‘Hefty?’ she muttered.
On the way out of the hospital Gilchrist bumped into a hard-faced blonde who’d clearly had a boob job and wanted everyone to know it, judging by the amount of cleavage on display.
‘Mrs Cassidy,’ Gilchrist said. ‘Could I have a quick word?’
‘I’ve already told you I don’t know nothing,’ Cassidy said, in a cigarette-wrecked voice.
Gilchrist ushered her over to a bench. When they were seated, Gilchrist said: ‘It’s about her boyfriend.’
Cassidy fished out a cigarette from her coat pocket.
‘My daughter is very independent for her age.’
‘You didn’t mind her going out with a twenty-two-year-old man?’
‘She goes her own way.’
‘You didn’t mind she was probably having sex with a twenty-two-year-old man?’
‘Look, dear, I don’t know about you but I lost mine when I was twelve. To my dad. He’d been poking about before then but he’d always said he’d wait until I was a woman — you know, until I’d started my periods — before he gave me a proper seeing to. And I know you’re not supposed to say this these days about whatchamacallit — incest? — but he was quite good at it. I’d much rather a twenty-two-year-old who knows a bit than a pimply thirteen-year-old who can’t find the right hole to stick it in.’
‘Even if he murders and cuts up his flatmate?’
Cassidy adjusted her left breast unselfconsciously, lifting then releasing it.
‘Yeah, well, that came after.’
‘But he’s clearly a psycho.’
Cassidy thrust her face at Gilchrist.
‘Look, dear, I don’t know what la-di-da men you knock about with but we live on Milldean. Different world, different rules. All I’ve ever known is violent men. He was a bit rough round the edges but until he did what he did he seemed normal.’
Gilchrist slid back along the bench a few inches.
‘So you accept that what he did wasn’t normal?’
‘Course I bloody do — I’m not touched, you know.’
Gilchrist cleared her throat.
‘Who is Sarah Jessica’s father?’
Cassidy narrowed her eyes.
‘None of your fucking business; excuse my French.’
‘Sarah Jessica said he’d sort out her attackers.’
‘He probably will.’
‘So you know who they are?’
‘I’ve already said I don’t.’
‘But Sarah Jessica does?’
‘She says not.’
‘How long were you married? Were you married?’
Cassidy waggled her right hand. On her second finger she had an engagement ring and a gem-clustered wedding band.
‘Some detective you are.’
‘When did you last see him?’
‘My Sarah Jessica’s expecting me.’ She stood. ‘If you’ll excuse me.’
NINE
It didn’t take Sarah Gilchrist long to find the name of Donna Cassidy’s husband through her marriage certificate and Sarah Jessica’s birth certificate. She blinked at her computer screen.
‘Listen to this, Reg,’ she called across the office to DI Williamson, standing by the open window with a mug of coffee in his hand. He was peering intently down at something on the street outside, but she was pretty sure he was really standing there because he’d had a curry the previous night and they’d both been suffering the consequences. ‘Donna Cassidy’s husband is one Bernard Edward Grimes of Lewisham. Stated occupation “handyman”.’
Williamson turned to look at Gilchrist and raised an eyebrow.
‘Actual occupation “scumbag”. Last heard of in Milldean en route to the south of France.’
He walked over to peer at Gilchrist’s screen.
‘How the bloody hell did everyone miss that?’
The Milldean armed intervention that had gone so disastrously wrong the previous year had been designed to apprehend Bernie Grimes, dangerous armed robber. He was believed to be staying in a house in Milldean prior to taking the ferry to Dieppe en route to his hideout in the south of France.
He was not in the house they’d stormed. Other people were. These people had been shot and killed, though by exactly which of Gilchrist’s colleagues it was still not clear. There was no trace of Bernie Grimes in the house or any indication that he had ever been there.
‘The bastard wouldn’t need to stay in that house given his ex-wife and kid were living down the road. You and your guys were truly shafted.’
