The Last King of Brighton

NINETEEN

Watts went with Tingley to the Buddha, Hathaway’s bar at the marina. It was another blisteringly hot day. Hathaway met them in his office on the first floor and took them out on to a private balcony. They sat in the shade of an awning, the glittering sea and the brilliant white boats almost impossibly bright.

‘I’d get a headache, looking at this every day,’ Tingley said. ‘One of those boats yours?’

Hathaway smiled and shot his cuff to check his watch.

‘Just setting off back from France, I think. I lent it to a mate. This marina was a long time coming, you know. Twelve years of enquiries. The site kept shifting. There were referenda and parliamentary bills. The first version in 1970 was just a boat harbour. It’s been added to ever since. I own four places here altogether. And my boat, of course.’

‘John,’ Watts said. ‘As we’re on first name terms, tell me about Elaine.’

‘Which Elaine?’ Hathaway pushed his sunglasses further up his nose. ‘There have been a lot of Elaines.’

‘The one we just dug out of the seabed under the West Pier.’

Hathaway mimed applause.

‘I admire your sensitivity. That’s years of customer care training coming into its own, is it?’

‘So – what about her?’

Hathaway’s face was impassive.

‘I’m no wiser, so let me ask you the same question. Which Elaine?’

Watts turned in his seat to look at Hathaway directly.

‘Elaine Trumpler. Believe you knew her. When you were in a pop group. Didn’t know you had that in you.’

Hathaway wafted his arm towards the dozen or so guitars on display in a corner of the bar.

‘Some detective you are. I can see why your police career was cut short.’

Watts smiled.

‘I’m slow but I get there in the end. So, Ms Trumpler?’

‘Yeah, I knew her. We had a thing. I was in a band – I had lots of things.’

‘When did you last see her?’

‘You’re joking, of course. I can’t remember.’

‘Try.’

‘Well, she did a bit part in that film on the pier, I know that.’

‘Were you still together?’

‘No. She was screwing some actor by then. Several actors, I believe. Then I heard she’d gone off to India.’

‘You heard?’

‘We weren’t talking really. Originally she’d wanted me to go with her but I couldn’t do it and, in any case, she then got off with these actors.’

He shook his head.

‘You OK?’

Hathaway looked like the wind had been kicked out of him.

‘Yeah. Funny how old memories catch up with you.’

‘So you cared about her?’

‘Suppose I must have done.’

‘You’ve never married. Never had kids.’

‘This is Brighton, darling. Nothing conventional here.’

‘Nevertheless.’

‘What, you think my heartbreak at losing that bint wrecked my emotional life forever?’ He reached over and began shaking a small bell. ‘Where is that Sigmund Freud when you need him?’

A big blond man hurried out.

‘It’s OK,’ Hathaway said. ‘Just a fire drill.’

The blond man looked puzzled. Hathaway shooed him away. He looked towards Watts and Tingley.

‘So Elaine has turned up under the West Pier, has she? I’m distressed to hear that.’

‘You don’t know why that would be?’

‘My distress? Because I cared about her.’

‘Why she should turn up there.’

Hathaway steepled his hands.

‘She was filming there. Perhaps you should be talking to the film people – and whichever actor was shagging her.’

‘I think you’re mixing up your years, John. She was filming there in 1968 but disappeared in 1969.’

‘That right?’

‘That’s right. Your father had premises at the end of the pier.’

‘An arcade and a shooting range, yes.’

Watts grimaced. Hathaway looked towards him.

‘Do you think we could assume we’re all adults here, Mr Hathaway?’

‘John. I thought we agreed on first names.’

‘John. You know what we’re asking. Was this something to do with your father?’

‘Absolutely not.’

‘You can see our problem here. Your father was a known gangster. Elaine turns up in a bucket of cement, which tends to exclude the notion she committed suicide or was killed in a crime of passion-’

‘My father was not a gangster.’

Watts laughed.

‘OK, clearly we’re not all adults. Maybe it’s because we’re talking about your dad and that reduces you to infantilism. Do you want to call your blond bimbo for your potty?’

Hathaway measured Watts with a long look. Watts was up for a fight. Perhaps Hathaway sensed that.

‘It’s a long time ago, John. Your father is dead. We just want closure for Elaine.’

‘Closure? If only life were like that.’

‘It can be,’ Watts said.

‘Really? How’s your life since those people were shot in Milldean?’

Watts started to speak then stopped.

‘Things are going down the pan,’ Hathaway said. ‘It’s back to the old days. There was a moment, just a moment mind, when this city could have been great. It could have been among the great cities of the world. But no, small minds and local greed won out. I’m from a local family but I hate that this city is run by local families. Jesus, we have a leader of the council so thick he has to have somebody write a synopsis of committee reports so that he can understand them.’

