‘What — you think legitimate business doesn’t do the same stuff? Just because the chief executive doesn’t personally break legs and kill people? Grow the fuck up.’ Grimes spat on the floor of the cabin. ‘Jesus.’ He looked up at Gilchrist. ‘What world do you live in?’
‘Was that it?’ Watts said. ‘The extent of your involvement?’
‘That was it.’
‘But you’ll testify against Laker?’
‘In court? I don’t think so.’
‘A statement then,’ Watts said.
Grimes swigged his drink.
‘I’ll think about it.’
Gilchrist drew Watts away.
‘Let’s leave him for ten minutes. He isn’t going anywhere. And I’m worried about Reg. I want to make a couple of calls.’
‘Who’s that?’ Gilchrist said, the moment her call was answered. ‘Sergeant Mason — DS Gilchrist here. Yes, I know I’m on suspension. I just wondered if you could tell me if everything is OK with Reg Williamson? Has anything happened in the past couple of days?’ She growled. ‘If he’d told me, I wouldn’t be asking.’ Gilchrist listened, then with a whispered ‘Thank you’ ended the call. She turned to Watts.
‘Reg Williamson’s wife drove their car off Beachy Head.’
Watts clenched his jaw.
‘Jesus. Poor guy.’
‘I think he’s about to follow her example. Taking Charlie Laker with him.’
FIFTY-FIVE
‘Reg, it’s Sarah. Have you booked Laker into the station yet?’
‘We’re en route but we’re in no hurry. Going the scenic way.’
‘Reg? What are you doing?’
‘It’s been all go since you went off to France. You can’t imagine. More than one person can cope with really.’
‘I know about your wife, Reg. I’m really sorry. But please don’t do anything foolish.’
‘Bit late for that, I’m afraid, Sarah. But, look, I must go. I don’t have a hands-free in the car so I’m driving one-handed. Aside from being illegal, it’s a bit dodgy up here.’
‘Where are you?’
‘Beachy Head. Me and Charlie are going to visit the missus. Well, not really visit. Share a moment.’
‘Please stop the car.’
‘I’m here now. I dropped the interview tape off at the cafe down the bottom. They’re keeping it for you.’
Gilchrist’s voice dropped to a whisper.
‘Please, Reg. .’
‘Can’t take it any more, sweetheart. But at least I’ll do something right.’
‘Let me talk to Laker.’
‘No can do — he’s a bit tied up. Remember how Finch got it? He was a dumb bastard but he didn’t deserve to go like that. Apparently, Laker was in the back of the car. Watched his men do it — though he didn’t see the cat jump into the boot. Oh, that snooty cow in the lighthouse — cat-woman — is mixed up in it too — he’s been her bit of rough for years. Very rough but it seems that’s how she likes it. Anyway, this is a bit of poetic justice to pay for Finch, creep though he was.’
‘You’ve got a confession. You don’t need to do whatever you’re planning. Stop now and when I get back we’ll go out, have a few beers and laugh over this.’
‘No laughs left, darling. And I don’t think the confession would stand up in court. Taken under duress, they’ll say. Kick the case out and he’ll get off scot-free. So, everything considered, this is the way to go.’
‘Reg, I’m begging you. You’re one of the few friends I’ve got.’
‘Nice of you to say but we hardly know each other. Both private — too private, mebbe.’
‘What would your wife think of what you’re doing?’
‘I’ll find out soon. Goodbye, Sarah.’
The phone went dead.
Gilchrist went up on deck.
‘Bob,’ she called, looking down the length of the barge for him.
‘I’m here,’ he said from the bank several feet below.
‘Reg has lost it,’ she called before she scrambled off the barge.
Bob Watts frowned.
‘Tell me.’
‘He’s got a confession out of Charlie Laker — everything, according to Reg. But I think he might have beaten it out of him.’
‘Reg?’ There was disbelief in Watts’s voice.
‘Back in the day he was a tough customer,’ Gilchrist said. ‘He always carries a cosh. Old-fashioned wooden thing with a lump of lead sunk in the top.’
