Hack

by Graham Johnson

  Relations with the Editor were still at breaking point. But the tension spurred me on to do some of the best stories of my career. The peasant still strong within me. Fearful and desperate to please. Working undercover in NHS hospitals. First as a cleaner. Then as a kitchen porter. To expose the sub-prison slop they dished out to the sick. Like Soylent Green come to life. Then one about the filthy wards left disease-ridden by the freshly-privatised, fat-cat contractors. Whatever happened to the post-war dream? But the Editor was more interested in I’m a Celebrity . . . One of the most important jobs in the office had become reality TV correspondent. To stay up all night monitoring Big Brother. A coveted, high-status role in the new regime.

  On a different tip, I turned over Wayne Rooney For shagging grannies in a back-street brothel in Liverpool. To get the grainy CCTV tapes, I arranged payment of £200,000 to some extremely sinister organised criminals. Ten grand on top to a couple of identical twin call girls whom the England wonderkid had also ‘walloped’. A £5000 bung to another masseuse. An extra £5000 to a swinger called Jim. Tens of thousands more pay-offs to various gangsters, protection racketeers and enforcers. Keeping them sweet and off our case. At one point there was so much money sloshing through various dummy accounts, that Trinity Mirror execs had to check the company wasn’t breaking money-laundering laws. Madness.

  The videos showed Rooney queuing up to have sex with a £50-a-pop hooker. Dressed as a cowgirl. Personally, I couldn’t give a fuck what he got up to. Whether he was shagging mature ladies, WAGs or Coleen McLoughlin, who, by the way, yours truly had ‘discovered’ to be the girlfriend of the soccer sensation a couple of years earlier. In another showbiz world exclusive. The old magic still there. Personally, couldn’t understand why the Editor wanted to get rid of my good self.

  The only aspect of the Rooney story that titillated me was the secret glimpse it gave me into modern football. Behind the scenes, Britain’s booming organised crime, bloated on record drug sales, was pulling the strings. Coke cartels secretly buying up shares in football clubs, manipulating sports agencies as front companies into vehicles of control. Gangsters blackmailing premiership stars, using mobile footage of them snorting and shagging all over the place.

  Kiss ’n’ tells had lost their sordid innocence. For newspapers, the genre was no longer just a case of buying up the Page 3 girl and sticking them in a hotel to spill the beans. Professional extortionists had realised that exposés were lucrative blackmail bait. Getting pro-active. Turning them into highly orchestrated setups. Paying honey-trap girls to lure footballers in. Crying cocaine rape. The scandal used as leverage to blood-suck lucrative ‘security contracts’ out of impressionable, over-cocky young men. Suddenly, behind every roasting story there was a rooting-tooting godfather making the moves. The Queen of Kiss ’n’ Tells was soon muscled out of business. A tear came to my eye when I reminisced about the good old days. A rose-tinted RIP to Shirley Ann Lye.

  The Rooney story was no different. I couldn’t believe how wide the international network stretched. Got calls from crime-lords based in the Middle East and Spain. Shadowy meetings with men with links to Amsterdam and the IRA. I had to fend off five or six crime gangs, private detectives and ‘security consultants’ to keep the tapes from falling into the wrong hands. Some of them wanting to get the evidence to blackmail Rooney. Some of them Rooney’s allies. Trying to buy them back as a ‘gift’ for him. Of course, without his knowledge. Got followed. Then threatened. My oppo Gav got a slap. From a pizza shop-owning drug lord. The shit scared out of him. The company installed a state-of-the-art alarm system in my new house.

  But we nursed the story into the paper. Fending off the News of the World in a rearguard action. To keep the scoop tight. The Screws Editor Andy Coulson put one of his top assassins on the case. None other than Greg Miskiw. But this time I was ready for him. Employing a former Turkish heroin baron and underworld counter-surveillance expert. To keep tabs on him. Until he was run out of town empty-handed. Greg would later hit the headlines in his own right. For coming back from America to face questioning by police about allegations of phone hacking.

