Reilly quietly observed them from the window.
‘Whoever did do it was pretty clever with the clown disguise. No way of being recognized.’
‘Must have been sweating like pigs, though,’ Dennis Hathaway said. ‘The wigs and the greasepaint.’
‘We have to hope for their sake they were careful about where they got the clown outfits from. Not to mention the guns.’
‘You’re right there, Sean.’ Dennis Hathaway scrutinized his son and Charlie. ‘If you two were doing it, for instance. Not that you would have been since I specifically told you to forget any idea of offing the Boroni Brothers. But, for the sake of argument, if you were, where would you have got the costumes?’
‘And the guns,’ Reilly said.
‘Thanks, Sean,’ Dennis Hathaway said. ‘And the guns.’
Charlie cleared his throat.
‘The guns you’d get up London, I expect. Round Fulham way, maybe? Stand-up friends of Jimmy White?’
‘Jimmy White,’ Dennis Hathaway said. ‘Poor sod. Gives himself up because he’s been bled dry on the run and he hopes to get a deal. Bastards give him eighteen years. And another Great Train Robber bites the dust.’
‘Buster and Bruce are still out there,’ Reilly said.
‘Do you know where?’ Hathaway spoke for the first time.
‘Mexico, I heard.’
‘They’ll be running through their money too,’ Dennis Hathaway said. ‘And the clown costumes?’
‘Buy them outright, mix and match them.’ Charlie shrugged. ‘Not a problem.’
‘And disposal after?’ Reilly said.
‘Dad always says that’s why God created the sea,’ Hathaway said. ‘It keeps its secrets.’
Dennis Hathaway chuckled.
‘Fucking dressing up as clowns. Chasing them along the pier. Wish I could have seen that. Fucking hilarious.’ He turned to Reilly. ‘Where are we on that thin-faced cunt, Potts?’
‘I’ve put the word out.’
Dennis Hathaway nodded and turned back to the lads.
‘OK, you pair of pistols, I’ve got stuff to show you.’
Dennis Hathaway pointed down at the motorboat dipping in the water in West Pier dock.
‘Handy little craft that. Takes about four hours to get to France. You know that Mr Wilson, in his infinite wisdom, has put a limit on how much money you can take out of the country with you? It’s your money but he doesn’t want you spending it abroad. That limit is fifty pounds, which, frankly, wouldn’t keep Johnny’s mother in Campari and sodas for a weekend, never mind a fortnight’s holiday in Ibiza.’
He indicated the boat again.
‘So we shift money in that. And then bring diamonds back in. There’s a couple of shops in the Laines we’ve got an arrangement with.’
‘How often do you do the crossing?’ Hathaway said.
‘Every week. We vary the days and the times of departure, and sometimes we meet a fishing boat from France in the middle and do the swap there. But that can be a bit hairy if the sea is rough. A couple of times we’ve just offloaded stuff on the beach here.’
‘And the customs don’t suspect?’
‘The customs have their work cut out at the airports and Newhaven. They can’t control hundreds of miles of coastline. Doing it on the beach here is a good wheeze, because there’s so much else going on it’s just like hiding in plain sight.’
Hathaway looked down at the motorboat, polished and varnished. He glanced at Charlie.
‘So you want one of us to look after the operation?’
His father nodded.
‘Not me,’ Charlie said. ‘Thanks very much, Mr H., but I get seasick.’
‘I’ll do it,’ Hathaway said.
That evening The Avalons were playing in the Snowdrop in Lewes. All except Charlie crammed into Hathaway’s Austin Healey. Charlie preferred his bike. Hathaway said little as he drove. He was still trying to come to terms with what he and Charlie had done. Well, Charlie really. Charlie had insisted they should just go ahead and kill the Boronis, even though his dad had rejected the idea. He had got the guns. He had got the clown costumes. He had shot them both.
Hathaway knew he had his own dark places, places he kept hidden from everyone, but he had been shocked – and a little frightened – by how eagerly Charlie had taken to killing. He now believed Charlie capable of anything.
The lads were blabbing in the car but he only half-listened. He liked playing with the group but the real juice was his day job. He was looking forward to his first trip to Dieppe.
