Essex Boys, The New Generation (31 page)

‘My auntie has always been like that, she thinks she has seen something or someone and nothing will make her believe any different to what she has in her head. At the time of the shootings, Auntie Christine had a serious drink problem, so much so she was prescribed tablets. Her memory and state of mind was not what I would describe as good. I don’t and won’t ever believe that she is right when she says Percival shot members of our family. She might believe it in her own mind, but she also believes I was always riding my motorbike around the street when I wasn’t.

‘At the trial, Auntie Christine said she recalled Percival being at our house party after the shootings because he had shoved toothpaste up her nose. This is just another example of Auntie Christine getting things totally wrong. She was still drinking heavily at that time and it was me messing about with the toothpaste with her, not Percival.

‘People in our family only started to talk about Percival as a suspect after his arrest. I guess he fell foul of the “no smoke without fire” mindset. Now he has been convicted, they have absolutely no doubt in their minds that he is responsible. All I can say to that is, apart from lying Alvin’s story, where is the evidence? Alvin has admitted being there and lied about how many gunmen entered the house. He says only one entered and fired the shots. All three victims, who had absolutely no reason to tell lies about that night, informed the police that two gunmen had entered the house.

‘I believe the other gunman was Boshell because his fingerprint was found on the car used in the attack. Boshell and Alvin were also the two who acquired the gun and went to retrieve it after the shootings. I think Boshell blamed Percival and a doorman named Dave to cover up Alvin’s and his own involvement. I think Alvin took elements of truth from that night and added Boshell’s bullshit informant evidence. He then spiced the whole story up with lies about Percival so that he could do a deal with the police to escape a lengthy prison sentence.

‘My uncle Raymond, who suffered terrible injuries in the shootings, went to the Woodcutters pub when he heard that Percival had been arrested. He wanted to make peace with the Walsh family and show them that he didn’t believe Percival was involved. He was adamant that the man who shot him had blue eyes. Unfortunately, Kevin Walsh got upset when he saw him and so Raymond left the pub. I visited Terry Watkins in prison after he stabbed Malcolm Walsh to death. I visited my family in hospital after they were shot. I saw the terrible injuries that the gunmen inflicted on them that night. I spent months of nerve-wracking uncertainty under police protection because of the attack on my family. I helped to carry my uncle Raymond’s coffin to his grave. Does anybody in their right mind think for one moment that I would befriend and visit the man in prison who was responsible for all of this?

‘I know for sure that Alvin is a liar because he told the police that me and Percival were going to shoot a bouncer. The very thought of pointing a gun at another human being after what happened to members of my family horrifies me. Could anybody honestly believe that I would consider for one moment shooting a complete stranger as a favour for the guy who is supposed to have shot members of my family?

‘Alvin is a lying piece of shit. He isn’t even capable of being honest with his own wife. As soon as the pressure is on, he says and does everything that will ensure his own skin is saved. If the police genuinely believed that I was conspiring to shoot or murder a bouncer for Percival, why didn’t they at least come and ask me about it? They have never been near my door in relation to this ridiculous allegation and, for me, that says it all.’

As Ronnie and I sat talking on a bench outside the Woodcutters Arms, a powerful Honda Fireblade motorcycle roared into the car park. ‘Oh, yes,’ Ronnie called out, as he jumped to his feet. ‘I have got to go now, Bernie. Good luck with the book.’

Moments later Ronnie was sitting astride his friend’s bike. His face was glowing with excitement as he called out to me, ‘One hundred and four miles per hour in first gear, mate. It’ll piss a hundred and eighty flat out.’

Before I could answer, Ronnie was disappearing from view down Eastwood Road North like a blurred flash of blue lightning.

The Hit Man Allegation

The other person Alvin claimed Percival had solicited to shoot people was the guy Alvin had referred to as Steve Penfold. It’s not his real name – Penfold is a nickname that his friends use because of his uncanny resemblance to the character of the same name in the
DangerMouse
cartoons. Like Ronnie Tretton, Penfold was accused by Alvin of plotting to shoot people on Percival’s behalf. Penfold was not required to attend Percival’s trial, nor was he questioned about the allegations.