  The Rooney scoop led to another Reporter of the Year nomination. Another wasted night on the piss, in the Park Lane Hilton or somewhere. But life at work wasn’t getting any easier, despite the big-ups. The knives were still out. I’d fucked up on a story about child-trafficking in Montenegro. The story wasn’t mine. The investigation was done by a freelancer. I wasn’t in the office when it was legalled. But as Investigations Editor I took the rap. The lawyers wriggled out of taking any of the blame. The company had to pay out on it. The Editor held it against me.

  One day, a short while before, an executive had asked me to download child porn on to my computer at work. Telling me it was for an investigation into a paedophile ring. That much was true. But I refused point blank. Downloading underage sex is a strict liability criminal offence. Meaning there is no public interest defence. Even for a journalist investigating a story. The executive was pissed off that I’d refused to follow an order. Cursing me for not being ‘able to handle’ it.

  Many confrontations followed. Low-level harassment to get me out. Another time the Picture Editor called me a cunt. I had to tell him off. He wobbled like a jelly, backing down the way bullies do. But he didn’t like the public humiliation. That’s what happens in newsrooms when they want you gone. The editor asked me to turn over TV actor Neil Morrissey We spent thousands getting into him undercover – but in the end he was so nice that I couldn’t turn him over, not that there was any dirt on him – but I just couldn’t stitch him gratuitously.

  I got offered a job by the BBC. As an investigator for a current affairs show. But I turned it down. Even though I needed an outro. Came down to the money. The Beeb offered £40,000 a year, which sounds like good dough. But when you’ve got a family in central London, it doesn’t go that far. Plus my partner Emma had not long lost her job, so we couldn’t take the risk. Instead, I started selling big set-piece investigations to TV. Did a big one for Donal MacIntyre. Buying Semtex in Kosovo. Another one based on book I wrote called Powder Wars. The doco was called Supergrass.

  The desk were still trying to suck me into showbiz. But I kept fucking them off. ‘I’ve written enough bollocks for one life – I can’t write any more.’ One day I had a bet with a music producer mate I know. He was trying to get some publicity for his next, big dance act. Thinking of paying his PR company five grand a month retainer to plug them in the papers. I told him not to bother. Bet him a grand that I could get him more publicity in a week than he could in a year.

  ‘Most showbiz stories are made up out of thin air,’ I told him. ‘Just ring up the showbiz desk on any national newspaper and tell them any old bollocks and they’ll run it without checking. The stupider and more unbelievable the better.’

  Sure enough, the papers were tipped off that a couple of WAGs had joined the band, namely Wayne Rooney’s Coleen McLoughlin and Steven Gerrard’s Alex Curran. Of course, the completely fictitious story appeared in several papers. Later, the documentary Starsuckers used the same trick.

  Meanwhile, I’d started a very big and dangerous investigation of my own, into one of Britain’s biggest heroin gangs. A corruption scandal at the heart of the British justice system. Going right up to the highest powers in the land.

  The story centred around two big drug dealers called John Haase and Paul Bennett. In 1996 the pair had been put in jail for 18 years apiece, after getting caught red-handed with 50 kg of heroin worth £18 million. They were part of an international smuggling network known as the Turkish Connection. But mysteriously, after serving just one year inside, the pair were released. Granted a Royal Pardon by then Home Secretary Michael Howard. An unprecedented act in English legal history. Very fishy to boot.

  I teamed up with a Labour MP Peter Kilfoyle to look into the case. Peter’s beef stemmed from the fact that two of Britain’s most violent criminals – linked to industrial-scale gun-running, numerous
shootings and blood-curdling acts of torture and assorted violence – had been released back into his constituency of Liverpool Walton. Fucking the place up again with a recurrent uncontrollable crime spree. The campaigning politician felt he’d been duped by the system. My motivation was simple – ambition. I’d been saying ‘no more straw men’ for years. Now was my chance to step up and go after some proper villains. Wanting to prove that I could go after weapons-grade targets. Carry out a thorough, truthful, textbook investigation. Multiple layers. Multiple techniques, both straightforward and covert reporting. Under stressful conditions.

