Widower John Puttock, a retired painter, took in the scene as he strolled back to his house, clutching a copy of that morning’s Today in one hand and a bottle of cheap wine in the other. He watched a fellow in a white builder’s hat and a luminous green plastic jerkin step into the road and wave as if to thank the van for stopping. The artic reversed slowly then juddered to a halt, completely sealing off the road about fifty yards short of the junction. John Puttock stopped to watch. It was a miserable day, overcast with heavy dark clouds, but he had nothing else to do. What happened next made him drop his drink in shock. Suddenly the Mercedes tractor accelerated to ramming speed and hurtled towards the rear of the security van. The pensioner noticed the metal girder protruding five feet in front of the tractor. It was welded on at exactly the same height as the square entry portal at the rear of the van. As it smashed into the back, the building-site worker pulled out an automatic handgun from his boiler suit and aimed four rounds into the bullet-proof windscreen in front of the driver. The four lugs held as if in suspended animation in the screen directly in front of his chest. John Puttock clutched his own chest and collapsed, dying of a cardiac arrest as the rammed security van skewed across the road into the back of the articulated tipper. The tractor and van were locked together like rutting stags. The steel girder was imbedded into the rear but the doors remained intact. The driver and passenger jumped from the tractor and ran at the van, loosing off shots from automatic handguns. It was as if the Wild West had come to East London.
As soon as the tractor had hit ramming speed DI Andy Martin, in flats overlooking Radnor Road, screamed into the radio, ‘All units standby, standby, ATTACK, ATTACK, ATTACK.’
High-powered squad cars, manned by uniformed blue-beret firearms officers disgorged their hidden ambushers. Cops burst from houses surrounding the robbery scene just as the gunfire began in earnest. And an articulated lorry, borrowed by the police from a nearby supermarket, came speeding up the one-way street the wrong way. Now screams of ‘Armed police!’ filled the air. The blaggers’ instinct was to target them. Stevey Whale raised his automatic in the direction of two officers armed with H&K machine guns. ‘DIE, YOU COWSONS,’ he hollered defiantly, but half a dozen bullets ripped into his torso before he could pull the trigger. Outgunned, out-numbered and surrounded, the Nelson gang had no option but to follow instructions and lay their weapons on the floor.
On August 25, 1988, Nicky, Charles, Georgie, David and Richard Nelson, along with Patrick Secker and David Tierney, appeared at the Central Criminal Court, The Old Bailey. They were sentenced to between eighteen and twenty years for attempted murder, robbery and firearms offences. Nominal amounts of money were recovered from the accounts of the brothers; nothing from those of Secker and Tierney.
For Nicky Nelson, the loss of face was crippling. As he received his twenty stretch, he glared at DI Martin who sat behind the prosecuting lawyer. Martin was smiling – the no-good shit-cunt filth! Nicky Nelson was on his feet. ‘You’re fucking laughing now, Martin, but you won’t be fucking laughing when that cunting grass Richards gets his scrawny throat cut.’ There was uproar in the court. Nicky was trying to get out of the dock to get at Martin. Three officers restrained him. Purplefaced, Nicky Nelson let loose a mighty gob in Martin’s direction. It hit the prosecuting lawyer squarely between the eyes.
Epsom races, spring meeting, 1955. In the immediate postwar days, this was where London’s top criminals made their biggest killing. The gaffers, the men who controlled the prime bookmakers’ patches, took a cut of every bet made at the track. Up until 1955 two very different men, Jack ‘Spot’ Comer and Billy Hill, had carved up the London crime scene. Working in tandem, they had taken a handsome slice of the capital’s gambling, prostitution and protection trade. Naturally, they also ran Epsom. And when the two men fell out, due, said Billy Hill, to Jack Spot’s ‘insecurity and persecution complex’, the London underworld shuddered on the brink of bloody gang war.