‘There’s a rumour you were behind the firebombing of the West Pier.’

‘Really? And there’s a rumour you and Sarah Gilchrist are still fucking like rabbits. Care to comment?’

Watts flushed.

‘It’s not true.’

‘There you go, then. Rumours. What can you do with them? As I was saying, things are going down the pan. The Geary plan for the Lord Alfred Centre is gone – and there are a number of villains past and present who are grateful those foundations aren’t going to be dug up. Brighton Centre, that fucking seventies eyesore, that, if I was going to firebomb anything, would be top of my list, is now not going to be refurbished. And the West Pier, of course.’

‘We’re just trying to find out about Elaine.’

Hathaway leaned forward.

‘I know you won’t believe this but I am a sentimental man. An emotional man. Over the years I’ve thought a lot about Elaine. I’ve imagined her safe in some ashram all this time or living in Australia or America, settled with a family.’

He rubbed his face.

‘But here she is in the ocean under the West Pier in a block of cement.’

Tingley and Watts glanced at each other, then both focused on Hathaway.

‘It’s a sea, not an ocean,’ Watts said. ‘And where her remains were found I’m not sure that even constitutes a sea, it was so near the shore. More like the basement of your dad’s place really. But thank you for your time. We can see you’re upset. Perhaps we can come back on another occasion to discuss her diary.’

Hathaway raised his head.

‘Her diary?’

‘Oh yes. Didn’t we say? It goes up, presumably, right to the day of her death. She was a good writer. Lyrical. Factual too, though. Very factual.’

‘How have you got it?’

‘Now that’s a funny story. You probably thought you’d cleared her place out after you killed her.’

Hathaway stood.

‘I didn’t kill her.’

‘Really? Didn’t take some cold-blooded revenge when she went off with these actors? Didn’t see it as a slight on your manhood?’

‘I’m not like that.’

‘She was living in a flat owned by your father, wasn’t she?’

‘I don’t remember.’

‘Yes, you do. Forty Kemp Street. Next door to the house where Mancini killed his mistress in the 1930s, though they renumbered the street to stop the ghouls gawking at the house. The second Brighton Trunk Murder. Famous in its day. He did it and got off. Remarkable. He confessed to a newspaper early in the sixties. You might remember.’

‘I do, actually. And my father remembered him doing a music hall show in the late thirties and forties in very poor taste. It was based around killing women – sawing them in half, that kind of thing. Played on the same bill as Max Miller. You’re too young to remember Max Miller.’

‘I’ve seen the statue in town.’

‘My father’s favourite. He was that cut up when Miller died. Could quote his act almost word for word. Did not a bad impression, too. “I was on this narrow ledge. Very narrow. And coming the other way was this beautiful girl. Very beautiful. So beautiful, I tell you, I didn’t know whether to block her passage or toss myself off.”’ Tingley smiled. ‘ “’Ere, you’ve got a dirty mind you have, mister.” ’

‘Not a bad impersonator yourself, John,’ Watts said.

‘You should have heard my Peter Sellers doing Laurence Olivier reciting A Hard Day’s Night.’

Watts frowned.

‘You had to be there. In the sixties, I mean.’

‘I thought if you remembered the sixties you weren’t really there?’ Watts said.

‘Exactly my point, Bob, exactly my point. You’re asking me these questions but how am I supposed to remember?’

‘You’re not doing too badly,’ Tingley said. ‘We know where Elaine lived because she was a civic-minded young woman. She registered to vote when she was twenty-one. Her name showed up on the electoral register for the property. We can’t find you, though. Not so interested in politics? Or wanting to keep under the radar?’

Hathaway had a far away look on his face.

‘I remember the diary. Used to carry it with her everywhere. Always scribbling in it. She had a thing about Anais Nin.’

Hathaway looked at their blank faces.

‘I had no idea who she was either. Wife of a businessman in Paris, wanted to be a writer. Hung out with Henry Miller – the dirty writer? His lover apparently. Her husband was loaded and she took his money and slept around. Nice. Did the rounds, though, I think. She wrote porn herself – you know, female porn. Arty farty. And she kept this diary. There were volumes of them – must have been millions of words. All about her and what she was up to in Paris. Elaine was doing American studies and I think three of these volumes were part of her reading list. Anyway, Elaine started to keep her own diary in this big book. More like a series of big books, actually. How have you got hold of it?’

‘Cat woman came to our rescue,’ Watts said with a grin.

Hathaway looked from one to the other.

‘I’ve no idea what that means but I assume the diary is how you ended up with me.’

‘Actually, no. It was through the band you were in – the three-piece suite.’

Hathaway laughed.

