned at the odd sight.

‘A what?’

‘A rather more lethal taser. But not usually a death-dealer.’

‘How did she get that?’

Gilchrist was silent again.

‘Fuck,’ Watts said.

‘I had a bad time once.’ Gilchrist sounded defensive. ‘Saw the need for protection. When I was staying with Kate, I told her about it. Left it with her.’

‘So she killed this creep with an illegal weapon.’

‘It can be handled,’ Gilchrist said. Watts said nothing. ‘It can be handled,’ she repeated.

‘I wasn’t thinking that,’ Watts said.

‘What, then?’

‘Killing someone is a hell of a thing to deal with.’

‘You and Tingley don’t seem to have any problems.’

‘I can’t speak for Tingley,’ Watts said shortly. ‘What can you do for her?’

‘Sorry I said that,’ Gilchrist said. ‘We should meet.’

‘Of course,’ Watts said. ‘I’m on my way to Brighton.’

‘Not just about this. We’ve found Bernie Grimes.’

The mist swallowed the old man.