The Last King of Brighton

by Peter Guttridge

  Nobody was taking any notice of Hathaway. He was aware of screams and crashes in the amusement arcade next door. He clutched the stave like a kendo stick, his hands body-width apart, and went for the men attacking his father.

  He hit one of the men from behind in the angle of shoulder and neck with a downward swing, then brought the other end of the stave up to clip him just behind the angle of the jaw.

  The attacker fell against the man next to him. Then a third turned from his father, swinging a stave above his head. Hathaway slid his stave through his hands, extended it in his right and thrust hard into the man’s solar plexus. The man doubled up, and Hathaway brought the stave down again between neck and shoulder.

  Hathaway heard a commotion, then a gun went off – so loud his hearing immediately went. Tommy was in the doorway, a rifle pointed at the ceiling. Two amusement arcade workers, also armed, flanked him. Everyone froze except Charlie, who was beating the bejesus out of a man curled up on the floor. Reilly grabbed him from behind and Charlie swung round, snarling.

  ‘He’s had enough, Charlie,’ Reilly said. ‘Charlie. Enough.’

  Charlie slowly nodded, his breath ragged. Reilly gave a little salute to Hathaway. Dennis Hathaway kicked the man his son had knocked to the floor.

  ‘Right, get these guys tied to chairs in the back room.’ He leaned down whilst kicking the man again. ‘You’ve got some explaining to do or you won’t get any tea.’

  ‘Somehow,’ muttered Reilly to Hathaway, ‘I don’t think tea is on the cards anyway.’

  By the time Sergeant Finch turned up with half a dozen beat coppers, the amusement arcade had been put back together. A few machines had been smashed, a lot of glass needed sweeping up.

  Finch looked around, then at Dennis Hathaway. Sniffed the air.

  ‘Love that sea smell. Heard there was trouble up this end of the pier. Report of gunfire.’

  ‘Few tearaways messing about. We sorted them.’

  ‘Where are they now?’ Finch said.

  Dennis Hathaway shrugged.

  ‘Gone for a swim, I think.’

  The dozen or so men who’d invaded the pier had all been thrown over the side after Dennis Hathaway had done questioning them.

  ‘Can they swim?’ Finch said.

  Dennis Hathaway sucked his teeth.

  ‘Most of them.’

  Finch took off his helmet and wiped the inside with a handkerchief.

  ‘And the gunfire?’

  ‘I run a rifle range, Finchie; even you must have noticed that.’

  Finch tilted his head.

  ‘You should be more careful shaving, Dennis.’

  ‘How’s that?’

  Finch pointed at Dennis Hathaway’s shirt. It was streaked with blood. Dennis Hathaway grunted.

  ‘And they call them safety razors.’

  Finch put his helmet back on.

  ‘OK, then. The chief constable might want a word about this. He likes a happy town; you know that.’

  ‘We’re happy,’ Dennis Hathaway said. ‘We’re very happy.’

  Finch gave a small smile.

  ‘Be seeing you, Dennis.’

  ‘Grab yourself a candy floss on the way out. All of you. On the house.’

  Hathaway and Charlie cracked up when that was exactly what they did. Seven plods in crumpled shirts and white helmets, and a pile of gear hanging off their belts, waddling down the pier with pink candy floss stuck to their chops.

  Dennis Hathaway looked at Reilly, his son and Charlie.

  ‘Right, we got some planning to do. Reilly, let’s go to your place.’

  Hathaway was driving an Austin Healey these days. Charlie still preferred his motorbike but left it on the pier and took a lift with his friend. They didn’t speak at first.

  Things had been strained between them ever since Dawn’s pregnancy. The day after Dawn had told Hathaway about Charlie, he’d gone to confront the drummer. He’d tracked him down in a coffee bar under the arches near the Palace Pier.

  ‘What the fuck have you been playing at?’ he said, standing over Charlie.

  Charlie indicated the seat opposite him and blew into his coffee.

  ‘This is the café where Tony Mancini worked as a bouncer back in the thirties. The Trunk Murderer?’

  ‘I know who Tony Mancini was. What’s that got to do with you putting my sister up the duff?’

  ‘Sit down, Johnny, for God’s sake. You’re looking a right prat.’

  Charlie saw Hathaway’s fists clench.

  ‘Johnny, think carefully about what you do next. If you start something, it won’t stop. You know that about me. I don’t stop.’

