The Dying Place (35 page)

You can’t choose the last words you say to your child as they leave the house. Not really. Otherwise you’d never let them leave, thinking over and over about what you should say to them. Final words of love, of wisdom. Some morsel of comfort that will get them through the time they spend away from you.

Matthew Collins. Colly to his mates. He wanted to do something with his life. Run his own business. Not sure what kind, but he liked the sound of being his own boss. When he was younger, he’d gone through a spate of asthma, his mum having him up to Alder Hey a number of times when he’d gone grey around the mouth. Not enough oxygen getting into him. Worried her sick.

He’d been stopped and searched by police more times than he could remember. One street caution for cannabis possession. Another for being in a fight he couldn’t remember any more.

His mum had washed the blood from his school shirts, tried to talk to him, but it was like having a conversation with a brick wall. He’d almost been nicked for robbery, but the charges had been dropped.

His two younger sisters doted on him. They would light up when he entered the room, the small amounts of time he deigned to spend with them the highlight of their week.

Cameron Wilkins was an only child, but was close to his cousins. He would have ended up in prison. No doubt about it. First arrest at thirteen for shoplifting and assaulting a security guard. Since then, numerous charges that were either dropped or led to a few months in the youth courts. Referral orders, the usual punishment.

His dad had been locked up for ten years for almost killing his mother. He was now out, but not allowed near either of them.

Cameron didn’t know what he wanted to do. Maybe get some girl pregnant so they could get a council house together. He heard being a spark or a welder paid well, so kept meaning to look into that.

He loved his mum. They’d been close. Things had changed as he got older, but that was what it mostly boiled down to. He wanted to see her happy. His mum knew that.

She clung onto that. It was all she had left.

A memory of love.

31

Princes Avenue in Toxteth was only a few minutes away from the city centre, and even with the traffic building up as they got closer, Murphy and DC Harris managed to pull up to the end of the busy street within ten minutes of leaving the CID offices in St Anne Street.

Them, and around a million other coppers, it seemed.

The scene in the distance was a sea of red and blue lights, endless marked cars parked, abandoned almost, along the usually busy thoroughfare of Princes Avenue. Then there were the other vehicles, civilian ones.

They
had
been abandoned.

Murphy pointed out a spot by the old church halfway down. ‘We’ll walk from there.’

Harris parked up and they both got out of the car, avoiding the seemingly endless stream of people moving in the opposite direction to them.

‘Whole area is being evacuated,’ Harris said, turning to him. ‘By the looks of things, anyway.’

Murphy allowed a couple to pass by them, one holding a swaddled baby to her chest as they hurried by, heads down. ‘Yeah, looks that way. Here’s the helicopter now.’

The familiar soundtrack to the city’s residents hovered high overhead, before moving further forward and around, then coming to a standstill up ahead.

‘Near Granby Street, that is,’ Harris said, still moving forward through the thickening crowd. People were flowing across the entire road area, the dual carriageway becoming a sea of faces illuminated in the growing darkness.

Murphy pulled Harris by the jacket sleeve and pulled him away from the right-hand side of the road and into the centre where the crowd was thinner, skirting the grassy area which separated the roads going in either direction.

‘When we get to the cordon, just say nothing, okay?’ Murphy said.

‘Sound.’

Someone had tried to set up police tape across the road but had deserted the task, so it flapped across the ground in the cool breeze.

A line of police vans and cars was keeping back those who’d stayed behind to see what was happening. Memories of 1981 came back to Murphy; of being a very young child pulled back from the window by his mum and dad as he watched police battling with the disenchanted and abused on the streets in Speke. Not as bad as it had been in Liverpool 8, but those ‘riots’ had reached even the outermost corners of the city.

‘DI Murphy with St Anne Street,’ Murphy said, holding up his ID to a suited-up sergeant who was standing closest to the bank of vehicles. ‘What’s the situation?’

‘Sergeant Mason,’ he replied, not bothering with a handshake or anything as formal. ‘Some nutter with a gun killed a couple of scallies on the other side of Granby Street. Looks like there’s been more as well. Couple of Indians have just been taken to hospital.’

