The Curtis Blake Killings

by Simon McCleave

  THE CURTIS BLAKE KILLINGS

  By Simon McCleave

  A DS NICK EVANS PREQUEL NOVELLA

  No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, scanning, or otherwise without written permission from the publisher. It is illegal to copy this book, post it to a website, or distribute it by any other means without permission.

  Names, characters, businesses, places, events, and incidents are either the products of the author’s imagination or used in a purely fictitious manner. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, or actual

  events is purely coincidental.

  First published by Stamford Publishing Ltd in 2020

  Copyright © Simon McCleave, 2020

  All rights reserved

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  PROLOGUE

  The story of Declan Blake

  Liverpool - a city unlike any other. Once the gateway to the British Empire, it was a port that had, at one time, been responsible for eighty percent of Britain’s slave trade. The darkness of that reputation seemed to set the tone for Merseyside for the next three centuries. It seemed to be a city divided from the rest of the country by its attitude and accent. A place with more stereotypes and divisive views about its people and culture than anywhere else. Liverpudlians were mawkish and militant. They were dishonest and yet fiercely loyal. Scallies, comedians, poets, politicians, musicians and sportsmen. And something about the raw, gritty air, that was filled with the salt of the Irish Sea, produced a clan of physically tough, verbally agile, and witty people, with a healthy distrust of the authority imposed on them by the south.

  The city’s character had been forged by the huge melting pot of nationalities and cultures that had settled there. Waves of immigrants began to arrive from the late 18th century when freed African slaves settled in a seafront area called Toxteth. By the 19th century, Liverpool was at the peak of its power. Nine miles of busy docks ran from Brunswick to Seaforth on the east side of the River Mersey, and from Birkenhead to Wallasey on the west side. Trading with every part of the globe and ferrying millions on the Cunard Line and White Star Line to the New World of America, Liverpool was one of the most important ports in the world. It remained that way until the 20th century.

  The Irish winter of 1848 was one of the coldest on record. Declan Blake had managed to beg and steal his way from his hometown of Killarney in southwest Ireland across to the port of Cork on the east coast. Ireland was in the middle of the Great Famine, or what Declan’s late mother Josephine called An Drochshaol, meaning ‘The Bad Times’ in Gaelic. Josephine Blake, along with over a million others, had perished from starvation and disease. Declan was devastated by her death but knew he needed to escape Ireland if he was to stay alive. Everyone he knew was trying to get away. After already hearing stories of the New World, Declan had learnt that his Uncle Joseph now lived in New York with his wife, Bridget. So that was his plan; A ship to Liverpool and then a two-month voyage across the Atlantic to a new life. Declan had managed to save nearly three pounds for the two trips.

  On the 12th January 1848, Declan paid his six pence for a ticket from Cork to Liverpool. Arriving at Langton Dock, Liverpool on the 13th January, Declan was told that he could get a ticket on a passenger ship called The Hector that sailed for New York four days later. Declan was incredibly excited at the prospect of a new life. But first he needed to find a boarding house to stay in. He would then spend the following day waiting in line at the emigration agents to make sure his paperwork was in order.

  However, by a strange quirk of fate, Declan Blake never made it to New York. Later that day, Declan ran into a childhood friend, John Houghton. They had been altar boys together at St Patrick’s in Killarney for a while. Father O’Reilly, who was always drunk and stank of body odour, was the unwitting victim of their practical jokes. Declan and John went to reminisce in a seedy local pub called The Parrot by the seafront. A few hours later, they left to find lodgings but were robbed by a local gang, ‘the Cornermen’. Infamous for preying on naïve Irish immigrants, ‘the Cornermen’ used bats and heavy sharpened belts to injure their victims. Even though Declan had hidden his ticket money for America in his shoe, the gang soon found it and left him and John for dead on the quayside.