Spot – his face already slashed in the battle of Frith Street the previous August – brought two new and fearless friends to the Epsom meet: Reginald and Ronald Kray. Billy Hill, who controlled the number-one pitch up by the winning post, had also come firmhanded. Among others in his company were ‘Mad’ Frankie Fraser, Billy Blythe – notorious for having cut the face of a Flying Squad officer – and Buck Nelson, a tough ex-boxer from Islington, North London, who had served time for house-breaking. This could have meant Armageddon, but in the event the cocky Kray Twins showed equal disrespect to both Billy Hill and Jack Comer. They had come to demonstrate that they meant business, that London, and London crime, would shortly belong to them. In the immediate aftermath, word reached the twins that Fraser, Blythe and Nelson wanted to fight it out with them. An Islington pub, the Queen’s Arms, was nominated for the battle. The Krays mobilised their toughest supporters. But when they reached the pub, the opposition didn’t show. Billy Hill had heard about it and called off the showdown.
The war between Spot and Hill spluttered on, until Jack Spot was cut again outside his Bayswater flat by Fraser and Alfie Warren. The Krays visited him in hospital and told him they could finish off Hill’s gang within 24 hours, and would take great pleasure in doing so. Spot declined their offer. The price tag was too high. London was spared a bloodbath and the Krays were denied the chance to inherit Jack Spot’s West End concerns.
The cold war between the crime families had given Buck Nelson cause for concern. He was a hard man, scared of nobody, but he had tasted prison before and didn’t want to go back. He had also fallen in love with Jo Pearson, a showgirl from Hoxton. He had proposed to her that spring and wanted out of the frontline of organised crime. Billy Hill was understanding and helped set him up as manager of an Islington billiard hall, also a conduit for an entire black market of stolen goods. A crooked poker school brought Nelson into contact with a young impetuous Hatton Garden jeweller, Jack ‘Solly’ Soloman, and Buck exploited Solly’s debt by fencing stolen diamonds through his business. Years later, Buck’s second-eldest son Bernard was to become close pals with Solly’s son Ross and husband to his daughter Rachel. Both boys studied accountancy and got into the property business, avoiding a life of crime. But Soloman Senior was in hock to North London’s most notorious criminals for the rest of his days. Millions of pounds in stolen diamonds were fenced through his shops as drug gangs turned to the gem trade to launder their illicit cash. It was, and remains, one of the few places where large cash transactions can be carried out with complete anonymity. When the Brinks-Mat gold came to Hatton Garden, Solly Soloman was the middle man. He grew fat on the trade, helping to establish a drug-smuggling ring among diamond traders working between Tel Aviv, the Garden and Antwerp.
Buck’s five other sons weren’t so academic. Charles, Georgie, David and Richard would have been happy with the takings from their father’s thriving clubs and the odd fat tickle from dealing in soft drugs. It was Nicky, the hothead, the psycho, the nutter, who steered his father back into serious crime; and it was Nicky who eventually persuaded his brothers that rich pickings could be made faster from the new game of armed robbery.
* * * * *
June 2, 1989. As the orange sun set over the exclusive beachside restaurant of the Don Caesar in Fuengirola, a slim and attractive long-limbed blonde in her early twenties smiled at the bronzed man in Farah slacks and a polo shirt drinking a tall glass of Kir Royal at the bar and smoking a fat cigar. The man, who was about ten years her senior, smiled back and motioned for her to join him. She shimmered over gracefully on high heels, removing an orange designer sun dress as she walked to reveal a bright yellow Louis Vuitton bikini.
‘Drink?’ he asked.
‘Please,’ the woman replied in an East European accent.
‘The usual, Pablo,’ he said to the barman. ‘Shall we?’ he asked his new companion, indicating a deserted corner table. The woman nodded. As they sat in the corner, the barman appeared with a chilled bottle of Cristal champagne and two glasses. Feigning s
urprise, the woman kissed the man on both cheeks before taking his hand and clasping it to her bosom.
‘Where I come from I’d only get a thank you.’
They both smiled. He leaned over and whispered, ‘I would very much like to sniff cocaine from off your breasts, my dear.’
‘You want fuck me?’
‘Oh yes.’
‘Four thousand pesetas, all night.’
‘It sounds like a bargain.’
‘I am Zarima.’
‘Bernard, my darling. Bernard Nelson.’
