City of Dreadful Night

by Peter Guttridge

‘Five people killed – I can see why you would think that.’

  ‘Five? Oh, you mean your officer, too. Yes, it’s especially bad when one of ours go down – though I’m not sure what I think about suicide. But you’re in deep shit for more than that. This riot. And I have to say you’re utterly exposed. The procedures you have in place here for armed response operations – or rather the procedures you don’t have in place – frankly, the whole thing is a disgrace.’

  ‘I was about to address it.’

  ‘About to? Given current international circumstances, it should have had absolute priority.’

  I was terse. ‘Tell me something I don’t know.’

  And I did know. Even so, I resented him saying it. My conceit, I suppose. When I was brought in, the Southern Force was in decline after years of liberal posturing and neglect. I’d put off doing something because I had vested interests to contend with and I was drowning in other procedures.

  ‘There is so little audit stuff in place that anyone can go in to the armoury and take whatever the hell they want. They can use it to shoot at anything or anyone they damned well please, then drop it back without the force being any the wiser.

  ‘And this particular operation is a total botch. Your officers are doing no one any favours by remaining silent. Nobody knows where the tip came from. The policeman who received it is unavailable. Your gold commander is watching his back and your silver commander – who should never have been in operational charge – has killed himself.’

  ‘The procedures in place are standard around the country.’

  ‘I well know that,’ Bill snapped. ‘It’s the way those procedures are carried out that matters.’

  I nodded, looked down at my desk.

  ‘Is everybody covering up?’

  ‘Except for Gilchrist. But she’s got a fixation on the man shot in the kitchen. She claims he had something in his hand but it wasn’t entered into evidence. She claims someone took it.’

  ‘Another officer?’

  ‘That’s the implication.’

  I looked up at him.

  ‘Who is the man in the kitchen?’

  ‘Still unidentified.’

  ‘Who shot him?’

  ‘None of your snipers are admitting to firing the fatal shot. We’re running tests on the rifles in the armoury to see which one has been fired. But we won’t know who checked it out because there’s no signing in and out of weapons. Any forensic evidence we get will be contaminated as everybody seemed to be handling everyone else’s weapons.’

  He shook his head then leant back.

  ‘You’re being pretty squarely blamed for the rioting too. What are you going to do?’

  ‘Find out what went wrong.’

  Munro shook his head again. Put his hand on his paunch.

  ‘I can’t let you near it, Bob. You’re part of the investigation now – and you’ve shot yourself in the foot by that damned stupid announcement.’

  I sat up straighter.

  ‘Supporting my team, you mean?’

  ‘Anticipating the results of my enquiry. I can understand why you were tempted to do it. But I wish you’d resisted the temptation. Especially as, on the evidence I’ve been able to gather, you may well end up with egg on your face.’

  ‘I assume they didn’t just go in guns blazing – they fired because they thought they were about to be fired upon.’

  He shifted in his seat.

  ‘Don’t be so sure. At least one of the killings looks horribly like an execution. The man on the toilet . . .’ He shifted in his seat again. ‘How’s Molly handling all this?’

  ‘Not well. She’s not good under pressure.’

  He eased himself up in his chair.

  ‘Give her my best.’ He looked down at me. ‘So will you resign?’

  ‘Everybody and his dog wants or expects me to.’

  He gave a small smile.

  ‘That’ll be a “no”, then.’

  ‘I came here to make a difference. I haven’t had a chance to do that yet. And it would be cowardly of me to resign. I want to be here to see this through.’

  ‘It’s not going to be pretty.’

  ‘Bill, I know I’m part of the investigation. But if you could keep me informed—’

  He put up his hand, then got to his feet. He nodded and left the room without another word. But at least he hadn’t said ‘No’.

  Sarah Gilchrist couldn’t recall a worse time in her life. The fucking insulting interrogation she’d endured from the two Hampshire policemen had been bad enough. Were they trained to act in a way guaranteed not to get information from people they questioned?