‘Fuck you and the horse you rode in on,’ he said good-naturedly. ‘Who told you about that? It’s true. Billy, our bass player, came up with the name. Didn’t tell us for years where it came from. We were so pissed off, especially as, by then, that whole Avalon and Grail thing was part of the zeitgeist.’

‘The zeitgeist?’

‘I know a few big words, Bob. You don’t get to where I am without a brain.’

‘Seems your band was pretty good.’

‘The funny thing is we were pretty good.’

‘Why is that funny?’

‘Doesn’t matter.’

‘Come on, John. Share, since we’re getting along so well.’

Hathaway pointed back at one of the guitars on the wall.

‘That was my very first. A Rosetti. Sounds crap now but at the time… well, actually, it sounded crap then. Then my dad bought me a Fender Stratocaster.’

He nodded to himself.

‘My dad. I didn’t know for ages we were only getting gigs because my dad was leaning on publicans and club owners. It saved him giving me money if I was earning it myself, you see. So we thought we were great when actually we were rubbish. But as time went on we did get better. Very much better. Dan could really sing. Charlie the drummer, despite all the jokes about drummers, never screwed up the beat, however drugged-up he was. Billy had a really fluid bass line. Then Tony joined us on rhythm guitar. He could play anything.’

‘And you?’

‘Me?’ Hathaway looked wistful. ‘I could carry a tune.’

‘So what happened? You seem to have disappeared off the music scene around the same time that Elaine disappeared for good.’

‘There’s no connection.’

‘No?’

Hathaway sat forward in his chair.

‘No. The band split up because of – what do they say? – creative differences. Five guys with big egos – it’s surprising we stayed together so long.’

‘What happened to the others?’

‘You don’t know?’

Watts shook his head.

‘Billy turned out to be a poof and moved to San Francisco to be with others like him.’ Hathaway caught Tingley’s look. ‘I know. If he’d waited in Brighton a few years he could have saved himself the plane fare. Got involved in gay politics with that bloke Harvey Milk. Died in the gay plague.’ Hathaway looked at the ceiling. ‘Had quite a life journey, our Billy. Always the quiet one.’ Hathaway tapped his head. ‘But a lot going on in here.’

‘The others?’

‘Dan stayed in the music business and did pretty well. He had a good voice and he started writing songs. Ended up in the States. Hung out with the Brits – Graham Nash, Terry Reid – that crowd. We knew Graham from when he’d been in The Hollies – we’d played support a couple of times. Good bloke. Got friendly with Graham’s old lady, Joni Mitchell, and Stephen Stills, Dave Crosby, Neil Young. Couple of minor hit albums, lot of session work doing backing vocals. Later he used to play footie with Rod Stewart’s team.’

‘And now?’

‘He went into record producing then Al Stewart – no relation to Rod, this was the Year of the Cat guy – advised him to get into the wine business. Al had got some vineyards for himself – so Dan bought himself a winery up in the Napa Valley. Got in at just the right time. Does pretty well. We’re still in touch. Sends me a case of a rather special Merlot every Christmas. You can try a glass if you like next time you’re over at the house – you seem to be regular visitors.’

‘And Tony?’

‘He joined us late on so he wasn’t really one of the gang. I think he went back to being a butcher.’ He spread his hands. ‘So there you go.’

‘You’ve missed out Charlie the drummer?’

Hathaway looked over at his guitars.

‘Charlie went his own way. We lost touch.’

‘Drugs?’

‘Yeah, something like that.’ Hathaway cleared his throat. ‘So, that’s all I can tell you about the good old, long-gone days.’ He looked at Watts. ‘And if you’ve got Elaine’s diary that’ll tell you anything else you need to know about me.’

Watts stood up, maintaining eye contact.

‘Actually, John,’ Watts said. ‘I hate to disappoint you but she doesn’t mention you at all.’

Hathaway gave an odd smile.

‘That so? Well, there you go, then. Told you our affair was something and nothing.’

Outside, Tingley looked at Watts.

‘I don’t think he was disappointed at all.’

Karen Hewitt met Bob Watts, her predecessor as chief constable, in a restaurant under the arches near the West Pier. It was a regular haunt for her. She liked fusion food. Their table was on a mezzanine, right next to the semi-circular window that looked out on to the shingle beach and the remains of the pier.

Hewitt knew she looked tired, her long blonde hair framing a haggard face. Watts was drawn too but his eyes still flashed an amazing blue. Hewitt chinked her glass of Prosecco against his.

‘To results,’ she said.

He nodded and put his glass down.

‘Have you got anything for me yet?’ she said.

‘It’s only been two days, Karen. But, yes, actually, on the Elaine Trumpler front. John Hathaway or his father are in the frame.’

‘Elaine Trumpler?’

‘The remains under the West Pier?’

Hewitt put her own glass down.

