Essex Boys, The New Generation Read Free Page A

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