City of Dreadful Night

by Peter Guttridge

  In the next ten minutes more people arrived in garish clothes, and policewomen in bright yellow jackets came for crowd control, as a large group of spectators gathered.

  Time to move. I paid for my meal and, head down, slipped out of the café and down the street a few yards before turning into the side entrance to a shopping arcade. I walked through it, avoiding eye contact, then up into the Laines. I ducked into The Bath Arms.

  I ordered a coffee and settled myself in a corner of the old pub away from the late-morning drinkers part-way through their first pints.

  I was thinking about the friendship William Simpson and I had inherited from our fathers. And then I was thinking about my father on one particular day.

  It was sunny and we were all in the garden. Sally and James, my sister and brother, were bickering, as usual. I was in the hammock, strung between two trees. Mum was reading an Iris Murdoch in a deckchair with a canopy – she didn’t do well in the sun. Dad was sitting at a table in the shade writing longhand in one of the cheap exercise books he used. He was in his sixties but didn’t look it and certainly didn’t act it.

  The doorbell rang.

  Dad had set up some kind of system so there was a bell attached to the back of house too. It also worked when the telephone rang.

  My mother looked alarmed. My father frowned. Unexpected visitors were not welcome.

  Mum closed her book.

  ‘Robert,’ Dad said, without taking his eyes from his notebook.

  I rolled out of the hammock. Smiled at my mother.

  I was woozy from the sun so when I opened the front door I was a bit blank.

  ‘You must be Robert,’ the woman said.

  I was eighteen, with little experience of women. This woman was almost as old as my mother but I still desired her immediately. I suppose she was in her late thirties, early forties. But not only was she beautiful, she also exuded sex. Or maybe that was me, full of testosterone, bestowing on her my own lusts.

  She was – the word is apt – glamorous. A beautiful oval face, green eyes, abundant auburn hair. Tall. Big-breasted.

  Attractive as she was, there was also an intensity about her that made me nervous. She had full lips, crimsoned with lipstick. When she smiled, there was a twitching of the nerves at the edges of her mouth.

  ‘Is Frank in? Your father.’

  Oh, she was trouble. I had a feeling of dread, but also of excitement.

  ‘He’s in the garden,’ I said. ‘With my mother.’

  There was movement at the edges of the mouth.

  ‘May I see him for a moment?’

  I would have liked to leave her on the doorstep but I knew I couldn’t.

  ‘Please,’ I said, stepping aside so she could enter our home.

  She walked from the hips and I couldn’t take my eyes off her. Of course, at that age I couldn’t take my eyes off any woman.

  I was going to take her into the living room, but I was sure she was a threat and that seemed too intimate as it was full of family photos.

  At the same time, I felt for her, didn’t want to pain her unnecessarily. Even without knowing, I knew who she was.

  I’m not explaining this very well. I sensed this woman was trouble for our family and I wanted to defend my mother from any pain – but I also felt for this woman. Perhaps my feelings for her were callow – simply because she was beautiful.

  I took her to Dad’s study.

  ‘I’ll get him,’ I said, ushering her into the room.

  Afterwards I wished I’d taken her somewhere else. Maybe if I had, my mother would never have realized who she was.

  ‘And?’ my mother said, raising herself in her deckchair and looking back towards the house. My father looked up, frowning. He too glanced at the house.

  My father’s study looked over the back garden. And now the woman – I realized I’d not asked for her name – appeared at the window of my father’s study.

  My father rose abruptly.

  ‘I’ll see to it,’ he said to my mother. But not before she had seen the woman too.

  She looked down. Sank back into her deckchair.

  My father strode past me. I didn’t look at my mother, though I became uncomfortably aware that I was standing over her. I looked towards the house. As my father entered through the back door, the woman withdrew from the window, fading from view. Now all the window showed was the reflection of our family in the garden. Without my father.

  He was in the house for ten minutes. He didn’t say anything when he came back out into the garden. He went back to his table and picked up his pen. My mother was looking at the book in her hand.

