1966
‘ We’re moving up in the world, Johnny boy. Bought a place on Tongdean Drive. You’re welcome to move with us. Dawn is. But I thought you might like a flat of your own. Got a nice one available overlooking the West Pier. Penthouse with a balcony.’
‘A penthouse?’ Hathaway said.
‘OK – a top-floor flat – but with a balcony to sit in the sunshine. And we can semaphore each other from pier to penthouse.’
Hathaway was excited at the thought, largely for sexual reasons. The group was getting a lot of interest from local girls but he had nowhere to take them. It felt seedy retiring to the back of the van, especially as the others were striking lucky too. Well, except Billy, who seemed to draw only earnest young men wanting to talk music.
‘I can stand on my own two feet,’ Hathaway said. His father looked steadily at him.
‘I know that, Johnny, but do it for your mother.’ He leaned forward and put his elbow on the table. ‘Come on, son, I’ll arm-wrestle you for it.’
Hathaway groaned and put his Coke down. His father was a good six inches shorter but he was sturdy and he had powerful arms. Hathaway’s longer forearms put him at a disadvantage because he had to start with a bent arm. He’d worked out the physics of it once.
‘I may as well just say “Yes” now.’
‘That’s always the best way with me,’ his father said.
The buzzer went off from the cashiers in the amusement hall and, a moment later, from the firing range. Reilly was sitting by the window with three foot-soldiers and Charlie.
‘Look lively,’ his father said, immediately out of his chair. They heard a clattering of feet on the other side of the office door, then it burst open and a man with a stocking over his head rushed through, a pickaxe handle in his hand.
Reilly had somehow moved, without any appearance of haste, into a position just behind the door. As the man went past him Reilly leaned forward and, with an almost delicate flip of the wrist, sapped him behind his right ear. The man sprawled forward, his wooden stave rattling across the floor ahead of him.
Dennis Hathaway picked it up and threw it to his son.
‘Stay out of it but use this if you have to defend yourself.’
A half-dozen other men came roaring through the door with stocking masks and pickaxe handles.
Reilly stepped back and Dennis Hathaway moved to one side, dragging his own lead-filled cosh out of his pocket. Two of his men also had coshes; the third picked up a chair and prodded the legs at the man who was charging him. Charlie was on his feet with a flick knife in his hand, moving forward, focused.
‘Don’t kill anybody, Charlie,’ Reilly called.
‘Don’t intend to,’ Charlie shouted back, his voice trembling. ‘Just gonna mess ’em up a bit.’
He swung the knife at the man nearest to him with a long sweep of his arm. The man fell back against the bench, and Charlie slashed at the hand that held a pickaxe handle. The man grunted and dropped his weapon as a thick line of blood blossomed on his hand. Charlie picked up the stave with his free hand and cracked it hard against the man’s head. Hathaway heard something break.
Hathaway was dithering. He wasn’t afraid and he was armed, but he wasn’t quite sure what to do. Whacking somebody with his lump of wood could do severe damage.
Reilly dead-armed a short, broad-shouldered man with a hard blow to his elbow. The man dropped his stave, and Reilly picked it up and decked him with it. He moved to support Dennis Hathaway, holding off two men with wild swings of his stave. But more men tumbled into the room and Reilly had to swerve to avoid one man’s lunge. Three men backed him into a corner.
Two of Hathaway’s men were on the ground getting a good kicking. The man with the chair, backed into a corner, was holding his own.
There were four men on Hathaway’s dad now, and he was taking some blows on his arms and body, though he was defending his head. He was roaring. Charlie had pocketed his knife and was fending off two men with wild swings of the pickaxe handle. He looked enraged.
Nobody was taking any notice of Hathaway. He was aware of screams and crashes in the amusement arcade next door. He clutched the stave like a kendo stick, his hands body-width apart, and went for the men attacking his father.
He hit one of the men from behind in the angle of shoulder and neck with a downward swing, then brought the other end of the stave up to clip him just behind the angle of the jaw.
The attacker fell against the man next to him. Then a third turned from his father, swinging a stave above his head. Hathaway slid his stave through his hands, extended it in his right and thrust hard into the man’s solar plexus. The man doubled up, and Hathaway brought the stave down again between neck and shoulder.
Hathaway heard a commotion, then a gun went off – so loud his hearing immediately went. Tommy was in the doorway, a rifle pointed at the ceiling. Two amusement arcade workers, also armed, flanked him. Everyone froze except Charlie, who was beating the bejesus out of a man curled up on the floor. Reilly grabbed him from behind and Charlie swung round, snarling.
‘He’s had enough, Charlie,’ Reilly said. ‘Charlie. Enough.’
Charlie slowly nodded, his breath ragged. Reilly gave a little salute to Hathaway. Dennis Hathaway kicked the man his son had knocked to the floor.
‘Right, get these guys tied to chairs in the back room.’ He leaned down whilst kicking the man again. ‘You’ve got some explaining to do or you won’t get any tea.’
‘Somehow,’ muttered Reilly to Hathaway, ‘I don’t think tea is on the cards anyway.’
By the time Sergeant Finch turned up with half a dozen beat coppers, the amusement arcade had been put back together. A few machines had been smashed, a lot of glass needed sweeping up.
Finch looked around, then at Dennis Hathaway. Sniffed the air.
‘Love that sea smell. Heard there was trouble up this end of the pier. Report of gunfire.’
‘Few tearaways messing about. We sorted them.’
‘Where are they now?’ Finch said.
Dennis Hathaway shrugged.
‘Gone for a swim, I think.’
The dozen or so men who’d invaded the pier had all been thrown over the side after Dennis Hathaway had done questioning them.
‘Can they swim?’ Finch said.
Dennis Hathaway sucked his teeth.
‘Most of them.’
Finch took off his helmet and wiped the inside with a handkerchief.
‘And the gunfire?’
‘I run a rifle range, Finchie; even you must have noticed that.’
Finch tilted his head.
‘You should be more careful shaving, Dennis.’
‘How’s that?’
Finch pointed at Dennis Hathaway’s shirt. It was streaked with blood. Dennis Hathaway grunted.
‘And they call them safety razors.’
Finch put his helmet back on.
‘OK, then. The chief constable might want a word about this. He likes a happy town; you know that.’
‘We’re happy,’ Dennis Hathaway said. ‘We’re very happy.’
Finch gave a small smile.
‘Be seeing you, Dennis.’
‘Grab yourself a candy floss on the way out. All of you. On the house.’
Hathaway and Charlie cracked up when that was exactly what they did. Seven plods in crumpled shirts and white helmets, and a pile of gear hanging off their belts, waddling down the pier with pink candy floss stuck to