  Hathaway had dragged Charlie off enough people to know that was true. He slumped down in the seat opposite Charlie.

  ‘I’m sorry about what happened with Dawn. It was just boy and girl stuff. I didn’t take advantage of her. I like her.’

  ‘So you’re going to marry her?’

  ‘Fuck sake, Johnny, I’m not the marrying kind.’

  ‘My dad expects you to marry her.’

  ‘Does he know it’s me?’

  Hathaway shook his head.

  ‘Not yet.’

  ‘I think she should get rid of it,’ Charlie said.

  Hathaway thrust his head forward.

  ‘You want my sister to go through an abortion? You scum.’

  Charlie watched Hathaway’s expression.

  ‘I bet that’s what your dad wants too.’

  ‘What about what Dawn wants?’

  ‘Well, she can’t want me as a husband if she’s got any sense.’

  Hathaway leaned back.

  ‘Well, she obviously hasn’t got any sense to be with you in the first place.’

  They both looked at the table. Charlie blew on his coffee.

  ‘Did you do it just to spite me?’ Hathaway said.

  Charlie looked puzzled.

  ‘Why would I want to spite you? We’re mates, aren’t we?’

  Hathaway looked at him, then away.

  ‘Aren’t we?’

  ‘Yeah,’ Hathaway said. ‘Forget I said that.’

  Under pressure from her father and Charlie, Dawn had the abortion in Hove. Hathaway took her to a posh house in a Regency terrace. The doctor was Egyptian and elderly. Dawn had seen Alfie and was terrified the abortion was going to be a coat-hanger job like in the film, but Dr Massiah’s rooms were spick and span. Despite his age, Massiah obviously knew what he was doing.

  Dawn was living back at home now. She’d given up her secretarial course. She stayed at home most of the time, her mother fluttering around her. She wept a lot.

  Hathaway looked across at Charlie as they drove along the seafront.

  ‘Dawn talking to you yet?’

  Charlie shook his head.

  ‘Probably as well. Your dad would go apeshit again.’

  Hathaway could never predict how his father was going to react to things. He’d given Charlie a beating – broke a couple of his ribs and two fingers – then had accepted him back as part of the gang as if nothing had happened. Charlie’s thing with Dawn was never mentioned again.

  Reilly lived in Portslade on the top floor of a newly built block of flats. He had a five-room apartment with a wide balcony looking out to sea. They all sat on the balcony, a bottle of Irish whiskey and bottled beer on a table in front of them. Reilly had put a record on. Jazz.

  Charlie gestured at the view.

  ‘Very nice, Mr Reilly. Very nice.’

  ‘Sean. Thanks, Charlie.’ A motorbike roared by on the road below and the sound of its engine ricocheted round the balcony. ‘Acoustics could be better.’

  ‘Who’s this playing trumpet?’ Hathaway said.

  ‘I don’t know but let me pay him to have some lessons,’ Dennis Hathaway said, his tumbler of whiskey clamped in his massive fist. ‘Jesus.’

  ‘Miles Davis. He’s playing modally, Dennis.’

  ‘That right? You and your highfalutin tastes, Sean.’
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br />   Reilly looked at the sun hanging above the horizon.

  ‘Whenever that sun goes down I think of King Arthur, wounded, heading off to Avalon. The Once and Future King.’

  ‘And whenever I think of Avalon and The Avalons,’ Hathaway said, ‘I think of your furniture.’

  Reilly grinned.

  ‘Still a good name for a group.’

  Hathaway looked from his father to Reilly.

  ‘How long have you two known each other?’

  ‘We were at school together. Brentfoot Primary and up through junior school. Then Sean’s family went back to Ireland and we went our separate ways.’

  Dennis Hathaway reached over and lightly punched Reilly’s arm.

  ‘Sean here gave me a right walloping once. You wouldn’t have thought it to look it him but he was hard. Always been hard. That’s how he got in the commandos and I ended up as quartermaster.’

  ‘That’s cos I was stupid and you had brains,’ Reilly said to Dennis Hathaway. ‘That’s why I work for you, not the other way round.’ He saw Dennis Hathaway’s look and raised his hands. ‘OK, OK – I know we’re partners.’

  ‘Damn right.’

  ‘You were a commando?’ Charlie said.

  Reilly nodded.

  ‘Where?’

  ‘Crete and other Greek islands. Normandy. Italy.’

