Peter Guttridge - The Last King of Brighton
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- Book:The Last King of Brighton
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- Year:2011
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The Last King of Brighton: summary, description and annotation
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The new gripping mystery following City of Dreadful Night - A man impaled on the South Downs. Another skinned alive. A skeleton found beneath the West Pier, its feet encased in concrete. Brighton has been invaded. But this is no mere power struggle between rival mobsters; the motives for the killings stretch back through the decades, to an explosive forty-year-old secret Brightons crime king John Hathaway would rather forget. But someone else remembers and that someone has decided that revenge is a dish best served cold . . .
Peter Guttridge: author's other books
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A Selection of Recent Titles by Peter Guttridge
The Brighton Mystery Series
CITY OF DREADFUL NIGHT *
THE LAST KING OF BRIGHTON *
The Nick Madrid Series
NO LAUGHING MATTER
A GHOST OF A CHANCE
TWO TO TANGO
THE ONCE AND FUTURE CON
FOILED AGAIN
CAST ADRIFT
*available from Severn House
THE LAST KING OFBRIGHTONThe Second Brighton MysteryPeter Guttridge This eBook is copyright material and must not be copied, reproduced, transferred, distributed, leased, licensed or publicly performed or used in any way except as specifically permitted in writing by the publishers, as allowed under the terms and conditions under which it was purchased or as strictly permitted by applicable copyright law. Any unauthorised distribution or use of this text may be a direct infringement of the author's and publisher's rights and those responsible may be liable in law accordingly.
This first world edition published 2011
in Great Britain and the USA by
SEVERN HOUSE PUBLISHERS LTD of
915 High Street, Sutton, Surrey, England, SM1 1DF.
Copyright 2011 by Peter Guttridge.
All rights reserved.
The moral right of the author has been asserted.
British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data
Guttridge,Peter.
The last king of Brighton.
1. Police England Brighton Fiction. 2. Gangs England Brighton Fiction. 3. Gangsters England Brighton Fiction. 4. Revenge Fiction. 5. Brighton
(England) Social conditions Fiction. 6. Detective and mystery stories.
I. Title
823.9'14-dc22
ISBN-13: 978-1-7801-0017-3 (ePub)
ISBN-13: 978-0-7278-8009-3 (cased)
ISBN-13: 978-1-84751-335-9 (trade paper)
Except where actual historical events and characters are being described for the storyline of this novel, all situations in this publication are fictitious and any resemblance to living persons is purely coincidental.
This ebook produced by
Palimpsest Book Production Limited,
Falkirk, Stirlingshire, Scotland.
For all my family, in memory of Ada and
Jim Guttridge
If God had abandoned this unlucky town, he had surely not abandoned the whole world that was beneath the skies?
Ivo Andric, The Bridge Over The Drina
PROLOGUE
Barbarians at the Gate
T he 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 mans 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 mans 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 mans 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 mans 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 mans 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 mans 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 mans head lolled, his eyes rolled. He was whimpering when they left him there.
ONE
Johnny, Remember Me
1963
T he 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: Theyre bolting the door get the guns.
Dont 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.
Thats it, he shouted, lets 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 drivers head was bleeding heavily. They were dropped to the floor beside the mailmen.
Another big man loomed over them.
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