  She’d told them about the evidence going missing. They didn’t seem interested. They thought, in fact, that she was using it as a plausible reason for discharging her firearm.

  ‘But I didn’t discharge it,’ she said. ‘The man in the kitchen was shot by a police sniper stationed outside the house.’

  They didn’t respond. She decided there and then she’d rather stick needles in her eyeballs than give these assholes any help.

  She kept mostly indoors for the next few days. From her flat near Seven Dials she emerged only to go to the gym, then get the papers and food from the local deli.

  In her flat she would wait for the phone to ring, trying to figure out what was going on, trying to figure out what to do.

  She knew something bad had happened. Not just that people had been killed, although that was bad enough. She couldn’t find out who was in the wrong place at the wrong time. Was it the police or the people in the house? Had the police raided the wrong house? Nobody was saying.

  Then there was the bastard with the missing teeth – Connolly. And the dead man on the kitchen floor.

  At the end of that terrible evening, as they were all cooped up in the armed response vehicle, she’d got nowhere when – out of curiosity and because she was involved – she’d tried to find out exactly what had happened upstairs. And, more to the point, who had shot whom. She couldn’t decide if they were stonewalling or simply being patronizing. Either way, it pissed her off.

  Now, three days later, she’d still been unable to get hold of Finch. She’d been told about Foster’s suicide. And, courtesy of the radio and TV, she’d heard about the riot. God, what a fuck-up.

  The missing evidence was difficult for her. Automatically, she felt loyalty to her fellow officers. In such a situation, ranks closed. And if ranks closed, did she want to be the one on the outside of them?

  Staying home was driving her nuts. She liked her own company well enough but she also liked to keep active. The gym helped. It was a women’s-only place up near the station. She tried to choose times when she was unlikely to run into people she knew. She hit the machines for an hour, used the sauna and the Turkish; tried to sweat the emotion out.

  Occasionally she got hit on but she was used to that in Brighton. She didn’t mind, she just wasn’t that way inclined.

  She jogged there and back. There was easy – it was all downhill. Coming back up was something else again. She took another shower when she got back to her flat.

  She prepared her food, taking more time than she ever had. Marinating meat overnight, chopping the vegetables finer and finer, cleaning the skillet and pans. Again and again. Cooking slowly, adding herbs, really getting the timings right.

  Then throwing the result in the bin. Instead, scarfing lumps of cheese, olives from the jar, rice cakes from the packet, spoonfuls of yoghurt from the pot.

  On Thursday, the fourth day of her suspension, she became front page news.

  On Thursday my home life ended. I’d been hoping things were quietening down. I didn’t see the papers until I got into work. As I walked through the ground floor office, I wondered why people avoided looking at me.

  Then I saw the newspapers my secretary had left folded on my desk. The headlines.

  The tabloids had gone for the jugular. ‘Top Cop’s Sex Romp With Massacre Shooter,’ said one headline.
The story that followed suggested that perhaps the reason I was so eager to defend the probity of my officers at the Milldean murder was because I’d had a one-night stand at a conference with one of the female officers. Sarah Gilchrist.

  I groaned. She’d sold her story to the papers.

  My first thought was to phone her. Except that I didn’t know her number. Human Resources would have it, but I could hardly phone up and ask for it. Or ask Rachael, my secretary, to do so. I tried directory enquiries on my mobile. Nothing. Some detective I was.

  Perhaps it was just as well. I was furious with her. Furious at myself, too. And sick of the thought of Molly hearing of my infidelity in such a humiliating, public way.

  I phoned her. There was no answer. I left a message on the answerphone. I wondered whether I should go home but there was so much work to do.

  Winston Hart, my Police Authority chair, phoned at eleven.

  ‘I think your position has become, if possible, even more untenable,’ he said crisply. ‘I must also inform you that I have received a letter from the Home Secretary stating that he has lost faith in you and asking us to press for your resignation.’

