NF (2010) Hoods

by Carl Fellstrom

  Carl Fellstrom

  he summer sun was already warming the flat landscape of the Lincolnshire coast when Joan and John Stirland awoke on 8 August 2004 in the modest bungalow they had made their new home. The middle-aged couple were both from Nottingham, but recent unpleasant events had forced them to move to the quiet village of Trusthorpe, near Mablethorpe, on the east coast of England. John, aged fifty-five, had retired as a machine operator in the traditional Nottingham industry of lace-dyeing. He was generally an outgoing man, the sort who would go out of his way to give a lost stranger directions, but had recently become less open and more suspicious. Joan, aged fifty-three, had worked as a cancer nurse and had known troubles in her life – a broken marriage, a tearaway son.

  John, shirtless and in his summer shorts, flicked through a Sunday tabloid filled with more revelations about the private life of Sven-Goran Eriksson, the England football manager. Occasionally he looked up at the television, which he liked to have on all the time. Despite her husband’s nonchalant protestations that she should enjoy the weather, Joan was feeling anxious. The day before, one of her daughters had left with the grandchildren after a wonderful few days’ stay. Life appeared to be getting back to normal. But then that very morning, one of the neighbours had called round to tell them she thought she had seen a tall, shadowy figure jumping over a fence and prowling in their back garden the evening before. Joan wanted to play it down to her neighbour. No need for them to know more than they have to, she thought.

  ‘Probably just kids messing about but I’d better tell John,’ she said. ‘Thanks for letting me know but probably nothing to get worried about.’

  But Joan was worried – very worried.

  ‘I’m going to ring the police at Nottingham in a bit, just to be on the safe side,’ she told John.

  ‘Okay, love, but I’m telling you you’re wasting a lovely day getting all het up about it. Get it out the way and then we can have a walk on the front.’

  Joan had every right to be scared. The past year had been a living nightmare as they moved from place to place, looking for sanctuary. Michael O’Brien, her son from a previous relationship, had shot dead a young Nottingham man, Marvyn Bradshaw, in a pub car park. Bradshaw had some very dangerous and powerful friends and this had put not just O’Brien but anyone related to him at risk. Even though Joan and John deplored the murder, they had since spent months looking over their shoulders and tensing at every knock on their door.

  Michael’s trial for the shooting had recently concluded and he had been jailed for life. Joan was ashamed of what he had done and even more ashamed that he had hurled a tirade of abuse at the victim’s family. When he was sentenced, he threw a cup of water in the direction of the victim’s family and taunted them. That was two weeks ago and Joan had since heard that Marvyn Bradshaw’s best mate, Jamie Gunn, had also died. Jamie had cradled his friend’s bloodied head in his arms as he lay dying. Unable to cope with his friend’s death, his life had collapsed into a haze of drugs and drink and his own body had given up. It was the worst news possible and was bound to reopen old wounds – Jamie Gunn’s uncle, Colin, was an infamous ganglord and Joan rightly feared that he would want revenge yet again.

  On 16 September 2003, two weeks after Michael had shot Marvyn Bradshaw, Joan and John had been forced to flee Nottingham. A few days after Michael was arrested, Joan and John were watching television in the home they rented in Carlton, Nottingham, when they heard the unmistakable blast of gunfire and the sound of shattering glass. Someone was shooting up their home. They both hit the floor, ducked down and lay quivering with fear as they heard the sound of a motorcycle revving and speeding off. Eventually they crawled up the staircase of the house where Joan got to her mobile to dial 999. It was a while before they felt safe enough to get up and assess the damage.

  Joan had told police after the attack: ‘I heard a series of about seven bangs. I was standing up in the living room when the window went in and can only describe it as like a rush of wind past my arm. Having bullets fired at the house has left me and John very, very frightened. We fear for our safety. It is only luck that we weren’t both killed.’

  The next morning they moved out of the house and went straight to the Crescent Hotel in Bridlington, on the Yorkshire coast, without telling the police. They were soon traced and offered witness protection, but Joan was told she would have to make a full statement about Michael and the phone call he had made to her admitting his role in the murder if the police were going to help them fully. She would also have to cut all connections with her two daughters because police would not provide them with protection. It was a step too far for Joan. She wanted protection for the whole family: her daughters and John’s son and daughter. The police would not justify such a move; the costs were prohibitive.

  ‘We will look after ourselves in that case but we want you to keep us informed about what is going on in the meantime,’ she told officers.

  Joan was close to Michael. His alcoholic father had died from cancer when Michael was just thirteen and his passion in life – he had been a promising footballer who dreamed of a professional career – disappeared. Michael never got on with his stepfather. He resented the loss of his natural father and the harder John tried to be a replacement the more Michael rebelled. He refused to take up the Stirland name, preferring O’Brien, and by the time they left the St Ann’s estate to move to neighbouring Carlton, Michael was a runaway train. Eventually he even sucked his mother into his criminal world. A few years earlier she had stupidly concealed some cannabis in her bra to give to him on a prison visit and was caught. Michael had been serving time in Swinfen Hall Young Offenders Institution and had asked her to bring the cannabis in after he was slashed with a razor blade by a fellow inmate, resulting in eighty stitches to his face. But sniffer dogs caught her as she went through security at the prison. She was lucky to escape a jail term herself. She shuddered as she remembered standing before the stern judge who had told her, ‘Stand up, Mrs Stirland. It is with considerable hesitation that I have not sent you to prison.’ Instead he suspended her nine-month sentence for two years.

