Kiss My Name Page 11

  “It has everything to do with me, Boffin. You’ve murdered one little lad, I’m not going to stand by and watch you do it again.”

  I could make out that ‘Simon’ was throwing punches, but bizarrely Boffin wasn’t. He was just attempting to block the punches that were being thrown at him.

  “Stop talking crap, Simon.”

  “If I’m talking crap, Boffin, why are you letting me punch you? Why are you not fighting back?”

  “Your brother was my mate, that’s why.”

  “You killed him.”

  “I was at home when he died, you fool.”

  “Liar.”

  Simon charged at Boffin with his head down. He was a big lad, taller than Boffin who wasn’t particularly tall, just muscular, but Simon wasn’t muscley, just a bit fat really. He must have had a hard head though, as he rammed into Boffin’s chest like an angry rhino. Boffin was lifted off the floor by the impact. Simon started punching Boffin with straight armed, windmill punches. Boffin was no Neville Chamberlain though. He could maintain a policy of appeasement for little more than a minute before he began punching back. I sensed this was exactly what Simon wanted. He seemed to want as many reasons as possible to fight with Boffin.

  “You murderer,” he kept repeating, “you filthy, murdering scumbag!”

  The penny finally dropped. There was a lad in our year, Simon Strong, whose brother, Colin, had been found dead in the canal during the summer holidays. This was obviously him. I wasn’t quite sure why Simon was blaming Boffin for Colin’s death, nor did I particularly care, I was just glad he was passionate about trying to knock Boffin’s head off.

  I think they would have fought to the death, but the fight stopped when some spectators spotted Mr.Hayton, the Woodwork teacher, wandering across in his apron to see what the commotion was about. Everyone scattered in all directions. I didn’t see where Boffin disappeared to, he just crept away, but Simon came looking for me. We walked along together, both trying to look like the fight had nothing to do with us.

  “Are you OK, Timmy?”

  “I’m fine.”

  “Bloody hell, your face is a mess. Let me take you to the nurse.”

  “No, honestly, leave it. I don’t want to go and see her.”

  “Why not?”

  “She’ll get the teachers involved. There’ll be this big investigation into everything that’s gone on, quite frankly, I don’t want the hassle.”

  “Why?”

  “I kind of deserved a beating.”

  “Timmy, whatever you did that murdering scumbag, he will have asked for it. I can’t believe half the lads in the school just stood by and watched him beat the shit out of you. Bunch of tossers, they really are. Are you sure you don’t want to go to the nurse?”

  “100% sure. Honestly, I’m fine.”

  “People use the word honestly when they are trying to pretend a lie is the truth.”

  “OK. I’m pretty sore, but I do not want to go to see the nurse. Is that better?”

  “It’ll do. Whether or not you go to the nurse, Luke Booth will stay clear of you now.”

  “I doubt it. I’m pretty sure he will come after me again. It’s part of his routine.”

  “Timmy, he won’t come near you. If he ever lays a finger on you again, he’ll have me to answer to.”

  Simon Strong, under normal circumstances, was not someone that Luke ‘Boffin’ Booth would have been scared of. Simon was out of shape and despite his height, he was unimposing. Boffin’s behaviour towards Simon Strong was definitely linked to his brother’s death.

  “Simon, can I ask you something?”

  “Ask me whatever you want, mate.”

  “What makes you think Boffin killed your brother?”

  “Because he did.”

  How do you know though?”

  “Someone was with Colin when he died. Loads of eyewitnesses have given statements to the police saying Colin was with someone older than him at the canal side.”

  “It might not have been Boffin though.”

  “Whoever it was is denying he was there and left Colin to die or left his dead body and returned home without reporting it. I’ve been told it was Boffin and I think it’s written all over his guilty face. Justice will be done in the end, Timmy, I’m sure of it. He’ll get his comeuppance.”

