K ate didn’t have many more pages of the diary to read. She hoped she’d be able to find additional portions of it. There were gaps of a few days between the entries now.
Saturday 30th June
Poor buggers on the night shift were digging up bones in an allotment on Wilson Avenue at two o’clock this morning. Dog bones. Whilst they were doing that, I was tucked up tight with a young lass who was a bit the worse for wear but seemed to know what she was doing. She reminded me of Frenchy and that actually made me sad. Getting soft in my young age. I wondered about going over to Dieppe for the day when I was next off to see if I could find her, make sure she was all right. It’s not the first time that’s happened but it’s never nice.
Today’s local evening paper had asked: ‘Trunk Mystery: Solution in Sight?’ Its first paragraph claimed: ‘Sensational developments in the Trunk Murder were hourly expected late last night following a day of great activity by Scotland Yard officers in London. ’
Well, I had to give the locals something too, didn’t I? Donaldson had gone up to London in the afternoon and later telephoned us to say he was staying up there overnight.
The paper said: ‘His departure has special significance in view of reports that a London man has been visited by police officers in connection with the crime. Another man was also at the Yard for two hours. ’
That’s as maybe, but Simpson told me Donaldson actually stayed up to take his sister out to dinner for her birthday.
To be honest, I was spoilt for choice for stories to tell the press. No harm in it, was there? The great unwashed liked reading this stuff and we were inundated with it down the nick.
That day, for instance, we’d found a car that had been seen in suspicious circumstances on the coast road at Roedean on Derby Day. Two men had been seen lifting out a trunk. When they saw they’d been noticed, they put the trunk back in the car and drove off. The owner of the car stated it was out of his possession between 31st May and 10th June. Car didn’t tell us anything, though, and whatever they’d been up to it didn’t seem to be connected.
The knives are long forgotten.
Thursday 5th July
Today it was an empty bungalow on the Downs at Woodingdean. I went with Percy and DS Sorrell. We had a tip from London. We searched the garden and all the rooms. There was brown paper and, in the kitchen, some knives. Won’t lead to anything.
I saw the Girl Guide again tonight. She lets me do whatever I want.
Saturday 7th July
Last night Scotland Yard published a list of missing local girls who most tally to the description of the woman we found. There were ten and I’m almost certain I once had a knee-trembler with one of them down that alley that runs from the side of the town hall to West Street. Phyllis Fifer, age 24, from Portslade. She’d gone off to live on a farm in West Sussex.
She was fresh complexioned and freckled. She was a well-built girl who took good care of her appearance. I’m sure it was her. She got upset because I tore her bloomers.
We’re busy tracing prenatal cases around the country.
I try not to feel guilt. It’s a negative emotion and those emotions just hold you back. Oh yes, I’ve been on all the right motivational management courses. But I was also aware that with Molly I’d betrayed a trust and behaved like a shit. I was acutely aware of how much distress I’d caused her. That what she was going through was my fault and my responsibility. So, in fact, guilt was dragging me down.
I’ve never been one to chase women. When I was a teenager, sure, but by the time I was nineteen or twenty I was looking for someone to settle down with. That probably makes me sound boring but I think most normal people are like that. I don’t know what possessed me when I spent the night with Gilchrist. I can think of all sorts of excuses: things bad at work, Molly not understanding or caring, me under stress, drink. Lust, of course. And I was drawn to Gilchrist’s spirit. Although, if I think about it honestly, it was actually because that spirit reminded me of Molly before her depression.
But no doubt about it, Gilchrist and I did click. I think she was as surprised that she went to bed with me as I was. I think she felt as guilty as I did afterwards. And yet there was this tug.
It was by mutual agreement we had decided not to see any more of each other. I loved Molly and, if I could, I wanted to spend the rest of my life with her. Gilchrist didn’t want to be involved with a married man, especially a married man at work.
But now Gilchrist and I were avoiding each other’s eyes over an embarrassed breakfast of toast and coffee. Gilchrist looked over at the pile of papers on the sofa. I followed her look.
‘The Trunk Murder files. Want to take a look?’
She almost ran over there. I followed. We separated the files. I sat behind my desk, she sat on the sofa and we began to read.
Kate was back on her balcony, memoir in front of her but thinking about her father’s visit. And how her hero-worship had changed to something more negative. Family holidays when she was young. They had always been a bit weird as her dad would then write a piece about them. And both her parents were shameless about using that fact to get deals at hotels and restaurants. She used to squirm at the fake bonhomie they received from maitre d’ and hotel managers who were hoping for a good write-up.
