by Paul Kelly
Title Page
WHO KNEW FELIX MARR?
A fiction mystery story about one particular person
Paul Kelly
Publisher Information
Who Knew Felix Marr?
Published in 2014 by Andrews UK Limited
www.andrewsuk.com
This book is sold subject to the condition that it shall not, by way of trade or otherwise, be lent, resold, hired out or otherwise circulated without the publisher’s prior written consent in any form of binding or cover other than that in which it is published, and without a similar condition being imposed on the subsequent purchaser.
The characters and situations in this book are entirely imaginary and bear no relation to any real person or actual happening.
Copyright © Paul Kelly 2014
The right of Paul Kelly to be identified as author of this book has been asserted in accordance with section 77 and 78 of the Copyrights Designs and Patents Act 1988.
Introduction
This is the story about a fourteen year old boy who THOUGHT he might even be fifteen or even older and he lived on the streets of Glasgow. He never had any parents that he knew of and had been brought up in a Home that was organized by a woman who could not have children and wanted to start a care home of her own. She had five children with whom she cared for and Felix Marr was one of those children. He had no faith; no God and no beliefs of any kind other than to survive, regardless of how he had to live in order to survive and that meant that everything and everyone was on this earth just to give him satisfaction...
Chapter One
Glasgow -1953
I watched him carefully and tried to avoid letting him see that I could tell what he was after, but I was saying nothing. He was a police officer and this was a police station, but that was nothing new to me.
I had been in this situation many times before and I sat in silence as what I had in mind was MY BUSINESS... It did not concern any other person, but this bloody policeman was agitated to know what I had in mind and I knew that. He twisted his fingers and sucked his jaws, thinking that I would speak, but the bugger was in for a big shock if he thought I was gonna plead guilty.
“How old are you?” he asked and I used the ‘normal reply and said.”NO COMMENT” as this was my usual answer when I didn’t want to reply and I could see him sigh to let me know that he was used to this sort of reply, but I smiled at him and I could see the anger in his eyes. There was no way I was gonna move from where I was sitting unless he shoved handcuffs on me or dragged me off by the scruff of the neck. I just wished that I could have read his mind and then I would have been able to do something, but I am ‘human’ I am not a bloody robot and there was no way I could see into the future or what another person was thinking, but I waited for him to go from the interview room as I badly needed a piss and with a click of his fingers he concluded the interview and I was able to relieve myself, but hardly had I come out of the bog than he was there again with more questions and I thought we had finished with all that.
“I need your full name and address and I don’t want no buggerin’about, Do you understand?” he barked.
I listened, but I thought it best on this occasion to reply to his request and I wondered if I should give him a true answer or make out that I was Barry Manilow... but I thought it best to do as he asked and I hollered the information that he asked for as if I was indeed a bloody robot.
“Betty Boop,” I screamed “address unknown”... and he held his hands to his ears, but before he scribbled something down on a piece of paper that was lying on his desk, within minutes a woman came into the room and scrutinized me so carefully that I thought she must be another police officer and I smiled at her.
“Don’t be so bloody smug,” she said and turned her back on me as she went through some papers on the desk. She fumbled though these as if she didn’t know what she was looking for but I thought I could give her a suitable smile and I said to her, “We could get to know each other somewhat better if you like,” and she turned to face me with a blank look on her face as she closed her eyes.
“Dry up sonny or I’ll tell your mother that you have been a very naughty boy.” she snapped but that only made me angry and I told her the only way she would be able to talk to my mother was if she went to the local graveyard and with that, she turned to the other male officer beside her and muttered something which I could not understand but then as she left the room, the other officer told me to ‘clear off’ but the way he told me was a little different as he told me to ‘fuck off’ and he told me that his name was Harrington... SERGEANT Harrington, he emphasised and that he would remember me for a very long time and if it hadn’t been for that lady superintendent Wilkinson, he would have had me thrown into a prison cell without the slightest hesitation.
Apparently it was she who found me to be not guilty of the theft that had been reported from a local hotel. Well, you have to eat, haven’t you and where else can you go if you don’t have no dosh?
I left the prison offices and went straight to the ‘Angel’ pub for a beer where I immediately met Charlie, a guy I had seen before and had talked to him in the supermarket when I was looking for something to eat... and he told me that he belonged to a gang and I was very interested to know more... especially if their members got a place to live and where they could eat...
“Is the meeting the same time as usual?,” I asked as if I had knowledge of the times the gang would meet and he nodded but I really didn’t expect an answer from Charlie as I wasn’t yet initiated into the gang and I wanted to become a full member as soon as possible, as life for me on my own was hard. I had no place to live and no place to eat or sleep... but I had met Charlie a few times and I knew he was in a gang but he only spoke when he wanted something to eat or drink... The gang was meeting at 7.30 that evening and I felt sure that as they would have expected that I would have been in prison, no-one expected me to be there, but I was full of the best intentions and NOTHING would stop me meeting with the gang. That was my life and that is what I wanted it to be. I needed some money, so I looked around to see if there was any to be found. I never ever had a problem getting money before and I didn’t expect one now, but I was lucky.
