‘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?’
TWENTY
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.
Hathaway remained seated when the three men walked in.
‘You two again – you’re like a bad fart. What is it this time?’
‘Do you know anything about the Visegrad genocide?’ Tingley said.
‘I’ve a feeling I’m about to,’ Hathaway said. ‘You two want a beer? Afraid I’ve got standards. I drink it out of a glass. I drink my wine the same way.’
Tingley told much the same story he’d told Gilchrist. Hathaway watched Tingley carefully as he talked.
‘The Serbs practiced eliticide, systematically killing the political and economic leadership. Then moved down the hierarchy, killing and raping at will. And the ethnic cleansing worked. These days Visegrad is a Serbian town. There’s hardly any Bosniaks living there.
‘Terrible,’ Hathaway said when Tingley had finished. ‘But there were war crime trials for these people.’
‘For some people. Eight men were charged with war crimes at The Hague for this and imprisoned. But some ringleaders got away – as we know, the two biggest Serbian war criminals did – Radovan Karadic and General Ratko Mladic. As did a certain Miladin Radislav. He parlayed the plunder he took from his victims into criminal wealth and a criminal empire. Ended up after the war in some fortified mountain eyrie as a white slaver and drug baron.’
‘I don’t know the name,’ Hathaway said.
‘Better known by his nickname. Vlad the Impaler.’
Hathaway looked off into the distance.
‘Nealson’s death, eh? You think Radislav is here.’
‘I think,’ said Tingley, ‘that he came across the oceans bringing plague and pestilence.’
‘That’s very poetical.’
‘I was thinking of Nosferatu. Dracula? Came from Transylvania in a plague ship. Killed all the crew. Captain tied to the wheel?’
‘You’re making him out to be a nightmare figure. But he’s just a gangster. I’ve known gangsters all my life. He doesn’t scare me.’
‘He should. He’s not just a gangster. He and his men are hardened in war. Trained killers. And he’s part of a pan-Balkan crime syndicate, thanks to the war. Which means he has a limitless supply of money and manpower. If they want to take over Brighton, they will. If they want you dead, you’re dead.’
Hathaway chewed his lip.
‘And you think I’m weaker than them?’
‘I think you’re twenty years older than them. And you have some sort of moral compass, skewed though it might be.’
‘Do you know why they’re here?’ Hathaway said.
‘Specifically? No.’
Hathaway stood and walked over to a desk against the wall. He picked up a small, plastic-covered red book then put it down.
‘You know about Mohammed?’ he said.
‘Which Mohammed are we talking about?’
‘The Mohammed.’
‘Your point is eluding me. He was from the Balkans?’
‘He died in 632 and within twenty years his followers had conquered half the Mediterranean. North Africa fell in about two years, then they were all over Spain and Italy and Sardinia. You know how?’
Watts turned to Tingley.
‘Seems it’s our turn for a history lesson.’
‘Alliances. Always alliances. They came in when areas were in trouble and they came to deals with the guys who were losing, then they took over the whole thing. The Spanish conquistadores did the same in South America.’
‘You think the Balkan guys have been invited in. By whom?’
‘Whoever their friend came to talk to in Milldean?’ Hathaway said. ‘Maybe the person who is behind the Palace Pier people now?’
‘What’s the Palace Pier got to do with it?’
‘Somebody is making a play for Brighton. That’s why they bombed the West Pier.’
Watts sat back in his chair.
‘There’s a rumour your guys heisted the Palace Pier the other weekend.’
Hathaway turned, a small smile on his face.
‘In a way,’ Tingley said, ‘that doesn’t really matter. Nor does why these people came. They came for revenge but now they are here to take over, as they have in France and Italy and Germany. And they will take over.’
&
nbsp; ‘Over my fucking dead body.’
‘I believe that’s their intention, yes. They intend to kill you. And they will succeed.’
‘Bullshit. If you think I’m going to let a bunch of Balkan gangsters take over my town – my town – you’re fucking mad.’
‘Now don’t go all Bob Hoskins on us. It’s over. Embrace change and get out alive. If you can.’
‘Bob Hoskins? The mockney actor? You lost me.’
‘It’ll come to you.’
‘The Long Good Friday.’ Tingley said. ‘Thought he could take on the IRA. Ended up in the back of a car being taken to a very bad end.’
‘Saw it. Down in Worthing. Got my car keyed that night. Maybe that was a message.’
Hathaway sighed.
‘So, you’re saying these guys have come into town and they’re intending to take over all crime as we know it.’
‘Not just crime. They’ll want what you have. Your legit businesses. And they will take over. These guys are killers. They’re at a different level. They’re war veterans. Mercenaries. They live by the feud, by torture. They are more barbarous than you can imagine.’
Hathaway walked over to his balcony. With his back to them, he said:
‘You don’t know what I can imagine. To frighten naughty children Romans used to warn them, “Hannibal the barbarian is at the gate.”’
‘More of your classical education, John?’
‘A Kevin Costner film called The Postman, actually. Much underrated.’
‘Sounds riveting,’ Watts said.
‘Oh, it was an epic. But you know the history of postal services is a history of adventure and of secrecy.’
‘I’ll tell them that the next time I’m at the sorting office,’ Watts said.
‘You should read The Crying of Lot 49.’
The Last King of Brighton Page 23