The Last King of Brighton
( Brighton trilogy - 2 )
Peter Guttridge
The Last King of Brighton
Peter Guttridge
‘If God had abandoned this unlucky town, he had surely not abandoned the whole world that was beneath the skies?’
Ivo Andric, The Bridge Over The Drina
PROLOGUE
Barbarians at the Gate
The thin oak stake was about nine feet long, blunt at one end, pointed at the other. The shaft was coated in something oily. Beside it on the grassy ground there were ropes, blocks and a mallet.
The paunchy naked man looked at these things, his eyes bulging. There was tape across his mouth. His hands were taped together behind his back. He was shivering uncontrollably, his flesh wobbling. The four men jerked him to the ground and lay him on his belly. He screamed through the gag.
They tied ropes to his ankles, then two of them pulled on the ropes to spread his legs.
The tallest of the two remaining men laid the stake between the naked man’s legs, the sharp end pointing into his body. The other knelt and rummaged between the legs with a knife. He turned his head away when the man fouled himself but continued to poke and cut with the tip of the blade.
The naked man jerked and squealed through the gag. As he spasmed, the men holding the ropes pulled them taut so he could only buck. His bound arms shook.
The tall man picked up the mallet and touched the blunt end of the stake. The man with the knife raised the pointed end of the stake and pushed it between the spread legs. The naked man shuddered.
The man with the mallet hit the blunt end of the stake. Three times. The naked man convulsed and started to hit his forehead against the earth. The man kneeling between his legs pressed with his fingers on his shaking back, checking the progress of the stake through the body. Satisfied, he signalled for the tall man to continue.
The naked man made strange mewling sounds as the next three blows thrust the stake deeper into him. Something frothy and bilious jetted from his nose. The man with the mallet paused but the kneeling man indicated he should continue. After a further three blows the kneeling man picked up the knife and leaned over the juddering body. The skin above the naked man’s right shoulder was stretched and swollen. He cut into the swelling with his knife, lengthways and crossways. Blood gushed out.
The knife man crouched over the shoulder as the point of the stake emerged in three short jerks. When the tip was level with the naked man’s right ear the knife man held up his hand. The man with the mallet laid it on the grass and came up beside the man he had skewered.
The skewered man’s arms were twitching but otherwise he was unmoving. He was bleeding heavily from his shoulder and rectum. The two men holding the ropes flipped his rigid body over. They bound the legs to the stake.
The man’s eyelids were fluttering, his face engorged. Green slime bubbled in his nostrils. The tall man bent over and tore the tape from his face. The skewered man’s lips were drawn back from his teeth in an agonized snarl. He breathed in jagged wet puffs.
All four men lifted him. They carried him a few yards to a crude frame and lowered the blunt base of the stake into a pre-prepared hole. As he was lifted to meet the frame, his whole weight bore down on the stake. His body slowly dropped, and with a strange sucking noise the tip of the stake slid level with the top of his head. His chest rose and fell in impossibly rapid jerks.
Two men held the body steady whilst the other two busied themselves with securing the stake to the frame. When they had finished they stood back and observed their handiwork. The man’s head lolled, his eyes rolled. He was whimpering when they left him there.
PART ONE
The Sixties
ONE
Johnny, Remember Me
1963
The axe shattered the window, sending shards of glass cascading to the carriage floor. The big man wielding it thrust his masked head and shoulders through the opening and clambered into the railway carriage. The five postal workers heaping mailbags in front of the door recoiled as he waved the axe in their faces. Behind them the mailbags tumbled as the door gave and six more men, wearing boiler suits and woollen balaclavas, pushed into the carriage. They carried pickaxe handles and coshes.
The masked men rained blows on the five sorters, hitting them across their shoulders and on the elbows, shouting at them to lie on the floor. The mailmen did as they were ordered. It was only five minutes earlier that they had heard someone outside the carriage yell: ‘They’re bolting the door – get the guns.’