‘What’s her address — maybe it’s similar to that of the house we raided?’
Gilchrist tapped some keys, shook her head.
‘Nope. Donna Cassidy’s address and that of the house we raided are nothing like each other.’
‘How the bloody hell did everyone miss that?’ Williamson repeated. ‘I mean that’s major information.’
Gilchrist phoned the Met Police and after being passed around eventually reached a serious crime unit that had a particular interest in Grimes. She spoke to a detective sergeant for ten minutes, Williamson back at the window.
When she put the phone down, she walked over to join him.
‘They don’t have any information about Grimes having a wife and child — and certainly not one living in Milldean,’ she said.
Williamson gave her a long look.
‘They’ve got a rat in their unit, deleting stuff.’
‘That’s what the detective sergeant was realizing.’
‘So they’ll be heading down here.’ He reached for his jacket. ‘We’d better get to her first.’
Donna Cassidy was not pleased to see Gilchrist and Reg Williamson on her doorstep in Milldean.
‘I’m just going out,’ she said, her voice even throatier than Gilchrist remembered from the hospital.
‘We can do this down at the station if you want, love,’ Williamson said.
‘Who the fuck are you calling “love”, fatso? And stop staring at my tits.’
Gilchrist knew that Williamson was always imperturbable when faced with insults, especially about his paunch.
‘I’ll take that as an invite to enter the premises, shall I?’ he said, stepping forward.
Cassidy gave him a hard stare, then barked a laugh.
‘I’m not making you a bloody drink, though,’ she said, moving back into her entrance hall. They squeezed by a table piled with opened and unopened mail, past the open sliding door of a toilet under the stairs and into a large square living room.
‘You’ll know why we’re here,’ Gilchrist said as Cassidy walked over to a pink sofa and plonked down.
‘You’ve found the little monsters who tried to kill my daughter?’
‘We’ve found out who you’re married to,’ Williamson said, from the middle of the room.
‘I knew I’d said too much at the hospital,’ Cassidy said, glancing down at her breasts pushing out of her blouse.
‘We’re not interested in catching him,’ Gilchrist said. ‘Though there’ll be others coming from London to question you, I’ve no doubt, who will have other ideas. We just need to know when he was last in Milldean.’
Cassidy turned to look at her and almost snarled: ‘And you think I’ll tell you that?’
‘OK, not that,’ Gilchrist said. ‘Look, we’re not out to get him or you. But you know that Milldean thing last year?’
‘When you lot shot a house full of innocent people?’
‘We were there to arrest Mr Grimes.’
‘Shoot him more like, if what actually happened is anything to go by.’
‘Definitely not,’ Gilchrist said. ‘I was there. I was downstairs when it happened. I want to find out why and how it happened.’
‘And you want me to help how exactly?’
Gilchrist stepped closer.
‘We heard your ex-husband was staying in Milldean in that house en route to the south of France. Was he? Or was he staying with you? Or was he not in Milldean at all?’
‘Why should I tell you something like that?’
‘Because you owe DS Gilchrist the life of your child,’ Williamson said. ‘As does Bernie.’
Cassidy looked at him.
‘How do you reckon that, fatso? She just found her and called for help.’
‘It were a bit more than that-’
‘Reg-’ Gilchrist said.
‘Those girls were still attacking your daughter when DS Gilchrist, off duty, passed by. She saw off ten of them on her own, out of uniform. If she hadn’t, your Sarah Jessica would be dead.’
Cassidy looked at Gilchrist.
‘That true?’
‘Something along those lines,’ Gilchrist said. Thinking: if you miss out the bit where the three Balkan gangsters turned up and scared the bejesus out of the kids, then tried to kidnap me.
Cassidy looked off to one side for a long moment.
‘And you’re not going to try to hang something on Bernie?’
‘It’s other people we’re after,’ Williamson said, unconsciously stroking his paunch. Cassidy watched his circling hand.
