Peter Guttridge - The Thing Itself

‘Antonio Mancini. “Baby” to his friends. Soho gangster. Knifed a thug from a rival gang. A Jewish gang. It could have gone either way — who lived, who died, I mean. It would have made no difference to me — one of them would have dangled from the end of my rope.’

‘Baby Mancini.’

‘Daft name for a grown man, I know.’

I nodded slowly.

‘I met him once,’ I said. ‘Just for five minutes.’

Pierrepoint was an unnervingly placid man. He remained still, watching me, waiting for more.

‘This lass,’ I said. ‘He killed her?’

He shook his head.

‘I don’t think so. Helping out his brother-in-law after the fact, apparently.’ He shrugged, though he seemed to make heavy work of the gesture. ‘Strange favours some folk do.’

‘Who was his brother-in-law?’ I said. ‘It wasn’t a bloke called Martin Charteris, was it?’

Pierrepoint frowned.

‘No idea.’

And that should have been it with regard to the Brighton Trunk Murders and the hangings of Albert Pierrepoint and the two Tony Mancinis. But, of course, nothing ever finishes. No story is ever really done.

A year later I was back in London working for military intelligence. I bumped into Pierrepoint again. I was on my way to meet Ian Fleming — he had some girls lined up. But this bloke and his feelings for his chilly occupation fascinated me. Since I’d last seen him, he’d executed at least two hundred Nazi war criminals. Now he was back at Pentonville, hanging home-grown traitors.

Over a pint he said: ‘Good job you got out of the Blackshirts when you did. I hanged two of your former comrades yesterday. Lord Haw-Haw and another bloke who’d been high up. Mosley’s unofficial ambassador to Italy. Picked up in Germany.’

‘Eric Knowles?’ I said.

‘You knew him too?’

I was remembering the time Charteris had taken me to Tony Mancini’s club. As we were standing at the bar, Eric Knowles had come in and gone upstairs.

I laughed. A bleak laugh.

‘Albert, as I get older I’m not sure I know anybody.’

Kate Simpson was dressed and sitting on the edge of her bed when Sarah Gilchrist walked in. She gave the policewoman a lopsided grin. The bruising round her eyes had turned yellow and the swelling on her lip had subsided a little.

‘Ready?’ Gilchrist said.

‘You’re sure about this?’

‘Sure I’m sure. You did the same for me.’

‘Only for a few days, though.’

Gilchrist picked up Kate’s backpack from a chair.

‘Stay as long as you like.’

Kate’s legs trembled as she got out of bed. Although physically she was making a rapid recovery, emotionally and psychologically she was still fragile from the shock and viciousness of the attack.

What she’d actually done to defend herself was something of a blur. She remembered the man hitting her, his weight crushing her, his hand jammed between her legs. She remembered scrabbling under the pillow and grabbing the volt gun. Pressing it to his temple and pushing the button.

She couldn’t face the thought of going back to her flat. Her mother had originally suggested she go up to London and stay at the family home but she had made it sound like an inconvenience. Anyway, Kate didn’t want to be in the same house as her father. Plus, her mother had not bothered to get in touch since the initial offer.

Her father hadn’t visited. He’d phoned, pleading pressure of work. She’d asked him what was behind the attack and he’d been evasive.

‘Some business complications, that’s all.’

‘That’s not all. That man made it very personal.’

‘It will all be taken care of, darling,’ he said.

She cringed at the word ‘darling’ coming from a man she despised.

Her father had at least taken care of her bail. She found it hard to take in the fact she had killed someone and might go to jail for it.

Gilchrist had offered the sofa bed in her new flat. This was by way of thanks for Kate putting Gilchrist up when the policewoman’s flat had been torched to discourage her from investigating the Milldean Massacre. Since Kate had a crush on her, it was a no-brainer, as Simon at Southern Shores Radio was fond of saying. Kate was on sick leave from her job there and looked forward to a week or two of rest and recuperation.

Gilchrist’s phone rang as they stood on the steps of the hospital.

‘DI Gilchrist. Hello? Yes, ma’am. Immediately, ma’am.’ She put her phone away and turned to Kate’s inquiring look. ‘The chief constable wants a word.’

Kate panicked.

‘Are we in it?’

‘Not we,’ Gilchrist said. ‘Me. And I’ve a horrible feeling I know what she wants a word about.’

Tingley slept late. After a quick breakfast he headed for the trolley car that went to the top of the nearby mountain. He walked down the Via Garibaldi, the sky a deep blue and the sun glaring on thick white walls. He was sweating again. He bought a newspaper from a kiosk and stuffed it in his jacket pocket.

The road widened as it neared the southern entrance gate and the signs to the funivia . He turned left immediately outside the gate and walked a couple of hundred yards uphill towards the ticket office.

When he saw the procession of slight green baskets making their way up the mountain face on a narrow black thread, he shook his head. He’d been expecting a proper cable car, with room for sixteen or so in each cage.

He bought a ticket and went to join a small queue. He watched the baskets come down. They were like birdcages with standing room for maybe three adults. Protective wiring came up to waist height. They were spaced at twenty-yard intervals on a cable loop that never stopped moving. Passengers jumped on as the cage swung round in a slow arc at ground level, the mechanic slammed the gate closed and they were on their way.

The cages looked fragile and the top of the mountain a long way away. Tingley thought he could see the cages wavering in the wind. He tidied things away in his pockets, felt the pistol fastened at the small of his back.

He clambered aboard the next cage and with a jerk it began a smooth ascent towards the mountain. Within moments Tingley was looking down at a rough scree of broken white rocks some hundred feet below.

He looked back at Gubbio falling away behind him. The plain beyond was vast, the foothills beyond that tiny. His cage brushed the tops of a clump of pine trees. Tingley smiled a hello at a couple with a little girl coming down about ten yards across from him.

He overbalanced as the cage reached the first of a series of tall metal pylons through which the cable was threaded. He grabbed for the guard rail as his cage tilted and juddered by. The sun was high in the sky, wisps of cloud hanging motionless. Tingley closed his eyes.

There was a flat concrete platform at the top, about twenty yards long. A man grabbed his cage and pushed away the safety bar so that he could drop out on to the concrete. The platform was beside a terrace cafe.

Tingley got a beer from the bar. He threaded his way through noisy youngsters playing table tennis, table football and videogames. He found a table with a view over a gorge and back across the Gubbio plain. Below him Gubbio seemed tiny, its red shingled roofs bright against the light green of the fertile plain.

To the side of him the mountain opened up into a series of valleys, their slopes clad in dark green firs and pines. In the cool under the umbrella Tingley looked for the glint of a scope attached to a sniper’s rifle.

Three girls at the next table were discussing a boy. An old David Bowie song, The Man Who Sold The World , was playing on the radio. Tingley sipped his beer. It was warm. He looked over as the cages bobbed up and on to the landing stage.