Hidden Witness

TWO

Three years later

By the time the two boys came across the old man that evening, they had already committed three robberies.

Technically, the first one wasn’t a robbery, just a theft. This was because to commit a robbery by the legal definition under the Theft Act, there has to be violence combined with stealing.

Simply rolling a drunk didn’t count.

However, if they’d ever got chance to brag about it they would have claimed it was a robbery by their own definition. In fact, all they did was trip over an unconscious vagrant in a Blackpool back alley and when he didn’t respond to their tentative prod-kicks, other than to groan, they shared a triumphant glance and one dared the other to go through his pockets. The tramp stank of body odour, vomit and booze, and had obviously urinated where he lay, so searching through his trouser pockets took some doing. The younger of the two lads, the least experienced one, took on the task to prove himself. He found a crumpled, wet, five-pound note and some loose change. After helping themselves to the unopened can of cider in the gutter by the guy, they legged it victoriously through the rain-splattered streets of the resort.

They shared the cider in a shop doorway opposite the entrance to Blackpool Tower, tossed the empty tin at two passing girls, then moved on to find more victims.

They were fired up, brimful of violence, on the rob.

Next time it was a fully-fledged robbery as per the legal definition. Still hyper from their first success and fuelled by the cider that went straight to their heads, they wanted to feel someone fall under their punches. The Goth teenager standing on Talbot Square opposite where Yates’ Wine Lodge had burned down, using his mobile phone was an ideal target. Once chosen, they didn’t hesitate — simply walked brazenly up to him, unfazed by the number of other people walking about and the older lad said, ‘Gimme your phone, badger-face.’

The Goth, his eyes blackened by make-up, his face whitened by foundation, looked quizzically at them, part-way through his conversation. ‘Eh?’

It was the younger of the two lads who stepped in and took the lead. The boy with the phone was older than the both of them, but no match physically or aggressively, as evidenced by his terrified expression. ‘Phone,’ the lad said, as if the Goth was stupid.

‘Get lost.’ He angled away from them, hoping that ignoring them would make them go away, like covering your face with a bed sheet to stop a burglar attacking. He was very wrong. The youngest lad smashed him hard on the side of his head, crashing his knuckles into the temple. He hit him three times in quick succession, driving the victim down against a building as his legs buckled at the knee and he dropped his phone. As he went down, his attacker continued to strike, and the older lad joined in, kicking him several times on the head with the sole of his trainer, stomping on him as he hit the ground.

The older lad snatched up the phone, which hadn’t shattered on impact with the pavement, and the pair raced away from a crime scene for the second time in half an hour. It was an attack that had taken place out in the open on a busy street, on a bustling evening, and though it lasted for less than thirty blurred seconds, there were many eyewitnesses but none brave enough to challenge or intervene. In fact, the bleeding victim crawled unaided to a nearby phone box to call the police, and on that short, incredibly painful journey, at least four people walked around him, one actually stepped over him. The streets of Blackpool could be harsh and unforgiving.

The two boys never even saw a cop car because none was dispatched to the incident. The poor, sobbing Goth was informed that every police officer in town was busy, and if it wasn’t too much trouble, he should make his way to the police station to report the crime. His other option was to make an appointment for a home visit by his local beat officer.

Within ten minutes the boys had sold the phone for ten pounds and so, fifteen pounds richer, they treated themselves to a burger and coke each at the McDonald’s opposite central pier. Then they decided to keep a low profile for a while in the amusement arcades before selecting their next victim.

But as it happened, they were so hyped up after the Goth robbery and the fast food, they couldn’t stop themselves going out on the prowl again. As they stalked through the streets they chanted, ‘Vic-tim, vic-tim, vic-tim,’ quietly, winding themselves up into some sort of feral frenzy. This time they wanted real money, to really hurt someone, and they needed to make a careful choice.

At nine p.m., they turned into the southern entrance to Bonny Street, which ran parallel to, and one-step back from, the promenade. They were walking north, the multi-storey car park and high-rise police station on their right, and the backs of various premises on their left, such as amusement arcades and the Sea Life Centre. Tucked in amongst those buildings was a pub called the Pump and Truncheon, a hostelry frequented by cops from the station opposite.

With the police station, and its enquiry desk now relocated to ground level, Bonny Street should have been a safe haven.

But it wasn’t. It was poorly lit and deserted at that time of day. The backs of the buildings, so inviting from the front, were grim and dark and full of shadow.

The lads quit their chanting as they passed the pub. The door opened and a couple staggered out, obviously the worse for wear, bickering at each other. They turned south, paying the robbers no heed, apart from a quick glance. The boys stopped for a moment, watched the man and woman cross the road and disappear.

Then they noticed the girl. She was walking towards them, not much older than they were, dolled up for a night out, unsuitably dressed to be walking through the drizzle. She was kitted out like someone much older, a tiny silver purse hanging on a thin chain from her shoulder that had to contain her money and phone. Her micro-skirt and skimpy top meant there was nowhere else to stash her valuables. And the boys knew this.

‘Vic-tim,’ the older one hissed.

