It Never Goes Away

by Tom Trott

  ‘He got what he deserved.’

  ‘Well, that’s not the same thing, is it?’

  ‘Isn’t it?’

  He shook his head slowly. ‘I believe there’s a difference between society enforcing the rules we all agree on and vigilantism.’

  It was my turn to shrug. ‘Like I said, I don’t get philosophical.’

  He moved on. ‘You’ve been telling stories about Max for years, I can’t find an earlier citation. For a long time people said you were making it up, that’s where the “Brighton bogeyman” term came from. They said you made it up to get publicity, promote your services, how did that make you feel?’

  I just shrugged.

  ‘Did it make you feel unappreciated?’

  ‘That wouldn’t be anything new.’

  He scribbled that down. Then he returned his focus to me. ‘And now?’

  ‘What’s changed?’ I asked.

  ‘Well, you’ve got people like me writing this book. Does that make you feel vindicated?’

  I scoffed. ‘The people who believed me still believe me, the people who didn’t still don’t. You’ll just succeed in sending more nutters my way. I’ve had enough trouble convincing people I’m not a conspiracy theorist, it helps if I’m not surrounded by them. What’s this book going to be called, anyway?’

  ‘Well, I haven’t fully decided yet, but I’m thinking of just calling it “Max”. Then a subtitle: “The True Story of the Brighton Bogeyman”.’

  ‘And do you believe the stories, based on your research?’

  He leant back defensively, but still attempting a smile. ‘I’m not here to have an opinion. I believe that you believe it, and plenty of others do too, and that’s what I’ll put in the book.’

  ‘And who’s interested in something like that? Who’s going to publish this?’

  ‘I am, is the answer to both questions. The story deserves to be told.’

  ‘Why?’ I almost snapped.

  ‘Because it happened. Or because he’s an urban legend. Because it’s interesting, even entertaining.’

  ‘It may be entertaining to read, it’s not entertaining to live.’

  ‘I didn’t say it was.’ He closed his notebook.

  ‘Is that all you wanted from me?’

  ‘It’s all I think I’m going to get.’

  I shrugged. ‘Have you got more you wanted to ask?’

  He smiled. ‘I’ve got a hundred things I could ask.’

  ‘Well, I’m here, and I can’t be bothered to get up just yet so you might as well crack on.’

  ‘Fine.’ He opened the notebook again. ‘When did you first hear about Max?’

  ‘Hear about him?’

  ‘Do you remember?’

  I smiled despite myself. ‘That’s a long story, we’d better save that for another time. In a warmer shed.’

  ‘Ok, fine with me. Who do you think he is?’

  ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘Any theories?’ he asked.

  ‘What do you mean by who he is?’

  ‘You think he’s just some punk?’

  ‘I think he’s Max. Who do you think he is?’

  ‘Well, if the stories are true then he wields an enormous amount of power. He has a lot of power and that means he probably has a lot of money, if he has a lot of money he’s probably quite well known in a city this size. And people who achieve power most often crave it, and people who crave power are really craving status, and status is pointless if it’s a secret. It’s all about the fact that people know you’re better than them. So he could be in a position of influence in a different way, like a councillor, or a philanthropist soaking up adulation, getting his kicks that way.’

  ‘You don’t understand him at all.’

  He raised his eyebrows, insulted but a little amused, as though it was cute of me to imagine I understood Max better than him. He waited.

  I obliged: ‘He doesn’t care about any of that stuff. He comes from the street, where it’s cut-throat, kill or be killed. He’s a... a rat. Feral. Carnivorous. But unlike the rest of the rats you’ve investigated, written about, even interviewed, he doesn’t have the anger that always gets them caught, the personal weakness, the fly-off-the-handle reaction to a slight or an insult. He’s methodical, he’s careful, and he’s not doing it for the thrill of it, or the love of it. In his mind he’s still on the street, still fighting to survive, clawing his way out of the gutter. And that’s what should scare you the most, because he’s not doing it for the thrill, because one day soon he’ll achieve whatever he’s been fighting for, he’ll reach his desired destination and he’ll simply hop off the train and disappear into the crowd, gone forever.’

