‘Macklin offered two grand. The man went to court. He spent ten grand on legal fees then came up against an unsympathetic judge. He warned him to settle or risk paying police costs as well. Macklin reduced his offer to five hundred pounds.’
I shook my head.
‘No wonder we get a bad press for being arrogant and out of touch.’
Sarah spread her hands.
‘Look, there’s something I’m not happy about,’ she said. ‘That night in Milldean.’
‘The thing in the man’s hand?’
‘Nobody is interested. Command has gone to shit since you resigned. All the senior people are desperately trying to cover their backs, so nobody is doing any proper managing or policing. The crime rate is rising . . .’
She was getting heated.
‘What was in his hand? A weapon?’
‘I thought it might be when I first saw him. But I don’t think so.’
‘What, then?’
‘I think it was a mobile phone.’
‘And it never made it to the evidence box?’
‘I think either Finch or one of those blokes from Haywards Heath took it. Which was odd, but I thought it would be entered into evidence. It wasn’t.’
‘Did you ask them about it?’
‘Yes. Except for Finch. I didn’t get a chance to talk to him. The Haywards Heath men denied removing anything.’
‘But you’re sure it was a phone.’ I sat back. ‘And you’re thinking that the man was in communication with someone outside.’
‘Not just anyone outside. A policeman, perhaps.’
‘Why would you think that?’
‘Just a feeling. And, if nothing else, there was a trigger-happy colleague on the outside.’
‘Why couldn’t he be in touch with whoever sounded that car horn?’
‘Yes – what was that about? An associate of the people in the house?’
‘Could it have been random?’
She shook her head and crossed her legs. I couldn’t help glancing. She noticed but continued:
‘The timing was too neat. It was a warning.’ She paused and tilted her head. ‘But I wonder who the warning was intended for? There’s no one I can talk to about it. If it was a set-up, I don’t know who I can trust. I’ve been waiting for the investigation but, as you know, it hasn’t really happened. I need to get more information.’
I walked behind the desk then looked back at her.
‘Are you saying that we didn’t raid the wrong house by mistake? That some person or persons unknown made sure we raided that particular house and that those people were the intended victims?’
‘Whoever was behind it wanted those people dead and he used the police to do it.’
‘I don’t buy it. Everyone in the armed response unit was in on it?’
‘Not everybody – just a couple – including Finch.’
‘But Foster was running the show – if what you suggest is true, he must have been in on it too. Why the suicide?’
‘If it was.’
‘You think someone has been going round knocking off the people who know exactly what happened that night?’
She nodded.
‘You think Edwards is dead, too?’
‘Or in hiding. And the same goes for the nark.’
‘He’s not been found yet?’
She shook her head.
‘Where can we take this?’ I said, coming round the desk. I moved over to her. I sensed her shrink back.
‘We need to talk to the Haywards Heath men but I don’t see how we can.’
‘I’ve got this friend – Jimmy Tingley. He can do it. He’s very good.’
‘You’ve mentioned him before.’
She looked at her watch and abruptly stood.
‘OK, then. I’d better go.’
‘I’ll call you when he’s got back to me,’ I said.
‘I’ll call you if I can find out anything more at work,’ she said, her hand already on the door knob.
‘Do,’ I said, before she fled from me.
Gilchrist felt like a teenager leaving like that. Watts confused her. She was determined there wouldn’t be a repeat of their one-night stand but she was drawn to him.
On a whim she decided to drive back into Brighton via the Milldean estate. She parked outside the pub and looked down the street to the house that had been the scene of the massacre. It seemed both an age ago and a matter of hours since she’d been crouching in the back garden.
She locked her car and went into the pub. A few heads turned as she entered but she ignored them. She approached the bar at the same time as a slender, unassuming man of middle height. He gestured for her to go first.
‘It’s OK,’ she said, ‘I haven’t decided what I want yet.’
The barman was burly with a big beer gut and forearms like hams.
‘Another rum and peppermint, please,’ the slender man said.
The barman looked him up and down.
‘Sure you’re in the right pub, love? This isn’t Kemp Town.’
‘A double.’
‘Big boy,’ the barman said with a grotesque pout.
There were two unshaven men standing at the bar. They sniggered. The man smiled but didn’t say anything. The barman made the drink and plopped the glass down heavily on the bar. The liquid shivered but didn’t spill. The man placed the exact amount of money on the bar, turned and went to sit by the window.
Gilchrist ordered a glass of wine, ignored the leering men and went to sit a few yards from the man. She wasn’t quite sure what she was doing here but she knew it was the local for at least one of the crime families.
A stocky, crop-headed man in his forties came in with a posse of four noisy youngsters. They all scoped the room.
‘All right, Mr Cuthbert,’ the barman said. The crop-headed man nodded and got into a huddle over the bar with him. The man who’d ordered the rum and peppermint went back up to the bar and put his glass down.
‘Another double when you have a minute.’
The man called Cuthbert glanced over. The barman straightened up.
‘Think you’ve had enough, don’t you, mate?’