  Once Declan had recovered, he realised his dream of getting to New York was over. Instead, his friend John found him work with an Irish ‘navvy’ gang who were digging out the new Albert docks. Within six months, Declan had met and married Mary Charlton, who came from Blarney, in St John the Baptist’s Roman Catholic Church close to Toxteth Park. They settled and found a room to live in on Smithdown Road, an area that was almost exclusively Irish. Weekends were spent with fellow navvies in the nearby Kelly’s Dispensary pub, owned by Robert Cain who came from County Cork.

  Declan Blake continued to work on the docks and then the railways until his death in 1905. He was buried in Toxteth Cemetery and was survived by Mary, four sons, three daughters and eight grandchildren.

  Toxteth, Liverpool 8

  June 1994

  The heat of the summer was reaching boiling point. Too hot to bother going to school, the boy thought as he and his elder brother, Shaun, wandered down Granby Street in Toxteth, Liverpool. Shaun was sixteen but he hadn’t been to school for months. He had been expelled twice from other schools when he was younger. The two brothers had already whipped two cans of Fosters from the corner shop which were going down bloody lovely.

  The boy loved being down the Granby Triangle on days like these. And with Shaun next to him, no-one was going to fuck with them either. With sweat clinging to his forehead and eyebrows, the boy wiped his face and swept back his jet black hair.

  There’s a feeling of space on these roads, he thought as the feint breeze cooled him.

  Wide Victorian streets were lined with tall, terraced houses – Beaconsfield St, Cairns St, Jermyn St and Ducie St. There were a couple of black kids on the other side of the road. They exchanged furtive looks – they must have been on the wag too. He didn’t have a problem with the blacks. They were just the same as everyone else, weren’t they? The kids at school, and some of his relatives, were dead racist but he hated that. They listened to black music, supported Liverpool, whose best player was John Barnes, but said things like ‘bloody coons’. What was that all about, eh? Dickheads.

  As Shaun kicked the now-empty beer can into the gutter, the boy got a waft of the food from the nearby Bangladeshi store. It smelt like curry but also sweet and smoky. They hadn’t had breakfast. There was nothing to eat in the house and they hadn’t bothered robbing anything yet.

  As they turned left, the boy saw a building with boarded up doors and windows that were now covered in colourful graffiti tags. He and Shaun had a go at tagging after robbing some spray paints from Halfords last month. It hadn’t lasted long as Shaun had decided to spray his younger brother’s hair and face green to look like the Incredible Hulk. But that was Shaun. Daft as a bloody brush, our kid. But the boy loved the bones of his older brother. Their dad, Jack Blake, had died three years earlier in a motorbike accident and since then Shaun had taken on the role of being ‘the man of the house’. Well sometimes.

  Up ahead, some old West Indian men, all in hats of one kind or another, sat on the porch of a house smoking ganja, playing cards and laughing. They nodded a hello to the boys who nodded back. Someone was playing reggae from somewhere, the bass of the stereo reverberati
ng down into the street. It was a lazy day, where the dogs lay breathing heavily in the shadows of trees and the air was still and thick with heat.

  As they passed an alleyway, they saw two drunk men having piss against the wall, holding themselves up as they slurred their words. The boy knew all about the pubs and bars in this area from his uncles. There was the old Somali Club where his Uncle Ray had got stabbed in a card game a few years ago. There was the strip place where the prossies would give you a hand job for a rum and coke – or that’s what Uncle Ray said when he’d been on the piss. Another club round the corner was called Dutch Eddy’s, even though that wasn’t its name. The Lucky Bar and the Silver Sands. The boy couldn’t wait until he was old enough to go on the razz with his uncles.

  Shaun slowed noticeably and then stopped beside a car as he glanced around. The boy looked at his brother and then at the car – a dark green MG Maestro – and knew immediately what was coming. His heart sank. They were the easiest cars on the planet to hot wire.

  ‘Eh, fuck off, Shaun,’ the boy protested wearily. They’d been in enough trouble in the past few weeks.

  Shaun wasn’t listening. Having pulled a flat-head screwdriver from his jeans, Shaun grinned at him as he went to work on the lock. They could TWOC a Maestro in under a minute. ‘Don’t be soft, lad. Two litre, fuel injection. This is greased fucking lightning.’

