Peter Guttridge - City of Dreadful Night

‘I told you,’ I said, impatiently, defensively. ‘She didn’t. She hasn’t poisoned me against you, Dad.’ I ducked my head. ‘You did that.’

I sighed.

‘Tell me about your friendship with William Simpson’s father.’

My father shrugged.

‘We met in Brighton, on the force. He was more ambitious than me. Keen to get on – a high-flyer for those days. Like yourself. We got on well enough.’

‘Did you both investigate the Trunk Murders?’

‘That were over half a century ago, lad. How do you expect me to remember?’

‘You remembered Graham Greene.’

‘We were pals, I remember that. Pally enough that he told me once he played for both teams. Brighton opened my eyes to a lot of things, I can tell you that.’ He scratched his chin. ‘Why are you asking about him? You should be sorting out the mess that got you the sack, not bothering about some decades-old case nobody gives a toss about.’

I left some ten minutes later. I couldn’t figure out how to take the conversation any further. I remember saying to him once:

‘There’s stuff we never talk about.’

He’d shut that approach right down.

‘Too much talking these days,’ he’d said quickly. His face cracked into a kind of grimacing smile. ‘Too much sharing.’

I stepped out of his house on to the busy road and waited for a break in the traffic to cross to the river bank. I took a walk along the towpath. There were youngsters sculling on the river. Their coaches shouted instructions from little motorboats alongside them, the engines echoing across the water. I sat on a bench for ten minutes watching a long, grey heron, motionless on the thin stalks of its legs, in the shallows near the bank.

Dad had always been tough. At the age of seventy he’d still been stronger than me. Still arm-wrestled. All that macho stuff.

‘You joined the army to please your dad,’ Molly used to say. Bitterly.

True. I didn’t want to become him, but when I was growing up I wanted his respect. It was hard won. If ever I got it.

I got the train at Barnes Bridge and changed at Clapham Junction for the Brighton train. As I walked across the echoing, roofed footbridge at Clapham, I pondered the route the killer might have taken if he’d come from London. And wondered, just for a moment, whether my father might know who the killer was.

P hilippa Franks had a flat in a rusting, paint-peeled sixties block on the seafront at the far end of Hove. Gilchrist drove down there late afternoon after her shift ended. She rang Philippa’s bell then waited in her car. The rain had finally let up but the sky was grey and brooding.

‘Thanks for seeing me,’ Gilchrist said when Philippa slid into the passenger seat.

‘Yeah, well…’

They didn’t speak as Gilchrist drove to Shoreham and parked behind the Arts Centre. They walked in silence back down the High Street to a rambling old pub that backed on to the wide river estuary. It was late afternoon and the pub was quiet. They took their drinks into the little paved garden. The tide was out so they sat looking out over mud flats.

They chinked glasses and Gilchrist got started.

‘I really need to know what happened upstairs in Milldean.’

‘I don’t know what happened, as I’ve already told you. And why have you got to know? You’ve got your job back.’

‘Oh yeah, and promotion is just around the corner.’

‘At least you’re still in the police.’

She wasn’t looking at Gilchrist.

‘You’re retiring on health grounds?’

‘It’s been offered. It’s probably for the best. The shifts were making it difficult with the kids. My mum’s great but you don’t want to take advantage.’

‘You have children?’ Gilchrist said. ‘I didn’t know that.’

‘I don’t broadcast it. You know what organizations are like.’

‘How old?’

‘Emily’s eleven, Jackson is nine.’

‘Jackson – that’s an unusual name.’

‘My ex-partner’s idea – I don’t even want to get into why. You want kids?’

‘Not yet,’ Gilchrist said, perhaps a little too quickly. Franks glanced at her. Gilchrist continued: ‘Was your partner the man I saw you arguing with in the veggie in Hove?’

Franks looked startled.

‘You mean the organic place?’

Gilchrist nodded.

‘No, that was someone else. Another relationship going south.’

‘He looked nice.’

‘He wasn’t,’ Franks said. She looked at Gilchrist almost warily. ‘You were there? You heard us?’

Gilchrist flushed and shook her head.

‘I was thinking of coming in, put my head in the door, saw you having this intense discussion and thought I’d better go elsewhere. It was just for a minute.’

Franks shook her head.

‘Jesus. There’s no privacy in Brighton.’

‘Small place,’ Sarah said.

‘Small minds,’ Franks said. She saw Gilchrist’s look.

‘Not you,’ she added quickly. ‘I hate this town. So smug, so full of itself but so parochial.’

She looked back over the glistening mud.

‘Philippa – why won’t you talk about what happened?’

‘Why do you bloody think?’

‘You shot someone?’

‘I didn’t shoot anybody.’ She was fierce.

‘So what do you mean: why do I bloody think?’

Franks swirled her wine in her glass. Gilchrist waited. Finally Franks looked at her, her mouth twisted in a curious expression of disgust.

‘Because I’m a coward.’ The words came out as an expulsion of breath. ‘Look what’s happened to Finch and Foster. I’m just a straightforward gal. I’ve got my kids to think about.’

‘Can’t you tell me who fired first?’

‘If I did know who fired first, I wouldn’t say. I’ve a feeling it wouldn’t be healthy. But anyway, you know how those decisions go. A split second to decide, a lifetime to repent. Everybody was hyped. Someone started firing, everyone else joined in thinking they were in danger. It’s hard not to go forward in those situations.’

Gilchrist thought for a moment.

‘You know they torched my flat. Have you been threatened too?’

Franks nodded.

‘Who?’

‘Voice on the phone.’ She sighed. ‘Once you’ve got kids everything changes. They are your absolute priority. It shackles you.’

‘There’s no guarantee you or your children are safe even if you do keep quiet. It looks like whoever they are have decided to take no chances. All the deaths surrounding this case indicate that. The only way for you to be really safe is to go public.’

Philippa stared at her drink.

‘At least tell me who went up the stairs first,’ Gilchrist said.

Philippa swirled her drink round in her glass. Flat-voiced, she said:

‘The big Haywards Heath guy went up first, the one with the teeth missing – Connolly. Then Finch, then White, then Harry Potter. I’m a mere woman so, of course, I brought up the rear.

‘Connolly, White and Finch were supposed to go straight to the front of the house whilst Harry and me took care of the back bedroom and the bathroom. But White stumbled at the top of the stairs and his gun went off. He was blocking our way. Next thing I hear Finch – I think it’s Finch – shout “This is an armed police raid”, then almost immediately there’s a volley of shots. I don’t know how many – three or four, perhaps.

‘By now White is back on his feet and heading to the front of the house. It’s pandemonium. Everybody is hyped.’ She drew a ragged breath. ‘So then I heard a single shot along the corridor. All the shots were really loud in that confined space. My ears were ringing. I looked and Finch was standing in the bathroom doorway, lowering his gun.’