The Underworld Captain: From Gangland Goodfella To Army Officer

by Alexander Shannon

  To say it turned out to be a disaster is one of the great understatements of all time. The whole night was actually boring, so I drank a half-bottle of brandy and some cans of beer before the bells. For hour after hour, I just sat there getting sozzled. I wanted to get drunk early on, having decided I would have an early night with a view to getting up sharp next morning and returning to Edinburgh.

  Pawny and Andy left the rest of us to move on somewhere else and I went off to bed in the house we had bought in North Carbrain. I remembered Paddy coming into the room to wake me and say they were going a few doors down the road to another party. He asked if I wanted to join them, but I told him just to let me sleep.

  I don’t recall how long it was after Paddy’s visit, but next thing I heard Tam’s voice below the window of the room where I was sleeping. He was shouting and swearing. I got out of bed, went downstairs to the front door and found Tam and Eddie standing there. There was blood everywhere.

  They were surrounded by a screaming crowd of about 20 teenagers, all drunk and cursing, seemingly intent on tearing them apart. Tam had his hand in the inside of his jacket, while Eddie was waving a black machete or sword about. It appeared he was trying to hit as many of these yobs over the head as he could reach.

  They looked to be aged from 16 to 20, but were out of their heads on drink or drugs. I must have had about four hours’ sleep and that, combined with the sight and noise, sobered me up. Blood was spattered on the walls and floor of the house. Some of it was so thick it had congealed, which told me someone had been badly hurt. I knew the victims were neither Eddie nor Tam because the mob was by now screaming and trying to run away.

  ‘God,’ I thought, ‘this is bad. I need to get away from here now because if I don’t Angie is going to kill me and the army will wash its hands of me.’

  I managed to drag Tam and Eddie indoors. Neither seemed to have a care in the world. They had no idea of Paddy’s whereabouts or if he was OK. My instinct was to get out of there fast before the trouble got worse, so I raced back to the bedroom, bundled my stuff together into a bag, went to the veranda and jumped off onto the pavement. My plan was to make my way to Pawny’s house in Kirkintilloch. It was ten miles off, and it was raining heavily, so I put up my hood and made ready to set off.

  Immediately, I walked straight into about ten of the youths who had been outside the house yelling. I didn’t recognise them, but as soon as they saw me they began shouting and swearing, ‘It’s you, ya bastard. You stabbed our mates!’ There was no way I was going to argue with them, so instead I turned and headed back to the house. It was only about 30 metres away, but I had to go in by the front door. That was a bad move. Police were everywhere.

  There was worse to come. The house nearby where the party had been held had now emptied. Everyone had piled into the street and all of them seemed to have noticed me at the same time. They surged forward, trying to get to me, but four or five policemen surrounded me and wedged me against the wall beside my front door. It was as if a screaming horde faced them. Then I saw paramedics taking casualties away on trolleys. It was obvious there had been severe stab wounds; blood was running from the bodies. Blue lights were flashing and the looks on the faces of the medics showed real concern. Other youths, the walking wounded, were also being led away.

  As I watched, I noticed a young guy with a cut on his head walking towards the police and myself. He was carrying a half-bottle of vodka. As if in slow motion, as he walked past he smacked it onto the bridge of my nose. I fell, stunned. The police grabbed him and hauled him away. It was a bizarre scene. There I was at the door, having been smashed in the face by a bottle, while inside I could see Tam and Eddie still drinking away as though nothing was wrong.

  The police eventually put me into a car for my own safety, but it became a magnet for the entire mob of youths, who tried smashing the windows and overturning it, so determined were they to get to me. It was scary. I couldn’t believe what was happening. The car was being rocked backwards and forwards, and the police seemed to have disappeared. Eventually, they realised the safest strategy was to get me to the police station as quickly as possible before the riot got out of hand.

