The Last King of Brighton (39 page)

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.

EPILOGUE

N
ovember 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 café 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

AUTHOR'S NOTE

Let's get the covering my back stuff out of the way first. The Palace Pier and the West Pier and their owners in this work of fiction are fictional creations, bearing no relationship whatsoever to any piers or owners that might exist or have existed in the real Brighton. Similarly, criminal input into sixties' Brighton building works is entirely in my imagination.

Charles Ridge, disgraced chief constable, did exist and was acquitted on charges of corruption. He sued the then police authorities for unfair dismissal and won the case and his pension rights. Philip Simpson, who succeeds him in this work of fiction, is my invention and bears absolutely no relationship to anyone who might have been chief constable in Brighton or Sussex in subsequent years.

Dr Say Massiah was both a society abortionist and a suspect in the Brighton Trunk Murder case.

Milan Radislav is a figment of my imagination.

Sadly, so too was the Visegrad Massacre during the Balkans conflict. For knowledge of Balkan gangsters I am indebted to Misha Glenny's
McMafia, Seriously Organised Crime
(Vintage, 2009). For knowledge of how to impale somebody, I turned to Ivo Andric's Nobel Prize-winning
The Bridge Over The Drina
(1945).

For stories of the pop scene in the sixties from the point of view of a support band, I am indebted to my brother, Michael, whose group did support Little Richard, Duane Eddy, The Who and many others. I am grateful to him and to vocalist Dave Parkinson and to other members of The Avalons for allowing me to borrow their name (and trash it).

Peter Guttridge, 2010.