In the Nick of Time

His name was James King and he had something to confess.

His wife was waiting for Rebus in the hospital corridor. She led him to the bedside without saying much, other than that her husband had “only a week or two, maybe less.”

King was prone on the bed, an oxygen mask strapped to his gaunt, unshaven face. His eyes were dark‑ringed, his chest rising and falling with what seemed painful effort. He nodded at his wife and she took it for an instruction, drawing the curtains around the bed so that King and Rebus were shielded from the other patients. The man pulled the mask down so it rested against his chin.

“ID?” he demanded. Rebus dug out his warrant card and King peered at the photograph before offering an explanation. “Wouldn’t put it past Ella to rope some poor sod into pretending. She thinks the drugs must have done it.”

“Done what?” Rebus was lowering himself onto a chair.

“Got me imagining things.” King paused, studying his visitor. “You don’t look much younger than me.”

“Thanks for that.”

“But it means you’ll remember the Mods? Early sixties?”

“I’m not sure they made it this far north. We had the music, though…”

“I grew up in London. Had the Lambretta and the clothes. My wages either went on one or the other. Weekend trips – Brighton and Margate. I liked Brighton better…” King drifted off, his eyes becoming unfocused. There was a tumor in him that had grown too large to be dealt with. Rebus wondered what painkillers the doctors were giving him. He had a headache of his own – maybe they had a few pills to spare. There was loud wheezing from somewhere beyond the curtain – another patient jolted into life by a coughing fit. King blinked away whatever memories he’d been replaying.

“Your wife,” Rebus said. “When she called us she said there was something you wanted to say.”

“That’s what I’m doing,” King retorted, sounding irritated. “I’m telling you the story.”

“About your days as a Mod?”

“My last time in Brighton.”

“You and your scooter?”

“And a hundred others like me. It was a religion to us, something we were going to take to the grave.” He paused. “And we hated those Rockers almost as much as they hated us.”

“Rockers were bikers?” Rebus checked, receiving a slow nod of agreement from King. “Pitched battles on the seafront,” he went on. “I remember it from Quadrophenia. ”

“Anything and everything became your weapon. I always had a blade with me, taken from my mum’s cutlery drawer. But there were bottles, planks of wood, bricks…”

Rebus knew now what was coming, and leaned in a little closer toward the bed.

“So what happened?” he prompted.

King was thoughtful for a moment, then took a hit of oxygen before saying what needed to be said. “One of them – jeans stained with oil, three‑inch turn‑ups, leather jacket, and T‑shirt – he starts running the wrong way, gets separated from the pack. A few of us peel off and go after him. He knows he’s not going to outrun us, so dives into a hotel just off the esplanade. Far as I remember we were laughing, like it was a game. But it wasn’t, not once we’d cornered him in one of the storerooms off the kitchen. Fists and feet to start with, but then he’s got a blade out and so have I, and I’m faster than him. The knife – my mum’s knife – was still sticking out of his chest when we ran.” King looked up at Rebus, eyes widening a little. “I left him there to die. That’s why I need you to arrest me.” His eyes were filling with liquid. “Because all the years since, I’ve never gone a day without remembering, waiting for your lot’s knock at the door. And you never came, did you? You never came…”

* * *

Back in his second‑floor tenement flat, Rebus smoked a couple of cigarettes and dug out his vinyl copy of The Who’s Quadrophenia. He flicked through the booklet of photos and the little short story that accompanied them. Then he lifted his phone and called DI Siobhan Clarke.

“Well?” she asked.

“It’s archaeology,” he told her. “Summer of sixty‑four. I’m assuming it landed on my lap because someone mistook me for Old Father Time. Didn’t even happen in Edinburgh.”

“Where, then?”

“Brighton. Mods and Rockers. Blood in the nostrils and amphetamines in the blood.” He exhaled cigarette smoke. “Nearly fifty years ago and a confession from a man with days left to live – always supposing he did it. Stuff the hospital is giving him, he could be telling us next he’s Keith Moon’s long‑lost brother.”

“So what do you think?”

“I just wish he’d asked for a priest instead.”