‘Don’t fucking look at us,’ a masked man bellowed, kicking one of the postal workers in the ribs. ‘Keep your fucking head down.’
Even so, each of the men lying on the floor stole looks at the masked men as they went about their business. Whilst two of the masked men stood guard with pickaxe handles, two more stacked the mailbags together. Three others handed them down on to the railway line. The smell of sweat was keen in the air.
There were 128 bags in the carriage. Half an hour later, when the man with the axe looked at his watch, all but seven had been offloaded.
‘That’s it,’ he shouted, ‘let’s move.’ He saw one of the masked men glance at the remaining bags. ‘Leave them.’
He remained in the carriage whilst the others dropped down on to the track. A few moments later the train driver and his fireman were dragged into the carriage, handcuffed together. The train driver’s head was bleeding heavily. They were dropped to the floor beside the mailmen.
Another big man loomed over them.
‘We’re leaving someone behind,’ he said, his voice a hiss. ‘Don’t move for thirty minutes or it’ll be the worse for you.’
Then the masked men were gone, taking with them?2.6 million in unmarked bills. It was an hour before dawn, Thursday, 8 August, 1963.
On Sunday, 11 August, John Hathaway was sitting at the breakfast table reading about what the press were calling the Great Train Robbery in his father’s News of the World when the doorbell rang.
The banks had admitted that the used?5,?1 and ten shilling notes stolen from the Glasgow to London night mailtrain were mostly untraceable. One bank had admitted that its money was not insured so it would have to suffer the loss itself.
The police were claiming they had significant leads but they always said that. Although the newspaper was indignant that the train driver, Jack Mills, had been badly injured when he resisted the robbers, it was clear they admired the audaciousness of the crime.
So did Hathaway. From what he had read, the robbery had been planned and executed with military precision. The train had been stopped on a lonely stretch of track at Sears Crossing in Buckinghamshire, at a fake signal. It had been robbed within a strict time limit. And the robbers had disappeared into the night with no word of them since.
It reminded him of a film he’d seen a couple of years earlier – The League of Gentlemen – when Jack Hawkins and a band of ex-soldiers had committed the perfect bank robbery.
‘Except they got caught,’ he said to himself as he opened the front door. He flushed crimson.
‘Did your father say I’d be popping round?’ the woman standing on the step said.
‘He said someone would, with some money, yes, Barbara,’ Hathaway stammered. He stood aside so that Barbara, who worked in one of his father’s offices, could come into the house. She looked back and he gestured vaguely down the hall, then watched as she walked, hips swaying, ahead of him. He could smell her perfume.
His heart was thumping. Barbara, some ten years older than Hathaway, looked like a softer version of Cathy Gale in the Avengers and was his main object of unattainable desire. Whe
never he went to his father’s office he tried not to ogle her, at least when she might notice.
She stopped by the breakfast table and put a big brown envelope on it.
‘Now don’t spend it all at once,’ she said, without turning. She was looking down at the newspaper.
‘My paper is saying that the mastermind is somebody in Brighton,’ she said. ‘A miser who lives alone in one room and works with infinite care and patience to come up with criminal plans that he takes to a master criminal well known in the Harrow Road area of London.’
She turned and laughed.
‘Such nonsense,’ she said. She glanced from his burning face to the front of his trousers and then around the room. ‘Have you heard from your parents yet?’
Hathaway’s parents had gone on a touring holiday in the Morris Oxford down through France and into Spain. They were going for three weeks, possibly longer. ‘Let’s see how it goes,’ his father had said. His mother was calling it a second honeymoon.
Hathaway shook his head.
‘They only went yesterday.’
‘Away for your birthday – that’s a shame.’ She took a step towards him. ‘How old will you be tomorrow?’
‘Seventeen,’ Hathaway said, trying to focus on her face rather than her cleavage.
‘Seventeen and this house all to yourself. I expect you’ll be having a party. Probably more than one.’ She took another step. ‘I hope you’re going to behave.’
