Essex Boys, The New Generation (5 page)

‘You cannot publish what I really think of Damon Alvin. Because he had been charged with the murder and spent a year on remand awaiting trial he had an intimate knowledge of the case from reading all of the paperwork. It was too easy for him to make up a convincing story to fit the available evidence without implicating himself. Plain and simple, Alvin has got away with murder and he is laughing at us all.

‘He admits that he had involvement in my son’s death; he knew what was going on that night, yet the police have treated him like Lord Muck. After watching my son being executed, Alvin says that he left the scene, went home, ate a Chinese meal and went to bed, where he enjoyed a good night’s sleep. What sort of callous animal could do that? The trial left me more confused than I had been before it started.

‘I want answers about the night my son died and the events that led up to it. It’s hard to move forward when your mind and soul are imprisoned in the past.’

• • •

Throughout her long and detailed story, Beverley broke down many times. I cannot help but feel sorry for her and the pain she continues to endure. The courts have convicted Percival, but, as you will read, it’s more than likely that conviction will be overturned and the case will remain unsolved. For that reason, I too hope that this book will help to answer the questions Beverley has about her son, because I do not believe she will hear the truth elsewhere.

Beverley Boshell is a fine lady who accepts she has made mistakes. None of us goes through life blameless and we all have to live with the burden of regret. The mistakes Beverley made can never be rectified and the regret that eats away at her intensifies with time rather than diminishes.

Dean, the end product of many of Beverley’s mistakes, paid a terrible price for the lifestyle he chose. His troubles are now over. However, Beverley, like all mothers whose sons immerse themselves in the world of drugs and guns, continues to pay the price for his foolishness on a daily basis. Please don’t judge her too harshly.

2

  A MOTHER’S TALE: SANDY PERCIVAL  

Friday, 24 August 2007. I am
in Leigh-on-Sea to talk to Sandy Percival, whose son Ricky has been convicted of the murder of Dean Boshell, among other matters. Having arrived in the village with two hours to spare, I decide to take a walk along the seafront to kill time.

Leigh-on-Sea stands on the north shore of the Thames River, just 30 miles from London, in the borough of Southend. Voted in 2006 by the readers of the London
Evening Standard
as the best place to live in the south-east of England, Leigh-on-Sea, for most of its long history, has been primarily a fishing village. It is a pretty, unspoilt middle-class area – hardly the setting for a story about drug dealing, armed robbery, maiming and murder.

A narrow, cobbled footpath leads me from the main street down to the sea. The tide is out and small boats lie stranded on their sides in the mud. An abundance of cockle sheds, small market-like stalls and two public houses are receiving deliveries for the tide of day-trippers that will soon arrive. I walk to St Clement’s Church; for more than 100 years, it has stood on the cliffs that overlook the Thames Estuary. A brief stroll around the cemetery in search of old friends reveals that one local resident had lived in the village until the ripe old age of 119. ‘Here lies the body of Mary Ellis,’ her tombstone reads. ‘She was a virgin of virtuous courage and very promising hope, and died on the 3rd of June 1609.’

If correct, this would make Mary Ellis one of the few virgins in Essex and the oldest person in UK history, her closest rival for the title being Charlotte Hughes, who died at the tender age of 115 years old. Perhaps it was the sea air that kept virtuous Mary going, or more likely the laid-back atmosphere that engulfs the village and its inhabitants.

On the High Street, I notice that the shops tend to be owned and run by traditional local traders. It really was refreshing to see a row of shops with character rather than the usual brand-name clones that sell the same items in every one of their stores.

Sitting in the Terracotta Tearooms on Leigh Broadway, enjoying a much-needed break, it feels as if I have been transported back to some bygone age. The middle-class clientele, a mixture of guys who look like lawyers and sweetly scented females who are doing their best to mimic footballers’ wives, chat amongst themselves about the weather, their plans for the forthcoming weekend and their numerous purchases from the nearby boutiques and stores. Pleasant, that’s what I keep thinking, as I sit sipping my morning tea. This place is really fucking pleasant.

Picking up the local newspaper, I read that a campaign has been launched to save the local shops because high rents and rates are threatening to close many of them down, the fear being that they will be replaced by the high-street giants or, worse still, an out-of-town superstore. One disgruntled resident supporting the ‘save our Leigh-on-Sea’ campaign had written to the editor claiming that he would not use one of the larger nearby town’s shopping centres because they were full of ‘lowlifes’, ‘benefit scroungers’, ‘dirty alcoholics, lying on the footpaths’ and ‘groups of students, sitting in places, spending nothing and taking up all of the seating’. Clearly outraged by the very thought of Leigh-on-Sea losing its old-world charm, the author of the letter went on to suggest that councillors intent on spoiling the atmosphere of the village should be shot.

