‘No, Mr Hathaway, not at all.’
‘Only?’
He grinned.
‘I quite like the illegal stuff.’
‘The Churchill Square thing is going well,’ Reilly said. ‘We’re renting them the diggers and demolition stuff, and only our men are working on it.’
‘How much is it worth?’ Charlie said.
‘By the end of it?’ Reilly shrugged. ‘A quarter of a million.’
‘With delays?’ Hathaway said. ‘I presume we hold them to ransom.’
‘Never get too greedy,’ his father said. ‘It causes complications.’
‘We can probably squeeze another fifty thousand out of them,’ Reilly said. ‘But we’re pushing them pretty hard as it is.’
‘Fuck ’em,’ Dennis Hathaway said. ‘If they want to bugger up my Brighton, let ’em pay.’ He glanced at Reilly. ‘Sean, you should show the lads your World War Two memorabilia.’ He looked at his son. ‘He’s got quite a collection. Show them, Sean.’
Reilly raised his eyes but picked up his glass and led Hathaway and Charlie back into the apartment, and into a small room down the corridor. It had a wall of windows looking out to sea. The other walls were lined floor to ceiling with books.
‘Didn’t know you were such a reader, Mr Reilly,’ Hathaway said.
‘I was at Trinity before the war.’
‘Is that Cambridge?’
‘Dublin, you oik.’ Reilly walked over to a cabinet and switched a light on inside it. Charlie and Hathaway looked down at a collection of guns, daggers and medals. Charlie pointed at a gun.
‘That’s a Luger,’ Reilly said.
‘How did you get it?’ Charlie said.
‘Its owner had no further use for it.’ Reilly pointed. ‘That’s a Webley. My gun of choice.’
‘That’s an SS dagger, isn’t it?’ Charlie said. ‘How-?’
Reilly stopped the question with a look.
‘Lot of medals, Sean,’ Hathaway said. ‘All yours?’
Reilly nodded.
‘Don’t be fooled by medals. Most of them are given just for showing up.’
‘What exactly did you do in the war?’ Charlie said.
‘I killed people, laddie,’ Reilly said. ‘Up close and personal.’
He pointed to a dull bladed knife.
‘Usually with that.’ He held up his hands. ‘Sometimes with these.’ He pointed again. ‘Often with that Webley. And just occasionally with one of those.’
He indicated a hand grenade in the corner of the cabinet.
‘Is that live?’ Charlie said.
Reilly nodded.
‘But it’s OK as long as that pin is in.’
He led them back to Dennis Hathaway.
‘Impressed?’ Dennis said.
Both young men nodded.
‘Nobody messed with Sean back then. For that matter, nobody messes with him now, if they’ve got any sense.’
‘Those blokes earlier on the pier didn’t have much sense, then,’ Hathaway said.
Dennis Hathaway leaned forward and put his glass down.
‘Let’s get to that. The Borloni Brothers were behind it, as you’ve guessed, and that thin-faced creep, Potts, put the gang together.’
Hathaway had a flash back to a Bank Holiday Monday on the Palace Pier when he’d seen Potts seething with hate as he watched Sean Reilly depart.
‘But they were encouraged by the twins,’ Dennis Hathaway continued, ‘Now, I don’t want to take the twins on directly, despite what they did to Freddie, but I do want to end this stuff in Brighton.’
‘What about the chief constable?’ Charlie said. ‘Isn’t that what he’s here for?’
Dennis Hathaway’s look lingered on Charlie. Charlie looked down. Not forgiven, then.
‘He’s finished. Digging himself a big hole that he’s going to fall into sometime soon.’
‘But he can come down hard on us,’ Hathaway said.
‘Can he?’ Dennis Hathaway chuckled. ‘We have Philip Simpson by the short and curlies. Remember that time a couple of years ago he came to the pier office and we talked about his destroying files to do with the Brighton Trunk Murder – the unsolved one?’
Hathaway and Charlie both nodded, Charlie lighting up a fag at the same time.
‘Well, a lot of them survived, thanks to a quiet word with Sergeant Finch.’ Dennis Hathaway gestured at Reilly. ‘Meet Mr Reilly, archivist of this parish pertaining to the Brighton Trunk Murders.’
Reilly ducked his head and gave a mock salute.
‘So Philip Simpson was the Brighton Trunk Murderer?’ Hathaway said.
His father grimaced.
‘You daft sod. Of course not. But there are witness statements in the files that put him in a very bad light. Not directly about the murder, but about corruption in the police force. Him and his mate Victor Tempest – two corrupt cops among many.’ He gave Charlie a cold look. ‘Particularly statements from a certain high society abortionist based in Hove. One Dr Say Massiah.’
Hathaway recognized the name. The elderly Egyptian who took care of Dawn.
‘Who has been kind enough to write down his reminiscences of those golden days,’ Reilly said, ‘before he retires to the West Indies.’
Charlie looked uncomfortable.
‘And the Borloni Brothers? We kill them?’
Reilly and Dennis Hathaway exchanged glances.
‘This “we” being who, exactly?’ Reilly said.
Charlie exhaled cigarette smoke and glanced over at Hathaway.
‘Me and John. About time we got blooded. Right, Johnny?’
Hathaway and Charlie were running at full pelt along the Palace Pier, their feet thudding heavily on the wet timber. Hathaway was grimly determined, Charlie spurred on by rage. Charlie was ahead. They zig-zagged between punters who had already been scattered by the two men they were pursuing.
What a fucking cock-up. As he ran, Hathaway was listening to the loudspeakers strung out along the length of the pier. They were transmitting the commentary on the World Cup final. He wanted to shoot somebody when he heard Helmut Haller put West Germany in the lead some twelve minutes into the game. He had the gun to do it.
A collision with a gaggle of giggling girls eating candy floss threw Hathaway out. Charlie swerved by them as West Germany took possession again. He was waving his gun around. The girls screamed.
Hathaway righted himself and saw the Boroni Brothers disappear into the covered Palace of Pleasure. Charlie, only twenty yards behind them, was running like his life depended on it. The collision with the girls had winded Hathaway and now he could only trot round the side of the Palace of Pleasure. He flattened himself against its wooden wall as he saw the Boronis come out of a side entrance.
They darted looks around, then dashed over to the Ghost Train. They scrambled on to the last carriage as it started off. The doors to the shed clanked open and the carriage jerked through.
Charlie found Hathaway.
‘We’ve got to get in there. There’s a back entrance.’
Charlie and Hathaway hurried round the back of the large shed. A metal door swung open easily. They slipped inside.
It was dark and noisy. Amplified cackles and shrieks and roars. Flashes of light as gruesome figures were
