City of Dreadful Night (8 page)

‘Did you forget I was coming?' I said, putting my hand on his shoulder. He tilted his head back.

‘I knew you'd find me. Smart copper like you.'

In his youth, my dad had been a robust, broad-shouldered man. With age he was shrunken but his shoulders were still broad and he held himself erect. His neck had shrunk, though, so his shirts always looked too big and his jackets hung oddly, almost up around his ears.

My father had always been charming. Turned it on and off. Could charm anyone. Especially women.

He was remarkable. He'd run his last marathon on his ninetieth birthday. But I wasn't sure what he did to fill his days, except ogle women in pubs, I suppose.

We weren't close. Indeed, we'd had a lot of problems over the years, mostly because of the way he'd treated my mum. I was pretty sure I had half-brothers and sisters somewhere and that they would come out of the woodwork when he died.

I got him another beer and sat down with a glass of wine. He watched me for a moment.

‘You've come a cropper, I gather.'

‘I wanted to let you know the full story – didn't want you getting the wrong idea.'

‘There's no such thing as a full story. As I understand it, you shot your mouth off about how innocent your officers were after you'd got your leg over one of them. You being in Brighton, I suppose we should be grateful it was a gal, not a bloke.'

‘Finished?'

‘Pride's taken a bit of a bashing, then?'

‘It's not over yet.'

‘Looks like game, set and match to the other side from where I'm sitting.' He took a drink of his beer and I saw his eyes follow another woman across the room.

‘Is yon government bloke going to help? Billy Simpson? Or has he put the boot in, too?'

Good question, I thought, but didn't say. My father looked at me.

‘Like father like son, eh? Billy's father were always watching out for himself. Anything I can do to help?'

This was typical of my dad. He'd always given me a rough ride but once he'd had his say and given me grief he'd be there if he could. Well, sometimes.

‘Not really. Got to stick it out, I guess.'

‘What are you going to do to make a living? Write your memoirs?'

He smiled as he said it. It was a thin smile. My father had a mean face. I'd often wondered about that. Does physiognomy reflect character? In the nineteenth century, police forces throughout Europe had built a whole system on that assumption. And some people did look cruel or sour. It was usually to do with the set of the mouth. My dad had a tight mouth drawn down. Eyes protuberant, unblinking. And he was cruel. When I was growing up, praise had been grudging. He'd always been demanding, always lorded it over the household. He was a bully, sharp with his words, contemptuous of what he saw as weakness.

I think he was missing an empathy gene. He could feign kindness. He was regarded as a charming fellow. But underneath he'd always been cold, hard.

‘A bit young for a memoir. Consultancy. Lecturing – I don't really know.'

‘Crusading? Not that the word has the right connotations in these days of warring religions. Son, I have no idea where you have got this crusading thing from.'

‘What's your point?'

‘My point is – there's nothing good about any of us. We're all in the gutter—'

I started to finish the quote but he interrupted.

‘I know the bollocks you're going to say. Oscar Wilde – the man who invented sound bites. Some of us like to think we're looking up at the stars, but whilst we're doing so someone is nicking our wallet, someone else is shitting on our shoes and that other bloke is fucking us up the arse.'

He leant forward to take a sup of his beer, his Adam's apple bobbing. He caught my look.

‘What – you're shocked to hear your dad talk like this? Bit late for finickiness, isn't it, after what you've done? You've spent your life taking the moral high-ground about me and your mother but now you see how it can happen. You know what I thought when I read about your leg-over? Thank bloody Christ he's actually got blood in his veins – because I often wondered.'

‘There's nothing wrong with fidelity and having a moral code.'

‘Fidelity is for my old hi-fi system and don't get me going on morality.'

His eyes were burning fiercely, his jaw jutting at me.

‘Dad, you've always been ice – there's no give in you.'

‘Your mother was fire. Fire and ice is a good combination, don't you think? Anyway, I'm a writer. We're all less than human.'

