‘Charlie. It’s Crespo di Bocci.’
‘Greetings from windswept Whitby, Crespo.’
‘There’s an Englishman coming here. Signor Jimmy Tingley. He is looking for Drago Kadire. Some of my family have a grudge against him, as you know. But I also know you are connected to Drago. What shall I do?’
Laker thought for a moment. When he’d made his play to take Brighton away from his former friend, John Hathaway, he had known the risk he was taking bringing in the Balkan gangs. Especially Drago Kadire, the Albanian sniper, and Miladin Radislav, who rejoiced in his nickname of Vlad the Impaler.
Laker had taken control of the Palace Pier through cut-outs but the local guys weren’t really up to the job of toppling Hathaway. That required people without conscience. Subhumans. That required Miladin Radislav.
But the danger had been: if he got them in, could he get them out? Not without pissing off his friends in the Italian mafia — quite aside from other Balkan guys running rackets in England.
Laker knew about Tingley. Ex-SAS. Handy. Tingley might offer a way out. Unconnected. Doing his ‘Man With No Name’ routine. Charlie idly wondered whether that ex-cop, Bob Watts, was with the old soldier. He knew they were friends. Laker didn’t think Watts was up to the job. Wasn’t certain Tingley was, either.
Kadire and Radislav. Get rid of them and the Balkan invasion would stall long enough for Charlie to sell up and get back to America. Once he’d done that, he didn’t give a toss what happened to Brighton. Oh, he had UK plans but they were bigger. Legit. Well, almost.
‘Let them fight it out,’ he said.
Laker had made Whitby his temporary HQ for sentimental reasons. When he was a kid, before he became a Teddy boy, he’d been in the boy scouts and they’d come north from Sussex on a camping trip to Whitby, Scarborough and Robin Hood’s Bay. In those days, the mid-fifties, their scoutmaster had managed to arrange for them to camp inside the ruined abbey. It was scary and it pissed down, and nobody slept very much, but they all loved it.
Now he was waiting in his suite for a couple of girls to arrive from Harrogate, the nearest place to Whitby you could buy quality arse. Not that he would be paying.
He was thinking about his late wife, Dawn. John Hathaway’s sister. He’d got her pregnant, some forty years earlier. Her father, Dennis Hathaway, had given him a choice. They’d been in the chilly wooden hut Hathaway used as his HQ behind the firing range on the West Pier in Brighton.
Dennis Hathaway. Jesus. Burly, friendly-faced and vicious as fuck.
That day Hathaway had handed Laker a whisky — Canadian Club, naturally — and said: ‘Here’s the choice, Charlie. You can go against my wishes and marry Dawn and have the kid. But you’re out of the business. I don’t want my Dawn involved in this.’
‘Or?’ Laker said, feeling the whisky burn his throat.
He could tell Dennis Hathaway didn’t take to his tone but Laker couldn’t help it. He’d never been good at being told what to do.
‘Watch your lip, Charlie. It’s your future we’re talking about. The alternative is that you persuade her to have an abortion, you finish with her and you continue your career with me and you thrive.’
Hathaway scrutinized Laker.
‘I think you were made for this life. I hope John is going to come through, but you — I see it in you.’
Hathaway swigged his drink.
‘You lost your brother, didn’t you?’
Charlie nodded.
‘Burned alive, wasn’t he?’
Charlie nodded again.
‘Gives a man a bit of impetus.’
‘What do you mean?’
‘Did the coppers ever get whoever did it?’
Laker shook his head.
‘No clue.’
Dennis Hathaway, still staring fixedly at Laker, nodded slowly.
‘Sorry,’ he said.
Laker started to say, ‘It’s OK-’
‘I’m going to need a decision from you this morning.’
Laker liked Dawn. Lusted for her. But he wasn’t father material. He knew that.
‘I’m Catholic,’ he said.
‘Lapse,’ Hathaway said without missing a beat. He raised his glass. ‘What’s it to be?’
Laker raised his own glass.
‘OK,’ he said in a low voice.
‘OK what?’
Laker leaned over and chinked Hathaway’s glass.
‘You get your way.’
Laker could see that Hathaway couldn’t hold back.
‘I usually do.’
That was meant to be that but Charlie Laker couldn’t get Dawn out of his head. He was getting plenty of women but there was something about her. He saw her after the abortion, from time to time, and she was dispirited and listless. Although Laker had insisted she have the abortion, she knew her father was behind it.
‘I wish I’d been able to stand up to him,’ she said. ‘But I’m just a coward.’
‘You’re no coward.’
‘Aren’t I? To let him kill my child.’
‘We’ll make another,’ Charlie said, on absolute impulse.
She smiled then and took his hand.
‘Over my dad’s dead body,’ she said.
Which is the way it worked out.
Charlie decided to kill Dennis Hathaway for many reasons. For Dawn, yes, but mainly because he was ready to take over Brighton. He knew he would have to kill the enforcer, Sean Reilly, too. He would probably have to kill his mate and rival, John Hathaway.
He bided his time. He thought their joint trip to Spain in 1970 would be a good opportunity. As it turned out, John Hathaway thought the same — and then some.
One minute, they were sitting around getting pissed on Sangria and whisky, Sean Reilly standing at the edge of the terrace looking out into the mountains. The next, John Hathaway shot his own father in the head and was about to do the same to Laker.
‘Goodbye, Charlie,’ Hathaway said and Laker closed his eyes, resigned, knowing this was payback for him executing Hathaway’s girlfriend. He’d been ordered to because she’d witnessed something she shouldn’t have, but he didn’t blame his old friend for not understanding.
‘Don’t,’ Sean Reilly said, suddenly beside them.
That Reilly had stepped in to save Laker’s life had surprised him. It was no surprise that Reilly told him to leave that night. Before Laker left, Reilly gave him the deeds to a couple of clubs in Ibiza and Majorca.
‘To help you start up on your own,’ he said. He handed Charlie?10,000, too. A fuck of a lot of money in those days.
Charlie kept to himself that Dennis Hathaway, as part of their deal over Dawn, had given him two clubs on the Costa del Sol, the pirate radio stations and cash in a Jersey bank account.
THIRTEEN
Charlie Laker went to Ibiza first. Set up a drug deal on his own with some Sardinian mobsters who provided the link through to the same Moroccan gangs Dennis Hathaway and now John were dealing with. It cost more to go
