Things are looking up 
It was the last day of term, 1971. My hair was a metre
long. My tutor said, "You look like a damned Hottentot, and if you
insist on becoming a musician, you'll probably marry one and end up living
in an attic."He was damn nearly right too. I did become a musician, and I married one, but we ended up living in the back of a car. But things are looking up. I now live between a slum and a disaster.
The slum is Klong Toey, and the disaster is Sukhumvit - a road which must surely hold more treasure beneath it than ancient Rome, for it's been excavated more times than most archaeological sites in history. The Soi that connects these distinctive headlines is dishevelled, safe, and a cauldron of pleasing chaos.
The landscape around here changes every five minutes. Yet, some buildings, like the 17-floor concrete carcass next to my block, are in a permanent state of semi-abandonment. It took the locals two years to figure out firstly, what the hell it was, and secondly, how you get into the damn thing?
We asked the builders, who didn't know, who went to find the architects, who weren't even there. Then the builders asked us if we had any money . . .
Meanwhile, a Himalayan pile of refuse has risen over the year as the workers threw all their rubble, offal, and flotsams of snot over the wall. Around here, it's called recycling. We have inherited this squalid disgrace, which, naturally, is completely ignored by everyone except the rats - who think it's Las Vegas.
Wearing expensive shades, they lie on their backs, bloated with toxic waste, and look slightly guilty - as though astonished by their own abundance. Even the local dogs are embarrassed to be seen with them.
For the rest of us, it seems impractical to be uncivilised here, for there is an instinctive humanity in this hard-working neighbourhood - a vital philosophy of getting ahead and getting along. Relationships around here are amicable, but have purpose, and you'll find yourself pulped into fiction if you don't contribute one way or the other. Your money or your manners - preferably both - and we'll all get along just fine.
There are apartments full of foreigners living a cocktail of realities. There are thugs, drunks, losers, survivors, dreamers, talkers, and moneymakers. There are keen teachers, busy business types, laid-back architects, and those who appear to have spent the last seven nights outdoors in a wheelbarrow.
There are also those who come and go, speak fluent bratpack, and are so relaxed they can't even get out of their own way.
Last night I sat talking to two guys in one of the local bars. We were a confederacy of strangers. After drinking a goon of panther pee each, and about to start on the second calabash of palm wine, I discovered that one of them was making 250,000 Baht a month as a salesman for computerised weaponry. The other guy, who had a face like a party balloon with a slow leak, didn't make any money at all - but just managed to maintain a ridiculous grin. Every time he wanted another drink, he simply yelled, "Nurse!" and they came running. What a brilliant idea.
He had all these pills in his shirt pocket. I asked him what they were for. "They make greyhounds incredibly happy for just a few moments," he explained. Oh.
Suddenly, late last night, one pathetic lightbulb blinked on, then off, high up in the dormant concrete shell next door. Then early this morning, there was an excited shout from the street: "Hey! It's been called a hotel!"
Wow! Sometimes truth can come at you from completely the wrong direction. My dear, by lunch there'd even be talk of guests . . .
Right not, we're negotiating with Christo to come and wrap the refuse dump in white silk - as a sculpture, as a monument, as . . . as . . . as possibly another hotel. But the squatters are not interested. A spokesgerm for the rats said they are demanding pink silk, fresh refuse, new Raybans, and a little female rat action after dark. We're working on it.
By Roger Beaumont
Available
at Bookazine
Murder at Deadmans Hill
Was the wrong man convicted in the A6 motorway case?
By David Cocksedge - True Crime series
THE INFAMOUS A6 MURDER was committed at Deadman's Hill, Bedfordshire on
the night of 22-23 August 1961. It was a seemingly motiveless homicide
of particular brutality. That evening, a gunman ambushed co-workers Michael
Gregsten and Valerie Storie as they sat in a car parked by a cornfield
at Dorney Reach, Buckinghamshire. Sitting in the back of the vehicle,
he made them drive around rather aimlessly for a few hours before parking
in a lay-by off the A6 motorway at around 3.30am. When Gregsten made a
sudden move, the gunman shot him twice at close range, killing him instantly.