  Joan had admonished Michael many times for his criminal ventures. She knew he was capable of bad things but the murder cut deep into her heart. Where had she gone wrong? Had Michael really become a monster? She had seen no such signs in him when he was a toddler and though she loved him as any mother would love their child, she now felt deep shame that she had brought him into a world where his mark had been made for all the wrong reasons. When he had first gone on the run he had even threatened to have his stepfather kneecapped if Joan refused to help with food and clothes. She had told the police all this and more. What else was there to tell, that they didn’t already have from other witnesses, about Michael’s role in the murder?

  After a week in the Crescent Hotel, the couple moved to Old Goole, in Humberside, for a few months. It had been their dream to live on the coast but this still didn’t feel like home. The small flat became a prison. Then, in the New Year of 2004, the opportunity of a bungalow came up in Trusthorpe. Joan’s daughter Rosie rang to tell her she had seen an ideal place to rent in the classified section of the local newspaper. It was perfect, and just a few yards from the seafront. Joan told the police they had moved and they weren’t happy.

  ‘Joan, you are moving into an area that the Gunn family have serious connections with, they have all sorts of contacts in the area. All it takes is a slip of the tongue to the wrong person and they will find out where you are,’ a detective told her.

  ‘I think we will be all right but just keep us informed,’ said Joan.

  That was eight months ago. Now the very thing the police feared might be coming to pass, thought Joan. Her mind raced through the possibilities. Had someone said something at the wedding of John’s son Lee, which they had attended to a few weeks earlier at Newstead Abbey? John had been very worried when three car tyres had blown on the way to the wedding – he thought it was more than just
a coincidence. ‘I mean, what are the chances of all three tyres going at the same time,’ he had confided to one of the guests. Despite all the precautions they took, maybe someone had followed them back from the wedding or had followed her daughter when she had come to visit.

  By about 11am, Joan had called the number she had been given by her police contact. She got through to Tony Webster, the duty inspector on call, and explained her concerns. DI Webster was well aware of the Stirland case – and of the Bestwood Cartel.

  ‘I’m worried because my neighbour said she saw someone in the back garden last night. What with Jamie Gunn dying and the end of the trial I’m worried they might have found us. Maybe I’m just being paranoid but can you look into it for me?’ she asked him.

  ‘Okay, Joan. Leave it with me,’ the officer replied.

  DI Webster contacted Detective Chief Inspector Paul Cottee, who had been dealing with the Stirlands’ concerns. Cottee was at the airport, picking up a friend, when he received the call and but arranged for a detective sergeant to call Lincolnshire Police. At 2pm, the bungalow telephone rang. Joan picked it up. It was a detective from Nottinghamshire Police.

  ‘I don’t want police cars screaming up here but if you can do something it would put my mind at rest,’ she told him.

  ‘Joan, I’ll get Lincolnshire to send someone over. We’ll keep it low key, don’t worry,’ he replied.

  Joan put the phone down, feeling slightly more reassured. It was almost 2.15pm.

  No one paid much notice to the two workmen in blue boiler suits wearing caps and silver gloves going in through the door of the bungalow – or the car parked on the kerb with its hazard lights on. Joan heard the pleas of her husband John from the other room and the sickening sound of gun fire. She rushed into the living room and saw John slumped on the sofa with six bullets in him, two in his neck.

  The two Beretta-carrying gunmen moved swiftly and backed her into the bedroom. She realised the end was near but knelt down, pleading with the gunmen. ‘Please don’t do this, I’ve got grandchildren,’ she screamed. Four bullets hit her; the fatal wound was to her neck. She slumped down into the narrow space between the side of the bed and the wall. Nearby was a picture of her son Michael; just below that was a bullet mark.

  The shooting was neither heard nor reported, and it was seven hours before the first police officer arrived, in belated response to Joan’s earlier call. John’s body was slumped on the sofa, newspapers still by his side and the flickering television screen illuminating the now darkening room. John had been hit by six bullets, three from each pistol. PC Kevin Jackson didn’t spot Joan’s crumpled body lying between the wall and bed in their bedroom. It would not be discovered until CID officers arrived at the murder scene another three hours later. She had been hit by four bullets, three from one of the assassins and one from the other.

  It would not be long before detectives realised the painfully sad and violent scene before them bore an indelible, blood-soaked label: Made in Nottingham.

