The Last King of Brighton

SEVENTEEN

Hathaway and Tingley went up to see Hathaway in his mansion on Tongdean Drive.

A black man in a well-cut grey suit answered the door.

‘For Mr Hathaway,’ Watts said.

The man looked him up and down, nodded. Then he looked at Tingley. Smiled.

‘Hello, Tingles.’

Tingley held out his hand.

‘David. You’re looking trim.’

‘You too,’ David said, shaking the offered hand.

‘You’re out of the business in one piece, then,’ Tingley said.

David glanced at Watts.

‘Bob here is a good friend of mine,’ Tingley said.

Watts stuck out his hand.

‘Bob Watts.’

David took the offered hand.

‘If Tingley vouches for you-’

‘I definitely do. He’s the ex-chief constable-’

David kept hold of Watts’s hand.

‘The one who got busted for standing up for his men?’

‘And women,’ Tingley said.

David clapped his other hand over the hand clasp.

‘Pleased to meet an officer who knows what his primary function is.’

Watts let go.

Hathaway appeared in the doorway behind David. He saw Tingley, the dapper, slender man he’d met some months earlier and decided he liked. The big, broad-shouldered blond man with the broken nose he recognized from the press as ex-Chief Constable Bob Watts.

‘If you’re finished with the love-in, Dave, perhaps you’d bring your friends through – where your boss is patiently waiting. Sometime this year would be favourite.’

David turned and grinned.

‘Sorry, Mr H. Mr Tingley and Mr Watts.’

‘Well, I can see that for myself, can’t I?’ He looked at Watts. ‘I don’t know why I bother. Try to ease the unemployment statistics and look what you get.’

‘If David is typical of who you’re hiring,’ Tingley said, looking at Watts, ‘then you’re hiring the best.’

Hathaway dropped his arm on David’s shoulder and winked at Watts.

‘David? He’s just the trainee. Coming along nicely, though.’

‘Thanks, Mr H.,’ David said.

‘All right, hop off and polish your medals or whatever it is you do for your extravagant salary all day. Come in, gentlemen, do. Mr Tingley – not an unalloyed pleasure to see you again but anyway. And ex-Chief Constable Bob Watts – I know you only by repute – though I did know your father. How is the old rogue?’

Watts was thrown by mention of his father.

‘He’s fine, thanks – how do you know him?’

‘Well, Bob – OK to do first names?’ Watts nodded. ‘Well, Bob, that’s a bit of a convoluted story – but who knows – if we make an afternoon of it there may be time.’

Hathaway took them up to a mezzanine where one whole wall was a window. He pressed a button and the window slid open. He led them on to a deep balcony enclosed in more glass. Another button and the glass retracted. Half a dozen ample wicker armchairs were spread across the balcony.

‘Sit, sit. I’m about to have a mojito – my girls make great mojitos – and you’re welcome to join me.’

‘I don’t know what it is but I’ll give it a try,’ Watts said. Tingley nodded. Hathaway raised three fingers and waved them towards a beautiful olive-skinned young woman hovering by a doorway.

‘You obviously don’t have kids who hit the cocktail bars,’ Hathaway said.

‘I probably do,’ Watts said.

‘You probably have kids or they probably hit the cocktail bars?’ Hathaway grinned his perfect white teeth grin. ‘Doesn’t matter – either way your answer is indicative.’

‘How old are your kids?’ Watts said.

Hathaway made an odd face.

‘I don’t have any – but I have a big family.’

Hathaway toasted Watts and Tingley.

‘Here’s to coalitions – may they always fail.’

‘You don’t like coalitions?’ Tingley said.

‘Worst of both worlds, then one member takes over.’

‘Here’s to truth,’ Watts said.

Hathaway laughed.

‘Yeah. Right.’

When they’d all sipped the cocktails Hathaway looked at Tingley.

‘I assume you and David were brothers-in-arms at some stage.’

‘More than once,’ Tingley said.

‘I’ve always had great admiration for soldiers,’ Hathaway said. ‘Never had any desire to join up, let me add, and I was the right side of National Service. But, growing up, I was close to an ex-commando who worked for my father. Became something of a mentor.’

Hathaway raised his glass.

‘Here’s to him.’