  The boy shook his head, ‘Only if I drive, dickhead.’

  ‘Go ‘head then, shorty,’ Shaun said as he opened the passenger door and let the boy in the other side.

  The inside of the car was like an oven. The boy watched his brother yank out a brown wire from the fuse box. He then ripped a white and red lead from the starter relay. He touched the two wires together and engine started immediately.

  ‘Bingo,’ Shaun said, giving him a wink.

  Shaun could be a bit of a dick, but it was pretty cool having him as your older brother.

  The boy could feel the buzz in his stomach. He loved driving stolen cars. They never did anything with them. Just took them, drove around like nutters and left them somewhere. Some of the scallies from down the road used to pour petrol in their stolen cars and set them alight. Then they’d throw bricks at the bizzies when they arrived. The boy couldn’t see the point in that.

  Pushing down hard on the accelerator, the boy felt the engine roar and judder under the seat and on his feet.

  Come on! Let’s fuckin’ go!

  He stamped on the clutch, which was softer than he was used to. Then he used the gears to pull away at speed. Second gear, third gear and now fourth. Smooth as fuck, lad.

  Both brothers began to laugh and whoop.

  ‘Let’s see what this twat’s listening to...’ Shaun said, turning on the stereo.

  The album ‘No Jacket Required’ by Phil Collins was playing.

  Shaun pulled a face, ‘Are you fucking joking, mate? Phil fucking Collins!’ He hit the eject button, took the cassette and tossed it out of the passenger window. ‘Yous can do one!’

  Twiddling with the radio, Shaun heard something he liked – ‘No Good (Start the Dance)’ by the Prodigy. Cranking up the volume, the frenetic beats and bass crackled out of the speakers.

  ‘That’s more like it, la!’ the boy shouted, peering over the steering wheel with a grin as he hit fifty miles an hour.

  ‘Come on. You’re driving like a bleedin’ granny!’

  Out of the corner of his eye, the boy saw a woman crossing the road ahead with a pram. They were going too fast. She tried to run to get across but there wasn’t enough time.

  The boy spun the steering wheel left as hard as he could.

  ‘Mind out!’ Shaun said.

  ‘Fuckin’ hell!’ the boy shouted, hitting the brake and feeling the tyres skid on the hot tarmac road.

  The car slid sideways towards the curb.

  We’re gonna flip this on its bloody roof, the boy thought. We’re gonna end up dead.

  The tyres hit the curb and the car mounted the pavement. Another woman screamed as her husband pulled her out of the way.

  The air was full of the smell of burning rubber as the car smashed two dustbins into the air and then hit a tree with a bump.

  For fuck’s sake!

  For a moment, they looked at each other, wide eyed and breathing hard.

  With the music still blaring, Shaun grinned at his brother. ‘What did you swerve for, you soft twat? You should have run that bitch over!’

  ‘Oh yeah. And end up getting ten years...’ the boy said, his heart still hammering in his chest.

  What a buzz, though! He felt alive – more than alive. He thought about all those mugs who were suffocating at school in double Geography. I don’t feckin care what the capital of Nigeria is, do I?

  Trying to open the passenger door, Shaun looked over, ‘It’s jammed. I’ll have to get out your side.’

  The boy took a breath as he reached for the door lever. A face came to the window – it was a uniformed police officer. He looked at them both for a moment.

  ‘Don’t know how you morons didn’t kill someone!’ he growled. ‘I thought you were packing all this shit in, Shaun?’

  Shaun knew a lot of the bizzies in the area. He was always getting nicked for something. And most of their family had served time at one point or another. It was just a normal part of life.

  Shaun shrugged. ‘I was trying to teach my brother to drive.’

  The officer shook his head and looked at the boy, ‘What’s your name, son?’

  ‘Curtis,’ the boy replied.

  ‘Curtis Blake,’ the officer said nodding. ‘And how old are you Curtis?’

  ‘Twelve,’ the boy said.