  I’m not sure whether it was down to Simon Strong warning him off, but Boffin never bothered me again. It may not have been down to Simon, perhaps it was because he hadn’t enjoyed his wet clothes, his dinner being spilt on him or the Holy Bible landing on his head, but I doubt it. I think Simon Strong saved me that afternoon. I’d like to tell you that it was the beginning of a wonderful friendship between us, but it wasn’t. Simon got on with his life and I got on with mine, but I always felt I owed him a favour. I was always disappointed that I never had the chance to repay him at school. Sometimes though, life works in peculiar ways and opportunities come along at times you just don’t expect them.

  SIMON – September 1986

  I was in my bedroom on a Sunday afternoon listening to Marillion’s album ‘Misplaced Childhood’ on my Aiwa cassette player. My musical taste had broadened since my ‘Wham’ days. At thirteen, I was into stuff like Pink Floyd, Genesis, Bob Dylan, The Smiths and Marillion. None of them were fashionable amongst my friends at school, which was fine. I had no urge to conform.

  I could hear a voice trying to be heard above the drums of Waterhole (Expresso Bongo), so turned the volume down. It was my Mum, calling me.

  “What, Mum?”

  “I said there’s a boy at the door for you, Simon.”

  “Tell him to come up,” and then as an after thought I asked, “Who is it?”

  Mum obviously didn’t recognise him, as I heard her saying,

  “I’m sorry, I don’t think I’ve met you before, I’m Simon’s Mum, what’s your name?”

  “Phil.”

  “Go on up, Phil,” Mum said before shouting, “Simon, Phil’s on his way up!”

  Phil knocked on my door and entered. He was one of those kids who you would think was good looking from a photograph, but when you saw him in real life, he somehow wasn’t. There were number of reasons, one was the slightly round shouldered stance he had, another was his exaggerated facial expressions, probably pulled due to a self-conscious disposition. Girls at school were always saying who they fancied, Phil Moss was never mentioned. Phil had very dark hair, but it always looked like it needed a comb. On this Sunday, he wore a pair of jeans and a Queen ‘Kind Of Magic’ T-shirt, the weird black one where all the cartoon versions of Queen have huge, muscular upper bodies and tiny legs. I knew he had called around to update me on the Boffin situation, I just didn’t know what the situation was. I switched off ‘Misplaced Childhood’ and was ready to listen with rapt attention.

  “Hi Phil, I said sitting on the floor, “have a seat. I hope you’re here to tell me that you’ve spoken to the police.”

  Phil sat on the edge of my bed.

  “I told you, I would, didn’t I? Bloody hell, mate, if Boffin knew I was here or that I’d been to the police, he’d kick my head in, you know he would.”

  “Why are you mates with someone you’re scared of?”

  “You don’t understand.”

  “I know I don’t. He’s a knobhead, keep away from him.”

  “Simon, it’s not that easy. It’s easier to stay friends with him. If I tried to keep my distance he’d get angry with me and that’s when the real problems would start.”

  “Well, hopefully if he’s locked up then you won’t have to keep knocking around with him. Thanks for telling the police.”

  “It’s OK. I thought a lot about what you said, mate, and you were right, I owed it to your Colin to tell the pigs what I saw.”

  “What did they say when you told them?”

  “Not much really, they just took my statement off me and..”

  “Did you say it was Boffin with Colin?”

  “I said it was probab
ly Boffin.”

  “And what did they say?”

  “Nothing, I told you, they just made some notes, said thanks for helping with their enquiries and let me go home. I mustn’t have been the only one though, who had told them it might have been Boffin with your Colin.”

  “What makes you think that?”

  “I was with Boffin yesterday, just hanging around town and he said the police had been around to his a second time on Friday night, saying people had given statements, which raised the possibility that he may have been with your Colin, on the day he died.”

  “Did he seem worried?”

  “Not at all, mate. He was just moaning about them wasting his time. He says he had already told them that he had been grounded by his Mum that day, but this time they wanted to double check with his Mum.”

  “Did he say whether the police had spoken to his Mum?”

  “Apparently they had.”

  “And what did she say?”

  “Boffin just said his Mum put them straight, told them he was grounded for fighting with his brothers, so anyone who had suggested it was him with your Colin, must have been mistaken.”

