Peter Guttridge - City of Dreadful Night

Connolly had readily let us in but then had taken offence at something Gilchrist had said and lunged at her. Tingley had intervened, and before I had even begun to react, Connolly was on the floor.

‘Someone has been trying to get into my flat,’ Kate was saying in my ear.

‘Call the police. No, wait.’ I called to Gilchrist. ‘Is Reg on shift now?’

‘How would I know?’ She saw my look, thought for a minute. ‘I think so.’

I handed her my phone.

‘Give Kate his mobile number. And tell her we’ll be over as soon as we’re finished here.’

I’d doubted the value of fronting Connolly. We weren’t going to strong-arm him into telling us anything. Tingley felt the same. He’d been monitoring Connolly and his colleague, White. But Gilchrist had been keen to confront him. And confront him she had.

‘You murdering scum,’ she’d said the minute we’d got into the house. Not the most tactful opening gambit and the reason everything had kicked off.

‘What the fuck do you all want?’ Connolly rasped, his voice hoarse. The open-handed blow to the throat does that to the voice box. The bubbling breath was the consequence of that and the punch in the diaphragm. The temporarily useless left arm was a nerve thing: Tingley’s precise attacks on the elbow and that bundle of nerve endings just below the shoulder joint. Connolly would be feeling major pins and needles soon. Then a lot of pain.

‘We want to know what happened at Milldean the night that everybody got shot. What was behind it?’

‘You’re Watts, aren’t you?’ Connolly said as he pushed himself up on one arm to his feet. He went over to a big armchair and dropped into it. ‘Mr High and Mighty.’

‘Why did you steal that phone from the kitchen?’ Gilchrist said.

Connolly bared his gappy teeth.

‘What is this – amateur hour? If I have something to disclose, don’t you think you should approach it with a bit more subtlety? Asking me straight out ain’t going to get you anywhere.’

I agreed with him. Even so, I said:

‘We’re on a clock. No time for subtlety.’ I waved my arm around the large room. ‘Nice place. Must have cost a bob or two. You must be good at handling your copper’s salary.’

‘That’s subtle. It’s Bob, isn’t it? Are you thinking you were one of the bobs who paid for it?’

Tingley snorted. I looked over at him but he still seemed to be focusing on the DVD collection, tilting his head to read spines. Connolly looked over at him.

‘Anything you fancy, feel free to borrow it.’ Connolly’s voice was getting stronger. ‘You’re handy, by the way. I’ll remember that for next time.’

‘Won’t do you any good,’ Tingley murmured.

‘What was that?’ Connolly said, leaning forward, belligerent again.

‘I said I can’t see your ultra-violent gay rom-coms – I’m guessing you keep them in the bedroom.’

‘Let’s go,’ Gilchrist said, heading for the door.

‘We’ve only just got here,’ I said.

‘This was a mistake. My fault. Asshole isn’t going to tell us anything. He doesn’t realize he’s next.’

‘Oh, here they are,’ Tingley said. ‘ Reservoir Ducks. Lock, Stock and Mockney Cockney. Gay Gangs of New York. The whole gay gangsters-r-us collection. You must have The Very Dirty Dozen and The Quite Wild Bunch in your bedside cupboard.’

‘What do you mean I’m next?’ Connolly said.

‘He’s not stupid,’ I said. ‘He knows what’s what.’

‘Somebody is knocking off the shooters,’ Gilchrist said. ‘And assuming it’s not you – because you’re too much of a blunt instrument – then you’re on the list. My flat was firebombed.’

‘That’s just pest control,’ Connolly said, but it was clear his heart wasn’t in it. He rubbed his dead arm, gave Tingley another look. Then he turned to me.

‘You should know more than me what’s going on, Chief Constable. Ex-Chief Constable, I mean.’

‘Why would I?’

Connolly looked at me and shook his head.

‘Don’t treat me like an idiot.’

‘That’s a tough call,’ Tingley said.

‘You’re next,’ Gilchrist repeated, standing over Connolly. ‘Being a policeman won’t protect you.’

‘Yeah?’ he said. ‘I’ll take my chances. Besides, I’m retiring on health grounds. Going into the security business.’

‘Anyone else retiring?’ I said.

Connolly shrugged.

‘Whoever is still alive,’ he said.

Kate’s bell rang again. This time it was the outer door.

‘Hello?’

‘DS Reg Williamson from the Brighton nick,’ a tinny voice said. She recognized the name from Sarah Gilchrist. She buzzed him in.

He was a lardy man, pasty-faced, but with something sympathetic in his eyes. He smelt of sweat and tobacco in about equal proportions.

‘Somebody has been trying to get into your flat,’ he said.

Kate told him what had happened.

‘Well, there’s no sign of forced entry on the front door of the house, but then another flat could have buzzed someone in. There is nobody in the common parts of the house now. I’ll check the other flats to see if they have a guest who rang your bell by mistake.’

Kate double-locked the door behind him. Her phone rang while he was out. Watts.

‘We’re on our way,’ he said.

Gilchrist was kicking herself for persuading the others to go to Connolly’s place. It hadn’t done any good. Hadn’t even made her feel better – which, if she were honest, had been the point of it. She realized she needed to wait for what Gary Parker was going to say, wait for more on Little Stevie, maybe talk to Philippa Franks. She sensed from what Connolly had said that the investigation was going to be shelved.

She watched the road ahead and cursed herself until Tingley started talking about his conversation with Hart.

‘Hart was a student here. Drunken encounter with a married woman on a hen night – this was back in the day when you did a pub crawl in your own town, not in Prague or Budapest or the south of France. Thinks no more about it. Does his degree, goes off, eventually settles back down here, gets in the papers a bit once he’s involved in local politics.

‘This woman gets in touch with him out of the blue about their son. She’s a divorcee now; life hasn’t been kind to her.’

‘She blackmails him?’ Watts said.

‘I think you mean she asks for the financial support to which she’s entitled,’ Gilchrist said.

‘Hart goes down the DNA route,’ Tingley said, ignoring them both. ‘Quietly, because he’s married with family.’

‘Then he coughs up?’ Watts says.

‘To be fair, it doesn’t sound like this woman is trying to screw him – financially, I mean – but Gary as a teenager is a handful so she has a lot on her plate. When Gary is a bit older, she asks Hart to pay for the rent on a flat for him. Hart agrees.’

‘Is that when Gary figures out who his father is?’ Gilchrist said.

‘Not immediately,’ Tingley said. ‘But, yes, the flat is in the name of one of Hart’s companies, and at some unspecified point Gary figures it out.’

‘He blackmails Winston Hart?’ Watts says.

‘Apparently not.’

Gilchrist pondered for a moment.

‘So, actually, this doesn’t take us anywhere. Gary Parker isn’t suggesting that Winston Hart had anything to do with the Milldean thing, is he?’

‘You tell us,’ Watts said, glancing towards her. ‘You’re the one who’s spoken to Gary Parker.’

‘I’m now wondering if his mention of his father and his claiming knowledge of the massacre are actually linked, as I had assumed,’ she said glumly.

‘So long as he can tell us about the massacre, we don’t necessarily need the bigger picture straight away,’ Tingley said.