* * * * *
For years, Bernard Nelson the respectable businessman had laundered a steady stream of illicit cash for his crooked brothers. ‘Bernard the Brains’ they called him. When the others were sent down, he continued to keep their stolen readies out of the reach of investigating detectives. He converted large amounts into European currencies and stashed it away in banks at Malaga and Puerto Banus in Spain. Still more was salted away in Calais. What was left, Bernard spent on buying run-down houses near Ashford in Kent and in Milton Keynes. Even before they were sentenced the brothers had agreed that Bernard would continue to administer their bent estate so that when they were all out of the boob the handsome investment would be split evenly between them. Property prices were always climbing and Bernard began buying flats and houses in Benidorm on the Costa Blanca, using the European accounts. What his brothers didn’t know was that along the way he had developed a huge appetite for cocaine and high-priced hookers. When Rachel divorced him, he indulged himself even more freely. Those weekends he had with the £1,000-a-night Brazilian and Russian beauties at his private villa in Mijas, near Fuengirola, were the best time of his life. The finest sexual experience came when Pablo persuaded him to enjoy a ‘United Nations’ – three prostitutes simultaneously, one white, one black, one Asian. It had cost Bernard £4,000 and what they hadn’t done wasn’t worth doing. But not even the Nelsons’ stash could finance his lifestyle indefinitely.
* * * * *
July 7, 1992. Four years into hard time as category-A prisoners at Belmarsh prison at Thamesmead, Southeast London, brought more bad news for the Nelson clan when their youngest brother Richard died from a heart defect. Bernard still paid regular visits to his remaining four siblings. It was common knowledge that the authorities bugged the meeting rooms, even for serving prisoners, so conversations were guarded. Nicky had become so paranoid that he covered his mouth with his hand as he spoke, in case of covert filming. He was also becoming increasingly angry about his sun-tanned brother’s reluctance to give them any clues as to how ‘the family was doing’.
So it was that Nicky sat glaring at brother Bernard in the semi-privacy of the Belmarsh meeting room.
‘The family is good, Charles,’ Bernard insisted, with a fixed smile.
‘How big are the boys now?’ Nicky asked, his fingers playing over his mouth. ‘Grown a lot, have they?’
‘Slowly, yes. Can’t rush these things.’
‘Some must be shooting up.’
‘Yeah, yeah. Don’t worry.’
Nicky was far from reassured. If everything was fine, why wouldn’t his brother look him in the eyes?
‘Don’t fuck with me, Bernie. You fuck us, brother or no, you’re fucking dog’s meat.’
‘Nicky, this place is making you paranoid. I said the family is OK. I have high hopes they will all grow up into fine young men. Short of smuggling in financial printouts up my jacksie what more can I say? You have my word, bruv.’
Nicky grunted. Bernard sighed inwardly. He’d got away with it again, but he knew the time was nearing when his brothers would get a release date and then he knew the shit would hit the fan. Bernard the Brains had been entrusted with half a million pounds. But instead of it doubling in value, as might reasonably have been expected, the pot had dipped to under a quarter of a mill. Sure, he could explain big losses in stocks and shares, and throw in a few porkies about bum property deals, but to offer his remaining four brothers a five-way split of £250K after they had served ten, maybe twelve years was tantamount to signing his own death warrant. ‘Brother or no.’
Bernard hated these prison visits. Belmarsh was a hostile, claustrophobic environment. Being there had given him a rotten headache as always, which Nicky’s suspicions had done nothing to improve. As a reward for his suffering, he allowed himself a long weekend break in Malaga, where he sought solace in the only way he knew how: with three grams of the finest Peruvian cocaine a day and the company of two stunning señoritas. Only this time it didn’t work. All the agg had gone straight to his groin. There would be no double-entry book-keeping today – he couldn’t get a perk-on. So he handed over £2,000 in pesetas just to watch the girls entertain each other.
Driven by depression, Bernard retreated to his favourite gangsters’ hang-out, Ricky’s Bar in Fuengirola. There were more wanted faces in this drinking hole than in all the rest of Spain put together. Where better to meet the kind of men who could stem his losses and turn what was left of his seed money into big blossoming oak trees of profit? The answer to his problems was obvious: cocaine. If Bernard invested heavily enough in a major drug deal and delivered the sweet stuff to the UK, his outlay would be repaid five times over pretty much overnight. Bernard had all the right connections in Spain and knew plenty of big-buy customers in London, mostly in the City and the diamond trade. Not only was this the obvious solution, it was the only one that could work well enough to drag him out of the shit he was immersed in, smelling sweetly of roses.
