City of Dreadful Night (15 page)

‘Get his bag, Russell.'

A young man with a pockmarked face loped over to the table Tingley had been sitting at and picked up a slender bag. As he took it back over to Cuthbert, he rooted in it and came out with a newspaper and a collapsible umbrella. He peered in the bag and passed it to Cuthbert.

‘That's it.'

Gilchrist was back on the edge of her seat. Tingley remained impassive.

‘What's this?' the pockmarked youth said, fiddling with the umbrella. Suddenly it sprang open. The youths laughed as he waved it around.

‘Fucking neat, isn't it?'

‘Fucking is,' one of the other youths said.

‘Fucking neat.'

Tingley laughed along with them for a moment or two. Then:

‘It's bad luck opening an umbrella indoors.' He nodded at the mirror behind the bar. ‘If that goes as well, we're all fucked.'

He held out his open hand out for his bag.

‘If you please.'

Gilchrist was thinking that in a movie, silence would have fallen at this point. Here it was a change in the atmosphere, a drop in pressure.

‘If I please,' Cuthbert said. ‘If I please.'

Tingley kept his hand out but looked across at Gilchrist. As she started to rise, he gave an infinitesimal shake of his head. Then he reached over and took hold of his bag. Tingley and Cuthbert exchanged looks.

‘Check me out,' Tingley said. ‘Name's James Tingley. I'll come back in a couple of days so we can talk.'

Cuthbert frowned but released the bag. Tingley turned to Cuthbert's posse.

‘Gentlemen.'

He turned and walked to the door. Gilchrist was on her feet a moment later. Trying not to hurry, she strolled out of the pub after him.

Tingley was standing about twenty yards down the road looking back at her. She walked towards him.

‘Bet you're glad you didn't have to pull your warrant card,' he said when she reached him.

‘Is it that obvious?'

‘To me.'

‘I know of you, Mr Tingley.'

‘I know of you too, Ms Gilchrist. That was very foolhardy of you to go in that pub. Had you been recognized—'

‘You know who I am?'

‘Your photo has been in all the papers – that's why you were taking a risk going there.'

Tingley looked beyond Gilchrist and quickly took her arm.

‘Get in your car and follow me – I'm parked down at the end of the street.'

Gilchrist crossed to her car, head down, ignoring the two men who were standing outside the pub watching her. One of them called to her but she slid into her car and drove down the street.

Tingley led her to the Marina.

Driving home, Kate couldn't concentrate. She was thinking about the Trunk Murder but she was also thinking about Watts. Although she didn't really go for older men, he was a bit of a hunk. He was a quiet man, but there was something about him that suggested he could take care of himself. And others?

She wondered about the third glass – whether Watts had been entertaining somebody who had hidden. Who might that have been?

She let herself into her flat. She lived in a first-floor flat in Sussex Gardens in Kemp Town, overlooking the sea. Kemp Town was the fashionable place to live in Brighton. Rows of Georgian terraces and brightly coloured cottages interspersed with restaurants and New Age shops.

Her flat in Sussex Gardens was her one concession to her parents. When she had moved to Brighton to do her doctorate, her father had bought the flat. As an investment, he said, but for her to live in whilst she was there.

She hated being beholden to her father but her mother pleaded with her. Kate selfishly didn't want to share with other people – the last time had been a disaster – but she couldn't afford the rent on anywhere decent in Brighton. Prices were the same as London. And this was more than decent.

She agreed. It was a two-bedroom flat and her parents came down sometimes to stay in the second bedroom over a weekend. It didn't happen very often since it was awkward. She had worried at first that her father would want to stay when he came down for the Party Conference or when he had meetings with Labour politicians in town. But he chose to stay around the seafront in the Grand or the Hotel du Vin.

Kate went to the box in her living room. She moved the vase of lilies from the dining table and started to empty the box on to it. There was a box file labelled ‘Witness statements' and a dozen or so cardboard files, all empty. Some had odd titles neatly printed on the covers: ‘Smells', ‘Missing Women', ‘Paper', ‘Empty Houses'.

She took out the loose sheaves of papers from the cardboard box, papers that had at one time presumably belonged in these files. They were in no discernible order. A number were headed ‘County Borough of Brighton' then ‘Statement of Witness'. Most were typed on manual typewriters, the occasional red letter coming through in the black type. Others were handwritten in blue or black ink by many different hands.

She turned one sheet over and found something strange typed on the reverse.

‘
This isn't a diary as such. It's a memoir if you like. A reminiscence. A slice of autobiography. Call it what you will – just don't call it a confession.
'

Her interest piqued, she turned other sheets over and soon had a stack of what were clearly entries from a diary.

Excited, Kate settled down on her balcony. She looked around the square and smiled or nodded at those people in other flats who were on their balconies. Music drifted across the square. Coldplay and Bach and Miles Davis.

The sea was calm. As the sky darkened, the white lights that strung the length of the stubby finger of the Palace Pier grew brighter.

She had gathered the pages of the anonymous diary into some kind of date order. She was sure there were more pages in the files, but since the entries were typed up on the back of other documents, or on witness statement sheets, it was difficult on cursory examination to distinguish them from other typed material.

There were fragments that didn't have dates attached. She put these aside. She started to read the entry for 6th June, the day the trunk was deposited at Brighton station.

NINE

‘
How do we know it isn't Lobby Ludd?' I said. ‘He's due down here today.
'

Lobby Ludd was sent by the
Westminster Gazette
to tour the south coast resorts during the summer. When he was in Brighton, his photo and approximate whereabouts were given in that day's copy of the newspaper. If you thought you recognized him, you went up to him with a copy of the newspaper and said: ‘You are Lobby Ludd and I claim my
Westminster Gazette
prize.
'

‘
Lobby Ludd? He tried to get fresh. Sat down next to me and invited me to lunch. I said no, so he said, “Well, what about a drink?” He said he wasn't after anything –' she gave me a look – ‘but then you all say that, don't you?
'

‘
You weren't tempted?' I said, giving her a look back.

‘
He stank of gin and he was too desperate – kept saying all he wanted was for me to “stick close”.
'

‘
Too desperate, eh? I'll make a note of that.
'

‘
Was it Lobby Ludd?' I said to the spotty girl.

‘
He waved some cards but I don't know if they were real. He said if I went with him for a drink, he'd let me have one of his cards so I could claim the ten bob.
'

‘
What did you say?
'

‘
I said give me the fifty pounds and I might be interested.
'

‘
Then what happened?
'

‘
I said I couldn't leave my friend and didn't he have one – to make a foursome like? He said no, then a young friend of his turned up.
'

‘
A young friend?
'

‘
He looked a bit of a bad sort.
'

‘
Did he now?
'

‘
They had a bit of a to-do,' the spotty girl said. ‘Fred – that's what Lobby Ludd said his real name was – left then.
'

‘
This young man he had an altercation with . . . ?
'

‘
Well, he obviously knew Fred. But Fred denied it. Even said his name wasn't Fred. Then he ran off.
'

Kate paused for a moment and looked across at the Pier. She wondered who Frenchie was and Dr M. She couldn't quite get the tone of his remarks about the platinum blonde. That last paragraph sounded harsh, callous.

The next entry she found was eleven days later.