‘Bit late for that, I’m afraid, Sarah. But, look, I must go. I don’t have a hands-free in the car so I’m driving one-handed. Aside from being illegal, it’s a bit dodgy up here.’
‘Where are you?’
‘Beachy Head. Me and Charlie are going to visit the missus. Well, not really visit. Share a moment.’
‘Please stop the car.’
‘I’m here now. I dropped the interview tape off at the cafe down the bottom. They’re keeping it for you.’
Gilchrist’s voice dropped to a whisper.
‘Please, Reg. .’
‘Can’t take it any more, sweetheart. But at least I’ll do something right.’
‘Let me talk to Laker.’
‘No can do — he’s a bit tied up. Remember how Finch got it? He was a dumb bastard but he didn’t deserve to go like that. Apparently, Laker was in the back of the car. Watched his men do it — though he didn’t see the cat jump into the boot. Oh, that snooty cow in the lighthouse — cat-woman — is mixed up in it too — he’s been her bit of rough for years. Very rough but it seems that’s how she likes it. Anyway, this is a bit of poetic justice to pay for Finch, creep though he was.’
‘You’ve got a confession. You don’t need to do whatever you’re planning. Stop now and when I get back we’ll go out, have a few beers and laugh over this.’
‘No laughs left, darling. And I don’t think the confession would stand up in court. Taken under duress, they’ll say. Kick the case out and he’ll get off scot-free. So, everything considered, this is the way to go.’
‘Reg, I’m begging you. You’re one of the few friends I’ve got.’
‘Nice of you to say but we hardly know each other. Both private — too private, mebbe.’
‘What would your wife think of what you’re doing?’
‘I’ll find out soon. Goodbye, Sarah.’
The phone went dead.
Gilchrist went up on deck.
‘Bob,’ she called, looking down the length of the barge for him.
‘I’m here,’ he said from the bank several feet below.
‘Reg has lost it,’ she called before she scrambled off the barge.
Bob Watts frowned.
‘Tell me.’
‘He’s got a confession out of Charlie Laker — everything, according to Reg. But I think he might have beaten it out of him.’
‘
‘Back in the day he was a tough customer,’ Gilchrist said. ‘He always carries a cosh. Old-fashioned wooden thing with a lump of lead sunk in the top.’
‘
‘Yes, Reg,’ Gilchrist said impatiently. ‘Tubby Reg Williamson. But it’s not just that he’s got the confession like that. I think he’s going to kill Laker — and himself.’
Williamson over-revved when he started up the slope so skidded and fishtailed, and then the turn was too wide so it slowed him. Still, as he put his foot down on the return run, he could see the lights of Eastbourne glittering just a little way down the coast. The pier was a poor thing compared to Brighton’s but it looked good from here: a brilliant, jutting finger pointing at France.
He aimed for it.
Charlie Laker was not going gentle into that good night. Behind the tape that was choking him he was raging. How could this be happening to him? He had big plans for the future. This fat fuck cold-cocking him. He’d tried to reason with the man but Williamson had just coshed him, again and again.
Was the mad fuck humming to himself as they skidded up the hill? Laker saw the fat man glance his way at the turn before they started back down.
‘Fuck!’ Laker screamed but, even though he felt something tear in his throat, no sound came through the gaffer tape.
The car bumped and slithered over the flints beneath the grass. Williamson’s eyes were focused somewhere in the distance. Laker was watching the lip of the cliff surge closer and closer.
He was wondering what he should be thinking about. Should his life be flashing in front of him? It wasn’t. He wasn’t thinking of Dawn or of John Hathaway. Or of his brother, Roy. His parents. The women he’d had, in every possible combination. People he’d hurt, or killed or had killed.
He wasn’t thinking any of this, or of all the things he still wanted to do, as the lip disappeared beneath him and the car flew into the air four hundred feet above the sea. He was seeing bitter blue sky and a seagull; he was sure it was a seagull. And that part of his final journey — the flying — didn’t seem to go on a long time or a short time. It just was.
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.
FIFTY-SIX
Tingley 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.’