‘I think I’ll take one more.’
‘You live here?’ Cuthbert said, staring straight ahead of him.
‘Near enough to walk.’
‘I was wondering why you’d come in here.’ He swept his arm out to take in the room. ‘It’s a pub for locals. Everybody knows everybody. That’s the way we like it.’
The man nodded.
‘That was a double, mind, not a single.’
The barman had stepped back and was standing in front of the rack of spirits and glasses. He flicked a look at Cuthbert.
‘As I was explaining,’ Cuthbert said, still not looking at the man, ‘everybody knows everybody. We’re like a family here.’
‘But this is a public house, not a club. And I am the public.’
He pushed the glass across the bar.
‘You can use the same glass.’
Cuthbert finally turned and as he did so the youngsters gathered in a loose semicircle around the mild-mannered man.
Shit. Gilchrist didn’t want to flash her warrant card in here, but if this turned out the way it looked like it was going to turn out, she would have to intervene. And probably get a good kicking in the process. She recognized Cuthbert’s name. He was a major Brighton villain. She cursed herself for coming in here, cursed the man for ordering such a ludicrous drink in a rough pub.
‘Are you dim?’ Cuthbert said, taking a step forward. ‘We don’t want you here. I don’t know what you’re looking for but, believe me, you ain’t going to find it here.’
‘I just want my drink for the road.’
Cuthbert looked at the barman and gave a quick nod.
‘On the house,’ he said.
‘You’re either the landlord or a leader of the community,’ the man said. ‘Did I hear your name is Cuthbert?’
‘Not that it�
��s any of your fucking business but, yes, it’s Cuthbert.’
‘I’m Jimmy Tingley.’ Tingley stuck out his hand. ‘And I’ve already heard all the jokes about my name.’
Gilchrist sat back in her chair. Jimmy Tingley. The man Bob Watts had mentioned. The way Watts had built Tingley up she was expecting Arnold Schwarzenegger, not this unassuming individual.
Cuthbert looked at Tingley’s hand, then at Tingley. Didn’t offer his own hand.
‘You’re one of the big three on the estate,’ Tingley said, withdrawing his hand.
‘I am?’
‘You are.’
Tingley looked at the youths, who had stepped in closer.
‘It would be great to talk to you privately.’
‘About?’
‘What goes on here.’
‘And why would you be interested.’
Tingley moved closer.
‘I need your help.’
Cuthbert tilted his head.
‘Get his bag, Russell.’
A young man with a pockmarked face loped over to the table Tingley had been sitting at and picked up a slender bag. As he took it back over to Cuthbert, he rooted in it and came out with a newspaper and a collapsible umbrella. He peered in the bag and passed it to Cuthbert.
‘That’s it.’
Gilchrist was back on the edge of her seat. Tingley remained impassive.
‘What’s this?’ the pockmarked youth said, fiddling with the umbrella. Suddenly it sprang open. The youths laughed as he waved it around.
‘Fucking neat, isn’t it?’
‘Fucking is,’ one of the other youths said.
‘Fucking neat.’
Tingley laughed along with them for a moment or two. Then:
‘It’s bad luck opening an umbrella indoors.’ He nodded at the mirror behind the bar. ‘If that goes as well, we’re all fucked.’
He held out his open hand out for his bag.
‘If you please.’
Gilchrist was thinking that in a movie, silence would have fallen at this point. Here it was a change in the atmosphere, a drop in pressure.
‘If I please,’ Cuthbert said. ‘If I please.’
Tingley kept his hand out but looked across at Gilchrist. As she started to rise, he gave an infinitesimal shake of his head. Then he reached over and took hold of his bag. Tingley and Cuthbert exchanged looks.
‘Check me out,’ Tingley said. ‘Name’s James Tingley. I’ll come back in a couple of days so we can talk.’
Cuthbert frowned but released the bag. Tingley turned to Cuthbert’s posse.
‘Gentlemen.’
He turned and walked to the door. Gilchrist was on her feet a moment later. Trying not to hurry, she strolled out of the pub after him.
Tingley was standing about twenty yards down the road looking back at her. She walked towards him.
‘Bet you’re glad you didn’t have to pull your warrant card,’ he said when she reached him.
‘Is it that obvious?’
‘To me.’
‘I know of you, Mr Tingley.’
‘I know of you too, Ms Gilchrist. That was very foolhardy of you to go in that pub. Had you been recognized—’
‘You know who I am?’
‘Your photo has been in all the papers – that’s why you were taking a risk going there.’
Tingley looked beyond Gilchrist and quickly took her arm.
‘Get in your car and follow me – I’m parked down at the end of the street.’
Gilchrist crossed to her car, head down, ignoring the two men who were standing outside the pub watching her. One of them called to her but she slid into her car and drove down the street.
Tingley led her to the Marina.
Driving home, Kate couldn’t concentrate. She was thinking about the Trunk Murder but she was also thinking about Watts. Although she didn’t really go for older men, he was a bit of a hunk. He was a quiet man, but there was something about him that suggested he could take care of himself. And others?