Watts and Tingley raised their glasses.

‘Does he have a name?’ Watts said.

Simultaneously, Tingley asked:

‘Is he dead?’

‘His name is Sean Reilly, Bob. And he’s very much alive, James. Later he worked with me for a few years but eventually retired. To Normandy, actually. His health isn’t good but he’s still sharp as a pin. I have a house in Varengevilles-sur-mer, a little village outside Dieppe. He lives there. Lovely place. If you’re a gardening nut, Gerturde Jekyll did the garden on the side whilst she was landscaping a local chateau. Name means nothing, Bob? Your wife does the gardening, eh? Or you’re thinking Jekyll and Hyde. How about Luytens, the architect who refurbished the chateau? No? He created Delhi – or whatever it’s called now. Bob, you did go to school, did you?’

Watts smiled.

‘Anyway your dad’s still kicking? Glad to hear it. He must be a fine old age. I’m afraid, Jimmy, I never had the pleasure of your father, as it were.’

‘Nor did I,’ Tingley said. Watts gave him a glance.

‘Yeah, well, that’s fathers for you.’

Hathaway drained his glass.

‘The West Pier,’ Watts said.

‘And?’

‘It’s been firebombed three times.’

‘And you’re asking me about this why, exactly?’

Watts leaned forward.

‘Come on, Mr Hathaway-’

‘John. My name is John. I thought we were doing first names.’

‘Nothing happens in this town without your knowledge and say-so. The pier’s development syndicate had the money in place to put the pier back in business and you didn’t want that because it would impact on your businesses.’

Hathaway looked out over his garden.

‘You want a confession?’ he said when Watts paused. ‘Because otherwise I’m not quite sure what the point of this bombast is.’

‘Actually, we want help with something else. At the same time as the pier was being firebombed, Laurence Kingston, chair of the West Pier Development Committee, was committing suicide. Pills and booze. Died inhaling his own vomit. Odd coincidence, don’t you think?’

‘Now you want my advice on synchronicity?’

‘Did you know Mr Kingston?’

‘I don’t associate with many poofs but as it happens I did know him. Not in itself a crime, even when homosexuality was illegal. Can I just say, Bob, that you show shocking research skills in your assumptions about me and the two piers.

‘If you knew anything of my history and my family’s history, you’d know that the West Pier runs through our lives like the lettering in a stick of rock. I’d no more have it firebombed than I would – well – almost anything. I used to spend my Easter holidays every year giving a small bit of the West Pier a lick of paint to keep the elements away.’

‘That was in the sixties, when your father ran Brighton?’

Hathaway kept his eyes on his garden but shook his head.

‘The police ran Brighton. First, the town’s chief constable, then, when – because of him – the government decided to push town constabularies into countywide police forces, the first county chief constable, Philip Simpson. William’s father.’

Hathaway caught the look that passed between his visitors.

‘What? You didn’t realize I knew William Simpson and his father too? Back in the day, I knew everybody.’

‘But you were only a kid,’ Tingley said.

‘Kind of you to say, but actually I was above the age of consent and I was learning the trade.’

‘The trade?’

‘My dad’s trade.’

‘And what trade would that be?’ Watts said.

Hathaway sat back in his seat.

‘Don’t be coy, ex-chief constable. It doesn’t become you.’ He pointed at Watts’s hands. ‘I can see the scars on those knuckles. You’ve got stuck in at some point in your life.’

Watts lifted his hands and examined them for a moment. He let them fall back on to his thighs.

‘You still haven’t told me how you knew my father,’ he said.

Hathaway bared his perfect teeth.

‘Oh, that’s easily explained. He used to come to our house with his friend, the aforementioned Chief Constable Philip Simpson.’

Watts seemed confused.

‘Why?’ he said.

‘Why? Let’s see. My father knew the chief constable, your father knew the chief constable, my father threw a lot of parties. Doesn’t sound odd to me – does it sound odd to you, Jimmy? He came to our house many times. Victor Tempest, thriller writer. We read his books, my dad and me. He signed some for us – they’ll be around here somewhere. Brighton was small in those days. Still is, really. Not that Larry Olivier ever came to our house from his Regency mansion, but that was more a class thing.’

‘So my father knew your father?’ Watts said.