  CHAPTER 1

  S THE A453 carves its way between the flood plains either side of Kegworth and Wilford, leading towards the Clifton estate, the first clue that a visitor is about to enter a city with a rich history is the welcome sign: a Robin Hood motif. This is Nottingham, a city where, for some, the myths are intrinsic to and inseparable from the reality. A city that feels like a village, where everyone seems to know everyone else and people are not slow to update each other on the latest gossip or fable. Thousands of tourists arrive every year to seek out the legend of Robin Hood and, of course, that is all it is – a legend. A fable borne from writings some 600 years old and revolving around two characters: the Sheriff of Nottingham and Robin Hood: one a cynical, overbearing, authoritarian figure whose main task is to round up outlaws, the other an outlaw whose aim is to take wealth from the rich, by violent means if necessary, and distribute it to the poor.

  Nottingham dates back to early Saxon times. In 600 A.D., it fell under the control of a Saxon chief known as Snot, whose people populated the ancient caves which still permeate the city and its Lace Market area today. It quickly became known as Snottingham, which means the ‘homestead of the people of Snot’. In more recent years, headline writers in London would revive the use of the ‘S’ and label the gun-plagued city ‘Shottingham’. It evolved into a centre first for the manufacture of religious artefacts during the fifteenth century and then, by the time of the Industrial Revolution, for the making of lace. The River Trent, which runs through the city, was crucial to its development. Marking the divide between northern and southern England, it linked Nottingham with the Potteries to the west and the Humber to the east. It was on the Trent, navigable for some 117 miles, that King Canute purportedly attempted to turn back the tides, near Gainsborough in Lincolnshire.

  The textile industry brought prosperity. The area’s lace-making became internationally renowned and by 1831 the population had swelled to 51,000. But this rapid expansion also resulted in what were reputed to be the worst slums in the British Empire outside India, and this in turn led to the riots of 1831. The first Reform Bill, which sought to end some of the abuses and corruption of the electoral system by giving more people the right to vote, was rejected by the House of Lords, and those living in poverty took up arms and burnt down the Sheriff’s lair, Nottingham Castle. Then owned by the pompous, anti-reformist Duke of Newcastle, whose surname still adorns streets in the nearby Park area of the city, the castle bore the brunt of several days of rioting; it was another forty years before it received a replacement roof.

  From the midst of this angry, dispossessed mass emerged a gang called, rather inappropriately in the circumstances, the Nottingham Lambs. They were anything but lambs. Originally the name was applied to early nineteenth century gangs who fought on behalf of rival political masters: the Yellow (Whig) ‘lambs’ taking on their Blue (Tory) rivals. Eventually it came to apply to the ale-swilling brutes who followed renowned bare-knuckle fighter William Thompson, commonly known as Bendigo, who became Champion of England in 1839. Such was Bendigo’s reputation that Sir Arthur Conan Doyle penned an ode to him entitled Bendigo’s Sermon;

  You didn’t know of Bendigo?

  Well that knocks me out!

  Who’s your board schoolteacher?

  What’s he been about?

  Chock a block with fairy tales;

  Full of useless cram,

  And never heard of Bendigo

  The Pride Of Nottingham

  Bendigo became an icon to the poor of Nottingham as he demolished opponents across the country. He spent spare hours fishing by the Trent, on one occasion rescuing three people from drowning. Though he eventually turned to God, preaching fire and brimstone in the streets, he was also a terrible drinker and incorrigible brawler and frequently appeared before the courts. He eventually became a figure of fun, taunted by small children. He died in 1880, aged sixty-nine, after falling down the stairs at his home in Beeston. His funeral procession, one of the biggest ever seen in Nottingham, was a mile long, with thousands lining the streets to pay tribute. In Bestwood Park is a small wooded copse known as Bendigo’s Ring, where, it is said, he fought some of his matches and where his restless spirit lays in wait ready to exact revenge upon the children who taunted him during his final years.

  By the beginning of the twentieth century, the city population was 240,000 and Nottingham was a major centre of commerce. The majestic Council House, which looks out over the Market Square, known as ‘slab square’, was completed in 1928, causing the famous Goose Fair to be moved to its present location on Forest Fields. But by the Second World War, profits to be made from the lace industry were dwindling and the city began to rely on other industries for employment, such as the Raleigh bike and Players cigarettes factories, the mining industry, and the chemist chain Boots, which had been built into a national chain by Jesse, the son of founder John Boot.

  Some of the worst crimes in the city were not of a human but of a planning nature. The
demolition of the Black Boy Hotel in Long Row in the late 1960s was one such misdemeanour. It was a hugely popular watering hole, crafted by the renowned Victorian architect Watson Fothergill and incorporating a huge tower and Bavarian-style wooden balcony. One of the most striking landmarks in the city centre, it made way for a dull shopfront eventually occupied by Littlewoods and later Primark. By 1969, some of Nottingham’s older homes had been deemed unfit for habitation by the local housing authority. Despite the protests of many families living in them, including those in the terraced houses of the St Ann’s district, they were bulldozed and replaced with modern houses and flats. However, the open plan St Ann’s, with its narrow interlocking alleyways and poor lighting, soon became was a mugger’s paradise. Having failed to learn from their mistakes with the St Ann’s estate, the planners went on to design the huge Meadows estate in much the same fashion.