She must have been about seventy odds I would have thought, but she went down like a light and her pension was intact as I took the purse from her pocket. I knew the police would find her eventually at some time or another and if she was still breathing, well that would be O.K. No harm done... but if she wasn’t breathing, well so be it... Life was like that.
I looked around for somewhere to eat and found a rather nice little café quite near the police station where a young blonde smiled at me as I went in. I thought she looked very nice but a wee bit ‘showey’ for my taste, with long dangling earings and more than enough make up, but it didn’t matter greatly to me as I knew she was just another waiting to be fucked and I was more interested in eating, but what did surprise me was another visit from the silent Charlie where he stuck his fingers in the air and tried to give me some sort of a message and I asked him to tell me more, but he simply shook his head and stuck out his tongue, but I didn’t know what he was talking about and so I decided I would go to the meeting at 7.30 that evening.
It was something I desperately wanted to do and I was going to do it at all costs. Charlie tried to put me off by telling me that it would cost me ‘millions’ to get started, but I found out later from Angus that Charlie was always jealous of anyone who came into the gang as a new member and so I ignored what he had told me. Anyway it sounded ridiculous for anyone to pay ‘millions’ to get into a gang when gangs were always k
nown to be AFTER money and not giving it away.
Chapter Two
There were only four at the meeting and I only knew one of them, Frankie Balliter and he had changed a lot since I last saw him. He had shaved his head and had two jewels in his ears apart from his earings which looked like pearls. I asked Frankie what he was up to lately and his reply was a quick up and down jerk of his wrist and I knew that meant that he had plenty of sex, but with Frankie it could have been a man or a woman or even a camel. You learnt not to ask for details, but sometimes with the look on Frankie’s face you could get a good idea if what he did have was satisfactory or not. He grunted something to me which meant that he would be in the pub later that evening after the meeting. You see, with the gang... sign language was very important and we would often use that when the police ever questioned us. It was either ‘NO COMMMENT’ or absolute silence... Not even an expression of guilt or innocence. Let the buggers decided for themselves... The police never ever made a mistake... or so they have so often told us. I went to the pub that evening and I was pleased to see that we had more guys in the gang than I had ever seen before and what was even more interesting was the sight of not only one girl, but THREE... One of them called herself SHEBA and I thought that was a funny name for anyone. Perhaps she considered herself to be a queen of some sort, but she was at least eighteen stone in weight, with an arse like an elephant and tits down to her naval, with a tattoo on her arm that looked like a figure 7, but she was as coarse and as brazen as she appeared with Pongo, one of the leaders of the gang approached her at the bar and asked her what she could give him as he touched her bottom and the reply she gave him made us all think that she would be capable of doing anything that Pongo asked her.
“A punch up yer fuckin’ froat,” she said and wiped her nose with the end of her right forefinger. I knew then that she was a ‘lady’ who knew what she wanted and nobody was going to fuck her about.
One of the other females was about six inches off being called a dwarf, but she dressed like a man with a collar and tie on her shirt and I thought it was hardly the dress we, as the gang or me just waiting to be accepted as a candidate expected a female to dress in and the last of the three was a young blonde girl hardly sixteen I would have thought and she kept chewing something as she threw her head back and forward. Two of the ‘ladies’ had a fight as they went up to the bar as the prices they were offered for the drinks they wanted were different to what they thought they should be and verbal abuse was shouted out at the top of their voices, but I didn’t have much to do with females and their drinking problems up until this moment, nevertheless all the men stood by and watched the fight with avid curiosity. Beer was fuckin’ shit at the prices suggested by the barman and whisky or similar drink was regarded as fuckin’ immoral and ‘not worth a bleedin’ wank’... as hair was pulled out all round at the roots and bar furniture went ‘for a burton’ somewhere.
The blonde tart who called herself, Ady, she tells me that really means ADORABLE... and she keeps looking at me as if she was smelling some shit or other as she asked me if I was a Jew. She thought it was because of my name being Felix, but I told her I didn’t know what I was as I didn’t believe in religions, but she kept on sniffing until I moved off into the gents... but when I came out, she was waiting for me and I could see a strange movement in her eyes as she ran her fingers across her hips.
“You can come up to my place any time, big boy,” she said and I ignored her invitation telling her she was not my type, but she glared at me when I said that.
“Do you prefer a young boy then, instead of a young girl?” she snapped and I said I preferred young girls, but I liked them YOUNG and not middle aged and she reached out and hit me across the face.
At that moment another one of the gang came across and smiled at me but I had never seen him before and his face was not one that I could recognise, but he moved his head to the right a little and by the way he looked at me, I felt there was something he wanted to tell me and then he introduced himself as Travis.
“HI Felix. I’ve just been talking to Charlie but he’s a funny sort of guy, isn’t he. .. I wanted him to do something for me; something that needed TWO of us and he grunted and pointed over to you and when I asked Greg who you were, he told me your name.
