Peter Guttridge - City of Dreadful Night

Eight hundred missing women were reported to Scotland Yard. Impressively, 730 were traced and accounted for. The case histories of the others were examined but none revealed a link with the dead woman.

In the event she was never identified. The cause of death was never established. And her killer was never caught.

As they drove along the coast road, Williamson went on and on about Beachy Head.

‘Don’t know why they don’t fence the whole of the Seven Sisters off.’ He was chewing a nail as he spoke. ‘It’s not safe at the best of times, lumps of chalk falling off. It’s not long ago they had to move that converted lighthouse back a hundred yards so it didn’t fall into the sea.’

‘You think it might have been accidental death?’ she said, for something to say.

‘Fuck knows. Beachy Head has won Suicide Spot of the Year twice running. Sometimes I think we should station somebody up there permanently just to make sure the suicidal form an orderly bloody queue.’

He chewed at his nail some more then, when Gilchrist didn’t say anything: ‘Or two queues – one for jumpers and the other for people in cars. I don’t mind so much if they do it when the tides in. I fucking hate it when you’ve got a fifteen-year-old Ford scattered across the beach.’

‘Not to mention the driver.’

‘Yeah, right,’ he said, laughing until he realized from her expression she wasn’t joking. He scratched the stubble on his chin. ‘Listen, Sarah. Anybody selfish enough to top themselves I ain’t got time for – they can drop dead as far as I’m concerned.’

‘They do.’

‘Yeah, well.’ His face was flushed.

‘Well, what?’

He glared at her.

‘I see the pain they cause for the people they leave behind,’ he said vehemently. ‘Children without mothers…’

Gilchrist glanced across at him. He was working his jaw and looking out across the sea.

Kate Simpson was ten minutes early for her meeting with Brian Rafferty so spent the time mooching along the corridors of the Royal Pavilion. She’d always regarded the Prince of Wales’s early-nineteenth-century Indo-Chinese confection as the height of kitsch. Her favourite story about it was that during the First World War it was used as a hospital for wounded Indian soldiers, presumably on the assumption that they would feel at home there.

She imagined them waking up, looking round at the gaudy decorations, the dragons and the other mock-Chinese and Indian decorations and thinking: ‘Where am I?’

She ambled into the banqueting room and looked up at the giant chandelier suspended from a dragon’s maw. She’d dined here a few times. Usually it was during Labour Party Conferences when her father invited her to be his guest so he could kill two birds with one stone – seeing to business and seeing her.

Rafferty’s secretary was waiting when she walked back down the corridor. She was a dumpy woman of indeterminate age who gave Kate the once over then led the way up the staircase, leaning heavily on the bamboo banister. Rafferty’s office was at the end of a meandering series of narrow corridors.

‘Delighted, delighted,’ he said, gathering her hand unctuously between his.

He was a curious little fellow. Probably in his late forties, with floppy hair and narrow shoulders. His manner made Kate think he must be gay, despite the photograph of his wife and children on his desk that he was keen to show to her.

He insisted on signing then presenting Kate with one of his books, a turgid-looking guide to Brighton: Past and Present. She flicked through it whilst he scurried around sorting out coffee. The book didn’t feature any kind of present Brighton she was familiar with.

‘So you have some files from the police investigation of the Trunk Murder,’ she said. ‘You don’t have the trunk itself, I suppose?’

‘I so like words with multiple meanings, don’t you?’ he said.

Kate looked quizzical.

‘Well, a torso is a trunk – the victim was found in a trunk.’ He smiled an awful, coy smile. ‘And, of course, if we were American, the trunk would be the boot of a car. Why, I wonder?’

‘You don’t have the trunk, then?’ Kate repeated. She took a sip of her coffee. It was good.

‘Alas, no. I have files. Lots of files.’

‘Which categories?’ Kate said, remembering how punctilious the Scotland Yard detectives had been about separating things out.

Rafferty steepled his fingers.

‘Do you know, I think I might risk a sherry. Will you join me?’

Kate glanced down at her watch. It was eleven a.m.

‘No, thank you.’

‘Ah – you’re thinking it’s a bit early. It’s all right – I won’t tell.’

He jumped up and scurried for a cabinet in the corner beside a replica of a large antique rocking horse that she’d also seen on sale in the Pavilion’s shop.

‘No – really,’ she said as he took out two glasses and a bottle. ‘I’m fine with coffee.’

He looked peeved but poured himself a glass and brought it back to his desk.

‘Most of the files don’t seem to be categorized,’ he said. ‘I’ve been reading up and, as far as I can gather, after some months, when the police hadn’t in reality got anywhere, the two Scotland Yard detectives heading the investigation moved back to London to oversee the investigation from there.

‘One would assume that all the files would have gone up with them but that was not the case. In 1964 the then Chief Constable of the South East Constabulary ordered all the files relating to the case held in Brighton Police station destroyed. Under, I presume, some thirty-year rule.’

He stood again and beckoned her over to another desk beneath a large window. When she approached she saw that the window led out on to a balcony. There were three cardboard boxes, each filled with brown and green files. Kate looked down at them, excitement stirring in her.

‘But these had been left here?’ she said.

‘In error, of course. There may be others.’

‘In the Pavilion?’

‘No, no. But the Scotland Yard detectives continued to take statements and carry out their investigations for a further year in London. They would have had their own files. I don’t know if they were destroyed.’

Kate nodded. She pointed at the nearest box.

‘May I look?’

‘By all means.’

She was aware that Rafferty was standing uncomfortably close. He smelt of something fusty, as if he slept in mothballs. His waxy cheeks, she noticed, had little points of red on them. She glanced at the empty sherry glass on his desk.

She lifted out an unmarked brown pocket file. Opening it, she saw a sheaf of foolscap pages, lined, each page headed ‘Brighton Police’. She looked at the first sheet. Beneath the heading someone had typed ‘Witness Statement of Andrea Stewart’. The statement itself was handwritten in neat, sloping letters decorated with loops and curlicues.

‘Ah, yes,’ Rafferty pointed at the page with a stubby finger. ‘She saw a man burning something foul-smelling when she was out for a walk with some friends over at Pyecombe. He told them he was burning fish but he wouldn’t let them near enough to see for themselves.’

Kate flicked through the sheets aimlessly. She felt excitement stirring as she wondered if within these files there might be some clue to the identity of the Trunk Murderer. What a coup that would be.

‘I don’t have time to work with you on this,’ Rafferty said. ‘But I expect the Pavilion’s discovery to be part of the story.’

‘Oh, of course. And for the programme I thought I might invite a policeman to comment on the evidence we have.’

‘Indeed? Do you have someone in mind?’

‘I was thinking about Robert Watts.’