‘Yeah, I’ll have a beer and a bowl of chips – tell the cook.’ He looked at Tingley. ‘Beer better?’
Tingley shook his head.
‘Next time,’ he said.
Hathaway gestured at the man’s retreating back.
‘He wasn’t a threat to you, you know. Or protection for me. Knowing what I know about you, if you came here to take me out, there’d be little he or I could do about it.’ Hathaway patted his chest. ‘I don’t carry a weapon. I’m no longer into chop suey or any of that Bruce Lee shit.’
‘Nor I,’ Tingley said quietly.
‘What is your martial art of choice? Just out of interest. That Brazilian thing? I hear the Hindi system is pretty effective.’
Tingley shook his head.
‘It’s an Israeli thing – a street-fighting thing.’
Hathaway smiled with his perfect teeth again.
‘The Jews have a mano a mano self-defence system?’ He laughed coarsely. ‘I assume it’s a post-World War Two thing. Back then it was grovelling and pleading, wasn’t it?’
Tingley simply looked at him. Hathaway continued to chuckle then said:
‘Tingley, I play consequences. You’re a bright guy, you’ve figured that out. That’s why I know I can send my boy out of the room and I’m going to be safe from you, despite what you did to Cuthbert – who is straining at the leash to do terrible things to you, might I note.’
‘Consequences?’
Hathaway pointed a finger at Tingley. ‘You harm me and you lose – in ways too horrendous to describe on such a sunny day – every single person related to you or close to you. Every person remotely connected to you. Every person who remotely knows you. Every person you passed in the street today.’
‘The Colombian way,’ Tingley said.
Hathaway shrugged.
‘Them and others. Colombian drug-dealers, Russian mafia, Albanian headbangers, ex-IRA psychopaths, Serb war criminals turned villains – a bloody United Nations of sick crooks have transformed the nature of violence in the UK. We home-grown boys have got to big up to keep up.’ He shrugged again. ‘Nature of the beast. Capitalism, that is. The unacceptable face of.’
Hathaway’s man returned with a tray and handed Tingley a glass of water. As Tingley took a long drink, the man put a pint glass of beer, a bowl of chips and salt and pepper on the table. Tingley drained his glass and handed it back.
‘Thanks.’
Hathaway pushed the bowl of chips towards him. Tingley shook his head. Hathaway put the salt and pepper in the ashtray and pushed them to the other side of the table.
‘You have a problem with condiments?’ Tingley said.
‘Only the word.’ A smile at the corners of Hathaway’s mouth didn’t make it any further. ‘I’m a recovering saltaholic. Don’t ever bring crisps into my presence.’
Tingley waited as Hathaway tucked in.
‘OK, I’m going to give you something,’ Hathaway said through a mouthful of chips. ‘Just so you’ll go away. You poking about is potentially bad for business. There’s a delicate balance and I don’t want you upsetting it.’ He reached for his glass of beer. ‘Never got this modern thing about drinking from the bottle. Disgusting habit. Got it from the Aussies, who are, by and large, a disgusting people. I happen to have it on good authority they shag kangaroos.’
‘Wouldn’t the tail get in the way? Even supposing they could catch up with one?’
Hathaway’s eyes glinted.
‘Maybe it’s koala bears. My point remains the same.’
‘Only the country is different,’ Tingley said. ‘Could you get to the point? I’m not getting any younger.’
Hathaway’s smile was at half-wattage.
‘There’s a close relationship – you might call it a synergy, if you were so inclined – between some local politicians, some national politicians, local criminal entrepreneurs such as myself, elements of Her Majesty’s constabulary and those government employees who live in the shadow world.’
‘I gathered that much.’
‘That terrible business at Milldean was a settling of certain scores and the removal of a threat. Threats plural, to be precise.’
‘Threats to whom?’
‘That would be telling – because that’s where that delicate balance comes in.’
Tingley made a stop sign with his hand.
‘Are you going to be specific or are we going to go round in circles again?’
‘I can’t be specific –’ Tingley started to get out of his chair – ‘but I know a man who can.’
Tingley sat back, aware the man behind him had moved nearer.
‘Multiple threats,’ Tingley said. ‘That doesn’t scan at all.’
Hathaway shrugged.
‘You have a better theory?
‘I’ve got a question. If what you say is true, who is bumping off all the police?’
Hathaway wagged a finger.
‘That would be telling.’
‘And who threatened William Simpson’s daughter, Kate?’
‘William Simpson. Now there’s a name to conjure with.’
‘Well, show me the bloody rabbit in the hat, then.’
Hathaway took another handful of chips.
‘I don’t believe you one little bit,’ Tingley said.
Hathaway chewed. He had strong jaws and ate quickly.
‘Look,’ he said. ‘I think you need to talk to a government department I know you’re familiar with. They’ll have the skinny.’ Hathaway wiped his mouth with his napkin. ‘I have a number you should call.’
Anna opened the door to my father’s house. She was slim and petite with badly bleached blonde hair and a pale face. There were dark rings under her eyes but she smiled cheerfully when she saw me and led me upstairs into the sitting room. He was by his broad bay window, feet up on a stool, half-hidden by the wings of his big chair.
My father didn’t get up as I walked over but he watched me, his head tilted, and gave a little smile. He indicated the wingback chair opposite his.
