The Thing Itself (26 page)

Then gravity grabbed them and the car dipped. He glanced across at Williamson who was not looking where the car was headed but still up, off somewhere in his own head.

Laker saw the white-lashed sea approaching more rapidly than he expected. The car rolled and he was looking at the chalk cliff face and then up at the sky and that bloody seagull again. His body was trying to tear free of the tape that held him to his seat, though he wanted the car to keep him safe from the enveloping air.

And he cried in frustration because all he was thinking at this final moment in his life, as the car pitched a second time, was about his favourite fucking penny slot machine in Dennis Hathaway's amusement arcade on the West Pier in the sixties. The glass case in which all the ghoulies and ghosties and creatures of the damned popped out of cupboards and drawers and coffins behind an old miser counting his money in total ignorance of them. And all the time these things were happening, the clockwork mechanism of the machine whirred down until the penny ran out and the car hit the water and everything stopped.

T
ingley was delirious. Drenched. He tried to turn, slick as an eel, but sodden sheets weighed him down. He groaned. His arm was free of needles now. He reached his hand up and wiped a slop of sweat from his forehead.

He stared at the canopy above his head, lost in muddled thought, until Maria came in. She wiped his face with a cloth and handed him his mobile phone. It was Bob Watts.

‘Jimmy – relieved to have got hold of you. You OK?'

‘I'm fine,' Tingley croaked, sounding anything but.

‘Job done?'

‘Done,' Tingley said, looking at Maria's watching eyes as she dabbed his face again.

‘Where are you?'

Tingley knew Watts could detect something in his voice.

‘Orvieto.'

‘Not the Balkans?'

‘They were both here. I got Kadire first. Just the way it fell out.'

‘Have you taken a hit? You don't sound yourself.'

‘It's nothing. Just echoes.'

Tingley took a ragged breath.

‘Echoes? Jimmy, you sure you're OK?'

‘Dandy. What about you?'

‘Sarah and I are in France with Bernie Grimes. Got a statement from him, though it looks like we're not going to need it. You know Reg Williamson, Sarah's partner? Drove Charlie Laker off Beachy Head.'

‘Jesus,' Tingley said. ‘We're done, then.'

‘Still got to get that slippery fuck William Simpson but I'm guessing that's somewhere further down the line. Jimmy – do you want me to come across and join you? I'm probably only a day's drive away.'

‘Negative. Listen, Bob, I'll call you in a day or so.'

Tingley passed Maria the disconnected phone and sank back on the pillow.

Sarah Gilchrist scarcely spoke on the flight back from Toulouse. Watts assumed she was in shock about Reg Williamson. He wasn't sure what he felt. Nothing new there, then. He had Grimes's statement in his pocket and he'd made a call to ensure that Met Police Transnational crime officers would be on his tail pronto.

Watts was pragmatic about the death of Charlie Laker. In some ways, it was the neatest solution. Getting him legitimately would have been a bugger. He didn't really know Reg Williamson so couldn't honestly grieve about his death, though he regretted one good man less in the world.

He was worried about Tingley. There had been something about his old friend's tone of voice. He didn't know him well, despite the number of years they had been friends, but he did understand nuance. Well, a bit.

‘Do you want to get something to eat somewhere?' Watts said when he and Gilchrist came out of Gatwick.

‘I think I'll take some time alone,' she said, giving him a perfunctory hug, hoisting her bag over her shoulder and striding away across the concourse. Watts watched her go. The longer he knew her, the less he knew her.

He took the express train up to Victoria and the tube along to Hammersmith. It was raining again but still he walked along the towpath, lugging his bag. By the time he reached his father's house his suit was a sodden mess; water dripped from his wet hair down his face and on to his shoulders.

He'd been hoping for some kind of cleansing from the rain. At one point he'd turned his face up and let it drench him. All he'd got from that was stinging eyes.

He stripped off and showered and changed into jeans and jumper. He phoned Tingley but the phone went to voicemail. He didn't leave a message. He poured a brandy – he'd drunk all his father's whisky – and sat in the wingback chair, his head thrown back, his eyes closed.