‘Sorry, Bob. It’s been a bad week. That man on the Downs. That bloody party on the beach. Laurence Kingston. The West Pier-’

‘No news on Kingston or the Pier, I’m afraid. But Trumpler was Hathaway’s girlfriend. She lived in one of his dad’s flats. If you want to go for Hathaway, maybe this is the way to bring him down. I don’t think he did the firebombing.’

‘How do we prove a forty-year-old crime?’

‘Not my area of expertise,’ Watts said. ‘Have you got anything for me?’

‘Nothing on the pier. Fire services think it probably was arson but most of the proof is in the sea. Kingston died of a mixture of pills and alcohol. Choked on his own vomit. There were two glasses in the room where he was found, as if he’d been entertaining somebody.’

‘Odd – he should have been entertaining me – but great news-’

‘Except that the cleaner put them in the dishwasher. Scene of crime have got some samples for DNA analysis but Kingston was a party animal – had people over all the time.’

‘It could be suicide but there’s a strong suspicion of fraud. Karen?’

Hewitt was gazing out of the window watching people fooling around on the beach. She looked back at him. He was starting to look jowly. He’d have to watch that.

‘The other thing that has been ballsing up my week is the official report about the Milldean massacre.’

Watts sat back, watching her intently.

‘You’re cleared of any operational misdemeanour but criticized for your actions after the incident.’

Watts shook his head.

‘No surprise there. When is it being published?’

Hewitt picked up her glass then put it back.

‘It isn’t. I wanted to give you a heads-up. The press will be on it tomorrow. You’ll be back in the limelight again, I’m afraid.’

Watts clenched his jaw.

‘Not published? Karen, that will look like yet another police cover-up.’

Karen reached into her handbag and pulled out a packet of cigarettes. She placed it on the table beside her knife.

‘That’s as maybe but it was a unanimous decision. Not just me. The Home Office…’

Watts emptied his glass.

‘And there I was thinking this was a social occasion.’

Hewitt took a cigarette from her packet and rolled it between her fingers. She looked at the varnish chipped on one nail. Policing and looking good didn’t necessarily go together.

‘Bob, I can’t let the past divert us just at the moment. Something very worrying is happening in Brighton. New criminal rivalries emerging. There’s a rumour the Palace Pier got robbed during the Party on the Beach. The heist team got away by sea. The Palace Pier people deny it but there are witnesses talking about masked men breaking into the pier offices.’

‘CCTV?’

‘Not working on the pier that day. Apparently.’

They shared a look. Ambitious as she had been to get on, Hewitt had nevertheless enjoyed her time as deputy to Watts. They had worked well together. She now understood what a poisoned chalice the chief constable’s job was.

‘I’d say that’s something to do with Hathaway,’ Watts said. ‘Has Gilchrist passed on to you the intel about Miladin Radislav – Vlad the Impaler?’

Hewitt put her cigarette back in the packet and sipped her drink.

‘She has. We’re in touch with the Transnational Crime Unit in London and with Interpol, who are trying to track him down. You think he’s after Hathaway?’

‘Stewart Nealson was linked to a lot of Brighton crime families but Hathaway is the biggest. It seems likely.’

Hewitt was conscious the waiter was hovering a couple of yards away. She glanced at the menu.

‘How’s your appetite, Bob?’

Watts made a sour face.

‘Dwindling fast.’

They both ordered salads. Hewitt decided against a fag outside and put the packet back in her bag. One small triumph for the day.

‘The Balkans is the breeding ground for a vast amount of crime in western Europe,’ she said to Watts. ‘It started with cigarettes – diverting Duty Not Paid fags destined for the Sahara, or wherever, through Montenegro, then across the straits to Italy for the Italian Mafia. Then narcotics and women. Afghan heroin. Now it’s that, plus people smuggling and even organ smuggling – livers and kidneys.’

Watts was nodding.

‘I was in the Balkans when it all kicked off. These criminals were supported by their governments and the paramilitaries – hell, they usually were the governments and paramilitaries. During the civil war Croatia and Bosnia were banned from buying weapons legally so this was a way to get money to buy them illegally. When I was in Kosovo, the smuggling routes went right across the frontlines. Kosovo was the hub for distributing Turkish heroin.’

Hewitt had forgotten about Watts’s military experience.

‘I’m behind on all this – though I shouldn’t be,’ she admitted. ‘I’m hearing that these gangs cross racial and ethnic boundaries. Syndicates of Turkish, Serbian, Macedonian and Albanian criminals working together with a common goal. Money. It’s like a United Nations of crime.’

Watts nodded again.

‘And Radislav is embedded in it.’

Hewitt reached into her handbag.

‘We’re in deep trouble,’ she said. The cigarette packet was back in her hand. ‘Have you got any matches?’