Her mother was more shameless than her father, more imperious, more strident at check-in desks when asking for upgrades. Kate saw the contempt on the faces of the check-in staff, saw her parents – and by implication herself – tagged as freeloaders and liggers.
One incident still made her face burn with shame at her father’s barefaced push and, well, nastiness. It was a press trip to California with half a dozen press families invited to promote a superior camping holiday. On the way out, the rather hunky PR man for the company had got everyone an upgrade to first class. On the four-day trip he’d been pretty good at boosting upgrades and freebies from Santa Monica to Santa Barbara via Las Vegas and the Grand Canyon.
On the way back, the upgrade to first was at the discretion of the airline. Her father had been pretty wrecked from the last-night party. He turned up at check-in bleary-eyed, unshaven, in a baggy T-shirt and scruffy jeans that were too loose at the waist. He looked like a bum.
The tanned man at check-in was gay, of course, with neat hair and a small moustache.
‘I believe there’s a possibility of an upgrade,’ her dad croaked.
The man behind the counter looked at her unkempt father standing before him.
‘We like to think of first class as a rather superior party,’ he said. ‘At which our passengers are the guests.’ He touched the corner of his moustache. ‘We expect our guests to dress accordingly.’
Kate flushed and looked down as she saw her father stiffen. She knew what was coming.
‘Fuck you,’ her father said loudly.
The man behind the counter stiffened.
‘And that is certainly not the kind of language we tolerate in first class. In fact, we may have to reconsider whether we fly you at all.’
Kate was crimson as she looked quickly from side to side to see where she could stand unnoticed. The man behind the counter pointed dramatically at some chairs off to the left.
‘Please,’ he said, his voice quavering almost parodically as he tried to do fierce. ‘Kindly go and wait over there. If we allow you to travel, you will be informed later.’
Both her mother and father stood in front of him, unmoving. When she had replayed this event in her memory as she got older, she had remembered nuances or suddenly realized things (or perhaps fictionalized things). Like the fact the man behind the counter was gay. Her memory had stored that unassimilated at the time, not totally understanding what was going on but like an animal aware of the atmosphere.
It was typical of her parents that not only did they get the upgrade, but the man also ended up apologizing to them for the ‘misunderstanding’.
In the nineties she was watching TV one night and recognized with an embarrassed jolt her parents on the news. It wasn’t her parents but it might as well have been. Hand-held camera footage of Neil and Christine Hamilton bearing down on the Man in the White Suit when he was announcing he was standing against Hamilton in a by-election. The same arrogant attitude; the same self-righteousness; the same hard faces. That was her parents at their worst.
By then her father was inside New Labour and her mother was riding on his coat-tails to write high-profile pieces for the qualities.
She didn’t mean to be so bitchy about her mum. There was just something about her – always had been. Again, things heard but not understood until much later. Kate sitting on the stripped pine stairs whilst a raucous dinner party went on below.
‘Oh, God.’ Her mum’s voice loud, brittle and bored. ‘I suppose that means I’m going to have to give you a blow job tonight.’
So where did that leave Kate? Why didn’t it bleed down into her? The genes were there. Was her anti-competitiveness simply a resistance to the obvious, or some perverse version of the same impulse? Could she deny her genes? She guessed she had little to do with it.
She’d avoided going into journalism, though that was the easy option. She looked around and the newspapers were full of kids of famous people. Had they no shame? She accepted that if they couldn’t write, they wouldn’t be there. But she also accepted that there were hundreds of other journalists who could write just as well, or much better, but didn’t have the inside track. She avoided taking advantage of her parents’ connections, those newspaper deals made over lunch and dinner with editors and publishers. She reacted against it. Hence her local radio gig. Was she shooting herself in the foot?
She sighed, picked up the diary – and did a double take.
Monday 9th July
The victim’s head has been found.
Her mobile phone rang. She checked the number. Answered.
‘Kate, it’s Bob Watts. Wondered if you wanted to meet to discuss the Trunk Murder with me and a serving police officer.’
‘They found the head!’ she said.
‘I take it that’s a yes.’
They agreed to meet in the Hotel du Vin in two hours’ time. Kate idly wondered who the serving policeman was but was eager to find out more about the head. She read on.
Actually, it was found back on 10th June before we’d even found the trunk in the left luggage office. The story would be farcical if it weren’t so tragic.
A young couple from a lodging house in Baker Street had gone for a walk on the rocks under the cliff at Black Rock on Sunday 10th June. It was about 4 p.m. The tide was out. Ina crevice where a pool of water had collected, they saw pieces of newspaper clotted with blood. They were wrapped round a female human head.
I went with Hutch and Pelling to interview them.
