The Last King of Brighton (25 page)

‘Just didn't want to disturb our meeting by having to nick 'em. They'll be back when we've gone, and in the meantime they'll just shift shop to the North Laines.'

Watts looked at her hands. Her right fist was tightly clenched.

‘My dad used to come here in the thirties,' he said. ‘Selling information to the papers about the Brighton Trunk Murder.'

His father, Donald, successful thriller writer under the name Victor Tempest, had been a bobby on the beat in Brighton in the early 1930s. Watts tried to picture him now as a young man propping up the bar.

‘This Stewart Nealson thing,' Gilchrist said. ‘He was alive when he was found. They'd taken great care to miss the vital organs – the stake didn't touch any of them.'

‘How long had he been impaled?' Watts said.

‘All night.'

‘Poor sod.'

‘You know the worst thing?'

‘Worse than that?'

She nodded.

‘What?'

‘To have done it like that means they had obviously done it before.'

Tingley and Watts looked at each other.

‘Takes you back,' Watts said.

‘Doesn't it just.'

Gilchrist looked from one to the other.

‘What do you know about this?'

‘You know you said there was a theory those two in the bed in Milldean massacre were Albanian,' Watts said.

She nodded.

‘Any chance they could be Serbian?'

She shrugged.

‘You two going to tell me what you know and I don't?'

Watts gestured to Tingley.

‘The historical, fifteenth-century Vlad the Impaler was Rumanian. Transylvanian actually. He ruled Wallachia. He's supposed to have been the source for the Dracula myth.'

‘So I've heard. He was a vampire. How have you picked up on this guy's nickname so quickly?'

Tingley ignored her question.

‘Actually, the historical Vlad was best known for resisting the expansion of the Ottoman Empire. And for his cruel punishments. Pretty cruel age, though. His elder brother was blinded with hot iron stakes and buried alive. When Vlad came to power he burned people alive, decapitated many – but most of all he impaled hundreds.'

‘I don't get the Dracula link.'

‘The family name was Dracul.'

‘OK. But now you think he's loose on the South Downs. You're sure you haven't been spending too much time in Lewes?'

‘Jimmy and I served in the Balkans in the nineties,' Watts said. ‘I was with the UN peacekeeping forces; Jimmy was doing – well, what Jimmy does. That's when we first encountered another Vlad, real name Miladin Radislav.'

Watts had been stationed in Travnik, a hilltop village just north of Visegrad in Bosnia. He had been staggered by the wild beauty of this mountain region, where hamlets clung to the crags and steep valley sides, and the river Drina below seemed to burst out of a wall of rock. Travnik was a village of plum orchards and the scent of fruit was everywhere.

‘There was a famous – and staggeringly beautiful – stone bridge over the Drina at Visegrad, built centuries earlier by the Turks using Christian slaves when the Ottoman Empire ruled the area. Muslims, Catholic Christians, Orthodox Christians and some Jews had, for most of the time since then, co-existed harmoniously in the town.

‘All that changed with the civil war. Spring 1992. Visegrad was of strategic importance because the bridge took the road from Saravejo to Belgrade over the Drina. There was also a hydroelectric dam nearby that provided electricity to the area and prevented the Drina flooding towns and villages further down the valley.

‘Over half the town's twenty thousand or so people were Bosniaks – Bosnian Muslims. A third were Serbians. The rest a mix of ethnicities. When Serbia got its appetite for empire building the JNA – the largely Serbian Yugoslav People's Army – bombarded the Bosniak neighbourhoods and nearby Bosniak villages. Some Bosniaks responded by taking local Serbian bigwigs hostage and taking over the dam. The JNA sent commandos in. They recaptured the dam and freed the hostages.

‘The JNA occupied the town for a month or so. When they left they put the local Serbs in charge.'

‘Then it started,' Tingley said. ‘Local Serbs, police and paramilitaries decided to get rid of the entire Bosniak population. They were the paramilitaries knows as the “White Eagles” and “Avengers” – linked to the ultra-nationalist Serbian Radical Party of Vojislav Seselj. They were avenging slights that had happened centuries before.'