Hathaway shrugged, feeling his face burn even more, thrown by the look in her eyes. It was both nervous and calculating. He saw her glance down at the front of his trousers again.
‘I’m not much for parties.’
‘What about birthday presents?’ she said, only a yard or so from him now. Her perfume enveloped him. ‘You must like them.’
‘Who doesn’t?’ he said. His throat was dry. She was so close he could smell her soft breath. She reached up and touched the corner of his mouth with a crimson fingernail.
‘Would you like an early one?’
When The Avalons finished their set to desultory applause the landlord came over, a sour look on his face.
‘Didn’t think much of the audience,’ Hathaway said as the landlord handed him a well-stuffed envelope. ‘Didn’t get in the spirit of it at all.’
The landlord looked at him but didn’t respond. Instead he said: ‘Hope your dad’s having a good holiday.’
‘From what I hear,’ Hathaway said, slipping the envelope into his jacket pocket. He was nattily dressed in a dark suit with narrow lapels and trousers, white shirt and slim black tie. The other three in the group – Dan, Bill and Charlie – were dressed in the same way and all had their hair Brylcreemed back.
‘Same time next week, then,’ Hathaway said.
The landlord gave a faint smile.
‘Looking forward to it,’ he said.
Once they’d loaded the gear into the back of Charlie’s van, they went across the road to another pub, ordered halves and Hathaway divided out the money between the band members.
‘He’s a miserable sod that landlord,’ Hathaway said.
‘It must be something in the beer,’ Dan, the lead singer, said. ‘Everybody in the place looked like they were at a wake.’
‘Well, it is a Sunday and they were all ancient,’ Hathaway said. ‘Not one of them under thirty.’
‘What did that woman think she was doing asking if we could do any Frank Ifield?’ Dan said. ‘Do I look like I can yodel?’
‘Well,’ Hathaway said. ‘In those trousers…’
‘Bugger off,’ Dan said, taking a swipe at him. ‘Now if she’d meant yodelling in the canyon…’
‘Hark at him,’ Charlie, the drummer, said. He was a couple of years older than the others. He had his comb out, peeling his thick lick of greased hair straight back into a high pompadour.
‘Good gig, though,’ he said. ‘And you almost got the intro right on “Wonderful Land” tonight, Johnny.’
‘I’m getting there,’ Hathaway said. He watched Charlie patting his hair into place. The drummer saw him watching.
‘Learn from the master,’ he said.
Charlie Laker had been a Teddy boy since he was about thirteen. When not in his stage gear, he lived in a drape jacket and brothel creepers, and thought Duane Eddy was God and Gene Vincent sat at his right hand. He was a car mechanic but he rode a motorbike. The van was his father’s. Charlie gave Hathaway grief about the Vespa he scooted around on.
‘I’m thinking we might need to change our look,’ Hathaway said. ‘All these mop-tops in the charts.’
‘I am not having a bloody mop-top,’ Charlie said vehemently. ‘Those Liverpool queers can do what they like.’
‘It’s catching on,’ Hathaway said, and Dan and Bill, the rhythm guitarist, nodded.
‘Having girl’s hair or being a fairy?’ Charlie said. They all laughed.
‘We should be learning some of their songs, though,’ Bill said. ‘I’ve got that new Billy J. Kramer and the new Gerry and the Pacemakers. I can figure out the chords.’
Three out of four in the group could read music, but the simplest way to keep the act up-to-date was not to wait for the sheet music – which could be a long time coming – but to figure out the chords from listening to the singles again and again. That sometimes meant the lyrics weren’t exactly accurate.
‘Just something to think about,’ Hathaway said, standing.
‘Where are you off to?’ Dan said. ‘It’s your round.’
‘Got someone coming round the house,’ Hathaway said.
‘Oh hello,’ Dan said. ‘Whilst the cats are away. Want us to come back, help you with the cheese?’