  At the station, I had expected to be put in a cell but instead was asked to wait in an office. I found this strange and wondered what was happening. Every now and again the police would come in and check on me, give me a cigarette and tell me they would not keep me long. I wasn’t used to this sort of treatment from the police and wondered if the fact I was in the army was making them more sympathetic to me. They obviously knew the mob that had been attacking me consisted of pond life, all the wee troublemakers from that area. Clearly, though, the police did not know that here they had a member of a family from Glasgow that had a pretty bad reputation. They had promised I wouldn’t be detained and, true to their word, about half five in the morning someone took a brief statement, asked me to sign it and let me go, telling me I was being released on police bail.

  I wandered back to the house in North Carbrain and found the forensic team still there, examining the scene. They said it was OK to go inside. I had to step over congealed blood. It was like having a mad dream. I found my bag, which someone must have taken from me and thrown inside, and left. I headed through to Glasgow to find Tam and Eddie, knowing this whole business was serious, and managed to track them down in a house in Maryhill completely off their heads on cocaine and Ecstasy. Yet again, they didn’t seem to have a care in the world. I told them what had happened to me, described the people carried away on stretchers and pointed out I hadn’t even been there during the fighting. Both promised that if I was arrested, they would hand themselves in and explain the truth of it all, that it was nothing to do with me.

  ‘Stop worrying,’ they told me. ‘Look, as soon as we hear the police are on their way to lift you, we’ll hand ourselves in.’

  The words and sentiment were fine, but they came from guys who had been in prison. I remembered the case of a friend of George Redmond who was still serving a life sentence after being convicted of a murder he didn’t do. Innocent people did end up in prison.

  So, I went back to the army. But in the back of my mind I was thinking to myself that this was going to go horribly wrong. I couldn’t get out of my thoughts the sight of the guys being wheeled out on trolleys, drips stuck into their arms, masks over their faces and covered in blood. I remembered trying to get away and hearing the yells, them blaming me for the injuries. Obviously, it had been the others – probably Tam. My stomach was turning. I had been through all this before. When you are guilty of something, when you’ve done something wrong, then there’s no fear, you accept it – you remember the old saying, ‘If you want to do the crime, do the time’. But when you weren’t involved, that’s when you start to feel the emotions. I couldn’t think, couldn’t eat and was drinking. I kept asking myself what was going to happen, but deep down I knew it was inevitable: I’d be arrested.

  As soon as I had time off, a couple of days, I went back to Inverness to see Angie, fully intending to tell her everything, but when we met up I found I just couldn’t bring myself to do that. Instead, I went for a pint with a mate to discuss how best to tell her the whole story. While we were in the pub, the barmaid, who knew me, said I had a telephone call. When I picked up the receiver, I found it was one of my best friends ringing to tip me off that the civilian and military police were on their way to my home to arrest me. It meant I had 20 minutes to get there and explain everything before they showed up.

  As soon as I got in the door, I told Angie I had something to tell her but had only five minutes in which to do it. As I raced through the story, she collapsed onto her knees and burst out crying. Dreadful though it was, I had to just leave her there on the floor and get out of the house. I knew I needed to hand myself in at the police station in Cumbernauld before midnight. By doing so, I could be in court the next morning and released on bail. If I waited for the police to arrest me, it would be hours before I would be
taken south and because the next day was a Friday I would in all probability be remanded over the weekend before a court appearance on the Monday.

  So, I set off to drive to Cumbernauld. I stopped on the way to ask my lawyer to meet me at the police station. As I did this, the police were arriving to find me gone. They explained the whole story to Angie and at least stayed with her, realising she was in a state of total shock.

  In Cumbernauld, following a brief chat with my lawyer, I handed myself in. The police were understanding and treated me well, but when the desk sergeant read out the first charge I felt my stomach churning. It was alleged that I, Alexander Shannon, did assault and attempt to murder so and so with a machete or similar instrument and did strike him to the extent of leaving him severely disfigured. It was repeated twice more.

