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.’
‘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.’
Watts was growing exasperated at Hathaway always talking in riddles.
‘I don’t have time to sort that title out, John.’
‘I’ve done a lot of reading over the years.’ Hathaway looked at his hands. ‘It feeds the soul.’
‘I’m sure it does. We need to move on, John.’
Hathaway ignored him.
‘You know how many times Britain has been invaded? We think we’re this island and that protects us, but that’s bullshit. Before 1066 and all that we were invaded by every bugger that took a fancy to us. Brighton got burned down by the French more than once in the Middle Ages.
‘Have you heard of the Barbary pirates? Muslims again on the north coast of Africa. In the sixteenth century, they took entire villages into slavery. Cornish and Irish villages left deserted for decades.’
‘John. Please-’
‘But that was then. No foreign invader has landed on these shores since the nineteenth century and, as far as I’m concerned, no fucker is gonna. Yeah, we’ll take their cockle pickers and strawberry pickers, we’ll pay their slaves shit but we aren’t going to let them get a hold.’
‘Jesus,’ Watts said, jumping to his feet and striding over to Hathaway. ‘They’ve already got a hold. Russians, Triads, Yakuza. They run Britain now. The Serbians have been running crime in the Midlands since the end of World War Two.’
‘They don’t run Brighton.’
‘For the moment, King Canute. For the moment.’
Hathaway pushed his face towards Watts.
‘Yeah, well, if that’s all you have to say, you can go. I hate negativism. Can’t abide it.’
Watts eye-balled him.
‘It’s realism.’
‘Yeah. Do you know how many years I’ve heard people talk of pessimism and say it’s realism? It’s not. It’s pessimism. That’s it. End of story.’
Tingley walked up beside them.
‘They’re going to kill you, John.’
Hathaway half-turned so that he was facing Watts and Tingley.
‘Then I’ll be the last king of Brighton. And after me – the dark ages all over again.’
‘Oh, they weren’t as dark as people think.’
‘These will be. But why are you sticking your noses in this? I thought you were trying to find out who killed Elaine Trumpler.’
‘And what happened to the West Pier,’ Watts said. ‘And Laurence Kingston.’
Hathaway stepped back from the two men.
‘Kingston? I thought he was a suicide? Probably in a hissy fit. He was that kind of guy.’
‘He may have been murdered. The crime scene guys will move it along.’
‘Who would have killed him?’
‘We were thinking you might have. You had a meeting with him the week before, didn’t you?’
Hathaway moved back to his chair.
‘He was in a funk. Wanted to back out of a deal we were doing.’
‘Good motive for murder.’
‘Please. I persuaded him to hold firm.’ He looked up at the two men. ‘But you two can’t be investigating that – that must be an ongoing police investigation.’
‘I’ve been retained by the West Pier Syndicate to look at recent events.’
Hathaway smiled.
‘Should I start calling you Marlowe, ex-Chief Constable?’
Tingley had drifted over to the desk. He picked up the little red book.
‘What’s this? The thoughts of Mao Tse-tung.’ He looked inside. ‘First printing, 1966. Wow. Bet this is worth something.’
‘They printed ninety million so I doubt it.’
‘Didn’t take you for a Maoist, John.’
‘It was a gift,’ Hathaway said. ‘From Elaine Trumpler. There’s an inscription somewhere in the middle of the book. She hid it there so she could check I’d actually read it. Thought you might want it as evidence.’
Tingley closed the book and put it back on the desk.
‘You’re going to need to give us more than that.’
Hathaway frowned.
‘I don’t need to give you anything at all.’
In Tingley’s car Watts said:
‘Can he do it?’
‘Not a chance in hell. These guys are unstoppable. The police will have to come to an accommodation with them as they have in London. I saw the same thing in Israel in the nineties. Hundreds of thousands of Russian Jews took Israeli citizenship. They included a lot of criminals so they could get easy access to the West. They brought drugs and prostitution to Israel. They thrive and the Israeli cops turn a blind eye as long as they don’t take the violence out of their own communities. If the Israelis can’t deal with them we don’t stand a chance.’
When the two men had left, the woman who had withdrawn to the kitchen walked in on Hathaway. He was standing by the window, looking out. He had a mojito in his hand, she had a diet cola in hers.
‘I’d kill for you,’ she said matter-of-factly.
He didn’t respond.
‘I’d kill for you,’ she repeated, touching the side of his face.
Hathaway turned and raised his glass to her.
‘You said that. I hope it won’t be necessary. But thank you, Barbara, thank you.’
