The Last King of Brighton

SIXTEEN

Kate Simpson had joined a scuba club that had been diving in and around Brighton bay looking at wrecks of fishing boats. She loved it, although it needed a clear day to see anything. Phil, the guy who ran the club, was ex-Navy but he now made a good living as a salvage diver. He had a bit of a soft spot for her.

He phoned her one evening when she was practising for a supper she was having at the weekend. Specifically, she was contemplating the mess she’d made of her first attempt to stuff a chicken breast.

‘I’ve been asked to get a crew together to check out the damage the firebombing did under the West Pier. See if there’s risk of further collapse. Wondered if you wanted to tag along?’

Kate was a competent diver. She’d got her qualifications at university and had become obsessed with the sport. She’d been rusty when she joined the scuba club but had quickly got the hang of things again. Even so, the storm would have thrown up a lot of shit that would take weeks to settle. Visibility would be poor and if the pier was damaged under the water the dive could be dangerous.

‘Am I qualified for that kind of dive?’ she said.

‘Well, I thought you could stay out of the water until me and a couple of the pro-divers had checked it out, Then you could come and have a look.’

‘Will there be anything to see?’

‘There’s always something. Interested?’

‘You’re on.’

The dive was on Saturday morning. When Kate got down to the marina she was surprised to see Bob Watts waiting with the others. He grinned when he saw her and gave her a hug.

Their friendship was complicated by the fact that Kate was the daughter of a man he despised. His former friend, William Simpson. Watts was convinced that Simpson, a senior government figure, had been involved in planning the Milldean massacre but he had been unable to prove it. Kate had her own issues with her father.

In addition, Kate and Watts had led the research into the 1934 Brighton Trunk Murders the previous year. She had discovered among old police files an anonymous memoir that, it transpired, had been written by Watts’s father, Donald Watts aka Victor Tempest.

‘You’re full of surprises,’ she said. ‘I didn’t know you were a diver.’

‘Nor I you. And, actually, I’m not. I’m just along for the ride. The West Pier Syndicate has tasked me with the job of checking out the damage. I’m the client.’ He hesitated for the moment. ‘It could be hazardous down there, Kate. Are you sure you-’

‘She’ll be fine,’ said a tall, slender man with close-cropped hair and startling blue eyes. He leaned over and gave Kate a peck on the cheek, then shook Watts’s hand.

‘Bob.’

‘Phil. I know she’s in capable hands.’

‘Plus she knows what she’s doing.’

‘I am standing right here, you know,’ Kate said, only half-joking.

Watts coloured.

‘I’m sorry, Kate.’ He looked around at the half a dozen people gathered round the boat. ‘You good to go?’

‘Good to go,’ Phil said.

The boat was capable of high speeds but Phil kept it steady, heading first out to sea then diagonally into the West Pier. He dropped anchor about fifty yards from the ruined end of the pier. The water was choppy and the boat dipped and rolled.

‘We’re going to focus on this end today. Kate, you’ll come in after we’ve done the initial exploration.’

The divers had digital video cameras with them. For the next two hours they did fifteen-minute shifts. Visibility was better than expected. Kate went down a couple of times and Watts stayed by the monitors on board ship. He was able to communicate with the divers on an audio link.

Phil’s camera was focused on the seabed near to a big rusty stanchion. Watts peered as the monitor homed in on what looked like two iron rods sticking out of the seabed. Particles swirling like a blizzard around the lens.

Phil reached down and dug around their base. More particles obscured the picture. When the lens cleared Watts could see that Phil was holding something at arm’s length in front of the camera.

Watts peered, trying to make out what it was. Kate looked over his shoulder. Phil was holding a human skull.

‘The Brighton Trunk Murder victim,’ Kate said, certainty in her voice. Although there was one story that the victim’s head had been sighted over in Black Rock, nobody knew for sure. At the time the lack of a head on the body had prevented the police identifying the victim and hence solving the crime.

Phil came up five minutes later.

‘Any other bones?’ Watts said.

‘I think those two rods are actually shin bones. And I found a foot. I left it all in situ.’