  By now, the reality of it all was sinking in. After my fingerprints were taken, I was led to the cells. On the floor outside the cell next to mine, I noticed a pair of training shoes and immediately recognised them as belonging to Tam. True to his word, as soon as he found out from the police and my friends in Inverness what was going on, he had handed himself in. So I sat, miserable and cold, with a blanket wrapped around me, wondering how I had got myself into this mess and how, now, my life, career and possibly marriage were over. How would I cope without Angie? I was sure I could handle a prison sentence, but not life without her.

  As the night wore on, I heard Tam shouting. He had noticed my shoes and was upset that they had arrested me, even after he had handed himself in. When he calmed down, we started talking, but he insisted on singing over and over to ‘always look on the bright side of life’. Well, I didn’t see there was anything to be cheerful about. After hearing the charges, I fully expected my army career to be over. I’d be remanded in custody and spend three months in prison waiting for a trial. It wouldn’t matter if I was found not guilty. I would be a civilian in prison clothing by then.

  We were allowed out of the cells that morning to wash and shave before showing up in court. Tam pulled out a packet of cigarettes and gave me some, along with a few matches and a couple of temazepams to calm me down. ‘Don’t worry, I’ll make sure you are 100 per cent sorted,’ he assured me.

  Within twenty minutes, I was ready for anything, even a seven-day remand to Barlinnie prison. By now Eddie too had given himself up but because of the seriousness of the charges we were given an escort to the court in Airdrie, where we were placed in a cell for high-risk prisoners. Happily, when we eventually appeared at court later in the day we were granted bail on condition we attended an identification parade and a judicial review hearing.

  At the identification parade, thirty-four witnesses turned up and eight of them picked me out as the machete attacker. I knew they had got it wrong, mistaking me for Tam, but us looking so alike had been a constant thorn in my side. A couple of years previously, I’d found myself in a cell after allegedly being caught in possession of a big machete in the centre of Glasgow. I’d never seen it, but the police had come and arrested me.

  Next day, when I’d been released on bail, I’d said to Tam, ‘Fucking knife’s got nothing to do with me.’ It turned out to belong to Tam’s mate. He’d always carried a knife, but because I was in the army I could not afford to do things like that – although I didn’t mind fighting and, if it came to it, would use whatever was on hand and then get rid of it. By luck, I had insisted on having the machete fingerprinted and, of course, the police ended up dropping the case. Again Tam had promised, ‘If it comes to it, we’ll say it belongs to us.’ Thankfully, it had not come to that, but I always had the feeling the issue of mistaken identity would come back to haunt me. And now it had.

  * * *

  While Alex went through the agonies of waiting for his trial and the uncertainty of the outcome, he learned of the arrest in London of William Lobban. Police had picked him up in January in Earls Court and he was taken under escort back to Glasgow, where he was questioned about the murders of Arty, Bobby and Joe. In the end, no action was taken. But Eileen Glover, for one, was not going to forget his treachery. Nor were the Shannons.

  * * *

  As the trial neared, I was going through a gamut of emotions, including denial and fear. I was having nightmares, too. Worst of all, sometimes I had no fear of anything or anyone, life or death, I just accepted the fact, as my lawyer had warned me, that I could expect a prison sentence of between eight and ten years.

  None of this mattered, though, compared to my concern for Angie. While she stood by me, and believed me, then mentally I would be strong enough to cope with anything. I owed her so much and loved her more than life itself, but what if she wasn’t there?

  The attitude of the army remained as it had always been – I was a gangster and guilty until I could prove my innocence. My brothers continued to reassure me they would make sure my army career was safe.

  One thing that worried me was that each time we had to turn up for a court hearing our lawyer told Tam and me: ‘You two are too alike. Who will a court believe? One of you did it.’ Tam insisted he would plead not guilty, but he assured me if they insisted on continuing with the charges against me and we ended up in the dock, he would plea bargain and change his plea.

  The case dragged on for a year. During that time, George Redmond promised he would do all he could to help and he would show just how good a friend he could be.