‘He was in Milldean and he was with us, and the next day he did go off to France,’ she said. ‘He never went anywhere near that house.’
‘Did he know about it?’ Gilchrist said.
Cassidy gave her a sharp look.
‘That sounds like the start of a new line of questioning.’
‘Or a way of clearing him of all suspicion of complicity in what happened,’ Williamson said.
‘You’d have to speak to him about that,’ she said, with an odd twitch of the lips.
‘Love to,’ Williamson said. ‘Can you give us his number? Or, better still, his address? I’m fond of the south of France.’
‘I think it’s time you went,’ Cassidy said. ‘I think you’ve already got more than you deserve.’
‘Was that a loo down the hall?’ Williamson said. ‘Do you mind if I use the necessities?’
‘On your way out,’ Cassidy said.
‘Well, DS Gilchrist has just one final question for you,’ Williamson said, striding off down the corridor.
Gilchrist, startled, smiled uneasily at Cassidy.
‘Er, I just wondered when Sarah Jessica was coming home from hospital?’
Cassidy gave her a calculating look.
‘End of the week, they think.’
‘Remembered anything more?’ Gilchrist said.
Cassidy shook her head, looking beyond Gilchrist as Williamson emerged from the downstairs loo, his jacket over his arm.
Gilchrist followed her look.
‘Right then,’ she said. ‘We’ll be off.’
Cassidy followed her down the corridor. Williamson was on the doorstep.
Gilchrist joined him and turned back to Cassidy.
‘By the way, I found your marriage certificate and I found your daughter’s birth certificate. But I couldn’t find your divorce registered anywhere.’
Cassidy looked from one to the other of them, smiled slowly then closed the door.
TEN
‘You’re looking pleased with yourself,’ Gilchrist said, glancing across at Williamson as they drove back into Brighton from Donna Cassidy’s house in Milldean.
‘Fancy getting a quick half somewhere?’ Williamson said.
They parked in the small courtyard of a thatched pub opposite the youth hostel at Stanmer Park.
‘OK — what have you been up to?’ Gilchrist said as they sat down with their drinks — pints not halves. ‘You’re looking insufferably smug.’
He tapped his glass against hers.
‘Did you see that pile of mail? On the table by the front door? There was a phone bill.’
‘Jesus, Reg — you didn’t? They could hang you up by your balls for stealing that.’ Gilchrist stuck her hand out. ‘Let’s see it, then.’
Williamson shook his head.
‘I didn’t take it; I just borrowed it for a couple of minutes. It was already opened.’
‘And?’
‘I got a mobile number she phoned a lot lately and a foreign landline number that I hope is in France.’
‘Did you memorize them?’
Williamson looked at her over the rim of his beer glass.
‘I scribbled them down.’
‘Jesus, Reg. With your handwriting we’re fucked.’
Williamson took a crumpled piece of paper from the top pocket of his jacket. He tossed it on to the table.
Gilchrist spread it between them.
‘Did you use a spider instead of a pen?’
‘Give me a break. I was in the loo scribbling it down as fast as I could.’
‘What’s that — a two or a five?’
‘Pass.’
‘And that?’
‘Look, we can try options, Sarah. Don’t be a pain in the arse.’
Gilchrist patted his hand.
‘Only kidding, Reg. This is great — but what the hell can we do with it?’
‘What do you mean?’ Williamson said.
‘Well, if we pass it on to the Met, we’ve got to explain how we got the numbers. Same if we try to do anything with them.’
‘Bugger that,’ he said. ‘We track the locations down and worry about the legalities later.’
‘You want us to go down there? How? How can we justify it? Plus, he’s a very dangerous man.’
‘What about Bob Watts and his mate, Jimmy Tingley?’
‘You’re suggesting we use vigilantes?’
Williamson looked at her again over his glass.
‘Let’s see what the numbers show us, then decide.’