‘Is there a wreck or something there?’

Phil shook his head.

‘Any idea what age?’

‘At this stage, of course not, but probably no more than a hundred years old.’

‘What makes you say that?’

Phil glanced at Kate.

‘Because there is what appears to be the remains of an old galvanised tin bath down there. That’s what the feet and shins are in, encased in what was once concrete.’

‘I don’t understand,’ Kate said. ‘Her legs were found at King’s Cross.’

‘It’s what I believe Chicago gangsters used to call a cement corset. During the Prohibition they got rid of business rivals by sticking their feet in quick-drying cement then dumping them in Lake Michigan. You like to hope they killed them first but I’m sure some of them went in alive.’

‘Jesus,’ Kate said.

‘We’d better notify the police,’ Watts said. ‘You may have just uncovered a crime scene, Phil.’

The next day Bob Watts got a phone call from Karen Hewitt, his successor as chief constable of Southern Police.

‘Bob. It’s Karen. I wondered if you might like to do a bit of work for us?’

‘I’m not a policeman anymore, Karen.’

‘We can sort something out.’

‘You want me to investigate the Milldean Massacre?’

‘I’d be grateful if you’d get that right out of your head. It’s done and dusted.’

‘Not by me.’

‘This force has moved on and so should you.’

‘How are you liking my job?’

‘Bob.’

‘OK. Sorry. What work are you talking about?’

‘I believe you were at the crime scene uncovered near Brighton pier yesterday.’

‘I’m on the West Pier committee.’

‘I know – and you’re liaising between the Syndicate, the insurance company and the police about the firebombing.’

‘I am.’

‘Well, those remains. Whoever it is has been down there a long time. Essentially, anything we do will be as a cold case. I don’t have the staff here to examine cold cases-’

‘So you wondered if I’d like to take it on. I’d love to.’

‘You would?’ Hewitt said, surprised.

‘Only connect, Karen, only connect.’

The meeting with the grass’s partner, Edna the Inebriated Woman, was painful. Her actual name was Dana and she looked like death herself, shivering on the sofa. Tingley, in Watt’s experience the most undemonstrative of men, put his arm round her and held her as she sobbed on to his shoulder. She was much taller than Tingley so it looked slightly ridiculous, but Watts was moved nevertheless.

She and Nealson lived in Preston Park in a big Edwardian semi. She’d been slow to come to the door but ushered them in readily enough.

‘Will you excuse me?’ she said when she’d taken them into a cluttered sitting room.

She was away ten minutes. Watts and Tingley sat side by side on a long sofa and scanned the room. Crumbs on the floor, magazines strewn around, used glasses on every surface.

When she came back into the room her face was a ghastly mess of pancake make-up and red-rimmed eyes. She saw Watts looking round the room.

‘Cleaner’s year off,’ she said. She had a glass in her hand, almost full to the brim with a clear liquid Watts assumed to be vodka.

‘As you’ve probably guessed, I’m an addict,’ she said.

‘You cope?’ Watts said.

‘Do I? I don’t know. It’s a heavy blanket. Anything that requires effort, more especially anything that requires emotion, and this blanket drops on me.’

She took a sip of the drink. Watts knew from observing his wife Molly that alcoholics always started slow.

‘Do you know who might have wanted to harm your husband?’

‘He wasn’t my husband. I’d never marry him. I still have some self-respect.’

She picked at the chair arm with a long crimson fingernail.

‘How long were you together?’ Tingley said.

‘Ten years. He looked after me. He knew I didn’t love him. Can’t love anybody. But he looked after me. Didn’t get much in return. Can’t even give a decent blow job these days.’

Watts dropped his eyes.

‘How did you meet?’ he said.

‘Don’t remember.’ She put her drink down carefully on the coffee table and leaned forward. ‘I see most things in a haze. My memory is pretty much shot. Conversations had, arrangements made – forget it. So your next question will be: what good am I? It’s a question I ask myself all the time.’

