Peter Guttridge - City of Dreadful Night

I got back to the bungalow late afternoon and within an hour Gilchrist had turned up. Jeans and T-shirt, her hair tied back. She didn’t demur when I handed her the glass of wine. This time I sat beside her on the sofa. She was conscious of me but didn’t seem put off by my proximity.

A strong wind had blown up. The window behind us trembled as a strong gust hit it.

‘So what have we got, Sarah?’

‘The cat from Ditchling Beacon is the Beachy Head cat.’

‘Was it chipped?’

‘Yes. There were very few remains but we found the chip. So we’ve got a cat disappearing on Beachy Head just a few hours before a car is torched on Ditchling Beacon.’

‘And we’ve got the body of Finch – a policeman involved in the Milldean operation – thrown into the sea off Beachy Head around that time.’

She leant forward. She was making sure we weren’t touching by keeping her knees close together.

‘They didn’t close the boot when they were carrying the body to the cliff edge. They wanted to minimize noise. He was alive but probably gagged. And he’d been beaten up.’

‘Poor bugger. So whilst the boot was open, the cat jumped in. They came back, having done the deed, closed the lid and drove over to the Beacon.’

‘They’d left another car at the Beacon.’

‘Leaving a car up there is asking for it to be broken into or vandalized, plus a police patrol is supposed to go by at least once a night.’

‘Rendezvous, then.’

‘What about the courting couples?’

‘Courting couples?’ Gilchrist laughed.

‘What?’

‘That’s such an odd phrase,’ she said. ‘They’re not courting, they’re shagging.’ The window shuddered again. Gilchrist glanced back at it over her shoulder. ‘Plus it’s either a bit late at night or too early in the morning for that kind of thing to be happening up there.’

‘I was thinking of when the rendezvous car arrived. And I’ve never liked that term.’

She sat back in the sofa and looked sharply at me.

‘Shagging?’

I nodded.

‘Let me guess. You prefer the term “making love”.’

Her voice was sharp and I immediately regretted what I’d said. Even so, I held her look. I was conscious of the emotion welling up in the room. I nodded. And then the question I knew would be next:

‘So is that what we did?’

The harshness in her voice was a thin disguise for vulnerability. Another gust of wind. I realized she was hugging her body unconsciously.

‘I hope what happened between us was caring, yes.’

She looked at me, her cheeks flushed.

‘You shagged the arse off me.’ She shrugged. ‘It was a one-night stand, ergo, it was a shag.’

I played the sentence back in my head. It should have been bitter or harsh but it wasn’t.

‘Come on. We were drunk. Did you think it might be more? You knew I was married.’

She reeled back as if I’d hit her in the face. Stood up abruptly. Shit. I could hear the tone of my voice as I’d said those things. I was harsh.

I stood up too. She moved a couple of yards away from me.

‘I didn’t mean it to sound like that,’ I said. ‘I’m sorry. My tone of voice was wrong.’

‘You chose your tone.’

She moved over to the window, her back to me. She had strong shoulders and a long back.

I felt wretched.

I’ve never been good with women. I don’t mean I’m sexist – at least I hope I’m not – but I haven’t spent too much time with them. I’ve never been a ladies man. I think I’m a good listener, which I hear is a good trait. But then all men think that, and how wrong most of us are.

I was distressed that I’d upset her. I wanted to put my arm around her and hold her close. I watched her long back. She held still.

‘I’m sorry,’ I said softly. ‘I spoke without thinking.’

She turned back to me. I looked in her eyes. Yes, definitely too revealing.

I wanted to say so much but I was split because I still cared about Molly and felt we should be back together. I’d already behaved entirely improperly with Gilchrist, messed her about emotionally. It wasn’t right to mess her around any more. And yet.

She cleared her throat.

‘So the car burnt at the Beacon was the car that had delivered Finch’s body to Beachy Head,’ she said, walking past me and resuming her seat on the sofa.

I had taken a seat behind my desk.

‘Was the car identified?’

She nodded.

‘Stolen in Worthing the previous day. Audi A4.’

‘But where does that take us?’

‘Well, at least we know how Finch got to Beachy Head.’

‘But not what he was doing in the two days before then.’

‘What about these Haywards Heath blokes – Connolly and White?’

‘They were given a hard time by your friend from the Hampshire force, but, as far as I’m aware, they had nothing to say.’

‘But maybe it’s time they were examined again?’

‘Get Jimmy Tingley on it.’

‘Then where do we go?’

‘We follow the trail backwards.’

I nodded and sat down beside her, conscious of our proximity. She turned to face me. We looked at each other, then she leant towards me.

Tingley was back in the pub in Milldean. This time he was drinking brandy. The barman had made a call and within fifteen minutes Cuthbert was standing beside him.

‘I’ve been finding out about you,’ he said.

‘That must have been exciting.’

‘Well, there’s only scraps, but you wouldn’t think it to look at you. SAS, intelligence agencies. Bit of a lethal weapon.’

Tingley didn’t say anything.

Cuthbert had some heavier men with him than on the previous occasion. He looked round at them.

‘But I’ve got to ask – is this the same person? I mean you look like something I shit out after a bad curry.’

His men sniggered. Tingley smiled.

‘Are you going to go on with this macho stuff all night?’

‘Well, it’s a problem for me. Problematic. You like that? Educated, you see. I mean, I hear this stuff and then I see you and I think someone is having a laugh.’

Tingley didn’t go for introspection. To say he was a man of action would be wrong. He was a man of inaction, of calm. However, he didn’t soul-search. Never had. He looked at Watts agonizing over the break-up of his marriage, the loss of his job, and he wanted to stay focused on the externals.

Tingley shifted in his seat and looked around him, clocking where the four goons were.

He could take out this room without raising a sweat. He knew which strike to make on each of them. The jab to the throat; the thrust to the diaphragm; the kick to the inside of the knee. He could disable easily enough. Cuthbert would undoubtedly have a weapon. Could he do all that before the gangster drew and used it?

Probably. Tingley stood.

‘I thought we might have a useful conversation but in the absence of that I might as well go.’

‘I don’t think so.’

There it was, in the open.

He took out the bodybuilder first – that rigid V between thumb and first finger whacked into his Adam’s apple. As the bodybuilder choked, clutching at his thick throat, his face purple, Tingley was on to the next, stiff fingers thrusting through the beer belly and up deep behind the diaphragm. With a startlingly loud exhalation, the man doubled over.

Two down and nobody had yet reacted. Then Cuthbert started to reach into his pocket and the fourth guy had a knife in his hand. That was quick. He must have had it palmed all the time.

Tingley kicked him in the face and chest and he went crashing backwards, falling heavily. Tingley nutted Cuthbert whilst he was still fishing in his pocket; kneed him between his legs and pulled his jacket down over his arms, trapping his hand in his pocket. As Cuthbert slumped forward, Tingley guided his head down on to his knee. He felt the nose go.