Chapter 2

My Life Before the Turn of the Century

I considered the events that had led to this. They had started in 2006.

Let me just explain. To understand my situation, you'll need to understand my history. First of all you would probably like to know a little background about me. Oh, I'd better tell you my name, just let me say it's Scott for the present so I don't complicate matters. I know it's annoying but I've changed my surname, many people do when their mum remarries.

I was born in 1982 and am now 23. I never knew my birth father so it was Mum who brought me up on her own until I was eight. There were few relatives on her side of the family because they had been farming in Africa in the fifties and few survived the Mau Mau uprising. Mum never said anything about that time and I never even knew if she were present at some terrible killing or if she was in England at the time it happened. I sensed she never wanted to talk about it and never liked to ask.

The only relative that I can remember was my Gran, she was my dad's mum. It was just after my gran died, when I was about eight, that we moved into George McAlpine's house. Mum and I adopted his name, McAlpine. You may think it strange but I never knew what happened to George's first wife, Candice's mother. Candice was older than me by a few years. She was an OK girl but a year or so after I arrived she went off to college, a pity that as we got on well despite the difference in our ages.

When I was coming up to twelve Mum died after a desperate illness that left me in a whirl. The illness was all over in six weeks and I don't know what was worse: seeing my mum just get thinner and weaker or feeling so alone when she was suddenly no longer in the house.

After that, things didn't change too much until just before I was fourteen, that's when Mrs McAlpine #3 appeared on the scene with her two, they were both my age. I looked forward to their arrival, wanting them to be my friends,

My mom had been pretty but Jemima was the perfect trophy wife. Even with the swollen tummy that she brought with her, she was like a runway model. I still have my suspicions that the bump, later baby Jennifer, was the passport she used to bring herself, Stephen and Stephanie, into the McAlpine family.

She must have borne the saintly twins, Stephen and Stephanie, when she was young because they were a few months older than I was. And didn't they let me know it! I was glad when they went off to a private, fee-paying school and just wish they had been boarding there.

George was not short of the bob or two*.

Very soon after their arrival I was put in my place by the thirty-year-old Jemima and her pair. Talk about wicked stepmother! I'll say no more but my presence was resented and even Candice stopped coming home, even at Christmas. After I was sixteen, I never saw this figure of stability that I thought I had in Candice. I respected her and she got on OK with Mum when she was alive.

By the time that I was eighteen I was eager to complete my A-levels and leave the discomfort of the house. In a fit of irritability I cut myself off from anything McAlpine and adopted Mum's name. Having to make my own way in the world, I quickly got a job and found lodgings a hundred miles away near uni. They were cheaper than the university accommodation.

By the time that I was twenty-two I reckoned that if I kept my job at the service station I could afford to stay on for a Masters' degree and that was what I was doing in the year 2006 when everything was turned on its head.

2006

I'm sorry if I've bored you to death but now you know a little bit about me; a student with little time for carousing and with a determination to get as high grades as possible. Yes, a few of us do study - that's why we go to uni. in the first place. And yes I would have preferred to have spent more time sampling the various real ales in the Union or, as we called the bar, the Junior Common Room. But I knew that without a family to fall back on, this was the only chance I was ever going to get and I was determined to make the best of it.

Most life changing events start off with a trigger. In my case there were four incidents that triggered the overwhelming change of my life as I knew it. Call me dumb, but until the fourth incident, I never connected the first three.

At that time I had my life arranged to ensure that I achieved two objectives; a good grade on my final examinations and graduating without any big debt hanging over me.

To that end I had a job working four or five nights a week. I would arrive at work by bus in the evening and, in all but the most torrential rain or snow, would leave first thing in the morning, jogging back the five miles to my bedsit*, thereby both saving money and keeping fit.

Incident 2: THURSDAY 26^th April 2006 6:45 a.m.

That was close shave! Bloody half-awake drivers, not unknown at this time of the morning! Fortunately I saw the oncoming car swerve over from the other side of the road and threw myself in the ditch before it arrived. I was lucky enough not to end up under his wheels.

Filthy stagnant water, almost freezing, it was no wonder I arrived back at my flatlet* at a faster run than ever before. I cursed car drivers in general and, throughout the day, one dozy sod in particular.

Incident 3: SUNDAY 29^th April 2006 6:47 a.m.

No work Thursday night and Friday night's duty at the service station had been swapped. This was the reason I worked the Saturday night/Sunday morning shift: it paid a premium as it wasn't popular with the others.

After a lazy few hours' revision on a quiet early Sunday morning, the day shift arrived. While there were two of us there, I put out the newspaper shelving and fresh cut flowers, opened up the shop, cleaned the toilets and signed off.

I changed in the back room and threw my books, pants and shirt in my rucksack as normal. Tying on my running shoes, I threw my rucksack over my shoulders. Tightening up the straps, I set off out over the parking area and immediately cut through, not onto the main road, but down the footpath to the minor thoroughfare that, after running through Beeches' Copse, came out near my bedsit. It was a good few miles. It was fortunate that I was wearing the wrap-around sunglasses. Their tightness suited my vaulting over ramblers' stiles* and slipping down the steep footpaths through Clover Woods.