“Worth bouncing it south?”

“You mean to Brighton?”

“Want me to see if I can find a CID contact for you?”

Rebus stubbed out the cigarette. “King did give me a couple of names, guys who were there when he stabbed the victim.”

“The victim being?”

“Johnny Greene. The murder was in the papers. Frightened the life out of King and that was the end of his Mod days.”

“And the others who were with him?”

“He never saw them again. Part of the deal he seems to have made with himself.”

“Fifty years he’s been living with this…”

“Living and dying with it.”

“If he’d confessed at the time, he’d have served his sentence and been rid of it.”

“I thought it best not to bring that up with him.”

He heard her sigh. “I’ll find you someone in Brighton,” she eventually said. “A burden shared and all that.”

He thanked her and ended the call, then slipped the first of Quadrophenia ’s two discs out of its sleeve and placed it on the deck. He’d never been a Mod, couldn’t recall ever seeing a Mod, but at one time he’d known this record well. He poured himself a malt and turned up the volume.

* * *

For the first time in several months, after an unusually high spate of murders in the city of Brighton this spring, Roy Grace finally had some time to concentrate on cold case reviews, which was part of his remit in the recent merger of the Sussex and Surrey Major Crime branches. He had just settled at a desk in the cold case office when DS Norman Potting entered without knocking, as usual, his bad comb‑over looking thinner than ever and reeking, as normal, of pipe tobacco smoke. He was holding an open notepad.

“Had an interesting call earlier this morning from a DI in Scotland, Chief, name of Siobhan Clarke. Pity is, she had an English accent. I’ve always fancied a bit of Scottish tottie.”

Grace raised his eyes. “And?”

“One of her colleagues went to see a bloke in hospital in Edinburgh – apparently terminally ill, wanted to make a deathbed confession about killing a Rocker in Brighton in the summer of sixty‑four.”

“Nineteen sixty‑four? That far back, and he’s dying – why couldn’t he keep his trap shut?”

“Maybe he reckons he’ll avoid hell this way.”

Grace shook his head. He’d never really got this religious thing about confession and forgiveness. “Just your era, wasn’t it, Norman?”

“Ha!”

Potting was fifty‑five but with his shapeless frame and flaccid face could have passed for someone a good decade older.

“I’ve had dealings with Edinburgh. Don’t know anyone called Clarke, though.”

Potting looked down at his notebook. “Colleague’s name is Rebus.”

“Now that name I do know. He worked the Wolfman killings in London. Thought he’d be retired by now.”

“That was definitely the name she gave.”

“So what else did she say?”

“The deathbed confession belongs to one James Ronald King. He was a Mod back then. The bloke he killed is Johnny Greene.”

A phone rang at one of the three unoccupied desks in the office. Grace ignored it. The walls all around were stickered in photographs of victims of murders that had never been solved, crime scene photographs, and yellowing newspaper cuttings. “How did he kill him?”

“Stabbed him with a kitchen knife – says he took it with him for protection.”

“A real little soldier,” Grace said sarcastically. “Have you checked back to see if there’s any truth in it?”

“I have, Chief!” Potting said proudly. “It’s one of the things DI Clarke asked me to find out. A Johnny Earl Greene died during the Mods versus Rocker clashes on May 19, 1964. It was one of the worst weekends of violence of that whole era.”

Grace turned to a fresh page in his policy book and made some notes. “First thing is to get the postmortem records on Greene and a mugshot and send them up to Scotland so Mr. King can make a positive ID of his victim – if he wasn’t too wasted at the time to remember.”

“I’ve already requested them from the coroner’s office, Chief,” Potting responded. “I’ve also put a request in to the Royal Sussex County Hospital for their records at the time. He might have been brought in there if he wasn’t dead at the scene.”

“Good man.” Roy Grace thought for a moment. “My dad was a frontline PC during that era. He used to tell me about it – how on some bank holidays back then Brighton became a war zone.”

“Perhaps you could ask him if he remembers anything about this incident?”

“Good idea. But we’d need to find a medium first.”

