Peter Guttridge - The Last King of Brighton

‘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.”’