The protagonist is a 17-year-old called Pinkie. He is the leader of a small group of criminals who extort protection money from the Brighton bookmakers. His predecessor, a character called Kite, was murdered by a rival mob, 'Colleoni's mob'. It might seem strange that, given that the other members of the gang - Spicer, Cubbitt and Dallow - are both older and have been members for longer, that young Pinkie should have inherited the leadership. It becomes clear, however that he is the natural leader. He is more intelligent, more ruthless and more ambitious than the other three are. The book is about his ambition.
Pinkie is the central character but the story opens through the eyes of another character. Charles Hale, who calls himself 'Fred', works for a newspaper, the Daily Messenger, as the 'Kolley Kibber'. He tours seaside resorts like Southend and Brighton where he patrols a certain pre-set route, discreetly leaving cards along the way. Those that find his cards win a small prize (10 shillings) from the newspaper and those that recognize him and present themselves to him with a copy of the Daily Messenger in their hand with the words 'You are Mr. Kolley Kibber. I claim the Daily Messenger Prize' win a larger prize (10 guineas). Pinkie's mob wishes to murder him. The reason for this is never made entirely clear but he seems to have been connected with the murder of Kite.
'Hale knew, before he had been in Brighton three hours, that they meant to murder him' (5). The first chapter describes the last few hours of Hale's life. These hours are spent fretfully following the schedule prescribed by his paper for the Kolley Kibber. They are hours of mounting anxiety, confident at first and desperate at last. It is a chapter in which Greene sets the 'gangland' scene of Brighton, a curious and not altogether convincing atmosphere of an underworld stirring beneath the unsuspecting feet of hordes of dull suburban weekenders.
Hale knows that Pinkie and his gang want to murder him. He does not resign himself to death. He is too afraid - the casual cry of 'Razors' by a salesman cuts through the humdrum noise of a busy Brighton afternoon - and he is too proud, 'But the old desperate pride persisted, a pride of intellect. He was scare sick, but he told himself, "I'm not going to die"' (12). He formulates a plan. He must find a companion, a girl. Pinkie and his mob cannot murder him with witnesses around. He tries the sea-front where single girls lounge in deck chairs waiting to be picked up. He has little luck. With his ink-stained fingers and terrified restlessness, he is unlikely to find someone. His one success is botched by the arrival of Pinkie.
Fleeing from Pinkie, he finally gives up any attempt to keep to the schedule that his job prescribes. He relinquishes his professional pride to fear. He finds comfort in a lady called Ida. She is motherly, takes pity on Hale and she seems to provide for him the security that Hale needs. They stick together but Ida leaves Hale for a fateful five minutes to go to the lavatory. She returns to find him gone.
Hale is dead. The rest of the story is told through the eyes of his killer, Pinkie and his avenger, Ida. Chapter Two is seen through Pinkie's eyes, described as 'slatey eyes... touched with an annihilating eternity from which he had come and to which he went' (20). The gang regroups after Hale's murder in a restaurant. Spicer has no appetite. 'He'd better have an appetite', the Boy (Pinkie) replies as his men reassemble 'like children before his ageless eyes' (23). They have been disposing of Hale's body and arranging an alibi. Spicer was responsible for distributing his cards along the Kolley Kibber's route as evidence that he died after two o'clock - i.e. after the murder actually took place. He tells Pinkie that he left one under the tablecloth of a restaurant called 'Snow's'.
Pinkie is worried that Spicer might have been seeing leaving the card in Snow's. Spicer refuses to return to retrieve the card so Pinkie goes instead. He finds the table at which Spicer sat and is caught by the waitress, a young girl called Rose, in the act of looking for the card. The card is not there. Rose admits that she found the card and, among other things, that she has a very good memory for faces. She noticed that the man that left the card did not look anything like the picture of the Kolley Kibber - the picture of Hale - that was published in the Daily Messenger. She is a liability. Her evidence could destroy the alibi that Pinkie and his gang have constructed. Pinkie leaves Snow's, unsure of how to deal with her: '"I'll be seeing you," the Boy said. "You an' me have things in common."'(28).
