‘Minced testicles and eyeballs in some frankfurters, I read. Give me Chinese any day. Hit me with that monosodium.’
Gilchrist’s mobile phone rang.
‘It’s Bob.’
She was silent for a moment, aware of Williamson watching her.
‘Hello, s-, hello,’ she said with forced enthusiasm.
‘I’m sorry to call you there – I know it’s awkward – but I wondered if you’d had a chance to look up that car that was burnt on Ditchling Beacon.’
‘As a matter of fact-’
‘Did the report say anything about a cat?’
‘A cat?’ she said, her tone clearly reflecting her thought that he was losing it.
‘I seem to remember they found a cat in the boot of the car.’
There was silence again.
‘Your ex-dancer on Beachy Head?’
No, she was the one losing it. She flushed.
‘I’ll get back to you later,’ she said, breaking off the call. She looked at Williamson. ‘We might have a bit of a break. And do you know why? That woman’s missing cat.’
‘Tiddles to the rescue, then.’
Tingley had called and wanted to meet at lunchtime in English’s Oyster Bar. When I arrived he was sitting at the narrow counter, tucking into a plate of oysters in their shells on a bed of ice.
‘You’re going up in the world,’ I said. ‘Bit of a change from the Cricketers.’
He didn’t look up.
‘Are you going to eat? The Dover Sole is always good.’
‘Sure.’ I took the stool beside him and glanced around. Although English’s was something of a Brighton institution, with its white painted Georgian fascia and its location just at the edge of the Laines, I’d never been in here. Behind Tingley’s head was a framed poster for a play from God knows when signed by an actress called Susannah York. ‘Thank you for a third lovely evening’ she’d written. Next to it was an old black and white studio portrait of George Robey and below him a more recent actress in a posh dress.
Through the open windows of the pub opposite I could hear a bunch of men singing raucously.
The waitress came over. A tall, pale woman with fine features and an accent. I ordered and when she’d gone into the kitchen, Tingley said:
‘Estonian – part of the latest tranche from eastern Europe.’
‘The influx causes all sorts of problems when they get into trouble – from prostitution to orphanages. In policing terms-’
‘Yes, but you’re not a policeman any more.’
I looked down at the stained marble counter.
‘Difficult to lose the mindset.’
‘But you’ve never been a proper policeman. When you came in here you didn’t scan the room to check out the suspicious characters.’
Now he was looking at me. Was he trying to pick a fight? I glanced at the two glasses beside his plate. One was a wine glass, half-filled with something red; the other was an empty whiskey glass.
‘I spotted you, didn’t I?’
My voice was light but I was aware of a tightness in it. I looked at photos of Omar Sharif, Albert Finney and Maureen Lipman on the wall behind the bar. He ducked to slurp an oyster from its shell. He looked back at me.
‘I’ve been checking out Milldean. Word is that a guy I pissed off in a pub there the other night is even more pissed off about a raid on a rotten meat warehouse in Newhaven. Name is Cuthbert and, as far as I can see, he’s into everything rotten. Gang bosses report to him as they park South Vietnamese and Chinese labourers all over the Sussex countryside, and Polish and Lithuanian youngsters in brothels. He’s into DVD piracy from China and he’s been on the carousel for VAT on mobile phones. All that quite aside from Shylocking on a third of the estate and the fraudulent benefit claims.’
‘We know some of that.’
‘So why has he never been done? He must leave a trail.’
‘Lack of evidence? I never got directly involved in operational matters.’
He put his fork down and shook his head.
‘One of two reasons. He’s either got the fix in very high up or he’s registered as an informer.’
‘I don’t know which he might be but I can find out.’
‘I’ll find out,’ he said. ‘You’re too much on the outside.’
‘I’ve got some contacts,’ I said, hearing the petulance in my voice.
‘This involves intel the Israeli way, Bobby, I’ve told you.’ He took a sip from his wine and shucked the last of his oysters.
‘Is he linked to the massacre in some way?’
‘I’m inclined to think not, but he is part of a bigger picture. This guy has got a competitor. I need to find out more about him. Guy called Hathaway. Into the same sort of shit but a bit more high-end. Maybe better connected. Maybe the man.’
I got back to the bungalow late afternoon and within an hour Gilchrist had turned up. Jeans and T-shirt, her hair tied back. She didn’t demur when I handed her the glass of wine. This time I sat beside her on the sofa. She was conscious of me but didn’t seem put off by my proximity.
A strong wind had blown up. The window behind us trembled as a strong gust hit it.
‘So what have we got, Sarah?’
‘The cat from Ditchling Beacon is the Beachy Head cat.’
‘Was it chipped?’
‘Yes. There were very few remains but we found the chip. So we’ve got a cat disappearing on Beachy Head just a few hours before a car is torched on Ditchling Beacon.’
‘And we’ve got the body of Finch – a policeman involved in the Milldean operation – thrown into the sea off Beachy Head around that time.’
She leant forward. She was making sure we weren’t touching by keeping her knees close together.
‘They didn’t close the boot when they were carrying the body to the cliff edge. They wanted to minimize noise. He was alive but probably gagged. And he’d been beaten up.’
‘Poor bugger. So whilst the boot was open, the cat jumped in. They came back, having done the deed, closed the lid and drove over to the Beacon.’
‘They’d left another car at the Beacon.’
‘Leaving a car up there is asking for it to be broken into or vandalized, plus a police patrol is supposed to go by at least once a night.’
‘Rendezvous, then.’
‘What about the courting couples?’
‘Courting couples?’ Gilchrist laughed.
‘What?’
‘That’s such an odd phrase,’ she said. ‘They’re not courting, they’re shagging.’ The window shuddered again. Gilchrist glanced back at it over her shoulder. ‘Plus it’s either a bit late at night or too early in the morning for that kind of thing to be happening up there.’
‘I was thinking of when the rendezvous car arrived. And I’ve never liked that term.’
She sat back in the sofa and looked sharply at me.
‘Shagging?’
I nodded.
‘Let me guess. You prefer the term “making love”.’
Her voice was sharp and I immediately regretted what I’d said. Even so, I held her look. I was conscious of the emotion welling up in the room. I nodded. And then the question I knew would be next:
‘So is that what we did?’
The harshness in her voice was a thin disguise for vulnerability. Another gust of wind. I realized she was