It took a moment for this to register. Potting stood, frowning for a moment, then said, “I’m sorry, guv. I didn’t realize.”

“No reason why you should.”

* * *

Two days later, Norman Potting came back into the cold case office, clutching an armful of manila folders, which he dumped on Roy Grace’s desk, then opened the top one. It was the pathologist’s report on Johnny Earl Greene.

“It’s not right, guv,” the old sweat said. “Take a look at the cause of death.”

Grace studied the document carefully. The list of the man’s injuries did not make good reading:

Multiple skull fractures resulting in subdural and extradural hemorrhage together with direct brain tissue injury from fragments of skull displaced into the brain.

Rib fractures causing flail chest, and laceration by broken ribs of the liver, spleen, and lungs.

Extensive fractures of the maxilla and mandible with hemorrhage causing direct upper airway obstruction and fatal inhalation of blood, combined with stamping injury to the trachea causing cervical vertebral dislocation.

Stamping injuries to the ribs, again lacerating the major thoracic and abdominal organs.

Multiple defensive injury fractures to the small bones of the hands and wrist indicative of fetal position adopted by the victim. Traumatic testicular and scrotal rupture.

Grace looked up at the detective sergeant with a frown. “There’s nothing here about any stab wounds. This James King, in Edinburgh, is certain he stabbed his victim?”

“I spoke to John Rebus twenty minutes ago. No question, according to him, King stabbed him in the chest with the kitchen knife. Left it in the body when he fled the scene.”

“A knife’s unlikely to have been overlooked, even back in the day,” Grace said wryly.

“Agreed.”

“Which would indicate Johnny Greene was not the victim, or am I missing something?”

“No, guv.” Potting grinned and opened another folder. “I got this from the hospital. We’re lucky. One more year and the records would have been destroyed. Saturday, May nineteen, nineteen sixty‑four, they treated a stab assault casualty. Sabatier bread knife still in his chest. Name of Ollie Starr. He was an art student and member of an Essex biker gang. The blade damaged his spinal cord and he was transferred to the Spinal Injuries Unit at Stoke Mandeville Hospital up in Bucks.”

“Do the records say what happened to him?”

“No, but I have the name of the officer who attended the scene and accompanied him to the county hospital. PC Jim Hopper.”

Grace did some quick mental arithmetic. It was now 2013. Forty‑nine years ago. Many police officers started in their teens. “This PC Hopper, he might still be around, Norman. He’d be in his sixties or perhaps seventies. If you contact Sandra Leader who runs the Retired Brighton and Hove Police Officers Association, or David Rowland, who runs the local branch of NARPO, they might know his whereabouts.” NARPO was the National Association of Retired Police Officers.

“I already have. And, guv, I think you are going to be very interested in this. PC Hopper retired as an inspector, but is still with us. What’s more, he’s kept in touch with Ollie Starr. The man lives right here in Brighton, apparently, and is mightily pissed off that his assailant has never been brought to justice.”

“Did he give you an address?”

“He’s getting it. He also invited us to a reunion.”

Grace narrowed his eyes. “Reunion?”

“The retired officers of Brighton and Hove. It’s this Saturday at the Sportsman Pub at Withdean Stadium.”

“From what I’ve heard tell of Rebus, he wouldn’t say no to a drink.”

Potting perked up. “Reckon DI Clarke might be tempted, too?”

“She might.” Grace studied his calendar. It was Wednesday. The rest of his week, including the weekend, was clear. He’d promised to spend time with his beloved Cleo and their baby, Noah. If this could be cleared up on Saturday, he’d have all day Sunday. Then again, how would Rebus and Clarke feel about working a weekend? “Give me their number in Edinburgh,” he said.

* * *

At ten thirty AM Saturday morning, after collecting John Rebus and Siobhan Clarke from an early Gatwick flight, Grace and Potting drove them into Brighton, with just the one detour so they could sightsee the beach and pavilion.

“Been here before?” Potting asked Clarke, turning his head to study her more closely.

“No,” she said, eyes on the scenery.

“Gets busy on the weekend,” Grace explained. “Day‑trippers from London.”