  “Bollocks!” I cursed in frustration but also to reflect that I did not believe this alibi one bit.

  “Simon, maybe he was grounded. I told you, mate, I wasn’t 100% sure it was him.”

  “Maybe, but I doubt it. Who else could it have been?”

  “I don’t know, mate, your brother was a friendly lad, it could have been anyone, he could have just been bored because no-one was playing out, so just got chatting to someone he had never met before.”

  “And then walked a couple of miles up to the canal with them? I doubt it, Phil. Something tells me it was Boffin.”

  “Maybe we’ll never know.”

  “Oh we will, Phil. Somehow or other, I’ll find out.”

  LUKE ‘BOFFIN’ BOOTH – September 1986

  It is 2012 now and when I look back on my childhood, it is not with any sense of pleasure. My Dad died in ‘77, in a motorbike accident on the M6. I’ll always remember there were Union Jack flags everywhere and people having street parties because of the Queen’s Silver Jubilee and whilst everyone else in the road was celebrating, Mum just cried and cried. I was four years old. People who knew her before the crash say Mum was never the same again. Not only did she have to cope with losing my Dad, she also had to raise three young boys on her own and she just couldn’t cope. We were never the easiest boys to deal with. We went looking for trouble at every opportunity. Mum just drank herself silly. She died in 1998 of renal and liver failure, which the Doctors said was due to over twenty years of alcohol misuse. I don’t miss her. She was never really here, not in a motherly sense anyway. Throughout our childhood, she was just a demented bitch.

  When Mum died, it made me think back to ‘86, back when I was thirteen years old. Up until then, I had never really thought much of the woman. She had never been a doting mother more a foul mouthed, verbally and physically abusive one. She always said it was her nerves, as Matthew, Mark and I were always up to no good. We were given Biblical names, but we were no saints. I’m guessing Dad died before John had an opportunity to be conceived.

  In 1986, one of the kids I used to hang around with, a little tearaway called Colin Strong drowned in the Leeds-Liverpool canal. He was only ten years old. Lancashire Police were all over it, as police always are when a kid dies, especially so in this instance, as the circumstances were deemed to be suspicious. Apparently, there had been loads of people who had spotted Colin with an older kid, just before he died. The police suspected that the other kid was me. Clever blokes coppers. Anyway, a couple of them came around to our house a couple of days after his body was found in the canal and I’d told them then that I had been in all day the day he died. I told them Mum had grounded me, but as more people came forward suggesting I was with Colin, the police came back to our house again, to check my story out with my Mum. Luckily for me, Mum was sober the morning they called for her and had no great love for coppers. She gave them a right earful, told them that they had no right to question what I’d already told them and sent them packing. Once they’d gone, as was often the case in our house, everything kicked off.

  “Right Luke , you owe me one lad,” said Mum sweeping her hand through her untidy, grey hair and looking proud of herself, “I’ve no fuckin’ idea where you ended up the day that little lad died, but I know one thing’s for certain, you weren’t grounded by me.”

  “I was grounded. You were probably too pissed to remember.”

  “How could you be grounded? I never ground you. That’s something that happens to American kids. Why would I ground you? I want you out from under my feet not hanging around driving me mad.”

  She talked crap. I wouldn’t even have been under her feet if Paul Simon had put diamonds on her soles.

  “Ok, if you must know, I was out.”

  My Mum smiled at first, as her assumptions were right. She had terrible teeth when she smiled. She never smiled for long though, until she had poured her first drink anyway. Her normal scowl soon returned.

  “Out with that little kiddie who died?”

  “No, I was on my own.”

  “Yeh, right, Luke. Pull the other one.”

  “I’m telling you, I was on my own in that derelict house on the way up to Coppull. I don’t want the police knowing that, they’ll do me for trespassing or something. Anyway, they wouldn’t believe me. They hate me those coppers.”

  “They hate you ‘cos you’ve got form, Luke. They already know you’re a lying little get.”

  “No, I’m not!”

