1966 - The Long Game

By Brian Lec

Even before I had reached the age of six I knew without doubt that I would die a murderer, to be precise - a double murderer, or myself die in the attempt. What I did not know, and could not have known at that time, was whether this would lead me to a life in one of His, or later Her, Majesty’s Prisons, a life spent always on the run constantly looking over my shoulder, a life of freedom but harbouring a huge and potentially destructive secret, or even a life destined to end in death on the gallows. I did not know that a beautiful and talented young woman would enter my life at its most crucial period and unwittingly cause such complication and heartbreak to us both. I did not know that I would need to explore the lurid clubs and associate with the lurid characters comprising London’s seamy nightlife, and, most surprisingly of all, how just one single explosive and dramatic moment in England’s World Cup football match against Mexico in 1966 would light a fire in my being which has never been extinguished.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Lulu.com
• Release date: Mar 15, 2018
• ISBN: 9780244974954

Book preview

1966 - The Long Game

1966 – The Long Game

F:\Cover72dpi.JPG

by Brian Lec

© 2018

ISBN   978-0-244-97495-4

Part One

Chapter One

Even before I had reached the age of six I knew without doubt that I would die a murderer, or, to be precise - a double murderer, or myself die in the attempt.  What I did not know at that time, what I could not have known at that time, was whether this would lead me to a life in one of His, or later Her Majesty’s Prisons, a life spent always on the run constantly looking over my shoulder, a life of freedom but harbouring a huge and potentially destructive secret, or even a life destined to end in death on the gallows.  I did not know that a beautiful and talented young woman would enter my life at its most crucial period and unwittingly cause such complication and heartbreak to us both.  I did not know that I would need to explore the lurid clubs and associate with the lurid characters comprising London’s seamy nightlife, and, most surprisingly of all, how just one single explosive and dramatic moment in England’s World Cup football match against Mexico in 1966 would light a fire in my being which has never been extinguished.

People who knew me in my early years, both adults and other children alike, considered me unremarkable in every respect.  Medium height, neither fat nor thin, short mid-brown hair, average at sporting and intellectual pursuits, fairly polite and passably acceptable socially.  In fact there was nothing whatever which caused me to stand out among my contemporaries except perhaps that I was a trifle on the quiet side for a boy.  I never got into any major scrapes but this was probably because all my early misdeeds had been rapidly detected.  In fact the only thing in which I was extreme was my sheer ordinariness.

Hence it would have shocked them all if they had had any inkling of this horrific intention burning away inside my apparently unexciting exterior.  But it was to me important that no-one, absolutely no-one, knew, although they may have understood my reason and maybe even have sympathised with it.

When I first started school in September 1946, it was at Radlett a small town in Hertfordshire about 20 miles north of London - the same school that my sister Sonia had attended during the previous four years.  Sonia was by then nine years old, tall for her age and very slim with long fair hair.  Although she did not smile a lot she seldom looked miserable and was never still for more than a few minutes.  We had no other brothers or sisters and as children we were very close.  Of course she was expected to look out for me at school, and this she did most conscientiously.  So I settled into my new routine as happily as one can be when losing the childhood liberty that starting school entails.  The first days turned into weeks, then into months - my first term ended, and Christmas came and went.  We had reached the dark winter days of February 1947 when the most momentous event of my life occurred - an event so shattering that I never fully recovered - not at the time, not later, and not even now as I am writing this over 60 years on.  If anything, the effect on me has multiplied with the passing of time.

It was a period in which England wallowed in a period of relief and calm, following the end of six anxious and turbulent years of hostilities during World War II.  At the very young age I was, my awareness of these events covered only the final strained years of the war.  Although my family were short of everything now regarded as basic essentials, not having ever had any more than this, they weren't missed, either by my sister or myself.  Most of the rationing of food items - meat, bacon, ham, eggs, milk, butter, margarine, cheese, sugar, jam, tea and sweets - had been introduced before I was even born, so for me it was accepted as a fact of normal life.  Sonia of course, was already aged two at the start of hostilities and being those few years older than myself, had many vivid memories of the darker and more frightening wartime days.  She told me of being woken night after night by wailing sirens and of being swiftly gathered up by our parents and taken to a nearby air-raid shelter.  Frequently her schooldays had been interrupted by those same sirens and whole classes of children were led away to pass the time in shelters until the welcome all-clear sounded.   Towards the end of the war, she had sometimes seen the immediately recognisable body and stunted wings of a German V1 flying bomb pass overhead, looking just like a toy aeroplane, and stood watching, fervently hoping that the unique, sinister drone of its engine would not choose that moment to fall silent.  Considering that these were the first long-range missiles invented the accuracy of their aim was surprisingly high.  The ones she saw would have been intended to hit London but perhaps they were aided by a tailwind, or their rocket engines had been given too much fuel, causing them to power on beyond their target.

