Peter Guttridge - The Last King of Brighton

‘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?’

A woman was lurking downstairs when Dave let Watts and Tingley in to the big house on Tongdean Drive. She looked at them with cold eyes, then went into the kitchen, closing the door firmly behind her.

‘Who’s that?’ Tingley murmured as Dave led them up to the mezzanine. ‘New mistress?’

‘Hardly,’ Dave said. ‘He likes them young. Maybe his mother.’

She looked like a junkie in rehab. Beautiful once, now stringy and lined, in a shapeless dress. Tingley thought he had seen faded trackmarks on her arms.