The Thing Itself

FIFTY

When Tingley woke, his head and his left hand throbbed. He looked at his hand. It was swollen to about twice its usual size and was coloured purple-red. Those ant bites. He looked down at the shirt wadded at his stomach. It was soaked in blood but he sensed that the bleeding had stopped.

He opened the glove compartment and took out his medical kit, dosed himself with antihistamine for his hand. He slid across to the driving seat and turned the engine on. He set off for Orvieto.

Williamson didn’t really know why he had a bee in his bonnet about Lesley White’s two names. He checked and cross-checked anyway, following his own rule that coppers never knew what was going to be important and what wasn’t.

After half an hour it looked as if Lesley White was simply her professional name. Punctilious as ever, he did one final check. He trawled the Land Registry for ownership of her house.

He sat back. He was having a Jeremy Kyle moment.

When Williamson was not working mornings, he would sometimes watch The Jeremy Kyle Show with Angela. She’d get cross at him shouting at the morons on the programme washing their shabby laundry in public. At some point, looking at DNA results to decide who was telling the truth about fidelity or parenthood or theft or whatever, Kyle would say: ‘Well, well, well.’

‘Well, well, well.’

The previous registered owner of the lighthouse, although only for a matter of days, was a certain Charles Laker.

He was pondering this when his phone rang.

He reached for it as Chief Constable Karen Hewitt tapped on the open door and stepped into the room. Williamson left the phone and started to get to his feet.

‘Ma’am. .?’

‘Don’t — don’t get up, Reg.’

She came and stood in front of his desk. Williamson noticed her hands were clasped so tightly in front of her they were entirely bloodless.

‘Reg, we’ve had a call. I thought I should tell you myself.’

‘Ma’am?’ Williamson said, his eyes fixed now on her scarlet mouth, his heart in free fall.

‘It’s about your wife.’

The phone rang on.

‘Have you got kids?’ Grimes said to Gilchrist. He sneered. ‘No, you look like you’d break some guy’s balls before you’d let him fuck you. So how could you have?’

Before Gilchrist could respond, Watts had backhanded Grimes so hard he fell off the sofa and actually skidded across the floor.

Rubbing his face, he looked at Watts with glazed eyes.

‘Forgot — you’ve been up there, haven’t you?’

Gilchrist moved to block Watts.

‘I can defend myself,’ she said, quietly but fiercely. She looked down at Grimes. ‘Try acting like an adult for the first time in your miserable life. Try doing the right thing for the first time. Morons like you use “family” as some kind of badge of honour — as if there was anything impressive about you having sperm. Getting a woman pregnant doesn’t make you a man, you moron — any idiot can do that. And they do. Standing by the child and bringing her up right makes you a man. And on that count you’re a miserable failure.’

‘I keep them,’ he mumbled, still rubbing his face.

‘In Milldean?’ Gilchrist laughed. ‘The scummiest place in Brighton? Congratulations.’

Grimes looked up at Watts.

‘You going to let me get up?’

‘When you’ve apologized,’ Watts said.

‘Leave it,’ Gilchrist hissed at him. She didn’t know how she felt about Watts coming to her rescue. First, because as a general rule she didn’t need anyone to rescue her. Second, because, even when she did, Watts, who had rejected her, wouldn’t be her first choice. Unexpectedly, she smiled to herself. Not that she had a first choice among older men outside of George Clooney.

‘I’m so sorry, Reg,’ Karen Hewitt said.

Williamson nodded and glanced towards the phone. All the time she was telling him the ruddy daft, fucking devastating thing Angela had done, it had rung and stopped, rung and stopped.

‘I need to take this call,’ he said.

Hewitt shook her head.

‘No, you don’t. You need to go home.’

‘What’s at home now?’ he said, picking up the phone. ‘DI Williamson.’

‘Reg, it’s DS Fairley down at Newhaven. The customs boys have a truck here looks a bit dodgy.’

‘And that’s news?’

‘The truck belongs to one of Charlie Laker’s companies. We know Brighton division has an interest in him.’

Williamson was blinking, conscious of Karen Hewitt standing in front of his desk, staring down at him. He looked at her. She looked like shit these days. He’d always been impressed that, despite the pressures of the job, she used to look glamorous as assistant chief constable. Her long blonde hair, her care over how she presented herself.

But since she’d become chief constable, all that had gone to pot. Her long hair was lank, framing a tired, narrow face. Her make-up was caked on dead skin. She seemed to have lost weight but not necessarily in the right places. She suddenly looked old.

‘Laker. Yes.’

He heaved himself up from behind his desk, keeping the phone at his ear.

‘I’m on my way.’

Karen Hewitt sighed.

‘At least take a bloody driver,’ she said. ‘And that’s an order.’