He looked up at a footbridge that crossed the road. Cows were walking in procession across it, silhouetted against the blue sky.
‘Wow, look at that,’ Dan said, laughing. ‘Surreal.’
‘That’s why I don’t want a convertible,’ Billy said, scrunching down in his seat. ‘One of them falls on you, you’re screwed.’
Dan gave him a look.
‘What? You think a cow is going to fall on you?’
They all sniggered.
‘Not just a cow,’ Billy said.
‘You mean a cow and something else? A giraffe maybe?’
‘I didn’t mean that—’
Hathaway laughed along but tuned out. Thinking about his dark places.
After the gig – which represented the first outing for Bill’s newly bought sitar – they sat around over a drink and Hathaway realized how distant he and Charlie now were from the other group members. Bill and Dan, in particular, were getting even deeper into music. Alan, the drug-dealing roadie, sat quietly, a reminder to Hathaway of the way the group straddled his two lives.
‘Folk music is really taking off,’ Billy was saying.
‘Folk music?’ Charlie said, incredulous. He pointed at his hair. ‘Bad enough I’m looking like a Liverpool pooftah. Now you want me to turn into Peter, Paul and bloody Mary?’
‘Actually, it’s worse than that,’ Dan said, laughing. ‘These folk groups don’t even have drummers.’
Everybody laughed but Charlie looked thunderous.
‘What – you’re trying to dump me?’
‘No!’ Billy said. ‘But we’ve got to look at what’s going on. Dylan. Simon and Garfunkel. Their new album is beautiful. There’s a couple of songs we could cover—’
‘Beautiful?’ Charlie snorted. ‘Since when was rock music beautiful? We get people dancing; we don’t do beautiful.’
‘Beautiful gets the girls,’ Dan said.
‘I don’t have any problem getting the girls,’ Charlie said.
Hathaway glanced at him.
‘We’ve got to move with the times,’ he said after a beat.
‘Which are a’changing,’ Dan and Billy said together, then laughed.
‘Sound of Silence’ came up on the jukebox.
‘I love this Simon and Garfunkel song,’ Billy said.
Charlie scowled.
‘I don’t like any of that sentence.’
‘No, really. This is a great, great track. We could do three or four songs from the new album. “I Am A Rock”—’
‘No way am I doing Simon and Garfunkel,’ Charlie said, fishing out a packet of cigarettes from his pocket.
‘We need to be writing our own stuff like Paul Simon does,’ Dan said. ‘That’s where the money is.’
‘So who’s our writer?’ Hathaway said. ‘Cos it isn’t me.’
‘I’ve been working on a couple of things,’ Billy said. ‘Wondered if we might give them a try.’
They all reared back in their seats to look at him.
‘Dark horse,’ Charlie said.
‘Crazy horse,’ Hathaway said.
Hathaway met Charlie by chance in a new club in the Laines a couple of days later. Charlie had definitely started feeling his oats. The drugs were making him even more aggressive. Charlie was with a new girlfriend called Laura. Hathaway was in a booth with a girl from the pier. It was busy but there was one stool free at the bar. As Laura started to sit on it, her miniskirt ri
ding high, the man at the next stool looked down at her thighs.
‘Seat’s taken,’ he said, continuing to look at her legs.
Charlie hauled him off his stool.
‘Yours is free, though, right?’ he said before he left him sprawling on the ground.
The man looked up at Charlie.
‘Piss off out of here,’ Charlie said.
‘I’ll be right back,’ Hathaway said. He made sure Charlie could see him approach in the mirror behind the bar.
‘Happy as Larry, boys and girls?’
Laura was staring straight ahead and Charlie had both hands round his beer glass. His pupils were enormous.
‘Johnny boy, what a delightful surprise.’
Hathaway caught the barman’s eye. The barman hadn’t intervened but he was looking sour. Hathaway could see he was wondering whether to call the police. He palmed a tenner and slid it across the bar. The barman took it, nodded and moved away.
‘Dad wants us to get into pop management,’ Hathaway said. ‘Reckons there’s big money there.’
‘Whatever,’ Charlie said, staring at his reflection in the mirror.
Hathaway did a drum roll on the bar.
‘Great.’
