The Last King of Brighton (32 page)

He'd been astonished when she'd turned up on his doorstep three months earlier. Astonished and cruel. Her sister had died and left her some money, and she'd come back to see the lawyer.

Unusually, Hathaway had actually answered the door himself.

‘Hello, young man,' she said cautiously.

It took him a moment to recognize her. She had lost a lot of weight over the years. She recalled the last time he'd seen her, hurrying down the police station corridors after him.

‘Barbara, a long time. I thought you were dead.'

‘Didn't bother to find out, though, did you?' she said, without bitterness.

He stood aside to let her enter. She stopped in front of him and looked up into his face.

‘Still got my looks, though, wouldn't you say?'

She grinned revealing artificially white false teeth.

‘What the fuck happened to you?' he said. ‘You're a fucking mess.'

She reared back then leaned in, hissing:

‘You mean before or after your father sold me to a brothel in The Hague? Before or after the heroin they stuffed into me to make me compliant? Before or after stag parties did what they wanted with me? What happened to me? Your father. Then cancer. They took my tits but left me alive.'

He couldn't keep the disgust from his face.

‘Christ,' he said sourly.

She saw his look.

‘Yeah, that's right. Blame the victim. If it makes you feel better, you were my first trick.'

‘What?'

‘You think I slept with you for your baby blues?'

He looked down.

‘Actually, you didn't care why I slept with you. You only cared that I slept with you.'

‘So you blame my father for everything.'

‘He made us both what we've become.'

‘We make our own destinies.'

‘Is that right? So, if you hadn't seen your father beat somebody to death and oversee the murder of your girlfriend you would still have turned out a right bastard would you?'

‘That's right. I was a bastard long before those things happened.'

She shrugged.

‘I don't really care. I'm just saying.'

She clasped her hands in front of her, veins standing out on arms and neck.

‘Do you want something from me?' he said. ‘Money? A flat? A fuck, for old times' sake.'

‘I've had enough fucks to last three lifetimes and then some.'

‘Good, because that bit was a joke. I don't fuck senior citizens.'

She stepped away from him.

‘Jesus,' he hissed. He put his hand on her shoulder. ‘I'm just being honest. I thought women valued honesty.'

‘Personally,' she said faintly, ‘I think truth is much overrated.'

‘Let me give you money.'

‘I need money but not from you.'

‘What, then?'

‘Such a lot of things.' Sadness behind her words. ‘Don't you wish we could have another try? Do it better? Different.'

Hathaway gave her a look.

‘I don't mean you and me. I mean life. By the time you realize you've only got one shot, it's already too late. You, above all people, know that.'

‘It would have turned out the same way for me whatever.'

‘You keep saying that.' She picked at a scab on her bare arm. ‘I think you're hard on yourself.'

‘Do you? Do you? You have no idea what things I've done.'

‘I think you were fundamentally changed in those teenage years.'

He patted her arm.

‘Nah. I found myself.'

She went and sat down on the sofa. She looked up at him.

‘Does that mean you're happy?'

‘Are you? You look fucking dreadful so I can't imagine there's much happiness in your life.'

‘Actually, Riley's been after me.'

‘Riley?'

‘Yes. Wants his life back.'

It took him a moment. He laughed. Then:

‘Stay here.'

‘What?'

‘I don't mean in my bed. I already said. But there are lots of rooms in this house. Empty rooms. Choose one. Stay here.'

‘And do what? The cleaning?'

‘Please. I'll help you get on your feet.' He moved behind her and brushed his index finger across her back. ‘Barbara – you were more important to me than I think you realize. It grieves me to see you like this. And I want to help.'

She tilted her head back to look at him. She had difficulty hearing as he said:

‘There are few things in my life I remember fondly. It's a short list. You're near the top.'

She looked at the ceiling. Neither of them acknowledged the tears sliding from the corners of her eyes.

TWENTY-ONE

S
ean Reilly's retirement home was Hathaway's big house on the outskirts of Varengeville-sur-mer, not far from the church where the artist Georges Braque was buried and the road ended at the cliff edge. Reilly lived there under the vague protection of the family of one of Dennis Hathaway's old smuggling partners, Marcel Magnon, a man who had also known Reilly during the war.

When Hathaway's boat docked at Dieppe they took the waiting car along the coast road. The tide was out and a score or so people were picking mussels from the rock pools.

The house had high walls around it with barbed wire along the top and security cameras set at intervals. Hathaway buzzed the intercom at the outer gate and it swung open. A man with a bulge under his jacket escorted them into the house. Barbara waited whilst Hathaway went ahead.

Hathaway was led down a corridor that smelt of floor wax, toilets and harsh disinfectant. The whole place smelt like a hospital. The smell was more intense in a large drawing room that had been converted into a hospital room.

Sean Reilly was propped up in a bed facing out through open French windows on to a long, landscaped garden. He looked up from the book he was reading. Smiled a winning smile, his false teeth too big in his skeletal head.

‘John.'

‘Mr Reilly.'

Reilly smiled again.

‘Sean.'

‘You're looking well, Sean,' Hathaway said.

‘I look like shit – and smell like it mostly, thanks to this bag. Sit me up higher, will you?'

Hathaway leaned over and pressed the button that lifted the top end of the bed. Reilly's head and upper body rose towards him.

‘That OK?'

‘Grand. So what's happening?'

Hathaway proffered the bottle of single malt.

‘I'm sure you're not allowed to but flowers are frowned on by your warders – nurses – I recall and I don't remember you having a sweet tooth.'

‘Hope it's Irish.'

Hathaway smiled.

‘Of course.'

With difficulty, Reilly raised a hand.

‘There are a couple of pretty decent glasses over there.'