  Mum laughed. She had a smokers laugh, a real cackle like a witch who had inhaled too much smoke from her cauldron.

  “You must think I was born yesterday, Luke. You’re a born liar. You were never at that run down house!”

  “I was.”

  “No you weren’t! You think I don’t remember nothing, ‘cos of the drink, but I remember that little lad calling ‘round and I remember you going off out with him. What happened, Luke? You can tell me, son, I’m your mother.”

  “Mother! Why would I tell you? You’re a shit mother!”

  “Piss off! You weren’t saying that five minutes ago when I was saving your arse from being hauled down to the station by them coppers.”

  “Normally you are. What, apart from that, have you ever done for me?”

  “I keep you fed and clothed, you ungrateful little rat.”

  I could tell she was starting to lose it. She could probably tell that I was starting to lose it too. No-one ever kept calm in that house.

  “We get shit clothes from the charity shop and crap food ‘cos you can’t cook.”

  “What do you expect, you knobhead, I’m skint. Do you expect me to be dishing out Roast dinners with the amount I get from the dole?”

  “You seem to be able to afford your drink.”

  “You kids drive me to drink. Anyway, this isn’t a fucking ‘bout me. It’s about you, you and that dead kiddie. What did you do to him, Luke? Push him in?”

  “I didn’t touch him, Mum! I told you, I wasn’t even there. He came here, I walked up the road with him, he went towards Chorley, I went towards Coppull. That was it, never saw him again.”

  “I don’t believe you, Luke.”

  “I don’t care whether you believe me or not, that’s what happened!”

  “It’s not though, is it, Luke? We both know it’s not. Did you kill that little kiddie, Luke?”

  “How many times do I have to tell you, I wasn’t with him!”

  “Does that derelict house in Coppull have a swimming pool, Luke?”

  “What are you on about, you?”

  “Does it have a swimming pool?”

  “No, it doesn’t have a swimming pool. You’re a nutter, you are.”

  “Well the clothes you crept back in wearing that night were soaked, Luke. You just left them in a plastic bag next to the washing machine because i
t was broken. If you’re going to lie, lad, make up a proper story.”

  “It was pissing down that Saturday.”

  “It didn’t smell like water from the clouds, it smelt like canal water.”

  “How do you know what canal water smells like?”

  “I just do. They’ll catch you if you killed him, Luke.”

  “I didn’t kill him.”

  “Look me in the eyes and tell me that.”

  I went straight up to her. We were similar heights at the time, so we were almost nose to nose. I looked her straight in the eyes.

  “I didn’t kill him! Satisfied?”

  “Not really, I’m not convinced, son and if you can’t convince your own mother, God help you if the police don’t buy that pile of crap we told them, ‘cos if you can’t persuade me, son, you’ve got no chance of persuading them!”

  I lost it then. That bitch was driving me up the wall. I launched myself at her, with both fists flying. I know they say you shouldn’t hit women, but most women aren’t hard as nails like my mother was. She fought back. It was just like fighting against my brothers, like one of those cartoon fights when both parties whip up a whirlwind of punches. Mum eventually pulled back, nursing a bloody lip. I had scratch marks down my cheek that took a week or so to clear. She dabbed her cut with her top.

  “That’s one hell of a guilty conscience you have there, Luke. That’s all I’m saying. One hell of a guilty conscience.”

  SIMON – September 1986

  Pretty often it poured down during the school summer holidays. Early July and September were always guaranteed to be tropical, whilst we were at school, but when you wanted constant sunshine, when you could play out every day, that was when the rains would come. I don’t recall 1986 being any different to the norm. I remember being back at school, after the summer holidays, the sun constantly shining, cries of ‘Jasper’ and all the lads chasing dying wasps around the playground.

  One Friday night, in late September, after a particularly sunny school day, I remember coming around the back of our house, as you could enter the back garden via a gate and then walk up a little crazy paving path to the back door. I opened it and, not unusually, Mum was sat at the table with a load of old photos of Colin and me spread across it, sobbing her heart out. Once she saw me, she tried to compose herself.