It Never Goes Away

by Tom Trott

  I turned my back on the park and crossed the road over to the pub on the other side where I consumed more coffee and a plate of fish and chips with minted mushy peas and homemade tartare sauce. The potatoes and batter really did the trick and I could have almost slept on a lovely carbohydrate cloud, but deciding not to tempt fate I got up again and sashayed back to the Jag.

  It was dark now, but as I rounded the corner onto St Luke’s Terrace my eyes picked out instantly a white Audi SUV towering above the other cars up the road, parked outside the houses directly opposite the school playground. A tall, bald, black man emerged from the houses onto the pavement and the Audi’s indicators blinked as it unlocked. I walked briskly enough to be in the driver’s seat before he started the engine. I watched in my wing mirror as the lights died in his car, hiding his face, and the headlamps came on. Mr X pulled out and a second later zipped past me. I pulled out just as quickly.

  Following someone by car is more difficult in the dark. Ideally you want to keep at least one car between you and the one you’re tailing, but at night in the city you run the risk of losing those tail lights in the sea of dancing red fireflies. You have two choices, either you have to take a quick but detailed mental picture of the unique shape and orientation of the lights you are following (you could learn every model beforehand to be better prepared), or you can drive right behind them. I did the latter.

  He lead us down Queen’s Park Road all the way to Edward Street and along into the centre of town, then down past the pier, along the seafront in the Hove direction, past the Brutalist Brighton Centre, the towering i360, Regency Square, the Victorian bandstand, until we reached the Angel of Peace statue just before Hove Lawns. We turned up Western Street, then through the maze of one way side streets until we ended up on Western Road, still heading west, then down Upper Market Street. I knew the road looped round in a one-way U that joined back up with Western Road, so this had to be his final destination.

  I parked at the end of the road in the first space I could find. Fifty metres ahead, at the bottom of the U, he parked in a space outside the Old Market (now an arts and live entertainment venue). If I had kitted myself up properly from the office I would have had a DSLR and telephoto lens with me. I opened the camera on my phone but from that distance it was useless. He stepped out of the Audi, straightened his suit jacket, and sauntered into one of the narrow terraced houses.

  I reset my badge on the dashboard and climbed out into the cold. The road was permit holders only, zone M, so it appeared a resident must have given him one of the visitor permits the council obligingly offer to sell you. However, as I wandered closer I could see that the bottom floor of the end house had been converted into a seafood restaurant, and as I examined his car I saw the bastard had a disabled badge which looked as genuine as mine. Other than that, his car yielded nothing interesting.

  The restaurant had a dark green frontage with gold lettering, and the only menu out front was the five-course set menu for sixty-five pounds. It was the sort of place that billed itself as a “dining experience” as a way of making up for the lack of choice. The chef decides what you should want to eat, and that’s what you get. The Steve Jobs method. It was too small for me to enter unseen, no more than twenty covers, and a single young(ish) man in jeans and a hoodie would definitely draw attention in this kind of joint, so I took to peering through the window from the other side of the street. On such a freezing cold day the glass had steamed up, and I had already lost his shape in the blur.

  The restaurant cut entirely through the ground floor, so I wandered round to the other side, which was just as steamy, but this time I could see the blur of Mr X sitting at a table by the window, sitting opposite a Mr Y. I plonked myself down on a bollard and waited.

  Mr Y was white, with dark hair and a dark beard. I could tell from his body language he was not pleased to be there, he was looking at his phone more than at Mr X. A waitress appeared but he batted her away, then he put his phone away and leant forward. Occasionally he would jab a finger at Mr X.

  Mr X was leant back. Calm, confident, almost louche, I could tell the meeting was his idea. Occasionally he would lean forward, his elbows on the table, making synchronised but open-handed gestures to Mr Y.

  It had only been ten minutes, but my arse was already going numb and my cheeks were ice. I stood up, stamping my feet on the pavement a few times to try and force some life back into them. Then I took to slapping my thighs like a Morris dancer. As I was doing my little jig the waitress appeared with the first plates of food. When a plate was placed in front of Mr Y he looked at it, and at Mr X, in disgust. He said something loud enough for other people to turn their heads, then he stood up, pushed past the waitress, threw on his coat, and burst out the door opposite me into the street.

  I took a quick step back into the shadows. I knew that regally primped beard: Ben McCready, city councillor for Hove Park. I’d had dealings with him before. When he was first elected almost fifteen years ago he was seen as an exciting new hope, but he had soon turned out to be more of the same. He pocketed the maximum allowance like all the rest and continued to greenlight policies that helped the city’s economy by bringing in richer residents and forcing out the people who believed in him. In the last year he had resigned from his party over their Brexit policy (it being at odds with the majority of city residents) and was now an independent. He also had a distinct hatred for me. Not that distinct, I suppose.

  I wasn’t the only one to recognise him. As he turned up the street a man moving down the road frowned as he spotted McCready and stopped him.

  ‘Oi! You’re that councillor, aren’t you?’

  A plastered smile appeared on McCready’s face, then quickly died. ‘Can I help you?’