Murphy looked around, moving past the sergeant. ‘No command centre yet?’

‘No,’ Sergeant Mason replied. ‘We’ve only just arrived and it’s all a bit chaotic, as you can see. We’ve got the civs out of the area and firearms are down the streets now to see if he’s still here. Didn’t fucking help that the press were here at the time. All over the bloody news already. Nothing we can do about that. Are you here to sort that kind of thing out or something?’

‘Something like that …’ Murphy replied, the vibration of his phone distracting him. ‘Excuse me.’

Murphy retrieved his phone, ‘Murphy.’

‘It’s DSI Butler. I’ve just been told you’re on the scene there …’

‘I am,’ Murphy replied, motioning for Harris to go and speak to a few of the uniforms who were standing close to the back of a police van. ‘It’s a bit hectic down here, as you can imagine.’

‘I can. SFOs and AFOs are there though, so you don’t need to be getting yourself too close.’

‘Just came down to see if it was linked to our Alan Bimpson case. I’m guessing it is?’

There was a dark laugh from the Superintendent. ‘I’m assuming you haven’t seen the news just yet then? It’s our man all right.’

Murphy looked towards Harris who was beckoning him over. ‘Well, I’ll make sure to watch the next bulletin,’ he said into the phone and then hung up, jogging over to where Harris and a few uniforms were standing.

‘What’s going on?’ Murphy said, as he reached them.

Harris stepped aside, revealing an older man, his make-up starting to run and hair not as coiffed as Murphy imagined it would have been thirty minutes earlier, still holding a microphone.

The cameraman sat beside the reporter, looking bemused by the whole thing.

‘These two were doing a live report on the BBC. Our guy came a bit closer than they were expecting.’

Murphy eyed up the reporter and didn’t bother to ask him what had happened, turning instead to the cameraman. ‘DI Murphy. You are?’

‘Simon Ridley.’

‘Great. That thing next to you,’ Murphy said, pointing to the tablet which was resting next to his camera, ‘reckon you can show me the footage you took earlier?’

‘Of course. I imagine it’ll be on YouTube already. It’s gone mad on Twitter, so someone will have uploaded it.’

‘Good, get it on there for me.’

A few minutes later and Murphy was holding onto the tablet. DC Harris hovered over his shoulder, watching. It was a normal outside broadcast at first, the news ticker moving across the bottom of the screen keeping people updated on what was already being told to them by the person on camera.

‘Why did you choose here to do the piece?’ Murphy said, not taking his eyes off the footage.

‘You know how it is …’ Simon the cameraman answered.

Murphy did. Any chance to link something violent to this part of the city, still synonymous with the eighties and its battle within itself.

‘Here it comes …’ DC Harris said.

At first, it was just a few glances to the side, as a couple of bangs happened off-screen. Could be mistaken for fireworks or something. Then screams, growing louder as they got closer to where they were filming on the corner of Granby Street. Some people running past a few seconds later. The report then cut to the newsreader in the studio, split-screen, so the on-the-ground reporter could be seen to begin to lose his composure. Wondering why all these Scousers are running towards him, screaming. Then the bangs happened again, the unmistakeable sound of automatic fire. That’s when the reporter hit the ground, the camera still upright, filming empty air. Slowly, it turned and zoomed in, as the newsreader back in the studio adjusted her glasses on the left-hand side of the screen and leant forward. The camera closed in on the scene and captured Alan Bimpson walking slowly towards them. He was a few hundred yards away, but with the close, tight shot the cameraman had made from zooming in, he filled the screen. No close facial features but unmistakeably him. Bimpson was almost sauntering down the road, sometimes aiming his rifle at those running away, sometimes relaxing his arms and glancing behind him.

He spotted something to his right, stopped and aimed his rifle. Cushioned the recoil in his shoulder as the screaming ends.

Then the gunman saw the camera ahead of him, causing him to stop in his tracks. He cocked his head a little and started to move forwards again.

‘Get the fuck out of here knobheads, he’s shooting everyone!’

