The Thing Itself

TWENTY-SIX

OBITUARIES

VICTOR TEMPEST, THRILLER WRITER 1913–2011. AGE 98.

Best-selling thriller writer Victor Tempest once claimed that he and Ian Fleming played baccarat for the right to author the James Bond novels. In a 1985 interview, to coincide with the publication of his bestseller, Licensed To Die, in which an unnamed secret agent commits deeds of 007-like derring-do, he stated that at a house party in the New Forest in 1946 he and Fleming came up with the idea of James Bond. Tempest claimed to have come up with the 007 code-name and ‘licence to kill’ tag, and to have invented Spectre. The Ian Fleming estate has never publicly commented.

Tempest’s own characters, including Alex Pope, have not had the longevity of Fleming’s globally recognized creation. Although popular in the 1960s, 1970s and early 1980s, Tempest’s novels are now largely forgotten.

Victor Tempest was born Donald Robert Watts in Blackburn, Lancashire, on 27 November 1913. His father, Robert Watts, was a weaver, his mother, Jennie Scott, a qualified teacher who was the daughter of a mill-owner. They had two older children, Derek and Angela.

Robert Watts was killed at the Battle of Mons at the start of the Great War and some months later Jennie moved the family to Haywards Heath, Sussex. There she worked as a teacher. She taught all her own children. She never remarried.

Donald Watts left school at 16 in 1929, just as the Great Crash led to mass unemployment. A keen sportsman — he boxed and played regularly in Sussex amateur cricket and football leagues — his fitness probably helped him pass the physical for Brighton constabulary, which he joined in 1931.

His police career was undistinguished, although he claimed that in 1934 he was one of the two police constables to discover the victim of the first Brighton Trunk Murder. They had been summoned to the railway station’s left luggage office because of a foul smell and had opened a trunk containing the naked torso of a murdered woman. Her body was never identified, her killer never found.

Watts left the force in 1936 still a constable. He was vague about how he made his living in the years between 1936 and the outbreak of war. He joined the Sussex Rifles in 1939 and was at Dunkirk, spending six hours in the water under heavy fire until a small boat rescued him.

In 1941 he joined the commandos. He saw action behind enemy lines in Greece, Italy and Yugoslavia. He was an excellent linguist. Captured in 1944, he was tortured by the Gestapo but escaped and made his way on foot back across Europe to England. This remarkable adventure formed the basis of his first best-seller, One Hour to Midnight (1957).

Back in England, he joined military intelligence, where he worked briefly with Ian Fleming. He remained in uniform until 1947 and may have reverted to his commando role in Burma (records are unclear). He certainly re-enlisted for service in the Korean War in 1950, eventually leaving the armed services with the rank of major.

He took a job as manager of a civil engineering firm in Hove but had already begun writing thrillers in his spare time. Following the success of One Hour To Midnight, he turned to writing full time. He had a string of best-sellers: Fly High Tonight, Tomorrow At Noon, The Devil’s Alliance, Spy Shroud.

His trio of spy novels featuring Alex Pope — Pope’s Prayer, Pope’s War, Pope’s Benediction — are perhaps his best-known works. In the late 1960s, Cubby Broccoli optioned them for movies that were set to star David Hemmings (the Jude Law of his day), but for reasons that are unclear negotiations broke down.

Tempest was a prolific writer and he continued to produce a string of best-sellers through the 1970s and into the early 1980s. The Berlin Inheritance, The Belgrade Intervention, The Moscow Ultimatum and The Saragossa Testament were all very popular, but the fashion for such straight-ahead thrillers slowly dwindled.

His personal life was the subject of much speculation. His name was linked to a number of women — including Vivien Leigh — before his marriage in 1965, at the age of 52, to Elizabeth James, an artist twenty-five years his junior. They had a son, Robert, in 1970. He went on to a distinguished army and police career that recently came to an abrupt end when, as Chief Constable of Southern Counties Constabulary, he resigned over the notorious Milldean Massacre.

Donald and Elizabeth divorced in 1990. His name had continued to be linked to a number of women during his marriage. After he divorced, he moved to Barnes, where, at the age of 77, he is rumoured to have had an affair with a world-renowned ballet dancer many years his junior. His former wife, Elizabeth, forged a successful career as an artist. She died of cancer in 1998.

Always a vigorous man, Donald Watts was running marathons until his early nineties. And, if rumours are true, his fiction will soon get a new lease of life: Quentin Tarantino is said to be in pre-production on a film of Pope’s Prayer.

Although Tempest stopped writing novels early in the new millennium, he is believed to have completed an autobiography before his death in which he reveals the true identity of the Brighton Trunk murderer. He is survived by two sons and a daughter.

Where the hell did the obits get that story about the identity of the Brighton Trunk murderer? Bob Watts put his newspaper aside. He looked out across the Thames to the mudflats on the other side, focusing on a crew trying to get a boat into the water down a concrete ramp. They were choosing a bad time. The tide was turning and any minute the tide coming in and the tide going out were going to create a stasis on the water that it would be hard to work through.

His father had always liked this high-ceilinged Victorian pub with its ornate balcony hanging over the river. It was just a couple of hundred yards from his river-front Georgian house by Barnes Bridge. Watts was having a drink in his dad’s memory as a break from sorting through the piles of papers in his father’s musty study.

A tourist boat went by from Ham, heading up to Westminster. As it went under Barnes Bridge, its sluggish wash hit the base of the pub and the oarsmen at the same time. The pub weathered the surge of water. The rowers did less well.

Watching them, Watts phoned his father’s agent, Oliver Daubney, an old-style publishing man approaching retirement.

‘Bob, terribly sorry to hear about Don’s death — but not a bad innings, eh?’ Daubney had a mellifluous drawl.

‘This stuff in the obits about dad knowing the identity of the Brighton Trunk Murderer? Did that come from you?’

‘It’s what Don told me — and if it helps to sell the autobiography. .’

The rowers, soaked, were clambering over the side of their boat, lugging their long oars with them.

‘He once told me he didn’t have a clue,’ Watts said.

‘You should always take what fiction writers tell you with a pinch of salt.’

Watts sipped his drink.

‘Is there an autobiography?’

‘So he told me,’ Daubney said. ‘And I had no reason to doubt him.’

‘You don’t have it, then?’

‘I’m waiting for you to find it among his papers. Have you thought any more about your own autobiography?’

Daubney had been keen to take advantage of Watts’ notoriety post-Milldean to rush out an autobiography of some sort. Watts had decided he should wait another couple of decades.

‘I haven’t begun my career yet, Oliver,’ he joked. ‘I told you that.’

Daubney chuckled.

‘I’ll tell my son to get back to you after I’m gone.’ He paused. ‘How are you getting on with the papers?’

‘Badly. I haven’t even found a will — but it is early days.’

‘Not in his bureau? Your dad was an orderly man.’

‘Nothing there.’

‘You know there are always a couple of hidden drawers or compartments in those old bureaux?’

Watts laughed.

‘I didn’t — but that’s typical of my dad to hide things away. Him and his bloody secrets.’