The house in Southend where I was told Penfold lived hadn’t been inhabited for some time when I visited it. After speaking to neighbours, I learned that he had left Essex five or six years earlier. Fortunately, they had a forwarding address for him and so I wrote to Penfold, outlining the matters that I wished to discuss with him. At first I heard nothing, but after two or three weeks he did contact me by telephone.

‘I wasn’t being rude, Bernie,’ he said, ‘but I needed to have you checked out before I could speak to you. My mate who runs a few doors around Southend knows you, he said you’re OK, and so that’s good enough for me.’

Meeting many of the characters in this story whilst researching this book has transported me back to my own darker times in the Essex underworld. Suspicion, doubt and secrecy used to be controlling factors in the most innocent of situations. A person leaving a group to simply go for a piss would result in somebody asking, ‘Where’s he going?’ or ‘What’s he up to?’ Without exception, everybody trusted nobody and conspiracy theories were spawned each time anyone opened their mouth.

Penfold had left the battlefields of Essex to take up residence near the picturesque village of Market Harborough in Leicestershire. It is a mere 60 miles from my home in Birmingham and so I was pleased to be spared the hassle of yet another early morning trek down the motorway network to Essex. His new home is a very large detached property situated down a deserted road on the outskirts of the village. Built in the 1960s, it is guarded by high-tech security cameras and high walls, which hide Penfold from the outside world. Bleak and depressing are the two words that best describe his home: HMP Gartree.

Arriving at 1.45 p.m., the time I was advised to attend, I was told to sit in the prison visitors’ waiting room until my name was called. I waited and waited and waited. At three o’clock, I was still waiting in the aptly named waiting room. A large notice directly in front of me stated that visiting time ended at four o’clock, so I began to wonder if I was ever going to be called in. I tried hard not to complain – after being banned from visiting Percival for no rational reason, I certainly didn’t wish to be turned away from HMP Gartree for merely highlighting their ignorance.

As I sat biting my tongue, bored out of my brains, two families from Manchester talked about their sons’ recent portrayal in the press. They failed to mention why their ‘lads’ were serving life sentences, but they repeatedly referred to the journalists who had written about them as ‘bastards, scum and parasites’.

After handing in my visiting order, my passport was checked to confirm my identity and I was then subjected to the most rigorous of searches. This involved having to remove my shoes and my coat, then opening my mouth, putting out my tongue and finally standing on a designated spot whilst a dog trained to seek out drugs sniffed my legs and groin. When I was eventually let into the visiting room, I had to produce my passport and visiting order once more before being told to sit at table number five and wait.

At 3.35 p.m., Penfold was finally allowed into the room via a heavily fortified steel door. We shook hands and laughed together about the ridiculous lengths visitors have to go to in order to enter a prison compared to the relative ease with which prisoners are currently admitted.

By his own frank and honest admissions, Penfold has been involved in crime for most of his 50 years. After being abandoned and then raised in an orphanage, there seemed to be a certain inevitability about the path his life would take. He has been sentenced to serve more years in prison than he cares to remember. Ten years for an armed robbery during which he pistol-whipped a man; four years for possessing a shotgun; two cases of actual bodily harm; a section 18 wounding with intent conviction, which he earned after hacking off somebody’s ear with a machete. Then, of course, there is his current sentence: life imprisonment.

Alvin claimed Penfold had been given this life sentence for murdering somebody, but when I asked Penfold who he had murdered and why he said he didn’t know what I was talking about. Penfold explained that in 2003, when he had been sentenced, a new ‘two strikes and you’re out’ law was brought into being by the Labour government. This legislation requires judges to presume that a criminal who commits a second violent or dangerous offence deserves a life sentence unless the judge can be satisfied that the defendant is not a danger to the public. Penfold had already been convicted of hacking somebody’s ear off and so a second conviction for a serious violent offence resulted in him being given a mandatory life sentence under the new legislation.

