G ilchrist’s treat for the day was to investigate a body found in a secluded cove at Black Rock. The drift patterns for bodies at the whim of the tides suggested it was probably a suicide from Beachy Head, the high chalk cliff that vied with the Clifton Suspension Bridge in Bristol for the most popular place in Britain for people to off themselves.
She was accompanied by Reg Williamson, a policeman she already knew. He was a dour, cynical old stager who had been her boss briefly before her promotion to detective sergeant.
There was little human to see in the bloated body crammed between rocks and wrapped in seaweed. It doesn’t take long for dead bodies in water to deteriorate. Undersea scavengers get to work almost immediately, waves and rocks buffet them, water mixes with gases to pump them up to twice their actual size.
Gilchrist didn’t get nearer than five yards. Sometimes, she knew, bodies exploded, letting out foul and noxious fumes. She talked with the medical team who were getting the body on a stretcher to take back to the lab, spoke to the local coastguard about tides, then scrambled back over the rock to where Reg Williamson stood, belly out, fag in his mouth, his face tilted towards the sun.
‘Beachy Head?’ he said when she came up to him. He was still taking in the sun’s rays.
She nodded and moved past him.
Kate Simpson was a meticulous researcher. Before she went to her meeting with Brian Rafferty at the Royal Pavilion she went into the local history library in the Brighton Museum to see what it had on the Trunk Murder.
There were a handful of people sitting at desks or in front of the microfiche readers. Kate went to the card index and found a dozen or so entries for the Trunk Murders. She was hoping for a quick in-and-out, but the books and pamphlets were in the basement and would take ten to fifteen minutes to deliver to her. She asked about using the fiche machine to look at newspaper reports from 1934.
‘You’ve got to book in advance,’ the stocky guy behind the enquiry counter said. ‘And there’s nothing free for a couple of days.’
He looked down at the list she’d compiled.
‘The Trunk Murder? Hang on.’
He came out from behind the counter and walked over to a filing cabinet. A couple of seconds later he pulled from it a see-through folder and proffered it to her.
‘We’ve made files of newspaper cuttings and other stuff that we’re always asked for. This is the one for the Trunk Murder.’
‘It’s that popular?’
‘Sure.’ He smiled shyly. ‘This should get you started.’
There were some thirty cuttings in the file. They were from the Brighton and Hove Herald or the Brighton Gazette. The Gazette for Saturday 23rd June had the headline ‘Ghastly Find At Brighton: Body In Trunk: Woman Cut To Pieces.’
Kate read the article and scanned the rest of the cuttings quickly. She hadn’t realized quite what big news the Trunk Murder had been at the time. It had attracted both national and international coverage.
A woman’s torso had been found packed in a trunk in the left luggage office on 17th June 1934. The next day her legs and feet had been found in a suitcase at King’s Cross station’s left luggage office.
The famous pathologist, Sir Bernard Spilsbury, had examined the remains and provided a profile of the victim that concluded she was a well-nourished young woman, aged around twenty-five, who was pregnant for the first time. There were no body scars, no poison in the stomach, no sign of violence on the body (except, of course, its dismembering), no sign of death from natural causes.
For twelve months Scotland Yard led the murder hunt throughout Sussex, much of Britain and other parts of the world. The investigating officers were swamped by information – thousands of letters, hundreds of written statements and over one thousand telephone messages.
Eight hundred missing women were reported to Scotland Yard. Impressively, 730 were traced and accounted for. The case histories of the others were examined but none revealed a link with the dead woman.
In the event she was never identified. The cause of death was never established. And her killer was never caught.
As they drove along the coast road, Williamson went on and on about Beachy Head.
‘Don’t know why they don’t fence the whole of the Seven Sisters off.’ He was chewing a nail as he spoke. ‘It’s not safe at the best of times, lumps of chalk falling off. It’s not long ago they had to move that converted lighthouse back a hundred yards so it didn’t fall into the sea.’
‘You think it might have been accidental death?’ she said, for something to say.
‘Fuck knows. Beachy Head has won Suicide Spot of the Year twice running. Sometimes I think we should station somebody up there permanently just to make sure the suicidal form an orderly bloody queue.’
