Peter Guttridge - The Thing Itself

‘I’m sorry. It’s a wonderful romantic story you’re telling me. A fortnight of romance every year for — how long, did you say? Fifteen years?’

‘Fourteen. Yes, it is.’

‘Doesn’t seem quite so romantic from where I’m sitting, of course. The person you were actually married to all those years. What are you going to say to the kids?’

‘They’ve known about David for months. They fully support my decision.’

Watts bowed his head.

‘I didn’t realize how distant my children were from me.’

He slumped on the lumpy sofa. He was trying to remember that he had once been a chief constable, used to making major decisions. Now he just felt overwhelmed by his father’s illness, his wife’s abandonment, the attack on Kate.

‘Ah, Jesus,’ he whispered, pressing his fists into his eye sockets.

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.

‘I wonder if you’re worth fucking?’ Laker said to William Simpson’s wife. She was sitting on the edge of a sofa, her knees pressed tight together. ‘Hard to tell sometimes. You’re a bony cunt, aren’t you? But the scrawny ones are sometimes the most fun. You got kids?’

‘One,’ she said, crossing her arms across her breasts.

‘Oh, of course — Kate. And I don’t know why I ask about the kids really as I was assuming I’d be using the tradesman’s entrance. Has that had much use? Aside from the usual function, of course.’

She hugged herself.

‘No? Can’t say the same for your husband’s. I must say, he’s egalitarian when it comes to sex with his boys. Sometimes he’s up them, sometimes they’re up him. Very equal opportunities.’

‘How do you know my husband?’ she whispered.

‘Ah, now that’s a long and not particularly edifying story. Suffice it to say that I do. Your daughter too. Well, kind of. Heard she had a lucky escape the other day.’

Laker stood and she shrank back on the sofa, a moan escaping her lips.

‘Trust me, darling — you’ll have the time of your tight-arsed life. Although you might be — how shall I say this? — changed when I’m done with you. If I’m done with you. Who knows? I might put you to work to pay off Willy’s debt. You’re getting on, it’s true, but some men get a kick out of doing snooty cows like you. At a stretch I could get a year out of you before you need diapers.’

She moaned again.

‘What do you want to know?’

‘Simple: when is your husband going to deliver the fucking goods?’

‘I’ve no idea what he owes you.’

‘That’s a shame.’

He held out his hand.

‘Let’s be civilized and do it upstairs, shall we?’

William Simpson tilted his head.

‘What do you want?’ he said to Bob Watts. ‘I’m a man without power now. The pretend coalition government has done for me. I don’t have Peter’s clout. I can’t sit in a wingback chair wearing a smoking jacket and a cravat and pitch my memoirs.’

‘Scum like you always come up smelling of roses. I’m sure you’re consulting somewhere.’

‘I still have value, it’s true. This government wants to cut. I know how to cut. I’ve probably missed the free school gravy train but another will come along in due course.’

‘What about this thing going on in Brighton?’

‘This thing?’

Watts leaned forward.

‘For God’s sake, William, your daughter has just been beaten almost to death. Don’t you have any feelings about that?’