  I swayed in the hammock, thinking about that beautiful woman, watching my mother and father pretend.

  ‘You know the man who was shot in the bathroom at Milldean as Little Stevie,’ Gilchrist stated, to get it on the record.

  Parker was staring at her breasts again but he was fading. He was probably dealing on a daily basis with withdrawal.

  ‘Fucking little scuzz,’ he said, but without heat. ‘I gave him one once, just to show him what’s what.’

  ‘Why was he there?’

  He rubbed his face, blinked a few times.

  ‘About a deal . . .’

  ‘What’s his last name?’

  He dipped his head down to his left in an odd gesture, as if trying to see what was behind his left arm.

  ‘The last name, Gary.’

  Gilchrist was watching him fade in and out. She was trying to stay calm but she was worried he was going to fade out before he’d given her anything. However, his drifting mind was working in her favour.

  ‘Never had no last name. Just Little Stevie. About a deal . . .’

  ‘You’re saying you know who those people were in the house in Milldean and why they were there.’

  He frowned.

  ‘Am I?’

  ‘Are you?’

  ‘Fucking right.’

  ‘How do you know them?’

  ‘What about my fucking deal?’

  ‘I’ll talk to somebody. How do you know them?’

  ‘You don’t know my dad, do you?’

  ‘Mr Hathaway, good to meet you.’ Tingley offered his hand to the tanned, well-dressed man who bore a remarkable resemblance to an older Simon Cowell. Hathaway considered for a moment then gave Tingley’s hand a firm shake.

  ‘Hear you’ve been rearranging my friend’s furniture. Mr Cuthbert, I mean. Bit chancy that. You’d better be watching your back from now on.’

  ‘I have other people doing that.’

  Hathaway tilted his head.

  ‘Oh, that’s right – you’re connected to some very secret people, aren’t you? Main reason I agreed to see you – courtesy to them.’

  ‘We know some of the same people?’

  ‘Doubt that, but let’s say the same kind of people. Our world is a small world.’

  ‘Our world?’

  ‘The shadow world.’

  The world beyond the law. Tingley nodded and looked round.

  They were in a bar on the boardwalk at the marina. The tables outside overlooked a small harbour, and through the open windows he could see brilliant blue sky and hear the chink and rattle of the hawsers and lines on the yachts moored there. Gulls were screeching.

  Bright outside, gloomy inside. The bar was like the inside of somewhere Moroccan, maybe Indian. Rugs strewn around, some bench seating, plump cushions on low divans, hookahs on shelves, turquoise and terracotta tiled walls and floors. Tingley gestured round.

  ‘Business good?’

  ‘Students love it – all this. And the cheap shots.’

  Tingley had been checking out Hathaway’s business interests online when the text had come through summoning him to this meeting. Although Hathaway’s power base was still in Milldean and he was into all the same scuzzy stuff as Cuthbert, he had his fingers in many other pies. He was a major landlord in Brighton and Newhaven and was said to use brutal methods when he wanted people o
ut. He had shares in a recycling plant and there were doubts about exactly what he was recycling. And he ran a security operation providing bouncers for clubs and bars all along the south coast. That operation probably cloaked a protection racket.

  Then there were the totally legitimate businesses, like this and other bars, a country house hotel over near Worthing and a small chain of dry cleaners in Burgess Hill, Haywards Heath and Crawley.

  He lived in one of the large Spanish-style villas – haciendas really – on Tongdean Drive on the outskirts of the city near the Devil’s Dyke.

  ‘So what are you poking around for, Mr Tingley?’

  Hathaway’s similarity to Cowell was quite striking. He obviously worked out every day. Although Tingley knew he must be in his early sixties, his T-shirt underneath his open suit jacket was tight.

  ‘I’m trying to find out what happened in Milldean on the night of the massacre.’

  ‘Police cock-up, as I hear it.’