The girl – pretty but shy and inarticulate – said she had wanted to pull it from the water but the young man wouldn’t let her. They had left it there.
‘ Why wouldn’t you let her?’ Pelling asked, puzzled.
The young man, Fred, was pimply, slope-shouldered, with a dusting of dandruff on his shoulders. He shifted in his seat.
‘ Dunno. ’
The girl, Barbara, said: ‘Fred thought some person had committed suicide by throwing themselves from the cliff above and that the police -’ she looked round quickly at the officers around her – ‘having taken away the remains they required, had swept the other parts into the sea. ’
We all looked at the young man. I’m sure we all thought the same. Halfwit. He seemed to shrink in his seat.
At least they hadn’t kept it entirely to themselves. They’d mentioned it to their landlady and Fred had told his boss. However, we only found out about it when Fred mentioned it to one of his employer’s customers. The customer had realized the significance of the information when news of the torso murder appeared in the press.
Hutch decided the girl and the boy should each be separately taken to Black Rock. I stayed with the young man whilst they took the girl to show them the pool.
I didn’t attempt any conversation with him. I’m not a snob, but what would we have to talk about? As a matter of fact, I was irritated not only by the fact he had been such an idiot but also by his relationship with the girl – what could such a pretty girl see in him?
They brought her back and left her with me while they took the man out to Black Rock. They were gone a couple of hours. I took full advantage of their absence. The girl proved not to be so shy after all.
Their stories matched exactly, but by now there was no head in the pool.
Jimmy Tingley phoned.
‘Just checking in,’ he said. ‘No real developments my end. You?’
‘Nothing here,’ I said, glancing across at Gilchrist, feet up on the sofa, frowning as she speed-read the files, occasionally jotting down notes. ‘Have you been able to check out the Haywards Heath guys yet?’
‘I’m certain they’re dirty but I haven’t got close yet. Do you want to meet?’
‘I’m coming into town for a little get-together to discuss the Brighton Trunk Murder shortly.’
There was a pause on the line.
‘First or second?’ he finally said.
‘You know about them, then – want to join us and then we can have another chat after?’
He agreed and I put the phone down. Gilchrist was looking steadily at me. I smiled and she smiled back, then dropped her gaze back to the files.
Kate arrived first at the Hotel du Vin. A sudden gust of wind just as she stepped off of Ship Street ballooned her skirt out and up, earning a whistle and a few grunts from some builders on the other side of the lane. She went to the loo to comb her hair and sort her make-up, then settled herself on one of the sofas that ran along the wall to the side of the bar. She sipped her wine and gazed up at the rafters far above.
Watts walked in accompanied by a tall woman about ten years older than Kate, with broad shoulders and a long stride. He flashed a big smile as he walked over to Kate whilst the woman deftly checked out the room. She nodded at a man at the bar. Kate glanced across. She hadn’t noticed the unassuming man sitting there but now he slipped off the bar stool and walked across to them, carrying a coloured drink in his hand.
Watts made the introductions. Kate tried not to react when she heard Sarah Gilchrist’s name – she read the tabloids. She tried not to give her the once-over but, of course, she did. Gilchrist was attractive and had a strength about her. Kate was surprised to see her with Watts. She’d assumed it had been a one-night stand. Were they actually having an affair? She recalled that other wine glass in Watts’s bungalow.
‘So they found the head?’ Watts said.
‘And lost it again,’ Kate and Gilchrist said, almost together. Kate smiled at Gilchrist. ‘It was in the police report.’
‘Though the public didn’t know until a newspaper report in 1964,’ Tingley said. He turned to Kate. ‘Hello, I’m Bob’s friend, Jimmy Tingley.’
‘You know about all this, then?’ Kate said, puzzled by his presence. She was worried she was going to lose control of the investigation.
‘I’ve given it some thought from time to time. I like analyzing things.’
‘And what has your analysis concluded?’ Watts asked.
Tingley took a sip of his drink.
‘Rum and pep,’ Watts said to Kate, seeing her curious look. ‘Otherwise he’s more or less normal.’
‘First, you’ve got to figure out how this guy got the trunk into the left luggage in Brighton. The body weighed seventy pounds – that’s a lot to lug around. The maximum weight marines are expected to carry in their packs is fifty-five pounds. They’re big, fit blokes.’
‘He took the train from London,’ Gilchrist said.
‘Maybe – if that sighting of a middle height man at London Bridge is accurate. But he still had to get it to the station in the first place. Same if he just dropped it off from somewhere in Brighton. This bloke is going to have difficulty moving this thing around. Such a high-profile case, a taxi driver would remember picking him up and helping him with the trunk.’
