Who killed my son?

The death of diving fanatic Paul two years ago has been dubbed "The Garage Murder".

An investigation by Hampshire Police and an appeal on Crimewatch UK have so far failed to close the net on the gang of three brutal men responsible.

Yet, someone in Southampton must know more about what happened to builder Paul than they're letting on.

His model looks and lively personality were well-known throughout the city.

As a result of his death, the lives of Paul's father Mick and step-mother Elaine are in a tortured limbo.

They cannot even embark on the grieving process.

It gnaws away at their souls.

You can see it in their eyes, which are either sparking angrily or etched with misery.

Every day, as builder Mick uses his dead son's tools, carved with his initials, he asks 'what if...?' over and over again.

All this is bad enough, but now Mick's health is in jeopardy as emphysema threatens to cut his life short.

His greatest fear is that he will die before the assailants are brought to justice.

Ultimately, he does not believe his son, buried in the cemetery of All Saints' Church, Dibden Purlieu, on the Waterside, rests in peace.

Yet Paul originally laughed it off when he was beaten up by three men in the early evening of February 5, 1999.

He had just withdrawn £20 from a cash machine at Lloyds Bank in Commercial Road, Totton and was on his way to the Calmore home of his 24-year-old fiance Caroline Williams, when he stopped at the Esso garage near to the Asda superstore to buy a pack of cigarettes.

During the assault the 31-year-old's skull was split.

Chillingly, it seems his attackers knew his name.

Paul went to hospital but, faced with the prospect of a long NHS wait, left before he could be properly treated.

Several days later, he spoke to his father of the attack on the phone.

Mick commented he hoped Paul had made a will.

("But I was only joking. How could I know?" he beseeches looking heartbroken)

The next week, Paul hauled himself off to work, despite suffering from headaches and dizzy spells.

Of course, he wasn't to know that the last hours of his life were ticking away as the time bomb head injury limbered up to kill him.

He eventually collapsed at his home in Blakeney Road, Millbrook, on February 16, and was taken to hospital.

Even then there was not thought to be any cause for alarm.

No-one thought for a moment he would actually die of a brain haemorrhage.

Mick and Elaine roared back and forth from their home in Eastbourne, East Sussex, for more than a fortnight.

As they left after what turned out to be the final visit, Paul was propped up in bed, following them with his eyes.

Mick turned round at the door to see his son raise his hand in a silent farewell gesture they always used.

They left.

Paul died.

They didn't say goodbye.

Paul's two children Andrew and Sam who live with respective mothers Kistie and Julie, became fatherless.

And when Paul's stepmum Elaine stood up to give a reading at his packed funeral, she battled to keep her emotions in check as she looked down the tiny church to see rows of men sobbing in anguish.

Back home in Eastbourne this week, Mick tells how more could have been done for Paul had he been treated by doctors earlier.

As he does, his anger leaps around the room and punches the walls.

His body movements become jagged and he suddenly walks out, returning with a family snap of a four-year-old boy, dressed in a diving suit, stitched for him by his father.

The suit is upstairs.

Mick is honest, proud, up front and impassioned.

He admits he's putting on a jovial front for the interview - though you can see it is a bit forced and his true feelings are churning away below the surface.

Elaine puts their plight into words with admirable objective emotional clarity.

These are genuine people, siphoning their energy into wrestling to come to terms with the loss, receiving counselling to try and take the edge off their trauma.

You can't help thinking Paul must have been a younger version of his father, that they shared both looks and temperament (Elaine points out they both shared an impatient nature).

"It's burning me up I tell you. It's worse today than it was the day after he died," says Mick.

"I keep thinking 'why did that bloke know his name?'.

"We just have this suspicioun that it's not an outsider. I feel a cripple, there's nothing we can do.

"I don't go for more than a couple of hours, every day, every week, without thinking of him.

"He would give you the shirt off his back. He was a rebel, but he was a nice rebel."

At the time of his death, Paul was on the verge of a new life.

Splashing around in his father's swimming pool as a tot had developed into a love of diving, which he dreamed of turning into his profession as an instructor, based on the Red Sea.

Now Mick has had Paul's name and a picture of a seal tattooed on his chest, close to his heart, so he carries a part of his son with him wherever he goes.

"Paul was on the threshold of adulthood, he had everything to play for. He didn't want to stay in the building trade because he saw what it did to me.

"He wanted to be a diving instructor and told me he had just had an opening. I'm so proud of him getting into this diving."

Mick was given 18 months to live 20 years ago when he had stomach cancer.

As a result of the illness he struggles to keep his weight up.

"I'm panicking that I'm not going to be alive when the job is done and dusted.

"The doctors have said that, if I don't give up smoking, I will be on oxygen bottles by the time I'm 60 and I won't see retirement."

Paul's family and friends have pooled their savings to offer a reward for information leading to the conviction of the attackers.

Their hope now is that a shift in relationships will mean someone is prepared to go to the police and give them that vital clue.

"You are meant to go through different stages of anger and disbelief when you grieve. But we just can't do that," says Elaine.

"If we knew what had happened to him, I'm not saying it would make it easier, but there would be an answer.

"Somebody knows what happened and they can't keep quiet forever.

"If they could just understand what we are going through. It's such a difficult thing to put into words. The pain and grief is unbearable - it just never goes away.

"It's like when you watch a thriller on television. You know that, at the end of the programme, they will find out who did it.

"What we are going through is like these programmes, but it's never ending - you can't turn it off. You see it on tv and it's entertainment. But to us it's like our son on the table having his head cut open in the autopsies.

"When we see cases in the news, the first thing we think of is the family and what they are going through.

"We just hope that somebody will read this and it will make them ring in. Somebody must have seen it. Somebody sure as hell knows something and they can't - or won't - speak up.

"Part of Mick was lost the day Paul died and it's gone forever."

Mick adds: "This is either girls or money. I will be dead and gone and if it does get sorted, they will say 'that old bastard was right'."