There is no cause for concern. The coroner's report states that he died of a weak heart. But Ida is not satisfied. She doesn't understand why Hale left her when she went to the lavatory. "I'd like to 'ave asked some questions", she says (32). Her curiosity is reinforced by the apathy of those around her:
'"You oughtn't to fuss about that, Ida. It's none of your business."' '"I know," she said. "It's none of mine." But it's none of anybody's, her heart repeated to her: that was the trouble: no one but her to ask questions' (34)
She attends his cremation where she and Hale's landlady are the only mourners. The clergyman concludes that "Truth is beauty and there is more beauty for us, a truth loving generation, in the certainty that our brother is at this moment reabsorbed in the universal spirit" (35). Ida is touched by the 'easy pathos' of the lonely, unloved Fred, also called Charles, disappearing in smoke, becoming 'part of the smoke nuisance over London', of the clergyman smiling gently 'like a conjurer who has produced his nine hundred and fortieth rabbit without a hitch' (34-36).
'Ida wept... But while she wept a determination grew... Vengeance was Ida's, just as much as reward was Ida's... Ida was going to begin at the beginning and work right on. She was a sticker' (36-37). So Ida sets out to discover the truth behind Hale's death. She starts by visiting the girl that was questioned at the inquest, the girl that Fred had tried to pick up on the sea-front. She gets little information from her, only a vague description of Pinkie and the idea that Pinkie was after him for money that Fred had borrowed. Her next call is to the spirit world. She gets out her ouija board and asks "Are you there, Fred?... What happened to you, Fred?" (43). The results are hardly clear - "FRESUCILLEYE" - but Ida, with a superstitious faith and a conviction that Fred did not die from natural causes makes sense of it: "Why it's clear as clear. Fre is short for Fred and Suici for Suicide and Eye; that's what I always say - an eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth." (44).
The coroner's verdict that Hale died of natural causes is of as little comfort to Pinkie and his gang as it is to Ida. They are somehow disconcerted: "That verdict sort of shook us all. What did they mean by it? We did kill him, Pinkie?" (46). Pinkie thinks Spicer is 'milky' but he, too, is not entirely satisfied. He is worried about Rose. He meets her for a date and tries to warn her to forget about Hale and the man that left the card in the restaurant, not to 'get mixed up in things' (47). He tells her of another girl that got 'mixed up in things' and had her face burnt by vitriol. He produces a bottle of vitriol and shows her its effect on the wood of the pier. This demonstration frightens Rose but impresses her also. She is struck with awe at what seems to be power in someone so young as Pinkie and at his apparent knowledge and experience.
His warning is particularly apt. When she protests, "I wouldn't get mixed up with a mob like that", he tells her, "You can't always help it. It sort of comes that way" (47). His warning applies not only to her but also to him. In his attempts to tie up the last loose thread of Hale's murder, Rose, he is getting mixed up in a mob that he never thought that he would associate with. Age and experience, women and sex are 'sort of coming his way'.
Pinkie returns to his gang. Two subscriptions of protection money have not been paid. Brewer and Tate have not paid up. Pinkie ignores the advice of Spicer and Dallow that they should lie low for a bit after the murder of Hale. Pinkie goes to see Brewer. Brewer tells Pinkie that he is paying protection money to Colleoni now that Kite is dead. Pinkie slashes him with a razor and he pays up.