‘Reg?’
‘Yes, Reg,’ Gilchrist said impatiently. ‘Tubby Reg Williamson. But it’s not just that he’s got the confession like that. I think he’s going to kill Laker — and himself.’
Williamson over-revved when he started up the slope so skidded and fishtailed, and then the turn was too wide so it slowed him. Still, as he put his foot down on the return run, he could see the lights of Eastbourne glittering just a little way down the coast. The pier was a poor thing compared to Brighton’s but it looked good from here: a brilliant, jutting finger pointing at France.
He aimed for it.
Charlie Laker was not going gentle into that good night. Behind the tape that was choking him he was raging. How could this be happening to him? He had big plans for the future. This fat fuck cold-cocking him. He’d tried to reason with the man but Williamson had just coshed him, again and again.
Was the mad fuck humming to himself as they skidded up the hill? Laker saw the fat man glance his way at the turn before they started back down.
‘Fuck!’ Laker screamed but, even though he felt something tear in his throat, no sound came through the gaffer tape.
The car bumped and slithered over the flints beneath the grass. Williamson’s eyes were focused somewhere in the distance. Laker was watching the lip of the cliff surge closer and closer.
He was wondering what he should be thinking about. Should his life be flashing in front of him? It wasn’t. He wasn’t thinking of Dawn or of John Hathaway. Or of his brother, Roy. His parents. The women he’d had, in every possible combination. People he’d hurt, or killed or had killed.
He wasn’t thinking any of this, or of all the things he still wanted to do, as the lip disappeared beneath him and the car flew into the air four hundred feet above the sea. He was seeing bitter blue sky and a seagull; he was sure it was a seagull. And that part of his final journey — the flying — didn’t seem to go on a long time or a short time. It just was.
Then gravity grabbed them and the car dipped. He glanced across at Williamson who was not looking where the car was headed but still up, off somewhere in his own head.
Laker saw the white-lashed sea approaching more rapidly than he expected. The car rolled and he was looking at the chalk cliff face and then up at the sky and that bloody seagull again. His body was trying to tear free of the tape that held him to his seat, though he wanted the car to keep him safe from the enveloping air.
And he cried in frustration because all he was thinking at this final moment in his life, as the car pitched a second time, was about his favourite fucking penny slot machine in Dennis Hathaway’s amusement arcade on the West Pier in the sixties. The glass case in which all the ghoulies and ghosties and creatures of the damned popped out of cupboards and drawers and coffins behind an old miser counting his money in total ignorance of them. And all the time these things were happening, the clockwork mechanism of the machine whirred down until the penny ran out and the car hit the water and everything stopped.
FIFTY-SIX
Tingley was delirious. Drenched. He tried to turn, slick as an eel, but sodden sheets weighed him down. He groaned. His arm was free of needles now. He reached his hand up and wiped a slop of sweat from his forehead.
He stared at the canopy above his head, lost in muddled thought, until Maria came in. She wiped his face with a cloth and handed him his mobile phone. It was Bob Watts.
‘Jimmy — relieved to have got hold of you. You OK?’
‘I’m fine,’ Tingley croaked, s
ounding anything but.
‘Job done?’
‘Done,’ Tingley said, looking at Maria’s watching eyes as she dabbed his face again.
‘Where are you?’
Tingley knew Watts could detect something in his voice.
‘Orvieto.’
‘Not the Balkans?’
‘They were both here. I got Kadire first. Just the way it fell out.’
‘Have you taken a hit? You don’t sound yourself.’
‘It’s nothing. Just echoes.’
Tingley took a ragged breath.
‘Echoes? Jimmy, you sure you’re OK?’
‘Dandy. What about you?’
‘Sarah and I are in France with Bernie Grimes. Got a statement from him, though it looks like we’re not going to need it. You know Reg Williamson, Sarah’s partner? Drove Charlie Laker off Beachy Head.’
‘Jesus,’ Tingley said. ‘We’re done, then.’