  ‘He’ll get caught.’

  I scoffed.

  ‘I’ve been writing about organised crime for two decades. It’s a house of cards.’

  ‘Maybe,’ I sighed, ‘but by the time it falls the King of Diamonds won’t be in the house and will be spending his diamonds partying with Mr Monopoly.’

  ‘King of Diamonds,’ he repeated amusedly, and wrote it down. ‘I guess that makes Coward the King of Clubs. And what are you? Grabarz, gravedigger. King of Spades? Ace of Spades? Jack of all Spades? Or just a Joker?’

  ‘I prefer to think of myself as that one that tells you the Bridge scores.’

  He ignored my stupid comment. ‘Do you really think he’ll stop, “get off the train” as you put it? In my experience it’s like gambling: people rarely give up when they’re winning because there’s always the prospect of winning more.’

  ‘The train started slowing down two years ago, and now we’re all about to pull into the station.’ I paused as the wind rattled the shed. The moment struck me. ‘And I’m sitting here wasting my time with you.’

  I got up and turned to walk out the door.

  ‘Another time?’ he asked my back.

  ‘Maybe,’ I told the door. Tidy was standing just outside. ‘Coming?’ I asked.

  ‘I’d better stay, kitten.’ She sounded sheepish, although there was still a twinkle in her eye. ‘But I’ll see you again.’

  I wrenched open the door into the alley and marched back to the car. What the hell was I doing? I asked myself. Wasting my time, I answered.

  I climbed into Stephanie’s Volvo and started it up, turning on the wipers to clear the snow that had built up on the windscreen. I performed a three-point turn in the sickly light of the solitary street lamp, headlights sweeping over the garages as I turned. As they straightened up onto the tarmac I slammed on the brakes. Another fox was standing in the road, frozen in the beams. From behind it peeked two kits. I waited, after a moment it scurried from the light into a bush, the two kits close behind.

  I pulled out of the dead end and through the Worthing suburbs, eventually joining the A27 and cruising along the silent road toward Brighton, snow fluttering in the beams. What the hell was I doing? Max had plans, I had none. The police were on me, and if I was branded a cop-killer there was no way they wouldn’t catch me. And they’d be rough about it too. Right now I had a car with less than half a tank of petrol, and the clothes I was wearing. And yet I had to find a way to stop whatever Max was planning. If I was lucky, I had until dawn.

  I left the bypass at the Patcham exit, slowing down for the little roundabout. Opposite was the road that lead to the newly renamed Downsfoot. I stopped the car and stared down the turning. There was a gentle glow from the “Welcome to Downsfoot Village” sign. It really did sound like a disease. Another fox was wandering aimlessly toward the sign, padding along by the side of the road, its tail wagging gently, soon to be the new neighbourhood’s first urban fox. Or suburban fox. My brain began to tingle. A disease.

  The Volvo purred as I gently released the clutch and pulled away across the bridge over the bypass and into Patcham. I cruised down Vale Avenue and past the Patcham clock tower, then along Winfield Avenue to Carden Avenue, turning onto Graham Avenue. As the turning up onto Old Farm Road appeared on my left I saw the wh
ite mock Tudor houses flashing blue. I ignored the turning and sailed past, fighting the instinct to look. I didn’t need to look to know Stephanie’s road was crammed with police.

  27

  Cards on the Table

  Western Esplanade is colloquially known as Millionaires Row. “Millionaires Row, Hove” when they’re selling properties, even “Millionaires Row, Brighton”. For some reason “Millionaires Row, Portslade” doesn’t quite have the same ring to it. But Western Esplanade is in Portslade-by-Sea; even if you say it’s a mile from Portslade Village, you can’t deny it’s right on Portslade Basin. It’s yet another example of people believing wealth should define geography. Hove/Portslade, Brighton/Saltdean, Withdean/Westdene, if you’ve got money you live in the former, if not you live in the latter.

  Millionaires Row gets its reputation not just from the value of its eleven addresses, but also because of its romanticised history of celebrity visitors like Frank Sinatra and Ava Gardner, and their modern day equivalents: Fatboy Slim and David Walliams, both apparently residents. Adele sold hers a few years ago.

