No Nonsense Page 10

  By 2am we had taken root in Blackie’s, the ground-floor sports bar. We were steaming. There was a bit of boys-on-tour banter between Chappy, the kit man, Tim Flowers, our goalkeeping coach, and a group of journos, including James Cooper of Sky Sports News, but nothing insulting or out of order. It had been a thought-provoking day, which Danny Mills and Steve Jordan had spent coaching children displaced by the tsunami.

  I started chatting football with an Everton fan, who knew of my allegiances and asked for my opinion on my boyhood club. The mood changed when he was joined by his son and a friend. Suddenly, there was an edge to the atmosphere. I don’t know if he felt the need to show off, but he began to denigrate Robbie Fowler as a cokehead and a coward, because he wasn’t on the trip.

  Bob was injured, and I wasn’t going to put up with lazy, vindictive lies about him. This was beyond football; it involved the integrity of a close friend. I could feel the mist start to descend: ‘Look, mate. Firstly, you don’t know the fella. Secondly, you’re a tit. Fuck off. Just do one. I don’t need you, or your shit, in my space. Go away.’

  ‘Are you going to make me go away?’

  ‘Yeah, if you want.’

  Before the confrontation could develop his son blindsided me, and kicked me in the shin. My pain sensors were numbed, because of the drink, but I went through the mental checklist that signalled impending chaos. The kid looked young, 15 as it turned out. From where I come, it doesn’t matter how old you are if you kick a grown man at 3am, in a bar where everyone is pissed. You are old enough to get a slap. You are getting yours, son.

  I hit him with an open palm, rather than a fist, and meant it to sting. This might appear to be appalling, an affront to cosy suburban ethics, but I prefer to think of it as a life lesson that would have been infinitely harsher had it been imposed at the Huyton Park pub. According to an eyewitness, I growled at the kid: ‘I’m going to fuck you up.’ He fled, crying and screaming empty obscenities.

  His dad was momentarily frozen. When he saw me turn towards him, hands clenched, he slipped away to complain to Dunney, whom he recognised from his time at Everton. I went back to my pint, and was soon confronted by the Honey Monster, who was as buried in the booze as I was. ‘Fucking get over there now and apologise!’ he screamed.

  I declined.

  Dunney grabbed me by the throat, and pushed me back against the wall. He was raging, oblivious to my warning that he had precisely two seconds to let me go. He was bigger and stronger than me, so wrestling was out of the question. I turned feral, and sank my teeth into his fist as hard I could. He roared, let me loose, and involuntarily looked down to see that I had drawn blood.

  I rugby tackled him before he could react, pushing him backwards across the room. Bystanders were bulldozed out of the way, human skittles in a bizarre game of bar billiards. Our momentum took us over some steps and into a secondary tier, where Dunney crashed through a glass coffee table.

  Momentarily wedged into its metal frame, and understandably stunned, he gave me enough time to think clearly and malevolently. Violence is strangely hypnotic, almost organic in its purity. Right on cue, my inner voice piped up: ‘You’re going to have to fight him now. He’s a big lad, but nothing to be scared of. Wouldn’t harm to give yourself some insurance, though.’

  I leaped back to the bar and grabbed a pint glass. Tim Flowers recognised my intention, of smashing it across Dunney’s head, and threw himself at me. Reinforcements arrived immediately, and before I knew it I was pinned to the wall by five guys. I was screaming unintelligible threats and, out of the corner of my eye, noticed the lad’s dad walking towards me, ready to play the Big Man.

  I knew I was getting a crack, because I was defenceless, so followed my dad’s timeless instruction and dipped my head so he could only pound his fists on my skull. He hit me twice before I took advantage of the confusion he had created, and wriggled free. It was payback time and he knew it. He turned to run, and I set off in pursuit, only to be met by a phalanx of security guards, who threw up a human shield between me, him and Dunney, who was by this time screaming blue murder.

  They had guns. I had beer glasses, bottles, ashtrays, chairs, tables. Anything that wasn’t nailed down was getting launched at them. They tried to restrain me, and I fooled them with the old schoolboy’s trick of going limp to imply surrender, so they would let me go. Once I felt their grip slacken I was away, ploughing through anyone or anything in my path. A Premier League press officer disappeared underfoot.