  The man was in his forties or fifties, bald, and with a similarly aged woman in a leopard print faux-fur coat who was trying to drag him away.

  ‘Why are you allowing them to build those houses on the Downs, eh?’

  This was a hot topic. A new estate of twenty houses being built just beyond the bypass on the sacred land of the Downs, the first official breach of that unofficial green belt.

  ‘The city needs houses,’ McCready replied astutely.

  ‘But why there?’

  ‘There’s nowhere else.’

  ‘There’s loads of brown field sites, old industrial units,’ the man suggested.

  McCready sighed. ‘I’m sorry, but that’s just not true. We looked at every option, and the only way to build houses is to release new land to developers.’

  ‘For twenty houses, what a waste! Build more flats down the marina.’

  ‘The city needs houses, for residents, for families, not just more overpriced flats for investors.’

  I was astonished: McCready was speaking facts.

  He started to walk up the road, but the man went back on his tracks to follow him, dragging the woman with him.

  ‘Then stop selling flats to people outside Brighton!’

  ‘I’m not sure there’s a legal way for us to do that,’ he replied with his best impression of calm.

  ‘They do it in Cornwall.’

  ‘No, that’s second homes, that’s different. And I’m not sure they managed to get it through anyway.’ He was still walking.

  ‘You’re not even going to stop to talk to me!?’ the man roared.

  McCready stopped. ‘Look, I am just as pissed off as you that people who grew up in this city can no longer afford to live in it. Do you think I like it? Everyone who works here lives in Peacehaven or Burgess Hill, and everyone who lives here works in London. It’s shit, I agree with you. But I know a little more about it than you, so please, I understand how you feel, but please leave me alone.’

  The man stared at him for a beat. It was long enough for the woman to start dragging him back down the road. ‘Prick,’ he grumbled, and let her drag him.

  McCready marched up the road and out of sight.

  Mr X hadn’t moved a muscle during this exch
ange, except to eat his food, despite the fact he could definitely hear it through the glass; he kept loading fork after fork into his mouth until his plate was clean. The waitress arrived to take his empty plate and enquire about his guest. He smiled, said something that made her smile, and she promptly removed both plates.

  I waited around for him to pay up, but instead another plate arrived fifteen minutes later. He tucked into it and this is when I remembered that the set menu (the only menu) had five courses. And I already needed a piss.

  I decided to wander to the nearest pub and relieve myself. Then they didn’t do coffee to take away, and I had to wander a surprising distance to find a coffee shop, and it was shut. I bought a bucket of fried chicken instead and carried it back to my perch on the bollard. Mr X was onto his third course.

  I chomped my way through the eight pieces of chicken, fries, and coke before he had made it onto his fourth course. Eventually his pudding arrived, he finished it with as much flourish as before and finally the bill arrived. He paid it, said something else that made the waitress smile and disappeared out the other door. Two minutes later his white Audi zipped round the one-way road, past me, and disappeared.

  Entering the restaurant would still be a bad idea, and I didn’t want to freeze my arse off waiting, so I was ecstatic when the waitress stepped out for a shivering cigarette. She was a pretty, very skinny brunette, possibly even under twenty, in a white blouse and black trousers.

  It had started snowing again now as I approached from the shadows.

  ‘Excuse me?’

  She jumped.

  ‘Sorry to startle you.’ I smiled warmly (in spirit if not in temperature). ‘Do you mind if I ask you a few questions about a customer who just left?’ I must have looked like a madman, I still had chicken grease on my chin.

  She was confused. ‘Sorry, what? A customer, why?’

  ‘Would you believe me if I said I was a detective?’ I fished out my silver card holder and passed her one of my business cards, leaving a sticky thumbprint on it.

  She read it. ‘I think I’ve heard of you.’ She looked at me sceptically, as though I might have stolen the cards. ‘Which customer?’

  ‘Black gentleman, bald, smart suit, left ten minutes ago.’

  She frowned, reluctant to speak. ‘Why him?’

  ‘Good tipper?’ I asked.

  ‘Yes, actually,’ she said defiantly.

  ‘Not like his friend.’

  She gave a single derisory grunt.

  ‘Did they book?’

  ‘Everyone books or they don’t get a table.’

  ‘What was the name?’

  She frowned as she took a drag on her cigarette. ‘I don’t mind telling you because it was that other twat; McCready, the councillor.’

  ‘You’re sure?’

  ‘It was in the book.’ She blinked her dark brown eyes at me.

  ‘You said the other guy was a good tipper, cash or card?’

  ‘Cash.’

  ‘The bill too?’

  ‘Everything. Four fifties and a twenty.’

  I nodded. Some days you don’t get any luck. ‘Thanks. If you remember anything that will tell me who he is give me a call.’

  I marched quickly back to my car. You could smell cooking even from that distance, and it was making me hungry again.

  I climbed in and started the engine to get the heated seats going. I pulled out my phone to call Thalia but it was dead, so I took the charger from the glove compartment and plugged it into the Jag’s USB socket. It took a couple of minutes to power up, and when it did I had five missed calls from her.

  I rang her back.

  ‘Finally!’ she screamed as she answered the phone. ‘I was trying to save you a lot of hassle.’