Sunglasses in April! You may well wonder, but running back due east with a low sun shining directly in my face almost the whole way, the experience of over three years had trained me to regard them as a necessity.

Emerging onto Crossfield Lane there was, as expected, no traffic at this time on a Sunday.

If it were not for those sunglasses I'd have been a goner. Thinking about it later, I worked it out that it was the low sunlight reflecting off the windscreen of the car as it came down Black Hill behind me that alerted me to its presence. The brilliant flash in the corner of the sunglasses' lens was all it took. There was no other alert or sign or sound of approaching danger.

A half glance around made me aware of its presence, but it was a second, sixth sense three seconds later that had me diving right through a thorn hedge over into a cow pasture. Just in the last half second, I caught the throaty accelerating roar as the vehicle dashed past, now wobbling to the brow as it recovered from skidding on the narrow grass verge where I had been jogging seconds earlier.

Ever thrown yourself through a hawthorn hedge? The spikes are hard and up to half a finger' size in length. You don't break the strong spikes unless the full weight of your body's fall takes them at a funny angle. I think I was only lucky in that, even, in the split second that I had to jump, I went a further pace down to launch myself through the hedge at its weakest point.

Two deep gouges were so deep on the back of my arm and just behind my ribs that I couldn't reach them. I had twisted around to avoid the greatest impact on the more vulnerable front of my body.

One of the other tenants in the divided house where my flat was found was a nurse and it was Dot who ladled on the TCP and stuck a few plasters over my 'little' scratches as she called them, laughing at me more for the fact that that I'd stumbled into a cowpat*. She was quite insistent that I take an anti-tetanus and even ran me down to A & E* in her old Honda.

"You should really report it to the police," she insisted, "once is an accident twice is more than a coincidence."

Reluctantly; I agreed to do that later in the afternoon, after I'd had a kip. Sunday was my favourite day since I could generally rely on a good eight hours sleep during the day. No such luck now!

By the time six o'clock came round I realised what a ridiculous figure I would cut at the police station. I couldn't even describe either of the two different vehicles; neither could I even give the mark of the car, but just knew the first was a foreign SUV and the other probably a saloon. I wasn't even sure of the colours. I determined, I'd just be more careful in the future.

Know what? I was beginning to think it must have been my fault, probably too tired after a night's work.

I never thought back to those two events and devoted my mind to more pressing matters: the first being my final exams having already started. The next was on Tuesday and then there was another all Wednesday afternoon.

Incident 4: 2.17.a.m. Friday May4^th 2006

I was lucky, damned lucky. If I were a cat I'd only have six lives left. Firearms attacks aren't that common at filling stations. I was more than lucky that "Geostations Retail" - that's the firm that ran the franchise where I worked and also couple of dozen more filling stations in the area - had been given the hard sell twelve years earlier and installed bullet proof glass at the night-time cashier's window.

Most security stuff is just reinforced and toughened glass to prevent the kiosk from being battered down by crowbars and the like.

It must have been getting on for nine o' clock when the police took me back to the filling station. I was surprised that it was still sealed off and no attempt had been made to even get the electricity on or even sweep up.

By now they were taking the robbery more seriously. I explained to the police, "It was when the lights suddenly went dark that alerted me first of all. Even the coolers over the refreshment side were silent. I assumed it was a power cut. The only dim lighting came from a few low wattage emergency bulbs."

I went on to describe how minutes after the power went out, "This man just appeared in front of the window of the kiosk and rapped on the glass. I went over to tell him I couldn't make any sales at all, neither fuel, nor refreshments.

"I know the sound isn't great without the microphone switched off but I can't recall hearing anything he said. I didn't hear what must have been the first shot either. That's when the glass shattered around a small indentation."

By now as I looked in the cold harshness of the day there was hardly anything left in the safety glass, a hole big enough to clamber through had been punched out!

"It didn't hit you?" queried the questioning officer, meaning the bullet.

Stupid question! I think he'd have known by now if it had. I tried to tell him, "I don't think that shot went through the glass at all. I'm not sure if there was hole or just big cracks out from a central point of the glass. I think I stared in surprise as the emergency lighting reflected off something. Don't ask me how long I took to realise that the cracked window was related to the handgun that was glinting off some light somewhere."

The copper let me go on, as much as anything else because I was shaking like a leaf as the full import of what might have happened was finally hitting me.

Finally I tried to go on, "I think he was surprised that the bullet hadn't penetrated the glass. It gave me second or two to jump back and I threw myself on the floor and crawled out towards the staff toilet so he couldn't see me. Already he was shooting further shots at the glass behind me."

"And then?"

"The shots got louder and louder and I heard breaking glass. I knew that if that first shot had connected he would have killed me. All I knew was that he was going to be able to climb in and I wanted to be nowhere around when he robbed the place."

"That's when you smashed your way out through that small window in the toilet? By now the plain clothes officer was in the tight room staring at the tiny window, "You got out through that tiny aperture?" he stared at it and transferred his eyes to me in disbelief.