“What is it you want, Travis? I asked and Travis pushed me into a corner and started to whisper in my ear. He needed someone to help him teach his brother in law a lesson as his sister was complainin’ that her bloke was knockin’ her about a bit and she didn’t like that about him. Travis also felt sure that his sister’s bloke was having it off with some other bird and she didn’t like that either, so Travis wanted to do something to teach this bloke a lesson and he needed help... was I interested? Well, of course I was interested. I was always interested in teaching some other bloke a lesson whatever he did as I liked to beat someone else around the bleedin’ ‘ead or kick ‘im up the arse. That was somethin’ that really got me fired up and I nodded to Travis and he grabbed me by the arm.
“Let’s go then,” he said and we marched off together to a local pub and waited outside for this geezer to show his bloody face.
“Would you know him Travis? “ I asked as anybody could have come out of the pub at that time in the evening, but Travis assured me that he knew his brother-in-law well and he would recognise him immediately.
We didn’t have to wait long before this bloke came staggering out towards us and Travis gave me the O.K. so we hit the geezer over the head and knocked him to the ground and then we kicked the shit out of him before we belted off around the corner without waiting to find out any more of what we had done or what had happened, but it was with great regret that when we made our way to Travis’s sister’s flat, who should come to the door to meet us? None other than the geezer we thought we had beaten up and then we realized that we had got the wrong bastard and didn’t know what else to do. I looked at Travis and he shook his head and he stuttered badly.
“I’m not worried about that old bugger lying out on the street by the pub, but Angus will have our guts for doin’ somethin’ that we shouldn’t have done. He will knock shit out of me, so I need you to stand up for me, Felix. Tell Angus that it was your idea, will you... and then he will go easier on both of us as you aint officially in the gang yet, are you?”
“Who is Angus?! I asked and Travis tried to look away as if he didn’t want to answer my question, but I asked again, “Who is this Angus guy?” but again, Travis tried to avoid my question until I took him by the shoulders and shook him violently “Angus is the guy who leads this gang, but he won’t be mucked about. You have to be straight with him or he’ll knock shit out of you. He is not like one of us. You won’t see him wearing jeans or anything like that. The best of West End clobber only for Angus and he wears perfume behind his ears with pearl earings sticking out of his bleedin’ lug oles... ”
I decided I would have to meet this Angus bloke, but I didn’t know what answer I could give him if he asked me who had knocked buggery out of the bloke at the pub, but Travis told me just to tell him that I had done it, as he would go easier with me as I wasn’t a gang member but that he would not be at all tolerant with any member of the gang. Travis told me to come Along to the ‘Angel;’ pub the following evening at 7.30 and I would be able to see Angus there at that time, and although that was O.K. for Travis as I gathered he had a place to stay for the night, I had to wander off to the nearest park bench and pulled my knees up round my arse to keep warm. I knew this was the best way to keep warm as I had done it so many times before. Nobody ever looked at you twice if you were sleeping on a park bench or if you were tucked under an old coat in a shop doorway. It was becoming quite a custom in Glasgow as the housing was a problem with most people now that you had to have a mortgage and everything else and it was worse when you were a ‘bastard’ and had no connections anywhere.
Chapter Three
I
didn’t sleep well at all as the rain kept filling up my ear. My shirt felt as though it had just come out of a bleedin’washin’ machine, but I stood up and shook myself just as the sun was coming through and I thought if I walked about a bit and maybe did a little run around, that my clothes might get drier. I had to get something to eat and I went to the nearest café where I could see two people eating something that could easily have been a breakfast, so I whispered in the guy’s ear that there was a serious accident outside and that people were gathering around... and immediately both he and the girl he was with shot out of the café and I nicked what I could from one of the plates. Having been fed, if even with very little, I knew I would be O.K. until later that day and whatever would come my way... would just come my way... that was the only way I could think and it always worked. In my world there was only today... there was never a tomorrow.
I took a little stroll around the town and came across a library and I thought it would be nice to see if I could read any of the books in there, but they would need to have large print as I was not the best of readers, however as I had gone into the library a young lady came towards me and asked if she could help in any way and I thought she had said that as she must have seen me looking curiously at the books in large shelves but I thought she looked rather nice and I thanked her for her kindness and told her I was just looking and had no particular book in mind, but she then said she could look up the library registration, thinking I had been a regular visitor to the library, but when I told her that this was my first visit, she asked my name and I told her it was Felix Marr and she smiled.
“That’s a very unusual name,” she said, “I have been working here in the library for over four years and I have never met anyone with the name Felix before... let alone a surname with MARR... but I gave her a wave and left the library as she stood looking at me as if I had stepped out of space and as I stepped down the street onto the pavement a policeman stopped me and asked me to accompany him to the police station... I thought one of the breakfast eaters at the café must have reported me, but I was wrong. I had been to a supermarket and took a basket for some ‘eats’ but I left without paying. I thought I was O.K. but apparently I was not. .. Apparently one of the security guards at the supermarket had tried in vain to stop me when I left the premises, but because he could recognise me, he got the police to chase me up.