It was obvious, when she told me these stories, how fearful she had been, and it seemed to help her to talk to me about it, although my comprehension level must have been very low and my comments unhelpful.  I realized, only much later, that she had been unable to speak about these things to our parents who had become increasingly stressed by wartime horrors and were only just able to cope with daily life in the aftermath.  Father had been discharged from the army early in the conflict with fairly slight physical, but serious mental, scars.  Although our family had otherwise come through unscathed, they had taken on the grief and sadness of their friends and neighbours who were less fortunate, just as if it had been their own.

Luckiest were the young lads who had left school and, although old enough to be drafted into the armed Forces near to the end of the war, were too late to see active service.  Not for them the trauma of battle, just the training, camaraderie and a smart military uniform to impress their friends with.  Most of them would afterwards claim to have been robbed of the chance of real action, but that's easy to say when the danger has gone.  One such lad, Tony Priest, had a brother in the final year at our school.  Not that I had been aware of him.  It is strange how insular the separate years were in schools then and I wonder if it is the same now.

So it was on one of the gloomy afternoons of late winter that I was slowly walking home from school with my sister.  It was a distance of nearly two miles but not an exceptional walk for children to have to do at that time even if the weather was bitterly cold and wet.  That day though, although it had been cloudy and dull, it was at least dry and very mild for the time of year.  We had left behind the school and the clusters of houses near to it, and reached a part of the route with fields on both sides of the road.

At this point a tall lad, accompanied by a shorter, younger boy, overtook us and one of them, the younger, made some comments to us as they went past which I didn't take much notice of.  Sonia seemed to know the one who spoke but she pretended not to hear him.  They walked on, but not very much faster than us, and even in the half-dark we could still faintly see them up ahead.

Since starting school I had been allowed to manage my own sweet ration, which amounted to twelve ounces for every four weeks.  I had said this to one of my classmates and found that he had never been told by his mother that he had a sweet ration at all.  I was always very, very, mean with my allowance in the early weeks of the month so as to leave plenty available near the end.  This was always at the forefront of my mind in those days - and my favourite topic of conversation too.

‘Do you know Billy Ray in our class, Sonia?’

‘I think so.  Is he that tall, skinny, boy with freckles?’

‘Yes, that’s the one.  I told him today that I had been given my sweet coupons to manage and he didn’t know what I was talking about.  His mum has never told him he has a ration of his own - she just gives him a few sweets now and again.’

‘What does she do with the rest?’

‘Billy thinks she must eat them all herself.  She is as fat as Billy is skinny - perhaps she doesn’t give him much food either.’    

‘How is your ration going this month, Colin?

‘One week to go and I still have six ounces left.’

‘Lucky you, mine has all gone,’ said Sonia.  This was usual, as her policy was exactly the reverse of my own. 

‘You can have some of mine.’

I really did mean it.  Although I was stingy with myself, I would have given her some willingly - but I knew what her answer would be before she spoke.

‘No, that wouldn't be fair.’

These were the last words she ever said to me ...... ‘No, that wouldn't be fair.’

Unaware of it as we were talking, we had closed the distance between the two lads and ourselves.   Suddenly, Sonia was plucked from the ground by the taller one, and in spite of her struggles, was over his shoulder in seconds and they were both running off with her, through a gate and away across a ploughed field.  I followed and tried to keep up with them but my much shorter legs were stumbling across the furrows and they soon left me way behind.  For a while I could hear Sonia screaming in the distance but I couldn’t tell where her voice was coming from and in the gathering darkness I was unable to find them.   With ever-increasing panic I stumbled around the nearby fields looking for them until I was exhausted but in the end I had to give up and go home.  I can still recall the look that came over my father’s face when I told him what had happened. 

I never saw Sonia again, either alive or dead.

Her body was not found until the next day.  I heard that unspeakable things had been done to her but I was far too young to understand what these coded words meant at the time.  Newspapers did not then put into print every minute personal detail of such crimes as they do today but their adult readers would still be able to fully interpret the story.  All I knew for sure was that I had lost forever the sister I adored and that those two lads were responsible.  The full meaning became clear as I grew up but by then my head would not let my internal rage exhibit any outward reaction.

It did not take many days for me to see that the younger lad was a pupil at my school.  His name was David Priest and soon afterwards I saw him out of school with the other lad who I found out was his elder brother Tony.  David and Tony Priest - those were their two names and they became branded into my brain.  Of course, I told this to my parents, naively believing this would bring about instant action, and they in turn told it to the police.  Unfortunately, the techniques available at that time had yielded no useful forensic evidence at all, and my words were all they had - the evidence of a five-year-old.  There was no way in the world the police could build a case out of that, even if they thought I might be right, which they showed no sign of doing.  Would you?  Would I?  Probably not.  Oh for DNA - how different things might have been.  How different my life might have been.