‘They wanted to kill all twenty thousand?' Gilchrist was pale.

‘They probably would have if they could. They attacked all the nearby Bosniak villages and killed whoever they found. Every day they marched Bosniak men, women and children on to the bridge – that beautiful bridge – and killed them, dumping their bodies in the river. They looted and destroyed the homes. They blew up the town's two mosques.

‘They systematically raped the women. They imprisoned the rest of the Bosniaks in various detention sites. The most unfortunate were housed in a concentration camp where they were beaten, tortured and forced to work. They were all sexually assaulted, of course.'

‘Terrible,' Gilchrist whispered, her jaw tight.

‘They herded Bosniaks into a couple of houses then threw grenades through the windows. They burned them alive in other houses. The worst of the atrocities were done by this guy, Radislav. He'd been a barber in Visegrad. He was one of those psychopaths the war let loose from the country's id. He ran amok. He tortured and raped children of both sexes. Murdered with gleeful ferocity.'

Watts's voice was toneless:

‘His men dragged people through the streets tied to the rear bumpers of cars. They ripped out people's kidneys. They took truckloads of people down to the Drina, shot them or knifed them in the guts then pushed them in. For target practice they threw children from the bridge and tried to shoot them before they hit the water.'

‘But why the name Vlad?'

‘That came after the UN arrived,' Watts said. ‘He retreated with his band of men into the mountains, dragging their loot with them.'

A month later, Watts received word that Radislav's band had returned to his village. Watts was ordered to get to Visegrad as soon as possible. Radislav's gang had gone far beyond rape and beatings this time. This one had to be seen to be believed.

Watts and his squadron went down the mountain in four vehicles. It was a blustery day, clouds scudding between the mountain tops. The road was on the whole good, although they passed bombed-out and fire-destroyed houses. At two points they had to skirt deep bomb craters.

They approached the town from the other side of the river, winding down through the hills. The green water roared between the arches of the old bridge. The soldiers' attention was drawn to what looked like a dozen statues in a row on a parapet raised some eight feet above the highest point of the bridge.

As the vehicles dropped down closer to the river they could see that the statues were in crude wooden frames. As they came on to the bridge their progress was halted by a large group of people, looking in horror at the statues, women keening and howling, men tearing at their clothes. A handful of peacekeepers in their bright blue helmets had formed a perimeter in front of the statues. Tingley was standing beside them.

Watts quit his vehicle and led his men through the throng. He could see now that the statues were men hanging in a line from long poles. A corporal stepped away from the perimeter. He was red-faced.

‘Bosnian-Serbs came out of the mountains in the night and raided the village. These are the young Muslim men they found here.'

‘Why do they look so stiff?' Watts said.

‘They've been impaled,' the corporal said. ‘Last night.' He gulped. ‘Two were still alive this morning.'

Watts looked up at the sky and at the mountains. He looked at Tingley. Tingley shook his head.

‘He got the name Vlad the Impaler that day,' Tingley said. ‘The lads weren't hot on geography. But Radislav wasn't inspired by Vlad. He was taking revenge for a Christian from his village who had been impaled by the local Muslims five hundred years earlier.'

‘Jesus,' Gilchrist said.

‘Radislav took off back into the mountains,' Tingley said, ‘I tracked him but never caught him.'

‘The coastguards have found a blood-soaked boat with a horribly mutilated body on board,' Gilchrist said. ‘An Italian industrialist. It seems the boat was boarded in the Adriatic. It was Radislav, wasn't it?'

Tingley and Watts exchanged glances.

‘Probably,' Tingley said.

Gilchrist shuddered.

‘And he's only just started,' Watts said. ‘I don't think the police can handle somebody like him.'

Tingley touched his swollen face and grimaced.

‘Well, someone has got to take him on.'

Gilchrist looked at the two men.