‘Vic-tim,’ the younger one agreed.

They pretended to ignore her, walking along the centre of the road, the police station fifty metres behind them now. The girl was on the pavement to their left, in the shadow cast by the buildings. They passed within feet. Her eyes nervously checked them out, picking up a suspicious feel for the duo, uncertain, wary… then relieved as they went past without even seeming to notice her. Even so, she upped her pace on her unsteady high heels. Better safe than sorry.

Two metres past, they turned like hunting dogs on an unsuspecting gazelle. They bundled her into a wide, deep service door. One clamped a hand over her face and pushed her against the side of an industrial size wheelie-bin where the assault began. Neither boy spoke as they kicked and smacked her, pounding her down to the litter-strewn ground. One ripped the purse off her shoulder, snapping the thin strap easily.

Then they were gone, sucked up on to the busy streets of the resort.

The purse contained two folded up five-pound notes, an expensive looking mobile phone, and a lip-gloss. This brought the cash total of three robberies to twenty-five pounds, less the cost of the burgers. They split the money as they walked up Church Street, past the Winter Gardens complex.

The older, more experienced lad said, ‘Maybe we’d better just quit for the night now, eh? Don’t wanna keep ridin’ our luck.’ He handed his mate his share of the cash and kept the phone for himself. ‘Not much, but I told you it was ace, didn’t I?’ The older boy — he was seventeen — had deep-green eyes and curly black hair, as though he could have been a descendant from the Romany gypsies. He had a wild, untamed look and a face that mirrored this.

‘Yeah, great.’ The younger one snaffled the money, but his voice, though enthusiastic, broke slightly, as though perhaps he didn’t feel entirely comfortable with their actions. That possibly he found himself doing something he didn’t really enjoy. He stuffed the money into his tracksuit-bottoms pocket and zipped it away. ‘I probably need to be getting home now… my mum’ll be wondering…’ His voice was thin with the lie. There would be no chance of his mother wondering anything about him, but it didn’t matter because the older lad wasn’t listening anyway.

He’d stopped abruptly, placed a hand on his mate’s forearm, then drawn him back into the recess of a shop doorway.

‘What?’ the younger lad asked.

‘I take it all back,’ he said excitedly, ‘because our luck is still riding high and we need to keep going while we’re on a roll.’ He jabbed a forefinger, pointing across the road. ‘That guy will be freakin’ loaded,’ he stated, and the younger lad saw what was being pointed out, and just to confirm, was told, ‘Victim number four.’

An old man was emerging from a shop across the road, turning to lock up and stepping back as he pulled down the security shutters covering the door, which he fastened with a sturdy padlock, giving it a shake to test it. He was obviously locking up for the night.

The younger lad watched, a worried feeling clawing at his guts.

The shop was a large, but inconspicuous unit selling male and female clothing and associated gear. The younger lad had been in once during opening hours and had seen stacks of designer jeans, tee shirts and dresses, all claiming to be at least half the price of the same goods in department stores. And all still too expensive for him to buy. So he’d stolen a pair of D amp;G jeans that did not fit him and sold them on for a couple of pounds.

He recalled the shop being staffed by young people, didn’t remember seeing an old bloke on the shop floor. ‘Must be the owner,’ he whispered.

‘Which is why he’ll be stacked with cash.’

The old man was satisfied the shutter was locked, the shop secure. He stood upright, turned, looked up and down Church Street. He was dressed immaculately in a black Crombie, brown brogues and well-cut trousers. His hair was thick and grey, combed back from his face which was tanned, healthy looking. He had a silver tipped walking stick and settled a trilby on his head that he adjusted against his reflection in the shop window. He looked dapper and sprightly.

Happy that all was OK, he crossed Church Street quickly and entered Leopold Grove, which ran across the top edge of the Winter Gardens. The older boy held his mate back, allowing the old man to get slightly ahead. Then they emerged from their dark doorway and started to follow, keeping to the shadows. As they turned on to Leopold Grove, the old man, walking briskly, was quite a way ahead, picking up momentum with the incline of the street. He went across Adelaide Street towards Albert Road, quiet, badly lit streets on the outer edge of the town centre. Ideal hunting grounds for opportunistic criminals.

They tracked him on to Albert Road where he turned right in the general direction of the seafront, but then quickly cut over into an unlit alley leading through to Charnley Road. He was moving with purpose, but the boys were closing in, the older one already chanting, ‘Vic-tim, vic-tim,’ under his breath, winding himself up for the attack. The younger one was less certain this time. There was something about the way the man walked, held himself. He might have been old — maybe seventy — but he had a confident aura about him, someone who could take care of himself, was unafraid. Nothing about him said, ‘Victim.’ If anything, ‘Victor’ was more appropriate and the younger lad sensed this.

The alley was dismal, but a streetlight at the far end illuminated the last five metres of it and the boys had to get their assault in before the man reached this pool of brightness.

They closed in, the older boy ahead, picking up the pace. The younger one was in his slipstream, carried along with the moment, heart hammering, legs weak, a taste of something unpleasant in his mouth that he tried to swallow down his dry throat.