‘Still got to get that slippery fuck William Simpson but I’m guessing that’s somewhere further down the line. Jimmy — do you want me to come across and join you? I’m probably only a day’s drive away.’
‘Negative. Listen, Bob, I’ll call you in a day or so.’
Tingley passed Maria the disconnected phone and sank back on the pillow.
Sarah Gilchrist scarcely spoke on the flight back from Toulouse. Watts assumed she was in shock about Reg Williamson. He wasn’t sure what he felt. Nothing new there, then. He had Grimes’s statement in his pocket and he’d made a call to ensure that Met Police Transnational crime officers would be on his tail pronto.
Watts was pragmatic about the death of Charlie Laker. In some ways, it was the neatest solution. Getting him legitimately would have been a bugger. He didn’t really know Reg Williamson so couldn’t honestly grieve about his death, though he regretted one good man less in the world.
He was worried about Tingley. There had been something about his old friend’s tone of voice. He didn’t know him well, despite the number of years they had been friends, but he did understand nuance. Well, a bit.
‘Do you want to get something to eat somewhere?’ Watts said when he and Gilchrist came out of Gatwick.
‘I think I’ll take some time alone,’ she said, giving him a perfunctory hug, hoisting her bag over her shoulder and striding away across the concourse. Watts watched her go. The longer he knew her, the less he knew her.
He took the express train up to Victoria and the tube along to Hammersmith. It was raining again but still he walked along the towpath, lugging his bag. By the time he reached his father’s house his suit was a sodden mess; water dripped from his wet hair down his face and on to his shoulders.
He’d been hoping for some kind of cleansing from the rain. At one point he’d turned his face up and let it drench him. All he’d got from that was stinging eyes.
He stripped off and showered and changed into jeans and jumper. He phoned Tingley but the phone went to voicemail. He didn’t leave a message. He poured a brandy — he’d drunk all his father’s whisky — and sat in the wingback chair, his head thrown back, his eyes closed.
Kate was standing on the balcony, holding the handwritten note from the Twickenham policeman, when she heard the flat door open and close. She looked over her shoulder. Sarah, a gloomy look on her face, passed through into her bedroom and firmly shut the door. Kate walked into the sitting room.
‘Sarah?’
‘Leave me,’ Sarah called through her bedroom door.
‘OK,’ Kate said in a small voice. She stood in the middle of the room, a little lost. She looked down at the handwritten note. It was the name and address of the car owner. The name of the Brighton Trunk Murderer. Mr Eric Knowles.
It was raining heavily again when Watts sat down and phoned Jimmy Tingley. This time his phone was answered.
‘Pronto?’
‘Who is that?’
‘Guiseppe di Bocci. You wish to speak to Signor Tingley?’
‘Please. But first: is he wounded?’
‘Signor Tingley is not well.’
‘Wounded?’
‘Let me give him to you.’
Watts looked out of the long window up into the sky. The rain falling from the roof of the world.
‘Bob?’ Tingley’s voice weak but recognizable.
‘What’s happening, Jimmy? Are you injured?’
‘Poorly.’
‘Are you safe?’
‘I think so.’
‘I’m flying over.’
‘No need for that.’
‘What kind of poorly, Jimmy? You told me you hadn’t been wounded.’
‘I lied. Shot in the stomach.’
‘You need to be in a hospital.’
‘Negative. My carers know what they’re doing. If anything can be done.’
‘Jesus Christ. James. .?’
‘I’m here. James — rarely hear that. I guess that’s what my parents might have called me. Or maybe not. Thank you. You know, Robert, there’s a weird dignity in names.’
‘I know it. Though if my mother ever called me Robert around the house, I knew I was in trouble.’
Tingley rasped a laugh.
‘And your dad?’
‘My dad?’ Watts looked into his brandy glass. ‘James, you’re gonna get through this. Hang on.’
‘For another weary winter? Robert. Things are what they are.’
‘I know that.’ Watts forced a grin down the line. ‘The only true account is the thing itself.’
Tingley’s laugh didn’t really start before it was cut off by a cough.
‘James?’
‘I gotta go.’
