Sports Illustrated - USA (2021-12)

DECEMBER 2021 73

killing of such a renowned figure

could remain shrouded in mystery,

one must first understand the Salford

code, which can be boiled down to two

words. In the parlance of this world:

Don’t grass.

Massey had considered grasses, or

snitches, to be the lowest of the low.

“If I got nicked and I’ve done some-

thing—I’ll go to prison,” Massey told

the BBC. “I’ll do my jail. If I was to

talk [to police], I’d just hang myself.”

In his world, nothing was more dis-

honorable than spilling to the cops,

especially in Salford, the hardest part

of Great Britain’s hardest, grayest

region—a balkanized place of tough

guys and gangsters, every one with a

chip on his shoulder.

Manchester’s fortune had been cast

during the Industrial Revolution of

the late 1700s and early 1800s, when

the once-sleepy Lancashire township’s

climate and proximity to coal mines

proved perfect for producing cotton

and wool clothing. Soon Manchester

was Cottonopolis, the global epicenter

of textile manufacturing. The world’s

first industrial city, though, suffered

growing pains. As workers streamed

in from the countryside, poverty

reigned. Sanitation was abysmal. In

a textile worker’s home on Silk Street

or Chiffon Way, a dozen people might

sleep in a single room. All the while,

industry hurtled forward. Factories

sought direct access to the Irish Sea, the

Atlantic, the world. In 1894 the 36-mile

Manchester Ship Canal let pass its first

vessel. Even 40 miles inland, the port

was the third-busiest in Great Britain.

Technically, the canal’s terminus

was just west of Greater Manchester’s core, in a dock

city filled with working-class ruffians and roustabouts.

And largely, over the years, Salford has stayed that

way. While the north of England has seen an inf lux of

immigrants in recent decades, Massey’s hometown has

remained, as Simon Harding, a criminology professor at

the University of West London, puts it, “the last bastion

of whiteness in the north of England.”

Salford stands in stark contrast to the Premier League

sheen of Old Trafford, a short walk away. Street gangs

have a celebrated history in England, dating back to the

Dickensian poverty of the Industrial Revolution, and this

is the type of place that gives birth to those gangs: poor

and blighted, with terraced houses and scads of small pubs.

most crucial was the one that tore through Massey’s fifth

rib on his left side, passed through his chest cavity, struck

his heart and lungs, and lodged in his back.

As blood pooled in Massey’s chest and on the ground, the

shooter ran across the street, raced through the graveyard

of the Parish Church of St. Anne, headed toward a wooded

area and hopped on a bicycle.

And then Mr. Big’s assassin pedaled away.

B

RITISH TABLOIDS COULDN’T get enough of the

Massey murder, which seemed plucked straight from

Peaky Blinders or The Sopranos. Yet the case went unsolved,

even a f ter police ident if ied more t ha n 100 people of interest.

To understand how the cold-blooded, broad-daylight

Mr. Big all but foresaw his end:

“IF IT’S MEANT TO HAPPEN,

IT’S MEANT TO HAPPEN,” Massey told

the BBC 20 -odd years before he was

gunned down. “I know the stakes.”