Hathaway walked over to the table beside the open windows and poured two hefty measures of the best Irish he'd been able to find.

He handed a glass to Reilly, pulled over a chair and sat beside him.

‘How's things?'

Reilly looked beyond Hathaway.

‘I've been thinking about the past a lot. Things I did. Things I didn't do.'

‘Not regretting things?'

Reilly grimaced.

‘No point. Just wondering how my life might have been different. Alternative lives.'

‘The road not travelled.'

Reilly smiled, nodded down at the book he'd been reading.

‘I'm enjoying stuff that makes me think.'

‘Jesus,' Hathaway said. ‘I used to have that.'

‘It's your copy. I found it lying around. Hope you don't mind.'

‘
Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance
. Bit late to turn hippy, isn't it?'

Reilly smiled.

‘Did you know I started a philosophy degree at Trinity before the war? Then the war came and I went over the border and enlisted – don't ask me why, that's a long bloody story. And then, after the war, well, things had moved on for me.'

‘So you were going to be the new Bertrand Russell?'

‘Or James Joyce. I was all over the place. But then life took another course.' He took a sip of the drink, closed his eye. His cheeks reddened within seconds. ‘That's good. Slainte.'

‘Slainte.'

‘Never understood before why in Westerns cowboys would come into town dehydrated and go to the saloon and down whiskies. Wouldn't a beer have been better?'

‘But?'

Reilly grinned again.

‘But this whiskey is just the drink for the thirsty man in the desert.'

Hathaway smiled, nodded down at the book and quoted from memory:

‘The truth knocks on the door and you say “Go away, I'm looking for the truth” and so it goes away.'

‘Personally, I've always thought truth overvalued.' He passed his glass to Hathaway, his hand shaking. ‘Stephen Boyd was the best James Bond.'

Hathaway looked puzzled.

‘Who?'

‘Who?' Reilly laughed. ‘The first one.'

‘Wasn't that Sean Connery?'

‘Sean Connery? The guy who played Taggart? Runs the bar in
Emmerdale
now?'

Hathaway looked at Reilly's glass.

‘That's had a quick effect.'

‘I told you – I've been thinking about different ways life might have gone. But not just mine. Michael Caine didn't get the posh part in
Zulu
, so the cockney actor who played Private Hook got all the attention, ended up doing
The Ipcress File
and went on to have Caine's career.'

‘What happened to Caine?'

‘He did
Steptoe and Son
and now he's a stallholder in
EastEnders
.'

‘And you?'

Reilly took another sip of his whiskey.

‘Me? I'm Seamus Heaney. Or Monet.'

‘Wouldn't you have missed the action?'

Reilly looked away to one side. Hathaway put both glasses on a table beside Reilly's old display cabinet. He glanced down at Reilly's memorabilia. The guns, the knives, the medals. He recalled the first time he'd seen them, so many years before.

‘What's happening with you?' Reilly said eventually.

Hathaway turned.

‘There are some very bad men in town.'

Reilly cleared his throat and looked up at the ceiling.

‘Tell me something I don't know.'

‘I don't mean the usual scum. These people have come from outside.'

‘What do they want?'

‘They want to kill,' Hathaway said. ‘
Plus ça
fucking
change
. You get rid of one set of scumbags and another one comes in.'

Hathaway leaned in.

‘I've seen enough films about this but I can't believe it's happening to me. I want out but I can't seem to get out.'

‘You know that from your dad,' Reilly said, fixing Hathaway with a watery stare.

Hathaway looked down.

‘Aye, well.'

‘Who's coming after you?'

‘Foreigners. Serbians. Mad fuckers. Real hard bastards. The kind who burn your neighbour's house down just because they live next door to you.'

‘What do they want?'

‘Long term? Everything. Short term? Revenge for the death of one of theirs and his pregnant girlfriend in that Milldean thing.'

‘The massacre?'

‘Yeah. They think it was targeted at their guy.'

‘Was it?'

Hathaway shrugged.

‘Not for me to say. But they're here and they're starting up their own mayhem.'

‘That man on the Ditchling Beacon?'

Hathaway smiled.

‘I see you're keeping up with the Brighton news. Yeah. Stuck a skewer right up him. Came out next to his ear. Left him there to have a slow, painful death. What are things coming to?'

‘We've done our share.'

Hathaway looked at his father's old ally and his own mentor.

‘True,' he said. ‘True.'

‘What are you going to do?' Reilly said.

‘What do you think I should do? I was so nearly out of it and now I'm being dragged back in.'

‘You know you've got to go pre-emptive, John. It's the only way. Nuke the bastards.'

‘That brings me right back in.'

‘But it's your only way out.'

‘I don't know.'

‘You can do it, John. I know you can do it. I know what you've done.'

‘I know you know,' Hathaway said, then caught something in Reilly's tone. ‘We never really talked about that.'

‘Your dad was my friend but he'd gone rabid. It was something you had to do. I didn't like that you did it, but I could see why you thought you had to. So I let it go.'

‘And worked with me over all those subsequent years.'

Reilly reached out a thin, purple veined hand and laid it on Hathaway's.

‘It's a strange world you and I inhabit. I doubt anyone living outside it would understand. I think you had enough dealing with your guilt. I don't think you've had a happy life, John.'

Hathaway smiled at him.

‘Are we supposed to have?'

‘Don't let the guilt emasculate you. You can handle these Balkan johnny-come-latelies.'

Hathaway sighed and looked down at Reilly's gnarled hand.

‘If I start it, they'll come back with everything. You'll end up in the firing line. I don't know whether I can protect you.' He indicated the passage outside the door. ‘I've brought Barbara with me. I'd like her to stay here. I'll leave men too. Good men.'