‘Pretty well. Not from his police days – your dad was a copper in the thirties with Philip Simpson and Charlie Ridge, wasn’t he? Though Charlie would have had a higher rank. Amazing to think he joined the force in 1926.’

‘And Ridge and Philip Simpson were both corrupt chief constables?’ Watts said.

Hathaway nodded.

‘Shocking, isn’t it?’ He saw Watts’s face. ‘Oh, I see what you’re thinking. Were they corrupt from the start of their careers? And if they were and your father was mates with them…’ Hathaway shrugged. ‘You’d best ask your dad. I remember there was some brouhaha around the end of 1963 or in 1964 over a lot of files that had gone missing or been destroyed from the 1930s – particularly 1934 when that Brighton Trunk Murder was. Did your dad investigate the Trunk Murders?’

Watts nodded.

‘Ooops,’ Hathaway said. He reached over and patted Watts’s arm.

‘I remember when you were born. For that matter, I remember when your friend William Simpson was born. The same year, if memory serves. Now his birth was really something. My mum and dad referred to it as the Immaculate Conception.’

Watts tilted his head.

‘Oh, not that Philip Simpson’s wife was a virgin.’ Hathaway leered. ‘Far from it.’

He looked at Watts.

‘The good old days, eh?’

Watts was morose. ‘I think everything has to do with everything in Brighton. Corruption in the sixties links back to the Trunk Murders in the thirties and forward to now. And Hathaway, from being a peripheral figure, is now taking centre stage.’

‘I like him,’ Tingley said.

Watts thought for a moment.

‘Like him as in you think he’s somehow behind the Milldean thing, or like him as in like him.’

‘The latter.’

Watts nodded his head slowly.

‘Is that going to be a problem?’ he said.

‘Of course not. But the difference between him and Cuthbert… this guy has some sense of morality.’

Watts laughed.

‘An honest villain – that’s all right, then.’

‘Dave and I are going to have a drink this evening. Wanna come?’

Watts shrugged. Evenings were when he felt most alone.

‘Sure.’

Watts called in on Gilchrist in police headquarters first. It felt strange re-entering the building he used to run. She met him in one of the conference rooms looking out over the beach.

‘We’ve identified the skull,’ she said.

Watts looked at Gilchrist surprised.

‘So soon. That’s bloody impressive.’

She shrugged.

‘We had a break. We thought we were going to have to go the familial DNA route, but her father was on a database and there was a missing persons report.’

‘From 1934? I thought all that had been destroyed.’

Gilchrist looked puzzled for a moment.

‘This isn’t the head of the Trunk Murder victim, Bob, though it is a woman. She went missing in 1969. The missing persons wasn’t pursued vigorously, if at all, because it was assumed she had gone off to India and joined some ashram, or got caught up with some cult.’

‘Any contemporary statements from friends and family? Known associates?’

‘Family no help. Father is dead and mother has Alzheimer’s. We’ve got her class list from the university so we’re tracking people down through the alumni association. We’re checking the electoral roll too, just in case.’

‘Who was she?’

‘Student at Sussex; hippy by the sounds of it. Name of Elaine Trumpler.’

Watts and Tingley met David in the bar of the Jubilee Hotel in Jubilee Square that evening. The bar was low-lit and the decor was white plastic. David was sitting in a booth in front of a large aquarium. Brightly coloured fish drifted or darted behind him. He was speaking into his mobile phone but cut the connection when he saw them.

‘I’ll get these,’ Watts said to Tingley. ‘You’ve got catching up to do.’

Watts pointed at David’s glass and the ex-soldier shook his head. When Watts went over a few moments later and put Tingley’s drink in front of him, David laughed.

‘Still drinking that fag drink?’

Tingley gestured around them.

‘Yeah, keep forgetting what town we’re in. Cheers, Tingles, and best of health to you, Bob.’

They drank. Tingley exaggerated smacking his lips after taking a sip of his rum and pep.

‘I told the boss I was seeing you,’ David said. ‘Wanted to play it straight.’

‘Whatever way you want to play it – we weren’t going to interrogate you, just wanted a bit of an idea of the set-up from your point of view.’

‘He said to tell you anything you want to know.’