  Eventually, they managed to bundle me through a set of glass doors, which were locked behind me. I tried to run back into the bar, and started to rip pictures from the wall. There was blood all over the marble floor. I was completely gone, psychotic. In the distance I could hear Dunney screaming: ‘Why is this happening?’ He was being frogmarched to a secure area, and was so out of control he kicked a plant pot, breaking a bone in his foot.

  He would miss two key internationals for the Republic of Ireland, but football was the last thing on my mind. I made a bolt for the fire escape, only to be shoved into the lift and escorted to my room. Two armed guards were posted outside the door, and Tim Flowers went above and beyond the call of duty to save me from myself. He stopped me punching the wall, and slept next to me when I passed out.

  We both woke in our clothes, and tried to piece together the fragments of a wild night. Chappy, an emissary from the real world, reckoned I resembled the cartoon character the Tasmanian Devil, in human form. I was a whirlwind of destructive energy. He had pulled some strokes in his time, but had never seen anyone lay waste to a place like I had done, in the early hours.

  Remorse sent acidic pulses through my guts. Dehydration scoured my throat. There would be a reckoning, because this was the sort of international incident that demands an official response. Had I found the limits of my usefulness to City? Would they try to cash in on me, before my notoriety impacted on my market value?

  Pearce was unequivocal. He wanted me thrown into a Thai jail, to await deportation. Club officials were rather less impulsive, and infinitely more calculating. They extracted promises that all damages would be paid for, and hustled me out of a side entrance and off to the airport. I flew to Manchester via Zurich, to put the press off the scent, and went to bed at home, in a world of pain, at six o’clock the following evening.

  I slept solidly for 14 hours, and woke with a start when my brother Andrew burst into my bedroom. My first thought, that we were under siege by the hacks, would have been a minor inconvenience compared to the news he bore. ‘Have you heard what’s happened in St John’s?’ he gabbled, his words bouncing around the room like pearls from a broken necklace. ‘Someone’s been killed in the flower park . . . ’

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  HORROR AND HOPE

  Gee Walker is a woman of immense dignity, incredible tolerance, immeasurable moral courage and inspirational goodness. No mother should have to bear her burden, of a lifetime’s longing for a wonderful son, murdered when his life stretched invitingly before him.

  I wept when I read her account of walking through a trail of blood in the hospital corridor. She was struck by its stickiness, and collapsed when she realised it had been shed by her son, Anthony. He was dying, and she was prevented from comforting him in his final moments by detectives, concerned by the possible contamination of evidence.

  Those words carry such weight that they should, by rights, tear a hole through this page. As a parent, I’m haunted by the image of a mother’s unimaginable despair. As a human being, I recoil at the horror of her son’s murder. As someone whose name is associated with such a terrible, racially motivated crime, I continually ask myself whether I could have done any more to prevent it.

  Anthony Walker’s life ebbed away at 5.25am on Saturday, 30 July 2005. He was 18 and had effectively been braindead for just over five hours, from the instant an ice axe was driven 6cm into his skull by Paul Taylor. My brother Michael was fighting with Anthony in McGoldrick Park when the fatal blow wa
s inflicted.

  Taylor happens to be my cousin. I appreciate the damage caused by his abusive childhood, but cannot forget or forgive his actions. I had dark forebodings that he was destined to cause immense harm in this world, but was unprepared for the extent of his malignancy.

  I used to see Anthony around the estate. I didn’t know him well, but he seemed a lovely kid, diligent and a good basketball player. His sister Dominique was a couple of years below me at school. The Walkers were close and loving, and stood out simply because they were the only black family within about a four-mile radius.

  I had a premonition something was wrong, very wrong, when my brother Andrew burst into my bedroom that morning. He had tried to call his twin, but Michael’s phone was off. That didn’t make sense, because, like most teenagers, he lived on his mobile. It began to have sinister connotations when I attempted to make contact. It had an international ringtone, and rang out.