It took Bernard six months to convert most of his assets into cash and smuggle the lot into Spain. His £150K investment had a guaranteed return of £800K, and three other investors each stumped up the same amount. They were all trusted men, known families from the south of England. The deal was easy. You paid £10K for a kilo of 88-per cent pure Colombian flake, which would then be cut eventually to about 15-per cent purity. The profit was all yours. Nothing could go wrong.
Half the money was paid up front and Bernard and his co-investors returned to England to await delivery. They waited in vain. It was the last he ever saw of his money and the South Americans – ‘the fucking lizards!’ – he had been counting on. There was only one thing to do. He wrote a letter to his father, Buck, and hightailed it to Spain. In a feeble, half-hearted attempt to placate his brothers, he left £100,000 in cash for them in a suit-carrier, which he left hanging in the bedroom of his Dockside flat. Bernard knew it was tantamount to signing his own death warrant – ‘Brother or no’ – but what else could he do?
When Nicky heard the news it took six prison officers to subdue him. David, who was already ‘shot to pieces’ because he couldn’t do time, also embarked on a mad rampage. Georgie provoked a fight that sparked a mini-riot. Charles, who was in Parkhurst, Isle Of Wight, took it like a stab in the heart. He didn’t say a word. He just shut his eyes and lowered his head.
All the bad feeling filtered back to Bernard, enhanced and exaggerated as oral accounts always are. Bernie the Brains knew there would be no forgiving, no family reunions. Money would be laid down to find him in Spain, and he had no intention of being found there by the time his brothers had served their bird. After a restful year he slipped quietly back into England via Stanstead Airport. Bernard had cleaned up his act, relatively speaking. He was on just one gram of Charlie a week now. Chickenfeed. Cautious to the point of paranoia, he steered well clear of North London and rented a small flat in Hornchurch, Essex, where he vowed to build up a business from scratch. At a singles night at the Epping Forest Country Club, Bernard Nelson met a lovely divorcee who enjoyed sex as much as he did. Her name was Dawn. Dawn Grogan.
CHAPTER FIVE
DEAD ENDS
January 1, 2003. Kara Tyler was counting the days for her decree nisi to come through. She had moved back in with her parents in Dullingham. Harry, that selfish bastard, had never owned up to his infidelity, but his grubby legovers hadn’t hurt her nearly as much as the underhand way her ex-to-be had slippe
d back into undercover work. They’d had a blissful few months together as a real family but her parents agreed that ‘irresponsible’ Harry was never going to change. The self-absorbed swine had barely made any effort to see the kids since they had split up and that was nigh on a year ago. But never mind. She was fit again, she was working, she had resident baby-sitters … it wouldn’t take her long to find them a new daddy; one with a regular nine-to-five job and eyes that didn’t wander.
Harry had thrown himself back into the hurly-burly of UC operations and loved every adrenalin-charged minute of it. He had been seeing more and more of Dawn in a no-commitment, highly carnal kind of way that suited them both. This morning was the fourth on the trot that he had woken up in her bed. His Harry Tyler side, the Jekyll to Harry Dean’s Hyde, had always been much more of a buzz but now the pull of it had become an addiction. And since dark seeds of doubt and disillusionment had been sewed over the Blackman case, Harry Dean had allowed Harry Tyler to bend the rules he had once lived by. He hadn’t planned it, but when an op had taken him to Guernsey in the summer of 2002, on a whim he opened a bank account there and started to salt away cash. Later, when a recovered kilo of class-A Peruvian cocaine was unaccountably unaccounted for, Harry casually off-load it to a Maltese mob for a handsome tickle. He didn’t feel bad about it. Why should he? He was still taking out the bad guys with ruthless efficiency but as far as he could see there was no one in the police hierarchy he could fully trust; so why not provide himself with a private pension? It was just insurance for the future. Just in case. He was the same guy but different. It was as if Bruce Banner had decided it was actually cool to be the Hulk.
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