‘You know he’s a major crime figure,’ Watts said. ‘You’re putting yourself at risk of jail time getting involved in illegalities.’

‘I know policing used to be your business, Bob – what’s lawful and what’s not – but our government has sent Tingles and me out on many an op where the lines are blurred. In the twilight zone chances are we’re helping shore up some regime that has raped an entire country. We must have worked for some of the world’s biggest crooks but they’re legitimate because they have the power. Terrorists who are now presidents. War criminals with the Nobel Peace Prize tucked in their back pockets. So Mr Hathaway’s crimes, whatever they may have been – for I do believe they’re all in the past – pale by comparison. What was it the man said? “All great fortunes are based on crimes.”’

‘Have you been rehearsing that?’ Watts said with a smile.

‘Bit. How’d it sound?’

‘Good,’ Tingley said. ‘Good enough to convince yourself, right?’

David looked him in the eye.

‘I’m working for him, aren’t I?’

‘What’s he like?’ Watts said. ‘I’ve only got the police report to go on and, frankly, a lot of that is guesswork.’

‘What’s he like? A man of his word, I think. A tough bastard – mentally and physically. He’s a streetfighter. I’ve seen him spar with some of the guys and he knows some stuff you don’t find in the textbooks.’

‘He’s an expert in aikido and karate,’ Watts said.

‘Nah, not that shit. Dirty stuff. The stuff Tingles and me were taught – you too, maybe – you’ve got the look of a military man.’

‘Reckon he learned those from Sean Reilly back when?’ Tingley said.

‘Obi-Wan Kenobi? Maybe.’ He saw their look. ‘Hathaway reveres that old commando guy. Talks about him far more than he ever talks about his dad.’

‘And you’re certain Hathaway’s not involved in anything illegal these days.’

‘Well, obviously I can’t be certain but there’s no heroin lab in the basement or brothel in the greenhouse, if that’s what you mean. And the kind of meetings I accompany him to are with legit businessmen – as far as any businessman can be legit. I’m sure you wouldn’t regard Laurence Kingston as a nefarious character.’

‘Laurence Kingston?’ Watts said.

‘Last meeting I took Mr H. to was over at his place in Hove.’

‘When was that?’

‘Some time last week – Thursday, I think.’

‘You’re sure it was him?’

‘Mr Kingston’s hard to miss, wouldn’t you say?’

‘You know he committed suicide the other night?’

David looked at Watts.

‘I didn’t know.’

After a moment, Watts said:

‘Is that it? The sum total of your grief?’

‘Bob-’ Tingley said. David raised his hand.

‘Give me a break,’ he said, a look of disgust on his face. ‘I didn’t know Mr Kingston. I don’t entirely approve of suicide – though I would argue the toss in certain situations – so I’ve no reason to feel grief for the man. I’ve lost a number of friends and too many close friends to violent death. I’ll keep my grief for such as those, if you don’t mind.’

‘I’m sorry,’ Watts said. ‘That was crass of me.’

‘Yes, it was,’ David said.

‘You know the pier has been firebombed too,’ Watts said.

‘I heard you thought Mr H. had done it – rather an odd thing for someone to do who planned to invest, I’d say, but I’m just a jarhead not a former top cop. What I do know is that Mr H. was well pissed off when he heard about the firebombing.’

‘And you maintain he’s legit.’

‘Why would he not be? He’s made his money – why run the risk of doing crooked things? You know better than me, Bob, how these things go. He owns restaurants, nightclubs, a chain of dry cleaners, office buildings and a couple of boutique hotels. He’s a legitimate businessman.’

Watts smiled.

‘So why does he need you and the others like you?’

‘Everybody needs security. And, unfortunately, in the past Mr H. has mixed with a lot of unsavoury characters who want to drag him back into the mire. He has to protect himself.’

‘How many people like you does he employ?’

‘A dozen round the house, on shift. I wouldn’t like to guess with regard to his businesses, especially as – I forgot to say – he also runs a security firm. Operates all along the south coast.’

There was a pause whilst they all sipped their drinks.

‘I assume you’ve heard about his accountant, Stewart Nealson?’ David said.

‘We’ve heard,’ Tingley said.

David looked down at his hands.

‘It’s starting, then.’