‘Dana-’

‘I’ve got a dyke friend who prefaces almost everything she says with “As a lesbian”. Fuck’s sake, just get on with it. But then I think, I’m the same. As an alcoholic… so bloody tedious.’ She looked at Tingley as if he had said something. ‘Am I promiscuous? I’ve been fucked for a bottle of voddy. Easy for a woman. I just have to let you get on with it.’

‘Did Stewart have any enemies?’ Watts persisted.

She ignored him.

‘Feel sorry for drunk men. They get the horn but they can’t perform.’ She hacked a laugh. ‘Hey – I’m a poet and I don’t know it.’

‘Enemies?’ Watts said.

She finally looked his way, touched a finger to her red mouth.

‘Course he had enemies – he was surrounded by enemies – he lived in enemy country. Hostile environment.’ She took another sip of her drink, pulled her skirt down. She had good legs.

‘You have a child?’ Watts said.

‘Children. They’re with their father. He remarried – proper home for them.’ She twisted her mouth oddly. ‘I don’t see them.’

‘Any specific people you’d like to draw our attention to?’ Watts said.

She glanced his way.

‘Do you know how much I hate waking up in the morning feeling so fucking awful? Every day I decide this day will be the day. I’ll stop. I’ll force a healthy breakfast down – superfoods, you know? But by eleven there’s that little thing scratching at me. Then I go: OK, today I’ll pace myself. Then someone comes along and says Stewart has been murdered…’

Watts and Tingley watched as she sipped at her drink again. Watts leaned forward.

‘Any names you can give us?’

Dana looked bemused. Maybe the drink was finally kicking in.

‘Of the men I’ve slept with? Don’t remember. I’m not that Tracy Emin, you know. All the same, they are. Slimey.’

Watts looked at Tingley, but Tingley was focused on Dana.

‘Not Stewart, though…’ Tingley said.

‘Why not Stewart? Why else was he with me? Panting for it all the time. He was useless for a woman who’s had two kids. Hadn’t a clue.’ She looked vaguely round the room. ‘But he was kind to me.’ She sniffed. ‘What am I going to do now?’

‘Do you have a name?’ Watts said.

Again she looked befuddled.

‘I know lots of names. How’s about John Hathaway?’

Again Tingley and Watts exchanged looks.

‘You know John Hathaway?’

‘The King of Brighton? Of course I know Johnny. I’m one of his cast-offs. When I was eighteen. He might even have passed me on to Stewart. I can’t be certain. My memory is shot – did I say?’

‘Stewart worked for lots of criminals, didn’t he?’ Watts said.

‘Accountant to the crooks, that was Stewart.’

‘Do you think any of them might have done this? On account of-?’

Watts paused, but Dana looked at him sharply, for the first time.

‘On account of Stewart was a snitch? Doubt it – Stewart wasn’t a real snitch, you know.’

Watts leaned back.

‘Meaning?’

Dana looked at him and smirked.

‘Meaning that clever bastard knew what Stewart was up to.’ She put her hand to the side of her head. ‘He was probably pulling his strings.’

‘Cuthbert?’ Watts said, though he knew the answer.

Cuthbert was a small-time thug in Milldean he and Tingley had clashed with several times.

‘Cuthbert?’ Dana said witheringly. ‘He’s a lot of things but clever he isn’t. Cunning maybe. I mean Johnny. Johnny Hathaway.’

Watts tried to process this information.

‘He fed Stewart selected information to pass on to the police.’

Dana reached for her glass. Missed.

‘And the likes of you.’

Tingley leaned forward and handed her glass to her.

‘But Stewart was the one who led us to Hathaway,’ Watts said, almost to himself. ‘Why would Hathaway want that?’

Dana sighed and took a longer drink from her glass, almost emptying it.

‘Didn’t get you anywhere but involved, did it?’ she said, slurring for the first time.

‘Involved in what?’ said Watts, leaning forward again. Tingley gestured for him to cool his eagerness. He leaned over and took Dana’s hand. She looked down at his as if a hand were something alien.

‘You know there’s a rumpus in town over who runs it?’ she said, looking from his hand to his face.