He chewed at his nail some more then, when Gilchrist didn’t say anything: ‘Or two queues – one for jumpers and the other for people in cars. I don’t mind so much if they do it when the tides in. I fucking hate it when you’ve got a fifteen-year-old Ford scattered across the beach.’
‘Not to mention the driver.’
‘Yeah, right,’ he said, laughing until he realized from her expression she wasn’t joking. He scratched the stubble on his chin. ‘Listen, Sarah. Anybody selfish enough to top themselves I ain’t got time for – they can drop dead as far as I’m concerned.’
‘They do.’
‘Yeah, well.’ His face was flushed.
‘Well, what?’
He glared at her.
‘I see the pain they cause for the people they leave behind,’ he said vehemently. ‘Children without mothers…’
Gilchrist glanced across at him. He was working his jaw and looking out across the sea.
Kate Simpson was ten minutes early for her meeting with Brian Rafferty so spent the time mooching along the corridors of the Royal Pavilion. She’d always regarded the Prince of Wales’s early-nineteenth-century Indo-Chinese confection as the height of kitsch. Her favourite story about it was that during the First World War it was used as a hospital for wounded Indian soldiers, presumably on the assumption that they would feel at home there.
She imagined them waking up, looking round at the gaudy decorations, the dragons and the other mock-Chinese and Indian decorations and thinking: ‘Where am I?’
She ambled into the banqueting room and looked up at the giant chandelier suspended from a dragon’s maw. She’d dined here a few times. Usually it was during Labour Party Conferences when her father invited her to be his guest so he could kill two birds with one stone – seeing to business and seeing her.
Rafferty’s secretary was waiting when she walked back down the corridor. She was a dumpy woman of indeterminate age who gave Kate the once over then led the way up the staircase, leaning heavily on the bamboo banister. Rafferty’s office was at the end of a meandering series of narrow corridors.
‘Delighted, delighted,’ he said, gathering her hand unctuously between his.
He was a curious little fellow. Probably in his late forties, with floppy hair and narrow shoulders. His manner made Kate think he must be gay, despite the photograph of his wife and children on his desk that he was keen to show to her.
He insisted on signing then presenting Kate with one of his books, a turgid-looking guide to Brighton: Past and Present. She flicked through it whilst he scurried around sorting out coffee. The book didn’t feature any kind of present Brighton she was familiar with.
‘So you have some files from the police investigation of the Trunk Murder,’ she said. ‘You don’t have the trunk itself, I suppose?’
‘I so like words with multiple meanings, don’t you?’ he said.
Kate looked quizzical.
‘Well, a torso is a trunk – the victim was found in a trunk.’ He smiled an awful, coy smile. ‘And, of course, if we were American, the trunk would be the boot of a car. Why, I wonder?’
‘You don’t have the trunk, then?’ Kate repeated. She took a sip of her coffee. It was good.
‘Alas, no. I have files. Lots of files.’
‘Which categories?’ Kate said, remembering how punctilious the Scotland Yard detectives had been about separating things out.
Rafferty steepled his fingers.
‘Do you know, I think I might risk a sherry. Will you join me?’
Kate glanced down at her watch. It was eleven a.m.
‘No, thank you.’
‘Ah – you’re thinking it’s a bit early. It’s all right – I won’t tell.’
He jumped up and scurried for a cabinet in the corner beside a replica of a large antique rocking horse that she’d also seen on sale in the Pavilion’s shop.
‘No – really,’ she said as he took out two glasses and a bottle. ‘I’m fine with coffee.’
He looked peeved but poured himself a glass and brought it back to his desk.
‘Most of the files don’t seem to be categorized,’ he said. ‘I’ve been reading up and, as far as I can gather, after some months, when the police hadn’t in reality got anywhere, the two Scotland Yard detectives heading the investigation moved back to London to oversee the investigation from there.
‘One would assume that all the files would have gone up with them but that was not the case. In 1964 the then Chief Constable of the South East Constabulary ordered all the files relating to the case held in Brighton Police station destroyed. Under, I presume, some thirty-year rule.’
He stood again and beckoned her over to another desk beneath a large window. When she approached she saw that the window led out on to a balcony. There were three cardboard boxes, each filled with brown and green files. Kate looked down at them, excitement stirring in her.
‘But these had been left here?’ she said.
‘In error, of course. There may be others.’
‘In the Pavilion?’