In another section of the newspaper I read that the residents were equally outraged by an influx of sexual thrill-seekers who were using an area just behind the railway station to meet like-minded deviants in an activity that has come to be known as dogging. Complete strangers meet in public places and fornicate with one another’s wives and girlfriends, or watch as others do so. This particular group of people had been spared the suggestion of being shot by the readership of the newspaper, but the method suggested to bring about their demise was equally unpleasant.

I begin to wonder if Leigh-on-Sea is such a friendly place after all. I settle my bill and then check the street outside for scantily clad couples in cars and gun-toting ‘not-so-happy’ shoppers before making my way to my vehicle.

The Percival home is just a short drive from Leigh Broadway. En route, I pass the first purpose-built police station in the Chelmsford area. I cross the busy A13 London road with caution and drive past the allotments where Dean Boshell met his death. Less than 100 yards away, I turn into a very respectable-looking road that is lined with neat houses and well-kept gardens. Halfway along that road I park my car and walk towards the Percival home. Before I can reach the door to knock, Sandy Percival opens it and invites me into the kitchen, where husband David, eldest son Danny and friend Kevin Walsh are sitting.

Today has been a particularly emotional day for Sandy. Kevin, the man who stood alongside her son Ricky in the dock, is on home leave from prison. He was sentenced to three and a half years for conspiring to pervert the course of justice. Despite his denials, he was convicted of giving Sandy’s son a false alibi on the night Dean died. Seeing Kevin sitting in her home without Ricky is clearly difficult for Sandy. She cries every time her son is mentioned. After Kevin announces that he is leaving with Danny and his father, there are more tears from her.

When Sandy and I eventually sit down to talk at a large family-sized table in the kitchen, I become acutely aware of just how empty such a once-vibrant house must feel for her without her son. ‘Ricky was in and out throughout the day,’ Sandy tells me. ‘He would be running around with the dog, who he loved, or laughing and joking with friends in his room. He didn’t drink or smoke because he enjoyed going to the gym and keeping fit, but that didn’t stop him having fun. He loved being around his family and friends; material things meant little or nothing to him, it was all about family for Ricky.’

An aura of sadness surrounds Sandy Percival. She tries hard to be upbeat, positive and occasionally jovial, but her eyes betray her. Welling up every few minutes, Sandy is clearly finding it hard to come to terms with the events of the last six or seven years. ‘Do you want another cup of tea, Bernie?’ is a question she asks often. It’s not that I appear thirsty or have ever claimed to have particularly enjoyed her tea, although I must say it isn’t bad. Sandy asks the question often, I assume, because it allows her time to compose herself, turn away from me towards the sink and wipe the tears from her eyes.

Any young man who thinks that crime is glamorous need only spend time with Beverley Boshell or Sandy Percival. They are living proof that neither the guilty nor the innocent, the victim nor the criminal, ever wins. Young, impressionable fools punch, kick, stab and shoot their way to the top of the gangland heap before the courts send them to prison or a bullet sends them to an early grave. The lifestyle chosen by all the young men in this story has only spawned one thing: losers.

The only time that Sandy appears to be happy is when she is talking about her distant past. Times when David, Danny and Ricky were home and their only troubles were the type that all families face in life.

‘I met my husband David 40 years ago in the East End of London,’ she says. ‘David was bringing home £9 a week when we first married, which doesn’t seem like a lot now, but it kept a roof over our heads at the time.

‘We were from Upton Park, near the West Ham United Football Club ground, but we eventually moved to nearby Manor Park in the London borough of Newham, which sounds a lot grander than it actually is, but David and I were really happy there. After we had married and set up home together, we had our first son, who we named Danny. Six years later, our second son, Ricky, was born. David and I worked hard to provide for our children. We had our ups and downs, as everybody does in life, but we loved one another dearly throughout and faced whatever difficulties life threw at us as one. Growing up in the East End, you have a natural resistance to hardship instilled into you. The people who live in that part of London are so down to earth. In times of trouble, they will tell you that there is always somebody worse off than yourself and tomorrow things will be much better. It’s not very often that advice is proven to be wrong.