  Although their size is impressive, the houses aren’t much to look at. One of them looks like the Shoreham Airport terminal, the others are white-rendered boxes, dirty from the sea air. There’s even a row of garages at the end like you might find in Moulsecoomb. The biggest selling point has to be the street’s private beach, but still nothing justifies their four million quid price tag. If you want a fuck-off mansion the houses on Roedean Road are nicer, but they don’t come with the status of living on Millionaires Row.

  I sat in a low chair facing the wall of glass that looked out onto the pebble beach. The distant hum of helicopters and crashing waves were the only sounds in the empty house. A huge tasteless neon digital clock filled one wall, bathing the otherwise unlit open-plan ground floor in red light. The floors, walls, and furniture were all black, which along with the neon gave the place the atmosphere of an empty club, rather than a home. There was a fireplace in the middle of the space, with a chimney suspended above it. On the little mantle that surrounded all four sides there were precious few photos, but photos enough. An attractive flame-haired woman playing with two toddlers, twins by the look of them; the two toddlers individually and together; the flame haired woman on her own in a green evening dress staring off into the distance in what looked to be a modelling shot cut from a magazine; and a candid shot of her playing the piano whilst laughing with the person I was waiting for. The neon clock ticked over to 23:47.

  A key turned in the lock and with heavy steps Rus Hillerman trudged inside and heaved shut his heavy door. He rested his head on it for a moment. Then straightened up and turned to the security panel on the wall. He went to key in the code but saw that someone had already disabled the alarm. To my immense surprise an excited smile broke across his face and he rushed past the cantilevered stairs, shoes and oily hair glinting in the light.

  The smile changed to horror and an almost sickening disappointment when he saw me.

  ‘Thought she’d come back to you?’ I asked.

  Anger flashed across his fake-tanned face, steeling him. ‘Have you come to kill me too?’ he asked defiantly.

  I frowned. ‘Now... that question makes no sense coming from you.’

  He took a couple of aimless sidesteps toward the wall. ‘What the fuck does that mean?’ he asked, swearing to steel himself further.

  ‘Because you’re in league with these people. And all the people who have died are the people who were working to expose your little scam: Clarence Alderney, Ben McCready, I’m even starting to suspect Price knew more than she let on. So if I killed those people then I’m on your side, surely.’

  He took a couple more aimless steps and reached the wall, leaning against a wooden cabinet.

  ‘What about Dr Sørensen?’ he asked through gritted teeth.

  ‘I’ll get to her in a minute, unless you know something I don’t.’

  ‘She’s disappeared,’ he grunted.

  ‘Did you ever actually meet Dr Sørensen?’

  He didn’t answer.

  ‘I’m guessing no. But who knows...’ I continued, ‘you’re very scared, maybe you know more than I do. Maybe I am working with them, and maybe I have come here to kill you.’

  His hand jumped into a drawer in the cabinet and emerged clutching a pistol. He sprang up straight, pointing it at my chest. He was about two metres away.

  ‘For the record,’ I said calmly, ‘I’m not.’

  The gun was a semi-automatic, black, and square barrelled.

  ‘Where did you get a gun?’

  His hand was shaking.

  ‘You didn’t even go for something sensible like a revolver, I bet you insisted on a Glock because it’s what the cool gangsters have. Either that or they saw you coming. A revolver is simple: load it, cock it, fire it. You can clean it with warm water and WD-40. Don’t get me wrong, I’m sure you could squeeze off a couple of rounds with that thing, but you probably don’t even know where the safety is.’

  ‘Want to bet?’ his voice quavered.

  ‘If you’re going to insist on pointing that at me would you mind sitting down, I’m worried you’ll trip and shoot me by mistake.’

  He perched on the edge of the cabinet.

  I sighed. ‘I didn’t come here to kill you, I came here to save your life.’

  He didn’t react.

  ‘The man who approached you, whoever you think he is; he probably said he was a property investor, couldn’t sell the land for housing; but whoever you think he works for, he really works for Max.’