Watts was welling up.
‘No, you don’t.’
‘Yes. I do.’
Watts heard Tingley’s raw chuckle.
‘What a ride, eh? I wish I’d known my mum and dad. One or the other.’
‘It’s not over yet, James. But if the time comes, I’ll give you your mother’s kiss, I promise. But not yet.’
No response.
‘James?’
No response.
FIFTY-SEVEN
Kate was on the phone with her father when Sara Gilchrist came out of her room. When she’d seen the Notting Hill number come up, she’d hesitated before she’d answered. Now she wished she’d hesitated longer.
‘Your mother has left me,’ he said without preamble.
‘Not before time,’ Kate said, before she could stop herself. ‘Where has she gone?’
‘No idea, but I’m sure she’ll be in touch with you in due course.’
‘She’s gone off with somebody else?’
‘Not at all.’
‘Have you?’
‘It’s nothing like that. Your mother had. . there’s this man — Charlie Laker-’
‘He’s dead.’
‘What?’
Gilchrist wandered on to the balcony.
‘He’s dead. He died yesterday.’
Her father was effusive.
‘But that’s wonderful news,’ he said.
Kate looked at Sarah’s long back as she leaned over the balcony.
‘Not for Reg Williamson,’ Kate said quietly. ‘Or do you mean because Laker can’t dish the dirt on you?’
‘I must phone your mother and let her know,’ Simpson said and hung up.
Kate looked at her phone in surprise.
‘That was sudden,’ she said, as Gilchrist came back into the room.
‘What was?’ Gilchrist said, walking into the kitchen and opening the fridge.
‘My father hung up virtually mid-conversation.’
‘That’s men for you,’ Gilchrist said, putting a bottle of white wine and two glasses on the coffee table.
Kate Simpson looked at her.
‘Sarah — I’m really sorry to hear about Reg Williamson.’
‘Me too,’ said Gilchrist, sitting on the edge of the chair on the other side of the table.
‘But you’ve been able to get a few things clar
ified?’
Gilchrist nodded as she poured two generous glasses of wine and passed one to Kate. Their hands touched for a moment.
‘Just a question now of whether I still have a job,’ Gilchrist said.
Kate shuddered.
‘And whether I go to jail.’
Gilchrist held her glass out to chink against Kate’s.
‘I’d bet money on a suspended sentence at worst.’
They took their first sips. Gilchrist took more of a healthy swig.
‘Finally figured out the identity of the Brighton Trunk Murderer. Bloke called Eric Knowles.’
Gilchrist shrugged.
‘Should I know him?’
‘No. But I think we should be able to find out more about him than we already know.’
Gilchrist nodded.
‘Job done, then.’
Kate smiled.
‘We still don’t know who the victim was.’
‘Of course,’ Gilchrist said, topping her glass up. She proffered the bottle to Kate. Kate shook her head.
‘I really want to find out who she is. I keep thinking: she liked music, she had a favourite food, she sighed over a favourite movie star. We know she liked the sun.’
Gilchrist nodded again.
‘She was another human being.’
‘Right,’ Kate said.
Gilchrist gave her a tight smile.
‘That’s your next project, then.’
EPILOGUE
Restless still, Watts roamed his father’s house. He wandered over to his father’s bookshelves. His father had read widely, more widely than Watts would have expected. Organized, too. Alphabetical within countries.
He was scanning the American section. It was all classic stuff: Hawthorne, Melville, Fenimore Cooper, Hemingway, Scott Fitzgerald. There was a narrow-spined work by Thomas Wolfe called God’s Lonely Man squeezed between John Dos Passos and some hard-boiled crime. There were signed copies of Chandler. Watts remembered his father telling him he’d once gone on a bender with Chandler and Ian Fleming.
On the shelf below were photo albums. An old cigar box was acting as a bookend. Watts took it down. He sat at the table by the window and slid the lid open. The box was filled with papers. He took out his father’s birth certificate. Three First World War medals lay beneath it. Watts smiled.
The Thing Itself bt-3 Page 20