  Over late-night meetings at Westminster’s Strangers Bar, we decided to divvy up the work. Peter would work to reopen the case. By making speeches in the chamber. Lobbying Home Office officials. Pushing Scotland Yard. While I would do the dirty work on the ground. Infiltrating Haase’s gang. Going undercover to extract confessions on tape. Digging up old paperwork. Tracking down witnesses.

  But the stress was horrific. The gang put a £100,000 contract on my head. One enforcer – linked to several targeted killings since he becoming a hitman aged 14 – told me straight to my face: ‘I’ve thought about killing you twice. You were bringing it on top for John and Ben (Haase and Bennett). So me and Ben had a talk. The plan was for me to come over. Go to your house. And kill you.’

  ‘Even though my partner and kids were there?’ I gulped.

  ‘Yes,’ he replied.

  Numerous threats followed. The Metropolitan Police’s Specialist Crime Directorate installed a state-of-the-art alarm system at my house. Doubling up, on top of the one that I already had. The walls were now bristling with panic buttons, multiple sensors and CCTV. The detective offered me protection on the witness support programme. Names changed, move house, all that caper. But I refused.

  ‘How can I?’ I said. ‘I’ve got kids. This is where I live.’

  But now the pressure was on at home. Getting more nervy and irascible. Thoughts blackening with crime, guns, heroin, murder. When I should have been playing with the kids. Em pissed of, asking: ‘What are you doing? This is just an ego trip. Let it go. Grow up.’

  But at every twist, the story drew me back. A deep meandering conspiracy into the depths. Involving leaps from the credible to the incredible. Dark powers within the government. Holdalls bulging with millions of pounds in cash. Money changing hands. Thirty-five huge gun caches. Fabricated supergrass evidence. M15. The IRA. Turkish godfathers. Sinkfuls of cocaine and heroin. Warnings from shadowy ex-customs officers. Strange men taking photographs of my house.

  But at night I slept lightly. Sounds stirring me into a panic. One point, sleeping with a barely-legal high-powered gas-gun under my bed. That I’d bought on an investigation into firearms. I ended up writing two books about the case. Numerous articles. The police reopened the case. I gave evidence in court. Eventually John Haase and Paul Bennett were put behind bars for 42 years for perverting the course of justice. Making legal history – the first time that a Royal Pardon had been overturned. Textbook investigation. Got a big-up in parliament. Described in Hansard as an ‘investigative reporter supreme’.

  But there was a dialectic tension. The more truthful my stories became, the more I told lies to everyone else. The better reporter I became, the harder I found it to be straight with the people I worked with. Was busy keeping too many balls in the air. I didn’t trust my bosses and felt that I had to blag them just to keep my job. The stress was driving me mad. On the cusp of success, the seeds of my downfall were being sown.

  37

  Freedom Next Time

  ‘Kate Moss is snorting,’ Gav revealed.

  ‘I’ve heard it does go on,’ I replied.

  Gav was telling me that, for once in his life, he’d had a good tip. About the world’s number one fashion influence on Western women. She was out of control on the stripes.

  ‘How can we prove it?’ I asked him. Impatient to conclude. The phone ringing. 1001 things to do.

  ‘I know who her dealer is,’ he said, eyes looking away.

  ‘The beauty is,’ he came back, a trace cockier, ‘that I can get them onside. I’ve had a chat with them. They’re prepared to throw her in – for good dough, of course.’

  I should have known it was a set-up. There were several warning signs. Firstly, Gav rarely came up with tips. He was not a trained journalist and sometimes found the job hard. For the year or so that he’d been on the firm he’d written little. He found it difficult to work alone. Preferring to have me give him detailed instructions, which was unusual on a Sunday newspaper. Working on the side whenever he could. Making short art-house films. Or whatever the fuck he got up to when I wasn’t there to check up. He liked a bohemian atmosphere. But for me, he was rapidly becoming excess baggage. When he should have been carrying it – for me, on jobs. A drain on resources. Looking back, it’d been a disastrous decision to employ a mate. It’s true – never mix business with pity. One day, the Force sensed danger. Gav had intro’d me to a lad in a pub in Camden. Claiming that he was the middle man on the Kate Moss job. But the meeting was moody. Something not quite right. As if the lad was sizing me up. Like a plump chicken, ready for the plucking. But my spider senses didn’t register it enough unfortunately. Clouded by the superhuman levels of stress that I was living with on a daily basis.

