The Last King of Brighton
Peter Guttridge
‘If God had abandoned this unlucky town, he had surely not abandoned the whole world that was beneath the skies?’
PROLOGUE
The thin oak stake was about nine feet long, blunt at one end, pointed at the other. The shaft was coated in something oily. Beside it on the grassy ground there were ropes, blocks and a mallet.
The paunchy naked man looked at these things, his eyes bulging. There was tape across his mouth. His hands were taped together behind his back. He was shivering uncontrollably, his flesh wobbling. The four men jerked him to the ground and lay him on his belly. He screamed through the gag.
They tied ropes to his ankles, then two of them pulled on the ropes to spread his legs.
The tallest of the two remaining men laid the stake between the naked man’s legs, the sharp end pointing into his body. The other knelt and rummaged between the legs with a knife. He turned his head away when the man fouled himself but continued to poke and cut with the tip of the blade.
The naked man jerked and squealed through the gag. As he spasmed, the men holding the ropes pulled them taut so he could only buck. His bound arms shook.
The tall man picked up the mallet and touched the blunt end of the stake. The man with the knife raised the pointed end of the stake and pushed it between the spread legs. The naked man shuddered.
The man with the mallet hit the blunt end of the stake. Three times. The naked man convulsed and started to hit his forehead against the earth. The man kneeling between his legs pressed with his fingers on his shaking back, checking the progress of the stake through the body. Satisfied, he signalled for the tall man to continue.
The naked man made strange mewling sounds as the next three blows thrust the stake deeper into him. Something frothy and bilious jetted from his nose. The man with the mallet paused but the kneeling man indicated he should continue. After a further three blows the kneeling man picked up the knife and leaned over the juddering body. The skin above the naked man’s right shoulder was stretched and swollen. He cut into the swelling with his knife, lengthways and crossways. Blood gushed out.
The knife man crouched over the shoulder as the point of the stake emerged in three short jerks. When the tip was level with the naked man’s right ear the knife man held up his hand. The man with the mallet laid it on the grass and came up beside the man he had skewered.
The skewered man’s arms were twitching but otherwise he was unmoving. He was bleeding heavily from his shoulder and rectum. The two men holding the ropes flipped his rigid body over. They bound the legs to the stake.
The man’s eyelids were fluttering, his face engorged. Green slime bubbled in his nostrils. The tall man bent over and tore the tape from his face. The skewered man’s lips were drawn back from his teeth in an agonized snarl. He breathed in jagged wet puffs.
All four men lifted him. They carried him a few yards to a crude frame and lowered the blunt base of the stake into a pre-prepared hole. As he was lifted to meet the frame, his whole weight bore down on the stake. His body slowly dropped, and with a strange sucking noise the tip of the stake slid level with the top of his head. His chest rose and fell in impossibly rapid jerks.
Two men held the body steady whilst the other two busied themselves with securing the stake to the frame. When they had finished they stood back and observed their handiwork. The man’s head lolled, his eyes rolled. He was whimpering when they left him there.
PART ONE
The Sixties
ONE
1963
The axe shattered the window, sending shards of glass cascading to the carriage floor. The big man wielding it thrust his masked head and shoulders through the opening and clambered into the railway carriage. The five postal workers heaping mailbags in front of the door recoiled as he waved the axe in their faces. Behind them the mailbags tumbled as the door gave and six more men, wearing boiler suits and woollen balaclavas, pushed into the carriage. They carried pickaxe handles and coshes.
The masked men rained blows on the five sorters, hitting them across their shoulders and on the elbows, shouting at them to lie on the floor. The mailmen did as they were ordered. It was only five minutes earlier that they had heard someone outside the carriage yell: ‘They’re bolting the door – get the guns.’
‘Don’t fucking look at us,’ a masked man bellowed, kicking one of the postal workers in the ribs. ‘Keep your fucking head down.’
Even so, each of the men lying on the floor stole looks at the masked men as they went about their business. Whilst two of the masked men stood guard with pickaxe handles, two more stacked the mailbags together. Three others handed them down on to the railway line. The smell of sweat was keen in the air.
There were 128 bags in the carriage. Half an hour later, when the man with the axe looked at his watch, all but seven had been offloaded.
‘That’s it,’ he shouted, ‘let’s move.’ He saw one of the masked men glance at the remaining bags. ‘Leave them.’
He remained in the carriage whilst the others dropped down on to the track. A few moments later the train driver and his fireman were dragged into the carriage, handcuffed together. The train driver’s head was bleeding heavily. They were dropped to the floor beside the mailmen.
Another big man loomed over them.
‘We’re leaving someone behind,’ he said, his voice a hiss. ‘Don’t move for thirty minutes or it’ll be the worse for you.’
Then the masked men were gone, taking with them?2.6 million in unmarked bills. It was an hour before dawn, Thursday, 8 August, 1963.
On Sunday, 11 August, John Hathaway was sitting at the breakfast table reading about what the press were calling the Great Train Robbery in his father’s News of the World when the doorbell rang.