Charlie took to managing groups like he’d been born for it. He signed up about two dozen local groups straight off. Brought an edge to his management work. Dangled a big London wheeler-dealer out of a fourth-floor window by his feet when he tried to steal one of his acts. He stubbed a lighted cigar into the forehead of another rival.
‘Fuck, Charlie,’ Hathaway said.
‘People I scare are going to have to look over their shoulders for the rest of their lives,’ Charlie said.
Dennis Hathaway was impressed. At the end of the pier he reminisced.
‘There’s this one guy I know. He was born in Manchester back in 1926. His dad made raincoats. Age fourteen, in the war, he sang in his local synagogue and tried doing a comedy turn. He was rubbish. Sat out the war – mysterious illness that kept him in hospital until the day the war ended, then miraculous recovery – and then became an impressionist – Jimmy Cagney and all that. He actually did the London Palladium. Max Miller said he stank. Maybe he realized it. Anyway, he turned to management, promotions. Worked out of his local phone box.
‘We’ve had dealings with him. Has his Rolls Royce and his flash jewellery. Manages the Small Faces. Pays off Radio Caroline to play the music from his acts. Pays the Small Faces a salary and gives them a London house, a Jag and driver, and all the clothes they want. No real money, though.’
He looked at Charlie.
‘So far as I’m aware he doesn’t commit arson, though.’
Charlie looked levelly back from behind his sunglasses. Hathaway frowned.
‘Arson?’
‘As I understand it, when a certain record company didn’t want to release one of Charlie’s new groups from its existing contract, its office was burned down.’
‘All I know,’ Charlie drawled, ‘is that the group was released from its contract two days later.’
‘And the accountant?’ Reilly said.
Charlie held out his hands, palms up.
‘I wanted to make sure he never had a child. So I got my tools out and battered his penis. I could have battered his head but I didn’t. I just wanted our fucking money.’
‘What?’ Hathaway said, both repelled and fascinated.
‘Charlie here was using an accountant he thought had cheated us,’ Reilly said. ‘He grabbed him at home, took him somewhere – not sure where, Charlie – and went to work on him.’
Dennis Hathaway was watching Charlie with a mixture of fascination and respect. Hathaway’s main emotion was fear.
EIGHT
Season of the Witch
1967
‘Since when did you join the Grenadier fucking Guards?’
Dennis Hathaway was in his shirt sleeves on the boat. He peered at his son’s red Victorian uniform, then at the medals on his son’s breast.
‘And it looks like you’ve had a busy war.’
‘I got it in Carnaby Street,’ Hathaway said.
‘The medals? Fighting tourists?’
‘The whole thing.’
Hathaway and Charlie had gone up to Carnaby Street in the summer sunshine. They smoked dope on the train. They wandered London in a daze – dazed by the cannabis, dazed by the life there. Carnaby Street was buzzing, ‘Sergeant Pepper’ pumping out of every shop, incense and marijuana in the air, the pavements crowded with dolly birds and hipsters.
‘This is it,’ Charlie said. ‘The centre of the fucking universe.’
‘I thought that was Worthing,’ Hathaway said.
‘You look a twat,’ Dennis Hathaway said now. ‘You know that?’
Dennis Hathaway was peering at his son, screwing up his eyes against the sun. There was a splash of white on his forehead. Suntan lotion he hadn’t rubbed in properly. The sun flickered on the water behind him.
‘It’s the fashion, Dad,’ Hathaway said, still a little stoned from his breakfast joint.
‘To look a twat? And what are those things on your feet?’
‘Plimsolls.’
‘Very useful on route marches.’
‘Handy for boats, though.’ He swung himself out on the ladder. ‘Coming aboard, Cap’n Birdseye.’
Dennis Hathaway came up close to him once he was on deck.
‘I’m worried about you, son. I hope you’re not using our own bloody product.’
‘You know I’m not.’
Hathaway sniffed.
‘Well, you’re smelling of something illegal.’
‘That’s patchouli, Dad.’
‘Patchouli? What the fuck is patchouli.’
‘Elaine got it for me.’
Dennis Hathaway tilted his head as if listening for something.
‘Elaine? New one on me. She’s your latest quim, is she?’
