City of Dreadful Night (23 page)

Then there were the totally legitimate businesses, like this and other bars, a country house hotel over near Worthing and a small chain of dry cleaners in Burgess Hill, Haywards Heath and Crawley.

He lived in one of the large Spanish-style villas – haciendas really – on Tongdean Drive on the outskirts of the city near the Devil's Dyke.

‘So what are you poking around for, Mr Tingley?'

Hathaway's similarity to Cowell was quite striking. He obviously worked out every day. Although Tingley knew he must be in his early sixties, his T-shirt underneath his open suit jacket was tight.

‘I'm trying to find out what happened in Milldean on the night of the massacre.'

‘Police cock-up, as I hear it.'

Hathaway led Tingley into an alcove and sat down on a low, quilted bench behind an equally low table. He leant back against the wall.

‘I find these seats bloody uncomfortable but the kids seem to like them.'

Tingley sat on a similar seat opposite him.

‘Do you know who the people in the house were and why they were gathered there?' Tingley said.

‘Do you?'

‘That's what I'd like to find out.'

‘Why come to me?'

Tingley looked him in the eye.

‘You're The Man.'

‘And what's in it for me?' Hathaway said. ‘Anything to trade? No? Thought not.'

‘You know I know some important people.'

Hathaway nodded. A pretty young woman walked past the alcove.

‘Amy.' She started towards them.

‘Hookah?' Hathaway said to Tingley. ‘With an “ah” on the end, that is. No? Just me, thanks, sweetheart.'

He watched her walk away, slowly shaking his head.

‘Sometimes the way a girl walks is enough to make you glad you're alive – don't you agree, Mr Tingley? Or, I suppose, the way a man walks, if you're that way inclined, as a surprising number of people are – and not just here in Gomorrah-on-sea.'

‘What kind of trade do you have in mind?' Tingley said.

‘Your soul?' Hathaway grinned. ‘I don't know whether you'd consider that too high or too low a price to pay. Supposing you haven't already signed it away in the course of your secret escapades. Still yours to bargain with, is it?'

Tingley nodded.

‘Glad to hear it. Now I'm wondering about these important people you know. I'm wondering – are your important people more important than my important people?'

‘Who is his father?' Gilchrist asked Williamson as they walked out into the car park at Lewes Prison, where Parker was on remand. Williamson had his unlit cigarette between his fingers. He shrugged.

‘Mother's a single parent living on benefits, three other kids still at home.'

‘Milldean?'

He nodded.

‘Can we talk to her?' She stopped. ‘Does she know what he's done? Has anyone been to see her?'

‘He's an adult. No need for his mother to be informed.'

They resumed walking.

‘Let's talk to her.'

Kate was running out of time before her shift started but she was desperate to finish off all the pieces of the diary she had managed to compile. She was sitting on her sofa, looking at her watch every few minutes, calculating then recalculating what was the latest time she could afford to leave.

‘
The captain's bloody furious,' Percy said.

I said nothing. The
Daily Mail
headline read: ‘Trunk Murder Sensation; Second Woman's Body Found.' The line underneath moved away from the facts. ‘Discovery of first victim's head and arms last night.
'

The report went on: ‘The discovery of the head and arms of the Brighton trunk murder victim, packed into a second large black trunk, with the body of the woman who had been killed apparently by a hammer blow on the back of the head . . .
'

‘
On several occasions throughout the course of this enquiry press men have been successful in securing the substance of the particular enquiry on hand, the result being that sensational stories have been published which invariably have been far from accurate and have had the effect of impeding our work.
'

‘
From the commencement of this enquiry it's been obvious that several of the press men are entirely unscrupulous in their methods of obtaining information. As a result, the remainder – who are far more fair and reasonable – have to do the same to keep their newspapers posted with the sensational stories published by the minority referred to. This means that at times the press has been more troublesome than the actual investigation.

‘
The stories in the papers about the second trunk murder are going to cause us serious problems. It's unlikely that there is any link between the two killings. There were, needless to say, no remains of the first victim found in the trunk containing the second. When we announce the arrest of her pimp, people will simply assume he did both crimes and stop bringing us information.
'

‘
Hutch wants a word with you.
'

And there the diary entry ended. Damn, damn. Kate pushed the rest of the papers into her bag, grabbed her keys and hurried out of the door. She got a bus almost immediately, plonked down and almost tore the papers out of her bag. She groaned. The next diary entry was over two weeks later.

Kate had reached her stop and the diary had come to an end, aside from some undated scraps. She let out a little snort of frustration as she got off the bus at the railway station and started to hurry down to the radio studio. Then she paused and looked back at the station. She glanced at her watch, turned and went to find the left luggage office.

THIRTEEN

I
was still in the Bath Arms, though by now I was drinking wine, when Sarah Gilchrist called me. She was in professional mode.

‘I've been told the man shot in the bathroom was called Little Stevie. He may be a rent boy.'

‘I'm in the Laines – can you join me?'

‘I'm on duty. The man who told me about Little Stevie is that creep, Gary Parker, who killed his friend in Hove. I think his father is maybe somebody big in Milldean. He's looking for a deal.'

‘I hope his father's not Cuthbert,' I said. When Tingley had taken me aside he had told me about his encounter with the gangster. ‘Making a deal with him might be tricky.'

‘Why?'

‘I'll tell you later.'

I phoned Kate Simpson and invited her to join me. I was thinking a lot about the Brighton Trunk Murder.

‘I'm supposed to be in the studio but I've been given research time,' she said. ‘I'll be right down.'

I thought about William Simpson's father. He had died in the late sixties from cancer after taking early retirement somewhere around 1965 or 1966. My mother had remained close to his widow, Elizabeth, for some years, although they stopped seeing each other eventually. I think my father probably had something to do with that.

The friendship between William and me was encouraged and we did like each other well enough. How friendly we would have been if left to our own devices, I wasn't so sure.

Tingley appeared by my side. I started.

‘You should audition for a ghost movie.'

He sat down.

‘And you should learn to mask your surprise. I've just had an interesting meeting with Hathaway. He knows what's what. My problem is getting the leverage that will make him tell.'

I thought for a moment.

‘He doesn't have a son with a different name, does he?'

The left luggage office no longer existed and there was no one to ask about its previous location. Kate was lingering on the concourse, looking at the iron girders holding up the station's vast, glass roof when Watts called. After the call, she phoned in sick. She took a circuitous route to the Laines to avoid her work. She found Watts and Tingley in the Bath Arms sitting side by side in companionable silence. Both stood when she entered and Tingley bought her drink.

She showed them the pages of the diary she had with her.

‘They found that the paper came from Bedford,' she said. ‘These days there's a Thameslink service between Brighton and Bedford via King's Cross.'

‘I doubt Thameslink existed then,' Watts said.

‘But there might have been an equivalent.'

Tingley was reading through the last diary entry.

‘He's saying here the paper might still have ended up in a depot in Brighton.'

‘Odd coincidence, though, don't you think – that Bedford–King's Cross–Brighton thing?'

‘It is,' Tingley said.

‘Unfortunately, the diary pretty much ends there. And there's a gap just before when it looks like he's about to get a bollocking.'

‘What do you think that was about?' Watts said.

‘He was selling stories to the press. Made-up ones mostly. His boss thought they were getting in the way of the investigation.'

Watts nodded. He'd asked but his mind seemed to be elsewhere and he had that odd speculative look on his face again. She frowned at him and he leant forward.

‘Kate, remember you said the papers were destroyed in 1964 on the orders of the then chief constable?'