Hathaway made some calls then took his boat over to France later that day. Barbara came with him. She observed him on the crossing. She’d thrived in his home. Relaxed. She knew he was on the lookout for drug use but there was none. She thought he recognized that she was devoted to him.
It was odd for her that she’d slept with both father and son. Odd but not significant, given all the other men she’d slept with in all kinds of combinations. Odder was the fact that she’d forgiven him for abandoning her. All she could think was that in the scale of things he had still treated her better than anyone else. He was the only one who had genuinely cared for her, even if only for a little while.
He’d been astonished when she’d turned up on his doorstep three months earlier. Astonished and cruel. Her sister had died and left her some money, and she’d come back to see the lawyer.
Unusually, Hathaway had actually answered the door himself.
‘Hello, young man,’ she said cautiously.
It took him a moment to recognize her. She had lost a lot of weight over the years. She recalled the last time he’d seen her, hurrying down the police station corridors after him.
‘Barbara, a long time. I thought you were dead.’
‘Didn’t bother to find out, though, did you?’ she said, without bitterness.
He stood aside to let her enter. She stopped in front of him and looked up into his face.
‘Still got my looks, though, wouldn’t you say?’
She grinned revealing artificially white false teeth.
‘What the fuck happened to you?’ he said. ‘You’re a fucking mess.’
She reared back then leaned in, hissing:
‘You mean before or after your father sold me to a brothel in The Hague? Before or after the heroin they stuffed into me to make me compliant? Before or after stag parties did what they wanted with me? What happened to me? Your father. Then cancer. They took my tits but left me alive.’
He couldn’t keep the disgust from his face.
‘Christ,’ he said sourly.
She saw his look.
‘Yeah, that’s right. Blame the victim. If it makes you feel better, you were my first trick.’
‘What?’
‘You think I slept with you for your baby blues?’
He looked down.
‘Actually, you didn’t care why I slept with you. You only cared that I slept with you.’
‘So you blame my father for everything.’
‘He made us both what we’ve become.’
‘We make our own destinies.’
‘Is that right? So, if you hadn’t seen your father beat somebody to death and oversee the murder of your girlfriend you would still have turned out a right bastard would you?’
‘That’s right. I was a bastard long before those things happened.’
She shrugged.
‘I don’t really care. I’m just saying.’
She clasped her hands in front of her, veins standing out on arms and neck.
‘Do you want something from me?’ he said. ‘Money? A flat? A fuck, for old times’ sake.’
‘I’ve had enough fucks to last three lifetimes and then some.’
‘Good, because that bit was a joke. I don’t fuck senior citizens.’
She stepped away from him.
‘Jesus,’ he hissed. He put his hand on her shoulder. ‘I’m just being honest. I thought women valued honesty.’
‘Personally,’ she said faintly, ‘I think truth is much overrated.’
‘Let me give you money.’
‘I need money but not from you.’
‘What, then?’
‘Such a lot of things.’ Sadness behind her words. ‘Don’t you wish we could have another try? Do it better? Different.’
Hathaway gave her a look.
‘I don’t mean you and me. I mean life. By the time you realize you’ve only got one shot, it’s already too late. You, above all people, know that.’
‘It would have turned out the same way for me whatever.’
‘You keep saying that.’ She picked at a scab on her bare arm. ‘I think you’re hard on yourself.’
‘Do you? Do you? You have no idea what things I’ve done.’
‘I think you were fundamentally changed in those teenage years.’
He patted her arm.
‘Nah. I found myself.’
She went and sat down on the sofa. She looked up at him.
‘Does that mean you’re happy?’
‘Are you? You look fucking dreadful so I can’t imagine there’s much happiness in your life.’
‘Actually, Riley’s been after me.’
‘Riley?’
‘Yes. Wants his life back.’
It took him a moment. He laughed. Then:
‘Stay here.’
‘What?’
‘I don’t mean in my bed. I already said. But there are lots of rooms in this house. Empty rooms. Choose one. Stay here.’
‘And do what? The cleaning?’
‘Please. I’ll help you get on your feet.’ He moved behind her and brushed his index finger across her back. ‘Barbara – you were more important to me than I think you realize. It grieves me to see you like this. And I want to help.’
She tilted her head back to look at him. She had difficulty hearing as he said:
‘There are few things in my life I remember fondly. It’s a short list. You’re near the top.’
She looked at the ceiling. Neither of them acknowledged the tears sliding from the corners of her eyes.