  ‘My phone was dead.’

  ‘Typical!’

  ‘What is it?’ I asked with emphasis.

  ‘She called in ’

  ‘Who?’

  ‘Mrs Swan. She made up with her wife, wanted to cancel the background check or whatever.’

  I huffed. ‘Great. I’ve spent the last three hours freezing to death for nothing. Thanks for waking me up this afternoon, next time don’t bother.’

  ‘You can go home and sleep now. Sleep all through tomorrow for all I care, we haven’t got any more clients.’

  I hung up and threw my phone on the passenger seat. Just great, all that work for the price of the retainer.

  I sniffed. I could smell the same thing as outside, I thought it was the restaurant, but it was stronger inside the car. I checked I hadn’t stepped in anything. I hadn’t. I wondered if the heated seats were burning the leather, but they weren’t even warm yet. I looked over my shoulder, the smell was stronger behind me, yet there was nothing on the back seat but the blanket from the night before. I checked it just in case. It held nothing but the peppery scent of that woman. If you can call that “nothing but”.

  I climbed out, sniffing the air. Was it coming from under the car? No. From the boot. I pressed the button on the key fob and it popped open, tossing fresh powder onto the rear window. I knew instinctively what it was. I doubled over and vomited onto the snowflakes. At least I had found Clarence’s body.

  6

  The Blues

  The snow flickered with the lights. Blue. White. Blue. White. I was in the back of a panda car with the blanket round me, staring through the glass as men in coveralls peered into the boot of the Jag, now just another exhibit, and their cameras flashed in the darkness. A tent was being erected.

  The road had been sealed at both ends and the restaurant closed, the second seating cancelled. Uniforms in high-vis jackets manned both barriers; detectives stood in a huddle, their hands clutching cardboard coffee cups. Residents stood in their doorways and at their windows, whilst others negotiated with the uniforms to enter the street and get into their flats. A crowd of curious bystanders had amassed at the northern barrier where the side street joined with Western Road, and they jostled with each other to get the last glimpse as the tent finally engulfed my car.

  A detective I didn’t recognise shuffled over to the panda car. He bent down to the window and whispered something to the officer in the driver’s seat. He then circled round to the passenger seat, climbed in, and we pulled out from the kerb and into the narrow road.

  We trundled down the road, through the grey slush, through the southern barrier, round the one way U and onto Western Road in the direction of John Street Police Station. Five minutes later we pulled into the underground carpark and I was escorted into an interview room. I hadn’t really been taking much of it in, but they hadn’t cuffed me so they were at the least not convinced of my guilt.

  A sergeant in a wheelchair arrived to take my statement. I started with the message from Clarence and went through everything relevant from there, up to the moment I opened the boot. I left out Tidy, Andy, Daye, and Burke; the story seemed neater that way. The statement was typed out and given to me to check, I approved it and then I was left waiting in the interview room. An officer in uniform waited with me, standing to attention by the door. She didn’t say anything and neither did I. This continued for two hours. No one offered me tea, or even water.

  When the two hours were up the detective I didn’t know poked his head in. He was in his forties with ginger hair and a bulging neck, and was wearing a functional suit because he had to. He knelt down to my level like I was a child.

  ‘We still need to speak to you, but as you can imagine the scene is quite complicated to catalogue, so it’s going to be a few more hours before the officer in charge will be able to get to you. You can stay in this room, but it’s getting late, so you can stay in one of the cells if you want to try and get some kip.’

  I had finished reading these walls, so I took up the option.

  I was marched through the corridors. Then as we rounded a corner a young, pale, devastated man’s eyes flared with anger when he saw me.

  ‘Why weren’t you there!?’ he screamed.

/>   He launched at me, but a couple of officers held him back. I shrank back against the wall.

  ‘Why weren’t you there for him!? Why weren’t you there!?’

  I didn’t speak.

  He fought against the restraining officers. ‘Answer me, Grabarz!?’

  ‘I don’t know who you are.’ I said through gritted teeth.

  ‘Simon!’ he screamed, as though that answered everything. ‘I sent that message to you from him. When you didn’t show he texted me to check I’d sent it. Why didn’t you show!?’

  His eyes were manic. Nothing I said would satisfy him.

  I looked to the officers. They separated us and pushed me down the corridors toward the cells. I didn’t have to be pushed.

  The cell walls were just as grey. On the floor was a blue mat like something out of a gymnasium. Through an archway was a stainless steel toilet. I checked the mat hadn’t been soiled recently. It hadn’t, so I laid down to rest my body if not my mind. On the mat was an itchy blanket, I kicked it away and used the one that smelt of Tidy.

  I don’t know why, but I slept like a baby. I was woken at three in the morning by the deafening clang of the door opening. The bright lights of the cell confused me, and I had ten seconds of panic whilst I couldn’t remember where I was. Then it all came to me. I was led by an officer back into the interview room, or at least one that looked the same. They put a cup of coffee in front of me and I slowly blinked myself awake. It was the first natural sleep I had had in months and took even longer to clear than the drunk fug. I took a sip of the sugarless black coffee. As it touched my lips Price entered.