“Just like nineteen sixty‑four,” Rebus commented.

“Just like,” Grace echoed, meeting the older man’s eyes in the rearview mirror.

“You work cold cases?” Rebus asked him.

“On top of my other duties,” Grace confirmed.

“I did that, too, until Siobhan here rescued me.” The way he said it made it sound as if he disliked being beholden.

“Much crime in your neck of the woods?” Potting was asking Clarke.

“Enough to keep us busy.”

“Stuff we get here–”

But Grace broke in, cutting Potting off. “It’s not a competition.”

But of course it was, and always would be, and when Grace next met Rebus’s gaze in the mirror, the two men shared a thin smile of acknowledgment.

In a conference room at Sussex House CID HQ, coffee was made before they sat to watch a video compiled by Amy Hannah of media relations. She had put together a selection of clips from Saturday, May 19, 1964, accompanied by a soundtrack from the era: The Dave Clark Five, Kinks, Rolling Stones, Beatles, and others.

“Nice touch,” Rebus commented as “The Kids Are Alright” played.

With the blinds down they watched the massed ranks of Mods, between the Palace and West Piers, many of them on scooters, wearing slim ties, tab‑collared shirts, sharp suits, and fur‑collared parka jackets, wielding knives, and the Rockers, in studded leather jackets, some of them swinging heavy chains and other implements. The Rockers looked little different to modern‑day Hells Angels, apart from the pompadour hairstyles.

Battle raged, battalions of Brighton police officers in white helmets on foot and on horseback, flailing their batons while being belted with stones and bottles.

Siobhan Clarke sucked air in through her mouth. “I had no idea,” she said.

“Oh, it was bad,” Grace told her. “My mum said my dad used to come home regularly with a black eye, bloodied nose, or fat lip.”

“Tribal,” Potting added. “Just two tribes at war.”

“Nearest we’d have up north,” Rebus commented, “would be the pitched battles at Celtic‑Rangers games.”

“But this was different,” Grace said. “And I’ll tell you my theory if you like.”

“Go ahead.”

Grace leaned forward in his seat. “They were the first generation ever in our country that didn’t have to go and fight a war. They had to get their aggression out on something, including each other.”

“You still see it on a Saturday night,” Rebus added with a slow nod. “Young men sizing each other up, fueled, and wanting some attention.”

“Stick around a few hours,” Potting said, making show of checking his watch.

When the video was over, Rebus told the room that he needed a smoke.

“I’ll join you,” Grace said.

“Me, too,” added Potting, pulling his pipe from his pocket.

Siobhan Clarke shook her head. “You lads run along.” Then she aimed the remote at the DVD player, ready to watch the clips all over again.

* * *

After fish and chips at the Palm Court on Brighton Pier, they headed to Withdean Stadium and entered the pub, where the reunion was in full swing.

“Retired?” Rebus snorted. “Most of them are younger than me.” He looked around at the hundred or so faces.

“Full pension after thirty years,” Grace commented.

“It’s the same in Scotland,” Clarke explained. “But John isn’t having it.”

“Why not?” Grace sounded genuinely curious.

Clarke was watching Rebus head to the bar, Potting hot on his heels. “It’s gone beyond being a job to him,” she offered. “If you can understand that.”

Grace thought for a moment, then nodded. “Completely.”

By the time they got to the bar, Potting was explaining to Rebus that Harveys was the best local pint.

“Just so long as it’s not the sherry,” Rebus joked.

Once they had their drinks, Potting led them over to the retired inspector Jim Hopper, who had attended the badly injured Ollie Starr on that Saturday afternoon in 1964. Hopper was a giant of a man, with a shaven head rising from apparently neckless shoulders, giving him the appearance of an American football player. But his eyes were sympathetic, his demeanor gentle. Potting handed him a drink. He took a sip before speaking.

“I told Ollie you might be coming to speak to him. He seemed hellish relieved. Ever since that assault, his life’s turned to a bucket of turds.”

“You’ve kept in touch with him?” Rebus nudged.