‘No, no. But the Scotland Yard detectives continued to take statements and carry out their investigations for a further year in London. They would have had their own files. I don’t know if they were destroyed.’
Kate nodded. She pointed at the nearest box.
‘May I look?’
‘By all means.’
She was aware that Rafferty was standing uncomfortably close. He smelt of something fusty, as if he slept in mothballs. His waxy cheeks, she noticed, had little points of red on them. She glanced at the empty sherry glass on his desk.
She lifted out an unmarked brown pocket file. Opening it, she saw a sheaf of foolscap pages, lined, each page headed ‘Brighton Police’. She looked at the first sheet. Beneath the heading someone had typed ‘Witness Statement of Andrea Stewart’. The statement itself was handwritten in neat, sloping letters decorated with loops and curlicues.
‘Ah, yes,’ Rafferty pointed at the page with a stubby finger. ‘She saw a man burning something foul-smelling when she was out for a walk with some friends over at Pyecombe. He told them he was burning fish but he wouldn’t let them near enough to see for themselves.’
Kate flicked through the sheets aimlessly. She felt excitement stirring as she wondered if within these files there might be some clue to the identity of the Trunk Murderer. What a coup that would be.
‘I don’t have time to work with you on this,’ Rafferty said. ‘But I expect the Pavilion’s discovery to be part of the story.’
‘Oh, of course. And for the programme I thought I might invite a policeman to comment on the evidence we have.’
‘Indeed? Do you have someone in mind?’
‘I was thinking about Robert Watts.’
Rafferty’s mouth twisted into a grimace.
‘That odious man.’
‘Is he? Do you say that because of what happened?’
‘Not at all. Simply because of who he is. I don’t think I would be able to work with him.’
‘You probably won’t need to,’ Kate said.
Rafferty smiled and giggled.
‘Ah – that snippy policewoman – I’ve just realized who she is.’
Gilchrist and Williamson parked at the lay-by just below the lip of Beachy Head. The converted lighthouse was some hundred yards up a steep incline behind them. Williamson didn’t say anything but Gilchrist could tell he was pissed off at having to walk up the hill.
He trailed behind as she strode ahead. She was enjoying the view: in one direction the sea and in the other the rich green folds of the Downs.
The wind was fierce, blowing in sharp gusts from the sea, sending clouds scudding across the vast arc of sky.
When Gilchrist reached the door, Williamson was still clumping along some fifty yards behind. The door opened before she had even located a bell.
‘Another suicide?’
The speaker was a woman somewhere in her fifties, dressed in a loose linen top and matching trousers, her hair drawn back from her sculpted face. She introduced herself as Lesley White.
She looked like a retired dancer, an impression reinforced when she moved back to usher Gilchrist into the house then led her down three steps into a spacious living room.
‘Possibly,’ Gilchrist said when the woman turned back towards her. ‘This is just routine.’ She looked around the thirties modernist room. ‘Lovely. And it must be lovely living here.’
‘It is and it isn’t. This stretch of cliff is very popular among tourists. And among suicides.’
There was a heavy rapping on the door.
‘Sorry,’ Gilchrist said. ‘My colleague.’
Williamson was sweating as the woman led him into the living room.
‘This is Sergeant Williamson,’ Gilchrist said. ‘We’ve found a body, as you surmised, down the coast a little way. At the moment we don’t know whether this is suicide. However, our visit is strictly routine.’
White gestured for them to sit down on a cream sofa. Gilchrist worried Williamson would somehow mark it, perhaps with nicotine-stained fingers. In consequence she sat particularly gingerly herself on the edge of the sofa, her hands clasped between her thighs
‘How long has it been in the water?’ White said, casually familiar with the procedure.
Gilchrist looked at Williamson, giving him an opportunity to join in the conversation.
‘We don’t know for certain yet,’ he said gruffly. ‘Probably a couple of weeks, judging from the deterioration. I don’t suppose you remember anything from back then?’
‘Well, we don’t keep a suicide watch here, if that’s what you mean.’
She sat so neatly, so straight-backed, that Gilchrist immediately felt lumpen and heavy. Looking at her face again she thought she might be early sixties – but looking very good on it. Gilchrist pushed her shoulders back.
‘Is there anything unusual you can recall?’
‘All I can recall is that we lost our cat.’
‘What was his name?’
