SEA DOGS Chapter 4 Higgins & Jenkins, part 1

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The Beginning; Prologue - The Attic

Chapter 4, Part 1

Higgins & Jenkins

Tonight was a bad night! Without warning, & after years of experiencing nothing, Billy’s nightmares had returned with vengeance. Higgins tried to comfort his friend in the damp, darkened cell to no avail.

Theirs was an almost father-son relationship, although Higgins (the ward) was younger in age. Many times before this, whilst they were alone in their cell at night, the normally withdrawn Billy Jenkins would open up, tearfully telling his story of injustice (be it genuine or not) & then Jenkins would wonder; how could this could be the one they call the Berkshire Ripper; the creature who had ripped all those poor women to shreds; - the one who he had read of in the news papers & had seen on TV? It didn’t make sense to him & after a time he too was certain of Jenkins' innocence.


                     Tony Peter Higgins had met a number of bad characters before, along the way. The type that would stop at nothing to earn a crust, be it blood money! Like Leroy Locke for example, who used to drink down at his local (the Stocks pub in Redwich). Originally from Leicester, Locke was from a crowd of gangsters that would shoot anyone at a price! Famously he took a trip one time down the motorway for a £500 fee in order to shoot dead the troublesome lover of an acquaintance’s ex-wife, on his door step. Although he attempted to make it look like a robbery in the process he unfortunately failed to convince the police. For although he was not one to lack the stomach, when it came to such mindless acts, he did however lack intelligence & was arrested soon after, once the gun, with his finger prints all over it, was discovered in the victim’s dustbin!

                       Even though Higgins had mixed it a bit when he was younger, he was morally a decent man & he felt for his cell mate’s plight. Logically, it appeared that a grave injustice had in fact occurred. And he wasn’t the only one who thought this way either. Some of the warders, who had had direct contact with Jenkins on a daily basis, for the past years that he had been imprisoned, also shielded grave doubts. It was a fact. Jenkins just didn’t fit the profile of a killer.

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Written by T.R.Vinnicombe (aka Dr. Peter Hodgkins) ©2009 all rights reserved & none of the contents of this site can be copied or used in any way without the written consent of the author. Published online by MicroHotStar 2009.