With three metres separating hunter and hunted, the old man suddenly stopped, turned around completely and faced the boys. They stopped in their tracks.

‘You think I didn’t see you!’ the old man roared. He had an accent of sorts, but neither boy could say what it was. ‘You think I don’t know you follow me!’

‘Don’t give a toss if you did or didn’t,’ the older boy sneered, but he was now apprehensive. The man seemed to have grown physically and was almost challenging them, his head tilted back and the fluorescent streetlight slashing down across his heavy features.

The man raised his walking stick, laughing harshly. ‘You may move quicker than me, but you will come off worse, I promise.’

The boys stood unsurely. The younger one touched his friend’s sleeve, a gesture to retreat. The older boy shrugged off the fingers, his anger building at the challenge. ‘Give us your cash and you won’t get hurt — that’s all I can promise you, old man.’

The old man shook his head, amused, unafraid.

‘C’mon, Rory, let’s leave this one.’

‘No chance — he’ll be fuckin’ minted.’

The older boy launched himself at the old man, hoping to catch him off-guard. He went in with his head low, but the man took half a step sideways, swung his hip and in the same movement brought the walking stick around with incredible accuracy — hard. He cracked it across the side of the boy’s charging head just the once. The blow glanced off, but still knocked him sideways into the alley wall. He moved in then and raised the stick, the boy now cowering behind his raised forearms.

‘No, please.’

‘You have had enough?’ the old man demanded.

‘Yeah, yeah,’ the lad said, scrambling away, backing into his mate, stepping into a pile of dog shit.

The old man addressed the younger boy. ‘You, too?’ He brandished the cane and the lad backed off, saying, ‘I didn’t go for you.’

‘Mm,’ he said doubtfully, gave them both the evil eye, turned and strutted out of the alley.

The boys stood together, side by side, the older one holding a hand over his bleeding head. ‘Bastard!’ he shouted.

The old man ignored the insult.

They watched him step out of the alley and begin to cross the road.

He was halfway across when the car hit him. Then everything slowed right down.

He was walking at ninety degrees to the car, which was a big Volvo estate, and the heavy vehicle was still accelerating, maybe travelling over thirty miles per hour when it struck. It connected with the old man’s right-hand side. It smashed full on into him, instantly shattering his hip and femur. The old man twisted appallingly with the impact, his body contorting out of shape. The car seemed to scoop him up, taking his legs from underneath him, driving on as his right shoulder smacked into the bonnet. His head, hat still in place at that moment, smashed into the windscreen, indenting it, and his whole body flicked up like a frog being thrown from a spade. He cartwheeled across the roof of the car, his right arm snapping, his cane spinning through the air, his legs flipping upwards, the car passing on under him. He cleared the vehicle and from a height of about twelve feet, crashed head first into the roadway.

In the mouth of the alley, the two boys stood mesmerized by the incident. They could see the old man lying on the road, broken, but moving, twitching. They were overwhelmed by the violence of the impact that had taken the breath out of their bodies. They were not prepared for what happened next.

The Volvo braked sharply ten metres ahead of the man. The engine revved. Then suddenly it reversed at speed, swerving wildly, engine screaming.

Raising his head slightly, the old man saw what was coming. The rear bumper of the car struck him and the back wheels crushed him, the car rising as though it was going over a speed hump. And it kept going, the front wheels doing the same, making the man writhe obscenely.

Still it wasn’t finished. The engine revved again, the car lurched forwards and mounted him again, front wheels, then back.

He must have been dead by now, his brittle bones and internal organs crushed. The car stopped and for one terrible moment they were certain it was going to reverse over him again.

The older one stepped forward, but the younger one held him back, something telling him it wasn’t over.

Why had the car stopped?

If this was a hit-and-run, the driver having made certain there was no living witness to his crime, why hadn’t he gone, left the scene? The old man was dead, why hesitate?

The younger boy ducked instinctively, stepping back into the darkness as the questions barraging through his brain were answered.

A man got out of the passenger door of the Volvo — the first realization to the boy that there were two people in the car.

It was a man, casually dressed, zip-up top, jeans, trainers, dark-haired, thirties, maybe. He walked back to where the old man lay in the road, unmoving, and bent to inspect him. Then the boys saw what he had in his hands, the fact registering with them at exactly the same instant.

A handgun of some sort. Neither could have said whether it was a revolver or pistol, but both saw the bulbous silencer fitted on to the barrel.

The gun was held at the man’s side and as he bent over, it angled at the old man’s head and the trigger was pulled twice. The old man’s head jerked as the bullets entered it.

The older boy, Rory, stepped into the light. ‘Hey!’ he called.

The man bending over the body turned his head and looked in his direction. There was a flash, lighting up his face.

He rose slowly, confidently and the gun came up.

The younger boy grabbed Rory’s arm and dragged him back into the alley, screaming ‘Run, run.’

They turned and sprinted away in the direction they’d come from, keeping low in the shadows, both expecting to feel the wham of a bullet in the back of the head.