Peter Guttridge - The Thing Itself

She’d found out more about Martin Charteris from police reports of a couple of trials for muggings — or possibly a 1930s form of cottaging? — in London. Nothing at all had come up about Eric Knowles.

She wandered over to the Brighton Trunk Murder files Watts had left with her. She had felt overwhelmed by them when she first saw them. She was excited by the treasure trove of documents but there were so many of them.

She dug through to find the file marked: ‘Sightings of man with trunk’. Some of the witness statements in the folder she’d seen before. Man coming in from Worthing taking up room on a crowded train with a trunk on the seat beside him. Porter at London Bridge lugging a surly man’s trunk with something sliding around inside. A statement from a couple who’d seen two men struggling to get a trunk out of the boot of a car on the road by the racecourse on Derby Day.

She remembered that last sighting from the files that had been discovered in the Royal Pavilion. When the men saw they were being observed, they pushed the trunk back in the boot and drove off. The couple had taken down the registration number. When the police had spoken to the — unnamed — owner, he said his car had been out of his possession at that time. There was nothing else in that file.

Here, there was a second sheet. On it a policeman had handwritten a note that the car had been traced to its owner, who had reported the car stolen a couple of days earlier. The owner lived in Strawberry Hill, Twickenham, London. The note gave the man’s name. Bingo.

Jimmy Tingley surfaced and this time stayed afloat. He looked up at the painted canopy above his bed; glanced down at his arm where not one but two needles were attached to tubes leading to drips. One, he knew, was saline, the other morphine. Maria was sitting beside the bed watching him. She became aware of his stare and looked his way.

‘Stomach cancer,’ he said. ‘I worry I have stomach cancer. Inoperable.’ He looked down his body. ‘But now my insides are really messed up.’

She shook her head, not understanding. He smiled at her.

‘It’s OK. I was saying it to me, not you.’

‘About bloody time,’ Charlie Laker said as he swung open the door of the converted lighthouse.

His mouth fell open when he saw who was standing in the doorway but he recovered quickly.

‘DI Williamson, isn’t it? I’m guessing you’re not here with my pizza?’

Williamson pushed him in the chest. As Laker fell back, Williamson barged into the room and slammed the door behind him. The woman — Lesley White/Clare Mellon — was sprawled on her white sofa, naked from the waist down, her legs akimbo.

She looked up at Williamson, eyes glazed, a bruise on her cheek. Williamson saw the white powder on the table, a flake of it beneath Laker’s nose.

‘Hey, fat man, fuck you and your family.’ Laker’s fists were going up. ‘Are you mental? Laying your hands on me-’

Williamson swept the cosh out of his pocket and brought it down on Laker’s collarbone. He heard more than felt it snap.

Laker howled and sagged to one side, his right hand reaching weakly up. Williamson stepped forward and pushed him in the chest again. This time Laker went down, screaming as his shoulder hit the wooden floor.

The woman on the sofa hadn’t moved. Williamson caught a breath.

‘Hello Lesley — or Claire — which is it?’ Williamson shrugged. ‘Doesn’t matter. I came to question you about your relationship with Charlie Laker and to ascertain his current whereabouts. Looks like I can skip down quite a bit.’

Laker was groaning, gripping his shoulder. Williamson kicked him and got another cry.

‘I’ve had a hell of a day, Charlie, a hell of a day. Quite aside from anything else, I’ve been wondering could I have done things differently, done things better? So if I’m a bit tetchy, blame it on the fact there’s a lot gone on today. Oh, and I’ve just been at Newhaven with the customs boys, opening one of your containers bound for Dieppe. Expecting, you know, rotten meat or some other scummy thing you were intending to offload on our European Community friends. Know what we found?’

Laker moaned, hugging himself.

‘You broke my collar bone — I can’t fucking believe it.’

‘I’m going to do worse than that,’ Williamson said, his belly wobbling as he raised the sap.

Laker had taken beatings before. Dennis Hathaway had beaten the shit out of him when he’d discovered Laker had made his daughter, Dawn, pregnant. The Mexican in prison who’d sliced his face had damned near punched a hole in him first. But all that had been a while ago.

This cop was old school. He knew how to lay it on with minimum effort. A flick of the wrist rather than putting the arm and shoulder into it. He knew where to hit, too. He could do this all day and not break a sweat, despite his weight.

As Laker thought this, Williamson brought the sap down on his elbow. Laker roared. He’d never espoused the idea that keeping shtum when you were taking a beating showed what a tough guy you were. Screaming your nuts off frankly made it more bearable. That way he could take it and survive — and then he’d see about this fat fuck.

‘I’ll beat you to death, you don’t talk to me,’ Williamson said. ‘Then I’ll throw you out of the window and say it was hara-kiri. Think anyone will give a shit?’

The rage was on Williamson all right. He wanted to kill Laker. Williamson’s life had effectively ended when his son had killed himself and Angela had blamed him. Made his life unbearable, in fact. He loved his wife and he lived in misery because he knew he could never leave her.

Instead, she’d now left him. Forever. Taken their car with her. No note. Just their car — and her — smashed to smithereens on the beach below Beachy Head. God. Yeah, God had a lot to fucking answer for.

Williamson looked at Laker and the gangster saw it in his eyes.

‘Do you know the filth I’ve waded through these last months,’ Williamson said, ‘because of your sick ambitions?’

Laker ducked his head and cried out again as his collar bone shifted.

‘Do you know what we found in the back of your container? Do you?’

‘I don’t know what you’re talking about,’ Laker gasped.

Williamson bent and hit him on the knee joint. It wasn’t a good strike but Laker grunted. Williamson turned to the woman on the sofa, who was blearily trying to sit up.

‘Five young girls we found,’ Williamson said. ‘Trussed like pigs, lying in their own piss and worse, scared out of their wits. Snatched off the street in Milldean.’ He turned back to Laker. ‘That’s what we found in your container. Headed where, Mr Laker, sir?’

Laker believed Williamson was going to kill him. His bowels spasmed. Williamson seemed to guess. He leaned over him.

‘Scared, Charlie? You ought to be. Even if I don’t kill you, I can guarantee you’ll be shitting in a bag for the rest of your life.’

Laker’s face burned. His breath was coming in laboured puffs. God, his collar bone hurt. His right arm was useless from the blow to the elbow. He was finding it hard to think straight as the pain washed over him. He’d done some lousy things in his life but did he want to go down for doing this stupid fucking favour for Bernie Grimes?

‘Let me make a phone call,’ he gasped.

‘Fuck that.’

‘No, really. To stop something.’

‘Stop what?’

‘There are supposed to be ten.’

‘Some slimy Sultan’s special order? Ten young English girls for his harem?’

Williamson raised the cosh again. Laker shrank back.

‘It’s not like that.’