“I have, yes. To tell the truth, I’ve always felt partways responsible. If we’d had more men on the ground that day, or we’d spotted him being chased.” Hopper winced at the memory. “I was with him in the ambulance. He thought he was dying, poured out his whole story to me, as if I was the last friend he’d ever have.”

“Do you think he’d be able to identify the assailant after all this time?” Clarke asked quietly.

“No doubt about it. Couldn’t happen now, of course, with CCTV and DNA. Nobody’d get away with it.”

“It was half a century back,” Rebus reminded Hopper. “You sure his memory’s up to it?”

A grim smile broke across the retired officer’s face. “You need to see for yourselves.”

“See what?”

“Visit him and you’ll find out.”

“Is he married?” Clarke asked.

Hopper shook his head. “Far as he’s concerned, his life ended that day. Stabbed in the chest, then the cowards just walked away.”

There was silence for a moment. They were in a bubble, far from the chatter and gossip around them.

“Give us his address,” Rebus ordered, breaking the spell.

* * *

Roy Grace had been in some shitholes in his time, and Ollie Starr’s ground‑floor flat, on the other side of the wall from the Brighton and Hove refuse tip, was down there with the worst of them. It was dank, with dark mold blotches on one wall of the tiny hall. As they strode through into the sitting room, there were empty beer bottles littering the place, an ashtray overflowing with butts, soiled clothing strewn haphazardly on the floor, and an ancient, fuzzy television screen displaying a football match.

But none of the detectives looked at the football. All of them stared, with puzzled faces, at the pencil sketches that papered almost every inch of the otherwise bare walls. From each of them an expressionless man stared out. He was the same man in every drawing, Grace realized, but he was aged progressively, from late teens to mid‑sixties. At every stage he was portrayed with different hairstyles, with and without beard or moustache. They reminded Roy Grace of police Identi‑Kit drawings.

“Bloody hell,” Rebus muttered, stepping farther into the room. “It’s James King.” He turned to Ollie Starr. “Where did these–?”

“My memory,” Starr said, flatly.

“You’ve not seen him?”

“Not since the day he stuck a knife in me.”

“The likeness is amazing.”

“Meaning you’ve got the bastard.” The muscles in Starr’s face seemed to relax a fraction. “Never forgot his face,” he continued. “And I was a student at Hornsey School of Art. Promising future, they said, maybe doing adverts and stuff. Instead of which, I’ve just been drawing him, year after year, hoping one day I’d see him.”

Siobhan Clarke cleared her throat. “We think the man who attacked you is critically ill in hospital.”

“Good.”

“That answers my first question.”

Starr’s eyes narrowed. “What’s that, then?”

“Whether you’d want to go ahead with a prosecution after all this time.” She paused. “Against a man with not long to live.”

“I want to see him,” Starr growled. “I need to see him, face‑to‑face, the closer the better. He has to be shown what he did. Ruined my life, and the only thing that kept me going was the dream.”

“What dream?” Grace asked.

“The dream of you lot coming here, delivering the news.” Starr blinked back a tear. We all have our dreams, eh?” His voice cracked a little. “But a man’s reach should exceed his grasp / Or what’s a heaven for?”

Grace was moved that the man had read Browning. He lived in a tip, yet clutched at beauty. How different might his life have been if…?

If.

He caught John Rebus’s eye, and then Siobhan Clarke’s, and knew they were thinking the same thing – while Potting tried to examine Clarke’s legs without her noticing.

“We’d need to bring you to Edinburgh quickly,” Rebus was saying. “Could you fly up Monday?”

“Train might be less hassle,” Starr said. “Give me time to decide whether to spit in his face first or go straight for a punch.”

* * *

Hospitals always made Roy Grace feel uncomfortable. Too many memories of visiting his dying father and, later, his dying mother. Late on Monday afternoon he followed Rebus and Clarke along the corridor of the Royal Infirmary. It looked new, no smells of boiled cabbage or disinfectant. Transport had been awaiting the group at Waverley Station, Clarke making sure the visitors glimpsed the famous castle before they headed to the outskirts of the city. As Rebus pushed open the doors to the ward, Grace glanced back in the direction of Potting and Starr. Neither man showed any emotion.

