Peter Guttridge: The Last King of Brighton

‘Because he protected him?’

‘And some.’

Watts looked around the cafe.

‘Dad, I’ve got to ask-’

‘Do you?’

‘Yes.’

‘Then ask away.’

Donald Watts put his coffee cup down.

‘This isn’t easy,’ Watts said. His father just stared. ‘You made a career of chasing women. You were a bastard to my mother. We all knew. She never let on. She never once commented on it whilst we were growing up, but I’m sure it helped kill her.’

Donald Watts continued to stare at his son.

‘Did you have an affair with Philip Simpson’s wife?’

His father sat back.

‘Nice lass.’

‘Someone told me that when she had William Simpson it was the Immaculate Conception,’ Watts said. ‘Is William Simpson related to me?’

His father sat back.

‘I don’t quite understand you, son.’

Watts looked at his father.

‘Simpson takes after his mother and I take after you, so the fact we don’t look alike doesn’t mean anything.’

His father absently watched another group of people arrive.

‘We never talked about it.’

‘That’s it? Why are you so cold, Dad – and don’t give me that Graham Greene sliver of ice in the heart thing.’

‘Why are you so wet? Do you have any backbone?’

‘Don’t be fatuous, Dad. It doesn’t become you. I’ve proved I’ve got backbone.’

‘But you haven’t proved you’re not an idiot. An idiot who doesn’t see what’s in front of his face and who gets too exercised over unimportant things.’

Watts reached over and grasped his father’s scrawny hand.

‘Dad, you’ve got to stop being the tough guy. You haven’t the strength for it and it comes over as bombast.’

‘Bombast. Nice word. You should be writing, not me. Philip assumed the boy was his. His mother never said he wasn’t. William had no reason to think otherwise. Why don’t you leave it at that?’

Watts looked round as people began to fill up the tables around them. Why indeed? He looked at his father’s clasped hands and down at his own. He laughed grimly.

‘Because I can think of only one thing worse than not being able to nail William Simpson for what he’s done. And that is to discover that, because my father was fucking his best friend’s wife, William Simpson is my half-brother.’

Jimmy Tingley crossed the Kings Road near the Palace Pier and went to join Barbara at the railings overlooking the beach. Below him were the tables of a bar, chairs stacked on them.

It was a still night, the water calm, the moon high. The Palace Pier lights had been extinguished but there were others flickering on the horizon. Fishing boats, passing ships.

Tingley watched the lights. He was tired. Tired of killing. But what to do in a world of wicked men?

‘I was scared of him at first,’ Barbara said, still facing out to sea. ‘John. Then I fell in love with him. Then his father sent me away…’

‘John didn’t stand up for you?’

‘No?’

‘Nor when you had cancer?’

She shook her head.

‘Then why?’

‘Go back to him? I didn’t have anywhere else to go. My sister dead, my husband long gone, my life a nightmare. He was the best I had. And he took me in.’

Tingley turned and tried to see beyond the lights. He imagined himself standing at the Ditchling Beacon, looking down on the town. Looking at himself, standing here tonight. He turned back to look out to sea.

‘I’m going after them, you know.’

‘Why?’

The men he had killed had been wicked men. He hadn’t hesitated.

‘I’ve got something of the trail back to the Balkans. I’ll set out on it in the next few days. Kill everybody I can find. Including Radislav and Kadire.’

‘Why?’

‘That’s what I do best. All I do well.’

‘It won’t stop it. You know that.’

‘But there’ll be a lull. Until the next flood forward.’

‘Nature abhors a vacuum,’ she said. She reached out and put her hand on his. ‘I inherit, you know. He left me everything. If you need money.’

‘What was Hathaway’s guilty secret?’ Tingley said. ‘What had he done to Charlie Laker that would make him take such revenge on him after so many years. It had to be more than the abortion thing.’

‘It went way back,’ Barbara murmured, then the bullet shattered the back of her skull and exited through her left eye socket, taking eye, brain matter and shards of bone with it.

November 2nd, 1959. It was cold in the den. Roy Laker pulled his duffel coat hood over his head and curled his fingers in his mittens. He shuffled on the makeshift orange box seat. His brother, Charlie, and Charlie’s mate, Kevin, had gone down to the cafe to get warm but Roy wanted to stay in the den. After all, he was on guard.

He peered out through the boards and crates and tree branches piled against each other. The den was right in the centre of the stack of wood and he’d had to crawl on his hands and knees to get in. The bonfire was big but would be lot bigger by Guy Fawkes night.

‘Penny for the Guy,’ Roy muttered as he saw an indistinct figure approach the bonfire. His heart jumped. Rival gangs tried to set fire to each other’s bonfires before November 5th. Roy couldn’t see properly but followed the figure flitting around the stacked wood. He heard the splash of liquid and smelt paraffin.

The flame shot up the side of the bonfire. Roy heard the sharp crackle as tree branches caught. He scuttled backwards for the tunnel. His feet slipped on the torn pieces of lino that had been laid across the mud floor. He turned awkwardly, seeing flames shoot up on every side, and stuck his head into the tunnel. It was blocked with a large crate and a railway sleeper.

Gulping down panic, he pushed against the crate, for the first time feeling the heat of the blaze. He coughed as smoke swirled round him. He vaguely heard singing. ‘Remember, remember the fifth of November. The Gunpowder Plot…’

He could vaguely see someone peering in at him. With a whoosh the entire bonfire took flame.

Young John Hathaway walked away without a backward glance.

To be continued in God’s Lonely Man