Free The Thing Itself by Peter Guttridge Page A

staying with her sister in Canada.
    â€˜Well, I guessed that,’ Watts said. ‘I told you it wasn’t necessary. The funeral will be pretty low-key.’
    â€˜I’m not ever coming back.’
    Watts thought for a moment.
    â€˜That’s coming straight to the point,’ he said.
    â€˜I’ve met someone.’
    â€˜Oh.’ It was all he could manage.
    â€˜Actually, I met him years ago. A neighbour of my sister. I’ve seen him every year for the fortnight I come here. We don’t communicate the rest of the year. He was married, I was married. Nothing happened between us.’
    â€˜I’m sure,’ Watts said, unsure whether he was being sarcastic.
    â€˜He’s a widower now. We want to try to make a go of it.’
    â€˜I thought
we
were going to try to make a go of it.’
    She was silent for a moment.
    â€˜There’s so much I can’t forgive you for,’ she said. ‘Not just screwing that woman. So much else.’
    â€˜I’m sorry. It’s a wonderful romantic story you’re telling me. A fortnight of romance every year for – how long, did you say? Fifteen years?’
    â€˜Fourteen. Yes, it is.’
    â€˜Doesn’t seem quite so romantic from where I’m sitting, of course. The person you were actually married to all those years. What are you going to say to the kids?’
    â€˜They’ve known about David for months. They fully support my decision.’
    Watts bowed his head.
    â€˜I didn’t realize how distant my children were from me.’
    He slumped on the lumpy sofa. He was trying to remember that he had once been a chief constable, used to making major decisions. Now he just felt overwhelmed by his father’s illness, his wife’s abandonment, the attack on Kate.
    â€˜Ah, Jesus,’ he whispered, pressing his fists into his eye sockets.

SEVENTEEN
    L aker’s Milldean plan had been vague at best. It had evolved. He’d had half a dozen coppers in his pocket for years. There was a gap-toothed git, Connelly, from Haywards Heath, who was rotten to the core. He brought a mate on board. Philippa Franks was easy – people with kids always were. Finch couldn’t be relied on so he had to go – rolled up in a blanket and chucked off Beachy Head. The other copper whose grass had passed on the information couldn’t be relied on either.
    Laker had been sitting in the back of the car when his men did Finch. The one Laker had done personally, though, the one he’d enjoyed doing, was the deputy chief constable in his poncy little beach hut in Hove. It was necessary. Guilt was written all over him. Laker had simply strolled in through the open door and the poor sod had virtually handed over his gun and begged to be put out of his misery. Laker had shot him in the temple, stuck the gun in the dead man’s hand and got out of the hut just ahead of the stream of blood.
    Other people, though, just never learned.
    Bob Watts took the train up to Victoria the next morning. He got a taxi from the station to Millbank. The cabbie took him the scenic route but he didn’t mind. He gawped like a tourist at Westminster Abbey and the Houses of Parliament.
    The taxi deposited him at Tate Britain. He spent half an hour wandering through a handful of the galleries, ten minutes intently examining Richard Dadd’s
The Fairy Feller’s Master-Stroke
. Dadd, the artist who killed his own father. He painted with such attention to detail.
    Then Watts walked round to the City Hotel to beard William Simpson.
    â€˜Wait here,’ Charlie Laker said as he got out of his car on a quiet Holland Park avenue. His driver, a knucklehead with muscles, looked worried.
    â€˜You want to handle this on your own, boss?’
    Laker didn’t even bother to reply.
    A skinny, tight-faced woman answered the door.
    â€˜Yes?’ she said, no friendliness in her haughty voice.
    â€˜You got a poker up your