I don't want you to get the idea that I or any of my friends are part of some fast set of Apache - type performers in some left-bank show at The Moulin Rouge! It just so happens that this particular drama played itself out on a stage not too far away from my personal life-theatre.
I'm referring to a mutual friend of ours who inadvertently committed suicide. Yes, suicide by accident! Poor Mr. X - I remember his deep basins of brown eyes that made him so popular with the ladies. He was in the 'Plant Hire' business when I knew him in the sixties. That is he used to hire-out large earth-moving machinery - bulldozers and that sort of thing. He used to come aboard the Landfall a lot - he was unhappily married at the time. He took up with Y, a waitress on the Landfall. He fell for her and she for him. Eventually he opened up a nightclub of his own in Liverpool - it was called The XXX Club. Being quite successful, he later bought and ran the XYZ Ice Rink, but ice-skating was going out of fashion at the time and it failed. The last time that I saw Mr. X and Y was in 1995 in the Wine Bar in Lark Lane Liverpool where my daughter Kirsti used to be a waitress to earn money whilst she was at university. Clare and I were just leaving as they were arriving. I hadn’t seen Mr. X or Y for seventeen years. They both looked great! We exchanged telephone numbers but I was so busy with marriage etc. that I didn't get round to ringing them. According to John Briercliffe's sister Jean, Mr. X was owed some money by some business acquaintance and it became very bitter and Mr. X shot this man in the stomach with an 'air gun' the man staggered away and Mr. X stabbed himself in the stomach to simulate a knife-attack by the other protagonist.
In other words, he injured himself to make it appear that the other man had assaulted him first. Mr. X was rushed to hospital but died of internal bleeding.
It might be said that he got what he deserved? So there it is - Mr. X was the instrument of his own demise - hoisted by his own petard! |