‘Armed robbery had become a crime of the past,’ Penfold told me. ‘Banks and building societies no longer hold much hard cash on the premises and security is so sophisticated these days that even if you did try to rob somewhere, the likelihood of getting away with it is almost zero.

‘I didn’t fancy getting involved in the drug scene because it attracts too many arseholes and so I decided to try something totally different to everybody else I knew. I decided to enrol on a computer course in the hope that I could get myself a proper job and go straight. I couldn’t read or write and so getting my head around something as complex as computers was never going to be easy for me, but I really wanted to give it my best shot.

‘Everything was going fine at first. My life revolved around attending Southend College, getting on with my work, going home and keeping my head down. After a few weeks, I noticed that one of my fellow students was being unnecessarily hostile and rude whenever I happened to be around. I chose to ignore him, but one day I went into class and found that he had deleted all of my coursework off my computer. I’d put my heart and soul into my studies and he had erased it all at the push of a button. I cannot deny that I was a little more than angry.

‘I had a heated argument with the man before leaving the building to avoid doing something I would later regret. I got into my car and drove away from the college because I knew that I needed to calm down. After an hour or so, I decided to go back and apologise to my tutor and fellow students for my outburst. As I went to get out of my car, the man who had deleted my work walked across the car park towards me. We stood facing one another and then he began mouthing off at me and shouting, “Do you want some?” Before I could reply, he had head-butted me full in the face. I’m not proud of what happened next, but I just lost it.

‘This guy had deleted all of my hard work. He had been constantly rude to me for no apparent reason and he had head-butted me in the face. I was fucking livid. I shouted, “Violence! Fucking violence! You want some violence? I’ll give you violence.” I punched him to the ground, and then went to the boot of my car and took out a long steel spike that is for use with a Kango heavy-duty concrete breaker. As the man was getting to his feet, I hit him over the head with the spike and then clubbed him a few times with it as he lay on the ground. I didn’t deny what I had done to the police nor did I offer any excuses. All of the effort I had put into bettering myself so that I could go straight had been wasted.

‘My victim was given 19 stitches for the head wounds he suffered and spent a short period of time in hospital, but I’m pleased to say that he has now made a full recovery. As for me, I’ve spent seven years in prison so far for doing it. Seven long years for a moment’s madness. It’s sickening. I have no idea when, if ever, I will be allowed out.’

Turning to the purpose of my visit, I asked Penfold about his knowledge of Ricky Percival, his dealings, if any, with him and his thoughts on Alvin’s allegations.

‘Ricky Percival is a nice enough kid,’ he said. ‘He’s half my age and so I’ve not had a great deal to do with him. I know his brother Danny better, but only because he works on the pub and club doors around Southend.

‘As for Ricky employing me to shoot people, I think I’m capable of causing enough trouble for myself without getting involved in his shit, don’t you? I had never met or even heard of Percival’s mate Alvin until he washed up in one of the numerous prisons that I have had the misfortune to be housed in. It was in HMP Belmarsh that we first met.

‘Prison officers from the internal security unit had turned up at my cell one day and announced without warning that I was being taken to the punishment block. It’s not uncommon for inmates to be searched or for them to be subjected to some form of special scrutiny, but I had done no wrong and couldn’t understand why this was happening. I was taken to the punishment block, where it was explained to me that the prison had received intelligence from the police that I was planning to escape from the prison van on my next trip out to court. This allegation was totally untrue and the thorough search of my cell, clothing and property that was carried out proved that fact. However, the mere allegation that I was planning to escape ensured that I was put on the ‘escapers list’ and I was then required to wear patches. This is the name given to a hideous set of clothing potential escapees have to wear which is covered in huge luminous-yellow squares. The patches make you stand out from the crowd so that the prison staff can monitor you more closely. When you’re no longer deemed a threat to security, you can return to wearing the normal prison garb, but you have to move to another wing in the prison so all contact with previous associates is severed.