‘She’s special, Dad.’
‘Is she, Sergeant Pratt? Is she? I’ve got some news for you. Come below.’
Reilly was sitting behind the small table in the cabin of the boat. He blinked when he saw Hathaway.
‘John hasn’t got long for this meeting, Sean,’ Dennis Hathaway said. ‘He’s off to fight the Zulus.’
Dennis and his son both sat down at the small table.
‘We got a problem in Milldean,’ Dennis Hathaway said. ‘Gerald Cuthbert is trying it on. The twins pushing him, of course. Not only that, he’s trying to muscle in on some of our other business further west. He knows Worthing is ours but he’s had his lads down there.’
‘I haven’t noticed anything,’ Hathaway said, frowning. ‘I would have seen.’
‘That’s what I would have hoped,’ his father said quietly. ‘But when were you last in Worthing?’
‘Of my own volition?’
‘You don’t need to say any more. Charlie looks after it, doesn’t he?’
‘He does.’
Hathaway saw his father and Reilly exchange a glance.
‘Right, we’ll have a word with him,’ Dennis said.
‘I can do that—’
‘He’s your friend.’
‘I can do that.’
After a moment his father nodded.
‘What about Cuthbert?’ Hathaway said.
Reilly coughed.
‘We’ll take care of him.’
‘Are we done, then?’ Hathaway said.
‘Not yet. The chief constable has summoned us to a meeting.’
‘What kind of meeting?’
‘The it-never-happened kind. On the Palace Pier. Next week. He wants peace and harmony in the town.’
‘Is that what we want?’ Hathaway said.
His father rubbed his cheek.
‘Once we run it, sure.’
Hathaway had met Elaine at a poetry reading in The Ship. It was part of the first Brighton Arts Festival. Yehudi Menuhin was playing his violin. Flora Robson was in A Man For All Seasons at the Theat
re Royal. Pink Floyd were performing in the West Pier ballroom. And there was poetry. Concrete Poetry, whatever that was. And The Scaffold with Paul McCartney’s brother. Billy was keen to see them. Charlie opted out but the rest of The Avalons went along because of The Beatles connection.
It took place in an oak-panelled old room at the rear of The Ship. There were no chairs. Everybody sat on the floor. Even with cushions scattered around it was uncomfortable. Hathaway became aware of a girl sitting just behind him and not just because of the exotic perfume that wafted over him.
‘Am I in your way?’ he said, half-turning, trying not to look up her skirt. She had good legs and an impish smile.
‘What is my way?’
He blushed.
‘I mean, can you see?’
‘You? Perfectly. What about you? Have you seen enough?’
She had seen his eyes flick down between her legs.
‘Not nearly enough,’ he said.
She stayed with him that night but at dawn insisted on walking barefoot on the beach. On sand, Hathaway could understand. But Brighton was all pebbles and stones. He grimaced at every step.
She was doing American Studies at Sussex. She sprang unfamiliar names on him. Bellow and Updike, and people she called ‘the hipsters’: Kerouac, Burroughs, Tom Robbins, Thomas Pynchon. A man called Noam Chomsky featured at the heavy end of discussions. Hathaway was out of his depth but she didn’t patronize and he was interested in the things she said.
They saw each other every night for a week. She had a fierce appetite. He didn’t know what she saw in him, although he knew he was OK at sex, thanks to Barbara long ago. He thought it was perhaps also a class thing. She was middle class. She liked roughing it. She called him Mellors once, then laughed. He didn’t get it at the time.
On the first night he’d asked her what her heady perfume was.
‘Patchouli.’
‘What’s patchouli?’
‘A musk-based perfume. Perfumes are either musk or flower-based. Musk smells of shit, essentially.’
‘Lovely.’
‘James Joyce was a bicycle-seat sniffer, you know.’
‘I’ll take your word for that,’ Hathaway said, not knowing who James Joyce was.
‘Musk and ambergris are low-down dirty smells, hence the link with excrement. Then, during the eighteenth century, when aristocratic women had to pretend to be modest, perfume makers developed sweeter floral scents. Then it changed again during the French Revolution. Am I boring you?’
The Last King of Brighton Page 11
