Peter Guttridge - The Last King of Brighton

Reilly raised an eyebrow.

‘Not exactly.’

‘Mr Reilly you’re starting to annoy me. We fought a war so that true-born Englishmen could remain free, and we even gave freedom to the frogs and a few worthy orientals along the way. No need to thank us, lads.’

‘As you say, Mister Hathaway,’ Reilly said, leaning over to pat Dennis Hathaway’s arm.

‘So just bloody well get on with it, will you?’

‘As you say.’ Reilly got to his feet.

‘Anything I can do?’ Hathaway asked.

‘I don’t know? Is there?’ His father looked at him. ‘Put the word out on your rock ’n’ roll circuit that we want information. We’ll pay.’

Hathaway nodded.

‘OK, Dad.’

‘You understand, do you, son, that it’s all about a code of honour?’

‘Dad?’

‘We look after the people who pay for all we have. Violence we save for others in the same business as us. And scum like the men who’ve done this to someone on our patch. We don’t target civilians if we can help it.’

‘I know that, Dad.’

Over the next few days, a dozen or so nonces were hauled down to the pier and given beatings of various degrees of severity in the storeroom beyond the office. None admitted to the crime, all named names. There were buckets of water constantly at hand to sluice the blood down into the sea. A half a dozen other men gave themselves in to the police and owned up to other offences.

Hathaway went off on a smuggling trip to Dieppe and Honfleur. He arrived back on a sunny day, the wind fresh. He climbed up the ladder from the bobbing boat and stopped by the firing range for a chat with Tommy and Mickey.

‘Dad in the office?’ he finally said.

Mickey nodded.

‘He’s got a lot on, mind, so be cautious.’

‘The prodigal son returns,’ Dennis Hathaway said when he looked up from his desk and saw his son. ‘How were the Dieppe lasses? Supposed to be the prettiest in France.’

‘I’ve got a girlfriend, Dad.’

‘You’re too young to be a monk.’

‘I’m hardly that.’

‘Aye, well.’

‘Anything I should know?’

‘We soldier on, John, we soldier on.’

‘Any word on the men who killed that lad?’

‘Let’s say the moving finger writes and having writ moves on.’

‘You’ve been at the Rubaiyat again, Dad – Mum warned you about that.’

His father laughed.

‘Cheeky sod. I bet you don’t know how it goes on?’

Hathaway sat down in the chair on the other side of his father’s desk.

‘Actually, I do. I learned it for just such an occasion.’

‘Let’s hear it, then.’

‘… nor all your piety nor wit shall lure it back to a cancel half a line-’

‘Nor all your tears wash out a word of it. Or to put it a Brighton way – no good crying over spilt milk.’

‘Whose milk has been spilt exactly?’

‘All you need to worry about is your piety, young Mr Monk – don’t waste the best years of your life on getting too serious about just one girl.’

‘There’s more to life than having sex with lots of girls,’ Hathaway said as Reilly walked in.

‘Listen, Mr Reilly. Life’s young philosopher.’

‘The lad’s in love. Let him enjoy it.’

Hathaway flushed.

‘I wouldn’t go that far…’

His father looked at him intently.

‘When are we going to meet this girl, then?’

‘Do you want to?’

‘I know your mum does – see if she approves. Not that mothers ever approve, mind.’

The chief constable’s meeting on the Palace Pier was an odd experience for Hathaway. He knew his father had something on Philip Simpson because of the Brighton Trunk Murder files. Simpson knew it too, so whilst he was being all high and mighty, he had to skirt around Dennis Hathaway. Reilly and Charlie were there, Reilly in a safari jacket, Charlie looking like Big Breadwinner Hogg with his kipper tie, wide lapels and flared jacket.

Hathaway was surprised to see Gerald Cuthbert there. He and his three heavies still favoured the Krays’ look – box jackets with narrow lapels over big chests.

He didn’t think anyone was carrying a gun, although Sergeant Finch’s double-breasted civvy suit bulged oddly. He knew Charlie had his flick knife and assumed Cuthbert and his men had knives or knuckledusters or both. There were a couple of CID men in sports jackets and jeans.

Two men arrived late. Slender, Italian-looking, in sharp suits. Luigi and Francis, cousins of the murdered Boroni brothers. When all the men were seated, giving each other hard looks, Philip Simpson began.

‘We’ve got to get some harmony in town,’ he said. ‘There is stuff I can turn a blind eye to and stuff I will not tolerate. Above all, I don’t want killings, like last year’s incident with Tony and Raymond Boroni.’

‘For which nobody was brought to justice,’ Luigi Boroni said, shooting Dennis Hathaway a cold look.

‘Investigations are continuing,’ Simpson said. ‘The case is being actively pursued.’

‘Why don’t you ask some of the people round this table?’ Luigi said.

‘Why don’t you go fuck yourself?’ Dennis Hathaway said.

It took a moment, then the Boronis, Reilly and Dennis Hathaway were all on their feet.

‘Gentlemen! Gentlemen!’

Simpson was standing too, and his CID men had moved in to subdue anything that might kick off.

Dennis Hathaway kept his eyes fixed on Luigi but pointed at Cuthbert, who was sitting jiggling his foot.

‘First off, Philip, I want to know what the fuck that scum is doing here. He’s a loan shark ripping off hard-working people, a scavenger who feeds off of our leftovers. He doesn’t respect the demarcation lines we’ve set up in the past. He needs to be firmly squashed. And if you don’t do it, I will.’

One of the CID men stepped in front of Cuthbert as he stood.

‘And as for the Boronis,’ Dennis Hathaway went on, ‘I don’t know who killed their cousins. All I heard was that two clowns killed two clowns. They were messing with the twins. Seems to me anyone could have killed them – their friends as easily as their enemies.’ He pointed now at Luigi. ‘All I want from these guys is an assurance they’re going to keep Brighton for Brighton and not bring in out-of-towners.’

‘Now there I agree.’ Simpson raised his voice. ‘There’s enough business going on for all of us. We don’t need out-of-towners here. We don’t want them. I won’t have them.’

‘With respect, Chief Constable,’ Cuthbert shouted as he tried to push past the CID officer to get at Dennis Hathaway. ‘What you want and don’t want don’t stack up to much against those London boys. They’ve taken on the Met and won. If they want to take over down here, I don’t see how you’re going to stop them.’

Simpson gave him a hard look.

‘Leave that to me.’

It was always difficult for Hathaway to switch gear from his day job to the group. He was feeling more and more distanced from The Avalons. But he was also trying not to think about the more brutal things he was involved in. He couldn’t forget looking back as he and Charlie walked off the Palace Pier in their sweaty, scratchy clown costumes to see the Boroni Brothers emerge from the ghost train shed, slumped forward in their seats, soaked in blood. Then the screams.

He thought the meeting on the Palace Pier today was going to end up that way but, in fact, the kettle didn’t really boil at all.

‘Well, that was a waste of time,’ Charlie said as the four West Pier men headed back along the Palace Pier.

‘On the contrary,’ Dennis Hathaway said, ‘that was bloody great. Look at who’s against us – third raters.’

‘What about the twins?’ Hathaway said.