Kate was standing on the balcony, holding the handwritten note from the Twickenham policeman, when she heard the flat door open and close. She looked over her shoulder. Sarah, a gloomy look on her face, passed through into her bedroom and firmly shut the door. Kate walked into the sitting room.

‘Sarah?'

‘Leave me,' Sarah called through her bedroom door.

‘OK,' Kate said in a small voice. She stood in the middle of the room, a little lost. She looked down at the handwritten note. It was the name and address of the car owner. The name of the Brighton Trunk Murderer. Mr Eric Knowles.

It was raining heavily again when Watts sat down and phoned Jimmy Tingley. This time his phone was answered.

‘
Pronto?
'

‘Who is that?'

‘Guiseppe di Bocci. You wish to speak to Signor Tingley?'

‘Please. But first: is he wounded?'

‘Signor Tingley is not well.'

‘Wounded?'

‘Let me give him to you.'

Watts looked out of the long window up into the sky. The rain falling from the roof of the world.

‘Bob?' Tingley's voice weak but recognizable.

‘What's happening, Jimmy? Are you injured?'

‘Poorly.'

‘Are you safe?'

‘I think so.'

‘I'm flying over.'

‘No need for that.'

‘What kind of poorly, Jimmy? You told me you hadn't been wounded.'

‘I lied. Shot in the stomach.'

‘You need to be in a hospital.'

‘Negative. My carers know what they're doing. If anything can be done.'

‘Jesus Christ. James . . . ?'

‘I'm here. James – rarely hear that. I guess that's what my parents might have called me. Or maybe not. Thank you. You know, Robert, there's a weird dignity in names.'

‘I know it. Though if my mother ever called me Robert around the house, I knew I was in trouble.'

Tingley rasped a laugh.

‘And your dad?'

‘My dad?' Watts looked into his brandy glass. ‘James, you're gonna get through this. Hang on.'

‘For another weary winter? Robert. Things are what they are.'

‘I know that.' Watts forced a grin down the line. ‘The only true account is the thing itself.'

Tingley's laugh didn't really start before it was cut off by a cough.

‘James?'

‘I gotta go.'

Watts was welling up.

‘No, you don't.'

‘Yes. I do.'

Watts heard Tingley's raw chuckle.

‘What a ride, eh? I wish I'd known my mum and dad. One or the other.'

‘It's not over yet, James. But if the time comes, I'll give you your mother's kiss, I promise. But not yet.'

No response.

‘James?'

No response.

K
ate was on the phone with her father when Sara Gilchrist came out of her room. When she'd seen the Notting Hill number come up, she'd hesitated before she'd answered. Now she wished she'd hesitated longer.

‘Your mother has left me,' he said without preamble.

‘Not before time,' Kate said, before she could stop herself. ‘Where has she gone?'

‘No idea, but I'm sure she'll be in touch with you in due course.'

‘She's gone off with somebody else?'

‘Not at all.'

‘Have you?'

‘It's nothing like that. Your mother had . . . there's this man – Charlie Laker—'

‘He's dead.'

‘What?'

Gilchrist wandered on to the balcony.

‘He's dead. He died yesterday.'

Her father was effusive.

‘But that's wonderful news,' he said.

Kate looked at Sarah's long back as she leaned over the balcony.

‘Not for Reg Williamson,' Kate said quietly. ‘Or do you mean because Laker can't dish the dirt on you?'

‘I must phone your mother and let her know,' Simpson said and hung up.

Kate looked at her phone in surprise.

‘That was sudden,' she said, as Gilchrist came back into the room.

‘What was?' Gilchrist said, walking into the kitchen and opening the fridge.

‘My father hung up virtually mid-conversation.'

‘That's men for you,' Gilchrist said, putting a bottle of white wine and two glasses on the coffee table.

Kate Simpson looked at her.

‘Sarah – I'm really sorry to hear about Reg Williamson.'

‘Me too,' said Gilchrist, sitting on the edge of the chair on the other side of the table.

‘But you've been able to get a few things clarified?'

Gilchrist nodded as she poured two generous glasses of wine and passed one to Kate. Their hands touched for a moment.

