‘You probably have kids or they probably hit the cocktail bars?’ Hathaway grinned his perfect white teeth grin. ‘Doesn’t matter – either way your answer is indicative.’
‘How old are your kids?’ Watts said.
Hathaway made an odd face.
‘I don’t have any – but I have a big family.’
Hathaway toasted Watts and Tingley.
‘Here’s to coalitions – may they always fail.’
‘You don’t like coalitions?’ Tingley said.
‘Worst of both worlds, then one member takes over.’
‘Here’s to truth,’ Watts said.
Hathaway laughed.
‘Yeah. Right.’
When they’d all sipped the cocktails Hathaway looked at Tingley.
‘I assume you and David were brothers-in-arms at some stage.’
‘More than once,’ Tingley said.
‘I’ve always had great admiration for soldiers,’ Hathaway said. ‘Never had any desire to join up, let me add, and I was the right side of National Service. But, growing up, I was close to an ex-commando who worked for my father. Became something of a mentor.’
Hathaway raised his glass.
‘Here’s to him.’
Watts and Tingley raised their glasses.
‘Does he have a name?’ Watts said.
Simultaneously, Tingley asked:
‘Is he dead?’
‘His name is Sean Reilly, Bob. And he’s very much alive, James. Later he worked with me for a few years but eventually retired. To Normandy, actually. His health isn’t good but he’s still sharp as a pin. I have a house in Varengevilles-sur-mer, a little village outside Dieppe. He lives there. Lovely place. If you’re a gardening nut, Gerturde Jekyll did the garden on the side whilst she was landscaping a local chateau. Name means nothing, Bob? Your wife does the gardening, eh? Or you’re thinking Jekyll and Hyde. How about Luytens, the architect who refurbished the chateau? No? He created Delhi – or whatever it’s called now. Bob, you did go to school, did you?’
Watts smiled.
‘Anyway your dad’s still kicking? Glad to hear it. He must be a fine old age. I’m afraid, Jimmy, I never had the pleasure of your father, as it were.’
‘Nor did I,’ Tingley said. Watts gave him a glance.
‘Yeah, well, that’s fathers for you.’
Hathaway drained his glass.
‘The West Pier,’ Watts said.
‘And?’
‘It’s been firebombed three times.’
‘And you’re asking me about this why, exactly?’
Watts leaned forward.
‘Come on, Mr Hathaway-’
‘John. My name is John. I thought we were doing first names.’
‘Nothing happens in this town without your knowledge and say-so. The pier’s development syndicate had the money in place to put the pier back in business and you didn’t want that because it would impact on your businesses.’
Hathaway looked out over his garden.
‘You want a confession?’ he said when Watts paused. ‘Because otherwise I’m not quite sure what the point of this bombast is.’
‘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