Gilchrist blurted out her question without thinking. She was a sucker for animals. Williamson caught the soppiness in her voice and gave her a disgusted look. She flushed but ignored him.
‘Phoebe,’ the woman said. ‘But Phoebe was a boy.’ She smiled quickly, showing small, even teeth. ‘We got muddled when he was a kitten.’
‘No wonder he ran away,’ Williamson said.
White smiled again but her eyes didn’t. Gilchrist could tell she didn’t like Williamson, especially sweating on her pristine sofa in his sports jacket and greasy trousers.
‘He’s chipped by the way,’ White said to Gilchrist. It took a moment for Gilchrist to realize that White was hoping she would try to find her cat.
She stood.
‘OK, well, that will be all for now.’ She handed White her card. ‘If you can think of anything else.’
Walking back down to the car Williamson kept pace with her. She felt awkward with most of her colleagues. First because of the shooting, second because of the splash the papers had done on her one-night stand with Watts. So she was surprised and touched when Williamson said:
‘Sorry you’ve been going through all this shit, Sarah.’
‘Oh, Reg, you know how it goes…’ Her voice trailed away.
‘Sorry if I’ve been a bit tricky today.’
Williamson apologizing too? Gilchrist gave him a sharp look as they neared the car.
‘Fact is, these suicides don’t agree with me-’
‘So you’ve made clear,’ she said quickly.
He looked at her, seeming to want to say more.
‘Ay, well. Let’s see what forensics come up with, eh?’
I was sitting in what passed for my back garden, pen and pad on my lap, when the bell of my bungalow rang out harshly. I was tempted to ignore it, as I had the telephone that had been ringing throughout the afternoon, but I felt vulnerable. I was pretty sure the front door was unlocked and whoever it was could just waltz in and find me sitting here.
I was punishing myself by living in this horrible place, sure enough. The thing about our old home was the view. Here there was no view. I had thought of renting somewhere in Brighton by the sea – another view I loved. Instead I’d chosen this place where the only view was of the big house that straddled the space between me and the Downs. A travel agent owned it. He and his wife acted like seigneurs, tramping by each day to walk their estate.
Fired up by the meeting with Tingley, I’d been mapping out a plan of action. What the hell else was I going to do? I had no job and no immediate prospect of one.
The past weeks had given me plenty of time to think. Seethe, too. I had been thinking about me, about what I am. I find it so unlikely that I got where I did. I was just a kid with wacko parents.
My dad, the writer, Victor Tempest, churning out these gung-ho thrillers. He was most successful when I was growing up. To meet his deadlines – he was writing three a year – he scarcely left his study, never mind the house. He was in his fifties before I came along and I guess he was set in his ways.
My mother was giddy, excitable – OK, mad as a hatter. Her mood swings, from the heights of joy to the depths of despair, made a big dipper seem like a sensible mode of transport. When my wife, Molly, proved depressive – post-natal depression – it didn’t need a shrink to tell me that maybe I was looking for my mother in my wife. But a shrink did, unable to believe my wife hadn’t shown some propensity for depression earlier in our marriage. Actually, rack my brains though I did, I didn’t think she had.
What did I get from my parents? From my dad, my ambition and my toughness. From my mum, something more theatrical. The drive to succeed I got, of course, from my desire to leave these two people behind. Not that you ever can, however far you go.
I was a driven man. People could see that in me. They couldn’t see that I was also a fearful one. My ambition hiding my insecurity. Often before big meetings, like an actor before a first night, I was physically sick. When I first came into the police at quite a senior rank I forced myself to speak within the first two minutes of a meeting, otherwise I feared I would not speak at all. I had difficulty addressing the troops. I was conscious that I didn’t have their experience, hadn’t worked my way up through the ranks.
The doorbell rang again, more insistently. I left the pad and pen on my chair and padded through the back door, down the corridor to the front. When I opened it, Sarah Gilchrist was standing there, an embarrassed look on her face. I flushed and glanced at the other houses around me.
‘It’s an official visit,’ she said hastily. ‘I have to take a further statement about that burning car you came across.’
I wondered whose tactful idea that had been. I stepped aside.
‘Come in,’ I said, acutely conscious of my rumpled appearance, in chinos and unironed linen shirt.