“Okay?” Grace checked, receiving two separate nods in reply.

Rebus, however, had come to a sudden stop, Grace almost colliding with him. The bed in the corner was empty, the table next to it bare.

“Shit,” Rebus muttered, eyes scanning the room. Plenty of patients, but no sign of the only one that mattered.

“Can I help?” a nurse asked, her face arranged into a professional smile.

“James King,” Rebus informed her. “Looks like we’re too late.”

“Oh dear, yes.”

“How long ago did he die?”

The smile was replaced with something more quizzical. “He’s not dead,” she explained. “He went into remission. It happens sometimes, and if I were the religious sort…” She shrugged. “Spontaneous and inexplicable, but there you are. Mr. King’s back home in the bosom of his family, happy as the proverbial Larry!”

* * *

Twenty minutes later, Rebus knocked on the door of the bungalow on Liberton Brae. Ella King answered, then stared stonily at the small entourage outside.

“My husband’s changed his mind,” she blurted out. “It was the drugs he was taking. They got him hallucinating.”

“Fine, then,” Rebus said, holding up his hands as if in surrender. “But could we come in a minute?”

She didn’t seem at all sure, but Rebus was already barging past her, stalking down the hall toward the living room, Grace and Clarke right behind him. James King was seated in a large armchair, horse‑racing on the television. He was dressed in slacks and a polo shirt, a newspaper on his lap and a mug of tea by his side.

“You’ve heard the news?” he boomed. “They’re calling it a miracle, for want of any better explanation. And has Ella explained about the drugs? I must have been rambling, the time I talked to you.”

“Is that a fact, sir? Well, is there any chance you could ramble your way to the front door? There’s an old friend of yours waiting to see you.”

King’s face creased in confusion, but Rebus was gesturing for him to get up, and get up he did, shuffling toward the front door.

Norman Potting stood on the path outside, hands resting against the handles of Ollie Starr’s wheelchair.

“James King,” Rebus said, “meet Oliver Starr.”

“But we’ve never met. I… I don’t know him. What’s this all about?”

“You know me, all right,” Starr snarled, his whole body writhing as if a current were passing through it. “Your bread knife’s still in an evidence locker in Brighton. Did your mum never ask you what happened to it?”

Grace watched King’s face. It was as if the man had been slapped.

“What’s going on?” his wife asked, voice trembling.

“A man did die that day,” Clarke explained. “But not the man your husband attacked. When he saw it reported, he jumped to conclusions.”

“Is this the man who stabbed you, Mr. Starr?” Grace asked.

“I’d know him anywhere,” Ollie Starr replied, eyes burning into King’s.

“You old fool,” Ella King yelped at her husband. “I told you to leave it alone, take it to the grave with you. Why did you have to bring it all up?”

“James Ronald King,” Grace was intoning, “I have a warrant issued for your arrest. I’m arresting you on suspicion of the attempted murder of Oliver Starr. You do not have to say anything, but it may harm your defense if you do not mention when questioned something which you later rely on in court. Anything you do say may be given in evidence. Is that clear?”

“I’m in remission,” King gasped. “The rest of my life ahead of me…”

“Had a good life so far, have you?” Starr snarled. “Better than mine, at any rate. All the years I’ve spent in a bloody wheelchair! No wife, no kids!”

“You can’t do this,” Ella King was pleading. “He’s a very sick man.” Her hand was gripping her husband’s arm.

Rebus shook his head. “He’s not ill, Mrs. King. We heard it from his own mouth.”

“But he is sick,” Potting interjected. “Takes a sick mind to shove a knife so deep into someone it breaks their spine.”

“So far in the past, though,” Ella King persisted. “Everything’s different now.”

“Not so different,” Rebus replied, looking toward Clarke and Grace. “Besides which, I’d say we got here just in the nick of time.”

Roy Grace nodded his agreement.

Different cities, different cultures, different generations, even, but he knew he shared one thing above all else with John Rebus – pleasure in each and every result.