  * * *

  Now that he was back under lock and key, William Lobban had been accused of the Pipe Rack hold-up and was awaiting trial. More worrying to him than the prospect of a further prison sentence was being sent to Perth prison. It was there that he would be joined by Paul Ferris’s brother, Billy, nearing the end of a life sentence for a murder in England. Billy had been friends with Bobby and Joe; indeed, they had visited him not long before their deaths. Lobban needed to be wary and he knew it. He had a small coterie of friends to act as minders, but paranoia that he was on the verge of being killed had set in.

  First, someone tried to poison his food. Then, in July, he needed 17 stitches to a head wound after another inmate had battered him with a last in the cobbler’s shop. Inexplicably, the prison authorities locked the attacker in the next cell to his victim, with the result that Lobban determined on revenge. Desperate to get at the other inmate, Lobban took prison officer Terry O’Neill hostage using a pen as a makeshift weapon. He then set about trying to smash his way into the neighbouring cell. As he ripped and tore and almost succeeded in smashing off the door to the cell where the other man cowered, staff, realising that if he succeeded then in all probability they would have a murder on their hands, set about negotiating an end to the drama. After 14 hours, they persuaded Lobban to give up. O’Neill was released unharmed.

  * * *

  You can only imagine what must have been going through that guy’s head in that cell. I’ve no doubt that if Lobban had got in to him, he would have killed him with his bare hands. Shortly afterwards he was shipped to Peterhead in Aberdeenshire, where me, Pawny and Tam went to visit him. This was the first time we had seen him since the murders. We wanted to know where we stood and to find out if he’d had anything to do with them. Of course, he was never going to admit to anything like that, so we assumed that he may or may not have been involved. That was more a concern for Paul Ferris, rather than us.

  Clearly, the Peterhead staff were keeping a very close eye on Gibby. When I was growing up, I had heard all about Peterhead. Nowadays, it holds mainly rapists and paedophiles, offenders thought to be in need of protection from the mainstream prison population, but at one time it guarded the most dangerous men in Scotland – rough, tough characters who feared nothing. Conditions had been appalling and brutal, beatings of inmates frequent.

  On the day we went, we sat among all the other visitors and then officers came in and told us to follow them. We naturally went along with everybody else and ended up in a big room. Everyone was sitting at tables and we started looking around for Gibby. There was no sign of him, the
n a whole pack of screws came rushing in, surrounded us and told us we shouldn’t have been there. We protested, but they hurried us out. We discovered later that they’d stuck us in a room with the sex offenders. The screws must have thought, ‘Fuck, we’ve stuck three gangsters in among them, there’s going to be a riot.’

  Gibby was in Peterhead having been recategorised as a prisoner who could not be trusted to conform to the mainstream system. He was both a danger to and at risk from other inmates. This followed the incidents at Perth and the whispers about his possible involvement in the Joe and Bobby murders. It was deemed too risky to let him loose in the general system, not knowing how many friends Paul Ferris had there. As a result of his status, we were taken to a tiny separate area of the jail. Guys with riot shields were guarding it. They had to move aside to let us in and sit down to wait for Gibby.

  He was too wary to say anything important. He was always conscious of cameras and people lip-reading as he spoke, so we left none the wiser. On the way home, I wondered why nobody else had made a move on him in Perth. I came to the conclusion it was because everybody knew he was a highly dangerous person.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX

  Alex had enjoyed his first tour in Northern Ireland, despite the dramas and dangers he had experienced. Now, he was looking forward to another. He received word he would be going to the province as a multiple commander in charge of 12 other soldiers. The tour would begin in the autumn, but instead of returning to West Belfast he would find himself in Crossmaglen, South Armagh. It was a nervous, worrying time for him and Angie. The risks all soldiers took in Northern Ireland didn’t bother him; he was well trained and, he knew, would be well prepared. Mentally, he was well up to the tasks that awaited him there. It was the waiting at home that made him edgy.