He then made Storie get into the back of the car, where he raped her.
After she helped him take Gregsten's body out of the car, the gunman shot
her several times as she crouched by her lover's body. Leaving her for
dead, the killer then drove off, and later abandoned the car at East Redbridge
station. But at least three of the killer's .38 calibre bullets had missed
Storie, and she amazingly survived to tell the tale in spite of being
paralysed in a wheelchair for the remainder of her life.
The first suspect was Peter Louis Alphon (30), an odd character who spent
most of his time gambling at dog tracks. The murder weapon turned up on
a London bus and two cartridge cases fired from it were found in room
24 of the Vienna hotel, at Maida Vale in London where Alphon had stayed
on 21-23 August. But one James Francis ('Ginger') Hanratty (27) had also
stayed there on 20-21 August, and when Valerie Storie picked him out in
a crucial identity parade, police focus switched to this petty thief and
housebreaker. Satisfied that they now had their man, Scotland Yard detectives
amassed circumstantial evidence to implicate and eventually convict Hanratty.
Oddly, the prosecution presented not a shred of forensic evidence as it
was alleged that the killer had used gloves, and then burned his bloodstained
clothes after the crime. Hanratty, though a known thief, protested that
he was no killer. But after a three-week trial he was found guilty and
hanged at Bedford on 4 April 1962 in spite of a growing mass of evidence
to prove that he had actually been in Rhyl, South Wales, at the time of
the murder.
On 12 May 1967 Peter Alphon called a press conference in Paris and dramatically
confessed to being the A6 murderer, stating that British Justice "should
be dragged in the mud where it belongs". He described himself as
"a Nazi", and said that he had been on a "messianic mission
against indecency and immorality" in stalking Gregsten and Storie.
He also said that Hanratty had been "expendable". Senior figures
in the Metropolitan Police Force and British judiciary dismissed Alphon
as a demented self-publicist; but there is much evidence to link him with
the crime. For example: on 22-23 August 1961, he was out all night, and
did not return to the Vienna hotel until just before noon.
Years later, it was discovered that around ?7,500 had been paid into Alphon's
bank account soon after the murder. This was a considerable sum in those
days, and Alphon was unemployed. Perhaps someone had paid him to kill
Gregsten and Storie, or had he blackmailed this person after the crime?
Alphon, (who was admittedly an habitual liar), hinted to the press that
he had been a hired gun in this murderous affair; but Gregsten's widow
Janet can be discounted as his accomplice as she was not wealthy and had
no known association with him. Even if she had secretly met Alphon, how
could she get access to such a sum of money anyway? Alphon later took
journalists to the exact location of the murder scene on the A6 motorway,
which had never been made public.
The police were never able to establish a motive for Hanratty. Alphon
had little driving experience, was boastful and talkative, but prone to
sudden rages, as Storie said the gunman had been. Hanratty, on the other
hand, was an excellent driver, was shy around strangers, and had no criminal
record of violent behaviour. And witnesses at Redbridge, East London described
a man closely resembling Alphon driving Gregsten's Morris Minor car very
erratically at 7.10am on 23 August following the murder in Bedfordshire.
It is chilling to speculate that if the gunman had succeeded in killing
Storie as well as Gregsten, Hanratty would most likely still be alive
today. It was Ms Storie's positive identification of this man as the killer
that formed the main plank of the Crown's case against him.
Over 40 years later, and in spite of considerable evidence to suggest
that the jury had arrived at an unsafe verdict, British Justice is still
reluctant to admit that it could have been wrong, and sent an innocent
man to the gallows.
(Research: 'Hanratty, The Final Verdict' by Bob Woffinden, Pan Books)
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