Peter Guttridge - The Last King of Brighton

‘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.