The screen cut back to the safety of the studio, where the newsreader adjusted her glasses again, then apologised for the language used.

The video ended.

‘This all you got?’ Murphy said, handing the tablet back to the cameraman.

‘Yeah. We took your man’s advice and got out of there. Hung around a bit further up the road and watched him get in his car and leave. Cool as you like.’

Murphy rubbed his right hand across the back of his neck. ‘Okay. Someone will take a proper statement, but,’ Murphy turned to the seemingly whiter-haired reporter, ‘relax. He’s not coming back any time soon.’

The reporter stiffened as he was spoken to, just nodded in response.

Murphy turned and walked a few feet away, studying the houses on the Princes Avenue side. Old Victorian buildings, standing with purpose.

‘What now?’ DC Harris said, zipping his black jacket up and running a hand through his hair, all in one movement.

Murphy looked around, at the myriad vans and cars. ‘Firearms will blanket this area, but he’s long gone. Not much we can do here. We need to find out more about Bimpson himself. Find out what’s driving him.’

‘Back to the station then?’

‘Can you think of anything else?’ Murphy replied, looking down at the young DC.

Harris shook his head. ‘We’re not exactly going to do much here.’

‘Area commander will be here shortly,’ Murphy said to Sergeant Mason as they walked past him. His hair was sticking up at odd angles, where it had been messed with.

‘Okay,’ Mason replied, frowning, and placed his hat back on his head. ‘Where are you off to?’

Murphy just smiled and carried on walking.

Hopefully, he thought, to do something more productive than stand around looking like a misplaced ornament.

Bootle

He didn’t think he would make it out of Toxteth, but by some miracle he had. The news cameras turning up hadn’t been part of his plan, but it hardly mattered now.

He wasn’t coming back from this.

He left the car abandoned near the docks and picked up another he’d left there. A small, white Rover hatchback that had cost a couple of hundred quid cash, the seller not bothering to ask questions or see ID. All the details he’d used had been fake anyway, so it wouldn’t be traced back to him.

He imagined they’d find the other one eventually, but by that time the night would be long over. All he cared about was being able to move north of the city without being stopped.

He drove through the city centre, the sirens and shouts coming in through the open side window. There would be roadblocks set up, he reckoned. But it was too soon for that.

It had only been ten minutes since he’d left Toxteth.

The first two had gone down fast. Then, well … things had become a little blurry for him. He remembered screaming, shouting. The click as his rifle had run out of bullets. Then, the camera across the street, realising he’d made his way up Granby Street and was near Princes Avenue. He seemed to recall talking, but didn’t know about what. He was just focussed solely on the task at hand, forcing his forty-odd-year-old body to move quicker than it had in a long time, as he worried about being outflanked and stopped.

He didn’t worry about the sounds of people hitting the pavement. They deserved it. For all their bluster about wanting the place to be different, Toxteth and the rest of Liverpool 8 was a stain on his city. All the talk of regeneration, yet all he saw was boarded-up houses, steel shutters, and new-builds which already looked crumbling under the strain of housing the scum.

If they couldn’t teach the children themselves, they didn’t deserve to live. It was as simple as that.

He took out a few of the worst. Those older teenagers who were nothing but a blight on normal life.

The ones who had killed his mother and father by their actions.

Now it was the next stop. Bootle, to the north of the city. Where the lad who had pretended he could be reintegrated successfully into society came from. A stupid little prick who’d thought he could fool him into thinking he’d changed.

He’d shown him.

Now it was time to take out a few of his friends.

It wasn’t hard to find suitable targets in that part of the city. It was full of them. He drove the old car out of the city centre onto Derby Road, turning off on Strand Road and driving towards the New Strand Shopping Centre. He would park the car there and rest for a while. Let the events of earlier reach the ears and eyes of the population in Bootle and then see who still wanted to come out and play.

It was dark outside, as his watch – the facia had cracked at some point, but he couldn’t recall it happening – ticked over past ten p.m. The late May evening gave up the ghost of its preparation for summer evenings and allowed the cover of darkness to fall over him.