City of Dreadful Night (22 page)

Parker broke wind forcefully.

‘Jesus,' Williamson said, disgusted.

The smell was appalling, but Gilchrist was at least relieved to have been dragged away from the entrance to that particular memory lane.

Parker started up again.

‘Some blokes only want to give it up the arse and they're not fussy whose arse. Women, men, armadillos.' He showed his ferret teeth and cackled. ‘OK, maybe not the fucking armadillos.'

He began rocking in his chair.

‘These blokes who sew up live birds in the chests of their victims. One guy pulled their lungs out and threw them over their shoulders. There was that guy that skinned his humps.'

‘These are all fiction,' she said, exasperated. ‘They're not real,'

‘Fuck off – that bloke who skinned them was real – and are you trying to fucking tell me people don't do these things in real life?'

‘No, you've demonstrated that.'

He had to think about that for a moment.

‘Oh, yeah – that. Fucking weird that was. Don't know where that came from. Where's his head? I wanted to keep that.'

‘What happened?'

‘I chopped him up. I was gonna make burgers but I couldn't get him in the pan.'

She tried to ignore that image.

‘I mean – what made you chop him up?'

He tilted his head to one side and looked at her. He frowned. He seemed to have forgotten about the rapes.

‘Had this fucking alien growing in him, coming out of his chest. Had to kill the fucker. Plus he wouldn't shut up.'

‘The alien?'

‘No, you stupid cunt—'

He shook his head in contempt.

‘Watch your language with me,' Gilchrist said calmly, as she sensed Williamson straining to come over and smack Parker. ‘You said he wouldn't shut up.'

Gilchrist tried not to react to his staring at her breasts.

‘What wouldn't he shut up about? The rapes?'

‘That was always his fucking problem,' he said, dropping one hand back into his lap. ‘Always trying to big it up, but nobody was fucking fooled. He was talking bollocks. Pissed me off.'

‘So he didn't rape anybody in Milldean?'

‘Like he knew what was fucking what. He knew fuck all, the cunt.'

She really loathed this little creep with his vacant grin, his imbecile face, the way he kept ogling her.

‘What was he talking about?' she persisted.

‘He don't have no fucking clue. Bigs himself up, but it's bollocks. I know more about that fucking lark than he ever did.'

She could see him as a rapist. After what he'd done she could see him as pretty much anything bad.

‘What lark?'

Her stomach suddenly growled. She hadn't eaten for what seemed an age. She ran her tongue quickly over her teeth: her mouth tasted stale and of too much coffee. He looked at her, suddenly cunning.

‘What they call a bent copper?'

‘What do you mean?'

‘What do they call a bent copper? It's a fucking joke. You're supposed to say whatsit – you know.'

‘Tell me, then,' she said, ‘what do they call a bent copper?'

‘That's it! Then I say whatsit!'

She tried to be patient. Said nothing as he searched for the punchline.

‘Fuck – whatsit – you know – fuckin' . . .'

He clenched his fist and hit himself on the side of the head a couple of times.

‘Fucking done my head in, man. Can't remember nothing no more. What was we talking about?'

‘Bent policemen, for some reason. But tell me what your friend was bragging about that got you so angry.'

‘Police don't know nothing, do they? Pretend you do but you fucking don't.'

She sighed. Someone let her out of here.

‘The Milldean fucking massacre. Fucking mess that was. Bet you don't have a fucking clue about it.'

Her stomach tightened, gurgled again. She leant forward and put her hands lightly on the table in front of her.

‘You know something about that?'

‘I'm from there, in't I?'

‘Were you at the riot?'

He ignored her.

‘That bum-boy in the toilet. Another fucking pain in the arse, but then he was all arse.'

‘What about him?'

‘Spent most of his life on his hands and knees. Chugging or taking it all the way up.'

‘What about him?' Gilchrist repeated.

He clenched his fists and shifted in his seat again.

‘OK, what's his name?'

‘Little Stevie.'

He sniggered.

‘What's funny?'

‘He had an even bigger dick than me.'

I was having a solitary brunch in a café by the old Town Hall, trying to imagine this square when the police station had been in the basement of the Town Hall. Before the Thistle was built facing out to sea, the Japanese restaurant had been plonked down in the middle of the square and the underground car park had been carved out beneath it. The time of the Trunk Murder.

I was feeling odd. I felt stalled for the moment on trying to sort out the Milldean mess and I was drawn towards this very cold case that Kate had plonked in my lap. I was deliberately not thinking about Molly or Sarah Gilchrist.

Three long pink limousines drew up across the road from me, in front of the side entrance to the old Town Hall. It now housed the registry office and here was the first of the day's gay marriages. It must have been somebody famous – TV vans arrived in the wake of the limousines. I drew back as I recognized a few of the TV people who had harassed me.

In the next ten minutes more people arrived in garish clothes, and policewomen in bright yellow jackets came for crowd control, as a large group of spectators gathered.

Time to move. I paid for my meal and, head down, slipped out of the café and down the street a few yards before turning into the side entrance to a shopping arcade. I walked through it, avoiding eye contact, then up into the Laines. I ducked into The Bath Arms.

I ordered a coffee and settled myself in a corner of the old pub away from the late-morning drinkers part-way through their first pints.

I was thinking about the friendship William Simpson and I had inherited from our fathers. And then I was thinking about my father on one particular day.

It was sunny and we were all in the garden. Sally and James, my sister and brother, were bickering, as usual. I was in the hammock, strung between two trees. Mum was reading an Iris Murdoch in a deckchair with a canopy – she didn't do well in the sun. Dad was sitting at a table in the shade writing longhand in one of the cheap exercise books he used. He was in his sixties but didn't look it and certainly didn't act it.

The doorbell rang.