So, by the time I was six I had already made up my mind to kill the two brothers.  Instinct told me that, however I felt, it was crucial not to show outward animosity towards them, and especially not to address any unpleasant comments to them, or behind their backs, about them either. Not in the smallest way would any other person suspect what I intended to do.  Not even my parents would have the slightest suspicion.  I was ready to play the longest of long games, and with the passing of time, Tony and David would, I hoped, less and less feel the need to be on their guard.

But they knew that I knew.  No doubt the police had questioned the two brothers intensively, and I was the most likely person to have accused them.  Subtle threats came my way, intensifying the feelings I already had, but, with no obvious reaction coming from me, it was not difficult for them to be convinced, quite soon, that I was of no consequence.  At five years old any thoughts and feelings I might have were considered to be insignificant.  Little did they know that the intense hatred inside me was growing every day that passed and my mind was already committed to retribution.

I knew that for many reasons any action of mine would have to be in the distant future, but that did not seem to matter as in some strange way the longer it took to accomplish the task would only serve to heighten the satisfaction when it was eventually achieved.  What was especially important, in those early days, was to give not the tiniest hint of my intentions to anyone - but especially not to Tony or David.  In this way they would never feel the need to be on their guard.  When my turn came I wanted it to be a total shock to them and to their family, as it had been to me and to mine.  Mentally this made me grow up far more rapidly than was either normal or healthy.  Inside my young boy's body a scheming demon was incubating alongside an awareness that I was well short of the physical attributes, talents and tools needed for this awesome task.

The first priority was that I myself stayed alive long enough to mount a devastating attack and that I had the level of fitness and strength that might be needed to make it successful.  As I had always been self-effacing naturally, it was no problem at all for me to keep an even lower profile by design.  As far as David and Tony were concerned I soon ceased to exist.  Meanwhile I embarked secretly on what would nowadays be termed a fitness regime.  At this time it was normal for kids to walk, run or cycle just to get around and, after reading all I could find on this subject, I was soon pushing my body to the limits that my growing stature could achieve.  When it came to any form of competition though, I made sure I was well down the order of merit so as not to attract attention.

Traumatic as this was for me, so it was for my parents, both of whom died not much more than a year afterwards.  My father, who was already in a poor state of health mentally, declined rapidly in the next few months, placing a heavy burden on my mother who was herself overcome with grief.  It was she who died first, early in March 1948.

On the day of her funeral there were many people, nearly all of them much older than myself, that I had seen only once before at Sonia’s funeral.  They were all dressed in black or dark grey and looked very much alike.  Some were relatives, some were friends but in most cases I didn’t know which.  A few tried to make a fuss of me but I fended them off as best I could.  I kept close to my father, who I could see was finding considerable difficulty in breathing - his low level of general health being seriously aggravated by the emotion surrounding my mother’s funeral coming so soon after that of Sonia.

We went back to our house after the service for tea and sandwiches.  It was late in the afternoon when I heard a commotion in one of the rooms.  I could tell by the tone of the voices that it was something very serious and, long before anyone actually told me, I knew that my father had died too. 

I was aware that whispered discussions were going on about what to do with me.  Two middle-aged ladies, relatives I hardly knew, were quietly but firmly, taking the initiative.  I was, of course still only six years old and the people remaining could hardly just go home and leave me in the house alone.  You may think that this might all have been too much for me, but by now I had acquired both an inner strength and a tough exterior shell which nothing could penetrate. 

I was put into the care of the two ladies who took me home with them.  They were, in fact, both great-aunts, sisters of my grandfather on my mother's side, who had never married, never moved away, and had lived all their lives together in what had been their family house at St. Albans.  I was not consulted about this development, nor did I expect to be,  but I had no cause for complaint either then or afterwards, and with the benefit of hindsight would have pressed strongly for it to happen.  I had lost all of my closest family within the space of not much more than a year and I more than deserved this break of good fortune. 

I always referred to them as Aunt and Auntie - Aunt Lottie and Auntie Maria.  Quaint, old-fashioned, caring ladies who loved me for what they saw and thought me to be, and because of what had happened in my life - but without ever suspecting what was going on inside of me out of their sight.

Moving my home to St. Albans meant also that I was moved to a Junior School and later a College nearer to my new home.  David had left Junior School by this time anyway, so we were no longer in the close proximity we were immediately following Sonia’s death.