Pinkie receives a letter from Colleoni. The thick, luxurious writing paper contrasts with the squalour of Pinkie's lodgings but Pinkie will not concede that Colleoni is more powerful. He has an obstinate pride, an immature self-confidence. He visits Colleoni in the opulent surroundings of The Cosmopolitan where Colleoni stays. Colleoni warns him that he should give up his protection racket. Colleoni's patronizing tone does nothing to undermine Pinkie's grandiose pride but serves instead to strengthen his self-belief and confirm him in his ambitions of power. He knows that it is Colleoni who has arranged for a policeman to wait outside the hotel and take him from there to the police station where he is given a similar warning. He is not impressed. His conviction is made firmer rather than weaker:
'He had been insulted. He was going to show the world. They thought that because he was only seventeen... he jerked his shoulders back at the memory that he'd killed his man, and these bogies who thought they were clever weren't clever enough to discover that. He trailed the clouds of his own glory after him: hell lay about him in his infancy. He was ready for more deaths.' (68)
Ida returns to Brighton on a mission. She lays a bet on 'Black Boy' at the bookies (Tate's). She picks up from bar room gossip a little information about Colleoni and Pinkie: that Colleoni is out for a monopoly on the protection racket and that Pinkie is trying to hold onto the racket that his predecessor, Kite, had set up. She goes to Snow's to find the girl that found the card that Hale had apparently left there. She talks to Rose who chats to her with her normal congeniality but suddenly remembers Pinkie's warning that she should be wary of people asking questions. Ida pursues her gentle interrogation but Rose is very much on her guard. She pretends to have a poor memory for faces and refuses to answer the questions that Ida asks about the appearance of the man that left the card: "I didn't talk to him. I was rushed. I just fetched him a Bass and a sausage roll and I never saw him again." (75). Unwittingly, she gives Ida a precious piece of information that confirms Ida's suspicion that it was not Hale that left the card for Ida remembers that Hale refused her offer of a Bass: "I don't like Bass." He had told her (10). She goes to the police with her evidence but is told that Hale's case is closed. The police will not investigate the case. It is her case.
'Spicer was restless these days' (81). Spicer was nervous. He disliked killing and he was worried by the easy conclusion of Hale's death. Without any sort of investigation, nothing to test their alibi, he was left uneasily free and suspicious. It seems to him that he and the others have a false sense of security. Pinkie carves Brewer only a week after Hale's death. Pinkie doesn't suspect that there might be something more sinister in the Hale verdict. Spicer is looking for cracks in their safety. He is unnerved, therefore when he meets Crab, one of the Colleoni mob, who tells him that Pinkie is at the police station. He returns to their lodgings and receives a call from Rose who tells him that a lady (Ida) has been asking questions. He is frightened, especially because he knows that Pinkie knows that he is frightened. He knows that he wouldn't betray them but also knows that they think he might. His situation seems very precarious. He feels threatened by the police, by Colleoni's mob and by his own mob. As he frets over his fears and dreams of security, away from the underworld of Brighton, running a pub in Nottingham, he does not notice the beach photographer taking his photo.
'The poison twisted in the Boy's veins. He had been insulted. He had to show someone he was - a man.' (86). Pinkie goes to Snow's and takes Rose out into the countryside just outside Brighton. On the bus, as they ride out of town, he clams down. She regards him with an awe and her admiration satisfies his insecurity but not for long: 'when he looked at the girl who admired him, the poison oozed out again' (88). Pinkie is not worried in quite the same way as Spicer but he is worried. He sees the threat to his security very clearly in the form of Rose. She characterizes the progression of time, the loss of the independence of youth. She represents the threat of marriage and sex and Pinkie is scared of both, but particularly sex. She also represents a world that he wishes to escape from. They both grew up in Nelson place, a Brighton slum. His thirst for power, for the opulence and ease of The Cosmopolitan is fuelled by a fierce desire to escape from his background, from the impoverished fate of his parents. His memories of childhood, witnessing the 'Saturday night ritual' - his parents' weekly sex - has cultured his disgust for sex. Rose represents, in her background, poverty and in her affection for him, the threat of marriage and sex. '... the prick of sexual desire disturbed him like a sickness. That was what happened to a man in the end: the stuffy room, the wakeful children, the Saturday night movements. Was there no escape - anywhere - for anyone? It was worth murdering a world.' (92).