He ran all the way along one side of the dock and then was halfway down the other when he was grabbed by a man standing at the top of some stairs leading down into a basement.
The man was wearing green Lennon spectacles, a fake moustache and a mop top wig. From some tiny speakers either side of the stairwell the Beatles’ ‘All You Need Is Love’ was playing.
‘Here, mate. You need to take a chill pill. Take a walk down Penny Lane, see Strawberry Fields.’
Stephen didn't have the breath to reply.
The man pushed Stephen down the steps into the Beatles Museum. Stephen turned and saw his pursuer emerge around a corner of a warehouse. He wasn't sure whether he had been spotted so he ran down the steps and entered the museum. Behind a ticket desk sat a bored, spotty youth reading a magazine with a tanned soap star on the cover. He was wearing large headphones and moving his head back and forth in time to a silent beat. Stephen dug in his pockets, finding a twenty-pound note, which he threw onto the counter.
‘Keep the change!’ he said to the attendant who ignored him. He entered the museum at a half jog.
Stephen had been to this museum before. It was one of the first places he and Jenna had gone on a date. He had a fond memory of her posing in front of a life-size wax diorama of the Beatles as he took her photograph. That day the museum had been crowded and full of life. Today it was empty, Stephen the only visitor.
The museum took the form of a series of twisting underground tunnels that linked rooms charting the career of the Beatles. The tunnels themselves were dimly lit and decorated with painted cardboard Liverpool street scenes from the sixties. There seemed to be no other customers and Stephen quickly moved through a recreation of Brian Epstein's office and the street where John Lennon was raised. In Epstein's office he paused to listen for the sounds of pursuit: he could hear nothing.
He carried on and the tunnels became darker, a recreation of the Reeperbahn in Hamburg, complete with lurid cardboard prostitutes, pimps and drug dealers. The darkness was interspersed with flashes from the green, blue and pink neon lights advertising the Kaiserkeller, the Star Club and striptease acts.
The silence was broken as Stephen entered another room, tripping the beam of a hidden motion sensor and triggered the sounds of the Reeperbahn: screams; police sirens; the Beatles playing Buddy Holly's ‘Rave On’.
He didn't hear the first gunshot. Just the crack in the air as the shell passed within an inch of his head, before slamming into the wooden face of a young Stuart Sutcliffe causing woodchip to explode like confetti.
Terrified, he plunged into the next room at the end of the tunnel, weaving one way and then the other. The passageway was barely lit and he nearly lost his footing, a mistake that he knew would lead to the end of his life.
Stephen began to sob but he kept running.
The tunnel opened out into a cellar filled with life-size black and white cardboard pictures of screaming teenage girls and at the far end was a stage with four waxwork models in suits, holding instruments. It was the Cavern. Stephen's movement triggered another hidden sensor and the screams of a thousand young girls filled the room. ‘Please, Please Me’ began to play.
A huge gaping hole appeared in the cardboard face of the teenage girl nearest to him. Stephen ducked into a side room from which three further tunnels branched off into the gloom.
There was a red telephone box in an alcove to the side of the room. There was a gap behind it, a dark shadow just big enough to squeeze into and hide. Stephen almost collapsed into the space. He forced his lungs to slow down, letting his breath come in shallow gasps, but barely enough to satisfy the starving need for oxygen in his lungs. Sweat poured down Stephen's face, he didn't dare wipe it away in case he made a noise. He shut his eyes to stop the sweat from running into them.
There was silence in the room for a second as the digital loop of screaming ended. Stephen heard a sigh and then a figure passed slowly in front of the darkened alcove where he was hiding.
He watched as the man paused and scanned the room. The man was wearing a rubber Ringo Starr mask. The stage lights accentuated dark shadows on the mask making it grotesque. Ringo turned and seemed to look directly at him as he cowered in the shadow. Stephen held his breath and prayed.
The man's head moved ever so slightly towards Stephen's hiding place as though he was straining to hear something in the dark and then there was a noise, the sound of metal on concrete from somewhere ahead in one of the tunnels that led from the room. His head snapped around and he moved towards the nearest tunnel and disappeared into the darkness.
Stephen waited for a minute. He needed air. He took out his inhaler and squeezed. The medicine was like cool water on a burn. When he felt the air sticking in his lungs again he decided to move. Instinctively, his fingers went to the small bronze St Christopher that hung around his neck. Once upon a time, he had thought it brought him good luck. He stroked it, took a breath and then slowly, and as quietly as he could, he edged out of his hiding place and started to softly walk back the way he had come. If he could get out now then maybe he could jump a cab on the dock road and make good his escape. He could even warn the others or perhaps the best course of action would be just to leave town, he owed them nothing after all.
He moved forward through the forest of cardboard teenagers and too late remembered the sensor. There was a click and the screaming started. It was deafening.
Stephen ran. As he got to the other end of the room, a stride away from the exit, when a bullet slammed into his thigh, ripping apart muscle and bone. He was thrown forward with the impact, one moment standing, the next flat on his back looking at the soot-coloured bricks of the faux Cavern ceiling.
Stephen screamed, his scream joining the cacophony of screaming girls. He heard someone moving slowly towards him; leather soles on tiles. Careful and methodical steps.
Stephen tried to sit up. He got halfway and looked at his leg. The remains of his kneecap protruded from an ugly exit wound. Dark arterial blood was pumping, staining the floor brown. Stephen collapsed back onto the floor.
Fifty-year-old screams intensified in volume as the Beatles launched into ‘Twist and Shout’.
He had no time to lose. Stephen pulled out his mobile phone and hit speed dial.
A female voice answered. ‘Hello?’
Stephen felt the cold steel barrel of a handgun press gently against his temple. Stephen began to sob. The man knocked the phone from his hand. It clattered on the stone floor.
He could hear a far away, tinny voice. ‘Stephen, is that you?’
Stephen watched a patent leather brogue crush the phone, twisting and turning until the wires and circuitry spilled out like guts.
The barrel of the gun was withdrawn from his head. Stephen was beginning to feel cold. He looked up at the man and into the face of the Ringo Starr mask. Ringo pulled out a twisted length of black leather from inside his jacket. He swung it slowly from side to side for a moment and then, almost gently, placed a loop around Stephen's neck before pulling it tight.
Stephen felt no pain: endorphins were flooding his brain, the shock blanking the pain out, systems were shutting down.
In the distance Stephen thought he could hear the sound of sirens, but it could have been the screams producing a Doppler effect as the blood pounded in his skull.
Ringo raised his gun.
‘Answer my question.’
Stephen struggled for breath. He shook his head.
The man took the end of the gun and inserted it into the place where Stephen's kneecap had been. He twisted the gun back and forth in the fleshy void. Stephen's scream merged with the screaming joy of a thousand teenagers.