Dad had set up some kind of system so there was a bell attached to the back of house too. It also worked when the telephone rang.

My mother looked alarmed. My father frowned. Unexpected visitors were not welcome.

Mum closed her book.

‘Robert,' Dad said, without taking his eyes from his notebook.

I rolled out of the hammock. Smiled at my mother.

I was woozy from the sun so when I opened the front door I was a bit blank.

‘You must be Robert,' the woman said.

I was eighteen, with little experience of women. This woman was almost as old as my mother but I still desired her immediately. I suppose she was in her late thirties, early forties. But not only was she beautiful, she also exuded sex. Or maybe that was me, full of testosterone, bestowing on her my own lusts.

She was – the word is apt – glamorous. A beautiful oval face, green eyes, abundant auburn hair. Tall. Big-breasted.

Attractive as she was, there was also an intensity about her that made me nervous. She had full lips, crimsoned with lipstick. When she smiled, there was a twitching of the nerves at the edges of her mouth.

‘Is Frank in? Your father.'

Oh, she was trouble. I had a feeling of dread, but also of excitement.

‘He's in the garden,' I said. ‘With my mother.'

There was movement at the edges of the mouth.

‘May I see him for a moment?'

I would have liked to leave her on the doorstep but I knew I couldn't.

‘Please,' I said, stepping aside so she could enter our home.

She walked from the hips and I couldn't take my eyes off her. Of course, at that age I couldn't take my eyes off any woman.

I was going to take her into the living room, but I was sure she was a threat and that seemed too intimate as it was full of family photos.

At the same time, I felt for her, didn't want to pain her unnecessarily. Even without knowing, I knew who she was.

I'm not explaining this very well. I sensed this woman was trouble for our family and I wanted to defend my mother from any pain – but I also felt for this woman. Perhaps my feelings for her were callow – simply because she was beautiful.

I took her to Dad's study.

‘I'll get him,' I said, ushering her into the room.

Afterwards I wished I'd taken her somewhere else. Maybe if I had, my mother would never have realized who she was.

‘And?' my mother said, raising herself in her deckchair and looking back towards the house. My father looked up, frowning. He too glanced at the house.

My father's study looked over the back garden. And now the woman – I realized I'd not asked for her name – appeared at the window of my father's study.

My father rose abruptly.

‘I'll see to it,' he said to my mother. But not before she had seen the woman too.

She looked down. Sank back into her deckchair.

My father strode past me. I didn't look at my mother, though I became uncomfortably aware that I was standing over her. I looked towards the house. As my father entered through the back door, the woman withdrew from the window, fading from view. Now all the window showed was the reflection of our family in the garden. Without my father.

He was in the house for ten minutes. He didn't say anything when he came back out into the garden. He went back to his table and picked up his pen. My mother was looking at the book in her hand.

I swayed in the hammock, thinking about that beautiful woman, watching my mother and father pretend.

‘You know the man who was shot in the bathroom at Milldean as Little Stevie,' Gilchrist stated, to get it on the record.

Parker was staring at her breasts again but he was fading. He was probably dealing on a daily basis with withdrawal.

‘Fucking little scuzz,' he said, but without heat. ‘I gave him one once, just to show him what's what.'

‘Why was he there?'

He rubbed his face, blinked a few times.

‘About a deal . . .'

‘What's his last name?'

He dipped his head down to his left in an odd gesture, as if trying to see what was behind his left arm.

‘The last name, Gary.'

Gilchrist was watching him fade in and out. She was trying to stay calm but she was worried he was going to fade out before he'd given her anything. However, his drifting mind was working in her favour.

‘Never had no last name. Just Little Stevie. About a deal . . .'

‘You're saying you know who those people were in the house in Milldean and why they were there.'

He frowned.

‘Am I?'

‘Are you?'

‘Fucking right.'

‘How do you know them?'

‘What about my fucking deal?'

‘I'll talk to somebody. How do you know them?'

‘You don't know my dad, do you?'

‘Mr Hathaway, good to meet you.' Tingley offered his hand to the tanned, well-dressed man who bore a remarkable resemblance to an older Simon Cowell. Hathaway considered for a moment then gave Tingley's hand a firm shake.

‘Hear you've been rearranging my friend's furniture. Mr Cuthbert, I mean. Bit chancy that. You'd better be watching your back from now on.'

‘I have other people doing that.'

Hathaway tilted his head.

‘Oh, that's right – you're connected to some very secret people, aren't you? Main reason I agreed to see you – courtesy to them.'

‘We know some of the same people?'

‘Doubt that, but let's say the same kind of people. Our world is a small world.'

‘Our world?'

‘The shadow world.'

The world beyond the law. Tingley nodded and looked round.

They were in a bar on the boardwalk at the marina. The tables outside overlooked a small harbour, and through the open windows he could see brilliant blue sky and hear the chink and rattle of the hawsers and lines on the yachts moored there. Gulls were screeching.

Bright outside, gloomy inside. The bar was like the inside of somewhere Moroccan, maybe Indian. Rugs strewn around, some bench seating, plump cushions on low divans, hookahs on shelves, turquoise and terracotta tiled walls and floors. Tingley gestured round.

‘Business good?'

‘Students love it – all this. And the cheap shots.'

Tingley had been checking out Hathaway's business interests online when the text had come through summoning him to this meeting. Although Hathaway's power base was still in Milldean and he was into all the same scuzzy stuff as Cuthbert, he had his fingers in many other pies. He was a major landlord in Brighton and Newhaven and was said to use brutal methods when he wanted people out. He had shares in a recycling plant and there were doubts about exactly what he was recycling. And he ran a security operation providing bouncers for clubs and bars all along the south coast. That operation probably cloaked a protection racket.