Essex Boys, The New Generation (2 page)

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  A MOTHER’S TALE: BEVERLEY BOSHELL  

Thursday, 1 March 2001. Basildon, Essex.
Ten people dead and a further eighty injured in a rail crash was the news that dominated the headlines that day. Beverley Boshell, a mother of two sons, took particular interest in the story because her eldest, Wayne, was a train driver. She was saddened by the terrible loss of life but relieved to learn that the crash had taken place the previous day in Selby, North Yorkshire. Wayne was employed in London. Putting her newspaper to one side, Beverley sat back to relax, but she was soon disturbed by the sound of her front gate being opened and people arriving at her door.

‘The knock on my front door was firm and somehow alarming,’ Beverley recalled. ‘It was mid-morning and I had no idea who it could have been, as I wasn’t expecting any visitors. When I opened it, two ashen-faced police officers – one male, one female – stood before me.

‘I was asked if I was Mrs Beverley Boshell, and when I confirmed that I was they said they needed to come into my house to talk to me. My heart sank. I just knew they weren’t going to give me anything other than bad news. “Why do you need to come in?” I asked. “Anything you have to say, you can tell me here and now.” The male police officer assured me that it would be better for me if I invited them into my home.

‘I relented and showed them into my lounge. “You had better take a seat, Mrs Boshell,” the WPC said. I remained standing – my heart was pounding. I told them that I was OK as I was and asked them to say whatever it was they had come to say.

‘The WPC glanced momentarily at her colleague, who gave a shrug of his shoulders, as if to say, “OK then, tell her.” Looking back at me, the WPC drew a breath and said, “I regret to have to inform you that your son is dead, Mrs Boshell.”

‘My first thought was of Wayne. I automatically assumed that he had been involved in an accident on the railways or some sort of terrorist incident, like a bombing. I felt as if I was falling at speed, but everything in the room appeared to be moving in slow motion. I slumped down into a chair and kept asking the officers what had happened.

‘“Your son, Dean, has been shot,” they said. “His body was discovered in allotments in Manchester Drive, Leigh-on-Sea, at 9.20 yesterday morning. A murder investigation is now under way.”

‘It had not occurred to me for one moment that this news would have anything to do with Dean. I cannot describe how I felt at that moment, nor could I repeat what I said because I simply don’t recall.

‘After informing Wayne of the news by telephone and asking him to return to Basildon to comfort me, the officers left. They had assured me that Wayne wouldn’t be long, but he was delayed from leaving work by two hours because a replacement driver had to be found for his train. Alone in my home, I was unable to cry; it didn’t seem real. I kept telling myself that the police must have made some sort of terrible mistake.

‘When Wayne eventually did arrive, he told me that he had seen a headline about a gangland execution taking place in Essex on the newspaper billboards in London, but he had no inclination whatsoever that it had anything to do with his brother. We began asking each other the same questions – who had done this and why? – but neither of us had the answers.

‘I didn’t wish to remain alone in the house and so that day I collected all of my personal belongings and moved into Wayne’s home. A day or two later, the police contacted me again. They said that they wanted me to go to Southend hospital with them to identify Dean’s body. They said that they had already identified it and confirmed that the body was Dean’s by using his fingerprints; however, they still needed a family member to formally identify him.

‘Wayne and I were taken to the hospital mortuary in an unmarked police car by two detectives. I noticed as we walked into the reception area that there was a small room with tea and coffee making facilities, a door leading to a toilet and another, facing us, which I assumed led to the room where Dean’s body lay. I had only ever seen one dead person in my life. I had paid my respects to my late stepfather in a chapel of rest, but that experience had been totally unlike this. I was in a place that was cold and clinical; I tried to blank everything out by staring straight ahead and focusing my thoughts on Dean.

‘I heard footsteps. The door opened and a man dressed in surgical clothing entered the room. He looked at the detectives and asked if everybody was ready. Wayne looked at me; I could see in his face the pain that he was feeling. He told me that he couldn’t go through with it. He said it would be too upsetting. One detective remained with Wayne and I was escorted into the room with the other.

‘I entered a dreadful place. My son was lying on his back on a table in the centre of the room. A white sheet stretched from his feet to his shoulders, covering his body. I could tell by the indents and bulges that Dean was naked beneath it. Bandages were wrapped around the back of his head, presumably to hide the gunshot wounds that had extinguished his life. The walls of the room were bare and the sound of pathologists or morticians working beyond them could clearly be heard.

‘An electrical saw buzzing and men talking, not loud but audible, filled my head and made my blood run cold. It was obvious from what they were saying that an autopsy was in progress. The very thought of such a macabre procedure taking place so close to my son and me was horrifying. Thoughts of what these people and my son’s killer had done to him filled my head. I was no longer sure that I could go through with identifying him.

‘Before taking another step towards Dean’s body, I asked the detective if he had sustained any facial injuries. To my relief, he said that he had not, but when I looked down upon my son I saw that he had big red blotches all over his face. “What are those red marks?” I asked.

‘“We don’t know yet,” the detective replied. I later learned that Dean’s killer, or an accomplice, had squirted ammonia in his face before shooting him. The ammonia had irritated the skin, causing the blemishes.

‘I found myself staring at the bandages around his head, trying to imagine what grotesque injuries they were hiding. I felt an urge to remove them so that I could see for myself if Dean had really been shot. It was hard for me to believe because he looked so peaceful, as if he were asleep. The longer I spent with Dean, the less certain I became that it was, in fact, him.

‘The last time I had seen my son he was far from muscular, as this person was, and he wasn’t as full in the face either. Unbeknown to me at that time, Dean had begun weight training and using muscle-enhancing products.

‘“I can’t be sure that this is my son,” I eventually said to the detective.