Gilchrist was not in uniform, but from the little I knew of her, this was her unofficial uniform: jeans and white T-shirt. She was big on the hips but long-legged and tall enough to carry it off.
I ushered her into my cramped sitting room.
‘You know I’ve already given a statement to Ronnie?’
Gilchrist was standing in the middle of the room. The space seemed unnaturally confined. She nodded.
‘Just a follow-up.’
‘They’re giving you the shit jobs, then,’ I said.
‘At least I’m back on duty.’ She laughed. ‘Although the thought of investigating the disappearance of a cat this morning did test my patience.’
‘A cat?’
She told me of her visit to Beachy Head. I unscrewed the top on an expensive bottle of New Zealand Sauvignon Blanc and poured us both a glass. I laughed when she came to the end of her story.
‘But you know there’s this whole thing about cats being stolen around here, either to make into fur rugs and stuff or for black magic purposes,’ I said.
‘Black magic – the Lewes loonies, you mean?’
Whereas Brighton was everything wacky and New Age, Lewes, the market town four miles inland, was more superstition and Old Religion. Its residents still burnt the Pope in effigy every Bonfire Night because some Protestants were martyred in the town five hundred years earlier.
‘Who knows?’ I handed her the glass of wine. I told her my theory about burning cars as a sign that big city corruption was creeping into the pristine countryside.
‘Hardly pristine, sir,’ she said with a laugh. ‘You know how many white collar crooks live out here. I don’t think anyone can be a millionaire without cutting a few corners.’
‘I suppose,’ I said. ‘The burning car reminded me of that burnt-out car up at the Ditchling Beacon just about the time the roof fell in.’
‘The roof fell in? I’m not following.’
‘On my career.’ I shrugged. ‘Might be worth seeing if there’s any link.’
Gilchrist frowned.
‘Doesn’t seem likely, sir.’
‘Call me Bob,’ I said gently. ‘Please.’
She held my look, gave a little nod.
‘So have they identified who was in last night’s car yet?’
She shook her head. ‘Folsom is working on the human remains, such as they are. We may never identify the person.’
‘Dentition should help.’
‘That’s always a bit hit and miss.’
I nodded.
‘What do you need from me?’
‘Just the usual. What you saw, what you did, where you’d been. Did you pass any other vehicles or anybody acting suspiciously?’
‘I saw no other vehicles on the lane. I may have passed a couple of cars coming across the Downs. I didn’t really notice.’
I described what had happened with the deer and how I’d walked across the field.
‘And why were you passing that way at that time of night?’ She saw my look. ‘I have to ask.’
‘I was on my way back from a meeting in Brighton.’
‘What kind of meeting?’
‘The private kind.’
She flushed again and seemed to tense.
‘I have to know, I’m sorry.’
‘Not that kind,’ I said, smiling. ‘I had a drink with Sheena Hewitt.’
‘Oh,’ Gilchrist said, not sure whether she should be writing that down or not.
‘About the Milldean investigation.’ I looked at her intently. ‘I thought our successful professional relationship whilst I was Chief Constable might count for something.’
Gilchrist looked down at her pad but didn’t say anything.
‘I’m going to find out exactly what happened,’ I continued. ‘I can’t believe the investigation so far has been so badly handled. Foster’s suicide, Finch and Edwards disappearing without trace, nobody knowing who the grass was. And not a single victim identified.’
Gilchrist met my stare.
‘I wish I knew what happened,’ she said. ‘Because it has fucked my career.’
‘I know the feeling,’ I said shortly.
She looked embarrassed again. Closing her pad, she started to rise.
‘Please, stay a little longer. You haven’t touched your drink.’
She looked embarrassed.
‘I’m on duty.’
‘Sorry,’ I said, feeling foolish.
Gilchrist’s mobile phone rang. She glanced at the number. Excusing herself, she walked over to the window. She listened but scarcely spoke. She finished the call and looked off into space for a moment.
‘You OK?’ I said.
‘Reg Williamson just phoned. The body on the beach has been identified.’
‘That was bloody quick.’
‘It was Detective Constable Finch.’
‘Christ – another suicide? But where’s he been – he can’t have been in the water all this time.’
She shook her head.
‘Apparently, he’s only been in the water a few days. And they don’t think it was suicide.’ She looked up at me with her clear blue eyes. ‘They think he was murdered.’