Peter Guttridge - The Last King of Brighton

The group was earning good money but not enough for the others to live on. Hathaway felt he was rolling in money because of the new salary he got from his father for picking up the pill take. It wasn’t exactly arduous work. He collected an envelope after a gig and dropped it through a night-box at one of his father’s town offices.

He called in at that office late one morning. It was in the Laines, on the first floor over a jeweller, sandwiched between an antiques shop and a Baptist chapel. The Bath Arms was opposite. The Avalons had played there once but the acoustics were dreadful.

A couple of men were listening to a transistor radio in an outer office. They recognized Hathaway and waved him through. His father was alone, staring out of the window, his feet up on a big safe in the corner of the room behind his desk.

‘Yes?’ he said, without turning.

‘Dad?’

Dennis Hathaway looked over his shoulder and dropped his feet to the floor.

‘John. A surprise.’

‘I was in the neighbourhood.’

‘I mean that you’re up – it’s not noon, yet.’

Dennis Hathaway smiled and waved at a low armchair in the corner of the room.

‘Doze in that.’

Hathaway sat and looked over the desk at his father.

‘And?’ his father said.

‘You sent Barbara away.’

His father started to swivel in his chair to face the window again.

‘Dad – I’m allowed to ask. I cared for her.’

‘John, I don’t care what wagtail you bumble. I just don’t want you doing it in your mother’s house.’

‘It wasn’t just that.’

‘But it was a mistake,’ his father said. ‘You don’t know anything about her.’

Not for want of trying.

‘You don’t know anything about me.’ Barbara had said that very thing once.

‘You don’t want to tell me anything.’

‘You don’t ask,’ she said.

‘I don’t like to intrude.’

Now, he said:

‘I know more than you think.’

His father snorted.

‘You know her husband is in jail?’

‘That doesn’t matter.’

‘It will when he gets out. You think she cares for you?’

‘I know she cares for me.’

‘She’s scared of you,’ Hathaway’s father said.

‘Scared of me? Me? That’s ridiculous.’

‘OK, strictly speaking, she’s scared of me. As she should be. She disobeyed orders.’

‘Orders?’

Dennis Hathaway laughed.

‘I know you’re a good-looking boy and you think you’re a little Casanova, but she didn’t just fall into you arms that first time.’

Hathaway flushed.

‘She was my birthday present to you.’

Hathaway sat back. His mouth dropped open. Dennis Hathaway spread his hands.

‘But that was meant to be the end of it. It wasn’t supposed to carry on. She went against my orders.’

Hathaway’s thoughts were scattered.

‘Why would she do that?’ he finally said.

‘Because she’s an idiot and didn’t believe I would punish her.’

‘I mean, why would she agree to sleep with me for my birthday?’

‘Because I told her to. I knew you fancied her. I saw you gawking at her every time you came in the office.’

Hathaway looked at his father’s hard face. He believed him.

‘You mean she’s a-?’

‘No, I don’t mean that.’

‘But you have that kind of power over people?’

Dennis Hathaway nodded.

‘Oh yes,’ he said.

Hathaway looked down at his sun-freckled hands.

‘So when she carried on seeing me, she was disobeying you because she liked me.’

‘I told you. The way she explained it to me, she was afraid of what you would do, or what you would say to me, if she stopped seeing you.’

Hathaway clenched his fists.

‘That doesn’t make sense. Where is she now?’

‘She’s working abroad.’

‘That’s her punishment?’

Hathaway’s father tilted his head.

‘Oh yes,’ he repeated.

Hathaway thought some more. A look sometimes on Barbara’s face. The sorrow he’d noticed that first time. He was surprised at how quickly he could assimilate it. He looked at his father.

‘Are you a gangster? Like the twins? Do you run Brighton?’

Dennis Hathaway shook his head.

‘The council runs the town.’

‘I mean illegal stuff.’

‘Crime? I’ll tell you who runs the crime in Brighton. The police.’

Hathaway smiled uncertainly.

‘I’m serious. Charlie Ridge, the previous chief constable, was utterly corrupt. Scotland Yard came down and made all our lives a misery. They arrested him, two of his CID officers and two members of the public. Tried to throw the book at them. Living off immoral earnings, taking bribes, running backstreet abortions, protection racketeering, robberies. He’d only been chief constable for a year but he’d been around Brighton for over thirty. God knows for how many of those years he’d had his nose in the trough. The charges only went back to right before he was made detective chief inspector in 1949.’

‘What happened?’

‘Ridge was acquitted, though the judge pretty much said he thought he was guilty. Said that unless there was a new chief constable, no court in future would be able to believe the evidence of the Brighton police. His CID men and one of the civilians were found guilty. Ridge got fired the next day but now he’s suing the police authority for unfair dismissal as he wasn’t found guilty of anything. And he wants his pension.’

‘Was he crooked?’

‘Of course. We paid him off same as everybody else. You had to or he’d close you down. As it was, as long as you paid, the police turned a blind eye unless you were really taking the Michael.’

‘And now?’

‘Well, thanks to Ridge they’ve got rid of Brighton police as an independent entity and are setting up Southern Police with its new chief constable, Philip Simpson.’

‘The man I met at New Year with Victor Tempest?’

‘The very man. And it’s business as usual. Now we’re paying him off. No coincidence that Simpson and Ridge both worked their way through the ranks in Brighton from the thirties onward.’

‘So the head of the police is also the king of crime in Brighton. What does that make you, Dad?’

‘I’m a prince of the city, son, just a prince of the city. And happy to be so. Kings have a bad habit of getting their heads lopped off.’

Hathaway’s mind was racing. Personally, he was thinking, I would want to be king.

The Saint was on the television but Hathaway wasn’t really watching. He had a glass of beer in front of him but he wasn’t really drinking. His mother had gone to bingo and his father was down on the West Pier. His mum had left one of her Jean Plaidys on the coffee table and he was idly flicking through it, thinking hard about his father and his father’s businesses. How criminal were they?

He’d asked his dad if he could find work for Charlie Laker. Charlie was with his father and Reilly now, discussing it.

He was also thinking about Barbara. He missed her but mostly he was thinking that she came to him unwillingly. Every time they’d had sex, she’d been doing it under duress. It was messing him up.

He’d liked to watch her dress, though he had to do it covertly as he made her self-conscious. When she pulled on her stockings and clipped them to her garter belt he usually wanted her again, despite her protests.

Now he thought how terrible it was that she did it out of fear. That those protests were probably genuine.

‘Johnny, I hope you’re not up to no good.’

Hathaway glanced at Charlie and Bill who looked at the ground.

‘Mum.’

‘Your dad tells me you’re doing a bit of work for him.’

Hathaway loved his mother but she was away with the fairies.