‘Is Anna getting you coffee?’
I nodded.
‘You’re becoming a regular visitor.’
I sat and got straight to it.
‘We’re investigating the Brighton Trunk Murder,’ I said.
‘Gives you something to do, I suppose,’ my father said. He dabbed his mouth with a white handkerchief. I looked at the liver spots on the big hand, the thick purple veins, the fingers bent to the side by arthritis.
‘Who was she, Dad?’
‘A tart. Violette somebody. Man who did it got off, God knows how. Mancini also known as Notyre. Went round the music halls after he got off doing a show where he sawed a woman in half. Very bad taste. Used to brag to people how he’d done it and got off. Publicly admitted it later – thirty years after – in the press.’
‘Not that murder,’ I said. ‘The first one. The one the police never solved.’
‘That lass. Found her legs in London, rest of her in Brighton. With them two murders Brighton got a new nickname: the queen of slaughtering places.’
‘That’s right. You were a policeman then, weren’t you? Alongside William Simpson’s dad.’
My father had scarcely talked about that phase of his life. I didn’t know until I was well into my twenties that he’d even been a policeman.
He turned his head to me awkwardly. It seemed like it was on a stalk, his body still facing forward. Looking both robust – the shoulders and the paunch – and puny – the bony wrists and the scrawny neck.
‘A bogie, aye. That’s a part of my past I prefer not to recall. Didn’t want that life but in those days you did what jobs you could get. The police force is just like any organization. They use you then they cast you off.’ He looked at me. ‘You know that now.’
‘Why did you leave?’
‘No advancement if you weren’t from the officer class. Lot of tedium, boredom.’
‘I thought you were forced to resign.’
&n
bsp; He looked straight ahead. He made an odd clicking noise in the back of his throat.
‘It were thought best.’ He nodded, forming extra chins with loose folds of skin around his jowls. ‘Good thing I did. Best thing I did. It got me started writing, introduced me to a new way of life.’
‘You did well.’
‘I did well by you and your mother. Made your life possible.’
‘Why did you resign?’
‘Tuppeny ’apenny stuff. Nowt worth bothering about.’
‘You were under suspicion for the Trunk Murder?’
‘Don’t be daft. Why would you think that?’
‘Mum said you had an eye for the ladies.’
‘Seems you inherited it.’
My dad had a fierce stare and when I was younger it had freaked me out. Even these days I usually couldn’t hold it. However, my dad looked down first, at his clasped hands, mottled with age.
‘You know the secret of getting women?’ he finally said.
‘Good looks, money and power?’
‘I didn’t have any of those things. No, what you look for is someone good looking who’s obviously insecure. She’ll probably have a certain way of walking, she’ll touch herself on the hips or sometimes on her breasts. She’s both sensual and insecure. Sow that wind and you’ll reap a whirlwind right enough.’
‘Dad, I’m not sure this is a proper conversation between father and son.’
‘But you think accusing your dad of murder is proper?’
‘I was just trying to find out. Secrets and lies, Dad – they get in the way of proper relationships.’
‘I can imagine murder would too. Don’t pontificate at me, Bobby. The genre I write in is predicated on secrets and lies. Usually family ones. But then at the end the secrets are revealed, the lies exposed.’
Anna came in with my coffee. My father watched her leave the room then turned back to me.
‘Graham Greene was a suspect, you know.’
‘Graham Greene was suspected of the Trunk Murder?’
‘One of dozens, but yes. One of his fancy women shopped him.’ He saw my quizzical look. ‘He used to bring them down to Brighton at the weekend. Stayed at the Grand. That’s when the razor gangs were around on the prom and up at the racecourse.’
‘Brighton Rock?’
‘Yes, though that didn’t come out for a few years – just before the war. I knew a maid who worked at the Grand. Told me the disgusting state he and his girlfriend of the moment left the sheets in.’ He looked at me again. ‘Apparently the famous writer was a back-door johnny. Can be a messy business.’
I felt squeamish hearing my dad talk about such things. I pushed away the thought of his sex life with my mother.
‘How did that make him a suspect?’
‘He was having nightmares about taking taxi rides with a woman’s body in a trunk. A cast-off lover telephoned us.’
‘Did you interview him?’
‘No – too delicate a task for a junior. I was on guard in the interview room, though.’
I nodded.
‘That’s the first time you met him. Did you talk about the case when you met him later?’
‘I told him at the Foyle’s lunch I’d been a policeman in Brighton in the thirties and he brought it up.’
‘What did he say?’
‘Said he’d been questioned then asked me the same thing you keep asking me – did we know who did it?’
‘And did you reply to him or were you as enigmatic as you are with me?’
My father pursed his lips but said nothing. I leant over and put my hand over his. It was impulsive but I also felt embarrassed. There had been little physical affection, or indeed contact, between the two of us over the years. My father looked down at my hand – big, long-fingered – covering his own hand. A smile twitched at the corners of his mouth.
‘Tell me, Dad, please.’
My father reached over with his other hand and patted mine on top of his.
‘I don’t think you really believe I’ve murdered anyone. So what did your mum tell you?’
‘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.
SEVENTEEN
Philippa 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 wha
t 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.’
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