  Hathaway led Tingley into an alcove and sat down on a low, quilted bench behind an equally low table. He leant back against the wall.

  ‘I find these seats bloody uncomfortable but the kids seem to like them.’

  Tingley sat on a similar seat opposite him.

  ‘Do you know who the people in the house were and why they were gathered there?’ Tingley said.

  ‘Do you?’

  ‘That’s what I’d like to find out.’

  ‘Why come to me?’

  Tingley looked him in the eye.

  ‘You’re The Man.’

  ‘And what’s in it for me?’ Hathaway said. ‘Anything to trade? No? Thought not.’

  ‘You know I know some important people.’

  Hathaway nodded. A pretty young woman walked past the alcove.

  ‘Amy.’ She started towards them.

  ‘Hookah?’ Hathaway said to Tingley. ‘With an “ah” on the end, that is. No? Just me, thanks, sweetheart.’

  He watched her walk away, slowly shaking his head.

  ‘Sometimes the way a girl walks is enough to make you glad you’re alive – don’t you agree, Mr Tingley? Or, I suppose, the way a man walks, if you’re that way inclined, as a surprising number of people are – and not just here in Gomorrah-on-sea.’

  ‘What kind of trade do you have in mind?’ Tingley said.

  ‘Your soul?’ Hathaway grinned. ‘I don’t know whether you’d consider that too high or too low a price to pay. Supposing you haven’t already signed it away in the course of your secret escapades. Still yours to bargain with, is it?’

  Tingley nodded.

  ‘Glad to hear it. Now I’m wondering about these important people you know. I’m wondering – are your important people more important than my important people?’

  ‘Who is his father?’ Gilchrist asked Williamson as they walked out into the car park at Lewes Prison, where Parker was on remand. Williamson had his unlit cigarette between his fingers. He shrugged.

  ‘Mother’s a single parent living on benefits, three other kids still at home.’

  ‘Milldean?’

  He nodded.

  ‘Can we talk to her?’ She stopped. ‘Does she know what he’s done? Has anyone been to see her?’

  ‘He’s an adult. No need for his mother to be informed.’

  They resumed walking.

  ‘Let’s talk to her.’

  Kate was running out of time before her shift started but she was desperate to finish off all the pieces of the diary she had managed to compile. She was sitting on her sofa, looking at her watch every few minutes, calculating then recalculating what was the latest time she could afford to leave.

  Monday 16th July

  Another trunk murder victim turned up yesterday. In Kemp Street, up near the station. Another woman, of course. No official information was given, but today’s newspapers published contradictory stories concerning the contents of the trunk. Hutch wasn’t too happy.

  ‘The captain’s bloody furious,’ Percy said.

  I said nothing. The Daily Mail headline read: ‘Trunk Murder Sensation; Second Woman’s Body Found.’ The line underneath moved away from the facts. ‘Discovery of first victim’s head and arms last night.’

  The report went on: ‘The discovery of the head and arms of the Brighton trunk murder victim, packed into a second large black trunk, with the body of the woman who had been killed apparently by a hammer blow on the back of the head . . .’

  They also declared that a tray of striped cloth stretched across a wooden frame had been found – the missing tray from the first trunk.

  Now, maybe I was too extravagant with my story of a trunk stuffed with a dead body and another’s body parts – but who came up with the second story? Not me. I’m outraged. Somebody else in the force is leaking false stories to the press.

  The press men homed in on the occupants of the house in Kemp Street and a house in Park Crescent where the second murder was actually committed. They tried every method possible to obtain entry to these houses. We had to post officers at both houses to stop them. They offered large sums of money for photographs and information.

  The trunk had been in the Kemp Street house for about six weeks and other tenants had complained about the smell. Ironically, neither of the owners – Mr and Mrs Barnard – had a sense of smell so they’d been unaware of anything amiss.