‘I can manage, thanks.’
‘Who is she?’ Charlie said. ‘Do we know her?’
‘Not that fat girl who lives at the end of your street?’ Dan said.
‘Bugger off,’ Hathaway said. ‘See you Friday.’
‘Make sure you wear a johnny, Johnny,’ Dan called after him. ‘And for God’s sake don’t let her get on top of you or you’re done for.’
Hathaway ignored the calls as he went out into the street and climbed on his scooter. Barbara’s car was already in the drive when he got back to the house.
On Monday evening there were radio reports that the police had found the farmhouse where the Great Train Robbers had holed up. It was splashed all over Tuesday morning’s papers. Leatherslade farmhouse, somewhere in Oxfordshire. On Friday two men called Roger Cordrey and Bill Boal were arrested. Hathaway recognized Cordrey’s name. His dad knew him. He ran a flower shop in town.
That evening The Avalons were playing in a new pub on the edge of Hove. Hathaway had time to watch the new pop show, Ready Steady Go, and ogle its short-skirted presenter, Cathy McGowan, before he went off on his Vespa. He liked the theme tune, ‘5-4-3-2-1’.
The evening started well but quickly went downhill thanks to the six Teddy boys who were out for trouble. Even before they were three rounds of Newcastle Brown in, they’d been catcalling and jeering. They were sitting to the right of the stage, pinched faces, big rings on their fingers that would cut as they punched.
They’d been OK at first but then The Avalons always started with Gene Vincent and Roy Orbison. It was when they moved on to some of the Liverpool Sound songs that the Teds got uppity.
The pub was only half full. Hathaway looked over at the landlord but he was deep in conversation with someone sitting at the bar.
The first coins were thrown at Hathaway part-way through the group’s second Shadows’ cover, ‘Apache’.
‘Get yourself some guitar lessons,’ the biggest of the Teds called, and the others cackled.
The first bottle of Newcastle Brown hit Dan in the chest a few moments later. When the second hit Charlie’s bass drum, he was out from behind his kit and jumping off the shallow stage before any of the Teds had got to their feet.
As Charlie ploughed into them, Hathaway looked at Dan and Bill and pulled his Fe
nder Stratocaster over his head.
‘Bugger,’ he said, laying the guitar carefully down.
Hathaway had been in his share of scraps. His father had taught him the rudiments of boxing but he’d taken up judo when he was fourteen and moved up the grades pretty quickly.
The Ted who’d thrown the coins was out of his seat and heading straight for Hathaway. Hathaway knew exactly what to do. He was going to grab the man by his velvet lapels, nut him, then do a backward roll, plant his feet in his stomach and use his opponent’s weight to send him over his shoulders on to the floor behind him.
That was the theory. But when he grabbed the Ted’s lapels he felt something slice into his fingers. He let go and saw the blood a moment before the Ted nutted him. He managed to turn his head to avoid getting a broken nose but the man’s hard forehead hit him with a loud crack against his cheekbone and eye socket.
Dazed, Hathaway could do nothing as the man followed it up with a kick to the shin that indicated there was some kind of steel toecap inside his suede brothel creepers. The man grabbed Hathaway’s own lapels, pulled him towards him and nutted him again. This time the nose went. Hathaway keeled over.
Charlie had gone under in a welter of flailing fists and feet. Dan and Bill, neither of them scrappers, hadn’t even really got started. The smallest of the Teds had hit Dan on the side of the head with a bottle that, thankfully, didn’t smash. Bill had slumped to the floor after a kick between the legs.
They could do nothing as five of the Teddy boys wrecked their gear. The sixth, the smallest, stood over Hathaway. He was unbuttoning his fly when the big one pulled him away. He leaned over Hathaway, who was trying to breath through his mouth as blood poured down his throat.
‘Listen, Hank Marvin,’ he said. ‘If your dad ever comes home again, tell him this pub ain’t his anymore.’
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