Sarah Gilchrist bumped into Philippa Franks coming out of a cafe in the North Laines. Franks had been a member of the armed response unit that had killed the apparently innocent citizens in Milldean.
‘How’s retirement suit you, Philippa?’
Franks, along with several others, had taken early retirement on the grounds of ill health to avoid any possibility of criminal proceedings. Gilchrist was sure Franks knew much more than she was letting on.
Franks shuffled a little.
‘I’m retraining to be a social worker,’ she said.
‘You’ll be good at that,’ Gilchrist said.
‘Terrible what’s going on at the moment.’ Franks gave a little shudder. ‘That man impaled on a stake on the Downs as a warning. John Hathaway over in France. They’re saying he was done the same way.’
She looked intently at Gilchrist. Gilchrist nodded.
‘He never had much chance, Hathaway,’ Franks said. ‘Having the father he had.’
‘You knew his father?’
‘I know I’m not looking great but do I look that old?’ Franks smile was tired. ‘My father knew them both. He used to run a pub that Dennis Hathaway “protected”. Then John took over the collecting when he was still a teenager. He was in a band. Charlie Laker was the drummer. Dad said it was God-awful but they got all these bookings in Brighton because everybody was frightened of his father.’
‘The men who killed Hathaway thought he had something to do with the Milldean thing. It was in revenge for that couple in the bed. You remember, Philippa — the two people that were shot to death by policemen in your presence.’
Franks looked down at her feet.
‘I don’t know anything about that.’
She kept looking down, but Gilchrist stared at the top of her head until she looked up.
‘I think you do. Don’t you think it’s time you told?’
Franks started to walk past her.
‘Not as long as I’ve got my kids to protect, Sarah.’
Gilchrist watched her go. When Franks was about ten yards down the street, she called after her: ‘We’ve located Bernie Grimes.’
Franks seemed to falter for a moment then carried on. Without looking round, she raised her hand in a little wave.
ELEVEN
Charlie Laker was having an early fish supper in a restaurant on Whitby harbour front w
hen his phone chirruped. It was a new phone and he hadn’t got round to changing the ringtone — he’d had a busy few weeks — but he winced every time it rang because it sounded like a bird choking.
‘Yeah?’ he said, his mouth full of Dover sole.
‘Bernie Grimes, Charlie.’
‘Bernie — how’s the south of France?’
‘Sweltering. Charlie, I need a favour.’
‘Well, I owe you one for your help with that Milldean thing.’
Laker reached for his glass of wine. Muscadet. The best the restaurant had to offer. It was OK, actually.
‘My wife tells me some gels have been picking on my daughter.’
‘Didn’t know you had a daughter. Or a wife, for that matter.’
‘The missus and me aren’t living together any longer. You know how it is. You can’t live with ’em and you can’t kill ’em.’
Laker gave a quick snigger to show willing.
‘And she brought up your daughter?’
‘Sarah Jessica. Lovely girl. Goes off the rails sometimes but a good kid.’
‘And these girls been picking on her?’
‘They overstepped the mark. Big time.’
‘And you want my people to have a word.’
‘More than that. They almost killed her. Stoned her on the beach.’
Laker reached for the bottle and poured a big glug into his glass.
‘Jesus, Bernie, I’m sorry to hear that.’
‘You have contacts moving girls, don’t you?’
Laker frowned.
‘Yeah, but they’re coming in, Bernie. These girls are already here, aren’t they?’
‘I want them working in some hovel of a brothel in some cesspit of a port town in some cancer of a country for the rest of their hopefully short lives.’
‘You do want revenge, don’t you? How old are they?’
‘Twelve, thirteen, fourteen. Some of them won’t have been plucked yet.’
‘This is a pretty big favour you’re asking, Bernie. Massive, in fact.’
‘I know that. I’ll owe you.’
‘How many girls you talking about?’
‘Ten.’
Laker got a coughing fit as his Muscadet went down the wrong hole.
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