Peter Guttridge - The Last King of Brighton

‘That brings me right back in.’

‘But it’s your only way out.’

‘I don’t know.’

‘You can do it, John. I know you can do it. I know what you’ve done.’

‘I know you know,’ Hathaway said, then caught something in Reilly’s tone. ‘We never really talked about that.’

‘Your dad was my friend but he’d gone rabid. It was something you had to do. I didn’t like that you did it, but I could see why you thought you had to. So I let it go.’

‘And worked with me over all those subsequent years.’

Reilly reached out a thin, purple veined hand and laid it on Hathaway’s.

‘It’s a strange world you and I inhabit. I doubt anyone living outside it would understand. I think you had enough dealing with your guilt. I don’t think you’ve had a happy life, John.’

Hathaway smiled at him.

‘Are we supposed to have?’

‘Don’t let the guilt emasculate you. You can handle these Balkan johnny-come-latelies.’

Hathaway sighed and looked down at Reilly’s gnarled hand.

‘If I start it, they’ll come back with everything. You’ll end up in the firing line. I don’t know whether I can protect you.’ He indicated the passage outside the door. ‘I’ve brought Barbara with me. I’d like her to stay here. I’ll leave men too. Good men.’

‘Barbara – that will be nice. As for me?’ Reilly shrugged his bony shoulders. ‘I can protect myself, don’t worry about that.’ He grimaced. ‘The only thing I can’t do is change my own bloody shitbag. Can you get Hattie Jacques?’

Hathaway left Barbara with Reilly and had dinner in a private dining room in a quiet restaurant in the backstreets of Dieppe. His hosts were Marcel Magnon, frail and thin-voiced, and his children, Patrice and Jeanne. Hathaway had been doing business with them for years and they greeted him warmly.

Marcel Magnon’s first question remained the same whenever they met.

‘Any word of your father?’

As always, Hathaway shook his head.

‘No word but we don’t give up.’

Magnon sighed and his head sank on to his chest.

The four of them shared a large tureen of La Marmite Dieppoise, the local fish stew, all dipping their bread in to soak up the liquor. Jeanne fed her father, who sucked on the wet bread as best he could. Conversation was kept general until the cheese course. Then:

‘Albanians control all our major ports now,’ Patrice said. ‘Even Marseilles.’

‘Dieppe?’

Patrice shook his head.

‘Too small but we pay them a tithe for the quiet life.’

‘We know of your problems,’ Jeanne said, cutting a small sliver from a hard goat’s cheese. ‘But I do not know how we can help. Our rough stuff days are in the past.’

‘I don’t expect anything,’ Hathaway said, reaching out to pat her hand. ‘Just keep an eye on Sean, if you would, and let him know if bad men are heading his way.’

‘That we can gladly do,’ Jeanne said, and Patrice nodded vigorously in agreement.

‘I’m sending men here,’ Hathaway said, ‘but let me know if there are developments.’

Jeanne contemplated her sliver of cheese then looked intently at Hathaway.

‘And you?’

‘Things are in hand.’

‘You could get out,’ Patrice said. ‘You have made your money.’

Hathaway reached over for the cheese plate.

‘It’s not my way.’

His phone trembled in his pocket.

‘Excuse me. A call I am expecting.’

He took out a pen and small pad and listened to the voice on the phone.

‘Spell that, please,’ he said. And twice more. ‘And Radislav?’

He ended the call without saying goodbye. A few moments later his phone made a series of beeping noises and he scrolled down the photos that had appeared on its LCD screen.

He put the phone on the table and Jeanne looked down at the last photograph.

‘I know that face. He has been here.’

The man who had just spoken to Hathaway phoned Jimmy Tingley next. Tingley and he had served together in the SAS before the man had joined the special Transnational Crimes Unit at Scotland Yard. He gave Tingley the same names and suspected British locations of four Balkan gangsters recently arrived in the country.

When he had finished he suggested Tingley and he meet for a drink the next time they coincided in London.

‘And, Jimmy, this is just intel for you, right? You’re not going to do anything illegal?’

After a moment, Tingley murmured:

‘ Moi?’

Hathaway’s boat drove into the setting sun. Seeing the sun go down always made him think of illustrations in a book he had as a kid of the wounded King Arthur being carried towards the setting sun on a fairy barge.

He made a number of calls on his crossing back to England, waking most of those he called. He gave Dave two instructions. One to deliver a message, the other to collect a parcel.

‘Do the first in a public place – don’t want any of that shoot the messenger shit happening to you.’

‘OK,’ Dave said.

‘Be careful with the parcel too – take a few of the lads with you. Deliver it to our storage place near Shoreham. Storage room 2020 should do nicely.’

‘Will do, Mr H.’

Hathaway was sitting on his boat by the breakwater at the outside edge of the marina when the Serbians torched his restaurant. He had his feet up watching the sun rising in a golden glow. Then there was the faint noise of an explosion and a surge of orange flame gushed out of the front of his restaurant and reached out over the water.

‘The fuck?’ he said, scrambling to his feet. Joggers and dog-walkers scattered along the boardwalk. He thought he could hear screams, then pops as bottles of alcohol exploded.

Dave came up from below.

‘Want us to cast off, Mr H., or go in?’

Hathaway waved him away.

He stayed on the boat, watching the black smoke spiral up into the sky, masking the sun. Emergency services arrived. Police milled about whilst firemen went in.

His mobile rang and he realized it had been ringing on and off for a while. The number was blocked.

He put the phone to his ear.

‘This is just the beginning,’ a deep, lightly accented voice said.

‘You’re wrong,’ Hathaway said. ‘This is the end. You and your oppos are toast.’

‘Oppos?’

‘I warned you. I told you to get out of my fucking country. I told you I was coming for you. Didn’t you get the message?’

The man chuckled, surprisingly warmly.

‘Think of what happened to your bar as my reply. Do not threaten us, Mr Hathaway. Aside from anything else, it makes you appear foolish. You don’t even know who we are.’

‘Don’t I? Well, you’re one of four. I’m guessing you’re Drago Kadire? What kind of name is Drago? You sound like a toilet cleaner. The Grand been treating you all right, have they? Hope you’ve had the afternoon tea. It’s known for it.’

There was silence on the other end of the phone.

‘That room you’re in – it’s the one Norman Tebbit and his missus were in when the bomb went off. Refurbished since, of course.’

Hathaway gripped his phone more tightly.

‘Now you listen to me, Drago. I had nothing to do with the death of your friends in Milldean. Let it go and I’ll let you flush back to your hovel in the Balkans.’

‘And if I don’t?’

‘Well, Mr Kadire, when you get that knock on your door it won’t be room service.’

Although he’d owned it for years, Hathaway hardly ever went to the storage facility near Shoreham. It was one of his legit businesses but he kept a couple of dozen spaces at the back end of the building for his own use. He had an armoury there, for instance, although he had another, more substantial, in the house in France.