‘You mean between the crime families?’

Tingley released her hand. She smiled at him. A good smile, given she was drunk.

‘Perhaps Johnny figured you to be a couple of wild cards.’

‘Between the crime families?’ Watts repeated Tingley’s question.

Dana drained her glass. She looked from one to the other of them.

‘Someone is trying to take over. Someone different.’

‘Based locally?’

She shook her head.

‘I don’t think so.’

She jiggled her foot.

‘Look, Stewart used to tell me bits and pieces. I never got the whole picture from him. But I used to overhear him on the phone too. He was always cautious. But there’d be bits and pieces.’

She looked at her glass. Tingley took it from her and went into the kitchen. He returned with the glass refilled and set it down on the table in front of her. She looked at him.

‘A true gentleman. Stay on after your friend has gone.’

Tingley smiled.

‘This person from outside,’ he said. ‘Any names mentioned?’

She started on the new glass, not sipping now.

‘No names that I recall.’ She started to put the glass down, then lifted it to her lips again. ‘But then I don’t recall much. He was the middle-man setting up a meeting with someone here and some foreign people. It had something to do with those police killings over in Milldean.’ She looked at Watts. ‘That was you, wasn’t it? You should know.’

Watts looked at his hands.

‘If only I did.’

John Hathaway had a problem with the Palace Pier people. The Boroni family were long gone and for decades it had been a legitimate enterprise. Hathaway had left it at that. He’d moved on from piers when the West Pier closed for good in 1975.

But lately he’d got back in via the West Pier development. And in consequence he’d been getting grief from the new owners of the Palace Pier. Niggly things. Stewart Nealson was supposed to find out who was backing the new owners but he hadn’t got anywhere before his terrible demise. Hathaway thought for a moment. Or maybe he had got somewhere.

And then they’d torched the West Pier. Hathaway was in no doubt the new mystery owners of the Palace Pier were behind that. So now it was payback time.

His phone rang. He had his feet propped up on the rail of his boat, looking out over the marina. He reached over.

‘Yeah?’

‘Is it a go?’

‘It’s a go. We’re gonna fuck ’em during that party on the beach. Do you remember last time DJ Dickhead did his thing? The entire beach was mobbed. People pissing where they stood because they couldn’t move. The entire city gridlocked right out on to the Downs, west to Worthing and east to Eastbourne, and nobody getting anywhere near the London Road.’

‘So excuse my asking, but how do we get away?’

‘By sea, you idiot. Just like those guys who firebombed the West Pier. The thing is, there’s no way anyone can stop us.’

‘Are we going armed?’

Hathaway didn’t even bother to reply.

The boat came in from the east. Hathaway was watching from the window of his room at Blake’s Hotel. He could see people streaming past the entrance to the Palace Pier, heading for the sound of the music. The promenade was a solid mass of them.

He could hear the music clearly. On the beach it must have been overwhelming.

He saw the boat slow as the driver eased up on the throttle. It sent out a long wave in its wake as it curved into the far end of the pier.

He saw the line go out to secure the boat to a thick stanchion. Secured, the boat bobbed on the waves. Hathaway adjusted the binoculars and looked at the deck of the pier. It was crowded with people facing towards the west, towards the music.

Hathaway focused on a door at the back of a solid-looking building on the pier. After a few moments it opened and four men in jeans and denim jackets spilled out. All were wearing balaclavas.

They each carried rucksacks on their backs. Without looking back they walked to the edge of the pier and looked down at the boat. One by one they clambered over the side and down a rusted ladder to the boat.

The first dropped easily into the boat. The second paused as the boat dipped in the swell. One-handed he took his rucksack and dropped it into the boat. The third and fourth lowered themselves in.

The driver reached out and unhooked the rope. The boat roared away from the pier, heading out to sea. It would be in Varengevilles-sur-mer within three hours.

Hathaway smiled and turned back to the girl sitting up in bed. She saw the expression on his face.

‘Has it taken effect?’

‘Oh yes,’ he said, walking towards her.