‘Danny fitted in well when he started school, but Ricky had problems, which we found out stemmed from him being dyslexic. This is a very frustrating condition that few people know much about. The most common view held about dyslexics is that they are thick. The truth is that dyslexia has nothing whatsoever to do with mental ability, or lack of it. It occurs at all levels of intelligence – average, above average and highly gifted.

‘When Ricky started school, he struggled with the positioning of letters. He couldn’t distinguish a “p” from a “d”, or a “d” from a “b”. “Was” became “saw”, “pet” was read as “bet”. Even in senior school, he was reading things like “nuclear” as “unclear”. School became a nightmare of frustration for Ricky.

‘Teachers who failed to recognise his problem thought that he was lazy, slow or not trying hard enough. This led to him being punished, which understandably made him resent everything about school. I am not blaming the school or the teachers for Ricky’s problems, because dyslexia was not really recognised back then.

‘When Ricky was eight years old, we took the agonising decision to leave London and move to Leigh-on-Sea. The influx of foreign nationals into his school in London meant that teachers were trying to cope with non-English-speaking pupils, and so Ricky’s dyslexia was almost ignored. The teachers did their best to assist everybody, but they simply didn’t have enough time. We found a school in Leigh-on-Sea that was prepared to offer him some assistance, providing one-hour sessions of one-to-one tuition in an effort to try and help him.

‘The teacher who worked with Ricky regularly described him as being the perfect pupil and a well-behaved boy. Unfortunately, all of the other time he spent in school was in a normal classroom environment and this led to him becoming frustrated, understandably bored and, as a consequence of that, disruptive. Ricky has always been one to voice his opinion and the constant disputes he was having with staff at his school resulted in a complete breakdown of communication between him and them. When Ricky was 15, it was agreed by all parties that it would be better if he sought employment rather than continue at school.

‘Ricky started work at a local fresh-fish shop, which involved him getting up in the early hours of the morning and working for long hours in extremely cold and damp conditions. I didn’t like him having to do the work he was asked to do, but he thought anything was preferable to school. My husband had always kept himself in shape training and, as the boys were growing up, he taught them to do the same.

‘Aged eight, Danny began to attend kick-boxing and martial arts lessons. He was, by all accounts, very good at both. So much so, Danny was billed to appear at York Hall in Bethnal Green in one of the preliminary fights before the main event: a Thai kick-boxing bout for the British championship title. The reigning champion’s opponent didn’t turn up that night for some reason and, rather than disappoint the crowd, Danny was chosen to stand in for him. Despite being knocked down twice, Danny gave a good account of himself, and lost on a disputed points decision. Everybody was saying that he was good enough to become a professional and Danny went on to prove them right.

‘Like most boys, Ricky looked up to his elder brother and wanted to be just like him. With his father’s encouragement, Ricky too began training. He was careful about what he ate and religiously attended the gym. When he wasn’t working out, he was doing what all kids do – playing out in the street or running around in the park. He did get into mischief and this attracted the attention of the police.

‘Respect isn’t given, it’s earned, and respect has always been high on Ricky’s list of priorities. If people were well mannered and polite in his company, he would be absolutely charming and hospitable in return. If people chose to be rude and ignorant, he would treat them with the contempt he felt they deserved. The police, unfortunately, were often sarcastic, rude and abusive when dealing with Ricky and this caused quite a lot of ill feeling between them and him.

‘I remember two officers calling at our home to speak to Ricky about him handling stolen goods. When they knocked on the door, Ricky answered and invited them both inside. The officers questioned Ricky about some cheap stolen goods that he had sold to a man and he readily admitted that he was responsible. Looking at Ricky in disbelief, one of the officers said, “I really am surprised by the reception you have given us, Ricky. Everybody told us that we would get nothing but grief off you.” Ricky looked a bit confused and replied, “Why would I want to be rude to you when you have been nothing but polite to me?” It really was that simple with Ricky; he couldn’t understand why people chose to be rude and, if they were, he would not tolerate it.

‘The turning point in Ricky’s life, for many reasons, was the murder of Kevin Walsh’s older brother, Malcolm. Ricky was only a teenager at the time and he had never experienced somebody close to him dying. He had become friendly with Malcolm, who was much older than him, because they used to attend the same gym and knew the same people. When Ricky bumped into the family of the man who had killed Malcolm, he shouted and swore at them. It was nothing serious, even the police said it was just anguish and frustration. A year after Malcolm’s death, three people connected to his killer were shot and Ricky was arrested. My son wasn’t involved, but the general consensus around Southend was that there was no such thing as smoke without fire. A lot of people genuinely believed that Ricky had shot those people simply because he had been arrested for it.