THE CURTIS BLAKE KILLINGS
By Simon McCleave
A DS NICK EVANS PREQUEL NOVELLA
No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, scanning, or otherwise without written permission from the publisher. It is illegal to copy this book, post it to a website, or distribute it by any other means without permission.Names, characters, businesses, places, events, and incidents are either the products of the author’s imagination or used in a purely fictitious manner. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, or actualevents is purely coincidental.
First published by Stamford Publishing Ltd in 2020Copyright © Simon McCleave, 2020
All rights reserved
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PROLOGUE
The story of Declan Blake
Liverpool - a city unlike any other. Once the gateway to the British Empire, it was a port that had, at one time, been responsible for eighty percent of Britain’s slave trade. The darkness of that reputation seemed to set the tone for Merseyside for the next three centuries. It seemed to be a city divided from the rest of the country by its attitude and accent. A place with more stereotypes and divisive views about its people and culture than anywhere else. Liverpudlians were mawkish and militant. They were dishonest and yet fiercely loyal. Scallies, comedians, poets, politicians, musicians and sportsmen. And something about the raw, gritty air, that was filled with the salt of the Irish Sea, produced a clan of physically tough, verbally agile, and witty people, with a healthy distrust of the authority imposed on them by the south.
The city’s character had been forged by the huge melting pot of nationalities and cultures that had settled there. Waves of immigrants began to arrive from the late 18th century when freed African slaves settled in a seafront area called Toxteth. By the 19th century, Liverpool was at the peak of its power. Nine miles of busy docks ran from Brunswick to Seaforth on the east side of the River Mersey, and from Birkenhead to Wallasey on the west side. Trading with every part of the globe and ferrying millions on the Cunard Line and White Star Line to the New World of America, Liverpool was one of the most important ports in the world. It remained that way until the 20th century.
The Irish winter of 1848 was one of the coldest on record. Declan Blake had managed to beg and steal his way from his hometown of Killarney in southwest Ireland across to the port of Cork on the east coast. Ireland was in the middle of the Great Famine, or what Declan’s late mother Josephine called An Drochshaol, meaning ‘The Bad Times’ in Gaelic. Josephine Blake, along with over a million others, had perished from starvation and disease. Declan was devastated by her death but knew he needed to escape Ireland if he was to stay alive. Everyone he knew was trying to get away. After already hearing stories of the New World, Declan had learnt that his Uncle Joseph now lived in New York with his wife, Bridget. So that was his plan; A ship to Liverpool and then a two-month voyage across the Atlantic to a new life. Declan had managed to save nearly three pounds for the two trips.
On the 12th January 1848, Declan paid his six pence for a ticket from Cork to Liverpool. Arriving at Langton Dock, Liverpool on the 13th January, Declan was told that he could get a ticket on a passenger ship called The Hector that sailed for New York four days later. Declan was incredibly excited at the prospect of a new life. But first he needed to find a boarding house to stay in. He would then spend the following day waiting in line at the emigration agents to make sure his paperwork was in order.
However, by a strange quirk of fate, Declan Blake never made it to New York. Later that day, Declan ran into a childhood friend, John Houghton. They had been altar boys together at St Patrick’s in Killarney for a while. Father O’Reilly, who was always drunk and stank of body odour, was the unwitting victim of their practical jokes. Declan and John went to reminisce in a seedy local pub called The Parrot by the seafront. A few hours later, they left to find lodgings but were robbed by a local gang, ‘the Cornermen’. Infamous for preying on naïve Irish immigrants, ‘the Cornermen’ used bats and heavy sharpened belts to injure their victims. Even though Declan had hidden his ticket money for America in his shoe, the gang soon found it and left him and John for dead on the quayside.
Once Declan had recovered, he realised his dream of getting to New York was over. Instead, his friend John found him work with an Irish ‘navvy’ gang who were digging out the new Albert docks. Within six months, Declan had met and married Mary Charlton, who came from Blarney, in St John the Baptist’s Roman Catholic Church close to Toxteth Park. They settled and found a room to live in on Smithdown Road, an area that was almost exclusively Irish. Weekends were spent with fellow navvies in the nearby Kelly’s Dispensary pub, owned by Robert Cain who came from County Cork.
Declan Blake continued to work on the docks and then the railways until his death in 1905. He was buried in Toxteth Cemetery and was survived by Mary, four sons, three daughters and eight grandchildren.
Toxteth, Liverpool 8
June 1994
The heat of the summer was reaching boiling point. Too hot to bother going to school, the boy thought as he and his elder brother, Shaun, wandered down Granby Street in Toxteth, Liverpool. Shaun was sixteen but he hadn’t been to school for months. He had been expelled twice from