  ‘Did you kill people?’ Charlie asked. Dennis Hathaway and Reilly both looked at him and he shifted in his seat.

  ‘That was the general idea,’ Reilly said.

  Charlie looked at Dennis Hathaway.

  ‘Did you, Mr Hathaway?’

  Dennis took a swig of his whiskey.

  ‘Only anybody who crossed me.’

  He looked at the others.

  ‘We’ve got more legit business coming up. We’re investing in the future of this town. Moving the money that we’ve earned in the black economy into the mainstream.’

  Charlie had an odd expression on his face.

  ‘Am I boring you, Charlie?’

  ‘No, Mr Hathaway, not at all.’

  ‘Only?’

  He grinned.

  ‘I quite like the illegal stuff.’

  ‘The Churchill Square thing is going well,’ Reilly said. ‘We’re renting them the diggers and demolition stuff, and only our men are working on it.’

  ‘How much is it worth?’ Charlie said.

  ‘By the end of it?’ Reilly shrugged. ‘A quarter of a million.’

  ‘With delays?’ Hathaway said. ‘I presume we hold them to ransom.’

  ‘Never get too greedy,’ his father said. ‘It causes complications.’

  ‘We can probably squeeze another fifty thousand out of them,’ Reilly said. ‘But we’re pushing them pretty hard as it is.’

  ‘Fuck ’em,’ Dennis Hathaway said. ‘If they want to bugger up my Brighton, let ’em pay.’ He glanced at Reilly. ‘Sean, you should show the lads your World War Two memorabilia.’ He looked at his son. ‘He’s got quite a collection. Show them, Sean.’

  Reilly raised his eyes but picked up his glass and led Hathaway and Charlie back into the apartment, and into a small room down the corridor. It had a wall of windows looking out to sea. The other walls were lined floor to ceiling with books.

  ‘Didn’t know you were such a reader, Mr Reilly,’ Hathaway said.

  ‘I was at Trinity before the war.’

  ‘Is that Cambridge?’

  ‘Dublin, you oik.’ Reilly walked over to a cabinet and switched a light on inside it. Charlie and Hathaway looked down at a collection of guns, daggers and medals. Charlie pointed at a gun.

  ‘That’s a Luger,’ Reilly said.

  ‘How did you get it?’ Charlie said.

  ‘Its owner had no further use for it.’ Reilly pointed. ‘That’s a Webley. My gun of choice.’

  ‘That’s an SS dagger, isn’t it?’ Charlie said. ‘How—?’

  Reilly stopped the question with a look.

  ‘Lot of medals, Sean,’ Hathaway said. ‘All yours?’

  Reilly nodded.

  ‘Don’t be fooled by medals. Most of them are given just for showing up.’

  ‘What exactly did you do in the war?’ Charlie said.

  ‘I killed people, laddie,’ Reilly said. ‘Up close and personal.’

  He pointed to a dull bladed knife.

  ‘Usually with that.’ He held up his hands. ‘Sometimes with these.’ He pointed again. ‘Often with that Webley. And just occasionally with one of those.’

  He indicated a hand grenade in the corner of the cabinet.

  ‘Is that live?’ Charlie said.

  Reilly nodded.

  ‘But it’s OK as long as that pin is in.’

  He led them back to Dennis Hathaway.

  ‘Impressed?’ Dennis said.

  Both young men nodded.

  ‘Nobody messed with Sean back then. For that matter, nobody messes with him now, if they’ve got any sense.’

  ‘Those blokes earlier on the pier didn’t have much sense, then,’ Hathaway said.

  Dennis Hathaway leaned forward and put his glass down.

  ‘Let’s get to that. The Borloni Brothers were behind it, as you’ve guessed, and that thin-faced creep, Potts, put the gang together.’

  Hathaway had a flash back to a Bank Holiday Monday on the Palace Pier when he’d seen Potts seething with hate as he watched Sean Reilly depart.

  ‘But they were encouraged by the twins,’ Dennis Hathaway continued, ‘Now, I don’t want to take the twins on directly, despite what they did to Freddie, but I do want to end this stuff in Brighton.’

  ‘What about the chief constable?’ Charlie said. ‘Isn’t that what he’s here for?’

  Dennis Hathaway’s look lingered on Charlie. Charlie looked down. Not forgiven, then.

  ‘He’s finished. Digging himself a big hole that he’s going to fall into sometime soon.’

