Peter Guttridge - The Last King of Brighton

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.’

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.’