Peter Guttridge - The Last King of Brighton

Williamson put his empty glass down hard on the table in front of him.

‘I repeat – what is your point?’

‘The acting DI needs another drink,’ Hathaway called over his shoulder. ‘My point is that the pop scene in the sixties was like the wild bloody west. You may have heard about hoodlums muscling in on Tin Pan Alley in the fifties but, Christ, the sixties. Forget no law west of the Pecos – there was no law at all. There were all these managers getting rich off these pig-ignorant rock stars who were too busy getting high – and laid – to worry about their money.’

He put his hand up to placate Williamson.

‘OK, someone broke into Hendrix’s place, forced booze and sleeping pills down his throat. Autopsy showed a lot of wine in his lungs but little absorbed into his bloodstream, which means he hadn’t been on a drinking binge, as suggested.’

‘You knew Keith Jeffery?’ Watts said.

‘I knew him. I knew all the gangsters back then, but of course I was a generation behind.’

‘Did you manage anyone?’

‘You betcha.’

‘Did you rip them off?’

Hathaway laughed.

‘Of course. These guys were morons. Morons are fair game.’ He clasped his hands. ‘But they did OK too. I wasn’t a total louse.’

‘Is that going to be on your tombstone?’ Gilchrist said.

‘Not for a long time yet,’ Hathaway said, baring his white teeth at her.

‘Are you going to get to the point?’ Tingley said.

‘Two people have been fingered for killing Hendrix. One is Jeffery, who has his alibi. The other is a man he went into business with. A couple of years later, Jeffery died in a private plane crash and this man took over his empire. If you want to get into conspiracy theory, when Hendrix died he’d been with a German druggie who’d nipped out for cigarettes. In the mid-nineties she started mouthing off about how Hendrix was murdered. Then she killed herself in 1996. Supposedly.’ Hathaway turned to Williamson, who was pouring his second beer into his glass. ‘Have they checked Kingston’s lungs?’

Gilchrist laughed again.

‘Whoa. You really are saying the guy who killed Hendrix also killed his manager and his ex-girlfriend and, then, fifteen years later, Laurence Kingston of the West Pier Syndicate. Any chance he did JFK and the Pope too?’

She looked at Watts and Tingley for support. Both were looking intently at Hathaway. Hathaway picked up an envelope from the table beside his chair. He stretched his arm out to Tingley.

‘Read it aloud, Jimmy,’ Hathaway said.

‘It isn’t dated,’ Tingley said. ‘It says: “Hello Johnny. Time’s up.” I can’t read the signature. Charlie somebody?’

‘Charlie Laker,’ Hathaway said.

Watts had a flash of a newspaper cutting he’d found in the local history unit. He shook his head in disbelief.

‘Charlie Laker. Drummer with The Avalons pop group.’

Hathaway should have killed Charlie in 1970. He intended to. He had the gun to his head. He was going to shoot him in the face, like Charlie had shot Elaine. Charlie was pretty calm, in the circumstances.

Then Reilly was standing beside him.

‘John,’ he said quietly.

Hathaway had lowered the gun.

‘We’re even,’ he said to Charlie.

Charlie had buggered off to America. He thrived in the music business, first under Jeffery then on his own. Bought a house in Hollywood next to Cary Grant. Surfed the seventies, found a way to profit from punk and the US New Wave. Then sometime in the eighties he disappeared off the radar.

But here was the thing. The other reason Hathaway had let him live.

‘He and your sister are back together,’ Reilly told him that evening in Spain. ‘She loves him.’

‘So now you’re saying your drummer Charlie killed all those people and Elaine Trumpler and Laurence Kingston?’ Gilchrist was almost harrumphing in her disbelief.

‘He had form in the music business here in Brighton. Rough tactics against rival managers. He went off to the States, did well for himself.’

‘And he killed Elaine Trumpler?’ Watts said.

‘I watched him do it,’ Hathaway said quietly. ‘Shot her in the face.’

‘Why?’

‘My dad ordered it and at the time I was too weak to stop it.’

‘But why did he order it?’

‘She’d seen something she shouldn’t have.’

Gilchrist thought for a moment.

‘Are there other remains down there?’

Hathaway shook his head.

‘Maybe one. The rest he took out to sea.’

The others exchanged glances. Hathaway stood and looked up at the sky.

‘I think Charlie is behind all this, this shit that is raining down on the city. He bears me a bad grudge.’

‘Aside from you threatening to blow his head off?’

‘He killed my girlfriend.’

‘So something else?’

‘Something only one other person knew about. My sister. I’m guessing she told him.’

‘She told him how?’

‘She was his wife.’

They all paused at that.

‘And you think he’s behind the Balkan gangsters?’ Tingley eventually said.

Hathaway nodded.

‘I think he owns the Palace Pier.’

‘So he’s after revenge – revenge that’s so cold it’s frozen?’

Hathaway nodded again. His bravado seemed to have deserted him. Williamson stirred.

‘If Charlie is back in Brighton – why now?’

‘My sister died,’ Hathaway said. ‘I heard from a cousin. She and Charlie were married for forty years. They couldn’t have kids. She’d had an abortion. She blamed me for that, I don’t really know why. A stand-in for my father, I suppose. I never saw her in all that time. I’m guessing he never did anything before because of her. Plus he was inside for a while. In San Quentin. That would have slowed him down.’

Williamson sniffed.

‘So you’re saying that Charlie Laker is making a major move to take over the town and to do that he has brought in Balkan gangsters, taken over the West Pier and killed Laurence Kingston?’

‘At least all that.’

Williamson stood and Gilchrist followed suit.

‘Don’t suppose you’ve any idea where we might find him?’

Hathaway grimaced.

‘Don’t you think I’ve been looking? But he shouldn’t be hard to recognize. He got into bad trouble in San Quentin with the Hispanics. A turf war thing. They almost killed him. He spent three months in the infirmary. He got better but he still carries the wounds.’

‘What kind of wounds?’ Tingley said.

‘Well, for one thing, his face was pretty badly sliced up.’

Watts let out an exasperated sigh, remembering the scarred man in the Grand the night Laurence Kingston had died.

Charlie Laker knew how to bear a grudge. He’d never knowingly forgiven any slight, however minor. Anything major? Well…

He stood beside the windmills high on the South Downs above Clayton watching the black Merc pull up. The wind tugged at his jacket, flattened his trousers against his legs.

Radislav, the Serbian torturer, and Drago Kadire, the Albanian sniper, got out of the back. Charlie watched them as they walked towards him. Radislav, slight, grey-faced, kept his head down. Kadire, always alert, looked around.

Charlie touched the rough scar on his top lip.

‘I want you to take a pop at him,’ Charlie said to Kadire before they had quite reached him.

Kadire looked up at the long white arms on the nearest windmill.

‘I want him,’ Radislav said. ‘My way.’

‘I think that’s overambitious,’ Charlie said. ‘I’m grateful for what you did, but I want to finish this.’ He turned to Kadire. ‘You could do it from up here?’

‘The distance is no problem,’ Kadire said. ‘I once shot a general from a mile away. But there are obstacles. His house is hidden. The boat too.’