  Typical of the Home Secretary, the most right-wing one we’d had since World War Two, and one with an eye on the Today programme. He was too quick to give the sound bite and regularly had to back down.

  ‘It will blow over,’ I said. ‘I’m not quitting.’

  ‘It seems to me that you don’t care about your force – you’re making it into a laughing stock. You just care about yourself.’

  I hung up on him.

  I left for home at lunchtime. Molly was sitting in a chair by the French windows, looking out at the green and velvety Downs. She didn’t stir when I came in.

  ‘I came to see if you were all right. After the newspaper report today . . .’

  She stood up and walked towards me. I looked at her, obviously for a beat too long. She swung at me.

  ‘You bastard!’

  She whacked me just below my left eye, came in with her other fist and whacked my right ear. I held her off. She was shaking with rage.

  ‘I want you out of this house.’ She was bellowing. ‘Today. You did this to us? You did this to us?’

  I took a room at The Ship on the seafront in Brighton. I was worried the manager would recognize me as I’d been to lots of functions here, but he wasn’t around and the blank-faced receptionists had no clue who I was.

  That evening I stayed in my room, sipping a whisky from the minibar and gazing blankly out to sea and across at the Palace Pier in its blaze of white light. I refused to think of it as Brighton Pier, although that’s what its sign proclaimed. That honour rested with the ruined West Pier. From time to time I phoned my son and daughter but I couldn’t reach either of them. I went back to the minibar.

  The next morning my mobile phone rang just after nine.

  ‘Bob, it’s William.’ William Simpson, my erstwhile friend. ‘Can’t tell you how sorry I am about what’s happening in the press.’

  ‘And?’

  ‘You’ll be resigning now, I assume.’

  ‘Like hell.’

  ‘Bob.’

  ‘William.’

  ‘You must resign. They’ve only just started.’

  ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘The press. They’ll move in on your family. Your wife, your kids.’

  ‘There’s nothing there. How dare they?’

  ‘The press dare, believe me. Then they’ll root – really root – for anything. Anything. If you’ve something in your background, they’ll find it. Your family, your parents—’

  I must have clicked my tongue.

  ‘Bob – I’m telling you as a friend. This could get very, very much worse.’

  This time he hung up.

  I was summoned to an emergency meeting of the Police Authority. Winston Hart was at his pontificating worst. He kept lifting his chin to ease his neck from the too-tight collar of his shirt and touching his moustache as if checking it was still there.

  ‘We’ve had a letter from the Home Office stating that the Home Secretary no longer has faith in you. We’ve had another letter from the Police Federation stating that they are unhappy with your conduct. I don’t, to be honest, understand why you haven’t already resigned.’

  I forced a smile. ‘I feel I can best meet my responsibilities by staying in post until I can find out what has happened.’

  ‘Had you not, by your public declaration, already prejudged the investigation, that might have been possible. However, your position is now clearly untenable.’

  Hart had a mobile phone on the desk in front of him. It rang. He picked it up without apology and looked at the number on the screen. He put the phone to his ear then wordlessly passed it across to me.

  It was Simpson. There was no preamble.

  ‘They’re authorized to give you a generous settlement. It won’t be leaked to the press. You can walk away with it. But you have to resign before you leave that room. If not, the Home Secretary’s letter will be leaked and worse will follow. Take your life back, Bob, I beg you.’

  I handed the phone back to Hart. He started to smirk but stopped when he saw my face. He seemed to rear back in his chair as if he thought I was about to launch myself over the table at him.

  I was tempted. I did want to hit him but I never would. Well, not never, just not now.

  I was seething.

  I didn’t want to go, was stunned by the speed with which the media had turned against me. My every instinct was to stay and fight. But what concerned me was the thought of reporters dragging my immediate family into it. What family doesn’t have its skeletons hidden in the closet? My mother was dead, but I couldn’t put Molly, the children and my father through that.

  I stared at Hart but I think he could see in my eyes that he had the upper hand. I dropped my gaze.

  ‘I’ll resign.’