  ‘But he can come down hard on us,’ Hathaway said.

  ‘Can he?’ Dennis Hathaway chuckled. ‘We have Philip Simpson by the short and curlies. Remember that time a couple of years ago he came to the pier office and we talked about his destroying files to do with the Brighton Trunk Murder – the unsolved one?’

  Hathaway and Charlie both nodded, Charlie lighting up a fag at the same time.

  ‘Well, a lot of them survived, thanks to a quiet word with Sergeant Finch.’ Dennis Hathaway gestured at Reilly. ‘Meet Mr Reilly, archivist of this parish pertaining to the Brighton Trunk Murders.’

  Reilly ducked his head and gave a mock salute.

  ‘So Philip Simpson was the Brighton Trunk Murderer?’ Hathaway said.

  His father grimaced.

  ‘You daft sod. Of course not. But there are witness statements in the files that put him in a very bad light. Not directly about the murder, but about corruption in the police force. Him and his mate Victor Tempest – two corrupt cops among many.’ He gave Charlie a cold look. ‘Particularly statements from a certain high society abortionist based in Hove. One Dr Say Massiah.’

  Hathaway recognized the name. The elderly Egyptian who took care of Dawn.

  ‘Who has been kind enough to write down his reminiscences of those golden days,’ Reilly said, ‘before he retires to the West Indies.’

  Charlie looked uncomfortable.

  ‘And the Borloni Brothers? We kill them?’

  Reilly and Dennis Hathaway exchanged glances.

  ‘This “we” being who, exactly?’ Reilly said.

  Charlie exhaled cigarette smoke and glanced over at Hathaway.

  ‘Me and John. About time we got blooded. Right, Johnny?’

  Hathaway and Charlie were running at full pelt along the Palace Pier, their feet thudding heavily on the wet timber. Hathaway was grimly determined, Charlie spurred on by rage. Charlie was ahead. They zig-zagged between punters who had already been scattered by the two men they were pursuing.

  What a fucking cock-up. As he ran, Hathaway was listening to the loudspeakers strung out
along the length of the pier. They were transmitting the commentary on the World Cup final. He wanted to shoot somebody when he heard Helmut Haller put West Germany in the lead some twelve minutes into the game. He had the gun to do it.

  A collision with a gaggle of giggling girls eating candy floss threw Hathaway out. Charlie swerved by them as West Germany took possession again. He was waving his gun around. The girls screamed.

  Hathaway righted himself and saw the Boroni Brothers disappear into the covered Palace of Pleasure. Charlie, only twenty yards behind them, was running like his life depended on it. The collision with the girls had winded Hathaway and now he could only trot round the side of the Palace of Pleasure. He flattened himself against its wooden wall as he saw the Boronis come out of a side entrance.

  They darted looks around, then dashed over to the Ghost Train. They scrambled on to the last carriage as it started off. The doors to the shed clanked open and the carriage jerked through.

  Charlie found Hathaway.

  ‘We’ve got to get in there. There’s a back entrance.’

  Charlie and Hathaway hurried round the back of the large shed. A metal door swung open easily. They slipped inside.

  It was dark and noisy. Amplified cackles and shrieks and roars. Flashes of light as gruesome figures were illuminated.

  Charlie and Hathaway waited for the train to clatter closer.

  ‘See you on the other side,’ Charlie shouted as he flitted away.

  Hathaway was standing beside a Dracula who raised his cape and roared as the ghost train approached. Hathaway heard the screams from the passengers. There were two flashes, then two more. Screams again. Hathaway tightened his grip on the gun in his pocket. He stood for a moment then turned away.

  Back outside, Charlie and Hathaway forced themselves to go slowly, hands clamped over the guns in their pockets. Hathaway glanced at Charlie’s expressionless face. Charlie stopped and looked up at one of the loudspeakers. He grinned. Geoff Hurst had equalized.

  ‘Bizarre killing of Pier owners. Pursued by clowns then shot to death in Ghost Train.’

  Dennis Hathaway threw the newspaper down on his desk and looked at Hathaway and Charlie.

  ‘Only clowns I know are you two. Anything you want to tell me?’

  They shook their heads.

  ‘You were at home watching Geoff Hurst score his hat-trick, I expect.’

  ‘Charlie was round at mine. Few beers. They think it’s all over . . . well, it is now.’