Peter Guttridge - City of Dreadful Night

Rafferty’s mouth twisted into a grimace.

‘That odious man.’

‘Is he? Do you say that because of what happened?’

‘Not at all. Simply because of who he is. I don’t think I would be able to work with him.’

‘You probably won’t need to,’ Kate said.

Rafferty smiled and giggled.

‘Ah – that snippy policewoman – I’ve just realized who she is.’

Gilchrist and Williamson parked at the lay-by just below the lip of Beachy Head. The converted lighthouse was some hundred yards up a steep incline behind them. Williamson didn’t say anything but Gilchrist could tell he was pissed off at having to walk up the hill.

He trailed behind as she strode ahead. She was enjoying the view: in one direction the sea and in the other the rich green folds of the Downs.

The wind was fierce, blowing in sharp gusts from the sea, sending clouds scudding across the vast arc of sky.

When Gilchrist reached the door, Williamson was still clumping along some fifty yards behind. The door opened before she had even located a bell.

‘Another suicide?’

The speaker was a woman somewhere in her fifties, dressed in a loose linen top and matching trousers, her hair drawn back from her sculpted face. She introduced herself as Lesley White.

She looked like a retired dancer, an impression reinforced when she moved back to usher Gilchrist into the house then led her down three steps into a spacious living room.

‘Possibly,’ Gilchrist said when the woman turned back towards her. ‘This is just routine.’ She looked around the thirties modernist room. ‘Lovely. And it must be lovely living here.’

‘It is and it isn’t. This stretch of cliff is very popular among tourists. And among suicides.’

There was a heavy rapping on the door.

‘Sorry,’ Gilchrist said. ‘My colleague.’

Williamson was sweating as the woman led him into the living room.

‘This is Sergeant Williamson,’ Gilchrist said. ‘We’ve found a body, as you surmised, down the coast a little way. At the moment we don’t know whether this is suicide. However, our visit is strictly routine.’

White gestured for them to sit down on a cream sofa. Gilchrist worried Williamson would somehow mark it, perhaps with nicotine-stained fingers. In consequence she sat particularly gingerly herself on the edge of the sofa, her hands clasped between her thighs

‘How long has it been in the water?’ White said, casually familiar with the procedure.

Gilchrist looked at Williamson, giving him an opportunity to join in the conversation.

‘We don’t know for certain yet,’ he said gruffly. ‘Probably a couple of weeks, judging from the deterioration. I don’t suppose you remember anything from back then?’

‘Well, we don’t keep a suicide watch here, if that’s what you mean.’

She sat so neatly, so straight-backed, that Gilchrist immediately felt lumpen and heavy. Looking at her face again she thought she might be early sixties – but looking very good on it. Gilchrist pushed her shoulders back.

‘Is there anything unusual you can recall?’

‘All I can recall is that we lost our cat.’

‘What was his name?’

Gilchrist blurted out her question without thinking. She was a sucker for animals. Williamson caught the soppiness in her voice and gave her a disgusted look. She flushed but ignored him.

‘Phoebe,’ the woman said. ‘But Phoebe was a boy.’ She smiled quickly, showing small, even teeth. ‘We got muddled when he was a kitten.’

‘No wonder he ran away,’ Williamson said.

White smiled again but her eyes didn’t. Gilchrist could tell she didn’t like Williamson, especially sweating on her pristine sofa in his sports jacket and greasy trousers.

‘He’s chipped by the way,’ White said to Gilchrist. It took a moment for Gilchrist to realize that White was hoping she would try to find her cat.

She stood.

‘OK, well, that will be all for now.’ She handed White her card. ‘If you can think of anything else.’

Walking back down to the car Williamson kept pace with her. She felt awkward with most of her colleagues. First because of the shooting, second because of the splash the papers had done on her one-night stand with Watts. So she was surprised and touched when Williamson said:

‘Sorry you’ve been going through all this shit, Sarah.’

‘Oh, Reg, you know how it goes…’ Her voice trailed away.

‘Sorry if I’ve been a bit tricky today.’

Williamson apologizing too? Gilchrist gave him a sharp look as they neared the car.

‘Fact is, these suicides don’t agree with me-’

‘So you’ve made clear,’ she said quickly.

He looked at her, seeming to want to say more.

‘Ay, well. Let’s see what forensics come up with, eh?’

I was sitting in what passed for my back garden, pen and pad on my lap, when the bell of my bungalow rang out harshly. I was tempted to ignore it, as I had the telephone that had been ringing throughout the afternoon, but I felt vulnerable. I was pretty sure the front door was unlocked and whoever it was could just waltz in and find me sitting here.

I was punishing myself by living in this horrible place, sure enough. The thing about our old home was the view. Here there was no view. I had thought of renting somewhere in Brighton by the sea – another view I loved. Instead I’d chosen this place where the only view was of the big house that straddled the space between me and the Downs. A travel agent owned it. He and his wife acted like seigneurs, tramping by each day to walk their estate.

Fired up by the meeting with Tingley, I’d been mapping out a plan of action. What the hell else was I going to do? I had no job and no immediate prospect of one.

The past weeks had given me plenty of time to think. Seethe, too. I had been thinking about me, about what I am. I find it so unlikely that I got where I did. I was just a kid with wacko parents.

My dad, the writer, Victor Tempest, churning out these gung-ho thrillers. He was most successful when I was growing up. To meet his deadlines – he was writing three a year – he scarcely left his study, never mind the house. He was in his fifties before I came along and I guess he was set in his ways.

My mother was giddy, excitable – OK, mad as a hatter. Her mood swings, from the heights of joy to the depths of despair, made a big dipper seem like a sensible mode of transport. When my wife, Molly, proved depressive – post-natal depression – it didn’t need a shrink to tell me that maybe I was looking for my mother in my wife. But a shrink did, unable to believe my wife hadn’t shown some propensity for depression earlier in our marriage. Actually, rack my brains though I did, I didn’t think she had.

What did I get from my parents? From my dad, my ambition and my toughness. From my mum, something more theatrical. The drive to succeed I got, of course, from my desire to leave these two people behind. Not that you ever can, however far you go.

I was a driven man. People could see that in me. They couldn’t see that I was also a fearful one. My ambition hiding my insecurity. Often before big meetings, like an actor before a first night, I was physically sick. When I first came into the police at quite a senior rank I forced myself to speak within the first two minutes of a meeting, otherwise I feared I would not speak at all. I had difficulty addressing the troops. I was conscious that I didn’t have their experience, hadn’t worked my way up through the ranks.

The doorbell rang again, more insistently. I left the pad and pen on my chair and padded through the back door, down the corridor to the front. When I opened it, Sarah Gilchrist was standing there, an embarrassed look on her face. I flushed and glanced at the other houses around me.