‘There’s nothing in the files I read about taxi drivers coming forward,’ Watts said.
‘So, perhaps he thought of that risk and he drove to the station. Whether he did the deed in Brighton or elsewhere, he would still have needed to drive.’
‘Getting the suitcase to King’s Cross would have been easier,’ Gilchrist said. ‘We need to check how easy that journey would have been from Brighton – and think about why he chose King’s Cross. What was its significance?’
‘At random?’ Tingley said. ‘Unfortunately, with just one crime there isn’t enough information to do a geographic profile based on the stations.’
‘What’s a geographic profile?’ Kate said.
‘A guy called Stuart Kind devised it. He accurately predicted where the Yorkshire Ripper lived by cross-indexing times of attack with locations. He figured out that this man was on a clock – he had to get home. So the later in the day the crime, the nearer to this man’s home.’
Kate nodded.
‘Ingenious. But I have a question. Why didn’t he throw everything into the sea, like he did the head? Assuming that was her head at Black Rock. And what happened to her arms and hands? OK, two questions.’
‘Perhaps he worried about the tides and that all the separate parts would end up in the same place,’ Gilchrist said. ‘Thought he could get away with disposing of the head like that. And that there would be a long gap between the discovery of that and the rest of the body.’
Tingley leant forward.
‘Gross as it sounds, a head is relatively easy to move around – heavy though it is. But a torso you’ve got more of a problem – the weight for one thing. If he’d chucked it in the sea, he’d probably have to do it in the trunk and then there’s the problem of floating.’
‘And the arms and hands?’ Kate said.
Tingley shrugged.
‘Don’t know. The arms shouldn’t have posed a problem of identification unless they had some distinguishing feature like a birthmark – these days it would be a tattoo.’
‘And the hands were because of fingerprints.’
‘Probably,’ Tingley said.
‘Though that in itself is interesting,’ Gilchrist said. ‘It means either that this woman had at some point been fingerprinted, so had a criminal record, or that the killer was ignorant and assumed that just the existence of fingerprints allowed for identification.’
‘If she had been fingerprinted, could that be because she was a prostitute?’ Kate said. ‘Killed by her pimp?’
‘Quite possibly,’ Gilchrist said.
Kate noticed that Watts had not contributed to the discussion but had been listening intently.
‘Let’s get back to the head,’ he now said. ‘If the head they found in the rock pool was the woman’s – wrapped in newspaper like the torso in the suitcase – then it’s likely he lived around here. He’s not going to be travelling far with a head – what would he carry it in, for one thing?’
‘A bowling bag?’ Tingley said.
‘Ugh,’ Kate said.
‘A man we have in custody walked from near Hove station to the pier with his friend’s head under his arm in the middle of the evening a couple of weeks ago, and nobody noticed,’ Gilchrist said.
‘These days anything is possible,’ Watts said, ‘but in 1934 I think somebody would have noticed. No, it still suggests he was local. He’s not going to make more than one trip from London to Brighton with body parts, is he? He wouldn’t want to risk being remembered. And lugging a trunk with a torso and a bag with a head in it at the same time would be risky. Plus, he’d want to dispose of the head at night. He couldn’t very well chuck it over the cliff edge in broad daylight.’
‘Can we check tide tables?’
‘Hang on,’ Gilchrist said. ‘Are we assuming that he threw the head in there? Why? Why couldn’t it have just ended up there – thrown in somewhere else and the tide tugged it there.’
‘OK,’ Tingley said. ‘But we’re getting somewhere. So his trip to King’s Cross – a special trip or was he going somewhere from there?’
‘If he was, he’d have to come back so, again, that’s doubling the risk of being remembered,’ Gilchrist said. ‘Supposing someone had opened the case in the meantime; staff would be on the lookout.’
‘So it was a special journey,’ Watts said.
‘But the same applies to Brighton station,’ Tingley said.
‘Which same?’ Gilchrist leant forward in her seat.
‘If we’re saying he lived down here, then wasn’t there a big risk when he was leaving the trunk at Brighton station that he’d be recognized and/or remembered lugging this trunk the next time he used the station?’
‘Hang on – break it down,’ Gilchrist said. ‘This is important. If he did live in Brighton, as you’re suggesting, then he ran two risks turning up at the station with a trunk. One: that he might bump into someone he knew. Who would later remember, when there was all the publicity, that he was lugging a trunk. Two: that as he lived here he might be recognized as a regular user of the station.’
‘You mean if he was a commuter?’ Kate said. ‘Did people commute from Brighton in those days? Plus we think he had a car.’
Tingley shrugged.
‘Well, all you’re really saying is that he lived down here but not in Brighton. He didn’t go up to London much because his business didn’t take him there.’