‘He assured me that the body was Dean’s, but my heart refused to be convinced of the awful truth. “We will of course check and double-check,” he said, before leading me out of the room.

‘A part of my heart remained in that hospital with Dean as we drove off towards home. It has remained with him ever since. I know, because I felt it breaking in two whilst I was there. I don’t believe that it will ever heal because the indescribable pain I felt that day has failed to diminish.

‘The following morning I contacted the police and asked them if it would be possible to look at a tattoo on Dean’s arm, as it might have helped me to positively identify him. A few years earlier, he had been tattooed with a pouncing puma that he had designed himself. I told the police that if I could see this unique tattoo, then I would know in my heart that the body in the morgue was my son’s.

‘If I am being totally honest, I was misleading the police. I knew it was Dean in that godforsaken place, but I was finding it hard to come to terms with it. I needed to go back to my boy, to be with him for myself, not for any horrible identification formality. The police were very understanding and of course keen for me to give them a positive identification.

‘Going back was in many ways harder than my initial visit. The vague possibility that this had been some sort of unthinkable mistake had been snatched from me. All hope of Dean being alive was now gone. I was being forced to accept that my youngest son, the baby of my family, had been brutally murdered.

‘Being with Dean on this occasion brought me a lot of comfort. It felt as if it was only me and him in that cold room, which, for a fleeting moment, felt warm with his presence. I looked at the tattoo on Dean’s arm and confirmed to the detective that this body was indeed my son’s. I have since had an exact copy of the pouncing puma tattooed on my shoulder blade. I hadn’t previously dreamed of ever getting one, but this has made me feel as if a part of Dean is with me at all times.

‘I have a lot of regrets regarding Dean. The benefits of hindsight are, in my case, proving to be non-existent, only cruel. It’s never easy bringing up children, but I keep telling myself that I could have done better. I guess every parent says that at some stage. We do what we think is best at the time, but a parent’s input is often over-ridden by outside influences. We live in the fifth-richest country in the world and our children are butchering each other in the streets. Why? It’s not as if there are no opportunities or things for kids to do in this country. Basildon, where Dean grew up, has estates with high unemployment, where kids who were bottom of the class can earn thousands of pounds per week dealing drugs. They lie in bed during the day playing computer games in which they can shoot people 50 times on screen and watch them get up again. Then they go out onto the streets at night, dripping in jewellery, brandishing knives and guns. Their role models are musicians whose message is “get rich or die trying”. It’s a sickness that is prevalent throughout society and it really needs to be cured.

‘I did ask the police if I could visit my son for a third and final time. I told them that I needed to say goodbye to him, and thankfully they agreed. I was not allowed to visit without police officers being present for evidential reasons and we had to give the mortuary several hours’ notice before we arrived. When I asked why, I was told this was because my son was being kept in a freezer and it would take a few hours for his body to defrost enough for me to view it. These words, spoken honest and true by the officers in reply to my questions, felt like a knife being plunged into my chest.

‘I cried and prayed I could travel back to the last occasion that I had seen Dean alive. I could then embrace my boy and ensure that he never left the safety of my home. My prayers never were answered.

‘When the door leading into the mortuary was opened, I saw that Dean’s entire body was covered with a sheet. Nobody had warned me that this visit would be any different to the previous visits I had made. I was unable to see Dean’s face, and when I asked why, I was told that the bandages covering his wounds had now been removed and seeing him would be too distressing for me.

‘How does a mother say a final goodbye to her young son? What words do you express to a bullet-riddled body hidden underneath a white sheet?

‘May God never find it in his heart to forgive the bastards who did this to my Dean.’

• • •

I first contacted Beverley Boshell by telephone shortly after the conclusion of her son’s murder trial. I was surprised to learn that she lived fewer than a hundred yards from my former home in Basildon. I had moved from there in 1995, following the execution of my three former associates in the Range Rover at Rettendon. For nearly a decade, the Essex Boys firm, as we had become known, controlled the doors of pubs and nightclubs throughout Essex, London and the south-east. The security we provided for these venues was little more than a front for the drugs the firm imported from Europe and distributed to revellers using local dealers. Greed, paranoia and illusions by some that we were invincible resulted in mayhem, murder and our eventual demise. On the day I had arranged to meet Beverley, I left my home in Birmingham early to ensure that I wouldn’t be late. Motorways these days are fine if you want to spend the best part of a day sitting alongside thousands of other stationary motorists, but they are rarely much use if you want to get from one place to another without delay. Arriving in Basildon an hour or two before I was due to meet Beverley, I decided to kill time visiting some of my old haunts.

I drove to the house my late wife Emma had lived in as a child. I walked around the snooker hall that was once Raquels nightclub, the venue where I had worked as a doorman, and I sat reminiscing outside the house of my former business partner, Tony Tucker. Driving towards Beverley’s home, I passed a public telephone box that I had regularly used to call my associates to discuss our illegal business ventures and violent misadventures. At the time, we believed that using public telephones would circumvent attempts by the police to trace calls between gang members. We were, of course, wrong: the police knew about most, if not all, of our activities. Being a gangster and not being able to tell all and sundry about it was too much to bear for some of my colleagues.

I passed the garages at the back of my old home, where I used to play football with my son, Vinney. The same garages had once been raided by police and an arsenal of the firm’s weapons found. Naturally, everybody questioned suffered bouts of amnesia and couldn’t remember anything that might have assisted the police with their inquiries.

It was, to say the least, a thought-provoking journey to Beverley’s modest home. It made me realise that my mother could easily have been in Beverley Boshell’s shoes and I could have been buried alongside Dean, Tucker, Tate or Rolfe. Gangsters? What a joke! They are only good for keeping florists, undertakers, police and prison officers in employment.