Peter Guttridge - City of Dreadful Night

My dad gave me a surprised look.

‘Dad, you saw the body. Was it her or not?’

He looked out of the window towards the iron bridge.

‘There were hardly any distinguishing features, were there? I mean, what was left of her was just a naked woman. I never gave her body a good look anyway.’

‘But you suspected it might be her? How?’

‘Spilsbury’s report mentioned what he called a pimple under one of her breasts. Frenchy had made a joke of having three nipples for me to suck on. That’s a mole, I said. Suck on it all the same, she said. I’d never met anyone quite like her.’

Again, I tried to mask my discomfort at my father talking about sex.

‘Do you think Massiah botched the abortion and Frenchy was the victim?’

‘I think it’s a possibility.’

‘So why didn’t you at least mention the possibility it might have been Frenchy? It could have changed the focus of the investigation.’

‘Sod ’em. By the time I was wondering whether it was her, they were giving me grief about my little arrangement with the press.’

‘But didn’t you want to see justice served for someone you’d known and been fond of?’

‘Fond of? She were nice enough, but it were just sex. I’ve had more meaningful relationships with my fist, believe me.’

‘What happened to Massiah?’

‘It went nowhere. They were going to put him under observation but Billy Simpson’s dad – ambitious bugger – jumped the gun and went and accused him. Massiah just sat at his desk and wrote a list of names of well-connected people in Sussex and high society he’d had dealings with. Implicitly threatening that he’d name names if he was put on trial. They dropped it.’

‘Then as now,’ I muttered.

Damn – maybe this old case was getting to me more than I realized. The enormity of the thought that my father had known this woman, had had sex with her, had perhaps made her pregnant – and had kept quiet about it.

‘Why did you get fired?’ I said.

‘Who says I was fired?’ he said. He brought his hands together. Separated them again. He grunted.

‘I was leaking stories to the press. That’s all. Inventing them, really. The press were ferocious back then, as now. The press corps wanted stories every day. Needed stories every day. I supplied them.’ He sniffed. ‘The stories weren’t exactly accurate but they gave the press their headlines.’

‘What kind of thing?’

‘I’d just take bits of routine work and make more of them. Claim we were following something up, looking for someone. Sometimes we were, sometimes we weren’t, but none of it really amounted to much.’

‘Meaning?’

‘I did a lot with a man called Lindon Laing – always thought it was a queer’s name but I don’t recall that he was. He was a stringer for the Daily Mail and the Evening News. He paid me good money for a story – at the end of 1934, I think – that I based on something and nothing. I told them we had a clue to the victim’s identity based on the fact her name began with the letter M.’

‘Was that a real lead?’

He was impatient at the interruption.

‘I don’t remember now. I doubt it. It was probably some link to Massiah. Other times I’d say that Captain Hutchinson is anxious to interview someone. That he’d asked all the other police forces in the country for help. Something and nothing. What you have to remember is we were inundated with accusations. Ex-wives trying to set their husbands up. Neighbours trying to set neighbours up. Then there were people who’d gone on holiday and not sent postcards so were presumed murdered. None of this stuff came to anything.’

‘You didn’t know that.’

He ignored me.

‘Tell me about the women, Dad.’

‘I’ve told you. I like women. Always have. And they’ve been kind to me. Always have. Frenchy, now – don’t know what she saw in me but she must have seen something.’

‘What did you threaten them with?’ I said. ‘The ones you didn’t bother to get to know too well?’

He rubbed one hand over the other.

‘Women are pliable, Bobby. You know that. And they want the same as us, they just don’t know how to admit it. I helped them do what they wanted to do.’

I looked down.

‘What did you say? That if they said anything you’d have them up on vice charges? Ruin their reputations?’

‘It was enough to be a policeman. But a couple did complain. Word did get round.’

‘You went to trial?’

‘Nobody would go that far. So they had no grounds for firing me or reprimanding me.’

‘And the Carole Lombard lookalike?’

He looked blank for a moment. Blank and old.

‘I’d forgotten about her. She was quite something. Must have been twice my age. Bonny lass. She was down with some older, rich bloke having a dirty at the Grand. I don’t think he was much cop in bed.’

‘But you were with the French girl-’

‘I met her on the pier and within five minutes we were underneath it.’

‘The French girl?’

‘No, the other one. She said: “I’ve always had a thing about uniforms.” I don’t remember what I said. Next thing, we’re under the pier, she’s stuffing her knickers in my mouth and we’re having a knee-trembler. Wouldn’t even let me get the johnny on. Fine by me – I’ve always hated them bloody things. It were parky too, I can tell you. Then it were “Thank you and goodbye”.’

I chewed my lip, thinking about what Tingley had said about the pathologist Spilsbury being fallible.

When I said goodbye to my father I wasn’t sure I would be seeing him again. As I waited for the overground train to central London, I wondered about him as a rapist. I also wondered about Frenchy as victim. But mostly I was wondering about the older woman he’d been with, the Carole Lombard lookalike. I didn’t think he was a murderer, but was it possible that she was the Trunk Murder victim?

A taxi took me to Millbank and the City Inn just behind the embankment. Tingley was sitting in the spacious foyer beneath a complicated map that was also art.

‘He’s here,’ he said. ‘He has a couple of minders with him.’

I was trying to figure out the map.

‘PR type minders or heavies?’ I said absently.

‘Heavies.’

I nodded and led the way up a spiral staircase to the bar above. It was a vast space with sofas and chairs running to a wall of long windows. Simpson was sitting by the windows, alone on a sofa, a tall glass in front of him. A bulky man was sitting a few yards away with a coffee, and a second, slighter man was on a stool at the bar.

Both watched as Tingley and I walked over to Simpson.

‘Forgive me for not standing,’ Simpson said as we stood on the other side of the coffee table. He looked at Tingley. ‘Don’t believe I know your friend.’

‘Tingley,’ Jimmy said, sitting in the armchair opposite Simpson. I sat in the chair beside him.

‘You’re on the brink of harassing me,’ Simpson said to me. ‘And that could get very nasty for you.’

‘What we know is pretty nasty for you,’ I said.

Tingley shifted his chair to put it at an angle to Simpson’s sofa. It also meant the man at the bar and the man behind Simpson were both in his view. Not that I could imagine for a moment anything kicking off in here.

‘Tingley – ah, yes. Our security services put quite a lot of work your way. You should bear that in mind.’

Tingley smiled, crossed one leg over the other.

‘And that means I know a lot of stuff of a very sensitive nature. You should bear that in mind.’

‘Why did you call this meeting?’ Simpson said, reaching for his glass.

‘To get the truth,’ I said.

‘The truth?’ He laughed. ‘That only exists in bad fiction, doesn’t it?’