‘Just a question now of whether I still have a job,' Gilchrist said.

Kate shuddered.

‘And whether I go to jail.'

Gilchrist held her glass out to chink against Kate's.

‘I'd bet money on a suspended sentence at worst.'

They took their first sips. Gilchrist took more of a healthy swig.

‘Finally figured out the identity of the Brighton Trunk Murderer. Bloke called Eric Knowles.'

Gilchrist shrugged.

‘Should I know him?'

‘No. But I think we should be able to find out more about him than we already know.'

Gilchrist nodded.

‘Job done, then.'

Kate smiled.

‘We still don't know who the victim was.'

‘Of course,' Gilchrist said, topping her glass up. She proffered the bottle to Kate. Kate shook her head.

‘I really want to find out who she is. I keep thinking: she liked music, she had a favourite food, she sighed over a favourite movie star. We know she liked the sun.'

Gilchrist nodded again.

‘She was another human being.'

‘Right,' Kate said.

Gilchrist gave her a tight smile.

‘That's your next project, then.'

R
estless still, Watts roamed his father's house. He wandered over to his father's bookshelves. His father had read widely, more widely than Watts would have expected. Organized, too. Alphabetical within countries.

He was scanning the American section. It was all classic stuff: Hawthorne, Melville, Fenimore Cooper, Hemingway, Scott Fitzgerald. There was a narrow-spined work by Thomas Wolfe called
God's Lonely Man
squeezed between John Dos Passos and some hard-boiled crime. There were signed copies of Chandler. Watts remembered his father telling him he'd once gone on a bender with Chandler and Ian Fleming.

On the shelf below were photo albums. An old cigar box was acting as a bookend. Watts took it down. He sat at the table by the window and slid the lid open. The box was filled with papers. He took out his father's birth certificate. Three First World War medals lay beneath it. Watts smiled.

He knew the slang name for these medals were Pip, Squeak and Wilfred, sarcastically named after a long-running strip cartoon that had begun 1919. Pip was a dog, Squeak a penguin, Wilfred a rabbit with very long ears. They went everywhere together, as did this trio of medals. You got one, you got the rest. Though it didn't mean you were alive.

Watts picked up one of the medals. The British War Medal, issued in 1919 to anyone, dead or alive, who had fought in the Great War. It was silver with George V's head on one side and a naked St George mounted on a horse on the other. The sun of Victory shone down on St George trampling the Prussian shield beneath his horse's hooves.

The second was the four-pointed Mons Star made of bright bronze, with a crown on one side and crossed swords on the other. It had a wreath of oak leaves beside a scroll inscribed ‘August 1914'.

The third was an Allied Victory medal, also issued in 1919 to all those who had been awarded the other two medals. This one was bronze lacquer. Winged Victory on one side, ‘The Great War for Civilization, 1914–1919' engraved on the other.

His grandfather would have been awarded them post-humously. Watts knew he had been in the Royal Sussex Regiment, 2nd Battalion. He'd gone over with the first division of the Expeditionary Force in August 1914 and been killed at the battle of Mons.

The Great War. He had seen a TV drama about Rudyard Kipling and his son Jack recently. Kipling, gung-ho about the war, had pulled strings to get his severely short-sighted son into the Irish Guards. He had fought at the Battle of Loos in torrential rain. With his glasses on, Jack Kipling wouldn't have been able to see anything, especially not the bullet that killed him.

Watts had visited his grandfather's grave once at St Symphorien cemetery, near Mons. It had been created by the Germans for both the Allied and German soldiers who fell in the battle. Well, some of the ones who fell.

He'd stood on a mound beside a tall obelisk and looked down at the five hundred or so grey granite headstones laid out in neat rectangles on every side. The man he was named after was somewhere among them.

He spent the next thirty minutes looking for him. It was quiet in the cemetery, although a breeze occasionally shivered the branches of the trees.

Some graves were unidentified. He found the grave of Private John Parr, killed on 21st August 1914, believed to be the first Commonwealth soldier killed in the Great War. Nearby was the grave of the Canadian soldier, Private Gordon Price, believed to be the last.