Summary
In the first chapter, Pinkie goes out for a drink with Dallow in the wake of his murder of Spicer. He tells Dallow of the burden he feels having to take care of everything, including Spicer and Rose, after Hale's murder. At the bar, Pinkie and Dallow run into Cubitt, who is with Sylvie, Spicer's girlfriend. Pinkie flirts with Sylvie and then goes out to the cars with her to make love -- but he runs away in disgust.
In the second chapter, Pinkie meets with Rose, who has read the newspaper about Spicer's death. Pinkie implies that, actually, he had killed Spicer. At first, he tries to call off marriage with Rose, feeling overwhelmed by the revulsion he experienced with Sylvie, but then decides against it, since it seems too likely that she will talk.
In the third chapter, Pinkie visits Rose at her family house to propose marriage. Though her parents refuse at first, Pinkie's increasing offers of money eventually win their approval for the marriage.
In the fourth chapter, Ida is at the Cosmopolitan with Phil Corkery, where they encounter Mr. Colleoni. Ida goes up to a room and undresses to have sex with Corkery.
In the fifth chapter, at a celebration for Pinkie's engagement, Cubitt is astonished to hear Pinkie more or less admit that he killed Spicer. He leaves in shock, while Dallow, who is also there, pledges to remain by Pinkie.
In the sixth chapter, after having sex with Corkery, Ida muses that she needs one of Pinkie's to talk.
Analysis
During Pinkie's walk with Dallow, the only person after Kite he is able to confide in -- including speaking frankly about the murders he has committed and the murders he may have to come to commit -- we are given a description of Pinkie and the social environment he represents that is uniquely sympathetic to the darkness of his situation and gives us a sense of the importance of Kite to Pinkie:
"I liked Kite," the Boy said. He stared straight out towards France, an unknown land. At his back beyond the Cosmopolitan, Old Steyne, the Lewes Road, stood the downs, villages, cattle round the dewponds, another unknown land. This was his territory, the populous foreshore, a few thousand acres of houses, a narrow peninsula of electrified track running to London, two or three railway stations with their buffets and buns. It had been Kite's territory, it had been good enough for Kite, and when Kite had died in the waiting room of St. Pancras, it had been as if a father had died, leaving him an inheritance it was his duty never to leave for strange acres (142).
We should have this description in mind when we think back to Pinkie's interview with Mr. Colleoni, who by his age could potentially act as a father figure for him, just as with Ida, whom Pinkie says is old enough (and certainly motherly enough) to be his mother. Pinkie is an orphan in more than just the literal sense -- the loss of Kite as a father figure who gave him a sense of belonging, of not being a stranger, in the squalid communities of Brighton, is a trauma so strong that it effectively drives Pinkie and thus the entire plot. Pinkie cannot give up on that which he lost in Kite's death, even when tempted by sexual and financial fulfillment and social integration.