  He had no business to be abroad, and had left no word about his whereabouts. I made some calls around the estate. Details of the murder were starting to seep out, and police were mobilising a manhunt. Someone wrongly suggested the cousin of a mate of mine had been involved, but no one really knew what had gone on.

  My phone rang. It was Michael, maintaining he was in France on a fishing trip. He claimed to have heard nothing about what had happened in the park, where Anthony had been ambushed beside a low wall, a matter of yards from where Lee Kinch was stabbed by Tommy One-arm. I knew he was lying, and the implication made me nauseous.

  It didn’t add up, and within a couple of minutes my phone rang again. Michael haltingly confessed he was at the scene of the crime. The court would later be told he fled, covered in Anthony’s blood, having tried and failed to extract the axe, which had pierced his skull and was embedded in his brain. Three men were eventually convicted of helping him and Taylor abscond to Amsterdam, via a Dover to Calais ferry.

  That would all unfold, as justice took its course. Trapped in the moment, it felt as if I’d had the wind kicked out of me. I struggled to process the enormity of the situation, but knew I had to do something, anything, to make Michael see sense. My solution was delivered in a stream of consciousness, unsubtle but urgent.

  ‘Turn yourself around and get back here. Whatever you are doing, whatever has gone on, I don’t want to know. Someone is dead. This isn’t going away. I don’t give a fuck who you’re with. Fuck them off and get right back here. This is mad shit, Michael. This is real. You can’t go on the run for ever. You’ve got to speak to the police.’

  He rambled about our cousin being the killer, and rang off. I turned to Andrew with a sense of dread. Our worst fears had been realised. I’d barely had time to gather my thoughts when my mobile rang yet again. It was Stuart Pearce, ordering me into the club to apologise for the Thailand fiasco. I told him to fuck off.

  At that moment, I didn’t want to play football again. All the old certainties appeared to have unravelled. My instinctive determination to man up and crack on with life seemed naive. I was 22, had a few quid, and no real ties. I felt a fleeting yet powerful urge to disappear to a desert island. I wanted to run away.

  My career was an irrelevance. I closed my eyes, covered my head with my hands, and screamed, silently. My default position was to beat myself up, to blame myself. I never worried about our Drew. He was too smart, too gentle, too thoughtful, to get himself in bother. I knew Michael was different. I’d tried to help, but allowed him to drift.

  His phone was diverting continually to voicemail, but a couple of days after our initial exchanges I received another call, from an unidentified number. It was Michael, asking for £1,000. I refused, and repeated my lecture. He wouldn’t tell me where he was and sounded desperate, gabbling about not being prepared to go to prison.

  I resented my impotence for years afterwards. Could I have prevented Anthony Walker being killed? Arguably. Could I have prevented Michael from ruining his life? Definitely. Could I have stopped Paul Taylor doing what he did? Doubtful. If he hadn’t attacked Anthony, he would probably have killed someone else, or been killed himself.

  If Michael had come to live with Andrew and me, as I’d wanted, he might have been better placed to work through his problems. If he had knocked on my door, and asked for money instead of taking it illegally, I’d have willingly handed it over. If I had been more forceful with him, when I began to pick up whispers he was involved in bad stuff, I might have made a difference.

  If . . .

  My mind went back six months, to a white Transit van parked up on the nearby Mosscroft estate. I’d got word Michael was in there with about 10 of his mates, smoking weed. There was talk he had been involved in robberies, burglaries, dealing, but it was couched in gang code, delivered with a nod and a wink. That’s the way St John’s worked.

  I had mates who were up to no good, and had no fear of the local hard cases. I’d known them since we were kids. Each of us knew of our capacity for violence. I made my break with them when I committed to football. They wanted to keep me at arm’s length, and preferred to feed me half-truths. At least this time, I had concrete information.

  The back doors of the van were thrown open. I recognised a few of the faces and smelled trouble, in addition to narcotic sweetness. Part of me recognised the futility of anger. I rationalised that Michael would have to learn his own lessons. It wasn’t my job to step in. I was his brother, not his parent. It wasn’t as if I had a shortage of shit to wade through in my own life.