‘But that means she was based down here,’ Gilchrist said. ‘So you’d think they’d be able to figure out who she was.’
‘Why was she killed?’ Watts said.
Kate replied:
‘The police theory from the files we have is that she was probably the mistress of a married man who killed her because she was pregnant.’
‘Good,’ Tingley said. ‘If she was a mistress in London that he visited regularly, then the station might be a problem.’
‘Unless he drove,’ Kate said.
‘But trains were quicker and more frequent then,’ Tingley said.
‘So it’s like not shitting on your own doorstep,’ Gilchrist said.
‘Exactly.’
‘OK,’ Watts said. ‘Alternative scenario. He was London-based but had a second home here. He didn’t come down often but when he did he drove. He brought her down here to kill her. Then maybe never came down again for a couple of years. He was nondescript anyway so no real worries about being recognized.’
Gilchrist nodded slowly.
‘But if he’s London-based, then he’s anonymous and we can’t ever locate him. If he’s down here, then at least we stand a chance.’
‘You mean by the rules of this kind of investigation?’ Tingley said.
‘What do you mean?’ Kate said.
‘Well – Jack the Ripper – all the theories revolve around a small number of suspects listed in the police files. So Ripperologists spend all their time trying to prove which one of them did it. But why on earth should the police have hit on the right suspects? So then you get the wild card theorists who suggest it was the Prince of Wales or the Masons or Walter Sickert. But given the fact that with a random killing or crime these days the police haven’t got a clue without DNA or confessions or blind luck, then the chances are the Ripper was somebody totally different.’
Kate frowned.
‘And you’re saying that applies here?’
‘No, no, this is different. There’s a surfeit of information – thousands of statements. It’s like the Yorkshire Ripper and all those high-profile cases. The police have already got the guys without realizing it – they’re in there among the statements. The torso murderer is somewhere in the thousands of statements the police took.’
‘But we don’t have those statements,’ Kate said. ‘They were destroyed. We just have a few of them.’
‘When were they destroyed?’ Watts said.
‘In the 1960s on the order of the Chief Constable,’ Kate said. ‘I assume it was some thirty-year rule.’
Watts looked at her intently for a moment.
‘What?’ she said.
‘Nothing,’ Watts said. ‘Are there files anywhere else?’
‘I’m going to the County Records Office tomorrow. There are files there. There is one other thing too, which isn’t in the copies I gave you.’
Watts tilted his head.
‘There is a kind of handwritten diary from a policeman involved in the case. Not all of it, just fragments.’
‘Which policeman?’ Gilchrist said.
‘I don’t know – I’m hoping the County Records will help me identify him.’
Watts still had the odd look on his face. Before Kate could press him, Tingley glanced at his phone – they’d all heard a text alert – and took Watts to one side.
During the discussion about the head and torso, Gilchrist had been thinking about Finch’s body washed up at Beachy Head and Gary Parker chopping up his friend. She bought another glass of wine for her and Kate. She warmed to Kate.
‘You know who I am, right?’ she asked her when they’d both taken a gulp.
‘I do. Can I ask – which has caused you most problems – your involvement with the Milldean incident or your fling with your boss?’
Gilchrist stared at her for a long moment then burst out laughing.
‘Please, don’t sugar-coat it – just ask me straight out.’
Kate flushed.
‘Sorry.’
‘It’s OK. The two together are a pretty powerful combination.’
‘Do you regret your fling?’
Gilchrist had asked herself the same question time and again. But now it was her turn to flush.
‘If I’m honest, I’m bitter about the consequences but don’t regret the fling.’
‘But he was married.’
The moral certainty of youth, Gilchrist thought. She didn’t know how old Kate was but she assumed she was younger. And she’d felt that same way once, before life kicked in.
Her mother was a feminist, had lived through the pill and the pressure on women to engage in sex for fun, whether it was fun for them or not. She belonged to that whole generation of women used by men and who ignored their own needs because most women wanted relationships, not one-night stands. Her mother couldn’t understand the notion of the mistress. Couldn’t understand the idea that women should have solidarity with each other but so many broke ranks to have affairs with married men, ignoring the suffering of the wives.
Gilchrist scanned the room, as she’d been doing since she first entered the hotel.
‘What I regret is losing my anonymity,’ she said. ‘In many ways I hate Brighton – so much “Look at me”. But all this exhibitionism, paradoxically, goes side by side with anonymity. When the scandal broke, losing my anonymity was hateful.’
Her phone beeped and she excused herself to read the text. It was from the station. Gary Parker, the man who’d chopped up his friend, wanted to see her.