She wondered about the third glass – whether Watts had been entertaining somebody who had hidden. Who might that have been?
She let herself into her flat. She lived in a first-floor flat in Sussex Gardens in Kemp Town, overlooking the sea. Kemp Town was the fashionable place to live in Brighton. Rows of Georgian terraces and brightly coloured cottages interspersed with restaurants and New Age shops.
Her flat in Sussex Gardens was her one concession to her parents. When she had moved to Brighton to do her doctorate, her father had bought the flat. As an investment, he said, but for her to live in whilst she was there.
She hated being beholden to her father but her mother pleaded with her. Kate selfishly didn’t want to share with other people – the last time had been a disaster – but she couldn’t afford the rent on anywhere decent in Brighton. Prices were the same as London. And this was more than decent.
She agreed. It was a two-bedroom flat and her parents came down sometimes to stay in the second bedroom over a weekend. It didn’t happen very often since it was awkward. She had worried at first that her father would want to stay when he came down for the Party Conference or when he had meetings with Labour politicians in town. But he chose to stay around the seafront in the Grand or the Hotel du Vin.
Kate went to the box in her living room. She moved the vase of lilies from the dining table and started to empty the box on to it. There was a box file labelled ‘Witness statements’ and a dozen or so cardboard files, all empty. Some had odd titles neatly printed on the covers: ‘Smells’, ‘Missing Women’, ‘Paper’, ‘Empty Houses’.
She took out the loose sheaves of papers from the cardboard box, papers that had at one time presumably belonged in these files. They were in no discernible order. A number were headed ‘County Borough of Brighton’ then ‘Statement of Witness’. Most were typed on manual typewriters, the occasional red letter coming through in the black type. Others were handwritten in blue or black ink by many different hands.
She turned one sheet over and found something strange typed on the reverse.
‘This isn’t a diary as such. It’s a memoir if you like. A reminiscence. A slice of autobiography. Call it what you will – just don’t call it a confession.’
Her interest piqued, she turned other sheets over and soon had a stack of what were clearly entries from a diary.
Excited, Kate settled down on her balcony. She looked around the square and smiled or nodded at those people in other flats who were on their balconies. Music drifted across the square. Coldplay and Bach and Miles Davis.
The sea was calm. As the sky darkened, the white lights that strung the length of the stubby finger of the Palace Pier grew brighter.
She had gathered the pages of the anonymous diary into some kind of date order. She was sure there were more pages in the files, but since the entries were typed up on the back of other documents, or on witness statement sheets, it was difficult on cursory examination to distinguish them from other typed material.
There were fragments that didn’t have dates attached. She put these aside. She started to read the entry for 6th June, the day the trunk was deposited at Brighton station.
NINE
Wednesday 6th June 1934
I remember 6th June. I don’t remember it because it was Derby Day. I’m not a betting man. I remember it because of the platinum blonde.
It had been a difficult week for me. Frenchie had been over on the Monday for her visit to Dr M. I met her off the ferry at the West Pier and she was alternately weepy and angry. She’d said she didn’t want to see me after, so I took her over to Hove and asked the receptionist to be sure she got a taxi back to the pier in plenty of time for the ferry back to France. I left more than enough money.
I was working that afternoon but I felt sorry for her – yes, me – so I nipped down to see her off. However, I got waylaid by a shopkeeper complaining about kids throwing stones at his shop window. By the time I got to the pier the ferry
was already chugging towards the horizon. It was too far away to make out anybody on deck, if she was on deck.
I never saw her again.
That Wednesday was hot and sticky and I was relieved to be out of the office. Brighton’s main police station is in the basement of the Town Hall, two floors below the magistrates’ court. It was no place to be on a sunny day.
I’d been out since noon. First I’d been up at the railway station. It had been mobbed. The trains clattered in at the rate of 500 a day at this time of year. From London alone, a train every five minutes from Victoria, every fifteen from London Bridge. Half a million people over a weekend, five million a week in a couple of months’ time during the wakes holidays.
I stood at the end of platform three and watched people getting off their trains, then swarming across to the single track inset between platforms three and four. There they boarded the special train that took holidaymakers up to the Devil’s Dyke, the pleasure park set in a deep gorge on the Downs.
When I came out of the station I was jostled by more arrivals spilling into the sunlight. Some queued for the little trams that ran from the station to the two piers. Others set off to walk the quarter of a mile down the Queens Road to the sea glittering at its far end.
Many families had come from the dark slums of London and you could see them dazzled by the light, looking up at the expanse of blue sky and down towards the bright sea.
I’d observed before that usually the women and children reached the seafront first. The men would find an excuse to stop off in one of the public houses that lay between the station and their family day ahead.
A day spent on the beach, on the silver painted piers, splashing in the sea, racing in miniature motors, listening to the bands playing. Idly watching small aeroplanes out of Shoreham airport write their advertisements for all kinds of products in languid trails of smoke across the sky.
Don’t tell me I can’t be poetical.
City of Dreadful Night Page 11