I showed him, the torn shirt and deep grazes on my chest and shoulders where I had wriggled my way out in a frenzy. My torn pants displayed the bruises and deep gouges on both hips as I had defied physics and squeezed my slim, but adult, frame through an aperture smaller than my own measurements.

"Weren't you scared he would hear you?"

"I was thinking that he was a druggie with one thing on his mind and probably not in full control of himself, but I could hear his attempts to break in at the front. I knew that, if I was quick, I was safe if only I could get out of this back window. It was obvious he was at the front still because he was making a hell of a noise. I could hear the shots from outside now and they appeared to be getting louder."

"Yes, he used the bullets to break through the glass, he'd have been better trying one of the other windows or the locks on the doors.

The man stopped for a minute before asking, "And when you got out you could get a good look at him?"

Is it a requirement of the police to ask stupid questions?

"I made no attempt to go anywhere near him. I made beeline to the nearest shrubbery and took a dive behind the bushes." As soon as I had come to my senses I wanted to get as far away as possible. He was going berserk and shouting for me to come out.

"He saw you in the undergrowth?"

"No, he thought I was hiding in the filling station, but he was shouting so loud I could hear him outside. It's quiet in the early hours. Anyhow. That's when I decided to leg it, get as far away as possible. I made off, over the fields. I was scared to go on the roads in case he got in his car and chased me. He was acting like a deranged fool."

"Ah, you saw his car?"

I thought for a moment, "I never saw anything. I just assumed he must have come by car, almost all the customers do."

"And?"

There was little more I could tell him, "You know there are no telephone boxes as there used to be, I had to make my way to that 24 hour taxi office in the high street and was knocking on the door for a good ten minutes before your lot turned up. They thought I was the violent one until I told them what had happened."

"That's when you got violent?"

"I didn't, I just refused to go with them to the service station in case that maniac was still there. They were going to take me back there without calling out the armed police."

The sergeant sniggered and then went very quiet, possibly thinking of what could have been, "So that's when you resisted arrest?"

"I demanded to be arrested, I reckoned I'd be safer in a cell than wandering around a blacked out service station. Those rozzers* could have waked in there and been killed."

Suddenly some enormous arc lights lit up the whole area and he saw the state I was in. I had to explain how I'd got all my other scratches and cuts. That made him more suspicious of me. What the hell did he think? Did he have the idea I was in cahoots with a mentally deranged robber? I'd got nothing out of the robbery bar some bloody awful torn skin and a load of bruises.

That was about all they said to me on Sunday. I heard the filling station was still shut Monday morning but I said nothing about what had happened there. I continued my exams that week: there were more urgent things to consider - like my future.

There was one consolation, to keep my job I'd had to agree to work over the exam period, but for some reason the service station was closed another week.

They were waiting for me Thursday afternoon with Prof. Jagson, the Head of Department, as I came out of the third exam that week. He looked at my marked face and cut hands, "This is Detective Inspector Keiler, he wants to talk to you about an altercation in which you were involved."

Gawd! The way I was spoken to, made me believe they were set to get the handcuffs out. It was as if I had been involved in a 'fight' I could see Prof. adopting a real look of disappointment and distaste as if I had let down his department in some way.

It was embarrassing to be taken off by two police officers. Even though the car wasn't marked I felt all the other students were staring at me. I never knew it at the time, but that was the last time I stepped on the campus for more than a year.

At the station they wanted a more detailed statement.

I told them, "I can't tell you any more."

Then they started pressing me about my other injuries and asking how I 'knew' the gunman was drugged up. The interview then went into what I knew about drugs and why should I be the subject of three attacks that week

They never told me at the time but there had been no attempt to take anything from the service station. The spare tills that were locked away in the staff room could have been easily accessed by shooting off the locks. Nothing had been touched. I'd even left my wallet in my anorak and it had been taken out and 'nothing' taken. Well, my university I.D. and library card had gone, but there were even a couple of fivers left in it.

Oh, they asked my permission to have a look around my room. I had nothing to hide but by this time I was sure they were looking for drugs and my involvement in dealing them or in not paying a dealer.

It was half eight Thursday night when they were just going to 'let me go' after 'helping the police with their enquiries' that all hell was let loose. Now, you might think me ignorant but then most people in the UK have no knowledge of handguns but the arrival of some bullets at the regional Home Office forensics lab were being signed in when one of the weapons analysts happened by and immediately recognised in the packaging what were Barnes Expander bullets.

No, don't ask me what that means. I have always thought a bullet was a bullet.

But these were the same peculiar type not commonly found in Britain. They had been used on a professional killing in Scotland that the technician was working on. Within two hours he had made a provisional identification that they were probably fired from the same weapon and he announced that Interpol had reported similar findings from a professional hit in Saltzberg.

I quickly gathered that neither of the other two killings had been drug related and the attitude of the police started to change. A renewed bout of questioning started then as the two near misses from the cars were examined in more detail, now by a member of the Regional Crime Squad, a unit that concentrated on the more 'professional' type of criminal.