  In the background, I’d started running a Brown Boom mini buy-to-let empire on the side. The preferred middle-class entrepreneurial activity of the age. Clocking up over a million quid’s worth of rental properties in a few years. Greedy, London living.

  Meanwhile, Gav had been moaning that he wanted more money. Complaining that his wages had been coming up short. Even though that side of things had little to do with me. I was a reporter not a bean-counter. One day he said to me: ‘I’ve been thinking about turning you over.’

  Deep down he was jealous. As much as I was filled with avarice and ambition, he was filled with envy for the trappings of success that I’d built up. Like all aspiring writer and artist types, he loved money. Scratch a hippie and you’ll find a Thatcherite. Or at least one her yuppies.

  Foolishly, I never thought he would. Anyway, I was too busy to deal with details. His threats were just some among many. Including those from the Editor and several of Britain’s most dangerous gangsters. I ignored him. Hoping that he’d just suck it up. Like everyone else on newspapers. Now I was too blinded by his snowy Kate Moss tip to worry.

  The rumours of Kate’s habit had been rife for years. From the grapevine, I knew that several other papers were working on it. Including our sister paper the Daily Mirror and the News of the World. Sean Hoare, who was now freelancing for the Sunday Mirror, was also on the case. Snooping around the posh pubs on Haverstock Hill. So I couldn’t let the tip go. In addition, I had developed a working model that I hoped would satisfy my haters on the papers. Feeding them just enough bollocks to keep them off my back. But leaving me just enough work time to indulge myself manically on my life’s work – the big John Haase Royal Pardon story. I’ll give you Kate – you let me go up to Liverpool to interview more witnesses.

  ‘OK, how we going to do it?’ I asked Gav, a few days later. In a rush, looking around the room. Stopping to vent fury down the phone to someone else.

  ‘The dealer is saying that they’re prepared to grass her up,’ said Gav.

  ‘Do you mean set her up?’ I asked.

  ‘Do you think they’ll allow us to get a video bag in there. During a deal. So we can see Kate scoring and snorting etc?’

  ‘That’s what they’re saying,’ Gav assured me. ‘But they want to see some money first.’

  I should have seen it coming. But my head was wrecked. Worries at work. Job under threat. Editor on my case. Stress of having a young family. Guantanamo-levels of sleep-deprivation. Em was pregnant with our third child. Being run ragged by the Desk. Working almost round the clock on the big John Haase case. More threats. Tense, nervous headaches. Tesco. Lost in B & Q trying to find things. On the pho
ne. Family feuds. Shouting down the phone at everyone. For fuck’s sake – what the fuck is going on? All I ever wanted to do was write. Have English O-Level, will travel. Is this the price I had to pay? Where did it all go wrong?

  ‘OK, I’ll get you some flash money,’ I said. ‘I’ll get you three grand in cash. You can show the readies to them as a carrot. Tell them that this is what they’ll get, if the tip is right. For now. Plus ten times. Twenty times. Or even thirty times more. If they can get us in the room, when Kate is scoring and we can get into the paper.’

  Gav smiled. ‘Nice one,’ he said.

  Should have seen him coming. The sly twat.

  ‘But don’t, whatever the fuck you do,’ I warned him, ‘hand it over to them. Or lose it. Or have it taken off you by some daft smack-head. It’s only for show. It’s only for hypnotic effect. To bewitch the criminal sub-classes into helping us out for the time being. In the search for truth and justice. Or at least until the time we can get control of the story. And start shouting the odds. Now hear this – tomorrow the three grand has got to go back to the paper. It’s just for show. D’you get me? No fucking messing about. I want it back . . .’ etc.

  Gav nodded, Pavlov-style. Smiling and nodding. Never trust a hippie.

  I told the new Deputy Editor James Scott the score. He agreed to get the £3000 in cash signed off ASAP. On the understanding that it came back within 24 hours.

  ‘No sweat,’ I said, itching to go. In a rush. Mind not on it.

  ‘I’ll underwrite personally.’ I said. ‘If it doesn’t come back.’