‘Now hang on – don't you two vigilantes go getting any ideas. We don't need you riding to the rescue. This is police business.'

She started to rise.

‘I've got to feed this information back, alert some other agencies.'

‘There was something else I wanted to talk to you about,' Watts said.

Gilchrist paused.

‘It pales in comparison to these horrors but I've been asked to investigate the death of the chair of the West Pier Trust.'

‘Great. No offence, Bob, but how are you going to do that?'

‘Just ask around.'

‘You know I can't help you. I'm a full-time police officer. I can't get involved in private investigations. Plus, I've got enough on my plate if this Radislav is going to kick things off.'

‘That wasn't exactly what I had in mind.'

‘Then what?'

SIXTEEN

K
ate Simpson had joined a scuba club that had been diving in and around Brighton bay looking at wrecks of fishing boats. She loved it, although it needed a clear day to see anything. Phil, the guy who ran the club, was ex-Navy but he now made a good living as a salvage diver. He had a bit of a soft spot for her.

He phoned her one evening when she was practising for a supper she was having at the weekend. Specifically, she was contemplating the mess she'd made of her first attempt to stuff a chicken breast.

‘I've been asked to get a crew together to check out the damage the firebombing did under the West Pier. See if there's risk of further collapse. Wondered if you wanted to tag along?'

Kate was a competent diver. She'd got her qualifications at university and had become obsessed with the sport. She'd been rusty when she joined the scuba club but had quickly got the hang of things again. Even so, the storm would have thrown up a lot of shit that would take weeks to settle. Visibility would be poor and if the pier was damaged under the water the dive could be dangerous.

‘Am I qualified for that kind of dive?' she said.

‘Well, I thought you could stay out of the water until me and a couple of the pro-divers had checked it out, Then you could come and have a look.'

‘Will there be anything to see?'

‘There's always something. Interested?'

‘You're on.'

The dive was on Saturday morning. When Kate got down to the marina she was surprised to see Bob Watts waiting with the others. He grinned when he saw her and gave her a hug.

Their friendship was complicated by the fact that Kate was the daughter of a man he despised. His former friend, William Simpson. Watts was convinced that Simpson, a senior government figure, had been involved in planning the Milldean massacre but he had been unable to prove it. Kate had her own issues with her father.

In addition, Kate and Watts had led the research into the 1934 Brighton Trunk Murders the previous year. She had discovered among old police files an anonymous memoir that, it transpired, had been written by Watts's father, Donald Watts aka Victor Tempest.

‘You're full of surprises,' she said. ‘I didn't know you were a diver.'

‘Nor I you. And, actually, I'm not. I'm just along for the ride. The West Pier Syndicate has tasked me with the job of checking out the damage. I'm the client.' He hesitated for the moment. ‘It could be hazardous down there, Kate. Are you sure you—'

‘She'll be fine,' said a tall, slender man with close-cropped hair and startling blue eyes. He leaned over and gave Kate a peck on the cheek, then shook Watts's hand.

‘Bob.'

‘Phil. I know she's in capable hands.'

‘Plus she knows what she's doing.'

‘I am standing right here, you know,' Kate said, only half-joking.

Watts coloured.

‘I'm sorry, Kate.' He looked around at the half a dozen people gathered round the boat. ‘You good to go?'

‘Good to go,' Phil said.

The boat was capable of high speeds but Phil kept it steady, heading first out to sea then diagonally into the West Pier. He dropped anchor about fifty yards from the ruined end of the pier. The water was choppy and the boat dipped and rolled.

‘We're going to focus on this end today. Kate, you'll come in after we've done the initial exploration.'

The divers had digital video cameras with them. For the next two hours they did fifteen-minute shifts. Visibility was better than expected. Kate went down a couple of times and Watts stayed by the monitors on board ship. He was able to communicate with the divers on an audio link.

Phil's camera was focused on the seabed near to a big rusty stanchion. Watts peered as the monitor homed in on what looked like two iron rods sticking out of the seabed. Particles swirling like a blizzard around the lens.