  ‘Yeah, but he’s nearly thirteen,’ Shaun said as though that made all the difference.

  ‘Don’t be a dickhead, Shaun. It’s illegal to drive until you’re seventeen. Get out, the pair of you. You’re coming down the station.’

  The story of Dewi Evans

  Dinas Padog was a small rural town on the eastern edges of Snowdonia in North Wales. It’s economy had been largely agricultural from the time the Romans left in 400AD for the next fifteen hundred years. It wasn’t until the mid-19th century that any great change came to Snowdonia, when recession and the Industrial Revolution triggered massive shifts in population. Thousands moved away from the area, heading east in search of a better life. Some only went as far as the newly expanding coal mines in places such as Gresford. Others headed to the rapidly developing industrial cities of Liverpool and Manchester. And some went even further. Welsh families headed across the Atlantic, making the arduous journey from Liverpool to Quebec to settle in Canada.

  In the summer of 1860, a young carpenter, Dewi Evans, left the small family run farm in Dinas Padog and travelled to Liverpool where he joined his cousin Morgan. Dewi immediately found work with a Welsh construction company, building homes for migrant Welsh labourers in Everton. It was here that Dewi met and struck up a friendship with a young architect, Richard Owens, who originally came from Pwllheli. Over the next three decades, Dewi worked with Owens and a team of Welsh builders to transform the Toxteth area of the city. Over ten thousand workers cottages were built along roads that were given Welsh names – Wynnstay, Barmouth and Gwydir. They are still known today as the Welsh Streets. The crowning glory was the construction of the Welsh Presbyterian Church on Princes Road, which soon became known as Toxteth’s Welsh Cathedral.

  Dewi Evans returned to Dinas Padog in 1903 with his family, buying land and buildings where his sons began a furniture and carpentry business. Dewi used local tradesmen to transform and expand the site of the town’s school, Ysgol Dinas Padog. The new buildings, including a large main school hall that bore his name, were opened a year before Dewi’s death in 1911.

  Ysgol Dinas Padog

  June 1994

  It was so hot on the playground that the boy’s shirt was sticking to his back. Wiping his sweaty forehead with his palm, the boy controlled the football, looked up and pass
ed it to his mate Owen. The warm air was filled with the shouts of a boisterous lunchtime football match. It had grown to about twenty-a-side as it was nearly time to go in for afternoon lessons.

  Jesus! English next. Poetry is enough to make me gouge my own eyes out, he thought. The day before, they had read a poem about slavery that was full of weird words that no one knew. It was called Patois apparently. Mrs Roberts had clapped her hands to show them the rhythm as they chanted the poem as a class. The boy wasn’t really concentrating. He was too busy looking at Mrs Robert’s arse. She might have been in her thirties but she was tidy.

  Even though the boy had passed the ball at least two seconds earlier, Steven Mallory came clattering in for a tackle and knocked him flying onto the hot concrete of the playground. The boy landed on his back which took the wind out of him for a few seconds. Getting up and rubbing the grazed palms of his hands, the boy glared at Mallory who grinned back with bits of Prawn Cocktail crisps stuck in his braces. He could smell Mallory’s fishy breath from where he was standing.

  ‘Oh, sorry, bender,’ Mallory said with a sarcastic grin. He was massive for his age and spent most of his time playing rugby.

  ‘Fuck off, you ginger twat!’ the boy said.

  Mallory wasn’t going to take that; he grabbed the boy’s shirt and ripped off two buttons.

  This was all the boy needed to explode. There was so much going on in his head. He couldn’t think of anything he wanted more than to have a good scrap. His mother, Mel, had been diagnosed with ovarian cancer a few months ago. The previous night, she had been taken away to something called a hospice near Llancastell. Auntie Pat said it was a bit like a hospital, but the boy wasn’t stupid. He knew she was dying. She looked awful. He had taken her hand, which was cold and bony, and looked into her face that seemed to have gone grey. She had promised that the boy could come and visit in the next day or so when she had settled in.