‘No-’
‘Course you fucking did,’ he jeered. ‘Last night you went for a quickie behind Johnny’s back. If I were your age I’d be tempted, I tell you. She’s a lovely-looking girl. Get those legs wrapped round you-’
‘You can fuck me however you want as much as you want.’
Elaine was sitting up, glaring at Dennis Hathaway. She jerked her head back towards Tommy.
‘I’ll give head to your man here. Your men can have me -’ her bravado ran out and she began to sob again – ‘but please, please, don’t-’
Dennis Hathaway had a look of disgust on his face.
‘Jesus, someone put her out of her misery.’ He looked at her. ‘Darling, I’d love to fuck you but I’m happily married, and whilst I’ll do most things, I draw the line at doing my son’s girlfriend, however much of a disappointment he is to me. I’m sure there must be a rule of etiquette about that.’ He peered into the tub of concrete. ‘Plus, how would I get your legs wide enough apart to stuff it in you, the concrete as set as it is?’
Hathaway saw a look pass between his father and Tommy. His father shook his head and went over to a table in the corner.
When Dennis Hathaway walked over to Charlie he had a gun in one hand and a garrotte in the other. He proffered them to Charlie.
‘So you’re not up to it? You’re not capable of it?’
‘There ain’t nothing I’m not capable of.’
‘A double negative. Thought your generation knew better than that.’
Charlie took the left hand, walked over to Elaine, tilted her head up and fired the gun full into her face.
‘Fuck,’ Dennis Hathaway said, one hand up to stop the spray of brain and blood hitting his face, ‘I was hoping he’d use the garrotte. Now we’ve got to clean this bloody place up.’
Hathaway looked down.
‘I’ll do it.’
TWELVE
1970
A gun is a seducer. A gun wants to be fired. It exists to be fired. And, sooner or later, whoever has one will be seduced into firing it.
Hathaway’s father disappeared in 1970. He left without Hathaway’s mother. Hathaway shouldn’t have been surprised by how devastated she was, but he was shocked at her rapid decline once she took to the bottle. He was overwhelmed when she took her own life just a year later, in the summer of 1971.
In February 1970 Dennis Hathaway took his son and Charlie to Spain on business. Reilly went along, of course. It was the first time Hathaway had seen the family hacienda in the mountains near Granada. It was a lovely house but the grounds were like a building site. They were a building site.
Dennis Hathaway was having a swimming pool built inside a long building constructed of local stone. The roof was going to be retractable, like something out of a James Bond film.
‘More like Thunderbirds,’ his father had said, guffawing. ‘Watch your feet there. That cement’s still wet. Don’t want to see imprints of your big clodhoppers across the floor of the pool.’
‘You’re having it tiled, aren’t you?’
‘You bet – but even so.’
Hathaway’s father was in a good mood because they’d just concluded a deal in Marbella to get hashish in large quantities from Morocco, transiting to England overland through Spain and France, then shipping from a small harbour near Deauville up to the West Pier.
Charlie was, as usual, cautious around Hathaway. They had a kind of working relationship but he knew Hathaway had never forgiven him for killing Elaine.
He was half-right. Hathaway was in a place that nobody he knew would understand. What did he feel about the death of Elaine? If he were honest, on its own he could take it. But there were other things.
His father was outlining his plans. Hathaway half-listened. He had his own plans.
They’d been drinking solidly all day. On the terrace, looking at the speckled sky and the lights winking down the valley, Hathaway watched his father take another swig of brandy.
‘The Great Train Robbers never squealed on each other,’ he said. ‘Not a one. And the witnesses knew nothing. All they saw was a bunch of blokes in balaclavas and overalls. How could they identify anyone? Bloody hell, they didn’t even know how many robbers there were. Nobody did.’
‘But you do, Dad,’ Hathaway said.
Dennis Hathaway got a strange expression on his face.
‘Makes you say that, son?’
‘Something you said a while back. And I heard two got clean away.’
‘You know that for a fact?’ his father said.
Hathaway nodded drunkenly. Dennis Hathaway sniffed.
‘Remember when your mother and I went down to Spain for our second honeymoon. Left you alone for your birthday?’
Hathaway remembered.
‘I remember you coming back,’ he said, thinking of Barbara.
That passed his father by.
‘Well, I thought it best to be out of the country at that particular time.’
Hathaway thought back.
‘It was around the time of the robbery. I remember reading the papers.’
‘It was two days after the bloody robbery. We were supposed to be holing up at the farm for a couple of weeks, but we thought that one of the locals had got suspicious so we had to make other plans. We split the money. There was so much of it. It was all in fivers and single notes. We didn’t even bother with the ten bob notes. Well, Bruce did but he was like that.’
‘So you really were one of the Great Train Robbers?’
‘No big deal.’
‘And you took the loot to Spain.’
‘Nah, not all of it. Any idea how much space a hundred and twenty-five thousand pounds in singles and fivers takes up?’
Hathaway shook his head.
‘A fuck of a lot.’
‘So what did you do?’
‘That lovely Oxford Morris – remember it?’
Hathaway nodded.
‘Had a false petrol tank and a false bottom to the back seat. Got the tip from a Kraut smuggler. Worked well for a couple of years. The rest – well, you know about the rest – you organized taking most of it over and converting it into diamonds, buying property and so on.’
Hathaway nodded.
‘But where do you hide paperwork about stuff like that?’
His father gave him a sideways look.
‘Why would you want to know a thing like that?’
‘Because I remember you telling me that the less paper around the better. Property leaves a long paper trail, doesn’t it?’
