anything going between the two goes on a van via Bermondsey, which is off in east London.
When this particular parcel reached Meltis in Bedford with a lot of other parcels, the despatch department would have opened it, passed the contents on and chucked the wrapping paper on the floor.
One of two things could have happened to this wrapping paper. It might have been used to wrap a box of confectionery sold at a discount to staff. It might have been used as packing in either vans or railway containers delivering boxes of confectionery to depots in Glasgow, Manchester, Reading, London – or down here in Brighton.
Now, whether this is going to help, I don’t know, but Hutch is acting pretty gung-ho for the first time in an age. By tomorrow he’s hoping to have traced every female who has left Meltis since January 1934 and have a list of men working for the company who were off work on 6th and 7th June.
None of this has appeared in the papers yet, for obvious reasons.
Kate had reached her stop and the diary had come to an end, aside from some undated scraps. She let out a little snort of frustration as she got off the bus at the railway station and started to hurry down to the radio studio. Then she paused and looked back at the station. She glanced at her watch, turned and went to find the left luggage office.
THIRTEEN
I was still in the Bath Arms, though by now I was drinking wine, when Sarah Gilchrist called me. She was in professional mode.
‘I’ve been told the man shot in the bathroom was called Little Stevie. He may be a rent boy.’
‘I’m in the Laines – can you join me?’
‘I’m on duty. The man who told me about Little Stevie is that creep, Gary Parker, who killed his friend in Hove. I think his father is maybe somebody big in Milldean. He’s looking for a deal.’
‘I hope his father’s not Cuthbert,’ I said. When Tingley had taken me aside he had told me about his encounter with the gangster. ‘Making a deal with him might be tricky.’
‘Why?’
‘I’ll tell you later.’
I phoned Kate Simpson and invited her to join me. I was thinking a lot about the Brighton Trunk Murder.
‘I’m supposed to be in the studio but I’ve been given research time,’ she said. ‘I’ll be right down.’
I thought about William Simpson’s father. He had died in the late sixties from cancer after taking early retirement somewhere around 1965 or 1966. My mother had remained close to his widow, Elizabeth, for some years, although they stopped seeing each other eventually. I think my father probably had something to do with that.
The friendship between William and me was encouraged and we did like each other well enough. How friendly we would have been if left to our own devices, I wasn’t so sure.
Tingley appeared by my side. I started.
‘You should audition for a ghost movie.’
He sat down.
‘And you should learn to mask your surprise. I’ve just had an interesting meeting with Hathaway. He knows what’s what. My problem is getting the leverage that will make him tell.’
I thought for a moment.
‘He doesn’t have a son with a different name, does he?’
The left luggage office no longer existed and there was no one to ask about its previous location. Kate was lingering on the concourse, looking at the iron girders holding up the station’s vast, glass roof when Watts called. After the call, she phoned in sick. She took a circuitous route to the Laines to avoid her work. She found Watts and Tingley in the Bath Arms sitting side by side in companionable silence. Both stood when she entered and Tingley bought her drink.
She showed them the pages of the diary she had with her.
‘They found that the paper came from Bedford,’ she said. ‘These days there’s a Thameslink service between Brighton and Bedford via King’s Cross.’
‘I doubt Thameslink existed then,’ Watts said.
‘But there might have been an equivalent.’
Tingley was reading through the last diary entry.
‘He’s saying here the paper might still have ended up in a depot in Brighton.’
‘Odd coincidence, though, don’t you think – that Bedford-King’s Cross-Brighton thing?’
‘It is,’ Tingley said.
‘Unfortunately, the diary pretty much ends there. And there’s a gap just before when it looks like he’s about to get a bollocking.’
‘What do you think that was about?’ Watts said.
‘He was selling stories to the press. Made-up ones mostly. His boss thought they were getting in the way of the investigation.’
Watts nodded. He’d asked but his mind seemed to be elsewhere and he had that odd speculative look on his face again. She frowned at him and he leant forward.
‘Kate, remember you said the papers were destroyed in 1964 on the orders of the then chief constable?’
She nodded.
‘I assumed it was under a thirty-year rule.’
‘Actually,’ Watts said, ‘I believe that’s at the discretion of the Chief Constable.’
‘You mean the Chief Constable might have destroyed them deliberately?’
Tingley gave Watts a surprised look.
‘Bit far-fetched, isn’t it, Bob? If they’ve been sitting there for all those years, why suddenly worry about what’s in them in 1964?’
Watts rolled his glass between his palms.
‘Isn’t that also the year in which the news about finding the head finally reached the public?’
Kate nodded.
‘Renewed interest in the case could be a factor, then.’
Kate was watching Watts’s face closely.
‘There’s something you’re not telling us?’ Kate said.
Watts shrugged.
‘How much do you know about your grandfather on your father’s side?’
‘I told you – he was dead long before I was born. And he was a career policeman like you.’
‘Almost exactly like me.’
Tingley tilted his head.
‘He was a career policeman. He joined the force in the early thirties and made chief constable in the late fifties. I’m almost certain that he ended his career as the Chief Constable of this very authority. And under a cloud.’
‘When?’ Kate said, already guessing the answer.
‘Around 1964.’
Gilchrist and Williamson looked at each other, both with handkerchiefs over their mouths. The boyfriend was locked in the bathroom. They could hear him through the door moaning and mumbling to himself.
‘I’m starting to feel like Dirty fucking Harry,’ Williamson said, drawing a ragged breath. ‘All the dirty jobs…’
‘No offence, Reg, but if you were Clint Eastwood, I wouldn’t mind so much.’
To hell with the sick-fuck boyfriend, he could wait. The paramedics were gathered around the unconscious woman sprawled on the bed. Her open mouth was a gory red well. Blood was gushing out of it, down her cheeks, soaking into the pillows and once-purple duvet. She was covered from head to foot in it. She was unconscious.
Gilchrist held down bile as she looked at the pair of pliers that lay beside the woman. There was a bowl on