  The press discovered I was staying at The Ship. They besieged me. I was wondering where to go next when family friends phoned to invite me to house-sit their farmhouse near Lewes whilst they went off to Spain for a month. I was touched by their thoughtfulness and accepted with alacrity.

  I spirited myself out of The Ship and disappeared from view. Except that after two days I resumed my habit of early morning swims at the sports club I used in Falmer, on the Brighton University campus. Nobody else I knew was a member and I always kept to myself, so I had no worry about being tracked down there.

  However, I reckoned without Sarah Gilchrist. At the start of the next week she doorstepped me in the club car park.

  I was halfway from the club entrance to my car when I heard her call out. She was standing beside her dark blue Volkswagen Polo. She was in jeans and a fleece. Her hair was down. I have to say, she looked beautiful. However, my immediate response was anger.

  ‘What the hell are you doing here?’

  ‘There’s no press,’ she said, twisting her mouth into a grimace, giving a little shrug. She’d guessed what I was thinking: that this was some kind of photo set-up.

  I looked round at the other parked cars. She started to walk towards me. Usually she had a rangy, easy lope. Today she moved stiffly, awkwardly.

  ‘I hope they paid you well. Have you any idea what you’ve done to my wife?’

  She stopped ten yards or so away from me.

  ‘What I’ve done? She’s not my bloody wife.’

  I shook my head, exasperated with her, with me, with the whole mess.

  ‘I shouldn’t be talking to you. The investigation.’

  I was aware of movement to my left. I glanced over at a woman walking up from the club, her wet blonde hair plastered to her skull, her gym bag over her shoulder.

  ‘It wasn’t me.’

  ‘They quoted you,’ I said.

  ‘Hardly. You know I don’t talk like that.’

  ‘I don’t know you at all.’

  Gilchrist walked over to me and looked down.

  ‘Si
r, I’m truly sorry it got in the newspapers – but it wasn’t me.’

  I took a deep breath. I realized my fists were clenched. I flexed my hands.

  ‘You can call me by my name,’ I said quietly. ‘In the circumstances.’

  She nodded.

  ‘How did you know I’d be here?’

  She shrugged.

  ‘I didn’t really. I just took a chance.’

  ‘You must have told somebody,’ I said.

  I was watching the woman unlock her car and sling her bag in the back seat. She was a swimmer too. We often shared a lane but never acknowledged each other, in the water or out of it.

  Gilchrist cleared her throat, perhaps to draw my attention back.

  ‘Somebody I thought I could trust,’ she said.

  I could smell her musky perfume.

  ‘On the force?’

  She sighed.

  ‘Doesn’t matter. He betrayed me.’

  She had kind eyes. I’d always felt they would be a problem when she had to deal with hard cases. They’d see her eyes and think they saw weakness. I didn’t know her well enough to know if she was weak. Hell, I’d only spent one drunken night with her.

  ‘They made up your quote?’

  She sighed again.

  ‘That first time. Then they phoned me, said they’d got the story, said they’d do a real number on us unless I spoke to them. I panicked.’

  The woman was in her car, moving out of her space.

  I put my arms around Gilchrist.

  ‘It’s OK.’

  She was stiff inside my embrace. I released her.

  ‘It’s not OK,’ she said, pulling back. ‘It’s fucking awful. You’re screwed and, frankly, I’m screwed.’ She looked fiercely at me. ‘Again.’

  My turn to step back.

  ‘Are they giving you a hard time in the office?’

  Police officers are essentially tribal.

  ‘I’m suspended, remember? The shootings . . .’

  ‘What the hell happened in there, Sarah?’

  She dropped her eyes.

  ‘Sarah, I really need to find out.’

  ‘Why bother?’ Her voice was harsh.

  ‘So many reasons.’ I gripped her arms. I felt her muscles bunch. ‘Please.’

  She shrugged me off.

  ‘What about this thing you thought you saw in the dead man’s hand in the kitchen.’