  I was about to discover the road to hell is indeed paved with good intentions. He was flesh and blood, even though he had lived with Mum all his life. He was six years younger, and I knew he had been allowed to roam free. He had been slow at school, and his trial would hear that he had a mental age of no more than 13.

  ‘Fuck these dickheads off and get out,’ I ordered.

  He tried to protest, but sensed I was in no mood to be defied and got into my car. I phoned Mum to tell her Michael was going to be living in my spare room. When I got him home, I told him to wear what he liked from my Reebok-sponsored stuff in the wardrobe, and gave him a fistful of notes to spend on himself. He didn’t get away scot-free, because the reprimand was vehement.

  ‘What the fuck’s going on? I’m not stupid. Come on, Michael, there’s more to life than this shit on the estate. You can’t go on like this. You’re 17. You’re knocking around with a bunch of scumbags. Look, this is where it is at. You need a job. I can help you get it together. I know you need mates, but no more dickheads.’

  He talked about joining the army, or going to college. I could never recreate the intimacy of his bond with Andrew, but we began to reconnect. Unfortunately, football intervened. I had away games in the Premier League and UEFA Cup. I asked my mates to keep an eye out for him, but gradually he slipped back into his old ways. He began by staying with Mum over the weekends, and then went missing for a few days. Within a month, I’d lost him.

  That was then. This is now. The media are camped outside Nan’s house. They’re laying siege to Mum’s house, unaware that, unforgivably, she is still on holiday in Turkey. They don’t know where I live, yet, but they have their uses. I agree to a police request to make a televised appeal for Michael to give himself up.

  That address, into an ITN camera, was an out-of-body experience. I spoke from the heart when I said that ‘those responsible for the senseless death of a kind, decent young man must be brought to justice’. I offered my ‘sincere condolences’ to Anthony’s family, and demanded their right to closure. I told Michael to contact police ‘because you know it is the right thing to do’.

  That night Gee Walker spoke for the first time about her loss, at an anti-racism vigil at St George’s Hall in Liverpool city centre. Thousands shared her grief. The following day Michael and Paul were apprehended in Amsterdam. They were officially arrested at 6.20pm, when they arrived back on home soil, at John Lennon airport.

  I’ve subsequently read a lot about estates like St John�
�s. It is a generalisation, but sociologists speak of a cycle of low aspiration and minimal achievement. Typically, nearly half the residents rely on benefits. Social problems are exacerbated by loan sharks. According to a thought-provoking piece in the Economist, these estates form a new type of white-dominated ghetto, where racism is endemic.

  Football broke the chain and broadened my horizons. I was at Everton with black lads from Toxteth, Netherley and Norris Green. There were still kiddie rivalries, and they’d give us a chasing if they saw us in town, but skin colour was meaningless to me because I knew them as people. I shudder to think of the racial abuse the Walker family endured on a daily basis, because ignorance elsewhere was pervasive.

  There was a kid at our school, who had an Irish father and a Cypriot mother. He had a slightly darker, Mediterranean complexion, and tanned easily, but used to be taunted as a ‘nigger’ or a ‘Paki’. It was insane; a combination of closed minds, wanton stupidity and a fear of difference. The impact of cultural paranoia and a lack of integration was underlined when an Asian family took on the corner shop in St John’s. Within a matter of days someone smeared the word ‘Pakis’ in huge letters across the main wall.

  A certain type of stranger still assumes I am racist because of my background, and the details of the court case. I find that abhorrent, an insult I resent with every fibre of my being, but I can follow the twisted logic. It wasn’t Michael Barton and Paul Taylor in the newspapers, or in the dock. It was Joey Barton’s brother, Joey Barton’s cousin. It created an impression I had to address immediately, not least with my team-mates at Manchester City.

  Despite my meltdown with Pearce, the club were hugely supportive when they grasped the magnitude and complexity of my problem. They did, though, have the right to expect me to be remorseful. My mind was frazzled, but I had an obligation to apologise personally to players and officials for my behaviour in Bangkok.