  Tuesday 17th July

  The new victim has been identified as a prostitute, Violette Kay. A woman in her forties. Her pimp, Mancini, is a bit of a mystery. There’s a Soho gangster with that name who has a lot of form but we’re not sure if it’s the same man. That Mancini was a member of a razor gang. He was a deserter from the forces.

  At any rate, this Mancini is much younger than her – she was in her forties, he is in his twenties.

  Early this morning – the middle of the night really – Donaldson, Sorrell and Pelling left the Town Hall to arrest him in London. He’d been picked up walking along a road in the middle of the night.

  I went with them. We were followed by a number of press men in a fast car. We shook them off in the side streets. When we came back from London, the press car was waiting just outside the borough boundary. It followed us to the Town Hall.

  I was sitting in the back seat with Mancini. He was regarded as a ladies’ man but he wore a cheap suit. He was only 5'5''. I wasn’t even going to talk to him but when I did try to make conversation he had this terrible stutter. A stuttering ladies man. Ronald Colman had better watch out.

  Later in the morning, Pelling had a meeting with us. He was angry.

  ‘On several occasions throughout the course of this enquiry press men have been successful in securing the substance of the particular enquiry on hand, the result being that sensational stories have been published which invariably have been far from accurate and have had the effect of impeding our work.’

  Around now I noticed Percy giving me the evil eye. He couldn’t hold it, though. He looked away.

  ‘From the commencement of this enquiry it’s been obvious that several of the press men are entirely unscrupulous in their methods of obtaining information. As a result, the remainder – who are far more fair and reasonable – have to do the same to keep their newspapers posted with the sensational stories published by the minority referred to. This means that at times the press has been more troublesome than the actual investigation.

  ‘The stories in the papers about the second trunk murder are going to cause us serious problems. It’s unlikely that there is any link between the two killings. There were, needless to say, no remains of the first victim found in the trunk containing the second. When we announce the arrest of her pimp, people will simply assume he did both crimes and stop bringing us information.’

  When the meeting had ended Percy came over to me.

  ‘Hutch wants a word with you.’

  Here it was: the beginning of the end.

  And there the diary entry ended. Damn, damn. Kate pushed the rest of the papers into her bag
, grabbed her keys and hurried out of the door. She got a bus almost immediately, plonked down and almost tore the papers out of her bag. She groaned. The next diary entry was over two weeks later.

  2nd August 1934

  We’ve finally found out where the brown paper with the partial word ‘—ford’ on it comes from. It’s the end of ‘Bedford’, which in turn is the end of an address a clerk working for the Loraine Confectionery Company – a sweet and chocolate shop in Finsbury Road – wrote on paper wrapped around a box of some defective confectionery.

  She wrote it some time between 1st January and 22nd May 1934 when she was sending the confectionery back to an associated company, Meltis Ltd in Bedford. Both these companies are part of Peek Frean, which has its London depot in Bermondsey.

  This is where it gets complicated. Although, apparently, Finsbury Park isn’t that far south of Bedford, and anything going between the two goes on a van via Bermondsey, which is off in east London.

  When this particular parcel reached Meltis in Bedford with a lot of other parcels, the despatch department would have opened it, passed the contents on and chucked the wrapping paper on the floor.

  One of two things could have happened to this wrapping paper. It might have been used to wrap a box of confectionery sold at a discount to staff. It might have been used as packing in either vans or railway containers delivering boxes of confectionery to depots in Glasgow, Manchester, Reading, London – or down here in Brighton.

  Now, whether this is going to help, I don’t know, but Hutch is acting pretty gung-ho for the first time in an age. By tomorrow he’s hoping to have traced every female who has left Meltis since January 1934 and have a list of men working for the company who were off work on 6th and 7th June.

  None of this has appeared in the papers yet, for obvious reasons.

  Kate had reached her stop and the diary had come to an end, aside from some undated scraps. She let out a little snort of frustration as she got off the bus at the railway station and started to hurry down to the radio studio. Then she paused and looked back at the station. She glanced at her watch, turned and went to find the left luggage office.