Essex Boys, The New Generation by Bernard O'Mahoney Page A

Bernadette’s flat in Southend. The product of Irish parents, Malcolm was by no means perfect; he was well known to the police and rumoured to be one of Southend’s major drug barons. For many years, Malcolm had been involved in committing burglaries, and during the hours of darkness he taught Alvin everything he knew about his unscrupulous trade.
    One night Alvin and Walsh broke into a chemist’s shop on Hamlet Court Road, Westcliff-on-Sea. They gained entry to the premises by climbing the fire-exit stairs to the roof and hacking through a fire door with an axe. Once inside, they began to fill two large rubbish bags with Walkman CD players, perfume and anything else they thought they might be able to sell. Whilst they were in the process of filling the bags, a police car pulled up outside and two officers got out. Walsh and Alvin, fearing they would be apprehended, ran towards the rear of the premises and up the stairs.
    Walsh went back out onto the roof, but Alvin dived straight through a ten-foot-wide plate-glass window. When he hit the ground, he saw that he had landed in an alleyway. Shaking shards of glass and debris from his clothing, he looked up to see a very bewildered police officer standing over him.
    ‘You’re under arrest, son,’ the officer said, as he bent down to grab Alvin.
    ‘Not unless you can catch me,’ Alvin replied, before jumping to his feet and fleeing. The officer gave chase, but he had no chance of catching the terrified teenager.
    Once Alvin was satisfied that the policeman had stopped pursuing him, he walked to the nearby car park where he and Walsh had left their getaway car. The lights on the battered old Capri had been left on and the engine was still running.
    ‘There were a number of officers in the car park when I got into the vehicle,’ Alvin later recalled. ‘They came rushing towards me when they saw me jump into the car, but I accelerated away before they could reach me. I drove out onto the main road, but they had blocked my escape route with a police car. Fortunately, the officer sitting in the vehicle must have thought I was an innocent member of the public because he reversed out of my way. He obviously hadn’t been contacted by his colleagues to look out for me or the Capri.’
    Walsh, meanwhile, remained trapped on the roof. Rather than face arrest, he brandished the axe he had used to breach the door and charged the police. Immediately recognising the difference between stupidity and bravery, the officers stepped aside and watched as Walsh disappeared into the night, waving the axe above his head and howling.
    The following day Walsh and Alvin scoured the local paper for news of their near capture and were surprised to read that the police were claiming that a ‘number of bottles of perfume’ had been stolen.
    ‘We didn’t have any perfume,’ Alvin said. ‘I suppose somebody could have just been walking through the car park, accidentally climbed the fire escape and found the two bags of perfume, but it’s unlikely. I’m certainly not saying the police would have taken the perfume for themselves. There’s no way they’d do that, is there?’
    When Alvin wasn’t sleeping, drinking, fornicating or thieving, he was terrorising those who displeased him in the area where he lived. On one occasion, Alvin, Kevin Walsh and another man were walking down London Road in Leigh-on-Sea when a taxi slowed down alongside them in traffic. Alvin was wearing a West Ham United hat and scarf and when the four men in the taxi noticed this they began shouting out obscenities and making offensive hand gestures at him. Having supported a mediocre football team for most of his life, Alvin should have been accustomed to this kind of reaction from strangers, but for reasons known only to himself he got annoyed. Gesticulating with his hands and issuing threats, Alvin approached the taxi, but, before he could reach it, the traffic eased and it continued on its journey. After just a few