The Thing Itself

SEVENTEEN

Laker’s Milldean plan had been vague at best. It had evolved. He’d had half a dozen coppers in his pocket for years. There was a gap-toothed git, Connelly, from Haywards Heath, who was rotten to the core. He brought a mate on board. Philippa Franks was easy — people with kids always were. Finch couldn’t be relied on so he had to go — rolled up in a blanket and chucked off Beachy Head. The other copper whose grass had passed on the information couldn’t be relied on either.

Laker had been sitting in the back of the car when his men did Finch. The one Laker had done personally, though, the one he’d enjoyed doing, was the deputy chief constable in his poncy little beach hut in Hove. It was necessary. Guilt was written all over him. Laker had simply strolled in through the open door and the poor sod had virtually handed over his gun and begged to be put out of his misery. Laker had shot him in the temple, stuck the gun in the dead man’s hand and got out of the hut just ahead of the stream of blood.

Other people, though, just never learned.

Bob Watts took the train up to Victoria the next morning. He got a taxi from the station to Millbank. The cabbie took him the scenic route but he didn’t mind. He gawped like a tourist at Westminster Abbey and the Houses of Parliament.

The taxi deposited him at Tate Britain. He spent half an hour wandering through a handful of the galleries, ten minutes intently examining Richard Dadd’s The Fairy Feller’s Master-Stroke. Dadd, the artist who killed his own father. He painted with such attention to detail.

Then Watts walked round to the City Hotel to beard William Simpson.

‘Wait here,’ Charlie Laker said as he got out of his car on a quiet Holland Park avenue. His driver, a knucklehead with muscles, looked worried.

‘You want to handle this on your own, boss?’

Laker didn’t even bother to reply.

A skinny, tight-faced woman answered the door.

‘Yes?’ she said, no friendliness in her haughty voice.

‘You got a poker up your arse?’ Laker said.

‘I’m sorry-?’ she said and then, presumably just realizing what he had said, began to close the door.

Laker stepped forward and pushed the door open.

‘You sound like you’ve got a poker up your arse.’ He walked past her into the house, pulling her with him by her arm. ‘And who knows — before the end of the morning you might have.’

She tried to pull back, clutching at her necklace. He back-heeled the door closed.

‘Who are you?’

Laker released her arm and touched the scar on his lip.

‘Oh, I think you know. Willy home, is he? Willy Simpson?’

William Simpson was wearing a well-cut charcoal suit and sitting with a pretty young man at a table in the centre of the upstairs bar. He was running his hand through his hair in an affected manner when Watts walked up beside him.

‘William.’

Simpson looked up.

‘Bob. Not exactly a pleasure. How did you-?’

‘Find you? Circumvent your security? Doesn’t matter.’

The truth was, he’d lied to Simpson’s secretary who had then told him readily enough where William might be found at lunchtime.

‘I’m rather busy at the moment.’

Watts smiled at the young man sitting across from William Simpson.

‘Please excuse us.’

The young man looked from Watts to Simpson. Simpson nodded. The young man huffed away. Watts took his seat.

‘You’re getting less discreet,’ Watts said.

‘Say a word and you’re dead.’

Watts smiled.

‘I recognize that as a valid threat, coming from you.’

‘What do you want?’

Watts appraised his former friend. He looked for any sign of his father in him.

‘We have so much to talk about,’ he said. ‘So much.’

‘Funny. I had exactly the opposite notion.’

‘Let’s start with your daughter, Kate.’

Simpson waved his hand.

‘It’s terrible what has happened.’

‘Yes, it is. And it’s your fault. It means you owe her.’

‘Owe her?’

Watts nodded.

‘And I’m here to collect.’

‘You?’ Simpson sneered. ‘What business is it of yours? You have no link to her, except maybe the girlish crush she must have on you.’

Watts said nothing.