Peter Guttridge - City of Dreadful Night

I was still in the Bath Arms, though by now I was drinking wine, when Sarah Gilchrist called me. She was in professional mode.

‘I’ve been told the man shot in the bathroom was called Little Stevie. He may be a rent boy.’

‘I’m in the Laines – can you join me?’

‘I’m on duty. The man who told me about Little Stevie is that creep, Gary Parker, who killed his friend in Hove. I think his father is maybe somebody big in Milldean. He’s looking for a deal.’

‘I hope his father’s not Cuthbert,’ I said. When Tingley had taken me aside he had told me about his encounter with the gangster. ‘Making a deal with him might be tricky.’

‘Why?’

‘I’ll tell you later.’

I phoned Kate Simpson and invited her to join me. I was thinking a lot about the Brighton Trunk Murder.

‘I’m supposed to be in the studio but I’ve been given research time,’ she said. ‘I’ll be right down.’

I thought about William Simpson’s father. He had died in the late sixties from cancer after taking early retirement somewhere around 1965 or 1966. My mother had remained close to his widow, Elizabeth, for some years, although they stopped seeing each other eventually. I think my father probably had something to do with that.

The friendship between William and me was encouraged and we did like each other well enough. How friendly we would have been if left to our own devices, I wasn’t so sure.

Tingley appeared by my side. I started.

‘You should audition for a ghost movie.’

He sat down.

‘And you should learn to mask your surprise. I’ve just had an interesting meeting with Hathaway. He knows what’s what. My problem is getting the leverage that will make him tell.’

I thought for a moment.

‘He doesn’t have a son with a different name, does he?’

The left luggage office no longer existed and there was no one to ask about its previous location. Kate was lingering on the concourse, looking at the iron girders holding up the station’s vast, glass roof when Watts called. After the call, she phoned in sick. She took a circuitous route to the Laines to avoid her work. She found Watts and Tingley in the Bath Arms sitting side by side in companionable silence. Both stood when she entered and Tingley bought her drink.

She showed them the pages of the diary she had with her.

‘They found that the paper came from Bedford,’ she said. ‘These days there’s a Thameslink service between Brighton and Bedford via King’s Cross.’

‘I doubt Thameslink existed then,’ Watts said.

‘But there might have been an equivalent.’

Tingley was reading through the last diary entry.

‘He’s saying here the paper might still have ended up in a depot in Brighton.’

‘Odd coincidence, though, don’t you think – that Bedford-King’s Cross-Brighton thing?’

‘It is,’ Tingley said.

‘Unfortunately, the diary pretty much ends there. And there’s a gap just before when it looks like he’s about to get a bollocking.’

‘What do you think that was about?’ Watts said.

‘He was selling stories to the press. Made-up ones mostly. His boss thought they were getting in the way of the investigation.’

Watts nodded. He’d asked but his mind seemed to be elsewhere and he had that odd speculative look on his face again. She frowned at him and he leant forward.

‘Kate, remember you said the papers were destroyed in 1964 on the orders of the then chief constable?’

She nodded.

‘I assumed it was under a thirty-year rule.’

‘Actually,’ Watts said, ‘I believe that’s at the discretion of the Chief Constable.’

‘You mean the Chief Constable might have destroyed them deliberately?’

Tingley gave Watts a surprised look.

‘Bit far-fetched, isn’t it, Bob? If they’ve been sitting there for all those years, why suddenly worry about what’s in them in 1964?’

Watts rolled his glass between his palms.

‘Isn’t that also the year in which the news about finding the head finally reached the public?’

Kate nodded.

‘Renewed interest in the case could be a factor, then.’

Kate was watching Watts’s face closely.

‘There’s something you’re not telling us?’ Kate said.

Watts shrugged.

‘How much do you know about your grandfather on your father’s side?’

‘I told you – he was dead long before I was born. And he was a career policeman like you.’

‘Almost exactly like me.’

Tingley tilted his head.

‘He was a career policeman. He joined the force in the early thirties and made chief constable in the late fifties. I’m almost certain that he ended his career as the Chief Constable of this very authority. And under a cloud.’

‘When?’ Kate said, already guessing the answer.

‘Around 1964.’

Gilchrist and Williamson looked at each other, both with handkerchiefs over their mouths. The boyfriend was locked in the bathroom. They could hear him through the door moaning and mumbling to himself.

‘I’m starting to feel like Dirty fucking Harry,’ Williamson said, drawing a ragged breath. ‘All the dirty jobs…’

‘No offence, Reg, but if you were Clint Eastwood, I wouldn’t mind so much.’

To hell with the sick-fuck boyfriend, he could wait. The paramedics were gathered around the unconscious woman sprawled on the bed. Her open mouth was a gory red well. Blood was gushing out of it, down her cheeks, soaking into the pillows and once-purple duvet. She was covered from head to foot in it. She was unconscious.

Gilchrist held down bile as she looked at the pair of pliers that lay beside the woman. There was a bowl on the bedside table. It was bloody. There was a pile of the woman’s teeth in it. Other teeth were scattered over the bed.

‘Actually, Clint, I still hate this job,’ she muttered.

‘You and me both,’ Williamson said. ‘You and me both.’

I watched Kate’s expression change as she took in the implications of what I’d told her.

‘You mean my grandfather was the one who ordered the destruction of the Trunk Murder files.’

‘If I’ve got my dates right, quite possibly – but the dates might be wrong.’

Kate thought for a moment.

‘How weird a coincidence is it that I’m doing this research now? But why would he do that?’

‘There’s more, I’m afraid.’

‘Go on.’

‘I’m not sure but I think he may have started his police career here…’

‘Back in the early thirties?’

I nodded. Kate sat back.

‘Wow. Just bloody wow.’

She took a long swallow of her drink. Tingley and I exchanged glances.

‘Small world,’ he said.

‘Smaller than you think,’ I said. ‘My dad was a policeman too.’

Kate put her drink down.

‘He’s a writer, isn’t he?’ she said.

‘But he was a policeman back in the thirties.’

Kate frowned. The thirties was ancient history to her.

‘I thought you said he was alive.’

‘He is. He’s ninety-five. He’s the George Bernard Shaw of the crime genre. He was running marathons until he was eighty-five.’ I shook my head. ‘And he’s a bastard.’

‘As a father, you mean?’ Kate said. ‘Tell me about it.’

‘No, more than that.’

Tingley had been watching me closely. He’d picked up on a tone in my voice.

‘Where did he serve?’

I gave a small smile and jabbed a finger towards the floor.

‘Here. That’s how he met your grandfather, Kate.’

There was silence around the table.

‘Kate, you’re wondering if either your grandfather or my father wrote that diary.’

‘I’m wondering more than that,’ she said.

‘If she’s wondering the same as me,’ Tingley said, ‘she’s wondering which one of them was the Brighton Trunk Murderer.’