  ‘Max!?’ he blurted, ‘The gangster?’

  ‘Yes,’ I said with an inward smile, ‘the gangster. What did Mr X tell you?’

  He didn’t answer. His hand was still shaking.

  ‘Fine, I’ll guess. He told you he owned the farm and would let you test-drill the site. You couldn’t put it through the company books; maybe the board wouldn’t approve it, maybe they would but they wouldn’t want to know about it (I wouldn’t be surprised if this sort of thing happens all the time in your industry), but either way you had to hire freelancers. Mr X offered to pay. You couldn’t run it through the company labs either, so he paid Dr Sørensen, an agreed-upon expert, to test the samples, and of course they came back positive for shale gas. Once the council’s objections to fracking had been overruled by central government, as is expected, you, by which I mean the South East division of Tessafrak, would then buy the farm off him at an inflated price but knowing that you would get a ten-fold return on your investment. You develop a new drill site for Tessafrak, probably earn yourself a promotion, and pretty soon you’ll be a company director, seat on the board, yacht, Monaco, affairs with sexy young interns, everything you’ve ever wanted. Right?’

  He didn’t respond. He didn’t need to.

  ‘Wrong,’ I answered myself.

  Now he frowned.

  ‘It doesn’t make sense,’ I elaborated. ‘Why was Mr X harassing Dr Sørensen? Why would she disappear? Then inspiration struck me. I had a thought. A thought that made sense of everything. And I realised I had figured out something that under no circumstances could they let you know. If you found out it would kill the entire deal.’

  I stopped talking, looked at him, raising my eyebrows. The gun was wilting, by now it was pointing at my legs.

  I could barely hear him as he asked, ‘What was it?’

  I grinned. ‘The samples came back negative.’

  The gun was now pointing at the floor. ‘No, they drilled the site, they sent me pictures.’

  ‘I’m sure they did. Like everyone they assumed they would come back positive. But they didn’t. So then they had to pay Dr Sørensen to fake the results. Which she did, for the right amount of money. But she felt guilty about it, wanted to tell someone, claim she had made a mistake. That’s why they had to threaten her, that’s why she’s disappeared.’

  He shook his head. ‘You don’t know that.’

  ‘I
do know it.’

  ‘How?’

  ‘I know Max.’

  He flinched at the name. It was dawning on him that he had done a deal with the devil, by proxy.

  ‘What do you think has happened to her?’ he asked.

  ‘The pessimist in me knows that they’ve made people disappear a hundred times before. And those people stay disappeared. But this time I’m inclined to feel a little more optimistic; I choose to believe that her conscience meant she finally told her wife all about it, confessed. Then, together, as a loving couple, they decided to take the money and run.’ I smiled. ‘We’ll know if they used their passports once the police get involved.’

  ‘The police?’ His eyes bulged. ‘Do they have to be involved?’

  ‘Dr Sørensen is missing, so is her wife. I found you, so will the police.’

  He put the gun back in the drawer. ‘This is terrible.’ I could see his career flashing before his eyes. ‘They tricked me. I didn’t know. It’s not my fault. What can I do?’

  ‘I’m not finished yet,’ I told him, ‘It gets far worse.’

  He marched over dutifully and sat in the chair opposite me.

  ‘This deal may be worth a lot of money to you,’ I explained, ‘but it isn’t to Max. Over the last ten years he’s acquired hundreds of millions of pounds, even if the farm sold for ten million, even twenty, it would mean nothing to him. He has the wealth of a global company, travelling through the digital ether back and forth down network cables. Money to invest, money he has invested in something, through a myriad of shell companies I’m sure. How can he grow that investment?’ I leant back. ‘Now, I know nothing about finance, but if there’s one thing the last ten years have taught all of us it’s that when things go bust other people get rich. Hedging, I believe. As I say, I know nothing about how it works, something to do with “put options” and “derivatives”, but essentially it’s a bet. That, I understand. You bet that a company is going to collapse. The bigger the company, the better it appears to be doing, the bigger the risk, the bigger the reward.’