‘You're not exactly James Joyce,' I said in exasperation. ‘You write thrillers.'

My father looked at me for a moment then continued:

‘Graham Greene said every writer should have a sliver of ice in his heart.'

‘You quote that approvingly. How does that work with family?'

He shrugged.

‘You seemed to have survived OK. Aside from your daft antics, and I don't see how I can be held responsible for that.'

‘Did you know Graham Greene?'

‘I met him a couple of times.'

‘At some authors' do?'

‘The second time.'

‘Is there an anecdote?'

‘I don't do anecdotes.'

This was true. He was notoriously close-mouthed.

‘What was he like?'

‘The first time he was arrogant; the second time better.'

‘When was the first time?'

‘1934. Then in the sixties at a Foyles literary lunch.' He sat back in his chair. ‘So what
are
you going to do?'

‘Visit you to get your blood circulating.'

He barked a laugh.

‘Aye. It's not exactly aerobic but it's better than nothing.'

As the sky started to lighten, the two hooded men left the car. When they opened its doors, no interior light came on. The taller of the two men unlocked the boot and swung the lid open.

The other man looked along the deserted road then up at the dark house, perched on the edge of the cliff some quarter of a mile away. He nodded.

The two men lifted a long, bulky bundle from the boot. The bundle squirmed. Hoisting it between them, the two men walked up the steep grassy sward to the cliff edge.

The taller man looked along the line of the cliff, the brilliant white chalk pale in the dim light. He looked down to the sea some four hundred feet below. The tide was full. He could hear the slap of the waves against the rocks, the undertow sucking at the beach.

The bundle squirmed more vigorously.

The taller man gestured to his partner. Together they swung the bundle back and forth. Once, twice, three times. On the fourth swing they released the bundle. It rose in an arc up and beyond the cliff edge. For a moment it hung in the air, silhouetted against the brightening sky. Then plummeted to the sea below.

FIVE

I
was on the mobile arguing with Molly when I hit the deer. I clipped it as it lunged suddenly out of the black night. My headlights caught the panic flaring in its eye as we collided.

I should have anticipated it. I take pride in thinking ahead and I knew this lane well, every blind bend of it. But it had been a long day, Molly was raging in my ear and I was distracted by the sight of a car in flames in the middle of a meadow to my right.

My reactions in any case were slower than they used to be. Months of chauffeur-driven travel had had a deleterious effect – and on more than just my driving.

I gripped the steering wheel with both hands and skidded to a halt. The phone slid off the passenger seat on to the floor. Through my open window I heard the deer's hooves skitter on the hard surface of the road. Then it cleared the gate into the meadow and was gone.

I became dimly aware of Molly's voice from the phone in the well of the passenger seat. I reached down and switched the phone off.

I took a torch from the glove compartment and got out of the car. The torch's beam was feeble in the darkness of the meadow and I could make nothing out. I guessed the deer was far away by now. I was relieved I didn't seem to have done it serious harm.

I turned to watch the burning car. Five years ago, burnt-out cars were confined to the other side of the Downs. I'd pass them on the outer edge of Brighton, near the golf course and on the wide grassy verges above the Hollingbury estate.

A couple of years ago, the first two or three appeared on the Downs themselves. Only last week, a stolen car was set on fire in the car park of the Ditchling Beacon, two miles from the outskirts of Brighton and on a lip hanging over this deep countryside. Centuries before, the warning beacons lit in this Iron Age fort were visible for miles around. So too was this conflagration.

I saw the trail of burnt-out cars as further evidence of the creeping approach of Brighton crime into the country beyond the Downs. And now it was here.

I climbed over the gate and walked across the uneven ground towards the burning car. It had probably been abandoned after a joyride or a robbery but I wanted to be certain nobody had been injured.

I approached gingerly. I was pretty sure the petrol tanks had already blown, judging by the way the flames had a hold, but I wasn't experienced enough at this kind of thing to know for sure.

