Essex Boy by Steve 'Nipper'; Bernard O'Mahoney Ellis

Author:Steve 'Nipper'; Bernard O'Mahoney Ellis [Ellis, Steve 'Nipper'; Bernard O'Mahoney]
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi
Publisher: Random House UK
Published: 2011-03-04T00:00:00+00:00

CHAPTER EIGHT

* * *

Everybody in the Essex underworld appeared to be experiencing traumatic times and it’s fair to say that I wasn’t having the best week of my life either. Malcolm Walsh had telephoned me from Essex to say that the police wanted to talk to me about ‘a bit of work’ we had done in Essex. Apparently, they suspected Malcolm and me of committing an armed robbery near the Lakeside shopping centre more than two years previously. I told Malcolm not to worry.

‘It’s just pub talk; you know what they’re like. Just because I am out of the area every man and his dog assumes that I am responsible for all of the crime committed in the south-east of England,’ I said.

Malcolm wasn’t so easily convinced. He said that he had already been questioned and if our stories didn’t match we could be heading back to prison.

‘Stay out of the way until it blows over,’ he pleaded. ‘I don’t need any more shit at the moment.’

My brother-in-law, Steve, had recently been diagnosed with terminal cancer and I was planning to go and visit him in Essex, but Malcolm was keen to point out that I would find the experience upsetting. He said that he had met Steve on Southend seafront recently and he had ‘looked awful’.

‘I hardly recognised him, he was thin and gaunt, the guy is really ill. He looks like he is going to die soon. You are better off remembering Steve as he was before his illness,’ Malcolm said. However, when I indicated that Steve’s rapid demise gave me more of a reason to see him urgently, Malcolm’s tack changed, ‘Don’t you worry about Steve, he will outlive us both.’

I knew that Malcolm was trying to prevent me from visiting Essex in case the police arrested me and so for his peace of mind I agreed to stay away. I, of course, had no intention of staying away, particularly after hearing just how ill Steve appeared to be. I knew that my brother-in-law had cancer but I hadn’t considered the possibility that he might die just yet, as he had only been diagnosed in the past two weeks, and Steve was a very strong young man.

I asked Malcolm about the problems that he was experiencing and he told me that he had become embroiled in a festering dispute with two brothers, eighteen-year-old Steven Tretton and his twenty-year-old brother Stuart, who he claimed owed him £200 for drugs. For a number of months, the Tretton brothers had been subjected to a catalogue of threats and abuse from Malcolm and when their mother Lydia had been informed, she had confronted him, calling him a scumbag and low life. Not the type of lady to mince her words, Lydia warned Malcolm to leave her boys alone or he would regret not doing so. Thereafter, the opposing parties exchanged abuse and threats every time their paths crossed. This turned out to be an all-too-regular occurrence because Malcolm often visited his ex-wife and their children, who resided in Locksley Close, where the Trettons also lived.

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