Peter Guttridge - City of Dreadful Night

It struck Kate as strange to have such an oasis of calm so near the bustle of rush-hour Brighton. But then that was Brighton – this hodgepodge of disparate things colliding – sometimes clashing – but somehow working. Not necessarily working together, of course, but definitely working.

She looked for cypresses as she drove through the cemetery. Those precise, evocative exclamation marks with their acutely delineated shadows so associated with death. But there were none. She went into the lodge, conscious of the heavy scent of rhododendra.

There was a narrow counter with a long, open office behind it. A pretty woman with a mass of grey hair and a tattooed ankle came over.

‘Is Sally here?’ Kate said.

‘I’m Sally.’

‘We spoke on the phone – about the Trunk Murder victim?’

The woman nodded and walked over to a cluttered desk. She picked up a sheaf of papers.

‘I found the grave,’ she said. ‘At least I found where it roughly is.’

Kate tilted her head.

‘We have grid references for a block of plots. I know roughly where she was buried but I don’t know which the exact grave is. And it’s in an area where other burials may have taken place across where she was buried.’

‘What does that mean if we’re thinking about exhumation?’

‘It means we’re not sure which is her body.’

Kate nodded.

‘I think in the circumstances she might be quite recognizable.’

The woman shrugged. She handed over the papers.

‘The woman is buried in the cemetery across the road,’ she said. ‘But these days her plot is one of a number given over to wildlife.’

Kate thanked the woman and went back to her car. She wound her window down. It had been raining and there was an earthy smell in the air. She drove slowly, avoiding the potholes in the road, past stone crosses on plinths, stained and lichened mausolea, headstones tilted at odd angles poking out of tangled undergrowth.

The entrance to the other cemetery was directly opposite. She drove in, turned right and drove up towards Woodland Grove.

The cemetery was deserted. She drove between a wall on her right and graves on her left. She took a left and parked beside a white van. An estate car was on the other side of the van.

The cemetery sloped away below her. Beyond it she could see, on the next hill, the racecourse. There was a giddy curve of houses, the railway station where all this began on another hill, and the sea beyond. Always the sea.

She checked the map and walked up the slope between newish gravestones. People who had died in the past five years. Now there were a few people in the graveyard. A couple laying flowers and a man on his own looking down on a small grave, lost in thought.

Quite a few young people buried here. Car accidents? Drugs? There were toy animals on a number of the graves. That of a three-year-old child was piled with teddy bears and other soft toys.

At the rim of these recent graves was longer grass, a grove of trees. She walked over. There was a sign: ‘This area has been designated as a nature reserve.’

The ground around and beneath the long grass was uneven – as well it might be, given that it was covering a score of graves. These were the paupers’ graves. People buried by the parish at the cost of the parish in unmarked graves. And the woman – the remains of the woman – found in the trunk at Brighton railway station was one of them.

Kate had no idea where in the twenty square feet her grave was.

She looked into the long grass. Looked up at the blue sky. A sudden wind shivered the trees. And when she looked back at the plot of ground, a man was standing at the other end of it.

Surprised, she took a step back.

He was tall, skinny, in a long black raincoat. He was in his thirties, maybe early forties. He stood, feet together, hands clasped in front of him, head bowed, as if in silent contemplation of the plot.

Then he lifted his head, just a little, and raised his eyes to look at her. He gave her a mischievous, malevolent look from that strange angle, made more sinister when he smiled. He called out to her, his voice deep, an edge to it.

‘What Katie did next, eh, darling?’

Then he turned and ambled away.

‘ W ell, something is kicking off,’ I said the moment Gilchrist had got into my car. ‘What happened to your flat is the worst, but I’ve just had calls from Kate and Tingley. Kate had a scare put into her – some guy hassled her up at the cemetery.’

‘The cemetery? What was she doing there?’

‘She’s found the grave of the Trunk Murder victim.’

‘Oh, that. Clever girl. And Tingley?’

‘He’s found out who Gary Parker’s father is.’

Gilchrist snapped her head round.

‘How the hell has he done that? We don’t know yet.’

‘He has his methods. Anyway, somebody is getting really rattled or pissed off – or both.’

‘Gary Parker’s father?’

‘No, that doesn’t make sense. The timing is wrong for him to come down heavy on us if his son is wanting a deal.’

‘I want to talk to that gap-toothed bastard, Connolly, in Haywards Heath.’

‘Tingley is on to him too. We’re going to pay him a visit. But we’ve got to collect Tingley from Gatwick first.’

‘Tingley’s been away?’

‘Not unless Lewes counts. A meeting. As usual, he was enigmatic.’

Tingley was waiting for them at the South Terminal. He slid into the back seat. Gilchrist told him about her flat but was really just waiting to ask one question.

‘Who is Gary Parker’s father?’ she said.

‘Not who you’d expect,’ Tingley said.

Kate was trying hard not to freak out. The man at the cemetery had chilled her to the bone. What could he possibly want from her? Surely nothing to do with the Trunk Murder – this wasn’t one of those silly thrillers where secret societies protected a secret for centuries. Was it?

Wrapped in a rug, she was on her balcony. Tonight, the music in the square was just Amy Winehouse and something unrecognizable involving a heavy bass beat. She had a notepad on her lap and a pencil in her hand. She was trying to focus on the Trunk Murder but all she could think about was that thin man standing at the other end of the burial plot.

When he walked away she thought of following to ask what he meant, but there was no one around and she wondered if he might attack her. Then she thought he might have done something to her car. When she got back to it she got in gingerly and locked it immediately, before starting the engine and testing the brakes.

She’d entered her flat nervously too, but there was no sign of any kind of break-in. She’d phoned Watts and told him what had happened. He’d told her to stay in the flat until he got over there later in the day. Told her to keep her mobile beside her.

It rang now, playing the irritatingly perky tune she couldn’t figure out how to change. Her parents’ number flashed up on the screen.

‘Hello, Kate,’ her father said in an oddly hearty voice. ‘How are things?’

‘Things are fine, Dad, thanks.’

‘Everything going OK, is it? You’re feeling OK?’

Her father never asked anything about her except when he was checking up on her for his own peculiar reasons.

‘I’m fine, Dad. Why do you ask?’

There was silence on the line for a moment. Then:

‘Nothing unusual happened?’

It was Kate’s turn to be silent as she pondered his asking her this question after her encounter in the cemetery.

‘Not really, no.’

‘Not really – what do you mean, not really?’

‘I mean no. How’s Mum?’

‘Mum’s fine,’ he said impatiently. ‘She’s wondering when you might be coming up to London again for a visit.’ He cleared his throat. ‘In fact, we were both wondering if you might like to come and stay for a few days. We don’t see nearly enough of you.’