I got within ten yards before the heat from the fire stopped me. Flames were consuming the whole car. The windows had blown out and burning fragments were scattered all around me. I felt the heat on my face but I stayed where I was. For from here I could see that there was a human form in the passenger seat, the head wreathed in fire. The person was clearly dead.

I backed away then turned to go back to my car and my phone. I swept the ground around me with my torch beam as I hurried to the gate, suddenly fearful that I might, after all, not be alone.

‘It's Bob Watts, Ronnie,' I said when I got through.

Ronnie was the neighbourhood policeman. He was surprised to get a call from me.

‘Hello, sir,' he said after a moment. ‘How can I help you?'

‘You've got a possible homicide on your patch.' I filled him in on the details.

‘I'll be right down. Will you wait?'

‘The truth is, Ronnie, my involvement will just cause unnecessary complication. Once you've called it in to Division, everybody will be down here. If it's all the same to you, I'll go on home – you know where to get me when you need me.'

‘Fair enough, sir.'

I never could get him to call me by my first name. After my disgrace some people cold-shouldered me and others sneered. A minority, like Ronnie, however, thought I'd been treated shabbily, made a scapegoat. They still called me sir because they felt I'd done a good job in the brief time I'd been Chief Constable here.

Molly was standing in our kitchen as I drove by. I gave her a wave I knew she couldn't see and carried on my way. Two miles further along the road I pulled through the first set of gates into the long gravelled drive of Harlingden Manor.

Whenever I took taxis, the drivers got excited around now, thinking they would be getting a good tip when they caught sight of the big manor house. I drove towards the second set of ornate gates at the entrance to the house then, as usual, turned left and followed the gravel drive round the back to the servants' quarters.

This bungalow – it used to be the chauffeur's in the old days – had become vacant just as Molly and I were separating. After my month in my friends' farmhouse was up I'd moved straight in. It was by no means ideal. Boxes of my things were piled in the hallway, not because I hadn't got round to emptying them, but because there was nowhere for the contents to go. However, it was all I would allow myself. And it was near Molly if she needed me.

The light was flashing on the phone. Probably Molly, angry that I'd hung up on her. Unsurprisingly, she was angry whenever we spoke these days, masking her hurt with rage. This evening she'd been angry because I'd made the mistake of telling her the truth. I'm a trustworthy man, on the whole, but I still believe truth is sometimes overrated.

‘What do you mean you're going to go back into the case?' she had said as I was driving over the Downs after a tense meeting in Brighton.

‘I'm even more convinced now that I was set up. I can't allow that kind of corruption to flourish.'

‘Can you hear yourself, Mr Knight in Shining Armour? I'm as sorry as you your glittering career ended so abruptly but, Christ, you presided over a massacre that caused two nights of rioting.'

Her voice was venomous.

‘And are you really so arrogant, so egotistical, as to believe that the botched operation and everything that followed was just aimed at ruining you? Get a life, Robert.'

‘I had one. It was taken away from me.'

‘With not a little help from you. Nobody asked you to shag that little tart and wreck your marriage.'

She was right about my one-night stand, but I was convinced that I was briefed against by someone near the top of the political food chain, that the story of my affair was leaked to the papers. And the set-up was real, I was certain of that too.

I do hate corruption. And I do belief in truth in the large sense. I couldn't bear the thought that there was corruption at the heart of the police force that I had led. But I had to be honest. Sure enough, I wanted to find out what had happened so that the truth would be known.

But most of all I wanted revenge.

I'd been to Chief Superintendent Charlie Foster's funeral the previous day. It was a small affair. Perhaps the fact of his suicide put some people off. I'd driven over to the crematorium early but had held back until the last minute, then slipped in at the back. Sheena Hewitt was in the front row representing Southern Police and there were a handful of familiar faces from the station. Sheena was now Acting Chief Constable. It should have been my deputy, Philip Macklin, but since his role in the Milldean incident was under investi-gation, the police authority preferred to go with someone uninvolved in – untainted by – that investigation.